Lenovo and IBM: how smart!

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Now, I get it. With a headquarters in New York, they will be doing what
IBM feels it cannot do profitably (enough): outsourcing to China! The
twist here is that they will hire IBMers to learn how to manage a
world-wide company!

Who do you think did the smart thing? The guy who sold the ranch, the
cattle and teaches the new owners how to run it? Yes, unless he needs a
job in a farm!

Then, we will attempt to learn from the Chinese how to make computers
profitably! Think what happened when the Japanese started building cars.
Look what happened to Mercedes when Chrysler "told" them how to run a
company: Chinese are not doing the same mistake, they will learn from us
and then ... May be one day, we will come up with the computer
equivalent of the Saturn (which as every body knows is not exactly a
huge success ....) to attempt to compete with Chinese PCs...

Who is smart here? The Chinese. They will have a wonderful foothold in
the US, will "outsource" their production to Chinese workers and I bet
they will be smart enough to hire enough Americans with a Midwest accent
to answer phone lines, at least in the beginning, until we get used to
their accent!

Well, now, I am less concerned about the future of Thinkpads: there will
be some glitches but at the end of the day, they might become as good
and reliable as Japanese cars eventually became. This does not mean the
user has won, since a user needs a job to have money to buy a computer.
Globalization should not be a one way street!

I am ashamed IBM did this: whatever the window dressing, this is a very
short-sighted policy at best and if they think Lenovo will limit itself
to quietly learning a few ropes, who are they kidding?

John Doue

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

mutefan@yahoo.com wrote:

> I'm concerned about this. When I contacted IBM on a service call for
> my ThinkPad last month, I specifically asked if they outsource tech
> support and other jobs. They *specifically* said they did not. They
> claimed they were proud of their domestically-based call centers,
> customer service, and tech support.

IBM is not outsourceing, they're selling the whole operation.

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

J. Clarke wrote:
> John Doue wrote:
>
snip
>
>
> There's nothing to learn. All you have to do is convince your workforce to
> work for 5 cents an hour and you've got the "secret" of Chinese
> productivity.

You are oversimpliying the issue. Productivity is only one aspect of the
problem.
>
>
>>Think what happened when the Japanese started building cars.
>
>
What, exactly, happened? If you will review the history you will find that
> (a) the Japanese were able to build inexpensive cars because their labor
> costs were low, (b) they were able to get a foothold in foreign markets
> because they went ape over quality control, (c) their labor costs started
> going up as their economy grew, (d) they ended up having to move their
> production to lower-cost areas--many Japanese cars are now made in the US
> with no greater efficiency than Ford or GM.

Boils down to one thing: Japanese managed to gain a significant share of
the US market and to make money in the process. AFAIK, we are not
exactly overwhelming the Far East with american cars ... Who wins here?
>

>>Chinese are not doing the same mistake, they will learn from us
>>and then ... May be one day, we will come up with the computer
>>equivalent of the Saturn (which as every body knows is not exactly a
>>huge success ....) to attempt to compete with Chinese PCs...
>
>
> Uh, Saturn was an experiment in management theory, not an attempt to compete
> with anybody.

I have a different view: Saturn was an attempt to compete with european
and japanese imports by offering a product somewhat similar. Few people
go this far in "experimenting management theories"! But given the
results, I understand it might be portrayed like this!.
>
> As for "competing with Chinese PCs", it has apparently escaped your notice
> that nearly all PCs on the market today are made in China.
snip

Oh, please ... has it escaped your notice that your knowledge might be
shared by others ?


snip

> Well, actually the same Chinese workers who are doing the work now will
> continue to do it. Or are you laboring under the misconception that there
> is a Thinkpad factory somewhere in the US?

Please ... again !

So, the way you see it, nothing basically changes in this deal? This is
where we disagree. I see this as a major change in the industry; we are
getting out of an important sector and helping a dangerously effective
company acquire the skills it lacked to compete with ... the few US
players left in the field; even if this is not, today, the primary goal...
>
>
>>and I bet
>>they will be smart enough to hire enough Americans with a Midwest accent
>>to answer phone lines, at least in the beginning, until we get used to
>>their accent!
>
>
> Depends really on whether IBM spins off their support operation with the
> rest.
>

Because you really think IBM would keep supporting products it does not
design, manufacture or sells any longer?

>>Well, now, I am less concerned about the future of Thinkpads: there will
>>be some glitches but at the end of the day, they might become as good
>>and reliable as Japanese cars eventually became.
>
>
> I sincerely hope the Chinese can do better than _that_. In any case, I have
> not noticed Thinkpads or any other kind of computer except the very
> cheapest suffering any significant reliability problems of late. I
> certainly have never had a computer give me as much grief as my old Toyota,
> that has since been replaced with a trouble-free Chrysler product.

Let us keep our fingers crossed.
>
>
>>This does not mean the
>>user has won, since a user needs a job to have money to buy a computer.
>>Globalization should not be a one way street!
>
>
> As long as there are countries with high labor costs and others with much
> lower labor costs, this is going to happen. If the Japanese model is any
> indicator, the Chinese will eventually be paying their workers as much as
> Japanese and American workers get, although they may manage to make slave
> labor continue to work in which case we may all be screwed.

Yes, but we do not need to help them screw us!
>
>
>>I am ashamed IBM did this: whatever the window dressing, this is a very
>>short-sighted policy at best and if they think Lenovo will limit itself
>>to quietly learning a few ropes, who are they kidding?
>
>
> In what way is it a "short sighted policy"? IBM has decided that there is
> no longer any profit in PC hardware and they're getting out of that
> business. As far as they're concerned the Chinese can _have_ the hardware
> market.
>
Short sighted because a company is more than the sum of its parts:
trying to prune the less productive branches and to keep only the most
successful ones might be smart on the surface for some companies but not
for others. IBM seems to have been searching for its soul the last 20
years. To me, a customer, not a shareholder, IBM parted with an activity
from which it may not have derived huge profits but which gave it
something which has no price, a good image. When corporate executives
will have switched to Dell or Compaq for their laptops and PC, don't you
think this will impact their attitude towards IBM services? Do you think
IBM competitors will stay idle and not take advantages of this
psychological impact?

Every company needs a flag ship, a flag product; the Thinkpad was one.
--
John Doue