bryan--
thanks forthe link. it was very interesting. one thing that caught me, is what one of them said toward the end...something about how MU isnt a badly run company, its just that the business they are in sucks.
i think this is a critical point that few seem willing to address. MU has world class engineers and technical expertise. however, when you combine that with an unimaginative management, you get very little.
now, i'm not saying that ALL the managers are bad, just that they do not seem to have the foresight to either get out of the business or become number one. management is congratulated for their efforts at keeping the company together...we are rewarding them for doing a maintence job. what i think the company needs is someone with the vision to reengineer the entire company. for example:
problem: MU has difficulty competing with asian firms who are supported by government and massive conglomerates.
solution: if you cant beat them, join them. this is what TXN did and i think it is one of the reasons TI's stock price is so much higher than MU (granted DSPs help<G>). set up manufacturing JVs with some of the asian companies. i mean, MU has the talent they need. and it gives MU a stronger position worldwide.
problem: DRAM is a commodity business.
solution: exit it at least in part. their diversification strategy has been a joke. RICs and FPDs are going nowhere. SRAm is another type of hell, but its almost as bad as DRAM. IDT converted SRAM fabs to processors, and there are a bunch of fabless semi companies that pay through the nose for manufacturing. also, MU could start making small runs of specialty chips like FPGAs.
these are just a few...i would like others to post their ideas too. what pisses me off is that this is a really good company, but it is saddled with management that knows little other than how to keep things together during the bad times, and over spend during the good times. in the semi industry, you build when things are bad so that when they turn around you have lots of capacity and can crush competition. MU and others do just the reverse..their over building causes the problem.
when i was in elementary school, many of my friends who got A's on their report cards were rewarded by their parents with money. i asked my father why he never did that for me. his response was that i had done what was expected...that an A was a very good grade, but it was what i was capable of and what was expected of me. you dont reward people for just keeping their heads above water. you should reward those who go above and beyond your expectations. now, i am not saying that MU should ditch everything that has worked in the past, just suggesting that they should reapply it to different situations. for instance, insteadof working on 64Mb parts, they should jump ahead and MASTER 256Mb, and release it early at a substantially lower than expected cost. if they do this, then the asians will never have time to enjoy 64Mb profits, and they will be way behind on 256Mb parts. they will be on their first volume generation while MU will be on their second or third, with SUBSTANTIALLY LOWER costs. they could kill samsung right out of the gate.
i think that if tyler lowery had stayed as CEO, MU would be well on its way to being a 20 billion (sales) a year company.
good luck to all,
trey |
