Smith, a leading global distributor of electronic components and semiconductors announces the appointment of Dale Bahn to the position of Global ITAD Director. In this role, Dale will lead the company’s global IT asset disposition (ITAD) team and oversee all ITAD initiatives.
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Smith launched its Intelligent ITAD services in 2017 and has seen rapid growth since its inception. The program provides sustainable solutions for decommissioned IT assets—including hard drives, SSDs, and other hardware—while maximizing return on investment. Utilizing the company’s proprietary data-wiping and verification service, SWIPE, Smith captures each drive’s identifying information, ensures all data is permanently removed from HDDs and SSDs to the NIST SP 800-88 R1 standard, and grades the quality and physical condition of the drive based on individual capacities, speed, runtime, and number of good or bad sectors. Top-quality drives are then remarketed to Smith’s vast network of global customers, while unmarketable drives are responsibly recycled to R2v3 standards.
“Smith is committed to protecting our customers’ sensitive and confidential data, and our SWIPE service provides critical assurance to our customers that all data-bearing hardware is completely sanitized and securely handled,” said Dale. “I look forward to supporting the  globalization of our ITAD business and spearheading new opportunities to drive our growth and innovation.”
The company opened a new, 30,000-square-foot facility last year to house its US-based ITAD services, which previously operated out of Smith’s flagship distribution center at its global headquarters in Houston. The expansion has allowed Smith’s Intelligent ITAD™ program to increase its process-line-capacity by 20 percent and the process lines’ roller-line capacity by 33 percent. The company has also added 20 high-capacity drive-erasure machines, with ten more machines to be added in the near future, effectively increasing the test-area capacity by 150 percent.
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Dale brings more than three decades of experience and knowledge of servers, networking equipment, components, and operational processes to the position. He joined ServerMonkey, Smith’s sister company specializing in refurbished servers and networking equipment, as its Operations Manager in 2014 and was named to his most recent position as Global ITAD Operations Manager at Smith in 2020. During his tenure, Dale has been instrumental in establishing the company’s ITAD policies and procedures, developing key service offerings, and expanding the department’s operational output.
“Dale has provided significant improvements to our ITAD service offerings from an operational standpoint,” said Art Figueroa, Senior Vice President of Global Operations at Smith. “His experience allows him to delve into arduous situations and provide practical solutions. He was a key player in the launch of our ITAD hub in Houston and helped bolster the department’s production with the introduction of groundbreaking in-house equipment and system-based improvements. He can largely be attributed to ITAD’s current and future success.”
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