Jim Tran, CEO of TDK USA Corp., was named Executive of the Year at the Best of Sensors Awards in June held at Sensors Converge 2023 in Santa Clara, Calif. It is the first year the honor has been bestowed.
In presenting the award, Sensors Converge Event Director Charlene Soucy described Tran as a newer leader of two years at TDK “but certainly not a new addition to the industry” after years spent mainly in wireless communications with Qualcomm, Broadcom, Sony and Boeing.
“In his short time at TDK, he has brought a focus on system solutions, pushing the strategic focus on collaboration between internal groups to develop complete product solutions using a full set of technologies and products,” Soucy said. “He’s also been instrumental in a recent purchase and acquisition which has enabled the company to accelerate the transition to Industry 4.0 with smart system platforms.”
Fierce Electronics caught up with Tran for this email Q&A:
FE: Congratulations on being named executive of the year at the Best of Sensors Awards 2023. You are the first named in that category. You have been at TDK for nearly two years and are credited with achievements including the purchase of Qeexo and what appears to be a reorganization around the InWheelSense product line. Can you talk about how the Qeexo purchase evolved and what the AutoML platform does?
Tran: Being the first-ever honoree of this award at a setting as relevant as the Best of Sensors Awards program is a tremendous distinction.
Leading up to the transaction, we embarked on energy transformation (EX) and digital transformation (DX) - and one of my focuses has been seeing how we, on the DX side, can help ourselves and others, our clients, and partners.One of our engineers had experience with Qeexo as we, TDK, began investing heavily in sensors and AI technologies. An introduction became necessary as we recognized that AI resources were (and continue to be) limited and expensive to match-make for particular domains.
Qeexo developed technology that can classify behaviors on a device or machine as long as an individual has domain expertise. The company started in mobile but transitioned to IoT and AI and their AutoML tool enables scaling as it is a no-code tool that allows these experts to create production-worthy ML models. The purchase provided us with AI expertise but in a way that allowed us to scale across thousands of industries.
Before we came together, we both knew that the future is about data; it's about sensors. Especially in Industry 4.0 - and we’ve developed the hardware and industry know-how. Still, scaling became a challenge (for the entire industry) for applying AI / ML to customer needs across industries. Qeexo addresses domain expertise and scaling challenges for our customer base.
FE: What do engineers and the broader public need to know about what TDK does and how it stands out from competitors? Clearly you are big in automotive, but is there an elevator pitch you can share?
Tran: TDK components and technology ingredients are inside nearly every piece of technology.
People of particular generations remember us from cassette tapes and VHS tapes, but we’ve changed – the TDK of today is a technological leader in sensor technology, passive components, batteries for consumer electronics, magnetic heads for cloud storage, and much more.
In the energy transformation (EX) world, we are prominent in home storage systems and provide onboard power electronics and converters for the large North American EV market players.
Last year, we posted total sales of USD $16.1 billion and employed about 103,000 people worldwide. Most importantly, we strive to impact the EX and DX initiatives that all companies are encountering today or will face in the future.
FE: The role of ML is obvious with AutoML but what do you make of the entire world of AI and generative AI and how it might impact TDK, either inside your company and in products you sell? Smart Bug 2.0, for example, won a Best of Sensors 2023 award for data acquisition and analytics.
Tran: TDK will continue to lead in edge AI and DX, starting with the data-collecting sensors, delivering value at the very source for more intelligent operations.
We see edge AI working with cloud AI in commercial and industrial spaces. All machines will be equipped with smart sensors, predicting outages and needed maintenance. This new refined data provides a more significant impact when it plugs into and feeds extensive third-party enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and manufacturing execution systems (MES) which tell a larger, more intelligent story. This bigger picture is one of the major transformations that drive us.
FE: Sustainability got attention at Sensors Converge in June, but some critics said companies are greenwashing, which is exaggerating the role they play in reducing carbon and making other improvements to protect the environment. What's your take on the whole sustainability movement, and how can TDK contribute in a meaningful way?
Tran: The key is efficiency, and our efforts to provide smart sensors with edge AI capabilities will make large and small-scale factories more efficient over time. These efficiencies equal energy savings over time.
Our TDK factories employ these technologies for efficiency and energy savings, as evidenced by our recent announcement. The entire global TDK Group will convert electricity use to 100% renewable energy by 2050, as part of its 2050 net-zero carbon emissions goal across its entire supply chain.
FE: Any important products coming in the next year you can hint at?
TDK always has new advances hitting different markets and industries. As a leader, one of my main charges is to pull new technologies and developments across our group companies and into new verticals for potential synergies. We have more than 6,000 products available now, with many more planned for release in 2023 and beyond.
Check out other Best of Sensors 2023 award winners online.