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QAD Inc.

QAD Inc. – Company acquired by Thoma Bravo in an All-Cash $2 Billion Transaction.

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QAD Inc is an American software company with headquarters based in Santa Barbara, California. It offers enterprise resource planning software and other related software to several manufacturing companies across the world. It is a privately held company as in November 2021, Thoma Bravo, a private equity firm completed the acquisition of QAD Inc. It was an all-cash transaction with an equity value of $2 billion. The founder of the company is Pamela Lopker, who is currently serving as the President and Chairman of the Board at QAD Inc.

About QAD Inc

QAD is a leading company in the manufacturing sector as it developed the best full-featured manufacturing ERP software and supply chain solutions. When the company was founded in 1979, there were only a few local customers who supported the company and from there it currently has customers across 100 countries. This is why QAD strongly believes in a very loyal and strong community. QAD has nearly 2,000 employees and it is currently focusing on enabling adaptive manufacturing enterprises and eradicating the disruption problems caused by technology and the constant shift in the preferences of customers.

QAD Inc.
Image source: wistia.com

History of the Company

Pamela Lopker started the company in 1979 and initially targeted the manufacturing companies in Southern California. The company started locally by offering them proprietary software applications and then eventually expanded to international markets. In 1984, QAD Inc introduced a new product that was built using 4GL (Fourth Generation Language) and RDBMS of Progress Software. QAD followed the APICS principles to build its first software product, MFG/PRO for the manufacturers. This also became one of the first products to support closed-loop Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II). In 1997, QAD Inc decided to go public and filed its first IPO. It began trading on 6th August 1997.

In 2003, the company launched its first SaaS product and it was a huge success. The product was launched as Supply Visualization and later became QAD Supplier Portal. This platform allowed the QAD customers and the authorized suppliers to share necessary information about orders, shipments, inventory, etc. In 2006, QAD launched a user interface called .NET UI. In 2007, the company changed the name of its core product suite MFG/PRO to QAD Enterprise Applications. After a few years, the company launched QAD Cloud ERP.

Currently, QAD focuses on selling its software products in six different manufacturing industries. They are automotive, high tech, food and beverage, consumer products, industrial equipment, and life sciences. QAD Adaptive ERP is the flagship product of the company which is a SaaS software marketed using cloud computing.

Acquisitions

QAD Inc has acquired several companies during the 2000s and a few of them recently. In 2006, it acquired three companies in a row. In September 2006, QAD acquired a company called Precision Software. It offered transportation and supply chain management software. The company was renamed QAD Precision in 2019. In November 2006, it acquired FBO Systems, an enterprise asset management company followed by a UK-based marketing company, Bisgen Ltd. Some of the other companies on the list are FullTilt Solutions’ product suite, DynaSys (a European company), CEBOS (management software and services), Allocation Network GmbH (German-based supplier management), etc.

About Thoma Bravo

Thoma Bravo is an American private equity firm whose history dates back to 1980 when Golder Thoma & Co was established. The current brand, Thoma Bravo was established in 2008 after they dropped the name Cressey from Thoma Cressey Bravo. Thoma Bravo has three headquarters in Illinois, California, and Florida.

Pamela Lopker – Founder of QAD Inc

Pamela Lopker is famous as the founder and President of QAD Inc. She went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, and right after graduating started writing codes. She started working on a project for radar defense systems for a naval defense contractor in California. She also helped his husband, Karl Lopker with his sandal company, Deckers Outdoor. It was then she realized there wasn’t any perfect software to track from sales to inventory and other requirements for Deckers Outdoor and decided to start her own software company for manufacturing sectors.

Siemens

Siemens – Story of the Largest European Industrial Manufacturing Company.

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Siemens AG is a German-based publicly traded company based in Munich. The company was founded more than 170 years ago when Germany was still famous as the Kingdom of Prussia. Werner von Siemens is the founder of the company who incorporated the business in late 1847 along with Johann Georg Halske. Siemens today represents a wide range of products and services and its principal divisions are industry, energy, healthcare, and infrastructure, and cities. The products of the Company are very diverse ranging from developing enterprise software to railway vehicles. The company is a multinational company that provides its service globally and currently employs 293,000 people. Currently, the CEO of the company is Roland Busch and its headquarters is based in Munich.

The Initial Journey of Siemens

Werner von Siemens and Johann Georg Halske co-founded Siemens & Halske in October 1847. Their business evolved around an invention that used a needle instead of morse code to point the sequence of alphabets. The company was then known as Telegraph-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske and they opened their first long-distance telegraph line in 1848. This construction took place in Europe and covered a total length of 500km. Starting in 1850, the company started expanding its business in London and also developed long-distance telegraph lines in Russia. In 1867, Company successfully completed its Indo-European telegraph line from London to Calcutta. Werner retired from the company in 1890 and left the company’s responsibility to his brother and sons. After a couple of years, Company received a huge contract for the construction of the Hobart electric tramway in Australia.

Siemens
Image source: www.jobriya.in

Siemens During Nazi Germany

In the 20th century, several activities of the company Siemens & Halske were merged with Schuckert & Co Nuremberg and the company’s name changed to Siemens-Schuckert. After the merger, Siemens-Schuckert became the seventh-largest company in Germany in terms of the number of employees. In 1932, another merger took place between Siemens and the other two companies which formed the present-day Siemens AG. Since Siemens was a German company, it didn’t have a good reputation in how it treated the laborers in the extermination camps. The company had a plant in Auschwitz and the company was known for supplying electrical parts to these Nazi camps.

Expansion of the Company

From the 1950s, the company started manufacturing computers, semiconductors, pacemakers, and washing machines. In 1980, the company rolled out its first digital telephone exchange and also started acquiring several companies. Some of these companies include Plessey, a UK defense and technology company, three solar module plants from ARCO, Nixdorf Computer AG, Industrial Systems Division of Texas Instruments, and many more. The company also started a joint venture with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which enhanced the business in the American market. In the late 1990s, Company opened its subsidiary, Siemens Financial Services for managing financial risks in the company. In 1998, the company made a big acquisition of $1.5 billion when it bought Westinghouse Power Generation and became a pioneer in the power generation market.

Company in Digital Era

In the 21st era, Company expanded its services and also started joint ventures with several companies. The company acquired the rail division of Invensys followed by LMS International NV in the same year. Nokia and Siemens started a joint venture and started Nokia Siemens Network but in 2013 the partnership came to an end when Nokia proposed a buy-out and acquired the entire Nokia Siemens Network. The same year, Company landed a huge deal with a middle east company called Saudi Aramco for manufacturing power plant components. The company also acquired the gas turbine and compressor energy business of Rolls Royce in 2014. Recently, Siemens Energy became an independent company and is not a part of SiemensAG anymore. The company is currently making efforts to expand its Healthline division and is planning to buy Varian Medical Systems for $16.4 billion.

About the Founder

Werner von Siemens, famous as the founder of SiemensAG was an electrical engineer and an industrialist by profession. His contribution in the field was so immense that his name was taken for the unit of electrical conductance. He completed his education at Prussian Military Academy’s School of Artillery and Engineering. After returning from the war, he devoured himself towards technology and soon invented the telegraph as the replacement of the morse code. He died on 6th December 1982.

Control Data Corporation

Control Data Corporation – The Story of One of the Pioneers of Mainframe and Supercomputers.

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There have been cases where companies do exceptionally well and stand as a tough competitor for their rivals at a time, and when the time changes, it becomes difficult for them to keep up with the changing trends, and they fall bad. The same thing happened with CDC (Control Data Corporation), a company founded in 1957, termed as one of the pioneers of the mainframe and the supercomputers. In the beginning years of the company, it easily became a part of the top ten leading computer manufacturing companies in the US. But the changing technologies made the company suffer huge losses, and it had to close most of its operations.

Foundation of Control Data Corporation

A couple of software engineers from a team (later became a company named Sperry) that worked for the US military in World War II established Control Data Corporation in September 1957. The company started its operations from an old warehouse in Minneapolis. William Norris became the first CEO, and Seymour Cray was the first chief designer of the company.
With enough experience, CDC started to build and ship the subsystems, including drum memory systems. The next year, the company built its flagship product, the CDC Little Character, one of the most successful products of CDC. In the following years, CDC also built products for the US Navy. The company is also allegedly credited for building one of the first minicomputers, i.e. the CDC 160A, a 12-bit version of 1604. The CDC 160A was the first computer to have an architecture of a standard office desk.
CDC 3000 series was CDC’s next famous series of the 60s. During the mid-60s, Seymour Cray, Jim Thornton, and Dean Roush were already working on a new computer design separately to improve the CDC 1604 and bring a more compact design computer to the market. The result was CDC 6600, a ten times faster machine that brought about $8 million to the company profits, and over 100 machines were sold. The CDC 6600 brought much-needed fame to CDC, and IBM started to consider the former as its rival.

Control Data Corporation
Image source: wikimedia.org

During the same time, to grow and compete with companies like IBM, CDC started to acquire other small companies. As a result, CDC was now also developing peripheral products like tape transport. The peripheral lineup of CDC was making cheaper yet faster peripheral devices as compared to its rivals. CDC became one of the leading companies to supply hard disk drives through its Magnetic Peripheral Inc (Imprimis Technology) division. CDC is one among the three developers of the universal Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) interface along with Compaq and Western Digital.
In the 70s, CDC also entered into the OCR system development business to replace the punched card technology and acquired Rabinow Engineering (one of the pioneers of OCR technology). But later, CDC had to close that business.
The next products from CDC were CDC 7600 and CDC 8600, which were even faster, but could not reach the expectation. In 1975, CDC introduced the STAR-100, a supercomputer that had its name registered in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the “most powerful and fastest computer”.
During the late 70s, CDC was selling CDC 6600 and 7600 under its CDC Cyber lineup. The company’s other ambitious and successful projects were Cyber 205, CYBER PLUS, Cyber 80, etc.

The ‘Fall’, and Formation of Ceridian

The 80s was the most challenging decade for CDC. It was selling the machines but was unable to produce competitive designs as per the requirements. With the rise in competition, the company started to sell some of its business bit-by-bit, starting with PathLab Laboratory Information System in 1987, followed by VTC, Ticketron, and CDC in 1992. CDC was then left with its service business, which is renamed Ceridian, a company that is still operational.
Ceridian, today, is following its legacy and is working as one of the leaders in the field of IT outsourcing, mainly as a human resource company. Ceridian is active in five major countries, i.e., the USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Mauritius. It is a publicly traded company and has its headquarters based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

The Key People in the Formation of CDC

William Norris was the first CEO and one of the founders of CDC. He was born on 14 July 1911 in Red Cloud, Nebraska. He went to the University of Nebraska and started his career as an X-Ray equipment seller for the Westinghouse Corporation in Chicago.
Later, Norris joined the US Navy as a codebreaker and became the lieutenant commander in the next few years. After World War II ended, he along with Howard Engstrom and other US Navy cryptographers, formed the Engineering Research Associates (ERA) in January 1946, a division that worked for the US Navy. After multiple restructuring of ERA, Norris with a few other employees left the company and established Control Data Corporation in 1957. Norris was unanimously selected as the president and the first CEO of CDC.

midea group

Midea Group – A Chinese Electrical Manufacturing Company Founded By The Famous Businessman He Xiangjian.

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He Xiangjian established the Midea Group in 1968. The company is a Chinese electrical appliance manufacturer and with time it has pioneered robotic and automation technology. Midea Group’s headquarters is based in the Shunde district of China. It is a publicly traded company that is listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. With time, that company has expanded to several foreign territories and established more than 60 overseas branches as of 2018.

Some of the main products manufactured by Midea Group are water appliances, small and big appliances for cooking purposes, laundry equipment, etc. So, the products manufactured by Midea Group are extensively used by people in day-to-day life. Once a brand especially for household appliances becomes popular, it gains the trust of the customers which helps it stay in the market for the long term.

About Midea Group

Midea Group is a Fortune 500 company and currently ranks 288th on the list. There are more than 150,000 working for the company from various parts of the world. The company currently entered 200 overseas markets and has established partnerships and collaborated with other brands to bring innovation into the products. Speaking of innovation, it is one of the core values of the Midea Group. Out of the total profit generated annually, Midea Group invests 3.5 percent in its R&D sector which consists of 20 research centers in 9 countries. The company has more than 56,000 authorized patents to date.

In terms of manufacturing, Midea Group is the biggest manufacturer for certain products on a global scale. With time, the company has improved production capacity and gained experience to produce a diverse range of products at a high rate. There are 16 countries where Midea Group has established production bases. The company’s goal is to deliver an order within 12 days after a customer orders it as per the T+3 business model.

midea group
Image source: www.gizchina.com

History of the company

He Xiangjian started the business in 1968 by opening a small workshop for producing bottle lids. The workshop was established in Beijiao, Shunde and Xiangjian had very little capital during this time. From a small workshop to turning Midea Group into one of the most successful companies in China, the journey is incredible. When He started manufacturing bottle lids, he eventually expanded the business and started producing car parts as well. During this time, Midea Group was a private company but Guangdong Midea Electric, a subsidiary that handled the core business of Midea Group filed for IPO. In 1973, it became a publicly traded company as it got listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

In the early 1980s, Midea Group started focusing on manufacturing fully finished goods like electric fans. In 1985, the company rolled out its first air conditioner which to date is one of the core products of the company. The last decade of the 20th century was all about expanding the horizon of products which included refrigerators, washing machines, microwaves, etc. Midea started building production units outside the country in the 21st century. Its first production facility was established in Vietnam in 2007 and this year marked the international expansion of Midea Group. The company’s next target was to enter into the CIS market and it did it in 2008 by partnering with Horizont. After a few years, the company entered into another joint partnership with Carrier Corporation and they opened branches in Egypt, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and India.

He Xiangjian served as the Chairman of the company from 1968 till 2012 when he decided to step down from his position. Xiangjian was replaced by Paul Fang who was the Chairman and President of Guangdong Midea Electric. In 2014, Xiaomi acquired a 1.2 percent share of the Midea Group and after a couple of years, Midea made three big acquisitions. They are Toshiba’s home appliance division, a German robotics company called KUKA, and a brand called Eureka.

About He Xiangjian

He Xiangjian is one of the eminent entrepreneurs hailing from China for building the world’s largest appliance maker company. Back in 1968, he with the help of 23 residents from the town of Beijiao formed the lid production workshop. His current net worth by Bloomberg Billionaires Index is $32.7 billion.

Wistron Corporation

Wistron Corporation – An Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) Which Grew Independently After Spinning Off From Acer.

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Originally the manufacturing division of Acer Inc, Wistron Corporation emerged as an independent entity in 2000. The company is a part of the ODM sector and it designs and manufactures Wistron products for other companies. These products are sold under the brand name of other companies. Wistron Corporation is based in Taipei, Taiwan and the key people involved in the core team of the company are Simon Lin (Chairman and CSO) and Robert Huang (Vice President). The company has also created a presence in international markets including Asia, North America, and Europe. Currently, there are more than 80,000 Wistron employees spread across the world.

About Wistron Corporation

Wistron is a leading global leader when it comes to providing technical solutions and innovative ICT products. Focusing primarily on communication and information products, Wistron has become one of the largest suppliers across the globe. Wistron has a very powerful and dedicated R&D division where the employees are highly qualified and experienced in product design. The company has a handful of subsidiaries that specialize in different branches of technology and communication. The subsidiaries are Wistron NeWeb Corporation (design and development of communication products), Wistron Information Technology & Service Corporation (software service company), and Wiwynn Corporation (cloud services company).

Wistron Corporation
Image source: logosurfer.com

History of Wistron Corporation

In the realm of contract manufacturing, Wistron represents a very powerful company that dominates the market not only as a computer maker but also as storage systems, mobile phones, LCD TVs, etc. After spinning off from Acer Inc, the company has diversified in terms of product range and landed some biggest clients like Microsoft and Dell. Only a year after the spin-off, Wistron started making Xbox videogames consoles and so much more. Simon Lin has big dreams for Wistron Corporation and eventually, he took the company to another level in the market. In the initial days, the company appeared on Forbes Asia’s Fabulous 50 list three times in a row. In 2009, the company’s manufacturing business was worth $233 billion.

Wistron started investing in electronics recycling very early and bought 5 percent of a company called Super Dragon Technology for dismantling computers. The company also invested in a startup called Polymer Vision to enter into the electronic reader market. Being an ODM company, Wistron also branched out to create opportunities in technology services. This was a rather smart investment and the reason why Wistron today is such a powerful company even if it is not that well-known among common people.

About Acer Inc

Acer is a Taiwan-based multinational corporation that sells electronic products and computer hardware. Stan Shih along with many others founded the company in 1976. The company started off with eleven employees and today it generates revenue of more than $200 billion. Acer serves customers on a global scale as it operates in 40 different nations. In 2000, along with spinning off Wistron, the company also let go of BenQ, and in 2018 spun off GadgeTek Inc. Acer has a very strong presence in Australia, Europe, India, Indonesia, and North America.

Products and Services of Wistron Corporation

Wistron provides a wide range of services as well as products and focuses very much on creating green products. The company strictly adheres to zero usage of forbidden substances and invests significantly in designing recyclable products. Wistron also focuses on constantly applying for patents after it designs innovative products for its customers. Some of the sectors where Wistron provides innovative solutions are education, industrial computers, IoT, enterprise storage, healthcare, etc.

Wistron is also known for developing LCD module components that range from smartphones to LCD TVs. To evolve with time and stay in the competition, Wistron has also expanded its LCM ODM production to automotive and industrial applications. Taking an active part in sustainable business creation, Wistron produces eco-recycled plastics, dismantling and recycling circuit boards, etc.

Simon Lin – Chairman of Wistron Corporation

Simon Lin graduated from National Chiao Tung University based in Taiwan. He graduated with a computer science degree and joined Acer as a regional sales manager. Simon’s career started with Acer and in 1997 he became the President and CEO of the same. Currently, he is the Chairman of Wistron Technologies and the company has been thriving under his leadership since day one.

Sanmina Corporation

Sanmina Corporation – An American Fortune 500 Company providing Electronics Manufacturing Services.

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From the mid-1900s till the end of the 20th century, many companies started their fortune in the semiconductors and telecommunication industry. Most of them became very successful due to the rising demand for technology with the increasing population and change in lifestyle. Sanmina Corporation is one such successful company in the field of electronics manufacturing services. The company was founded in 1980 by Jure Sola. Sanmina provides end-to-end design solutions of premium quality to the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). The company’s main fields of interest are communications network, healthcare, computing and storage, multimedia, defense, aerospace, clean tech sectors, etc.

A Brief Introduction about Sanmina Corporation

Sanmina Technology is based in San Jose, California. Within 40 years of its thriving business, the company has opened nearly 80 manufacturing sites, hired 40,000 employees, operating in more than 20 countries, and has already established itself as a technology leader. In 2018, the company was ranked 411 on the Fortune 500 list. Currently, Jure Sola is serving as the Chairperson and CEO of the company although there was a change in leadership in the meantime. As many big companies are eventually entering into the profitable industry of oil and gas, Sanmina has been a provider of manufacturing services to some big oilfield equipment and service corporations for the last 20 years.

Sanmina Corporation
Image Source: sanmina.com

Founding History of the Company

Jure Sola started working for Lika after graduating which produced electronic transducers and control instruments for factory automation. In 1980, he decided to establish his own company and thus co-founded Sanmina Corporation with Milan Mandaric. When Sola and Mandaric opened the company they exclusively manufactured printed circuit boards. For the first decade, the company expanded the business into manufacturing backplanes and subassemblies. In 1991, Jure Sola became the President and Chairman of the company.

In the 1990s, the company started designing and producing products for major OEM companies and acquired a bunch of businesses. In 1993, the company filed for an IPO and completed it on NASDAQ. In 1997, among the contract manufacturers present at that time, the company ranked ninth. So, Sanmina avoided manufacturing consumer products so that it can focus on high-end networking and telecommunication applications. Sola believed that the company had lots of opportunities if it went after designing and manufacturing products that are difficult to build internally.

Sanmina Corporation and SCI Systems

From the 1990s both the OEM companies and the contract manufacturers started working side by side like integrated cooperation. During this truly cooperative time, SCI became a pioneer in the list of OEM companies as it designed and produced almost everything for the Apollo Space Project. By the end of the 1990s, the company generated most of its revenue from government contracts and personal computers. Jure Sola saw this as an opportunity as it wanted to create a more diversified revenue system for Sanmina Corporation. This meant the company needed to bring a broader group of customers on board which led to the merger of SCI and Sanmina in 2001.

Sanmina Corporation
Image Source: mergr.com

Sanmina generated two-thirds of its revenue from the communication market but it was really depressed during the time of the merger. So, this merger was very crucial for Sanmina Corporation to get back on its feet and emerge as a larger empire in the industry. In July 2001, Sanmina Corporation acquired SCI in a stock swap for $6 billion and it is till date one of the biggest acquisitions in the history of the electronic manufacturing services industry. After the acquisition, the new company started generating an annual revenue of nearly $12 billion and soon it became one of the top 5 companies in the electronics manufacturers industry. In the last few years, Sola’s company acquired a few more businesses and has maintained the quality of services provided.

The Founders: Jure Sola and Milan Mandaric

Jure Sola was born in 1951 in Croatia. He moved to the United States at the age of seventeen and completed his engineering from San Jose State University. After graduating in 1972 Sola joined Lika Corporation and worked there for eight years. In 1980, he co-founded Sanmina Corporation and switched his positions a couple of times.

Milan Mandaric is a Serbian-American businessman who started his career by taking control of his father’s machine shop. In 1969, he left his home country Yogoslavia and started working for an American company in California. Soon he founded his own company, Lika Corporation but after a few years sold it off to co-found Sanmina with Jure Sola.