Motorola Going After Control of Vertex Standard (parent of Yaesu)

[Tom WA3KLR]

The whole shebang from:

http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/kelly1.htm

Kelly Johnson's 14 Rules of Management

1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.
2. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.
3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).
4. A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.
5. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.
6. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program. Don't have the books ninety days late and don't surprise the customer with sudden overruns.
7. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.
8. The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Don't duplicate so much inspection.
9. The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.
10. The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to well in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a specification section stating clearly which important military specification items will not knowingly be complied with and reasons therefore is highly recommended.
11. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn't have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.
12. There must be mutual trust between the military project organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to an absolute minimum.
13. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.
14. Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised.

[AF9J]

Yep another company run by bean counters.  I argued about that in a business class I was forced to take for engineering degree #2.  I stated that you wanted somebody who knew the product, so they would have product specialized insight with regards to manufacturing, marketing, sales, etc.  You know what I was told?  "That's what you have your experts for, who work under you."  Yeah, right!  One of the biggest maladies of US manufacturing companies nowadays, is that they're run by acountants and marketing, and have been for the last 30 years or so.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

Hi Ellen,

I almost agree with you but as a professor of marketing I am a little biased.  Well run companies understand their customers (marketing) AND their capabilities (engineering) and when they start chasing efficiency at the cost of everything else (often inspired by accountants and/or financial officers) then you are sliding down the slope to disaster.  My standard opening lecture in my sales management course is that it is easier to be efficient than to be effective but which is more important???  GM provides a perfect example, over the years, of the fight between the financial management types and the marketing and engineering types over company direction.  The current game being played by most auto companies is called, "will the customer miss it?".  You remove a light source here, a bit of sound insulation there, and improve your production cost figure and multiplied by several hundred thousands of units produced the cost savings look attractive.  My answer as a marketer is, "the customer probably won't miss these items during a test drive and they will likely buy the vehicle but they will over time become less satisfied with all of the little cost cuts and probably will not be a repeat buyer."

 Our biggest shortcoming as a nation, business certainly included, is our short term orientation; it is a major competitive disadvantage which does lead to a national security issue.

Most marketers I know like and respect engineers, heck I spent two years in the engineering core before I switched to business.  I am sure that the time I spent in thermodynamics was character building and at least I got to laugh at my fellow business students complaining about the one "calculus for dummies" course they had to take as compared to the courses I had already completed.  Most marketer's biggest sin is re-framing product specs to "massage" the product image.  Marketers are biased towards customers wants (even when the customer doesn't know what they "should" want).  I am convinced that if Ten Tec gear photographed a little better the sales would be much greater; another example of aesthetics being more important than performance in product sales.

NOBODY can make an old buzzard transmission like a college professor!  Wink SRI

Rodger WQ9E

I stand corrected Rodger,

You put it much better than me.  I agree, you do want to keep costs under control.  As you said, when keeping costs under control turns into corner cutting, that is detrimental.   Sure you'll have a short term gain, but in the long term, you lose.  A good case in point, is the 73 Chevy Impala we had in the 70s & early 80s.  While the engine ran great, so much corner cutting was done in other areas, that it was a miracle we had it as long as we did.  The lack of even rudimentary rust proofing, made it a great big rust bucket.  My dad was always trying to deal with the rotting quarter panels, with silicone seal, and riveted on aluminum sheet.  The doors didn't even have window frames.  So, my dad was constantly yelling at us to close the doors gently, so the windows wouldn't shake, rattle, and eventually break off the scissor jacks, dropping the windows down into the door wells.  

A malaise that's all too common in US companies, is the hangup with a quick ROI (return on investment).  Many foreign companies (especially those in Japan), are willing to put up with ROIs that are 5, 10, in some extreme cases even 20 years.  In most US companies, even 2 years for an ROI is considered excessive (the exceptions might be the defence and aerospace industries).  In some cases, they won't even consider a project, if there's no guarantee of an ROI of a year.  Short term gains win out, but you lose in the long term.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

[W1RKW]

I read the title of this thread rather quickly and my first impression was Motorola was going after The Vortex, Joe.   

[WA1GFZ]

"America where are you now"

[Pete, WA2CWA]

"America where are you now"

America Ferrera:

[KB2WIG]

              America where are you now?
              Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
              Don't you know we need you now
              We can't fight alone against the monster

[The Slab Bacon]

              America where are you now?
              Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
              Don't you know we need you now
              We can't fight alone against the monster

Kevin,
         ur dating yourself with this one!! John Kay and the boyz circa '69 or '70!!

[K6JEK]

Motorola saved my life.   

They bought the computer company I was working for and ran it into the ground.  I left.  My office at Moto was destroyed by the Loma Prieta earthquake.   If Moto executives hadn't been so bone headed about the computer business, I'd have been squashed like bug.   That was Bob Galvin not his son, Chris.  Galvin, Mitchell & Weiss.  God bless them.

[Bill, KD0HG]

Wow...

Motorola once was an early leader in computing. I used their VMC and VME computers along with the 100 pound 5 meg hard drives that had washing machine motors.

Now Apple has switched to Intel processors.

Gary Halverson K6GLH and I both worked for the batwings in Schaumburg a long, long time ago..

[K6JEK]

Wow...

Motorola once was an early leader in computing. I used their VMC and VME computers along with the 100 pound 5 meg hard drives that had washing machine motors.

Now Apple has switched to Intel processors.

Gary Halverson K6GLH and I both worked for the batwings in Schaumburg a long, long time ago..

I feel like Forrest Gump on this one. The building where I wasn't squashed was torn down.   It's now Apple World HQ. I went to work for Sun which made much better 680x0 computers than Moto even did.   For awhile I worked for Ed Zander now the president of Moto.  I suffered through Six Sigma twice, once at Moto, once at Sun (no, no!  I've seen this movie). At Sun, I used to meet with the Moto execs.    I've never owned a Yaesu.

There were plenty of regrettable moves before Chris Galvin not just during his run.    I'm not sure Ed has made any big mistakes.   He has an EE degree but he's really a marketing guy through and through.

[Tom WA3KLR]

If I recall correctly, the multi-user Motorola computer in our engineering department in the early 1980's was called ExorMacs.

After that period, I spent a fair amount of time qualifying vendors other than Motorola for our VME motherboard and other VME plug-in modules.  Typically, the non-Motorola sourced hardware was one-third the price of the Motorola counterpart.  The Mupac? motherboard I chose was superior in it's electronic parameters besides 1/3 the price!

[WA1GFZ]

VME when you are not in a hurry to move data...the interrupt pecking order

[W3SLK]

Didn't Tektronix and Silicon Graphics use the 68XXXX series cpus? I worked on them along with other countless workstations that NASA filled its maze-style cubicles with. However I did like working on the DEC PDP-11 stuff (when it did go down for a hardware failure!).

[KA1ZGC]

For awhile I worked for Ed Zander now the president of Moto.

(snip)

There were plenty of regrettable moves before Chris Galvin not just during his run.    I'm not sure Ed has made any big mistakes.   He has an EE degree but he's really a marketing guy through and through.

Ed came to join the board of Netezza just before he took the Moto job.

Like you said, he's far from being a technological retard, but his primary role in any company is to keep the shareholders happy. That's what he's best at, so that's what he's brought in for.

Unfortunately, the collision of high-tech and ham radio only serves to dumb down the hobby that much more. In high-tech, the trend has always been to make whatever process/device/package simpler for the consumer. The less human intervention required, the less human error introduced.

That's all good and fine, but ham radio is supposed to be educational, among other things. One learns primarily from one's mistakes, to eliminate them all leaves a whole lot of people holding licenses who don't actually understand the material they had to prove some level of proficiency in to get their licenses.

The size of the manufacturer really doesn't enter into it, if you ask me. If the manufacturers could somehow re-discover that we're supposed to be learning something about radio from the radios we buy from them, that they should be as much test beds as radios, capable of modification, experimentation, and end-user repair; then the hobby might again be ham radio, instead of just talking on a radio.

I'm sure they're far more interested in public service, marine, aviation, and FRS/GMRS radio dollars than ham radio dollars, anyway. Sales volume (not price, but volume) in those services probably well eclipses sales volume of ham gear.

It'll be interesting to see how this all pans out.

--Thom
Killer Agony One Zipper Got Caught

[W1RKW]

I've been working with some older VMIC hardware recently trying to resurrect it in order to get some data and software off of it to run on a newer system for a new project.  It's beating me to death.  Still got a few options left but things are looking grim.

[K6JEK]

Didn't Tektronix and Silicon Graphics use the 68XXXX series cpus? I worked on them along with other countless workstations that NASA filled its maze-style cubicles with. However I did like working on the DEC PDP-11 stuff (when it did go down for a hardware failure!).

SGI used the 68K series before switching to MIPS.   I don't know about Tek.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

So did HP, Dec, Apollo and some other workstation companies. On the PC side, Atari and Amiga both used the 68k, as did Apple with the Mac. A ton of them were used as a controller in printers.

Didn't Tektronix and Silicon Graphics use the 68XXXX series cpus? I worked on them along with other countless workstations that NASA filled its maze-style cubicles with. However I did like working on the DEC PDP-11 stuff (when it did go down for a hardware failure!).

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

Here's a note from the North American Head of Sales, posted to another group:

Friends,

By now, many of you may have heard that Vertex Standard Co., Ltd,
(Vertex Standard USA's parent company) announced that they have agreed
to form a collaborative joint venture with Motorola, Inc. I personally
believe the most important words in this sentence are "collaborative
joint venture a business relationship that indicates a far different
outcome intent than the demise of one of the venture partners.

Since Yaesu is the Amateur Radio Division of Vertex Standard, I am sure
you are just as curious as me, a Yaesu employee with a job at stake, to
know what this business transaction will mean to all of us in the hobby.
Predictably, I see that the news about the pending new Motorola
relationship with Vertex Standard, hence Yaesu, is giving life to all
sorts of misinformation and "doomsday". Internet postings by the usual
cast of characters who always seem to know so much more about things
than the rest of us mere mortals. After studying public announcements
and considering the internal information that is made available to
me in my role as the leadership individual for North American sales at
Yaesu, I would like to offer the following FACTS about this exciting
development. Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) will launch a tender offer to
acquire a controlling interest in Vertex Standard Co., Ltd. (JASDAQ:
6821). Upon successful completion of the tender offer and subsequent
restructuring process, Motorola will own 80% of Vertex Standard and Toko
Giken, a privately held Japanese company, controlled by Jun Hasegawa,
current president and CEO of Vertex Standard, will retain 20%, forming a
joint venture. On 5 November 2007, the Board of Directors of Vertex
Standard expressed their support of the tender offer. Yaesu, of course,
as one of the Vertex Standard operations, will be included in this
exciting development.

I want our Yaesu customers and concerned others to know the following
about the proposed merger:

Vertex Standard (meaning Yaesu to us in the Amateur Radio hobby) will
remain a separate, global organization with distinct resources governed
by the Board of Directors comprised of four Motorola representatives and
one Toko Giken representative. Toko Giken is a privately held Japanese
company, controlled by the founders family. It currently holds 29.2%
shares of Vertex Standard.

Mr. Jun Hasegawa (my boss), son of Sato Hasegawa JA1MP, the founder of
Yaesu will continue to take part in the management of Vertex Standard in
his capacity as the Representative Director, President and CEO of Vertex
Standard after the Tender Offer. The day-to-day management of the joint
venture will be the responsibility of Mr. Hasegawa and his senior
leadership team, who are also expected to continue. Count me as one of
those who will continue with Yaesu.  Our business will continue to be
operated as is, and we will continue to actively develop new products
and operate the business as a leading manufacturer of amateur radio,
marine, land mobile, and airband radios.

The Vertex Standard brand of equipment (Standard brand in Japan) will
continue to exist. The current Vertex Standard brand strategies are
highly respected by Motorola and will be continued. Since Motorola
appreciates our Yaesu brand strategy, there will be no change to it.
There will NOT be a Motorola brand of Amateur Radio equipment replacing
or competing with Yaesu.

Yaesu customers can expect to see positive benefit from the fact that:
Vertex Standard has an experienced engineering team that, combined with
Motorola's extensive engineering talent, will develop new innovative
products.  Personally, I cannot wait to see what this joint engineering
effort will bring to Amateur Radio!

Cost synergies will be realized through the use of Motorola's buying
power to reduce the joint venture's costs for raw materials. Hams are
known to enjoy seeking out the best buy for their hard earned money -
expect to see Yaesu products remain highly competitive and providing
excellent value for your investment.

Because Mr. Hasegawa will continue to manage the day-to-day operations
of Vertex Standard, we do not expect to see changes in the existing
Yaesu dealership, pricing and rebate philosophies as a result of the
joint venture.

These are historic exciting times for Yaesu, our customers, and Amateur
Radio. The future is bright and the potential for incredible
technological advancements for Amateur Radio are immense. We are glad
you will be there with us as the positive affects of the Vertex Standard
/ Motorola joint venture unfolds.

73,
Dennis Motschenbacher K7BV
k7bv@vxstdusa. com

[WA1GFZ]

My sister's town is putting in a new radio system.....Guess who was flashed across the screen on local news......not mot crooks but our own ham radio good guy, Big Al K1JCL

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

I saw a news story on FoxNews last night about a town near Buffalo trying to install a new intergrated cellphone-like system for all emergency responders to use. It has a few bugs to work out. The cops showed the walkie-talkies they'd bought at Wal-Mart or somewhere like that to use in the meantime, mentioning that it was pretty bad when you could by better radios at a dept store.

Good job for Big Al! I have his old 6m Utica transceiver and VFo in the museum here. He used to have a communications trailer he dragged to Hosstraders in Rochester, outfitted with a nice ART-13 set up including dynamotor. I recall hearing that thing spool up when he keyed the mic, and watching the autotune system change frequencies. What a set up!

[Bill, KD0HG]

Breaking news:

Motorola CEO Zander stepping down

By Wailin Wong | Tribune staff reporter
    11:14 AM CST, November 30, 2007

Motorola Chief Executive Officer Edward Zander is stepping down from his post Jan. 1, 2008, ending a four-year tenure that saw the Schaumburg-based equipment maker establish market dominance in mobile handsets before sharply sliding into a period of heavy financial losses and operational difficulty.

The company said its board of directors has chosen Greg Brown, 47, the current president and chief operating officer, to be the new CEO. Zander, 60, will stay on as chairman until Motorola's annual stockholder meeting in 2008.

While Zander has battled intense pressure from shareholders, including activist Carl Icahn, he said in an interview that he had thought of a four-year tenure when he took the CEO job in January 2004.

"I went to the board over the period of the last six months and said, 'I think the time is right,'" Zander said.

At Motorola, Zander oversaw the meteoric rise of the Razr handset, which remains one of the top-selling phones in the United States. The popularity of the Razr revived the ailing company, which by 2006 had nabbed a 23% share of the global handset market. But Motorola struggled to replicate the Razr's cachet in successor phones, and the company's market share dwindled to less than 14 percent, according to Citigroup.

"We certainly have had a very troubling mobile device business," Zander said, though he emphasized that Motorola has come a long way since he first took the reins.

"We're a stronger company when it comes to intellectual property and intellectual assets and balance sheets and some of the other things we worked hard on over four years," Zander said.

Next year, Zander will be "strategic advisor to the CEO," a role that he described as "working with Greg on an individual basis" while keeping out of day-to-day operations.

Brown, 47, said in an interview that after the company wraps up 2007, he will focus on "extending our category leadership in the home and enterprise (businesses) and public safety, and also ensuring we continue the drumbeat of progress in the mobile device business."

Brown also said a robust line-up of new mobile phone offerings is necessary.

"I think we need to strengthen our product portfolio in 2008 and beyond," he said.

Brown steps in just as Motorola appears to be stabilizing. The company reported a small net profit in the third quarter, beating Wall Street expectations. The mobile phone unit posted a $138 million loss and sales were 36 percent lower than a year earlier, but analysts say the worst may have passed.

"There's still some work that needs to be done, but we're off the bottom now and we're in the early stages of a turnaround," said analyst Lawrence Harris of Oppenheimer & Co., which upgraded Motorola's shares to "Buy" after the third-quarter results.

Shareholders welcomed news of the management change, with Motorola's stock climbing more than 4% in the early hours of trade before easing back. Shares were recently up 10 cents at $15.75.

Before joining Motorola in 2003, Brown was head of software provider Micromuse Inc. He was named to the company's number-two post in March of this year.

Brown "is an excellent choice" and a logical one after his appointment earlier this year, Harris said.

"He will bring additional discipline to the company's operations," Harris said.

Before joining Motorola, Zander had been a managing director at private equity fund Silver Lake Partners and also served as president and chief operating officer at Sun Microsystems.

[WA3VJB]

Dennis Motschenbacher K7BV
k7bv@vxstdusa. com

Dennis,
I was disappointed to read your message about Motorola's buyout of
Yaesu, in which you said, in part:

"There will NOT be a Motorola brand of Amateur Radio equipment replacing or
competing with Yaesu."

Such a rivalry would have helped boost the credibility of Yaesu beyond
the stigma attached to its ham radio products as being full of show
but not much go.

Motorola of course has an outstanding history in ham radio, providing with the Metrum II straightforward, performance-oriented FM equipment that "rivals" its products developed and marketed to commercial and government clients.
Even earlier, Motorola enjoyed acclaim from its role in the production for government users of HF radios, including the famous R390 and R390A receivers which continue to be highly prized among radio hobbyists.

By contrast, Yaesu is considered by many to be a consumer-grade
product, oriented more toward what charitably are known as "bells and
whistles" that occupy someone's attention trying to operate the radio,
instead of their actually utilizing the radio for communications.

An apt comparison might be a video game versus a flight simulator,
where the flight simulator actually accomplishes something.

Among government and commercial users, law enforcement suffering with
Vertex/Standard radios are often ridiculed by those from agencies that
have fully funded their communications systems instead of buying
on-the-cheap.  You can check the resale value of any V/S two-way
radios to see how the market views your brand.

Before you continue with the defensive tone I perceived in your
message, please try to find confidence that Motorola will be the
benevolent and gracious partner in your continued product and career
growth, raising Yaesu to a higher standard.

On the other hand, perhaps your caution is warranted, vis-a-vis the
Daimler divorce from Chrysler. Should the Yaesu-Standard-Vertex brands
continue to be a confused and ineffective structure, you may indeed
have cause for the alarm you've raised in your message to American
radio hobbyists.

Paul

[Bill, KD0HG]

That Metrum rig..What's with that?
IIRC, it was a crystal-controlled adaptation of a Muthaola marine radio, when everyone else had gone to synthesizers. And it cost an insane amount.

Then there was the MoCat CB rig...I had one of those.

Then some MoFo broke into my 1976 Chevy Blazer and stole my MoCat.

When I worked at their Schaumburg factory, it was the tail end of their Motrac production. One of the last stops each Motrac made off the assembly line was to this guy who was supposed to rap each with a large rubber mallet to find any mechanical intermittents.

This created a problem when a rocket scientist they hired was smacking the rear heat sinks so hard that it would occasionally shatter the tubes therein.

Be afraid, Yaesu..Very afraid.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

A 99.9% similar rig to Metrum was also marketed by Lafayette called the HA-146. It was also marketed under the Unimetrics label. They all looked similar and used the same printed wiring boards and, of course, all made in Japan.

One can only hope that Motorola stays out of the amateur radio market.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Motorola Completes Tender Offer for Yaesu's Parent Company
From the ARRL Web Site, dated January 17, 2008:
On Wednesday, January 16, Motorola, Inc announced that its subsidiary, MI, Inc, has successfully completed its tender offer to acquire a controlling interest in Vertex Standard, parent company of Yaesu. The tender offer period expired on January 15 with approximately 5.4 million shares tendered and accepted. On November 5, 2007, Motorola launched the tender offer, in cooperation with Tokogiken (a privately held Japanese company controlled by Vertex Standard's president and CEO Jun Hasegawa) with the intention of forming a joint venture to develop and sell Vertex Standard products and develop select Motorola products. All regulatory clearances required for the completion of the transaction have been obtained.

Starting on January 22, Motorola will have a total ownership stake of approximately 78 percent of Vertex Standard on a fully diluted basis (excluding certain stock acquisition rights that are scheduled to be cancelled), following the settlement of the tender offer for approximately 12 billion Yen (almost $112 million US dollars) in cash. Through a subsequent restructuring process, Motorola will own 80 percent of Vertex Standard, while Tokogiken will retain a 20 percent stake.

Dennis Motschenbacher, K7BV, Yaesu's Executive Vice President for Amateur Radio Sales in North America, told the ARRL that ...
For the rest of the story, go here:
http://www.remote.arrl.org/news/stories/2008/01/17/100/?nc=1