KDI's Chips Communicating in the New Millennium

K D I / Triangle Corporation, in Whippany, New Jersey employs 170 people and has 26 million dollars in annual sales. The radio frequency and microwave component manufacturer is a supplier to the communications industry, with clients such as Lucent, Motorola, Nortel, Nokia and Ericksen, as well as several key military contractors.

The New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program, Inc. (NJMEP) contacted K D I/Triangle Corporation to assist them in confirming that their mission critical manufacturing equipment was Y2K compliant. A representative from the New Jersey's Institute of Technology's Center for Information Age Technology trained KDI/Triangle Corporation on how to inventory their Mission Critical System. They decided that their process for resistor and attenuator chips, which creates the chip from raw material to the final assembly in casing, was their most critical system. NJMEP had to check approximately 24 items.

NJMEP investigated all of the items submitted; and they were determined to be Y2K Compliant.

K D I projected a loss of $2 million dollars in sales if they did not check for Y2K malfunctions. Some of their clients required them to be Y2K compliant, before they would place orders. Kevin Forrestal, Senior Design and Facility Engineer stated, " This project brought a great awareness of other types of equipment that may have been effected other than computers, which in return made us investigate the equipment and is some cases replace it". As a result of researching the equipment, Kevin Forrestal found that there was a need to replace equipment, that prior to this project he was unaware that this type of equipment may have Y2K malfunctions. K D I spent about twenty-two thousand dollars on new capital investments, such as hardware, software and upgrading the security system and time clocks.

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