The former chief executive of Intermec Technologies has been named president of Beaverton, Oregon,-based Tektronix.
Patrick Byrne had been serving as a vice president with Tek’s parent company, Danaher Corp.
Outgoing President Amir Aghdaei, who has run Tektronix since 2009, is now “group executive” of Danaher’s communications organization. Within Danaher’s corporate structure, communications is a subgroup of its broader test-and-measurement organization.
Prior to joining Danaher in 2012, Byrne had been chief executive of Intermec, a publicly traded, radio frequency identification specialist based in Everett.
Byrne left in 2012, a year after successful heart surgery, as Intermec was preparing to restructure following three years of losses. Intermec was sold several months later to Honeywell International for $600 million.
Before running Intermec, Byrne had spent eight years in executive roles at Tek’s chief rival, Agilent Technologies, and two years at Hewlett-Packard Co. before HP spun out Agilent. He holds engineering degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and from Stanford.
Tektronix makes oscilloscopes and other instruments that engineers use to develop and test electronics.
It’s the godfather to Oregon’s technology industry, spinning out dozens of smaller companies and establishing the state as a destination for electronics manufacturing and design.
Intermec had $677 million in revenue in Byrne’s last full year running that company. Sales in Tek’s instruments business totaled $843.7 million in 2007, its last full year before the company’s sale. (Danaher also acquired Tek’s communications business but operates that separately.)
Danaher does not disclose current financial results for Tektronix, but reported Thursday that Tek had its 11th consecutive quarterly decline in core revenues. However, Tek also posted its first increase in orders since 2011.
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