Cypress Firm to Sell Tektronix Design Stations : Manufacturing Systems Signs 18-Month Pact

McDonnell Douglas said its Cypress-based Manufacturing Industry Systems Co. unit has signed an 18-month agreement to sell Tektronix Inc.’s color graphics design stations worldwide.

Company officials would not place a value on the pact except to say that they expect it will make McDonnell Douglas an even bigger player in the increasingly competitive computer-aided design market.

Tektronix’s design stations--keyboards, terminals and the electronics that link them to a computer to enable operators to do complex design work--will be installed as part of McDonnell Douglas’ computer-aided design and engineering systems for the manufacturing industry, said George Meister, senior vice president and general manager of the Manufacturing Industry Systems.

He said the agreement with Beaverton, Ore.-based Tektronix broadens a 5-year-old pact under which McDonnell Douglas has offered Tektronix’s design stations for use in the architecture, engineering and construction industries.

Meister said the new agreement with Tektronix will enable McDonnell Douglas to satisfy a growing customer demand for the Oregon company’s design stations, which can enable a company to use the same computer for applications ranging from electronics engineering to mechanical engineering and analysis.

Bigger Market

The manufacturing design market, he said, is “much bigger” than the architectural and structural engineering markets in which Tektronix-equipped McDonnell Douglas systems have been sold in the past.

The market overall for computer-aided design tools for the manufacturing industries was about $2 billion worldwide in 1985,” Meister said. Companies in the McDonnell Douglas information systems group had about 8% of worldwide sales, the fourth largest total in the market.