Chipping Away
In a digital world, Texas Instruments finds profit in analog
Intuition and hunch are mentioned often. "Ideas come together much more often on a whiteboard, or even the back of an envelope, than in digital," says Brett Forejt, an analog designer at TI. Experience counts, giving older designers more sway and job security than in other semiconductor jobs and raising the risk for a company like TI. Analog designers are known to leave when they feel beset by corporate folderol. "When they move, they tend to move in droves," says Inouye at Databeans. "That keeps the companies scared." A group of designers, in fact, left National Semiconductor some years ago to found Linear Technology. Still, at $1 billion, Linear is a much smaller company than TI, which had sales of $14 billion last year. Texas Instruments, says Inouye, is the biggest company with a major analog play.
Lowe, TI's analog chief, was charged with keeping the expanded analog division from coming apart. "I went home many nights wondering if it would work," he says. Six years later, it seems to have held together, with 90 percent retention of the new employees.
TI's manufacturing capability seduced some of them, as it often was more advanced because of its work in digital semiconductors. Managers moved analog chips into former digital plants, and designers found they could push their concepts further. Another benefit for Texas Instruments: Fabrication gear for analog chips can be used for 10 or 15 years, versus perhaps two for digital semiconductors. "The analog chip business is capital efficient," says Slaymaker, the investor relations chief.
But making the mergers work, and holding together the analog group, depended on a hands-off approach, he says: "We did not come in as an acquirer. We left management teams in place and told them we wanted to learn what they do." So Burr-Brown, for one, remained largely intact, including its creative processes. Designers stayed in Tucson, cowboy hats were embraced, and the beer checks continued.
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