NCET Biz Tips: Arrow Electronics Points to The Future
NCET helps you explore business and technology
By Dave Archer
On the corner of Maestro Drive and Longley Lane, a relatively nondescript warehouse and office building stands quietly. It would be easy to pass by it and not know that it’s home to one of Arrow Electronics’ largest global warehouses and that components for devices you use every day pass through it.
“Every single day at some point by 10 a.m. you’ve touched a product that has probably had an impact through this facility,” said Danny Weibel, Director and general manager of NA programming centers at Arrow Electronics. “Your phone is an example. Every single thing you touch electronically probably has a component built into it that came through this facility.”
A Fortune 500 company with more than 20,000 employees worldwide, Arrow Electronics guides innovation forward for more than 200,000 leading technology manufacturers and service providers. With 2018 sales of $30 billion, Arrow develops technology solutions that improve business and daily life.
Its business reaches a host of industries, including aerospace and defense, business intelligence, lighting, data center, power management, internet of things, transportation, sustainability, cloud, mobility, security and more.
Its Reno presence began in 1990 when Arrow opened a 180,000-square-foot warehouse on Spice Island Drive. Now, it employs more than 1,000 people with more employees at its Stead value-added recovery operations. The 700,000-square-foot South Reno warehouse on Maestro Drive services all Arrow’s major electronics component manufacturing clients.
The Reno team also provides programming services, wherein engineers add logic or intelligence to semiconductors upon client request. In Stead, Arrow’s VAR group recovers valuable components from obsolete electronics equipment.
The Reno location also participates in many of Arrow’s global initiatives. One of these is the SAM project, which modified a Corvette Stingray to empower quadriplegic, former Indy Car race driver Sam Schmidt to drive again. Technology from the SAM project is now being used to help other disabled individuals gain more access to driving and other movements.
Another, We Care Solar, a nonprofit that teamed with Arrow to ensure women can give birth in well-lit health facilities and to equip medical providers with the power to save lives.
The company’s motto is, “Five Years Out,” which Weibel said integral to its philosophy.
“We are continuing to design our resources, infrastructure, and planning model around the next five years,” Weibel said. “Not where we are today or tomorrow, but in five years, where do we want to be? When we look across our customer base, we’re constantly asking, where will you be five years from now so that we can support those endeavors?”
See Arrow Electronics’ 700,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution center in Reno and learn about its global impact during NCET’s Tech Wednesday event from 5:30–7:30 p.m. on July. For more information and to purchase registration, visit NCETwed.org.
Dave Archer is president/CEO of NCET, which produces educational and networking events to help people explore business and technology.