Excerpted from Forbes article re: Dell's manufacturing prowess.
Funny, McNealy won't talk about when his own company might actually make some money for a change, but he needs no coaxing to "dismiss" one that makes plenty.
--QS
forbes.com
.....Not everyone is in awe of Dell. Scott McNealy, the chief executive of Sun Microsystems, which competes with Dell for corporate customers, dismisses the company as a "grocery store," not a technology innovator -- an accusation repeated by Hewlett-Packard's chief executive, Carly Fiorina. Eunice is inclined to render a more mixed verdict, slapping on Dell a phrase -- "virtuoso vanilla" -- that is at once a compliment and a dig.
Dell, Eunice said, performs well when stamping out commodity products like laptops, desktops and printers, but he has been much less impressed with Dell's performance when it "ventures into territory that requires new invention or significant investment in research and development."
Research and development is one way Dell tamps down costs. The company devotes 2 percent of its bottom line to this area, much less than its rivals. Innovation inside Dell is instead more about how one produces, packages and markets a product than it is about improvements in the product itself. "We have some competitors who are spending 5 or 6 or 8 percent on R&D," Rollins said, "but our financials suggest our R&D model is the right model."
Others, however, wonder whether those savings come with a long-term cost in innovation. |
