Fujitsu: Closes director's gate to Tait, 9 execs abdicate, and for German workers – a crap Weihnachtszeit There's trouble at Fujitsu: it is removing EMEIA* boss Duncan Tait from the board – the first non-Japanese exec ever invited on to it – and wants to shutter its German manufacturing plant. Oh, and it's laying off half the number of executive officers that work across the group. First up, Tait. Fujitsu lied to El Reg. Weeks ago …
Is the German factory the one they inherited when Siemens sold off their PC/server business to them?
I wonder how many companies are going to be left actually manufacturing physical devices for all this software-defined, cloud-scale stuff to run on, I guess it's just going to be Supermicro and a couple of contract manufacturers building custom cloud boxes?
I think so. It's in Augsburg, where I live. Pretty glum news. Hope the staff can find something more that just working as Jeff Bezos' slave down the road in Graben.
Though it probably means even more cars on the Autobahn and even more people on the already full trains to Munich (which I, like many others, use to commute to work)
Somehow I’m not surprised by this. Their first round of cuts looked like they were focused on soft targets for delivering visible savings, rather than making a long term difference. The issues being faced by the EMEIA organisation didn’t seem strongly linked to where the cuts were taking place. And some of the changes pushed through went seriously wrong, as I understand it.
Fujitsu is a lot like HP and IBM in this regard, I guess. I used to work for them (as an I.T. contractor) a long time ago. Not a bad company, really. I suspect 'old school' thinking in the wrong places, though (and maybe NOT in the RIGHT places).
And they _do_ need to be a bit more competitive on pricing.
it was probably not intentional - they are just clueless.. yes, old school thinking in the wrong places.. and those places are at the top. Not worried about Tait: he will go somewhere else, get a fat package, continue being blind to inefficiencies and move on again after a few years.
He just believed what the managers below him told him, simple really.
Managers below him told him what he wanted to hear and what sounded good to support their own careers.
Obviously, the manages above him saw through all this as indicated by poor orders and loosing customer base.
The changes aren’t over. Once Fujitsu gets the ridiculous annual Munich event out of the way, more change is expected. Tait and his lieutenants are on borrowed time.
The surprise with the Augsburg factory is that Fujitsu has allowed it to stay open for so long - Fujitsu doesn’t want to make product in the EU. Few do, nowadays.
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