Support, Service and Linecard - The Arrow Differentiators

Dear Reader

To be successful in today's electronics industry, distributors must offer a comprehensive portfolio of services that go way beyond the simple fulfilment of customer orders.

A growing number of OEM customers are looking to distributors to provide them with in-depth design-in and technical support during product development and prototyping. Ever-increasing legislative pressures - as illustrated by the recent introduction of the RoHS directive - create opportunities for the distribution channel to play a key role in providing both information and practical support to help customers achieve the necessary compliance. Outsourcing of manufacturing demands that distributors be capable of delivering product to disparate locations across regional boundaries. And component obsolescence and EOL issues present distributors with the challenge of checking the status of multiple products across a variety of suppliers and then communicating the relevant information - including possible replacement technologies - in an accurate and timely fashion to customers.

Arrow has long recognised the importance of providing such added-value service and, as a result, has been supporting customers in all of the areas described above for many years. Take the requirement for engineering support. In Northern Europe Arrow has more technical resources capable of supplying design-in and technical support than any other distributor, and our ratio of field applications engineers to field sales engineers in much of the region has long been 1:1. Our significant investment in processes, procedures and systems to help customers with the RoHS transition is clear evidence of our commitment to supporting customers with legislative compliance, while our global footprint ensures that we can implement supply chain and logistical solutions that are optimised for OEMs and CEMs, wherever they are located. Finally, we have operated for a number of years a programme that keeps customers informed of EOL issues affecting the products that they purchase from Arrow.

Of course, behind these value-added services it is still important for there to be a strong product and technology offering. That's why Arrow's portfolio of products from some of the world's leading electronics companies represents the industry's broadest linecard of semiconductors, passive components, electromechanical devices, connectors and cable and wire technologies, not to mention power supplies, displays and subsystems.

I hope you enjoy this issue of Arrow Innovation. As always, if you have any queries, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us.

Karl Johan Lier
Managing Director, Arrow Nordic