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David - how's the company doing now? And how's their reputation for quality now?
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David - how's the company doing now? And how's their reputation for quality now?
Just been bought by one of our/their competitors for what would have been a years profit a while ago. I say our as I have been retired just over a year now but still think of myself as an employee. 35 years will do that to you. Great years I may add.
I think their reputation is what kept them going for the last years. Engineering wise they were the market leaders through the 1940's to 1980's then they went public and the family lost control. The founders sons were in control in a hands on style and had come through the apprentice system like any other employee.
David
I think their reputation is what kept them going for the last years. Engineering wise they were the market leaders through the 1940's to 1980's then they went public and the family lost control. The founders sons were in control in a hands on style and had come through the apprentice system like any other employee.
David
Took a little longer than that but every year we on the shop floor could see dumber and dumber decisions being made.
I use to work for a small outfit in the UK and when they had a new machine the owner would approach a customer and offer a free copy of the machine for trials. At the end of the trial we would give them a reduced price on an updated version. We could not run the quantity of material through the machine in our plant to highlight problems and fully test it and the customer got all the extra production. We often ran the machine for them.
Said all that to illustrate what the public company I retired from would do. We had designed a great new machine and one of our customers were about 20 minutes down the road from us and they were market leaders so if they had one everyone would want one. As it was an unknown machine they hesitant to take it at full price so the first copy was sold overseas and every development/trouble call involved a transatlantic flight. That customer eventually bought one but they were a small company and nobody noticed.
We would have been able to sell a lot of these machines if the engineering had been allowed to market them but accounts said that development costs had to be made back on the first one.
They were always looking to make the books look good this month. Not thinking about what effect their decisions would have down the road.
Our founder is probable revolving in his grave. He came from nothing to own/run a multi million pound company doing business all over the world.
David
I use to work for a small outfit in the UK and when they had a new machine the owner would approach a customer and offer a free copy of the machine for trials. At the end of the trial we would give them a reduced price on an updated version. We could not run the quantity of material through the machine in our plant to highlight problems and fully test it and the customer got all the extra production. We often ran the machine for them.
Said all that to illustrate what the public company I retired from would do. We had designed a great new machine and one of our customers were about 20 minutes down the road from us and they were market leaders so if they had one everyone would want one. As it was an unknown machine they hesitant to take it at full price so the first copy was sold overseas and every development/trouble call involved a transatlantic flight. That customer eventually bought one but they were a small company and nobody noticed.
We would have been able to sell a lot of these machines if the engineering had been allowed to market them but accounts said that development costs had to be made back on the first one.
They were always looking to make the books look good this month. Not thinking about what effect their decisions would have down the road.
Our founder is probable revolving in his grave. He came from nothing to own/run a multi million pound company doing business all over the world.
David
