Electronics boss on a global mission to meet all the staff

IN the seven months since his appointment as chief executive of the US electronics company, Xilinx, Mr Wim Roelandts has made it his business to meet the staff.

Mr Roelandts was in Dublin this week for his second round of meetings at Xilinx Ireland's plant at Citywest business campus on the Naas Road. More than a quarter of the Irish staff have now met the head of the worldwide operation on a one to one basis or in very small groups, while one fifth of all employees worldwide have had a similar meeting.

Although such an exercise is made easier by its compact size - Xilinx has a mere 1,100 employees - Mr Roelandts believes passionately that managers have to do more than merely talk to other managers.

"You can't limit yourself to executives, you have to drill down further. You have to get to know people better. A lot of management is really trying to understand what goes on in people's heads."

Mr Roelandts, who worked with Hewlett Packard for almost 30 years before joining Xilinx, describes himself as "a big believer in communication". Apart from the two personal visits, the chief executive has also talked to the Irish staff at the end of every quarter via a video link.

Xilinx, which employs 115 people in Ireland, makes programmable semiconductor chips. It also produces the software needed to customise chips to particular customer requirements. Its main customers are in sectors such as high end electronics, telecommunications, aerospace and defence.

An analogy from the construction business gives a simple idea of what Xilinx does. Buying a custom designed chip from companies such as AMD or Texas Instruments is like buying a house which is completely finished down to the curtains and carpets. But buying a Xilinx chip is more like buying the shell of a house and doing the interior yourself.

The company, which has its headquarters in San Jose in California's Silicon Valley, plans in the medium term to expand faster at its subsidiaries in Colorado, Ireland and Scotland than in the San Francisco Bay area.

Xilinx has agreed plans with IDA Ireland to increase its employment levels to 300 within four years, but this is a very conservative figure, according to Mr Roelandts. "Three hundred (jobs) is probably the lowest number possible," he said.

Additional jobs are likely to be added to the Dublin operation through new developments, which were not foreseen at the time of the original plans for the plant. Already Xilinx has created 20 extra jobs by setting up a large telecommunications hub in Ireland, which routes all the company's European data traffic through Dublin.

The chief executive was "particularly pleased" with the quality of the staff that the company had found in Ireland. "If you have confidence in teams of people you can give them more responsibility."

The decision to concentrate its expansion outside the Bay area has been prompted in part by the shortage of qualified and experienced staff, and Mr Roelandts believes the Irish Government should take note. "It's very critical that we have a flow of good engineers coming out of universities, the Government can't wait until there is a shortage."

Mr Roelandts has experience of at least 10 start up operations he ordered them as a senior executive and also worked on the ground in a start up company with HP. He describes Xilinx Ireland as "the best start up I've ever seen".

The Irish operation, which exports to Europe, the Ear East and Japan is expected to be responsible for about one third of the company's worldwide turnover of $600 million this year in a market which is worth about $1.6 billion.

The company's Irish staff could be in for a busy few years.