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August 24, 2006
A tale of two companies
Maybe some of the big dinosaurs are beginning to get it. For example, there is this story - Matsushita Electric Aims to Profit By Improving Design Efficiency:
Fumio Ohtsubo, the new president of Matsushita, which produces Panasonic brand goods, said in an interview that improving the design and assembly of its products is pivotal to raising profit margins.
Matsushita, the world's largest consumer-electronics maker by sales, last week said it will consider closing some of its 170 remaining plants in North America, Asia and Europe.
Mr. Ohtsubo's predecessor, Kunio Nakamura, was able to turn around Matsushita -- hit by a big loss in the fiscal year ended March 2002 -- by closing factories and cutting thousands of jobs. He also focused on a few major products, such as flat-panel plasma displays and digital cameras.
. . .
The 60-year-old Mr. Ohtsubo sees a focus on product-design improvements as central to pushing Matsushita into a new stage of growth. "I want to strengthen our cost competitiveness at the design level," Mr. Ohtsubo said.
He said his first step will be to head a new task force to break down the barriers between design teams. This will aim to get teams to share more information and design products that use fewer parts and are more easily assembled.
And then there is this Business Week interview with Bill Ford - Ford on Ford
Business Week: The truth about the auto business is that it takes years to bring new product to market, and there's little you can do to move the ball financially in the short term. Is the revised restructuring plan mostly meant to convey action—that you are digging deeper and faster to really change the company?
Ford: There's a large element to that. People need to see that we're attacking what we can attack. It's not just costs. It's also product. Most people focus on that we are too big and our costs are too high. It's about cutting costs. But it's very much a product-focused plan. We had already begun to diversify away from large SUVs and trucks well before the oil price spike. But we have to see how my product programs can accelerate and pull forward.
Or maybe not. Matsushita is talking about design-for-manufacturability and Ford is looks to simply catch up with the market.
Guess it takes a lot more to make dinosaurs dance.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at August 24, 2006 12:26 PM
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