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Zuken's Z-DAC Conference Well Attended

I have to admit that I'd never been to Rockwall, Texas until last week. I didn't know there was anything to see on the Eastern side of Lake Ray Hubbard, just east of Garland. I was in Rockwall to attend Zuken's Z-DAC Annual Conference at the Hilton Bella Harbor, a hotel that opened recently on the lake. The Hilton offers amazing views of the sunset and plenty of restaurants within walking distance.

Training classes focused on optimizing tools such as CR-5000, E3 and DS2. Speakers included Paul Lapointe, a PCB designer with Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIM); Karen McConnell of Lockheed-Martin; and Rodney McClean of Northrop Grumman. Travel budgets aren't what they used to be, and attendance was down a tad from last year's event in Long Beach. But organizers said about 85 users came from all over the North America to attend Z-DAC. Some of these attendees have been coming to Z-DAC for years. McConnell said she likes the fact that at Z-DAC, she can give her personal feedback to the people who developed the tool she uses. And she's never been shy about sharing her opinions, as she pointed out.In between classes, attendees browsed the exhibits, which included Aldec, CAETEK, Rogers Corporation, Gigatronik, and the Zuken VAR Tropical PCB Design Services.While the classes were under way, I spoke with a few members of Zuken management.Gerhard Lipski, head of Zuken's Western sales, said that despite the downturn, the company had over $200 million in 2009 revenue, with assets of about $250 million in cash on hand. Zuken is busy acquiring new customers for its cable and wire harness design tools and CR-5000. Lipski said the Italian carmaker Fiat recently decided to use Zuken's E3 for its cable and wire harness design. "As someone once said, until the Lehman crash we had everything under control!" Lipski chuckled. "We've been hit in Japan, and we've been hit in Germany, due to the automotive and machinery market. But in the U.S. we have continued to grow and are planning to grow this year. Specifically, we have been looking for more cabling and wire harness business."General Manager David Gullickson added, "In the U.S., we've had very good growth on the PCB side too, with large customers like Lockheed-Martin, where we're continuing to expand into more business units, and RIM."

Gullickson said Zuken also counts Rockwell Collins, Medtronic, Northrop Grumman and Continental among its customers, along with Japanese consumer product companies such as Sony and Panasonic. "The number of people using CR-5000 has increased very much," said Gullickson. "Last calendar year, we trained 650 new users, and through this year we've trained more than that already, and we're not through the year yet."He remembers not long ago when there were few veteran PCB designers with Zuken tool experience. Now, Gullickson believes that if all other types of tools are excluded in a comparison, Zuken is No. 1 in overall market share of PCB design tools. He quickly pointed out that he meant worldwide, not North America.

"Oh, no. We have to include Japan; otherwise we wouldn't be No. 1," said Gullickson. "But we're No. 1 in market share of PCB-specific tools. Now if we can just validate that!"Chief Technical Officer Kazuhiro Kariya said that tool environments such as E3 and DS2 reflect Zuken's approach - dealing with the entire electronic system, not just the PCB."Our focus is now system design," said Kariya. "This is our new challenge."Kariya said OEMs that utilize ODMs are big customers of the DS2 data management tool, which allows companies to share IP while controlling access to it. He added that Zuken dominates the consumer electronics and smart phone markets, and the company plans to do the same with automotive and aerospace.It was demand from automotive customers that led to the ongoing collaboration between Synopsys and Zuken. Kariya said Synopsys users can access their simulators through a CR-5000 interface, and both companies are satisfied with the partnership.Each night we watched the sun set on Lake Ray Hubbard. There were many worse places to be.After the big dinner Wednesday night, Gullickson told the gathering that the location of next year's Z-DAC was still undecided.  New Orleans is on the short list.

For more photos, click here.