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>F. George McDuffee expostulated:
>
>| It would be interesting to know how much in deductions the
>| corporation took on their tax returns over the last 5 or 10 years
>| for market research and product R&D. Article in Wed. June 22 WSJ
>| discusses shift in consumer priorities for major appliances from
>| stolid dependability to flash and glitz, which may help explain
>| why the "dependability people" are now in deep do-do.
>
>It's probably worthwhile to take note of the fact that I'm not a
>"Maytag Expert" and that I can't provide very much more than firsthand
>observations (that may or may not be safe to use as the basis for
>generalizations) and inexpert opinion - garnered while working as a
>software consultant with their R&D group. Since all of the products
>under development of which I had knowledge have been announced and/or
>shipped, I'm free to speak openly.
>
>On the R&D side, Maytag has extraordinarily competent engineers and
>researchers who're as enthusiastic and eager as any I've ever seen
>elsewhere. There aren't many of them - and they seemed much
>under-appreciated by their management. My thought was (and remains)
>that any of Maytag's competitors could ruin the firm simply by
>offering this one engineering group an industry competive wage and
>management guaranteed to provide genuine appreciation of past and
>future accomplishments. With careful research, a competitor could
>simultaneously put Maytag's future in grave jeopardy and greatly
>enhance their own prospects for as little as $500K/year. In my mind,
>for a Fortune 300 company this is tantamount to gross negligence on
>the part of management.
>
>| On the other hand, flash and glitz are only skin deep, and how
>| much can it cost and how long can it take to have a design studio
>| "re-skin" a washer or drier, and how much can it cost to shoot
>| metal flake paint in place of white? As an aside, the American
>| people deserve what they get on this one..
>
>Flash and glitz /are/ cheap and easy. Solid dependability and quality
>of function are more difficult and generally expensive to achieve - no
>surprises here. My task as a consultant was to provide a technical
>solution that was expected to drasticly reduce that expense. I
>provided the requested solution (which incorporated solutions to the
>usual variety of unanticipated side issues) and to the best of my
>knowlege, that package was shelved because it required a degree of
>interdepartmental cooperation/communication that too many of the
>first-line development managers weren't prepared to exercise.
>(Bummer!)
>
>A related issue had to do with more than healthy managerial resistance
>to technology more advanced than a motor-driven cycle controller -
>even after their horizontal-axis (front loading) Neptune washer had
>provided proof positive that micros are here to stay! I was by
>definition a "short timer" and that attitude was grindingly
>frustrating to me. I don't want to think about how frustrating it has
>to be for the R&D folks who're intending to stay with Maytag for the
>long haul...
>
>| In response to another reply, the questions about the likely
>| outcomes for senior management were rhetorical, although your
>| detailed answers were insightful. This helps explain the
>| "shortage" of engineers and the rapidly declining number of
>| engineering students. Even the "nerdest" engineer can look
>| up/around and see that while they (and the rest of the "product"
>| people) are taking it in the shorts big time, management and
>| finance are riding off with full boodle bags. While both groups
>| will have some time off, for the product people it will be a mad
>| scramble for another job so they can keep the house and the car,
>| while the management and finance people are resting in Cancun.
>|
>| Do you happen to know if the Maytag pension plans are fully
>| funded, or is this another "debt bomb" that will be lobbed into
>| the PBGC? How about medical care for current retirees? Off
>| Maytag and onto the taxpayers through Medicare?
>
>I don't know. Actually, I didn't pay much attention to anything
>unrelated to R&D and/or some specific product development. I sat
>through (too many) meetings and took notice of what was being said
>about the technology and politics involved with getting the
>vertical-axis (top loading) Neptune product working and out the door -
>and the implementation of a methodology to streamline development of
>all future cycle-based "whiteware".
>
>| We need something more than biased B-school case studies. What do
>| you think of an economic/financial equivalent to the NTSB that
>| would investigate major corporate "crash and burn" cases? These
>| could well be a job for Dr. Kavorikan and not a "crash-cart" and
>| life-support situation.
>|
>| In the aggregate the major loss/damage caused by not only Maytag,
>| but also Enron, Tyco, Ford, EMC, Delta, American, etc., etc., is
>| a total loss of confidence in the competence and motives of
>| management by not only their employees, but the majority of
>| stockholders and the American people.
>
>I'd encourage you to make an at least internal distinction between
>failures resulting from fundamental dishonesty with intent to
>defraud - and failures resulting from stupidity, lack of due
>diligence, etc. on the part of fundamentally well-intentioned people.
>If I were to choose a single cause for Maytag's failure to thrive
>(which would be a huge over-simplification), that cause would be the
>selection of a succession of CEO's who lacked the wisdom to define
>success and to lead their people in that direction.
>
>Your summary is basically true; but would you really expect that a
>government agency /could/ do more than throw good money after bad in
>these cases? If so, you're far more optimistic than I'd dare to be.
>
>One final comment. One of my first questions after starting work at
>Maytag (and I did ask every single person I worked with) was: "What
>does it take to make dirty clothes clean?". What I was after were
>things like how much water per pound of clothes during wash and rinse,
>how much agitation, how much cleaning agent, etc. with some kind of
>mathematical relationships and some numbers. No one knew! I was (and
>still am) dumbfounded that no one at Maytag had ever made a serious
>effort to define in engineering terms what it takes to make clothes
>clean. Think about the implications of that tidbit as you ponder
>business failure causes...