Skyworks Solutions thrives on high-intensity challenges Focus is keeping pace with rapid changes in wireless technology 1/29/2004 Skyworks Solutions thrives on high-intensity challenges Focus is keeping pace with rapid changes in wireless technology By Nancy V. Burns, Globe Correspondent WOBURN -- The general public may not know the name Skyworks Solutions Inc., but anyone with a cellular telephone has used the company's products. "We make the digital signal processor, deliver all the software, and produce the very specialized semiconductors that let wireless devices transmit and receive voice, data, video, and still images, at cellular frequencies," said David J. Aldrich, president and chief executive officer. "Some combination of those capabilities goes into every cellphone in the world." Cellphones are the majority of the company's business, though its products also empower routers known as WiFi. "If you have multiple PCs and printers in your home, our components and semiconductor products empower WiFi devices that allow you to use your computer products wirelessly throughout the house," said Aldrich. "It's the same concept as for cellphones: high-speed, high-performance data that is delivered wirelessly." Skyworks came into existence in June 2002, the result of a merger between Alpha Industries Inc. and a Rockwell International spinoff called Conexant Systems Inc. On Jan. 5, Allan M. Kline took over as the new chief financial officer, succeeding 25-year veteran Paul E. Vincent, who stayed on as vice president of finance. This publicly traded company's revenue grew 35 percent in the fiscal year ending last September to $618 million, while its net loss decreased to $54.3 million from $236 million. The improvement continued in the fiscal first quarter ending Jan. 2, the company reporting last week that revenue rose 9 percent from a year earlier to a record $175.1 million, while net income totaled $4.2 million, roughly five times the quarterly earnings a year earlier. The company's share price, which has ranged from $4.94 to $12.28 over the past year, was trading at about $11.30 early this week. The 2002 loss resulted from "a soft market environment and a high cost structure" in the wake of the merger, said Thomas Schiller, Skyworks' senior director of communications. The turnaround began with a reorganization that "prioritized key products and investments, consolidated manufacturing operations, and lowered our cost structure," he said. Schiller added that revenue was boosted by the launching of new products. At the Skyworks headquarters in Woburn, more than 400 employees work in shifts around the clock. That includes a laboratory staff that produces gallium arsenide wafers, which enable cellular devices to work at higher frequencies than with silicon chips. Another 600 employees are in executive offices in Irvine, Calif., and Aldrich said the company has a diverse workforce of 4,000 spread across the globe in such countries as China, India, Mexico, South Korea, and France. George LeVan, vice president of human resources and a 22-year employee, is proud of the way Skyworks came through the merger. "Our predecessor was Alpha Industries, which had been around since the 1960s," said LeVan. "We're one of the few firms that have successfully made the transition from the military to a commercial company. We did that over a 10-year period, which meant reengineering and changing the way we operate." According to Aldrich, "We went from producing hundreds of devices a day in the 1970s and '80s, which were sold mostly to the military, to greater than a million parts a day." Due to the rapid design cycles of today's cellphones, 70 percent of Skyworks products are new each year. Production has to ramp up and down quickly, which forces the company to be "the antithesis of bureaucracy," said Aldrich, who became chief executive officer of Alpha Industries when he joined the company in 1995. The offices are structured as open cubicles, and casual attire is the norm. The goal is to minimize barriers to communication, while helping employees to work effectively together. "People communicate up and down the chain of command and horizontally across the company," said Aldrich. "When we travel, we all use the same policy: We fly coach." LeVan said, "We try to make things easy for our employees, because our engineers and other professionals work here round the clock." A concierge program called "Circles" helps employees purchase tickets to a ballgame, make restaurant reservations, and arrange outings. All Skyworks employees are included in an incentive plan, so everyone receives stock options. Compensation is based on overall performance in such areas as customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, and profits. According to Aldrich, "When we do well on behalf of our shareholders, our people will do well." Looking head, officials see vast potential for growth around the world. LeVan noted that a wireless infrastructure is cheaper and faster to deploy than a traditional telephone system. "There are no telephone poles in India, China, or lots of places in the Middle East," he said. "Those are where we're selling these cellphones, and that's why business is exploding over there." Aldrich described a recent experience on a train from Hong Kong into the Chinese countryside, at the end of a workday. "The train was half-full of people who had obviously come off a farm or a rural environment, and had been working in a field," he recalled. "What amazed me was all the cellphones going off. Cellphone use is reaching populations that could never have afforded them a few years ago." "People in our workforce are excited about the products, because of the range of technologies that interact," said Aldrich. "We have people creating these solutions -- software, semiconductors, hardware, and esoteric aspects of wireless communications -- all under one roof." However, he added, the work is not for the faint of heart. "This is a high-intensity, rapidly changing environment," he said. "It's not for someone who's looking for a 9-to-5 job." © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. Homepage | Look at a Video | Listen to a Voice Sample | All Content and Artwork Copyright 2007/Nancy Burns. Site Designed by Wisman Cronin Creative