RosettaNet Press Release
RosettaNet Initiative For Developing Collaborative Supply Chain Process Interface Standards Embraces Electronic Components Industry

Newly Formed Electronic Components Board To Adopt RosettaNet's Model To Align Its $200 Billion Supply Chain

For Release August 30, 1999

Santa Ana -- RosettaNet, the most significant supply chain partner-to-partner e-business initiative ever undertaken, today announced that it is expanding its mandate to develop standards for partner-to-partner interface processes to include the electronic components (EC) industry. A natural extension of the consortium's current efforts in the IT supply chain, RosettaNet will form a managing board of EC manufacturers and distributors to address the needs of their industry's supply chain.

In an organizational shift, RosettaNet will now be comprised of two managing boards - the new EC Managing Board and the IT Managing Board - that fall under the umbrella of a newly formed Executive Board that includes representatives from both groups.

"Together, the IT and EC industries represent an interactive, interdependent supply chain, where the line between one and the other is blurred," said Fadi Chehad é, CEO of RosettaNet, who has been named chairman of the Executive Board. "This supply chain interdependency, coupled with RosettaNet's promise of supply chain efficiency, was the fuel that drove the electronics components industry to enthusiastically embrace the initiative," said Chehad é .

As a demonstration of its commitment, the electronic components supply chain agreed to embrace the RosettaNet Project Methodology, expand the RosettaNet Dictionary to include values for passive components, active components and connectors, and to adopt as many Partner Interface Processes (PIPs) as possible.

"There are some business processes that are unique to the component supply chain," said Steve Kaufman, vice chairman of the RosettaNet EC Managing Board and chairman and CEO of Arrow Electronics Inc., the world's largest distributor of electronic components and computer products. "After performing a gap analysis to ascertain how the components side can best utilize PIPs already defined by RosettaNet, the EC Managing Board will merge its PIP development effort with that of the IT side."

The new EC Managing Board reflects a significant portion of the $200 billion EC market. Twenty-three companies have joined the board and will share a common language for identifying products and participate in development of computer-to-computer dialogs that accelerate the flow of information and transactions throughout the supply chain.

The EC Managing Board includes Altera Corporation, AMD, AMP, Arrow Electronics, Avnet, AVX Corporation, Bourns, Cisco Systems, FCI Electronics, Future Electronics, Kemet, Hitachi Semiconductor America, Intel, Micron Technology, Molex, Motorola, National Semiconductor Corp., Pioneer, Solectron, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, VEBA and Xilinx.