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year, except to say coofly: “What me most is that we are now trend ith the industry. And we will do very well relative to ous majot competitors.” Few analysts are expecting s material upturo in semiconductors eartier than the first quarter of 1975 and possibly even - later. But Corrigan has no doult that & Fairchild will come out of this stump in good shape. For one thing, internal con- trols were glaringly absent when Fair child got caught Gatfooted with a buge and costly buildup of inventory back in 1970. “We didn't even realize there was & slowdown unti! three or four months af- ter it began,” Corrigan admits Since then, he goes on, Faischild has developed “an acute intelligence system that tells us what inventory levels are and how and when they change among both our com- petitors and our customers.” Early this year, for example, semi- conductor demand was stil] rolling along, creating major backlogs of orders and stretching delivery time out to as long as nine months. But Fairchild was already taking steps to cut back production, lay off production workers in the U-S., Singa- pore, Hong Kong and Korea and reduce capita! expenditures for the year. from $55 million to $45 million. “As early as January we were predicting a down- turn for sometime around April or May,” boasts. “And we began slowing ourselves down sooner than most of the competition. In fact, some of them only began to realize there was a downturn in midsummer.” : Fairchild seems to have achieved equally notable transformation in the marketplace. It has expanded its cus tomer base fivefold over the past four years and, more important, diversified it substantially. Heavily dependent for the bulk of its volume on a handful of main- frame computer manufacturers back in 1970, the company is now a major sup- plier to scores of mini-computer makers, peripherals producers, interface manu- fecturers and other related component users. “The breadth of our customer base,” Corrigan explains, “gives us a strong buffer against the cyclicality of the business.” ms Fairchild has also spent some $43 mil- lion in the past three years to modernize its aging manufacturing facilities and to buy a substantial market position abroad, pasticularly in Europe and Japan. Last year foreign sales more than doubled, contributing 30% of total volume. Corti- gan expects forcign sales to rise again this year, provid'ag a cushion against the flat domestic market. On the technological front, Fairchild eT ener Te _qre ee emer, Se a an ai et SE Fairchiid’s Wilfred Corrigan . . has been battling to recover a lot of lost ground. As the second-largest manufac- turer of integrated circuits—the tiny chip with thousands of miniature components on its surface that is the fastest growing segment of the semiconductor industry— the company was nearly overtaken by some newcomers to the game, such as National Semiconductor. Now, thanks to a strong research and development effort, it has strengthened its position in several key areas. In the bipolar integrated-circuit mar- ket, for example, Fairchild has become the undisputed industry leader in the pro- duction of memory circuits, which are used in everything from computers and cash registers to telephone switching sys- tems and industria! controls, Recently, moreover, the company has been improv- ing its lackluster posture in metal-oxide semiconductors (MOS). Long ihe weakest link in its product chain, MOS devices are now receiving a major push from Corrigan: some fifty new ones ate being re introduced this year. Fairchiid’s major | strategy now, says the tough, no-nonsense Corrigan, is “to completely dominate the memory and logic marketplace. Our pian,” he asserts, “is to keep on expand- ing the lines until they have become enormous.” . The kind of market growth that Cori- gan expects to absorb this rapid expan- sion lies, of course, beyond the current. slump. Indeed, in the decade ahead he’ visualizes an indusiry growth rate that will outdazzle the fast pace of the past ten years. “We're far more positive about the next ten years than the past ten,” he says flatly. Meanwhile, Corrigan sees Fairchild rid- ing out the slump by “digesting its recent rapid growth” and “avoiding any adven- turing” (like making major acquisitions or developing end products such as calcu- lators and electronic watches). “We're now taking a conservative posture,” he says, “to study all the opportunities com- ing our way.” Nov. La wpa eT en