Monday, February 8, 2010

Now I think it is right time for ex-IDC managers to look for new jobs. Most of the managers are not even aware of the product for which their group members sent abroad for training. It is very easy for team members to fool their managers and still it is very easy for managers to fool their group directors. Because managers/directors are not fully conversant with knowledge.

Monday, February 8, 2010

If the IOM development group is a "mockery and a fraud", then it is a direct reflection of its leadership. It is (long past) time for the VP of Development to be released from his role, and the company can move on in a positive direction. Sudipta, please help us.

Sunday, February 7, 2010 - RE: "Was shocked and surprised at a couple of the so-called "executives" Bhattacharya has brought in."

Sudipta offered the APAC chief position to this person in recognition to his services for Invensys-Cognizant deal (this person is consultant to Cognizant for the project EDGE) and to execute next one (moving the Invensys engineering groups to another OSP/Cognizant)

Friday, February 5, 2010

Few days back, the only managing director who achieved his target in IOM Middle East was fired, without mentionning a single reason. I hope the top management is still enjoying the Middle East collapse. Congratulations to all competitors.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The IOM development group in Invensys is a big mockery and fraud now. Rather than giving correct inputs to the teams at ODC, their focus has shifted to finding faults, to cover-up their owns. Just remember, whether you fail or make ODC fail, the loser is always going to be INVENSYS

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - Re: "In reality, more resignations were expected from GSD based":

So you DO believe that domain knowledge is not necessary, and that developers for our systems can be picked up off the street. Good of you to clarify this for us all......

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - Re: 'Now ODC resignations started like bombs in GSD':

In reality, more resignations were expected from GSD based on the initial reactions from these employees when this engagement was announced. But not so. These numbers can be easily dealt with.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 - RE: Domestic vehicle quality has definitely reached parity with Japanese manufacturers.

I don't want to take sides in the fight between the American Invensys team and Indian CTS team, but then I cannot resist commenting on CARS and cannot ignore such distortion of reality.

To be honest, I don't read the news to figure out what is the quality of a car. With my experience on multiple car models from different manufacturers, both in India and US, I'll rank them as follows:

2009 Customer Satisfaction Survey by the most acknowledged business magazine: Toyota comes first and not only in cars (First globally in any manufactured product), then we have Honda, then FAW (China), then Maruti (India), then BMW, and I don't remember where the GREAT American Belly-ups are in this list.

Mileage for same engine Capacity: Toyota scores best, then Honda, then Koreans and probably then the GREAT American Belly-ups.

Reliability: Any one who studied engineering will know that the less efficient an engine, the more heat it produces and so the more is the wear and tear. So I'll leave it to you to guess the rankings.

Engine refinement, Transmission smoothness, Consistency of Pick ups and ease of handling w.r.t revving/breaking: Toyota comes first, then the Honda. GM cars (Pontiac, Malibu) have inconsistent pickups. E.g You have to really slow a Malibu down before entering a parking lot, else you will hit something. You can drive a Toyota @ 30 miles into a crowded parking lot and park just right i.e. the place you want and the way u want. This is because a Toyota behaves exactly the same every time, even during sharp turns.

Usable interior Space divided by Car Size: Honda First, then Toyota, then Koreans and then probably every one else who can make a car and then finally the great american Belly ups.

Car Companies for Share holders in Last 2 years: Maruti (India) shares multiplied 4 times, FAW shares multiplied 3 times, Toyota doubled and GM and Chrysler Shares hit Absolute Zero (a decrease by infinite times).

Regarding the news about Pedal Sticking: Do we know 1 Toyota car that had this problem?? Also a problem in 1 Toyota car doesn't make all American cars better. When the Americans come back with cars that are more efficient, reliable and refined than the Japanese, their car companies will no longer be run by the govt and the unions but by investors and capitalists.

It will take America more than Obama's charming words or a Nobel prize to get out of this mess. So lets stop meaningless blogging and start working, because the world is catch up with us and not only in cars!

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Full disclosure: I currently work for an IOM competitor. Recently I took a look at the new IOM website and happened upon the executive team listing. Was shocked and surprised at a couple of the so-called "executives" Bhattacharya has brought in. His buddy from Geometric is hardly prepared to run an operation like IOM's APAC organization, and the guy he brought in from ABB was the one responsible for its Skyva debacle. Who's minding the store there? Keep hiring these kind of "leaders"! We love it!

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Now ODC resignations started like bombs in GSD, which was exactly forecasted when edge got operated. Senior person in PRO/II resigned. Can anybody dare to think to replace or recruit such a talent? Even a lot of others are just waiting their turn to leave GSD. One side it is enjoyment for the US staff because their jobs are secure; on other side their work load will be tremendously increasing soon because the best talent is leaving very soon, from especially GSD.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

My Reply to the blog stating Cognizant is paying up to 1 Lakh (100,000 Indian rupees) monthly salary for engineers with ONLY 1 year experience:

The information you got is totally wrong. A person with 1 year experience in Cognizant is getting paid around 3.2 - 3.4 Lakhs per Annum. which is equialent to 7200 USD per year, and 590$ per month. Even in India, where living costs are less (Not really), it is enough only to fill the stomach of the employee. Nothing more.

Friday, January 29, 2010

The last blogger is clearly stuck in the 1990's. Domestic vehicle quality has definitely reached parity with Japanese manufacturers. Or don't you read the news?

Thursday, January 28, 2010

FYI. I moved to one of the developing countries and do not work for Invensys anymore. I agree with reasoning of the post - why GE? Always my argument is that there is no dearth of human intellect anywhere. I respect US as a country where lot of great innovators are available. Having said that, there are enough people capable of doing same tasks in India and elsewhere. One should understand why they are cheap: they are cheap not because of low quality, but due to the low cost of living. I have seen many instances where people moved from US work for quarter the salary that they used to command in the US. These are people who had US education and had been sucessfull for years in US industry.

Also my other argument was, why not Invensys? If the entire competetion is doing that, and if Invensys don't do, that they may not survive.

Another reason I truly believe - why there is so much backlash in IT related stuff was the reason of unmatured outsourcing in US terms. Usually US companies innovate run through it for few decades, then outsource to elsewhere. A good example was ship-building, which peaked in US later in the 80's, moved Japan and currently happens in Korea. However, as IT related stuff doesn't require much infrastructure, it moved on quickly.

Regarding Cognizant hiring at very high salaries - that could not be true. The Indian market pays around US$ 10-15k per yr for one year experience, and Cognizant is not an exception.

Boeing and GM life cycles are longer; they started their R&D 4-5 yrs back, and have yet to see the results. Every one knows why Boeing got delayed, and the delay was much before the outsourcing boom. It's because of poor PM in that org. I am wise enough not to say that the US doesn't have a good PM. GM's failure is not doing manufacturing outsourcing. While rivals like Ford source components mostly from India, and Toyata gets from Japan, GM hadn't been able to move quickly, and so they paid the price.

Someone was debating about IP. Yes that's a debatable question when you are outsourcing to a third party.

I truly believe that the success of any entity depends on how it was built and managed. How well you attracted the best talent. The same is true with IDC.

My final words - let me end by saying that people had a perception that Japanesse cars were inferior to American ones in 80's, and now the most diehard American fans cannot say that. Japanese cars are better than American cars. I understand the pain it causes while technology moves away, impacting lives. But one cannot do anything except to be sympathetic. That's the charm, or the brutality, of global free markets.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

What a terribly uninformed comment regarding Boeing. There is no better example of why NOT to outsource than the Boeing 787 example!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Quoting names of companies doing R&D in India... Aren't Boeing years late with there 787...and haven't GM gone bankrupt?!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - To the person who blogged "Sunday, January 24, 2010" regarding all the "successful" companies doing R&D in India:

I'd like to Point Out that Honeywell and ABB may be currently enjoying success, but their reputations is getting as bad as their products. Microsoft is "Hit and Miss". I can't really speak of the other companies.

I'd also like to point out that the USA. was the first country to put a man on the moon, and lead the world in technology, medical research, automotive, computers, etc., long before India, China, Brazil, and other counties even had electricity, let alone modern capabilities. There are a few reasons for the decline, but without a doubt, the biggest is the offshoring of jobs. It's impossible to innovate and improve things when you no longer make things.

Lastly if you are so fond of other counties, perhaps you should go live in those countries. The USA (and for that matter Canada, UK, Australia and Japan) could do with one less person with such a defeatist attitude.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Heard from one of my off-shore India collegue that Cognizant in India is doing a "mass" hiring in major Indian "Tech" cities like Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, etc. It was alleged that Cognizant is paying up to 1 Laksh (100,000 Indian rupees) monthly salary, which today is equivalent to about US$ 2,150 for engineers with ONLY 1 year experience. It is quite a fair bit of money, to have with India's low cost of living.

If this is true, then I have doubts about the recruitment process of Cognizant in such mass recruitment scale. Going by such a recruitment method, I wonder how this will affect the quality of Cognizant work for Invensys in the long run?

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

To answer "why GE?" "why XXX?", one must first analyze the behavior of corporate leadership and what drives them.

Fundamentally, many US-based and global multinationals take a quarter-to-quarter, near term view of their strategic and operational planning. This is driven by their own compensation schemes, pressures from the capital markets, and by fundamental inabilities to think on a longer-term scale. Corporations in many of the emerging markets, notably those in the Far East, operate amidst different pressures and motivations and are able to think of much longer planning horizons, even multi-generationally at times.

The outsourcing/offshoring trend was and is driven largely by this short term operational mentality. Most of these corporations are mortgaging their futures to meet near term financial targets. They are losing critical intellectual property (you don't believe for a minute that Indian outsourcers don't indirectly sell what they learn at ABB to Honeywell, do you?), operational flexibility, and are taking the easy way out, but one that fattens the bonuses of the top executives.

There are a number of fantastic oppportunities and reasons to establish a multi-dimensional presence in emerging economies. However, short term cost management is the very worst reason of all, for all participants.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

I do not comment on the efficiency of IDC. Everyone has different perceptions based on which BU you worked for. I would wish that there was no dearth of talent in India; the results depends on how you build and manage. As said, one should not bother about the comments of people getting impacted and the same holds good for IDC folks reaction few months back. It should be the business interests, not any percieved opinions.

My only question is that if the entire bashing of high value creation at low cost is true, then how come most innovations are appearing with companies that are applying the above business model. To name a few: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Oracle, IBM etc. FYI Boeing, LHK, GM, GE are doing most of R&D in India. Don't tell me automation software is more complicated than Aeronautics, Operating systems. Even if you convince, then the next point is how come Honeywell and ABB, who operate in this space, are sucessfull with above model?

It is interesting to see comments coming from Wonderware guys, not from Foxboro or SimSci, where domain is nothing more than software engineering.

Saturday, January 23, 2010 - To the person who made the comment on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 about exploiting the cheap overseas labor as other so called successful companies:

I just got a job offer from a friend of mine to work with him at an OEM, as he is now the lead of the Automation group there. The company is now re-building its automation group after a failed attempt to offshore the automation and controls to India.

In this case it came down to logistics. Yes India has very bright and hard working people, and technologies have improved world wide communications. But it is still another country on a different time zone. Most clients want and appreciate face to face meeting and clear understanding of project scope, schedule, and challenges. You'll never get that when dealing with someone on the other side of the planet.

Now if your creating a product that requires little or no customization, you might get away with that doing it in another country (look at many of the bug free products from Microsoft). Otherwise you need local people that understand local requirements.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Folks, the problems with Invensys are a shortage of real strategic direction, and an utter and complete lack of execution. Ulf, Sudipta and crew simply haven't a clue. A Power point deck does not a strategy make.

It has been mentioned many times, but Sudipta's decision to bring along his band of merry men (mostly from Wonderware, and certainly short on cultural diversity) will be the death of the company. These guys are almost all lightweights and amateurs who haven't spent much time actually earning a living in 20 years, as they've been busy nursing off the teat of the cow in the Wonderware lobby. Most of them haven't the foggiest idea about the world outside. The inevitable outcome will be sad, yes, but predictable.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - Re: "exploiting what is called value-creation at lower cost"

Utter BS. We have seen "value-creation at lower cost" - it was called IDC. They weren't very good, but they were a lot cheaper on paper than the US developers. Invensys don't think about domain knowledge and they may never have. These products are hard to write and cannot be done by any old developer pulled in off the streets of Lake Forest, Foxboro or Hyderabad. The people who know how these systems work and can develop them are rare and expensive.

Management is trying to sell the company to whatever fool will buy it. At that time, the SOBs at the top will cash out with a happy smile and "I'm all right, Jack!" to the rest of us poor sods. There is no other explanation for such utter stupidity.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

I feel why Invensys isn't sucessfull is because they shy away from exploiting what is called value-creation at lower cost. Invensys is still trying to do more with region based, rather than exploiting the low cost engineering/ development. Meanwhile, competetion like HONEYWELL, ABB, Siemens, Emerson have tens of thousands working in low cost countries (India), but Invensys hardly have one eighth of them. Invensys should shed inhibitions and go ahead with what the market is doing, or the competetion is doing. They shouldn't be bothered about people that get impacted writing blogs about or preaching about 'their own percieved value' which isn't anymore than emotional comments. They should invest where business is growing (APAC).

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The current state of the business is best described with this quote: "The anguish of low quality lingers long after the sweetness of low cost is forgotten." This is true for all business units throughout Invensys.

All this cost saving plans (while demanding double digit growth) are done at the expense of the working base, who are still trying to serve the customers while working in survival mode. This will first come to an end, when the Top Level Management has sucked the very last penny out of the once successful companies.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Investors are more than likely factoring in rumours regarding the disposal of the rail group, and the resultant cash such a transaction would generate, rather than the upside potential of the company. This is a "book value" play, not a growth investment. The markets that Invensys serves may be expanding in the years ahead, but as the #7 or #8 player globally, they will be an afterthought, not a first choice as a supplier when compared to much larger, more well respected brands.

Were Invensys to have some unique product offerings, the situation might be different, but this is clearly not the case. The R&D pipeline is not primed with anything particularly interesting, either. The head of development has successfully killed off most of the high potential initiatives as they were not in alignment with his views or goals. Sad state of affairs, indeed.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The real effects of the IOM change won't come through the balance sheet for another year. What comes through immediately is the reduced head-count and contracting off the cost overheads (Development) so things look rosy. Watch in a year when there are no new products, no support for the existing products and no sales force able to sell the old products!

Sunday, January 17, 2010

On paper, the company looks strong at first glance. No debts, oceans of pounds in bank, and in an industry that has strong growth potential. What is not visible to casual investores is that morale is low, we are looking for other work, and the domain knowledge is streaming out the door to the competition. Most investors are fools and do not look further than the current balance sheet. The company has no good future but it's present is very bright. This won't last but it will last long enough to fool people who are easily fooled.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

When I read this blog and look at Invensys' stock performance, there isn't any correlation. The stock perfomance has been quite strong. So what is the flaw? There must be some good news to offset the facts described on this blog or folks are quite negative. Where is the truth? Are the Investors blind? Isn't Sir Nigel Rudd smart?

Saturday, January 16, 2010 - Regarding the last post:

I am an employee of Invensys Middle East and I agree completely. Everyone is taking it one day at a time and there is no motivation or any long term plan. Everybody is just thinking about the next commission or incentive he can make on orders / projects and looking at job opportunities with the competition.

Friday, January 15, 2010

The Invensys Middle East operations are in shambles. Morale is below zero and the management is a joke. Invensys is no longer even considered serious competition by Yokogawa, Honeywell, Emerson and ABB in the Middle East. Worse even the customers think that the Invensys Middle East team is a bunch of jokers floundering from one mismanaged disaster to another.

There are some proprietary jobs that are falling in their laps and these are highlighted as major achievements and crowed about to the powers that be who are absolutely cut off from reality. What else can you expect from a technical organization where the Finance Manager and the Supply Chain Manager call the shots?

Monday, January 11, 2010

I heard that ABB is doing well and have moved most of their America- Europe activities to India / China as well. Even during the most difficult times last year they have managed to do well. I am not sure whether they also have plans to hire people.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Most of the remaining people have seen the examples of their braver or incautious or naive friends who tried speaking up and are now gone. We're all just waiting for our job offers to come in and we'll leave. There isn't a good reason to speak up. No one in authority cares and the people sucking up to them at the next level are spineless sellouts.

What makes me sad is that after all these years of working here, this company is falling apart. We'll never get our company back from these jerks. Beatings will continue until morale improves.

Monday, January 11, 2010 - RE:On Mr. Bhattacharya's watch:

This is true to a large extent. Invensys, as a company, has ceased to exist in true spirit from a year or so. Just a few individuals are managing and manipulating the entire company and driving the company to crazy ends. Who is going to bell the cat?!

Monday, January 11, 2010

On Mr. Bhattacharya's watch, whilst the order book was slightly up, revenues fell and profits dropped nearly in half. Product innovation has also come to a virtual standstill, employee morale is near an all time low, buddy politics have returned to high levels, and customers have significant concern over the long term viability of their existing IOM solutions. Mr. Bhattacharya's response? To dust off the same tired ideas he espoused at SAP.

It is becoming more and more clear that shareholder value would be optimised by the near term disposal/sale of the remaining components of Invensys. If a reasonable offer for the rail group can be obtained from Alstom or others, it should be accepted. Similarly, the IOM group would fetch more value today than it will a year from now. There are a number of diversified companies in Europe, India, and China who would be able to leverage IOM's assets.

Mr. Henrikkson has overstayed his period of utility to the organisation, and rather than riding the curve back to the bottom again, he should, if for no other reason than personal gain, dispose of the assets of the company whilst they still have value.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

I see the shares have shot up, probably in response to Alstom declaring they want to buy Rail. No doubt this would be welcomed from Invensys corporate level. Better start learning French, guys!

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - RE: Once the job market revives, ODC Managers will have a hard time retaining the product knowledge.

Do not exclude managers - they are also eager to leave Cognizant and in-fact would like to be the first ones (but would be interesting to watch whether their wish can succeed). Their technical and managerial inabilities to lead teams has become an open secret in Cognizant and they are finding very hard to meet the SLAs and schedules. Added to their woes, their counterparts in Invensys are busy in making their ends meet by troubling the ODC employees. Which makes it obvious that it is not a partnership deal (as announced by Cognizant and Invensys) and but appears to be parting-away deal. ODC employees beware of the danger and be prepared.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

The dilution of domain knowledge isn't unique to ODC. It happened at Wonderware many years ago, mostly due to growth, not attrition. It was just difficult to find solid developers who also had domain knowledge. Only a handful remain.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The management does not understand that domain knowledge is what made this company so good, and why the company is failing now. We are all expected to know everything about a product or project after working with the code for a few weeks. Domain knowledge takes much more than that; but telling this to your team lead or project manager shows up on your performance review as having a poor work ethic and a negative attitude.

Honeywell knows the value of domain knowledge. It's why they have so many of our CVs now.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The funny part with ODC is that Cognizant is stressing on replacing domain guys that are leaving with computer science engineers, as they are cheaply available to this services company. We see ODC and Cognizant senior management downplaying the need for domain engineers. With management asking questions if we really need domain engineers and can other software engineers be trained to do our job, we wonder if the new business objectives of ODC will hold a promising future for us domain engineers.

This apprehension is fueling resignations, and while our cunning management is trying to do damage control by emphasizing the importance of domain experience, we see that they are in fact acting in opposite direction and most new hirings are not of domain engineers.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

It's now evident that Cognizant is finding it too difficult to retain the ODC employees. In Jan 2010, there have been 3 resignations in GSD, 4 in Wonderware and 3 in Foxboro. As per reports Honeywell(India) is sitting with 160 resumes from 0DC, but they are waiting for better market forces. Once the job market revives, ODC Managers will have a hard time retaining the product knowledge.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

I have heard from another exec that our leader in development has been given specific objectives that he must achieve in order to preserve his job. I hope they are measures like innovation, customer satisfaction, on time delivery and quality - not just cost.

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - Re "15 Signs your workplace is dysfunctional":

I think those of you who commentred on the comparison between their Invensys workplace and the 15 points of a dysfunctional workplace in this article got it WRONG. One person counted 12, and another counted 14. But I did it and got all 15. My surprise is that some parts of the group only rate 12 matches out of a possible 15.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The current executive team thinks that "long term" means two quarters ahead. I'm sure no one has considered actually MEASURING the results of these initiatives, perhaps with the exception of Mr. Freburger. As stated other times on this blog, Mr. Mody could care less whether it works or doesn't work. If it works, he'll take credit; and if it doesn't, he'll blame it on being "told" to do it.

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - Regarding the outsourcing:

Excellent observation. There were plenty of "slides" pointing out the benefits (cost mostly) but no looking back to measure. I guess the inititaives were not very S.M.A.R.T..... This question should be answered.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Can anyone give me an update (factual vs original business case) of the following outsourcing initiatives:

1. R&D - Led by Mr. Mody;
2. Finance - Led by Mr. Alison;
3. HR - Led by Ms Larson;
4. Manufacturing - Led by Mr. Freburger.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

How can Matamoros be called a "Center of Excellence". They had no SMT and very little electronic manufacturing when the consolodation was announced. Their only qualifications for being the recieving plant for the consolidation was cheap labor and available floor space. All technical expertise had to be hired.

Saturday, January 2, 2010 - Re"15 Signs" article:

I looked it up and counted 14 out of 15 at IOM. I did not think of when it was a bad idea to put things in writing. I thought of examples of the other 14 though, so pretty bad.

Here is the link:

15 Signs Your Workplace is Dysfunctional

Friday, January 1, 2010

The description of the "untouchables" not being fired, even though they are the "responsibles", is no more obvious than at the top of development. What kind of voodoo does he have to keep Ulf and Sudipta convinced to keep him on?

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

I just saw an article online "15 Signs Your Workplace is Dysfunctional". I counted 12 out of 15 for here. I particularly liked the first sign the article says: Conspicuously posted vision or value statements are filled with vague but important-sounding words like "excellence" and "quality". These words are seldom defined and the concepts they allude to are never measured.

Here is the link:

15 Signs Your Workplace is Dysfunctional

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

I'm hearing that Invensys Controls lost 3 of their 4 top customers by moving Holland and Chihuahua to "One Center of Excellence" in Matamoros. Their top appliance customer has determined that Invensys will no longer quote on new business. Their automotive customer moved to another facility in Holland. Another top appliance customer is irate about lack of proper labels and is leaving. Was this move an attempt to get rid of a division that couldn't be sold or just a poor attempt at a cost savings?

Sunday, December 27, 2009

$300M US is lost in Middle East champions organization! How do you doing Mr.Ulf? And the untouchables still gain more recognition? I wish to see some resposible heads fying, instead of firing only the inoccents.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Replying to the post on 17 Dec. regarding Middle East president. He is not firing & hiring. He is just firing. If you are not 100% in line with his ideas, you are terminated on the spot. I wonder who selected a president who stayed only 10 months in each of the his last two jobs.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Few of my colleagues in Lake Forest are always complaining about the quality of work received from development groups; but how about the work done by project managers at Invensys ODC, is this of any quality? I keeping hearing from Indian staff right from IDC days that most of the time development groups end up doing project management activities. I suggest that we should stop paying for these low-quality (project management) activities from Cognizant and request the outsourcing Program Management of Invensys R&D to do atleast some justice to their positions by evaluating and taking-off this kind of low-quality work from Cognizant.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

What was the 401k match before this latest change?

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Why so negative? The 401K enhancements are a positive thing, nothing more. Let's hope for a better 2010 at IOM!

Monday, December 21, 2009

The consolidation of Chihuahua and Holland Controls facilities into one "Center of Excellence" in Matamoros is not going as planned. The Holland automotive customer pulled his product quite quickly. The largest customer, by sales dollar, has disqualified Invensys Controls from quoting new business. Another large appliance customer is irate about the current performance. In spite of this, everyone would claim that all is going well. After not being able to sell this division, it doesn't appear to be holding the value it may have once commanded.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

The 401K plan change is probably just as much to clear up any unvested contributions to clean up the balance sheet to make it easier for a potential acquirer to value the company. Let's not forget the pension liability issues elsewhere in the world and how paralyzing they were to our ability to invest and acquire or be acquired.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Today, I received the following in my email:

I am pleased to announce some enhancements to the Invensys 401(k) Plan. Effective April 1, 2010, the company will match dollar for dollar up to 6% of pay. This aligns with our strategy of offering a competitive and consistent retirement program across all US Invensys locations. All employer matching contributions will vest immediately. For those employees whose current 401(k) plan design does not provide for immediate vesting, all current employer contributions that are not vested will immediately vest on April 1, 2010.

Over the coming weeks leading up to this important plan design change, I encourage you to evaluate your current 401(k) saving strategy and maximize your saving opportunity within the Plan. We will be scheduling onsite educational seminars and/or webinars to help educate you on how this change impacts you and to help you understand the investment options available to you in the Invensys 401(k) Plan. Scheduling information for these seminars will be promoted beginning in late January 2010. If you need more personalized help with your 401(k) account, you can utilize our plan’s free retirement consultation services.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Another fatal mistake is happening in the Middle East, new President with no experience, and just manage peoples (fire, and hire). This is not good sign. Talents people are leaving, and others waiting for the best time, and the new joiners are trying to digest what is going on (but?!)

Thursday, December 17, 2009

The post about the Invensys Middle East employees is incorrect. There have been employees sacked over the past few months but hardly any of those have joined Honeywell. Most of them are still desperately looking for jobs.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The IOM CEO had better wake up. The employees that have domain expertise in the business are leaving and they can't be replaced overnight. There is no way to execute Sudipta's vision for the business if the individuals that understand the automation space pack up and go work for the competition.

Sudipta, this is your wake up call. We had a CEO before that didn't understand the business; we expect more from you. Your people are the only assets that keep your clients coming back; if you lose them, you won't have a business. Reducing cost is important to remain competitive, but you can't outsource everything. You have to balance the clients needs and what they are willing to pay for. You need to start to surround yourself with individuals that understand the business and know how to execute. "Yes Men" are not what you need. Take a hard look at the individuals that have been at IOM and know what works and what doesn't work. Get their input, in fact, empower them to execute your vision.

The current leadership team has strengths, but most have no experience running large organizations and there doesn't appear to be any sense of urgency. We lost a dozen good people in the last 30 days at level 3 and 4. You can't keep that pace and expect to win.

Eco-Systems? Take care of your own first, sending business to your partners and expecting they will do the same in return is a noble thought, but in this ecomony it is everybody for themselves. We need to protect our bottom line and outsourcing work to system integrators who you think will return the favor isn't happening. Those SI's can barely keep their doors open in this ecomony let alone send us business. Focus on the core business and grow into the emerging markets. We all want to win, but we can't if the quality talent departs.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Only the people in IDC are crying? What about the other Business units? Invensys Middle-east is bleeding, a lot of talent had been fired or left in last 6 months. The good news that they joined Honeywell in a week.

Sunday, December 13, 2009 - RE: 'Like many other groups, this group has added problem, hopeless leadership.'

Not sure about the other groups, but in MES/EMI group managers are hopeless while they were in IDC or now at ODC. Important change after moving to ODC in this group is even the group leads commitment and interest has come down considerably because their concerns regarding the managers of this group are not addressed so far.

Sunday, December 13, 2009 - Re: "Wonderware, Lake Forest, has seen improvements in meeting schedule."

Quoting "Maybe the few disgruntled people in ODC should resign so the rest can move on."

This statement assumes that some ODC employees are voicing concerns which is affecting the morale for many others. So this person believes that most of ODC employees can be directed like a herd of sheep if no one complains about the path. Also this person knows that there are disgruntled people in ODC that are resigning and more that will resign in near future. He also knows that most employees in ODC are finding it hard to move on. So this person has to be from Invensys / Cognizant / ODC Top management. All I would like to tell this guy is the following: Most professionally sound engineers possess good intelligence and the ability to determine the favorable career path. Also many of them can think ahead of what you guys plan and so they should not be misjudged to be a herd of sheep. Of course, there is a some dirt in IDC that will move on, but will they deliver?

Quoting "Wonderware, Lake Forest, has seen improvements in meeting schedule."

I challenge this individual to state the schedule milestones that were met in this short time! I don't think that we are in the field of business where improvement in project "milestones" can be suggested based on a period of 3 months as few meaningful development projects can be completed in this short time. The very fact that he feels this way once again suggests that he can only belong to incompetent Invensys / Cognizant / ODC Top management! So I am not going to write on his quality improvement claim.

I see most ODC employees working less than IDC as the projects that should come from Invensys are getting delayed. Also I see the scope of many ambitious projects being reduced in scope and also an uncertainty about when they will start. I think this is because of budget constraints and uncertain returns on these ill conceived projects. Despite less work everyone here is billing full 45 hours / week to Invensys.

Also the resignations have recently started and in last one month we have heard of at least 11 people resigning. Most of these guys are experienced individuals who had been contributing to IDC delivery. We have to see if the rate goes up or sustains. None of these resignations were ODC Managers.

Regarding better communication, we see less transparency as the Dev managers in Invensys are supposed to primarily communicate to the managers in ODC or Cognizant Onsite / Offsite coordinators and not to the Dev team directly. So its for Invensys Dev managers to judge how worthy and meaningful they find the sweet words that they hear from ODC.

Friday, December 11, 2009 - RE: "We do not know why few people at IDC are crying...":

Correct yourself first, it is ODC now and it is not few employees but many. If these people are not attached to Invensys and continue contributing, it is Invensys which would be crying few months from now (in case it is allowed to survive), understand this and support to improve the working conditions at ODC, if you have the guts. Otherwsie please mind your own business.

Friday, December 11, 2009 - Re: "Wonderware, Lake Forest, has seen improvements in meeting schedule.":

This person must be either the Invensys management representative overseeing the Cognizant operations trying to protect the job, or Cognizant representative trying to protect the Invensys order. Reality is completely different. This was divulged through this blog by many people, many times. So, many yesterday's STAR PERFORMERS at IDC, are todays NON PERFORMERS at ODC. It is true that the quality of work received from MES/EMI groups has worsened. Like many other groups, this group has added problem, hopeless leadership.

Friday, December 11, 2009

We do not know why few people at IDC are crying. All is happening for good cause. If you people are not satisfied, pave way for others by leaving IDC. Let them work and achieve for the organisation.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

I have to disagree with my colleague in Lake Forest who says that things are getting better in any substantial way. Our outsourcing and offshoring approach was broken before, and it is just as broken now, except that we don't have any control over hiring/firing and we've lost the few good people who know anything about our products and our industry. The quality of work we get is consistently bad, particularly in the MES and intelligence areas. We end up re-doing lots of it anyway, so what's the point? It made Sudipta look like a star, that's about it. But we'll have to pay for this short term decision in the long term.

I sit back and wonder often when we lost our way. Why on earth Ulf and Sudipta cannot - or will not - do anything about this baffles us.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

This blog makes it clear that Invensys doesn't include it's employees in anything except work-load and blame. So, to some a "ONE CONTROLS" sounds like a change for the better. But be careful, because history shows that it could mean your days are numbered. History has it that by being "ONE CONTROLS", it means information sharing & collection from Control employees globally will be collected and stored in ONE location & not the existing one you know of. Head office management knows exactly what you have been doing, quoting, saying, planning, etc. – because they plan to reduce costs by you leaving & not being missed. Then you & your colleagues can be pressured into leaving – saving them money but they won't lose business (i.e. give your potential clients details and discussion notes, quotes etc. to a distributor or a different employee). Money, Money, Money only Money it's rich mans world.

Let's face it, Controls were once a much bigger company with many more employees, and now its smaller and still struggling. The Dec 1st PPT for Invensys Controls says headcount reduced 39%, working capital reduced 42% and inventory reduced 49%. (Some of these numbers may include the 2010 plans). Given that the sales are via channels (OEMs, Distributors, etc) Controls might be the equipment section that was noted in the IOM PPT presentations by Sudipta Bhattacharya there Dec. 1st 2009?

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

I was (and still am) very happy to leave Invensys Controls 4 years ago. Biolchini was 100% arrogant, intimidating and incompetent and we see today how very good companies as Eliwell and Eberle have been left. A part Ulf who promoted Biolchini to his position, there is also a big responsibility of human resources: do they make any Management appraisal and performance review?

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

From Wonderware, Lake Forest, we have seen improvements in meeting schedule milestones, improved quality and much better communication and accountability and commitment from the ODC. Admittedly this is only true of some teams but it is gettign better. The feared attrition has not occured. Maybe the few disgruntled people in ODC should resign so the rest can move on.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

It is time for Invensys to take stock of the situation at ODC in Cognizant, what benefits Invensys has achieved as compared to this group being part of IDC - any improvements in:

• meeting schedules
• employee commitment levels
• employee utilization
• attrition rates
• managing projects
• managing people

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Invensys ODC at Cognizant is about to complete 100 days (disgusting, worrisome and troublesome). Per employees at Invensys ODC, Cognizant has gifted them each a water bottle, and the gift to Invensys is unproductive person hours of ~2500.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Can anyone guess the benefits that Invensys received in these 100 days, after the IOM development in India was moved to Cognizant?

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Any guess who could be the next CEO of Invensys? No great effort, the man who influenced to screw-up the development organizations of IOM and IRG. He has few more dreams left to be fulfilled, selling the Engineering and Project Managements groups of Invensys

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

---Flash--- Another 120 goats of Invensys (IDC) are being bought by/transferred to Cognizant.

Cognizant is quite clear, their interest is to serve IOM and IRG customers by delivering end-to-end solutions rather than just developing products. In this situation it makes more sense to transfer the EEC groups of Invensys to Cognizant rather than the development groups.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

I've been an employee in Controls Europe for long time. Is still not understandable to me, what the reasons were to put a person like Biolchini in his role within Controls. The only answer could be the inconsistency of Ulf, just able to interface with sales people and nothing else; but that is still not enough. Why Biolchini? Why a person so arrogant and incompetent can achieve a position like that in Invensys? Just one suggestion to Balcunas (that is a well proven capable manager): call back in Controls all the Managers who left the Company for any reasons in the last two years and clean the sales organization.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - Ref: ONE CONTROLS:

Yes , the situation in Controls is very much difficult and none seems having new ideas . This new edition of ww organisation is probably being motivated by need to reduce management layers , difficult to see any real focus on market and customers. On Biolcini - yes, never seen so uncapable and arrogant person, his management has only generated inconsistent, not adapted strategy and phenomenal internal bureaucracy.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Ulf to depart before the end of the fiscal year - which concludes at the end of March 2010. Please say this is more than a rumour.

Monday, December 7, 2009

T Shape structure. Surely the beginning of the end?

Sunday, December 6, 2009

I sent an email "months ago" immediately after Bernard Biochini was fired. You did not mention anything. Please note that he completely destroyed controls. Inside Controls everybody is fighting against everybody. The company is managed buy the ex "yes man" that Bernard chose because he is a stupid idiot that loves people that say always yes. No decisions are taken and all Controls Europe is completely frozen. Salesmen change cars, they spend a lot of money in lunch, dinners and they feel like kings. Motivation is lower than ever. It's not anymore a metter of engagement but of credibility. Nobody believe anymore in Ulf and in this management.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

I've heard that its true that both the Managing Director and Finance Director of Invensys Rail UK (Westinghouse)have been fired. Looks like a sensible move as the company has gone downhill since both Direcrors took their positions. As for a single Invensys Rail senior team, well its been there a while now with R&D reporting on a global basis. The Manufacturing organisation has always been a global Invensys Rail function supplying more customers outside Westinghluse. Equally HR and Finance have had reporting lines into IRG. The only local Westinghouse dedicated function has been for local delivery in projects. To me this makes sense.

Friday, December 4, 2009

I hear that the Finance Director for Invensys Rail Northern Europe (UK) is soon to be out of the door. This follows the announcement that the Managing Director has already been replaced. Looks like we are shaping up to have one Invensys Rail Group Executive committee, rather than one per current region (former companies WRSL, WRSA, Dimetronic and Safetran). I can see radical changes happening next year. More redundancies?

Friday, December 4, 2009

Weeks ago, Ulf has announced new organisation and strategy for Invensys Controls - the creation of a worlwide organisation "ONE CONTROLS" to better respond to market. Incredible! If someone takes the announcement of two years ago, it will read the opposite strategy and arguments. This just shows how ideas are confused and how the future of Controls Divison is hard.

The good news is that Bernard Biolchini has been fired and will leave by end of December. The result of his management is a drammatic lost of turnover, and more important of credibility with all customers. Internally also he has only created conflicts and a general loss of engagment at all levels. Hope the company will not pay too much money for exit package and for departure parties.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

The idea of a T structure organisation is new, different, and really exciting. I think nobody has ever tried this before. Probably because it is such a bloody stupid idea that no one ever wanted to.

But wait: if the T structure doesn't do it for them, there are other shapes left to waste time by restructuring into. The O shape organisation is equilateral and allows for criticism equally from all sides. The Q shape is similar but it lets management hide off in the corner. The K shape gives lots of meaningless corners and angles which they appear to like.

Or they could cut right to it and just say that their management structure is one big CF.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

T Structure is a normal way up T. Basically all the "boring" detail design is done by Infotech in Hyderabad, speced by "senior" engineers and then reviewed/checked by those "senior" engineers. The more junior staff have asked in the recent past where they fit into the new T shaped world - the answer was that the recent round of redundancies targetted those grades.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

"Invensys Operations Management, a division of Invensys, is headquartered in Plano, TX. Its solutions are used by more than 40,000 clients around the world in more than 200,000 plants and facilities. Invensys Operations Management's offerings are delivered under several prominent industry brands, including Action Instruments, ArchestrA, Avantis, Barber-Colman, Chessell, Continental, Eurotherm, Foxboro, IMServ, InFusion, SimSci-Esscor, Triconex and Wonderware........"

Already few "prominent industry brands" have vanished, and rest are going to DIE shortly ...

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

What I cannot believe is how all of this in this organisation are expected to swallow every bit of this. The Ulf, Sudipta and Co. have made it plain that they have no concern about anything but lining their pockets at our expense. But I am still unable to understand how they can say all of this with a straight face while they are all shoveling out more and faster. That they have no compunction about lying to us we all knew, but just how gullible do they think we are?

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

For those of us in other parts of the organisation, would you tell us a little more about this T shape? Is that an inverted-T or a T straight up? And if the latter, it makes me think of a thin column of workers supporting that huge crosspiece of management.

I also think that good engineering means that form follows function and that you shouldn't pick the goals before you do the analysis. And, yes, that you should know how to get from one to the other.

Funny stuff. I think we're all having a Dilbert experience in real life.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

On one hand, Invensys is practicing severe austerity measures but on the other hand wasting lot of cash-in-hand to maintain the not so productive ODC at Cognizant.

Employees of Invensys ODC in Cognizant are billing Invensys by charging to on-hold projects, since most of them have no on-going projects to charge (all the major projects are either scrapped or put on hold). Even then, Cognizant (could be on the advice of Invensys) is on recruitment spree to earn more dollars. This said, whose vested interests are being fulfilled? Perhaps the Invensys shareholders and employees should unearth the culprits.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Inadequate and apparently shambolic planning is also present in Invensys Rail. There is a plan to restructure the organisation "for the future". The briefing passed on to technical staff was basically "This is the current structure" - a nice triangular shape, and then the next slide (in a 2 slide Powerpoint) was a T shape, with the comment "This is how the structure would be in the future - any ideas how we are going to do it?"

The fact that the proposed structure revealed was literally a coloured shape on a screen is quite telling. Even more so the fact that technical staff have been asked how they can achieve the structure change. When the obvious questions, such as: "How do varying grades of engineer fit into this plan?" and "How is the transition from one to the other structuregoing to happen?" and "How long will this take?" were asked, no answer could be provided.

As far as anyone can tell therefore, the "restructuring plan" consists of a coloured T shape on a powerpoint slide and nothing more.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

All IOM top management can up in name of objective is that we want to earn more money. While that is good (Of course, you don't need an MBA to come up with that objective!), the problem comes in the next stage. The methods they suggest are of little value to the customers. The basic concept of "Integrating Top Floor to Shop Floor" is more of a management Jargon and at a technical level it is neither properly defined nor desired by our customers. It just fuels some random development projects and hopes to create a market out of nowhere, by integrating the existing products so that our customer who need one product have to buy other products from us which they really don't need.

The management should be trying to create better products that add more value to the customers, rather than be thinking how they can succeed in selling junk to customers. Else our customers, who are not stupid, will refuse to pay a higher price for the so called "Integrated Product", and will simply walk away.

But wait a minute. How will our management, that has little domain and Industry experience, and one that does not even want to retain a development team, come up with good Ideas for better products? Once more, they will fail to deliver!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The lack of planning is one thing, but the best plan is meaningless if you don't know how to execute. Which is exactly the problem today at IOM. The basics aren't getting completed, and we have all sorts of VP's with great ideas, but nothing that can be implemented. Too many leadership members having to sign off, and yet not one of them is accountable. When leadership is communicating that we have to hire individuals that are in India to support our business and clients, regardless of what our clients want, and are willing to pay for, you know we are in trouble. Back to basics, listen to the client, deliver on your commitments and execute what you promised to the employees, clients, and shareholders.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Brand destruction? What about the 150(ish) years of history that was Westinghouse?

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Consider yourself lucky that none of the "planning" gets to the channel, since it is mostly a useless exercise anyway and would merely confuse and misdirect you. Besides, those doing the "planning" have no idea how the business really works anyway. They should ask us.

Monday, November 30, 2009

And, of course, none of the "Planning" gets conveyed to the distributor channel (sorry, "ecosystem partners").

Monday, November 30, 2009

Oh, there's plenty of "planning". The STRAP process chews up countless hours each year, but nothing useful or valuable ever actually gets done.

Monday, November 30, 2009 - Re: lack of planning:

The only people who are not aware that there's no plan are the shareholders. The rest of us are all too clear on the complete lack of planning.

Monday, November 30, 2009

Eurotherm first, then Wonderware. The brand destruction has begun!

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Eurotherm Gone! It's begun - The end of Eurotherm as we know it, is real and it's now. Eurotherm in Australia is first. It took IPS no time at all to take the products and flatten a once good company. Is this "The first domimo falling" or is this the real Invensys plan? Previously I thought that there was a plan and it was being kept a secret but now I think that the secret is the lack of a plan.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 - Re: Indian job market upward trend:

I do not think the current Invensys management cares about the company's money. If they did, by now they should have allowed/advised Cognizant to move/remove the non-productive managerial staff/employees from Invensys ODC. In the better interests of Cognizant/Invensys, for the type of work being executed from ODC the setup just requires the staff like:

• Director - one is adequate but can go for two (experience can be 10-12 yrs)
• Senior Managers - not essential
• Managers - Ten to twelve in number is sufficient with an experience level 8 - 10 yrs; normal work these people does is email forwarding with little/ nil technical contribution to the projects. These managers could be given the project management responsibilities thereby eliminating seperate PMs
• Development and QA leads - number is as the per requirements, experience levels 6 to 8 yrs
• Working staff - number is as the per requirements, experience levels can eb between 0 to 7 yrs

Note to experienced people: Please relocate to other businesses of Cognizant or find your way. Some of the managerial staff in Cognizant ODC are indicating to their experienced staff that their continuation may be impossible in the organization in future.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

It is interesting to read the comments of 24th November. If the Indian job market is on an upward trend, where does this leave the outsourcing that Invensys Rail (Nee Westinghouse) does? To compete, will the oursourcing company (Infotech) have to up wages, thereby raising costs to Invensys?

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

So far these days, I was thinking that Invensys is doing wrong selling IDC to Cognizant. But todays, Function Point training class (IDC RAIL) proved to me that they are doing right. I got answers to many questions. I am working for IDC Rail division. We are ordered to go to "Mandatory" training on function-point estimation skills.

To my surprise, the trainer himself admitted that he doesn't know anything about function-point estimating technique, and he had downloaded some "video" from some website and wants us to show it. The only "eligibility" he got is that he is a Ex-Collegue and friend. This is how we are train our people. Management overseas will see that engineers are unproductive despite expensive training.

If Indian management is wasting valuble resources (in recession period) for their part of kick backs, or commisions like this, why should it not be sold to CTS?

Anyhow, the situations in IDC Rail are not going good. We have already seen two Senior people submitting their resignations this month, one quoting "Selling Peanuts is better than Working at IDC" openly... With the job market getting better in India, IDC rail is going to have HUGE attrition in the near future.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

The person at IRL who talks about IDC's inability to innovate/create anything new should be careful - Sudipta (and by proxy, Ulf) think otherwise. They think that the great educated (but inexperienced) minds of the untapped masses are far superior to the proven minds that have gotten the company to where it is. Past results mean nothing to them, and this philosophy will be foisted upon the others in the team in due time.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

I'm a long-term employee of Invensys Rail. I don't think there are too many people shedding tears in Invensys Rail about the departure of Mr. McPhee. The new acting MD, Mark Wild, is an altogether more inclusive and likeable person and is highly capable; I for one hope he becomes the permanent incumbent. I also agree with the comments here about the return of Steve Barry - another fine director.

As for the IDC fuss - IR won't be handing over any real IP as IDC haven't got that involved in our real technology. IDC have generally failed to show any real innovative abilities, so they have always been given the boring stuff - V&V, low level coding etc. (they are OK if you tell them EXACTLY what to do, but don't ask them to invent something...)

It's all just business as usual from my perspective - none of this really affects the day-to-day work or the strategies that are in place for the future.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

I work in Safetran and as far as I'm concerned Westinghouse is lucky to have Steve Barry help them out. I know this from the year Steve spent with us a few years ago. All our managers said he was a great guy. He drove us hard and made us deliver but worked every weekend himself along side us. He knows the business and you can count on him.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Is Nigel Rudd asleep at the wheel? It borders on the absurd that Invensys is dispersing its intellectual property, directly and indirectly, at the expense of a false short term gain. Most studies have shown that in the period following an outsourcing decision, output actually decreases for a period of 12-24 months. Certainly our experiences in IOM thus far lay proof to this claim. I do not know what form of magic dust Mr. Bhattacharya has sprinkled into the eyes of Messrs. Henrikkson and Rudd, but unless these two snap out of it shortly, we shall surely find ourselves in a far, far worse position than when we began this "journey". The only possible explanation is a desire to dispense with the company shortly and an attempt at sweetening the bottom line. If this is the plan, be up front with it so that the rest of us can do our part to help prepare the company and ourselves for this eventuality.

Friday, November 20, 2009 - Re: If IDC was ineffective:

I am not supporting the Cognizant transaction, nor Sudipta. But want to straighten the facts about soiftware India. India is the place where most of industrial automation industry software development is happening. To quote, Honeywell employs 8,000, ABB 6,000, Siemens 10,000 and the list continues for every major automation vendor. Hope you don't articulate the theory that all these CEOs are also giving special favours to India. Please get ready to accept the dominant status of India in software development, and in the automation industry in particular. Also Invensys' biggest customer and largest implementation comes from India. The local teams who implemented these know better than any one else, even in application engineering.

Thursday, November 19, 2009 - RE: Westinghouse:

I think its good news that Alistair McPhee is going and so do all my colleagues. I don't know about Invensys Rail people but the announcment I received said that Steve Barry was coming back to help. For me a former Westinghouse Director with over 10 years of experience is good news. He transformed our manufacturing business into the most profitable part of the business and built a strong and competent management team. I think thats help we could use. I don't know anything about Richard Prophet but hope he is a good sales person as we need the orders. This could be a turning point.

Thursday, November 19, 2009 - Re: 'Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - If IDC was so ineffective...':

In IDC, each group had few effective, efficient people because of which every group had survived. These people used to be in regular touch with the stakeholders in the US and be uptodate on project matters even when the managers were not effective and efficient. It is rightly pointed here that these people are getting sidelined in Cognizant's Invensys ODC, may be in the name of protocol.

Even the stakeholders and project in-changers from Invensys are not showing the same encouragement for these people, some of them even stopped responding to these employees queries. But Invensys should remember that this change in attitude would be to their disadvantage. The exodus of good talent from Cognizant's Invensys ODC has started and will increase unless the Cognizant and Invensys managements take necessary corrective measures. It is a wakeup call.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Now that Alistair McPhee is on his way out, suddenly Invensys Rail global bodies are being parachuted into senior roles in the former Westinghouse UK operation. Who will be next to follow Mr McPhee?

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - RE: If IDC was so ineffective, which it was...

There were parts of IDC that were ineffective, while on the other hand there were also groups in IDC that were effective, efficient and so much more productive than any group in US or Europe, simply because India has a low cost advantage.

With the Cognizant deal, the ineffective part of IDC gets stronger as Invensys loses direct control on ODC resources and so they cannot directly support the resources that are productive based on delivery. As a result the part of IDC that thrived on performance is now isolated in ODC.

Also Cognizant for now fails to realize that they need to interface faster with the real productive part of ODC that is now isolated; else the delivery of ODC which was mainly sustained by a few effective resources will start faultering.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

If true (IRL development moving to Cognizant also) this is an utter disaster. A criminal investigation should be seriously considered. Someone is getting rich at the expense of Invensys employee and shareholders, and we want to know who.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

How do past actions move into the future?

1. Invensys divested part/whole of its development staff located outside India to Cognizant.
2. Invensys divested part/whole of its project execution staff (Cognizant could be the preferred vendor as its strategy is made clear through the self-sponsored ARC Briefing).
3. Invensys divested part/whole of its business development staff (again Cognizant could be the preferred vendor).
4. Invensys is sold off, in parts or the whole, to one of its vendors.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - Press release: Chippenham, UK, 16th November 2009:

Alistair McPhee, Managing Director of Invensys Rail Ltd (previously known as Westinghouse Rail Systems Ltd) has decided to leave the company on 31st December 2009. Alistair, who joined the company in 2002 as Projects Director, became Managing Director in 2006 and has overseen the growth of the company in both the UK and in export markets in Europe and the Far East.

James Drummond, CEO and President of Invensys Rail said "I would like to thank Alistair for his leadership and contribution to the success of the business over the past 7 years and wish him well for the future". Mark Wild, currently General Manager Core Markets, will become Acting Managing Director.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

It is now official that Invensys Rail software development is also going to move to Cognizant in early January. Hearty Welcome to all Rail friends.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I believe that the Cognizant alliance for core development adds value to the product roadmap and product life cycle support. IOM should focus on their core strenght in the automation domain. In this competitive era, there is no point of vertical integration to duplicatee other automation vendors.

Monday, November 16, 2009

If IDC was so ineffective, which it was, Sudipta had a number of options. He could have expanded capacity in the USA, China, South America, Eastern Europe, or any number of highly capable locations. One could make a strong case that domain knowledge in our industry is far higher in the USA and Europe than elsewhere. Have we already forgotten the disaster with Geometric? Sudipta's loyalties are quite clear, unlike his thinking.

Monday, November 16, 2009

It's official. MD for Invensys Rail (UK) will be leaving 31st December.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

IDC was operational long before Sudipta joined. Once it was decided to sell IDC, where would they look for a possible candidate? In China? It has to be in India! The important thing to note is that 400 odd developers were to be transferred. It would be best if the partner had an office in the same city, Hyderabad.

Another thing to note - Cognizant is US based and headquartered in Teaneck, N.J. Maybe the Invensys people in UK should complain that the profits are going to US and not UK.

So much for Sudipta's allegiance to his native country. While I have no idea of Sudipta's capability, at least let's keep the complaints meaningful.

Coming to "interchangeable body theorem" - it's nothing new and wasn't invented by Sudipta or Ulf. This is the standard management mantra today (just see the Honeywell blog). When top management believes that a person with no automation experience can run the company (the former IPS CEO), why would they have an issue in applying the same principles to developers?

Sunday, November 15, 2009

It would be wrong to say that Sudipta's allegiance lies with his native country as people in IDC are looking at a loss in Cognizant. I think Sudipta's allegiances lie only with himself and so he wants to take steps that look good on his resume and by the time the effects of these steps are felt by Invensys, he would be long gone to some other company (may be to Cognizant :D ).

The sale of IDC is going to hit Invensys hard as the development cost of ODC will be much higher than IDC simply because ODC uses more managers than IDC and because Cognizant will like to make profit, something that IDC did not! On the other hand this deal seems to be really good for Cognizant as they get good business and they can always push their margins against a customer that is left with no other option.

The deal also hit IDC employees hard as they end up losing the work culture they cherished. They are suddenly part of an organisation where client interface and business development are much more important than core R&D and domain engineering. The conditions in ODC have been described in previous blogs in much detail and they haven't changed, so they don't have to be repeated. What should be noted in ODC's perspective is that as the frustration of mistreated employees grows, the best will be the first to leave the organisation while the desperate ones will remain till last.

Saturday, November 14, 2009 - Re: Sudipita truly believes in the interchangeable body theorem of development:

Most of us thought that Wonderware was dying because of bad management. But it also seems that Sudipta is the man truly responsible for the big stupid decisions. The fallacy of the interchangeable body theorem is easy to prove. This belief is unbelievably stupid in the executive of a major company but I doubt that it will be a major company much longer.

Saturday, November 14, 2009 - Re: "IOM decision to open up its software platform to partner development.":

Methinks some spin mastering is afoot! WonderWare's platform has been among the most open and extendible since 1990 or so. This is nothing new. Just a new guy responsible for it claiming that it is something new. Would be nice if there was ACTUALLY something new from WonderWare. Sheesh.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Sudipita truly believes in the interchangeable body theorem of development and has told us so in not so dissimilar words. Of course, he is completely wrong about it. At times, I truly wonder if his allegiance to his native country is much stronger than his allegiance to the country that created the opportunities that have brought him to where he is in his career now.

Friday, November 13, 2009

I have to agree about at least one thing: I think that IOM is a really good idea and I would have liked to see this in place several years ago. There's a lot of strength to be gained through all of the subordinate companies working together. If there's anyone left to develop products, it may work.

Cognizant was a dumb idea. It's based on the beliefs that (1) any competent developer can work on the products without a lot of product knowledge and experience and (2) that Cognizant isn't going to really stick it hard to Invensys the day after the current services contract and (3) that the IDC developers are going to be so pleased with Cognizant that they will stay there for Invensys. None of these are true.

Friday, November 13, 2009 - Re: "Invensys Rail UK Managing Director is leaving":

Where did that come from? No sign of this happening at Invensys Rail UK! Methinks this might be just wishful thinking...

Friday, November 13, 2009

For Sudipta's survival, he needs a chance to deliver on his vision for IOM. We can argue all day long about the Cognizant situation, but at face value, what Sudipta wants to do long term is good for the company and therefore us all, if we can get the team in place to make it happen. I just hope we can get this whole mess in development behind us and move forward.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Yes, the Invensys board should take up Invensys' top leaders abilities and the recent decisions made at their level. This is on a war footing, because company's existence is at stake.

Thursday, November 12, 2009 - extracts from Control Engineering Sustainable Engineering News:

Invensys Operations Management explains new approach

At the annual Invensys user conference, IOM president Sudipta Bhattacharya addressed the company's recent merger of divisions and how it plans to differentiate itself in the industrial automation market.

Against the unexpected backdrop of rising attendance at this year's OpsManage conference in Anaheim, USA (November 3-5, 2009) - overall attendance is said to have increased 9% this year versus last - the major theme at this year's conference is the company's focus on the new business drivers in the manufacturing market. According to Sudipta Bhattacharya, the drives are: environmental excellence, production excellence, asset excellence, and control/safety excellence. "Five years ago, the only thing that really mattered was production optimisation. Today, several issues play a key role."

In response to these changes, Bhattacharya noted that Invensys Operations Management, that incorporates IMServe, Invensys Process Systems, Wonderware, and Eurotherm, has shifted its focus. Now the company stresses the issues of addressing control and safety, as well as simulation, optimisation and execution more so than it does a specific product-oriented strategy.

Detailing plans for wave one, the Wonderware system platform will have core supervisory and control capabilities for all vertical industries. It will also feature a common configuration tool for HMI, MES, and mobile applications. Visualisation will also be a feature common to all applications regardless of end device used to access the application. Also key will be the system's ability to interact with any field device or I/O unit.

Another issue prominently noted was Invensys Operations Management decision to open up its software platform to partner development. Partners bring specific industry expertise to the table.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Let us just summarize the current Invensys leadership crisis with one assessment: Ulf Henriksson was the right person to bring Invensys out of its financial challenges, but is absolutely the WRONG person to lead Invensys to growth. Sadly, Sudipta Bhattacharya is not the right person either, as he lacks both experience and execution ability for a role of this magnitude. Perhaps James Drummond could fill the role, but he has his hands full with Invensys Rail at present. The board must put in place new metrics for the top level leadership that focus on growth, which will have the effect of either modifying their behavior or forcing them out.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Ulf and his direct reports should attend a course on 'Open Approach' and 'trustworthiness'. While addressing the townhall along with Cognizant, Sudipta promised to share the terms and conditions pertaining to the moved IOM employees in the agreement. But, till today, these have not been disclosed.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It really is disturbing how often the rumors are accurate and management's denials and obfuscations aren't. Here's a tip to management: we all of us know when you are lying. It's just that we choose not to say so to your face. But you aren't good at it (and why would we have ever told you that to your face either?).

If you know what a 'tell' is in poker, one of the best-known liars in management has two of them that he isn't aware of. One is in his face and the other is not. Watch closely and you should be able to spot them.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

So it's finally out that the Invensys Rail UK Managing Director is leaving. There have been rumours for weeks that he has been fired although we can expect the usual "major contribution and thanks but has decided to seek new opportunities elsewhere, personal reasons blah blah blah". What a joke. Hopefully we can now concentrate on engineering. Invensys Rail remains a great business and the old Westinghouse company is still (just about) an industry leader.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

It is a big joke when some one says Invensys follows "open communication". Where was this when all the IOM development team at IDC was transferred to Cognizant? Most of the employees came to know this news through this website, rather than through their managers and Invensys Management. The managers outrightly denied all this to their employees.

In fact Invensys could still have the paternership model with Cognizant (whose strategy is to develop and deploy a seamlessly integrated OM solution, from sensors to enterprise systems) without trasferring the IOM development team. This strategy is made clear through the ARC Briefing (Dawn of a New Era in Operations Management Solution Delivery) sponsored in part by Cognizant. So, the million dollar question remains: to whose benifit?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - RE: "Open Approach" document:

What a bunch of bunk from above, once again. Our dear leaders are far more adept at creating slogans and Powerpoints than at creating a vision and strategy for improving our competitive position and our customer value proposition. I am getting sick of this. First Invensys Values, now this.

A lot of people have suggested that we need to change players if we want to make progress. But Sudipta has kept around a lot of the people who got us into trouble in the first place. Our managers are not just holding back progress at WonderWare, they also had responsibility for IPS for a while now - and where is InFusion, huh? We need new blood in there, and we have good people in WonderWare, SimSci, and even Rail who could step in and do a much better job.

Monday, November 9, 2009

In June 2009, Ulf Henriksson, announced "An Open Approach" and published a document (www.invensys.com/isys/docs/ar/2009/profile2009.pdf) that states:

"Invensys is changing. This year we have revealed a new brand and identity, reflecting the changes we are making within our businesses to become more efficient, more cohesive and more able to deliver on our objectives. One of our goals is to communicate more effectively with our customers, our employees and other interested audiences on what Invensys is, where we are going and the value we offer."

Cluelessness has been accused of bringing down companies like Enron. I hope some of the INVENSYS investors read this, or Ulf and Invensys managers read it. Hey Ulf, here is a tip from management 101: "It's time to put the promises into action, because promising it doesn't make it happen. And let's be clear, THE BUTT STOPS WITH YOU."

P.S. You had better do a risk assessment on how exposed Invensys is from all the promises made and not kept - i.e., if anyone lost their job from a secret agenda, then Invensys is exposed. And from what I see here, it sounds like a class-action suit coming.

If any-one out there can say that Invensys is now OPEN with its employees and Clients etc, don't sit there complaining about this posting. Write in and tell all the other lost souls what is happening before the shareholders, customers and other staff realise that they are also mushrooms.

Monday, November 9, 2009

If we are all becoming managers, we are allmost all becoming redundant, given the work that we can see.

Monday, November 9, 2009 - Re: "we're all going to become managers of projects rather than developers...":

Do you really have so many projects? But the information in this page says all the major projects are put on hold. Enjoy the holidays!

Monday, November 9, 2009

So it is Invensys' turn to add managers (managers for projects), WAH what a development organization, structure resembles cylindrical or rather inverted pyramid.

Monday, November 9, 2009

It has been said many times here by many people, but Sudipta doesn't seem to get it yet: unless development priorities are aligned, nothing else will change. Even if Sudipta's ambitious plans are on the right track, we will fail in executing on them and will lose a lot of talented staff in the meanwhile. We still don't know what our development priorities are supposed to be for 2010. We get (bits and pieces) trickled down from Sudipta, and have another set of our own priorities. And we here yet another set of priorities from marketing. And yet another from sales and our distributors. Somebody needs to get on the same page.

Sunday, November 8, 2009 - Re: Interesting message from Sudipta: First half performance was off due to "reorganizing"....please work with a sense of urgency in H2.

That sounds like its self-fulfilling. "Things weren't good because we reorganized and we reorganized because things weren't good." So after we've had our benefits cut, our pension turned off, no raises, and the promise that we're all going to become managers of projects rather than developers, with nothing forthcoming from management but more smoke and mirrors and no promises, after all of that, we're supposed to trust the company and work harder. Sure, we can all do that. Sure.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Interesting message from Sudipta: First half performance was off due to "reorganizing"....please work with a sense of urgency in H2.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

From The Times (November 6, 2009):

Two days after Warren Buffett’s $34 billion bid for Burlington Northern underlined the long-term attractions of railways, Thursday’s first-half results from Invensys made much the same point.

Once again, it was the rail division of the FTSE 100 automation and controls group — which develops and installs signalling equipment and other trackside technology — that was the stand-out performer. At £73 million, the division’s operating profit for the six months to September 30 was 11 per cent ahead of consensus forecasts. The division’s operating margins also continue to improve — to 21.8 per cent, up from 21.2 per cent a year ago.

True, orders were down 13 per cent but that owed more to last year’s boost from a contract for a high-speed line in Spain and a lull in procurement by Network Rail ahead of the next phase of track renewal.

Encouragingly, since the end of September, Invensys has made up that deficit — picking up its first big contract in Brazil (a £153 million deal to resignal three metro lines in São Paulo) and £41 million of upgrade work in America.

The broader reassurance is that spending on rail infrastructure — driven by worldwide moves to shift more freight by train, the construction of mass-transit systems in emerging markets and tightened safety standards — shows no signs of slowdown.

So why did Invensys’s shares fall 10 per cent at their worst? [Note on Friday November 6 the shares were back to where they were before the earnings announcement] The culprit was operations management, the company’s biggest division, which makes and installs technology that helps processing plants — such as petrochemical facilities and power stations — to run at optimal efficiency. Orders dropped 23 per cent, sales fell 17 per cent and operating margins weakened from 9.6 per cent to 7 per cent. Spending cuts by oil and gas companies, especially in the US, are part of the explanation but the concern is that process equipment is the bit of Invensys in which the full effects of recession have yet to be felt. In short, it is a “late cycle” activity in which the long lead times behind big capital projects mean they have previously been protected from downturn.

For its part, Invensys remains sanguine. The company expects a stronger second-half trading period, such that it will still be able to meet full-year profit forecasts. Given Invensys’s recent record in reading its markets correctly, it should be given the benefit of the doubt. The underlying appeal is a company with a huge installed base of process equipment. Elsewhere, its controls division, which makes timers and displays for consumer appliances, should be quick to benefit from cyclical recovery.

Invensys sits on net cash, now pays a dividend and, valued at £2.4 billion, is a small — and therefore eminently digestible — constituent in a sector dominated by US and European giants. At 290p, or 14 times next year’s earnings, the shares are a buy."

Saturday, November 7, 2009

It is not just Sudipta; all the people involved in the implementation of these strategic decisions which has brought down Invensys reputation in the market should be made responsible. Invensys has wasted and continues to waste lot of money for some of the recent decisions. It is quite evident that there are no plans to start the much talked about projects (Infusion Acceleration, Mega HIstorian, NextGenSimulator, etc) in the near future but Cognizant has recruited many employees for this account. Per Cognizant these resources will be billed to Invensys from their 16th day onwards.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Some of the guys who could have moved the products forward were pushed out of the company a while ago. As long as Sudipta's gang of pals is running the show, we just have to sit back and wait and watch the clock tick away. We are changing the wrong things. If we changed the VP responsible for development, the mood and the results would change nearly overnight.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Too bad we can't pull a Zilog on them. But then the Zilog guys didn't outlast Intel either. But they did prove you could make a better product.

Thursday, November 5, - Re: comment on 31/10/2009 - "if there wasn't a recession I wouldn't be working here":

I am sad to say this, but I doubt we can say anything now that will matter. I believe we are, all of us, for the chop soon enough. There is too much absurdity to believe that management cares about us. The midyear evaluation process is a sick joke. Who reads or cares about this? We fill out difficult forms, talking about meaningless goals solely to make HR happy. We fill out time sheets that always tell the same story about bad planning and budgets that don't matter, and nothing changes. We get our benefits cut and my pension is frozen so that Invensys can pay for trips to Aruba on our labor. We do meaningless training on company ethics practices while there are questions about how managers are handling money spent on vendors. We are told that this is a Meritocracy but people with a history of failure and abuse still have jobs.

If we formed a trade union and every man Jack of us strode into Sudipta's office, we would just get eliminated faster. Nothing can be done now and I am sorry that this is true.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Should Invensys require product roadmaps after outsourcing the developemnt and project execution activities? Nay, they would not need road maps to run from pillar to post.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

From what I've seen here at Ops Manage, I must agree that there is no believable roadmap for Wonderware. I've heard it all before. This is not at all surprising, looking at who Sudipta has made his inner group of advisers. I remember calling Tech Support and some of those guys answered the phone. Maybe they should listen to us a bit more, since we live with the products every day. I've been using Wonderware for almost 15 years now, and don't have any plans to change at least for HMI or historian. We've had our hiccups with some new versions, but overall it just works well and we know how to get the most out of it.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - Responding to "Most of what is said on this blog is totally untrue."

That person should look at Wonderware's software Roadmap and see absolutely nothing on the horizon for core products (i.e. the ones that keep the lights on). Development has stopped and so has the communication from management. Speaking of which, has anyone seen an organisation chart? Or does everyone report to Sudipta?

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - Responding to "Most of what is said on this blog is totally untrue."

WHAT is untrue here?

1. That managers are not generally respected? Yup, that's true.
2. That there were going to be layoffs? Whoever called the shots on the layoffs in July seems to have been right.
3. That the motivations for whatever Invensys management is doing are unclear? That's REALLY true: nobody can figure this out and none of the explanations make sense.
4. That there are lots of people looking for work right now? The turnover rate used to be 11% just a few years ago. Even if you ignore the layoffs, I'll bet the turnover rate is going up and up as people leave.
5. That there's going to be another layoff soon with Dev managers? Put your money on the table, son. I think there is going to be one not long from now. I would be glad to be mistaken.
6. That it isn't safe to speak up at the company? I don't put my name on this because it isn't safe to speak up and I have no reason to bet what's left of my job. You think it's safe?

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - Re.: "what would happen if we were to form some type of Developers Union?"

Based on what happened at Foxboro about 20-years ago when some small local trade union handed out leaflets outside the Neponset plant one morning ...

Management will go into full DEFCON 1 status. They didn't have Predator drones 20-years ago to track and eradicate subversives but I bet they do now.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - Response to "So a bunch of us were sitting around wondering, ... or would it make a difference?":

Suggest to organize a meeting with the top invensys executive team and quiz them till they reveal the real motives behind all the recent and future happenings. Tip of the iceberg

• Past - Transfer of IOM development team in India to Cognizant; layoffs in other offices.
• Present - Transfer of Rails development team in India, mostly to Cognizant; more layoffs in other offices.
• Future - Transfer of Project execution teams too. Strong news is afloat around that Invensys has already engaged in discussions with few parties; more and more layoffs. Finally, Invensys would be filled with middle-persons.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - Responding to "Most of what is said on this blog is totally untrue."

Is Invensys/Cognizant hiring such foolish (devoid of good sense or judgment) people who can't see/accept what is happening around?

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Invensys transferred along with the IOM team the habit of renaming groups/divisions. Now Cognizant wants to rename the Invensys ODC.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

So a bunch of us were sitting around wondering, what would happen if we were to form some type of Developers Union? Would we be all canned on the spot or would it make a difference?

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Most of what is said on this blog is totally untrue. Are you all from Rockwell or Siemens?

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

It's only the economy that's been holding me back. There are a lot of development managers on the market in Orange Cty and the price is down. I have been looking ever since the first layoff in July. It is only a matter of time now until we see another layoff that hits Dev. managers hard. WW is moving all of the Dev. functions to India, and Lake Forest will become a company of architects and project managers. They think they don't need Dev. managers any more. If I have a job lined up already when it happens, I can collect a lot of severence pay and then go to the new job. But even if I just leave, I am still better off.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Keep alert for big announcements at the Ops Manage meetings in Anaheim, followed shortly by Q2/half year financial results. Should be a very interesting week for shareholders.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

I find it interesting that the most vociferous of comments on this webblog come from the United States. Invensys plc is a British company and unfortunately not many of my UK colleagues seem to feel inclined to comment. What is happening to Wonderware is happening everwhere within the world of Invensys as we know it. Is it not time for people to stand up and be counted? We are doing it in Europe; it's not getting us very far admittedly, but maybe it would be a good idea to buy a few shares and attend the AGM.

Everyday I am seeing colleagues who are suffering from stress. They have the 'learned helplessness' attitude, whatever they do it won't change the outcome, but when the next 'Employee Engagement' survey comes out, maybe we should all answer honestly and insist upon seeing the results. We are essentially a global company and it is about time to consolidate what we all feel. How we do that without Big Brother Invensys watching is a bit of a dilema.

I would appreciate comments on this. As an aside, due to outsourcing to companies, whose people don't assimilate information, ask the same questions over again (Groundhog Day), and the additional work given to the remaining workforce, how appropriate is it to send out the I-grow email? How many of us have time to grow? We're merely trying to keep our heads above water. Once again a lack of understanding and care for the workforce. 'I want to work here' - if there wasn't a recession I wouldn't be working here.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Yes, there in no doubt in saying that it is time to optimize the Invensys ODC organization structure which appears to be in complete disorder. On one side there is a fat managerial staff acquired from Invensys, and on the other side another set of managerial staff like on-site coordinators, off-site coordinators, account management staff, talent management staff, etc., created by Cognizant. There are many redundant and unwanted positions which makes the structure look ridiculous. Simple thing to remember, not this many managers, senior managers, directors, coordinators, etc are required to maintain five hundred people and to carry out the type of work Invensys ODC is asked to do. So, lot of managerial staff has not much to contribute in this structure. May be it is a good idea to ask the managerial staff to take lead responsibilities either in development or in QA for at least one project other than just mail forwarding. Senior managers are like middle men/women, should be scrapped right away. Realize and trim it soon, the current organization structure is neither good for Invensys nor for Cognizant.

Another important point to mention: Cognizant management is also making the same mistake that Invensys management made, by not directly talking to the working level staff to understand their aspirations, concerns and complaints. So far not even a single meeting is addressed by EMS group heads at Chennai involving working level staff but there were so many visits made by these heads and meetings with managerial staff in the last two months. Lot of working level employees are not happy with their managers as they contribution very little to the projects, poor in coordinating the day-to-day activities but will be ready to take the credit for the success and pass-on the blame to their staff. Heard this is very predominant in the MES/EMI group and lots of staff has complaints against their managers. Just to remind, most of the revenue Cognizant's revenue is because of the working level staff. If their needs are not taken care of, sustaining this business is doubtful.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Project Orange? Of course there are more redundancies to come. Look at the orderbook. Don't make me laugh. The HR department are now known as Business Partners. What a laugh. Chief HR Officer? All they need to do is get people recruited as needed, paid on time and treated fairly. Instead they are full of mindless actvities, pretending that HR runs the business. COO that is responsible for none of the operations? What a joke. I've heard this said by senior managers. At the end of the day this Invensys problem has now infected Rail and it will go the same way as IPS and Controls unless there is a change at the top.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Sudipta's Twitter feed seems like it is written by someone in Marketing, not by Sudipta, does it not?

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A Westinghouse insider tells me that the management there are getting very jittery about these comments. Perhaps they are getting too near the truth. Take "Project Orange", for example. It has been speculated that this was to do with the current redundancy round. It goes beyond that, and even beyond round two already being planned. (Your reps are not allowed to talk about it, but look them in the eye when they deny that talks are ongoing). The ultimate aim is closure of regional offices. Oops, I should not have said that. Your management do not want you to know that.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

It is time for Invensys to open its eyes wide and measure the performance of its creation at Cognizant (Invensys ODC). This does not mean that the setup created at Invensys IDC was of any high standard. But it was far better, when compared with the setup at Cognizant.

Some of the important issues reported so far:

1. In all the town hall meetings organized before the transition of IOM employees to CTS, much hype was created about Cognizant, its pro-employee policies, work place environment, etc. But in reality (to name few) the work place at DLF office sucks (resembles a big fish market, but nothing close to a product development setup), rest rooms stink, inadequate and unequipped meeting rooms, sub-standard work spaces, etc.
2. The partnership term (between Invensys and Cognizant) was used only in the initial town-halls. In Cognizant, the top bosses always view Invensys as another customer/client whose emphasis is to get more and more revenue from the Invensys deal. In fact, from day one - charge Invensys 9 hrs per-day-per-person, even when the Invensys ODC employees have not put the required effort. Charge Invensys even when employees - especially managerial staff - are spending time on Cognizant specific, people management related issues.
3. Most of the good talent at Invensys ODC are vexed with the Cognizant policies, credibility, treatment towards them, work environment offered. They are actively seeking other employment opportunities.
4. Not an optimized organization structure is in place, especially the fat managerial staff acquired from Invensys. They do very little contribution to the projects, other than just mail forwarding. Ssimilar views were expressed when this organization was part of Invensys IDC - too many managers, senior mangers and directors. Added to this fat managerial staff, after shifting to Cognizant, there is another set of managerial staff like on-site coordinators, off-site coordinators, account management staff, talent management staff, etc.

Invensys should really evaluate whether Invensys ODC at Cognizant is a sustainable creation. Invensys needs to guide this setup, if this needs to be a successful creation. One thing is quite clear and Invensys should always remember: if the agreement between Cognizant and Invensys falls apart, Cognizant at-most would add another five hundred employees to its bench strength. But for Invensys, most of the product development activity might be halted, if there is no Plan B. As there is a strong news that IDC Rail group is also moving to Cognizant in a couple of months from now, Invensys should do this evaluation at the earliest.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - RE Monday 26th "Friendly Channel Partners":

I don't know if there are any "Friendly Channel Partners" left. Certainly in the UK this is not the case. We have integrated Wonderware ever since it was released and had a good working relationship with the local distributor and WW/Invensys directly but it has become too difficult to deal with these people with all the changes.

All we have seen in the UK is price rises, price rises and guess what? more price rises. Less service (4 sales guys have left in the last 6 months and none have been replaced).

What makes it even better is the sham that is their own inhouse integrator, which we keep getting told is not competitive and then we find them competing, surely the Distributor can't also be the Integrator? What a conflict of interest? How to turn off your channel in an instant, where, everything I tell you, every licence I buy will be used to your advantage to develop your own Systems Integrator business for when WW take the business back in house!

How do they get away with it and what the hell are WW doing about this? Or do they not know - seems that they disbanded most of the European Channel Management and senior guys in Lake Forest? Do they even care? Hopefully SI's will talk with their feet.

Monday, October 26, 2009

The intent is probably to use more friendly channel partners that may already be part of the IOM family, such as the WonderWare distributors. I don't think the WonderWare people want to be selling instrumentation, loop controllers and DCS stuff, though! No doubt though that Invensys will be cleaning up its channels to both extract margin and to get more control. Both of which are possible indicators of a future move to sell the business.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

IPS seems to be trying to shift away from sales channels other than direct Invensys salesmen; in the US at least. Something happened 1 April and it seems to result in a severe cutback in sales support, discount capability, product support and just the general ability of several of these "channel sales partners" to work with them. Looks like some are even trying to expand capabilities with competing products in anticipation of Invensys cutting them loose.

A few days ago a post suggested that small systems were becoming more important in the IPS mix. This move seems to suggest that customers for small systems are becoming less important.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The head of IOM development stands idly by and allows these horrible decisions to be made, because he has no other job options. He should be shown the door, and we can all get back to the work of making Invensys a better company with better products.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

For those of you at the Westinghouse Rail facility of Invensys Rail, don't be too hard on yourselves over the Network rail problems.

Do not forget that Network Rail is in turmoil at this time, and their chairman Rick Haythornthwaite (where have I heard that name before?) may be very busy as Chairman of the Risk and Regulation Advisory Council and Chairman of Mastercard Inc, and he is also Chairman of London’s South Bank Centre, President of PSA Energy, and an advisor to Star Capital Partners Limited. It must be good to be wanted.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

It seems to be a shambles here in Westinghouse Rail. We were told today that we have lost the last 4 Network Rail bids and that the contracts in Asia are facing damages claims from our customers. Apparently its down to us not recruiting enough people, while at the same time we are making redundancies!

While this is going on, there are preparations for major management conferences and the total waste of time "Together we will" presentations that people only attend because a named attendance list is kept. Without that nobody would bother. This company has been falling apart with image more important than our customer service. There used to be Directors of stature who would come around and talk to us. Two in particular were with the comapny for over 10 years and they seem to have moved to IRG over the last 12 months. I'm told by my manager that both of these Directors were responsible for making things happen. Now we appear lost.

I'm also told by my manager that Invensys Rail makes up the majority of profit and cash for Invensys. God help us under the current leadership. By the way it is true that the PPP team have started a sweepstake on when he gets fired. Sooner the better as its what most are thinking.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - Response to 'The new setup with Cognizant (CTS) ...' (Monday, October 19, 2009):

Yes, the ones listed in this posting are few out of many more. It is not just Invensys losing good talent in the US but also at Invensys ODC in Cognizant, as most of the good talent are vexed with the new employer's policies, credibility, treatment they have received so far, work environment that is offered - just to name a few from the huge list (growing day by day). These people are just waiting for an appropriate timing to say good bye, unless dramatic changes happen within a few days to make them stay.

There is strong news that IDC Rail group is also moving to Cognizant in couple of months from now. It is better and the right time for Invensys to remind itself: "Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket (don't risk everything all at once.)"

Another comment to offer is: what is the best Invensys (IOM) can get from a CEO/Business President who can not imagine the market situation beyond two years? I can only wish "Best of Luck to Invensys Employees and Shareholders".

Monday, October 19, 2009

The new setup with Cognizant (CTS) has a major flaw that can hurt Invensys. Going by the concept of the partnership, Invensys becomes a company of Managers who manages client requirements and oversees the respective development in India. Of course there are other functions also, like Marketing, HR etc. Here the development in India is handled by Cognizant which in turn is paid on the size of projects it gets to execute. So, if we consider that Cognizant gets a project for a specific task and it has two paths to accomplish that task; one path that takes 2 man years and another that takes 5 man years. Cognizant earns more if it chooses the path that takes 5 man years and so would be inclined to extend the project time. On the other hand, Invensys being a company of managers with limited development expertise will have no idea that other path of 2 man years exists. If Invensys would have maintained its own development team in India, they would have been glad to point out the better path as they were part of the same organization, and the benefits of the shorter path would be shared with them also. However, now Invensys has alienated most of its India development team with the sale of IDC and they are no longer interested in increasing the benefits for Invensys.

While Invensys top management would like to claim that they intend to retain some experienced developers to monitor and mentor the development in CTS, the fact is that the leftover development team in US is rapidly aging and new younger replacements are not coming in. Also, as the development team in US would be taking little part in development, and as they are being treated so poorly by their own management, it's hard to believe that Invensys will be able to retain technical expertise capable of monitoring and mentoring CTS development.

I can understand a retailer being a company of only managers. But trying the same in a technology company would be a disaster.

The team in India had not only the experience and expertise, but also the enthusiasm of youth and continuous inflow of new engineers to provide better products in the long-term future. Not owning that team is unwise and so is to think that Invensys top management, which has no idea about this field, will provide proper guidance to this technology company. Once the experienced development mangers and developers in US who have good knowledge about our products and their technology retire, Invensys is bound to decline.

Sunday, October 18, 2009 - Regarding what you'd get if you bought Wonderware:

The real Wonderware assets are the same ones from 10 years ago, which are a loyal customer base and a great distribution channel, riding on the strength of a great HMI that was built nearly 20 years ago. No one would buy it for any of the more recent developments or the people. One could make a good case that Wonderware has been in maintenance mode for years, and is ripe for outsourcing all maintenance and driving great margins with the existing products.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

In India, most of the Cognizant guys are creating environment outside like Cognizant acquired Invensys. They were mentioning this in interviews, while hiring the new people. New employees who are joining Cognizant and working for Invensys are in confusion after joining, and creating confusion in other people. Now, this has gone wild. Every corner of the Software industry, all other IT guys are asking us like "Is Invensys acquired by Cognizant?" Why? What happened to invensys? Are they not doing well etc... If at all they have to sell, why they have choosen Cognizant? This is really bad to hear. Invensys is a great company for ever in our hearts, even how many stupid people come and spoil its fame.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Yesterday, we were offsite far enough that we felt safe talking about work. We argued if they're trying to make Wonderware or IOM look good enough on paper to sell. We were almost convinced they're selling us when one of us said "What would you get if you buy Wonderware"?

If someone came in and wanted to buy us out, he'd get Wonderware, the buildings, a bunch of people who are probably not really happy but might stick around to see what happens. They would also get the source code and the right to build more. But they wouldn't be able to build new code. There are almost no developers or QA left in LF. And it would violate the contract with CTS to not use their services. So if someone buys Wonderware, they just get tired marketers and a lot of source code they can't maintain. To develop new stuff, they have to crawl to CTS and deal with a third party vendor.

We ordered more drinks. If someone wanted to buy Wonderware, they'd instead look at hiring away the dissatisfied senior people here who can make a company work. Offer them a 25% raise, stock options, fund the pension, and the possibility of salary increases bigger than 3% for the rank and file. Guarantee that Pankaj will never be welcome through the doors of the new company. Do the same thing for the IDC developers now at CTS you want to keep for their experience and you suddenly have a DIY Wonderware for a fraction of the cost. And you cripple Wonderware's ability to turn out more products at the same time so no competition for a long time.

This is scary and ugly. Our senior management has turned Wonderware from the industry leader into a company nobody in their right minds could want to buy.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Has anyone seen the Yokogawa blog page recently? Looks like these guys have woken up. It looks like the UK MD is doing what he did previously at Invensys: sell the buildings and land to balance the books and move everything closer to where he lives. De ja vu? Wonder if the they want to hire anymore of our failing execs?

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Sudipta Bhattacharya is now on Twitter, and he will be "tweeting" about work (we hope), opinions on travel, books, music and other interesting topics.

Twitter is a popular social networking site that allows users provide status updates in 140 characters or less with an answer to the question, "What are you doing?" Some of you may use Twitter, and for others this is new territory. To get started, you'll need a Twitter account. Then, use the "Find People" tab and search for "Sudipta Bhattacharya" and the link should appear to follow Sudipta. His username on the site is "sudi_bhat". If you don’t have a Twitter account, you will need to sign up for one before you can follow Sudipta. Go to Sudipta’s Space for a link to Twitter.com

Thursday, October 15, 2009

It is nice, in a strange way, to know that the management stupidity happening here in Lake Forest, CA. is also happening in the Rail Group in the UK.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - To the UK Rail blogger:

Project "Orange" is the amateur attempt of a very poor senior management team to restructure. Lead by an incompetent managing director the whole thing is backfiring with little or no business benefits. Meanwhile as new projects plunge in the UK rail business, the PPP project team have started a sweepstake on when the managing director will be fired. Cruel? Yes, but so are redundancies. Calling the project "Orange" at the same time as the company transfered to Orange mobile phones (managed by the IT function) meant that all details of redundancies, names, costs etc. were visible to the IT department. Stupidity doesn't even come close to this fiasco.

There are a couple of real directors at the top but in the last year we have lost the real thing to IRG leaving amateurs trying to lead a huge organisation, while the managing director is more interested in making self publicity videos!

Who knows what the future is. IS will certainly come back under central control. My view, and that of my close collegues, is that we need a "one" Invensys Rail culture and organisation and not the current Westinghouse Way. Manufacturing is already a separate organisation with an IRG feel and culture. Walk around it and see - it doesn't even look like Westinghouse. I get a similar feeing in R&D. It's just the usual idiots like the managing director and his mate that hold things back. Having said that, what is the "new markets" bit about? Total rubbish. Our business is about mass-transit and main-line. Another stupid organisation change a year ago.

So lets hope IRG get stuck in and reslove things before there is a collapse. The best people are looking to leave now.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Interesting news from JimPinto's eNews No. 273 - 12 October 2009

For sale:

• Rockwell - whether they like it or not.
• Invensys - whether they like it or not. Their pension planwas under funded, and was a poison-pill for potential buyers.
• Honeywell - the Process Systems Division is likely to be divested by a hungry-for-growth-and-glory CEO Dave Cote.

• ABB - Joe Hogan (ex-GE) would find GE's Automation businesstoo small. He is more likely to be focused on Rockwell. ABB has the cash, and Joe Hogan needs to make a move. A bigger ABB would create a global alternative to Siemens.
• Siemens, the largest industrial company, has never been ableto make a successful acquisition. They'll be in the bidding.
• Schneider - one of the winners during this decade. They couldwant GE's software business to add to Citect. They may also bein the market for DCS player. Invensys would be a good fit and make Schneider a world player in software and Process Control.

(Click)- GE will emerge as next big automation player

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

If Sudipta is allowed to execute on his vision of IOM, it can be a true success story. He needs to be given the resources and flexibility to do it, and he needs to be vigilant of those around him who may not be the right people to help him get there.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Here (in the UK) some local IT staff are being absorbed into Global Invensys, whilst others are made redundant. There is to be no specialised IT support. One size will have to fit all. I gather this approach will be applied to the rail group too [currently a money-making group].

Now we are being beaten, round the head, with "project Orange". What on earth is that all about? If it to affect us, then why cannot we be told what it is?

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Eurotherm in Leesburg, VA is so poorly managed, it is amazing they are still part of Invensys. The sales force continues to get screwed on commission with managments "fuzzy math". The Plastics BD Manager for NA is absolutley clueless on what is transpiring in the market. Poorly thought out marketing programs and continuous ill-fated planning will be the demize of this vertical as well. He is more concerned about his ego and covering up for his previous family-owned failures in the plastic sector. Additionally, the MACO product is so poorley designed and over-priced than any level headed engineer would even think of considering.

Friday, October 9, 2009

It looks like small systems will be again important for Invensys.

Eurotherm system 2550 series + Eycon, T940 etc. Will be transfer 100% to Foxboro. Now with a different plan for A2, they decided to invest lots of money on A2. It seems they are now going for the small projects (water, pharma etc.) All Eurotherm Leesburgh system structure will be now part of Foxboro, they will change the whole structure of A2, new developments are ready to go out, new service and support team, etc. They are even thinking on an A2 SIL 2 rated mainly to compete with GE MTL = EMERSON SAFETY SYSTEM. Mainly they will compete at a simnple SIL 2 market which has been growing a lot lately. It seems Eurotherm will continue being a small controller, recorder company dedicated mainly to plastic solutions. Just waiting to see what will be part of Foxboro and what will be sold out. Eurotherm has been wrongly managed; they lose their glass team - they invested a lot on it, and many people have left the company.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

How will Invensys deliver RBATCH-II on SOTM, when people from RBATCH-II team have left the company?

Thursday, October 8, 2009

The head of development at IOM is the primary source of many of our problems. He manages through fear, intimidation, and bends with the political winds. He lacks up-to-date market or technology skills, and it the bottleneck for progress. He is loving the Cognizant deal because it gives him someone else to blame when things are late, over budget, and buggy. He is running out of excuses. The time has come for him to move on, and I know there are a lot of us who would be excited about IOM again and work longer and harder for the company.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Does anyone think the new product delivery structure will actually deliver anything in any time frame !? By time it gets throught he contract layers, glaciers will have melted rather than moved!

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

If we lose our skilled developers and testers, Wonderware is going to have a hard time making promised schedules for new products. Our technology is complex. I didn't feel rock solid until after my 4th anniversary and it still was hard for me when I moved to a few different projects after that.

Does our contract with Cognizant say that they have to deliver no matter what? (Who does Wonderware contract administration. I don't know, but I would like to ask a few questions.)

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Invensys recently sold its Indian Development Centre (IDC) to Cognizant. As our associates in India are getting to know more about the new setup, it is getting clear that the partnership between Invensys and Cognizant may be heading for rough waters.

While the seating, office space, food and air quality in new Indian office are all known problems, recently it was communicated to them that the work hours are increased from 8 to 9 hours/day. Given these circumstances the team in India seems to have lost both faith and enthusiasm. Also our associates in India feel that the level of monitoring and restrictions indicate that Cognizant is a company that runs BPOs, and so core R&D is something that they are new to.

As the job scenario in India is good, if situation in Cognizant ODC is not changed soon, Invensys risks losing most of their India development team.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Can you define "many". As far as I know average ratio is of 3-4 developers for each Manager. Soon may be all the empty offices will be occupied by Cognizant employees.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

There are many developers and testers still at Wonderware, Lake Forest. Are they all becoming managers?

They must be trying to sell the company by cleaning the bottom line. Could any management be so stupid as to make all these decisions and think it was for the good of the company?

Sunday, October 4, 2009

I find it interesting that no one has commented on EDGE. Here a program has been rolled out where we are told flat out that no new development will be done by IOM. All IOM personnel will do is create statements of work (SOW) to be given to Cognizant. When the work is done IOM will compare it to the SOW. So IOM will no longer be needing any software engineers. When current projects are done they are gone. IOM will become a company of managers.

Friday, October 2, 2009

As someone who has posted a comment, complaining about the many dumb things that have been happening and are still happening, I want to say that Sudipta's recent offer of 1-1 meetings and posting his schedule is a really good thing. This is a step beyond saying that his door is always open. He's offering specific times when we can talk to him privately. I am choosing if I want to take advantage of his generous offer. My concern is not for me but for my manager, who is a great guy and I don't want to risk getting him in trouble for something that I might disagree with Sudipta about. Nevertheless, I want to give credit where due to a very good idea.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

After reading many of the statements on this blog, it is obvious that there are unhappy people; but in turn there are happy people. Yes we can all agree or disagree to where things are going, but let's face it - the competition is no better. We all talk to each other. I have had many different bosses since being here, but each comes with a learning experience. Let's stop complaining about the company and get back to the technical and good things we offer as a company. We have a lot of great talent in this organization that bring great value to our customers. We are here to help our customers better succeed. Let's get back to talking about our good not anymore about the way we feel about management. It is getting real old here and much more embarrassing!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I am pleased that you have enjoyed your career here, but this place really is falling to pieces and a lot of it is because there are people in too many places who are just plain no good at what they do. In a good company they might have been removed, but you can get away with almost anything here if you are likeable. There are development managers and product managers and website people who are all complete witless, but people like them so they stay here for decades making a mess of everything they do.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I have really enjoyed my 20 year stint with Invensys. A challenge from the start. All the naysayers of negitivity should get a life.

Managers come and go. The good ones that are not after the next rung stay and enjoy their management life, helping us that don't care to be managers. We all have to know our own limits. Step out of line and the man will take you away.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

What is it about HR advocacy for talent management? A non-performer can continue to stay in the company, while capable and competent people depart, as they want to do a good job for customer and the company, not for the selfish interests of few "Simply Antagonizing Players". The company is now disintegrating into "Internal Organization Malfunction". (read the Capital lettera). What is a job match and compatibility when a previous director of Strategic Sales Center take on a new role as Channel Sales leader? (It's like a private banker taking on the role of teller, trying to earn tiny commission by pushing insurance/unit trust sales). Is it that difficult to understand that you must have a good job fit to motivate performance?

Monday, September 21, 2009

Bullying and intimidation are key to the company culture. I still laugh whenever they talk about meritocracy and integrity. Merit comes from how well you can kiss up to your boss and your boss's boss and integrity is keeping your boss happy without causing something embarrassing they have to deny. I've known a couple of people who complained to the ethics hotline over the years and were told that they looked into the complaint and there wasn't anything to worry about. It wasn't worrying about this that was the problem. It was the unethical behavior that causes a stink.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Invensys' code of conduct condems bullying and intimidation; and yet to me, it appears that it's the company's culture. We're told that IOM is a new group, but it is actually the justification for reduced costs through zero pay rises, zero expenditure, whilst intimidating staff to resign. The staff reduction creates a short term gain that has the board's bonusses paid. However if not stopped, it will actually result in shareholder pain. It's time that the share holders and the managers of other people's retirment funds take a much closer look at this bubble, before it bursts.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Most of our "Process Know How" left the company quite a few years ago, and the effects are still being felt. IPS's "Process Know How" is being shown the door on a daily basis. Sadly, our boss in development is stuck in the 1990's and hasn't the foggiest idea about what the market needs today, nor how to run a modern development team. Sudipta and Rashesh - and some of us in development - have a bunch of good ideas that will never get a chance as long as Pankaj has effectively veto power. We need a new head of development soon so that we can save this company. Maybe Ulf will figure this out soon.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Wonderware's core competency is the combination of its "Technology, Process Knowhow" and "IT expertise". Such a player in the automation arena yet to be invented. Having handed over its IDC to an IT company, Invensys has also handed over its "Secrecy", which will ultimately cause it to lose to its core competency. It is almost equivalent to Technology Transfer. By this Ulf & Company have committed a sin to the shareholders and employees.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Ulf needs no pension, since he has such a massive number of shares and options of his own - and some of which he has sold. He can readily bank millions for himself, while the rest of us scrimp and save for college, retirement, and even survival. The latest change is the modern day version of 'let them eat cake'.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

I just got Ulf's message about killing off the pension program in the U.S. in order to remain competitive.

So few companies have a pension these days that it was the only reason I've remained with Invensys. I mean... no raises, mediocre benefits, having to pass 25 years to add to vacation. I can get that at any number of places.

I guess I'll hang in here long enough to early retire and start collecting another paycheck elsewhere. Experience just has no value these days.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Ulf just announced that Invensys is freezing the pension plan on 1 Nov 2009. He made money when he sold IDC, he saved money laying off people at Wonderware, and he makes $2B revenue from the IOM companies, but matching pension fund pmts is too much money. Thanks for making it crystal clear what the employees mean to you.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Are people on this weblog looking for new jobs? Or are they simply waiting to see what happens at Wonderware Lake Forest, CA. facility? I see small signs that support the idea of LF moving 90% of business to India. Do not know if this means more lay offs at LF or not.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Does anyone know what is behind the rapid rise in Ivensys shares over the last few days?

Thursday, September 3, 2009 - An interesting note from somebody at Cognizant working for Invensys ODC facility.

It is quite evident that Invensys ODC facility at DLF is purely made for improving the Cognizant margins with no consideration for employees’ (working level) health. Do not be surprised when after few weeks, most of the IOM ODC employees visit doctors for knee, back, etc related complaints. Almost every one felt that the first two days were miserable, not seen in their professional career so far.

As is always the case, the managers had taken care their needs and requirements very well with very little consideration for their associates. Managers greediness: there is no match for it.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - Re: the first entry on September 1, 2009:

For you as an Invensys employee who just wants to do his work, you may be right: Shut up, get your paycheck and thank God for "still" having a job.

I can understand and confirm concerns of all the other people who do not dare to open their mouth, because I personally had to experience the consequences. I had been working for Wonderware for almost 12 years, I always had open discussions with my bosses, and this had been no problem until approx. 3 or 4 years ago. The new regime was put in place and the $$-driven managers did not want people with ideas and opinions other than their own. Their charter was to take care of profit and quarterly results, not about markets and customers, who finally pay their bonusses, and not about employees, who finally make it possible.

My career in Wonderware ended after I had an open word with Sudipta and other LF based VPs. It was not them, who gave me the kick, but my new boss who was obviously taken to task by Sudipta.

So you only can be brave in this company, if your wife has a good job and the house is fully paid.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The restructuring of IOM is a mystery which gets murkier with every new announcement. Lack of clarity of roles pervades all over and the whole APAC/ME IOM organization looks like someone is monkeying around with no long term vision. Its unfortunate for Invensys that every new change at top in IPS in past 2-3 years has brought massive organisational changes which have costed millions without any tangible benefit and sincere employees are getting the brunt. Please stop experimentation, else this once great company will sink.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

I'd suggest avoiding the personal attacks and name calling here, as it borders on very fragile legal ground and adds no value to the discussion. There's no need for that in this forum, as the same points can be made with out it. If you think you are anonymous, think again!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

It sounds like the old Indian proverb is being followed at Invensys: "The nail that has it's head sticking up will get nailed!"

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - To the person who said that opinions should be taken to management:

Management at WW doesn't want opinions - they want workers to simply put their heads down and do what they are told. As a former manager at WW, I told management above me many times what the issues were. I was told that I had a bad attitude. That my goal was to get people to "like" me and to "trust" me. I thought my goals should be to do good work that supported the customers and impacted the bottom line, delivered on time and in budget. I was told that was the wrong attitude.

I left because it's not possible to try to improve the products or the company. Management doesn't want that. They actively target people who make suggestions about how to improve products or processes. These are people who are not "liked" or "trusted". It's 7th grade all over. And who doesn't want to be 13 years old again?

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

It is true that invensys managers should relook at their strategies, if any, and give due respect to the working level organization, which is almost missing. A healthy organization in place will help, for sure, to take up the business challenges rather in-house issues.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Yes, many of my peers are enjoying the paychecks and the coffee and hiding in the grass while doing their jobs as well as can be. Speaking up is a bad idea here and it is far worse than I have ever seen it in all my years here too. This may be because the people in charge know they don't know what is going on and so they fear that any criticism may expose them as incompetent so they squish anyone who criticizes and then preen themselves publicly and a little nervously. We all see what's happening, but most of us don't think its worth bringing up.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The underlying problem that will lead to Invensys's demise is that the powers that be do not know how to assess talent. They value loyalty - or more correctly, fealty - over ability. Sudipta's band of merry men he has recently appointed are hopelessly underskilled and unqualified for the roles they have been given, but they are loyal lapdogs and in many cases fellow countrymen. Sudipta's bosses and the board are so horribly out of touch with the market and the business that they simply nod like bobblehead dolls when the anointed one makes a proclamation. It really is a living comedy show, but a tragic comedy. There are very few exceptions to the general lack of qualifications of most of Sudipta's recent appointees. As long as the paycheck keeps coming, I'm in no great rush to leave but have learned to keep my head down. I only wish somehow, someway, the board could see what utterly incompetent and unqualified people are in key roles within IOM now.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I agree strongly. I tried to talk about this to my manager and didn't care and then to his manager, who was actively hostile to the idea that anything was wrong other than my attitude for thinking something was wrong. I'm still recovering from that myself, but the message was received: keep quiet and do my job or leave.

Can I do a better job than these people? Yes. I know it because I know better than to insult my team and sabotage their efforts. My people have always turned in great performances because I support them. So with respect to the person who suggested we put up or shut up, many of us have tried to alert our managers to problems and have been hurt badly for it.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I also was one took that chance. I spoke to my manager about what I and many others saw as potentially better solutions, and offered suggestions on how to acheive more active participation. I have many years of sucessful sales and management experience. I was told quite bluntly "They (upper management) don't want to hear it. Period. We suggest you stop now." So I stopped before the axe hit. It was very close though. I was demoted and removed from my career path. For now, I will just hold on, keep taking a paycheck home, and keep looking for other employment. It is better to be employed at a lousy company that doesn't care than be at home unemployed. This recession will end and then a lot of good people will be leaving "Brokesys".

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I was one of those brave souls who did make suggestions to management on how things could be done better. What did I get for my initiative? I was shown the door and told to turn in all my company property.

The senior managers at Invensys don't want to hear any differing opinions. They want the mindless drones to do what they say so that they can take as much money from the company as they can before they leave.

Itoo would love to see Invensys succeed. I think they have some great products and services. If senior management can only get out of the way, they could be very successful.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

To all the folks at Invensys or non-Invensys. Do you really have nothing better to do then to talk garbage about the company? Step up to the plate if you can do a better job. If you are one that has not taken the time to discuss your ideas or thoughts with senior managers, then do not complain. Keep getting your paycheck and thank God you have a job.

If you think you have the answers and can turn things around better, then contact your Regional President, Sudipta or Ulf. Trust me folks, this is the worst economic crisis in history. Nobody has the correct answers. We all just need to work together. We can not all agree on everthing that is happening at Invensys; but if you at least discuss your thoughts/ideas with decision makers at Invensys, you at least can say I told them so.

So I challenge everyone who has negative comments who work at Invensys on this blog, send your issues and solution to the issue to your top managers. You have nothing to lose! If you are one that is no longer at Invensys, I wish you well. There is a reason for everything in life.

As a side note, I am not a manager in this company. I am a employee not new to the company who actually wants this to work!

Friday, August 28, 2009

The only reasons for an active rumor mill in a company are when the management has lost credibility and is not telling people what's happening. At WW, the person who did the last company presentation has had no credibility for years. We listen carefully to what he says and doesn't say and then use it as the roadmap to the real situation. It works; but it would be nice to have someone we believed when he says the sun is up and didn't want or need to then go check for ourselves.

If management cares about the people and the company, they should start actively responding to the rumors and concerns they see here. Something with the class of Rick Bullotta's recent post would go along way to calming fears. I'm sure they want all this noise to go away, but it won't happen. It's too late to tell us all to trust the vision for the company and make our deadlines, because it's us doing the work; and us that got passed over for raises and us that are losing most of the week off at the end of the year; and us that Ulf said he is going to reduce the benefits on while they brag about how the IOM companies make $2B a year in revenues. I don't think anyone minds make executives rich, but being kicked in the teeth while hearing that we should work harder to make the same people richer was stupid and self-centered.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

I strongly agree that Rick Bullotta is a class act. My hat's off to him for letting us know more about his departure and what he's up to now.

Morale here at WW-LF continues to deteriorate. It's just a little every day, but it's something we all can notice. You can feel the difference from week to week as you walk the halls. Almost everyone is wondering what's going to happen to their job, their groups, even their function - as Cognizant comes on board. As a result, too many good people are out shopping for jobs. I'm pleased to say that I've been talking to people and am in the process of leaving for far greener (in all ways) pastures. I'm very thankful to the company for the many years I've had here, but I am now thinking daily of the great relief of not working here any more. My only regret is that Wonderware's management can't see or doesn't care that they're doing this to a formerly good company.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Is anyone going to attend the "IPS NA Client Conference" in Houston this September? Why would one attend this when Emerson Exchange is the following week in Orlando? I have attended Wonderworld and other Invensys events as well as Emerson's and there is NO DOUBT - Emerson Exchange is hand's down way better.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Rick Bullotta remains one of the true gentlemen of the industry and a class act. Others could and should learn from and follow his example.

Signed: A former Wonderware employee who knows the Invensys cast of characters well.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - eLetter received from Rick Bullotta:

Hi, Jim.

I wanted to clear a few things up since there seems to be some misinformation being posted on your discussion forum.

First of all, my name has two "L's" and two "T's". ;-)
Next, my departure from Invensys/Wonderware was not all that sudden, nor was it the result of some nefarious plot. In early 2008, there were a series of organizational changes made that shifted my original CTO role into something that was not really a fit with where I wanted to go from a career perspective, and to be most effective the new role would probably have best been based in California.

Additionally, I've become hooked on the enterpreneurial/startup life, and it made it very difficult to return to the more traditional corporate world. It soon became clear that it was best to part as friends rather than continuing on in a role that was neither beneficial to Wonderware or to me. While I did not always agree with the strategic directions we were taking, I have nothing but admiration for the Wonderware and IOM team. They have people, brands, products and a market position that remain the envy of the industry. I wish them nothing but the best wherever the future may take them amidst a sea of constant change. That's just life in this day and age.

As for me, I'm busy in a new startup, Burning Sky Software, which I co-founded with my business partner from Lighthammer and with the former CEO of Cimnet. We're currently in "stealth mode", but are busy working on products, positioning, and staffing up our team. We're excited about creating a new segment of the industrial software market, similar to when we helped pioneer the EMI market nearly a decade ago. It's time for some excitement in this industry, beyond mergers and acquisitions and political intrigue. ;-)

Feel free to post this message in its entirety.

Kindest regards,
Rick Bullotta
CTO/Co-Founder
Burning Sky Software

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Ulf loves his boondoggles. Nice resorts around the world, trips to the pyramids, south beach, golf courses. Must be nice to not care about how people perceive you.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Very Interesting! While everything at Invensys is in total disarray, people are getting laid off and others are waiting for the axe to fall, management is partying. I mean meeting in Aruba. Sounds like they took a page out of the AIG management handbook.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

To borrow from Wonderware's very early advertising campaign: This is NOT Wonderware.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

So, they renamed WonderWorld to OpsManage; here's the tagline for the event: "The One Multi-Discipline Event Where You Can Learn How to Empower Your Sustainable Success".

Wow! So many words to say so little. I'm guessing the original Wonderware marketeers didn't make the IOM cut...

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

ABB in talks with Invensys? Keep an eye out for familiar Invensys faces in the Zurich airport.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Rick Bulotta gave a great talk at our sales conference last year, with some good ideas on things we needed to do to shore up our products and get into some new areas. Seemed like everything was rosy back then. Never heard why his sudden departure. Caught a lot of us off guard, especially because we were pretty psyched up by what we saw at the S&M conference.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

In the Provience of Massachusetts, in the tiny hamlet of Foxboro, was Camelot. Camelot was a place of hard work that was well rewarded. Then came the Black Knight that supressed the Good King Ben and his brother Rex, and clouds covered the land. A curse was apon the land, a plague began taking its toll and the population dwindled. To save themselves they left Camelot. Stay and you will be rewarded with pieces of silver (the king takes his share first) and what was left was copper pennies.

After many years the story is still the same. More serfs ben taken by the plague, crops are failing still, the Royal Vault is almost empty. Yet the King & his Court sailed to a far away place called ARUBA to hold Court.

Many time we hear the Town Crier call out, "Hear ye! Hear ye! More work for the serfs! The King will pay many pieces of silver for services." Yet we do not see pieces of silver. What we see is people of foreign lands coming to our village, and they speak in words we cannot understand. They are taking the pieces of silver.

After the new crops were planted in the spring of the year, the Lord of Camelot said, "The King will give you 3 days of rest from your labors. I know you will keep up with the work, but remember that you will only recieve 4 days wages." Yet the Lords & Ladies and Knights were provided with all the fresh meat & vegetables that could eat.

A proclammation was posted in the town square:

All Lords, Ladies, Knights and Serfs of Camelot:

Make yourself ready for the arrival of our good King Sudipta, on the days hence forth 24th August to 28th August, in the year of our Lord AD 1509.

Come one, come all, and enjoy the pagentry. (No weapons allowed during the celebration).

Monday, August 24, 2009

More distressing is the lack of board oversight or intervention with this latest travesty. Clearly the board must be complicit in a plan to systematically neuter Invensys as is being executed of late. Barring pure insanity or mental illness, the only other possibility is a specific intent to pretty up the income statement to fetch a better price from an acquirer. Any intelligent buyer should be able to see through this charade!

Monday, August 24, 2009 - Re: Invensys IOM is pretty much handing over its crown jewels to Cognizant:

No one is stupid. If the deal is so bad for Invensys, why did they do it? Did anyone question that it is possible someone in Invensys made a sweet deal? A few years ago, a lot of perople made good money this way.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Read the latest Jim Pinto commentary in JimPinto.com eNews, 25 August 2009. Here are extracts:

The news was brewing on the JimPinto.com Invensys weblogs for months before it finally happened. In mid-July they finally made the announcement - Invensys had "entered a strategic relationship with Cognizant..."

Astute commentator Andrew Bond suggests in his "Automation Insider" that this looks as if Invensys IOM is pretty much handing over its crown jewels to Cognizant: all of the development for the former Foxboro, Triconex, SimSci-Esscor, Avantis, InFusion, Eurotherm and Wonderware. Wow!

Back home at Wonderware in California, the source of the Invensys crown-jewels, exits are taking place at an alarming rate. Sudipta remains mum.

After all this idiocy comes the latest laugh. They have renamed the long established and highly successful "WonderWorld" events for this year as "OpsManage09". One can only guess how the WonderWare sales channel will greet this gross lack of common sense.

Is Ulf immune to all this noise? Or, is he just pretending to be asleep? As he was when Paulett Eberhart was creating havoc with Foxboro? The Invensys weblogs reported that he had sold off some of his stock, and that the Cognizant deal was done simply to clean up the balance-sheet prior to the sale of the company.

(Click) Invensys - Outsourcing the Crown Jewels

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Is the president of Asia who is leaving, the one they just appointed? Or is this old news? I agree that Invensys is in disarray, and will continue to be until they put the right people in place globally. That probably means, bye bye Ulf...

Sunday, August 23, 2009

It's clear the Wonderware organisation is now in total disarray. Two years of leadership by someone who has absolutely no understanding of, or passion for, the Automation Software market, is clearly beginning to show. Will there be a Phoenix?

Saturday, August 22, 2009

It seemed like one of the turning points was when Rick Bulota was forced out last year. I felt like it things started turning bad right about then. We never really heard why it all happened anyway. I always thought he and Sudipta were friends. It just felt like more than a coincidence that we started feeling changes here in Lake Forest about the same time.

Friday, August 21, 2009

I keep thinking that there's too much about to happen. Resumes are being written, projects are starting to slip, critical people are being shafted, and there's an air of uncertainty going on. In 10 days, the final employment numbers from the IDC/CTS changeover will be in place and we'll know how much knowledge has been lost by the sale - though I'm not expecting to hear this from management any time soon. But the numbers will get out, I'm sure.

You know, a year ago, Wonderware had morale. Even if idiot-managers were still being aloud to run wild, employees believed in the products, in the overall goals, and the future. We wanted to try and make WW a billion dollar company. Now, everyone is just trying not to get yelled at by some jerk above them, and put in their time until the economy picks up and its safe to move to another company. The only logical conclusion is that IOM or even Invensys is being prettied up to be sold, because the management is doing everything it can, short of actual public beatings, to discourage people from staying here. Whoever buys this will be buying a corpse because all the good people are leaving.

Friday, August 21, 2009

Nabil Kassem, President Asia Pacific & Middle East at Invensys Process Systems will be leaving Invensys. What is next?

Friday, August 21, 2009

Regarding not making long term plans at IOM - that is because the head of IOM and his reports are completely incapable of doing so. Good business people plan on both horizons, unless there is a predetermined plan to sell the company within that period. Three years is an eternity in IOM's core businesses. Most of the major new product initiatives will span 2 to 3 times that period, and the lifecycle of those products will be 3 to 4 times that period. I am very, very concerned that we have people in place at the top now that know effectively NOTHING about our business. Time to polish up the resume and get out of here when the opportunity presents itself.

Thursday, August 20, 2009 - re: long term plans:

Seems to me I heard the same thing almost twenty years ago at Foxboro from someone high up in management: "Don't make any long term plans based on your continuing employment at Foxboro". So what is new?

Thursday, August 20, 2009

If OSP can gain that type of knowledge on Invensys products and command it, why do not we all join the OSP then? It was made clear by IOM head that making long term plans (>=3 years) in this fast changing game plans is of no use. So, be prepared to be part of the OSP.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

The old time Foxboro fellows will remember a similar situation. In the early 70´s Foxboro transferred technology to a small Japanese company based in Yokohama. A few years later this small company became on of the most tough Foxboro competitors.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Regarding the OSP model, let me paint a picture of the future for you. Fast forward a couple of years, and a current Invensys executive is now CEO of one of the major outsourcing partners. This OSP now has accumulated a wealth of intellectual property knowledge as well as the effective ability to hold its partners hostage to whatever commercial structure they see fit, as the cost and impact of changing would be impractical. The OSP now also offers its services to many of Invensys' competitors, and begins to develop products of its own. This future scenario is not far fetched!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

One need only look at the problems Boeing has faced and is facing with the 787 Dreamliner to know that the OSP model on complex products cannot be as effective as in-house. Our customers could likely see a stream of quality issues, late deliveries, products that do not align with market needs, and poor support responsiveness as a result of the disintermediated value chain that Henrikson and Bhattacharya are embarking upon. The only possible explanation is a desire to improve the financial statements in the short term to facilitate a higher price in the liquidation or sale of the company.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Having worked for ICE for several years, I am dismayed that Ulf has been gullible enough to beleive in these 'Harebrained' out-sourcing initiatives. It is evident that our OSP's are transactional, unfortunately, AP & AR, particularly in Europe are more about building relationships with suppliers and customers and are less transactional than Ulf obviously believes, but hey get a good salesman and he can talk the customer in to believing anything. Invensys may be cash rich, but what happens when suppliers hold supplies, halting production, because invoices have not been posted on to the ledgers? What happens when our customers feel that Honeywell or Siemans understand their issues and can resolve them and understand them, when Invensys can't? What happens when past dues on AR increase to in excess of 15% from less than 5%, result will be a lack of confidence in the company, both from Suppliers and Customers? Is this how we build relationships with our partners?

Our OSP's are transactional, therefore if the work being passed over is not particularly transactional, what do they do - put in another process which is transactional, totally irrelevant and increasing the time for processing of invoices - good move? Surely, the time must come when Senior Management realise that out-sourcing or co-sourcing (which sounds much cosier)does not work. It was not intended as a cost saving device but to improve efficiency. How is this being measured and do we really know the costs? But in any case if it doesn't work, what do we do - we move it to another country, the way it is going Invensys will soon have world dominance in failed outsourcing.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

There are a number of people currently keeping there heads down and lips buttoned up at WW. They are getting work done as best they can and working business networks and waiting for the economy to improve a little. Expect the turnover rate to hit 30% in 2010. That assumes that WW will even remain where it is and not get split between TX and India as some on this list have suggested.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Well, darn - it's a suspenseful time for Jim Pinto to be on vacation! :) There is a cheap, petty, sensation-seeking crowd out here (like me) which wants to be able to find out what's happening at WW-LF. I do have some news, which I'll contribute in a separate note.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Does anyone knows what is main reason for winding up the Invensys development from India, and who are main catalysts and benifeciareis for this operation