THE TIMES 100 : The Best Performing Companies in California : THE GIANTS : A Quantum Sales Leap for Drive Maker : Computers: Milpitas-based company succeeds in shortening time between the concept and the product.

Stephen Berkley likes to talk about how fast his business is. A deadline every minute, he says. Still, Quantum Corp., the Milpitas-based disk-drive maker, insists on speeding things up.

Not long ago, for instance, the company succeeded in reducing how long it takes to turn an idea into a product on the shelf. In the past, it took 18 to 30 months, said Berkley, Quantum’s chairman. Now the company is working in the 12- to 14-month range.

In the competitive computer disk-drive business, that lead can mean everything. It allowed Quantum to capitalize on a boom in sales of personal computers and small workstations in the second half of 1991, analysts said.

Quantum shot to No. 13 on the Times list of 100 California companies with the fastest-growing sales, up from No. 91 last year. Quantum’s sales for the calendar year rose 49.9%, to $1.1 billion.

However, intense price competition among disk-drive makers squeezed Quantum’s profits. The most recent figures, for the nine months ending in December, showed that Quantum’s earnings dropped 45%, to $29.6 million, versus the year-ago period.

“The last year has been the most difficult year the disk-drive industry has experienced in its 18-year history,” said Berkley, who stepped down as chief executive last month but remains chairman. He said his company and one other, Conner Peripherals of San Jose, are the only two in the industry that made a profit last year.

Berkley’s “30-second” version of how Quantum accelerated its product development (he has a three-minute version, but didn’t have time to provide it), is that the company reorganized itself into business teams. Each concentrates on a set of applications and a market. He said the teams keep the company focused and flexible.

In September, Quantum introduced two products--a single-disk, 120-megabyte drive and a double-disk, 240-megabyte drive--that were selling at a rate of $400 million a year by March, Berkley said.

“Quantum has about the best product mix to match the current trends in the PC market,” said John T. Rossi, an analyst with San Francisco investment bank Robertson, Stephens & Co. “They were early with a couple of new products, particularly the 120” megabyte drive.

Another reason for the good sales year is that Quantum has broadened its customer base, said Todd Bakar, an analyst with Hambrecht & Quist, a San Francisco-based investment banker.

Just two years ago, Bakar said, half of Quantum’s sales were tied to sales of Apple Computer’s line of personal computers. Quantum has reduced that portion of its business to 20% of revenue by adding such customers as Dell Computer, AST Research and Hewlett-Packard, now Quantum’s second-largest customer.

Quantum is an intriguing study because it is the only disk-drive maker to use a Japanese manufacturer. About 85% of Quantum’s products are made by Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics Industries Ltd. The arrangement began in 1984 when Quantum decided to produce a “hard card,” a slot-fitting hard-disk drive that could be added to IBM-compatible computers.

Quantum had never sold to the retail market. “The arrangement taught Quantum to look for not just performance but for products that were easy to manufacture,” said Rossi, who worked for Quantum at the time of the MKE agreement.

Rossi believes that the arrangement limits Quantum’s ability to make extra profit when times are good. A drive manufacturer could crank up production and spread the fixed costs over more disk drives. And he believes that, some day, MKE will know more about disk-drive technology than may be good for American competitors. Think of semiconductors, he said. Think of auto parts.

But Berkley dismissed that idea. “Both companies contribute significant technology to this relationship,” he said.