PIONEER-STANDARD:

The Energy Behind Your Power

Pioneer-Standard helps engineers identify high-efficiency, low-cost solutions

to meet power supply challenges

Power Solution Challenges

From palm-sized digital assistants to the most complex telecommunications devices, power supplies are everywhere. More and more people use more and more electronic devices. Our increased reliance on computers, and the drive to push more information through smaller boxes, poses new cost, density, reliability, and noise issues.

Power supply engineers must painstakingly design, prototype, test, and implement power supplies to meet the unique demands of each project. Critical power design challenges – ensuring time-to-market and achieving price targets – are frequently compounded because fast-moving technologies in computers and telecommunications put greater pressure on power supply providers. Additionally, the power supply is frequently the last design component.

Electronics distributors such as Pioneer-Standard understand the critical need to streamline the design process and speed time-to-market. Cost cutting has forced manufacturers to reduce costs any way they can, so Pioneer-Standard’s Industrial Electronics Division (IED) offers a range of tools and solutions that enhance the processes and productivity of power supply design, testing, and implementation, while helping engineers meet time-to-market and price objectives. Pioneer Standard is one of a limited number of highly skilled power providers who can offer one-stop-shopping boasting best-in-class suppliers to meet their customers evolving power needs.

Build versus Buy

Power supplies are generally categorized as standard, modified standard and custom. Standard products are standard to a particular manufacturer, rather than the industry. Modified standard products are a specific company’s standard products, modified to fit a particular customer application. Because they have already been designed and manufactured, standard and modified standard products allow users to reduce their time-to-market and minimize costs for new product introductions.

By contrast, custom products are designed from the ground up to meet the specifications of a unique customer application. Custom power supplies commonly require significant tooling costs and a four- to six-month design cycle from conception to production. Engineers frequently turn to distributors such as Pioneer-Standard to help decide on standard, modified standard or custom products because Pioneer offers the industry’s most robust collection of solutions and tools in addition to a complete range of power products.

Electronics manufacturers today face greater competition to accelerate the time to market for new products, and are increasingly expected to produce newer generations of products over a shorter period of time. As a result, they are more likely to purchase from suppliers that offer a broad range of standardized power conversion products, rather than highly customized products that take more time to design and manufacture. As an alternative, electronics companies may outsource the manufacture of power conversion products to more efficient suppliers. Consequently, customers turn to power supply providers like Pioneer-Standard that offer both off- and on-line design support, tools and solutions, so engineers can easily buy or design power supplies customized to their needs.

Delivering Critical Design Support

Whether customers design their own power solutions or collaborate with Pioneer-Standard’s experts on a modified standard or complex design challenge, Pioneer offers a complete range of innovative engineering design solutions.

Pioneer-Standard carries one of the industry’s most extensive line cards of configurable power supplies and components from best-in-class suppliers. Engineers and purchasing managers can use the advanced, customized online discovery and procurement tools at MyPioneer.com, Pioneer-Standard’s award-winning Web site, to select the components they need to develop their own power solutions.

In December 2000, Pioneer-Standard launched WEBENCH™, the industry’s first virtual design tool, which allows engineers to design and test a DC-to-DC converter completely online. WEBENCH dramatically reduces design time and costs – slashing design time from six months to minutes – and improves efficiency by kitting and shipping the DC-to-DC converter power supply prototype and assembly instructions in less than three days.

Customers with complex power issues can turn to Pioneer-Standard’s Regional Power Specialists (RPS), who are field-based engineers prepared to assist with every aspect of power supply design. Whether configuring a power supply or seeking expert advice on a demanding application, Pioneer-Standard provides direct access to experienced engineers who can implement the most current power technologies available to shorten the design cycle, cost, and time-to-market.

Pioneer-Standard’s Power Products Center (PPC) is a unique resource that provides customers with the right combination of people, products, and technical capabilities to solve the most demanding power applications. When KLA-Tencor Corporation (NASDAQ: KLAC), the world’s leading supplier of process control and yield management solutions for the semiconductor and microelectronics industries, needed to identify a new power supply to replace an obsolete component, KLA-Tencor’s Peter Wong contacted Pioneer-Standard’s Jim Meduri at the Power Products Center. Meduri and his colleagues at the PPC helped Wong identify a suitable replacement and design a new interface, ensuring that KLA-Tencor’s production was uninterrupted.

Whether you require a simple integration of a modular power supply or a complex, application-specific design, Pioneer’s PPC can turn your specifications into deliverable products – on time and on budget.

“When the economy is booming and your vendor cuts off your supply, engineers need solutions yesterday,” Wong said. “The best distributors understand what engineers need – having access to design specialists at Pioneer’s Power Products Center has been a real life saver. We work almost exclusively with our experts at PPC because they are extremely knowledgeable and responsive.”

The Competitive Edge

From microwatts to kilowatts, Pioneer-Standard’s diverse array of power solutions guarantees that customers get the most cost effective, high efficiency solutions to meet their unique power supply needs. Engineers designing power conversion products may choose to design and build their own custom power supply, buy a standard product, or collaborate on a modified standard product with a Pioneer-Standard’s Regional Power Specialists and Power Products Center. In any situation, they can rely on Pioneer-Standard as the single source of knowledge and products that delivers design support solutions to meet the development, time, and cost demands faced by today’s engineers.