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In November, Roy Vallee, executive chairman of electronics distributor Avnet (NYSE: AVT), will retire after 35 years with the company. He served as COO and then president from 1992 until July 2011. Vallee saw Avnet grow from a $2 billion company to a $26 billion company. He recently spoke with Associate Editor Jenel Stelton-Holtmeier about how the industry has changed over the past 35 years, where he thinks it’s heading and provides advice for the next generation entering the industry. Part 1 of this interview appeared in the Oct. 10, 2012, issue of MDM.

MDM: In our podcast (available at mdm.com/7Minutes) you identified automation as the biggest industry change you’ve seen in your career. Could you talk more about the other changes you’ve seen?

Roy Vallee: How we operate is so much different today. We used to have inventory in every branch. It was difficult to find and transfer inventory between branches, and in order to fill a single customer order, we would often have to ship product from multiple branches to get the total quantity that we were looking for. Now with …

In November, Roy Vallee, executive chairman of electronics distributor Avnet (NYSE: AVT), will retire after 35 years with the company. He served as president and COO from 1992 until 1998, when he was promoted to CEO – a position he held until July 2011. During his tenure, Vallee saw Avnet grow from a $2 billion company to a $26 billion company. Vallee recently spoke with Associate Editor Jenel Stelton-Holtmeier about his career at Avnet and the role acquisitions played in the success of the distributor.

MDM: Avnet's growth is in large part attributed to its acquisition strategy. But integration can sometimes be a challenge – finding a balance between maintaining the culture and what attracted Avnet to the company while at the same time making the acquired company a part of Avnet. How did Avnet achieve success with this? And how can other companies make it a smoother process?

Roy Vallee: We did our first large-scale integration back in 1993. And we had to figure out then the best way to deal with it. But one of the first things we decided was that we'd document the process that we used so that with our next acquisition, we could …