The ongoing downturn is causing an upturn for distribution-demand creation—using distributor-supplied suites of engineering services to encourage product training and guidance—as suppliers rely more on distributors to encourage complete designs. “What I've seen in a number of suppliers—not universally but in a number of key supplier relationships—is maybe a greater willingness to examine the way business is being done,” says Mark Larson, president of components distributor Digi-Key Corp. “These changes were occurring even before the downturn. Now, everyone is standing back, and they are seeing that success is not coming as easily or, in some cases not at all, and it forces a re-examination. It's an interesting thing, and I think it's going to make for more creative solutions.”

Mike Long (photo), newly appointed chief executive officer of Arrow Electronics Inc, agrees that, in many ways, distributor relationships with suppliers are getting stronger. “We are looking for ways that we can increase or take on different portions of the supply-chain workload so we are not duplicating efforts as much as we used to,” he says. “Suppliers would like us to continue on our journey to be more technically astute and bring their technology to more customers than we have in the past.”

Long notes that companies are changing the ways they are doing designs. “If you go back 10 years, every engineer wanted to see another engineer that was around product specialization,” he says. “Today, the engineers are more interested in solving a solution problem versus a part problem. Customers aren't interested in our doing a design for one part. They want the total solution to be efficient, and they want the solution to be designed with products that will be readily available for longer periods of time.”