With foreign rivals making the cut, toolmakers dwindle

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Friday, November 21, 2003 | TIMOTHY AEPPEL, The Wall Street Journal

[Willie Green]

The final parts of Microsoft's mice weren't always fitting together correctly on the assembly line. An immigrant from Austria with a reputation for perfectionism, Mr. Buchmayer spent half a year making Microsoft new molds so uniform the differences were measured in increments 1/10th the width of a human hair. Microsoft's failure rates promptly plummeted. Year after year the company came to Mr. Buchmayer for new tools.

[chilepepper]

Ross Perot ran for president with the only intention of getting Bill Clinton elected.

Look at EDS's record with outsourcing if you want to know where Ross Perot's true beliefs lie...

[chilepepper]

I have an S&K socket set that is about thirty years old now, and is of astonishing quality... the problem is that I also have a Chinese one that I got as a "freebie" and works well enough for most things...

The problem is a complex one. Unfortunately, a car mechanic in Liberia or Honduras or Bangaladesh can't afford the S&K and in this sense the Chinese are doing a real service in raising the standard of living of these poor people...

Lets face it folks, the world is changing and we need to be the leaders in designing machines that design machines that design machines (come to think of it, we ARE, at least for now!)

[Centurion2000]

And that goes for computer networks (my area of work), machine tools--anything. To expect the customer to pay a princely sum for your not quite getting it right, after you've charged said customer a princely sum for your product, is just lousy business.

Yeah but Mickeysoft operates this way and gets away with with it amazingly enough ....I'm in the same field. It is interesting to note the number of security patches that come out with each new release of the M$ OS generation.

[RLK]

Ross Perot ran for president with the only intention of getting Bill Clinton elected.

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Bush continued his stupid lackadaisical run for office to keep Ross Perot from making reforms.

[RLK]

Look at EDS's record with outsourcing if you want to know where Ross Perot's true beliefs lie...

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Perot is retired in his late seventies. He sold the company years ago. Wake up!

[Admin Moderator]

Cool it.

[RLK]

Look at EDS's record with outsourcing if you want to know where Ross Perot's true beliefs lie...

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Here is a paragraph from a Perot biography:

"Perot accepted another challenge in 1984 when he sold EDS to General Motors for $2.5 billion. The ownership that he retained in the company made him GM's largest individual stockholder and a member of the board of directors. After major disagreements over the quality of GM automobiles, Perot resigned from the GM board in 1986."

Perot has had little to do with EDS since he sold it to GM a few months short of 20 years ago. When he was in control, there was no outsourcing. Perot and GM disagreed on everything. The failure of GM to take Perot's advice caused GM to get thoroughly trounced by Japanese automobile makers, incidentally.

[Poohbah]

Perot Systems (his current company) is also a leader in outsourcing.