The business section of my local newspaper reports that Milwaukee Electric Tool has been sold to a Hong Kong company, Techtronic Industries Co. According to the article, that company is the maker of Ryobi and Homelite products.
Editorializing:
I hope Milwaukee doesn't turn into another of brand that trades on it's old reputation but is cheapened to the point of uselessness. Where are we to buy tools if all the good ones become memories?
I found a quick link which describes it a little more:
Where in China can one collect an unemployment check???????
introduction yesterday when they announced some details. Somewhere, I've got a press release, but it's almost certainly on the above site.
Atlas Copco bought Milwaukee less than a decade ago, and appears to have done little or nothing to expand its market share, yet the brass at AC stated, "The business is, however, still far from the Group's desired position of globally being number one or two in the markets we serve."
One has to wonder what people like that use for thinking equipment. Neither Milwaukee nor AEG had the kind of market penetration, though both made, and make, marvelous tools, that would lead to a fulfillment of that kind of expectation without one helluva lot of tool research and development at several levels. Neither company produces what can be called consumer level tools, meaning their numbers are never going to go over the top and sweep everyone else away. That should have been obvious to even to even the most solidly MBA-ed dolt in management, but it seems not. Then again...when a company thinks annual plans are the same as long term plans....
It should be in interesting run. Ryobi R&D has always come up with of the more interesting tool concepts, and some damned good tools in particular price ranges (and some that are not all that good...I'm not a fan of their routers). There is a step up in quality with the Ridgid tools...and I noticed the Dirt Devil vacuum (another TTI brand) was cheaper than the one I bought 5-6 years ago, but seems identical in power, etc. (not a durability problem: it was stored at the top of basement stairs when we had a basement fire).
I have no idea how it will all shake out yet, nor am I enamored of one tool company for all the world, which sometimes seems to be the way things are headed with all these mergers, but I am curious as to where things will stand next year at this time.
Charlie Self "A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers." H. L. Mencken
They have taken a page directly out of Jack Welch's approach of how to run a company. (Retired CEO of GE)
Having said that, Atlas-Copco is no General Electric.
The rest of Welch's approach goes like this:
You will be #1 or #2 in market share. You will have at least 25% market share. You will contribute at least 20% net after to the profits of the General Electric Company.
If a business didn't meet those goals, GE either sold the business or shut it down.
Sounds like the just tried to copy GE, but without all the other stuff that is required to make it happen.
What you say is absolutely correct; however, you can define a market segment as other than the Homer Homeowner market, in which case the GE approach would work quite well.
Long term planning:
What's for lunch?
IMHO, Emerson has totally destroyed Ridgid, but then again, I'm prejudiced.
I was at Ridgid in Elyria, Oh the day is was announced that Emerson had purchased the company. It was not a happy place.
That makes two of us.
Lew
Lew Hodgett responods:
Yes, but Emerson hasn't had anything to do with Ridgid for some time now. HD pushed them out and brought TTI in, expanded the line of tools and got redesigns on many of the remainder. The TS3650 table saw is a case in point. Similar to the Emerson TS2424, but with some extra features and refinements that add to utility. There is now a line of cordless power tools, and the job site table saw, whose number escapes me at this hour of the morning, is currently the best on the market.
Whether or not Emerson would have made similar changes I don't know, but I'd guess they would have. It often isn't the producing company that creates the quality range, the features gained or lost, the durability, but it is the company doing the specifications--with the major spec being the profit margin. Set a price for the final product and then decide what your profit margin is going to be. Design to fit and to hell with the customer. Not a good process.
Look at the new Craftsman table saw (2124) to see what happens when a company gets away from that process. It costs more than the saw it replaces, though sales have kept the prices fairly similar since it was introduced. But that new saw may well be the best non-industrial table saw that Sears has ever sold. Is it the best table saw in the world? Of course not. It is a third addition to the hybrid saw tradition, and seems to me to be better than the other two, though by how much I don't know...and I could be wrong. I've done very, very little with the DeWalt and Jet.
One thing with the new Craftsman saw line: it was designed and implemented for Craftsman by a bunch of old Delta hands. Let's replace 'old' with 'former'. And it shows the signs.
Charlie Self "A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers." H. L. Mencken
Bob Peterson responds:
Yeah, except that Ridgid is under the tutelage of TTI, not Emerson, though if I got most of the complexities right, the Ridgid brand name, and the plumbing tools, are still Emerson's.
Charlie Self "A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers." H. L. Mencken
I have had some great experiences with Milwaukee, both the tools and the company, so I was enamored. Now I'm depressed.
HWhy are you depressed? Many once great companies died along the wayside cuz, they were like the dinosaurs, were unwilling to change clinging to their old ways of doing business and many are just simply greedy.
In the 60's GM had about 60% (pls don't hold me to the figure) of the market shares. Datsun's (Nissan today) Blue Bird in the same period look like a toy, you will laugh till all your teeth's falls off. All the Japanese vehicles were really cheap shit. Japanese's cars take to and from the places you wanna go. They reinvest their profit and improve....blah, blah, blah. You won't laugh at them today, Toyota out sell GM and admire all over the world.
We always though we were invincible and still does, only we can design and make cars and no one could do it better than we, are we?
We laugh at the Taiwanese and Chinese products today, are they are not following the same footsteps like the Japanese in the 60's? Japan cannot compete with many of the products they once have monopoly, Taiwan and China have replace them. Americans' CEOs and CFOs spending more time thinking how to make more and more monies for themselves. They receive millions and there seem to be no end at sight how much they can make in the short term. Taiwan make some of the best and cheapest products you can find, for example almost all the computers' mobo are mfy. in Taiwan. The two largest chips' makers are in Taiwan, many woodworking hand and power tools..... and so forth...
Cheers
I can remember the "ka-ching" of my Datsun minitruck door closing, versus the solid "thunk" of my wife's Pinto door. US made was demonstrably different in other ways as well in those days.
US firms invested more in their people than the Japanese, and were working in older factories to begin with.
Product design specification written by an accountant.
Lew
Ridgid is a shell of it's former self.
IMHO, Emerson has other fish to fry and as a result, Ridgid has paid the price.
But then again, I'm prejudiced.
Lew
Yup, it sure was. I drove a Pinto back in "the day", 2.3 liter engine that couldn't get the POS out of it's own way. Today I'm driving a Saab with a 2.3 Litre engine and 3 times as much horsepower. And better mileage. And astonishingly better safety and reliability.
There was also a culture in the US carmakers in the 70's and 80's that they could get by with substandard crap, and they got passed up. As much as I hate to see Milwaukee Tools being sold to a company not in the US, well, if it's a case of being done elsewhere or being done poorly, I'll take elsewhere. Not saying Milwaukee Tools are made poorly, I've been buying 'em for years, but lately I'm buying more Makita than Milwaukee anyway.
Where it's made only goes so far in selection of a product. When the quality and feature differences overcome that, then I'll buy the right product regardless of where it's built. I worked for GE for about a dozen years, and I figured the GE meatball on an appliance would make it worth about 50 bucks more; more difference than that, and I'd buy another brand. Only counted for so much.
Dave Hinz
Yeap, invest more on their CEO and CEO, how much do you think an associate in Walmart make compare with their CEO and CFO?
You might want to check on the comparative wages of the Japanese and US auto workers at the time indicated. Not to mention the pensions. Take the CEO back to a dollar a week, and it wouldn't add a dollar a week to everyone else.
Sheesh!
That's a lame excuse, I heard of that over and over again, if you compare with what a CEO making today (including all the toppings million and millions) and what a blue workers making ($5 to $45/hr) you will not be Sheeeh!
By the way Atlas Copco and AEG both are foreign companies, Atlas Copco make the finest screw compressor and AEG is like GE, they are licensed manufacture of GE's Industrial gas turbines. I too worked for GE during Reginald Jones watch in Apparatus Services Shop we services heavy power generation equipment and I love it.
George responds:
On the basis of today's CEO salaries, it sure as hell would. Drop a 100 million buck a year man back to a buck a week, and even a company with 50,000 employees would get a little back (about two grand a year)...but you can bet it wouldn't go into lower echelon salaries anyway. Stockholders might see some of it, but most would just lose visibility.
Charlie Self "A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers." H. L. Mencken
Look it up, Charlie, most of that "wage" is not a wage, but stock options and deferred compensation, and there are performance conditions set on that. Know many folks on the line who would go for a performance-oriented wage?
Regular retirement plans are deferred compensation, but the rank-and-file never see them as such, nor do they know the cost of any other benefits. GM, for instance, passed one retiree for every two active workers a few years back, and the health plan for retirees is the same PPO the regulars get. Makes for a tremendous competitive advantage for the foreign makers, wouldn't you think?
Oh yes, I doubt that companies of 50K employees are paying 100 million CEO salaries. That kind of money just isn't there, unless you're in something besides manufacturing, or your employees are Chinese.
Besides, isn't paying people what they're worth a liberal shibboleth?
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