Gp, you said that "Hackworth and everyone else was surprised by what happened in 1996" and this is exactly what the problem with Hackworth is. How could he have been surprised when Jim Billum-Boult was reporting in the mid summer range of 1995 that Micrus was running at 25% of capacity and that there were no order as close aas 45 days out? Hackworth's response was to "just fill it". That attitude and decision resulted in over $25 million in inventory write offs throughout 1996 and into 1997 because Cirrus just kept filling the fab with useless inventory including many millions of 14.4 modem chips. Also, I don't want to work with that "perhaps he gained some wisdom" as a result. He made very costly decisions that most mid level managers would not have.
As for Tom Kelly, yes, this guy was arrogant and certainly tactless. Yes I do recall that incident you were speaking of but if you recall, the question was extremely adversarial to begin with and also, if you recall the person who asked the question and know him, you know that this person is/was somewhat of a jerk. I disagree with you about the management thinking the grunts were at fault. I believe that they thought everyone was at fault. Also, recall that Cirrus had never performed a weeding out prior to this and that it was long overdue, IMO. I believe everyone sacrificed including management. All bonuses were canceled as well as most business trips company lunches and host of other items. Take a look at the 1995 annual report (the publication) and compare it to past reports. It looks like one of your Sunday paper inserts.
As for the management deadwood, yes I forgot about the little Ceasar, Ed Ross. You are right on. This guy is the worst thing that ever happened to manufacturing. I would take Sena Reddy any day over this idiot. But, I really disagree with you in regards to my old pal Bill Caparelli. Yes, he was/is a dynamic speaker. But actions speak louder than words. This guy is a true salesman and as such spreads a lot of BS. Don't get me wrong, I like Bill but he certainly wasn't much help in terms of getting the company on track. However, he was the one that said in 1995 "S3 will be out of business by the end of the year". This type of arrogance cost Cirrus and us right in the pocket book. I have no idea where you got the idea that Suhas was the "sole" of the company. Suhas acted like a senile old man. His contributions consisted of picking out the furniture for the new board room. You should have heard the comments after attending meetings in the R & D group that Suhas also attended. Everyone asked why he was at the meetings. He would constantly sidetrack meetings with meaningless thoughts. He also never kept up with technology and would rehash ideas that were three and four years old. Also, because of his indecision's, he would hold up projects and in some cases, actually cause the project to be canceled.
You are again right on in regards to the design and management functions getting out of control. But, I was also close to the ISO 9000 project that got derailed because Hackworth and Suhas would constantly cancel meetings were decisions would have to be made about design functions, etc. And it was actually Mike who canceled this program altogether. Yes, I too feel a lot of these problems have been fixed or are in the process of being fixed but I can not believe for a moment that Hackworth won't fall back to his old self and start micro managing once again. But, all of these changes came in the past 18 months. Who was the guy in charge? Kelly.
You have your right to be optimistic about Crus' future. Cirrus is in a very competitive market and is starting to face some strong competition in the Mass Storage arena. I wish you and everyone else all the luck in the world because IMVHO, you are going to need it with this management team. Just to let everyone know, I got out of this stock this morning and as such, I will only jump into the commentary once in a while. I still have a number of contacts at Cirrus and if I hear anything worth repeating, I will pass it along.
Calvin Scott. |
