Very interesting. I think the best post so far is the blof og Tuesday 19th January, 2010, that lists the items being exposed on this blog, which does not apply to any of the competitors.

If this is true, when Washington has finished flogging Toyota, it may be Yokogawa’s turn. This may explain why the "leader" has surrounded him self with so many to blame.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

As a former employee of Yokogawa, I was told this blog might be some interesting reading. Obviously, it's reading about people who need a place to release some stress anonymously because their stress may not be caused from their workplace.

In reference to the comments about the definitions of the HR and IT department – did an HR professional or IT professional write this or is it written by someone who also believes that management spends all their time getting people to brown nose? Has this person ever been in management? Probably not.

Why should you worry about pay, annual reviews, surfing the web, texting on your cell phone or making personal phone calls on the company phone – you are a professional, right? Anything you do on “company time” (that is the time you are getting paid to do your job) is not anything you need to hide, right?

If someone else is abusing their job it’s not your problem. And when they no longer have a job you will know why just like the people in HR and IT will know. In every successful company, eventually people who are just taking up space are weeded out.

Talk about generalizations - it is also amazing that people who are posting on this blog don’t even have their facts straight. It is obvious they are just repeating what other people “think” is true. Maybe these people have such a lack of self confidence they have to attack the leaders and departments of the company to make themselves feel better.

So, your skills and your job doesn’t grow on trees and uprooting your family is not an option – an option you don’t want to choose – so, maybe you should realize where your financial provision is coming from and start trying to make your environment a better place instead of feeding the negativity. We all have options.

Unions – you are not always protected, if you don’t do your job you will still go and you should.

And like the person posted before me – not all of us are forced to leave Yokogawa, some of us choose to move on to other opportunities and take good memories with us.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

I am a current employee of Yokogawa.
I am an ex-employee of Yokogawa.
I am a customer of Yokogawa.
I am an employee of a competitor.

My point? Believe maybe 15% of what is written here. Good luck trying to figure out which 15% to believe...

Sunday, March 7, 2010 - To the 2/27/2010 blogger:

We didn't say anything about beauty and brains. No need to worry about your future, you have them right where you want them. You are notorious about hiring the wrong people. Don't give us the crap about "they interview well but don't perfom." I have to say that I've personally seen some good talent in HR. It has been few and far between but we have see a couple. However, we run them off just as soon as we get them. As for the comment about the 1-800 number, looks like we kicked that person that was saying that to the curb. Gosh, why did it take so long for you to see that she wasn't a people person nor did she have any computer skills? I think when our HR team is threatened by talent, so they get rid of them. We had someone that stood up for the employees at YCA, they did a great job telling us about our benefits and helped people that had no clue what they were reading. We kicked her to the curb.

So when you are sitting in your bed at night reading these blogs and trying to find a "come back" look at yourself. How can you make our company great again? Some of us like working at YCA, we want to continue but we have a hard time not taking advantage of the openings at other companies when we can't see out future here. It is troubling to hear that we have employees that have been out sick or giving birth and we torment them while they are out and usually fire them when they return. Can't someone have a personal issue without this find of consequence? I look around and see what we let go and what was kept.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - Regarding the ongoing commentary on HR, a few posts back:

I think a few of you, both employees, and HR professionals, really don’t understand the role of HR at any corporation. HR departments do not exist for the benefit of the employees. HR exists for the sole purpose of protecting the employer from employee. The following is a list of some of the functions HR departments provide:

1. Maintain the lowest standard of pay, and benefits for any given position
2. Work closely with the legal department to ensure all agreements are in the corporations favor
3. Maintain an annual employee review process, to establish justification for corporate action
4. Provide a professional development program to create evidence of employee support

1. Track the cyber activity, the web sites you explore, the Emails you send
2. Track your phone activities (desk and cell) of all employees looking for rogue behavior

Things can go wrong when the leader of the company uses HR, IT, and the Legal department for his own purposes rather then for the benefit of the company. This happens in Companies as well as in Governments. All anyone has to do, is research a few dictatorships to see how the human animal behaves. If you are interested, Google Stalin. Stalin was so threatened by his generals, eventually he imprisoned and killed many of his military leaders. The bottom line was: he was afraid of losing his job to better qualified people. This is why in democratic countries, the number of terms that a leader can serve is limited. The leader knows that his job is temporary, and will not feel threatened since the end of the job is inevitable.

Is it possible that Yokogawa has turned into a dictatorship? Is the leader a dictator that surrounds himself with weak non-threatening people that don’t question him? Does he eliminate strong and qualified people that could do a better job then he does? How many years has he been working at the same company?

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

It is a sorry, sorry time to see Yokogawa where it is today. Many talented workers are gone. Many talented workers are still there (even in management) The current VP's and managers should look around them and see how they can help stop the biggest problem with Yokogawa (and that is the current CEO). He has one goal and one goal only and that is to make everyone do what he wants and not what is good for the company. He was probably the wrong choice from the beginning but, he knew how to impress the Japan office. I'm sure if enough people email contacts in Japan with concerns and facts that everything will not fall on deaf ears. (Or at least I would hope not). Next time Mr. Johnson walks by just look at his face and you will see that it is not a face of a leader, and you will see some fear and at lot of anger in his eyes.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Reading these sure makes one insecure about their future at YCA! Maybe its time to start circulating the resume... I can say that YCA gave me a lot of room for growth, which I have appreciated and have returned the favor with 110% of effort and dedication. YCA certainly seems to be losing a lot of good worker bee's - management seems to not appreciate the Indians - thank goodness we have so many chiefs.

Monday, March 1, 2010

This is very entertaining; some one should make a movie about this company. It would be like the documentary on Enron with more sex.

Monday, March 1, 2010 - YCA Houston we have a problem.

March 2010 is the last month of the 09 fiscal year or, for many, the last stop on the employment highway at YCA. YCA’s current downward spiral will increase as this month’s close of business brings losses to an all time high. Loss leaders include Engineering and Service with disappointing projects and high head counts. Manipulation of the figures deep within the departments is no secret and is reminiscent of the saying, "robbing Peter to pay Paul".

A few years ago YCA paid a large sum to purchase the largest and most profitable sales-rep organization in the YCA region, Dixon, and turned it into Yokogawa Southwest (YSW). The management did a good job of running the YSW division into the ground. This part of the company was recently closed. Over 20 more people lost jobs a few weeks ago and the remainder of the business was turned over to a new outside-rep organization.

Part of the YCA rep organization was put on 30-days notice to terminate; due to performance issues. Although the instrument groups claim they are not contributors to the losses, this can be disputed by a number of factors. YCA has lost customer confidence in delivery with long lead times. YCA is also being excluded from opportunities that they were previously included on at major companies. This year Japan stopped all prepaid warranty money; this money for many years was paid to YCA in large installments at the beginning of each fiscal year. Any funds not consumed during the fiscal year were then added to the individual departments’ profitability at year end. After many years of this misuse of funds, Japan finally figured it out and decided to pay for warranty on a case by case basis. This, along with the economic downturn, constricted cash flow further.

YCA is facing more hard times as the growing loss of qualified personnel exit the company. Sporadic layoffs over January and February were kept low key, on top of early retirements and resignations. This has affected many projects including top customers like Shell and Chevron and caused a strained relationship to become agitated with YCA’s help.

More employees are set to leave the company in March, some with advance notification others will have the YCA surprise package at the end of the month. Maybe you remember the words of the CEO when he said “we have had no layoffs”, and his comments after the first layoff “we will have no further layoffs”. It may have been more appropriate to say “fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride” or “you can’t handle the truth”.

It appears that, in order to save face, Japan will keep the current management and let them run this ship right into an iceberg. For those of you who have left already, consider the severance packages and additional perks as your life boat. Those that are still aboard should be looking for anything that can keep them afloat.

Monday, March 1, 2010

I cannot comprehend why employees that know that the company they work for is horrible, continue to stay and complain how bad it is.

This is not 1942 Germany. You are free to make a choice. Although many of you say Hitler is in charge, and the SS is everywhere, you will not be shot for deserting if you quit and join a better company.

My advice: Stop complaining and get the hell out while you can. If you are valuable, another other company will see this and pick you up immediately.

Sunday, February 28, 2010 - To the Saturday, February 27th blogger on HR:

I know of more than one person over many years that YCA HR did not help, and in more than one instance hurt by helping implement management’s wishes. This can be confirmed by many people within YCA, or by others that have left. Assuming you are part of HR by the comments you have made, I am not surprised as your department hires your own.

HR at YCA is ultimately managed by the CEO and his cronies, and does not fight for any employee outside the power elite friendship base. The puppets within HR are under the control of management and their jobs are manipulated by the puppet masters/management pulling their strings.

Don’t concern yourself with complaints about HR; you should have enough to do with the pending year end layoffs. Soon you may get the chance to lay yourself off, or layoff others within your own department. Everyone I know within YCA has said that the last place you want to go and discuss any type issues is HR, with the exception of your benefits and pay, but if you get help, get it in writing and have it signed.

My suggestion, to any fellow YCA employee that has any issues, is to get a lawyer and see if you have a case first, then have your lawyer do the talking with YCA. Make sure everything is documented, with a copy sent to YCA, your lawyers’ office, a relative, the local newspaper and keep a copy in a safety deposit box. If you can’t afford to get a lawyer call your local bar association and they can usually help.

Your comments “it is more likely they are just unhappy with their life and they would complain no matter where they were, instead of taking charge of their life” shows the quality of person we continue to hire. Generalizations about people who have issues coming from anyone concerned about YCA HR or employees, I think you may have been right about “Everyone likes to think they are a "people person", but they are not. You appear not to be one.

Did you know that in Yokogawa Japan they have unions? Did you know that most Japanese management frown upon unions or the talk of unions in YCA? Why, when they have them for Japanese employees? The only way to make a change at YCA or Yokogawa globally is to unite as employees and form a union to make sure we have a voice. This way we don’t need to worry about HR helping us; we will have a union that will take care of the people with seniority and experience.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

My comments are to the employees who continually bash HR - if you have an issue and need assistance you should not accept the response: "just call this number"... HR is a department established to take care of employees. It seems to me that the people who continuously complain either don't really have a problem, or they don't need HR for assistance.

As far as who is experienced in HR. Do your homework. HR is more than just smiling and answering the phone - most people think they can work in HR but they don't have a clue. Why do you think HR keeps having turnover - sometimes people interview great, but can't (don't) perform after being hired. Everyone likes to think they are a "people person", but they are not. And you should know, if you are the one who keeps complaining about your paycheck not being correct. If you really want to find out who you have in HR - call them. They are there to help you. Just because the company is having layoffs and some employees are unhappy in their job doesn't mean the people in HR are not qualified. It probably really isn't their job at Yokogawa the complainer is complaining about - it is more likely they are just unhappy with their life and they would complain no matter where they were, instead of taking charge of their life.

Also, contrary to popular belief - there is not one woman in HR who has ever had any type of relationship with management other than professional. Again, do your homework - don't assume (in HR) because a woman has looks, she must not have brains, or she wouldn't be in her position.

Start focusing on doing the best job and being the best employee you can be. You are getting paid by the company to enhance the company, not to do a half job and see how much trash you can talk over lunch. Like the others before me... just my 2 cents.

Monday, February 22, 2010 - To the person who commented on 16 Feb, "one person that (sic) continues to write all the negative comments":

how can you possibly read what has been posted here and think that. If it's not clear by now that its a pervasive mood by the workers in the trenches, and that these are comments left by numerous contributors, then you need to go back and look at the different writing styles and descriptions of the situations and problems. Not only are there many different contributors, its obvious that there's multi national input from both sides of the pond (although none seems to be from our Asian colleagues......?).

Also, just a point of clarification. A former HR manager is returning, but she was there maybe 5 or 6 years ago, I'm not sure exactly. The reason I make that seemingly minor distinction is that we did have another manager approximately 10 years ago who WAS a disaster. She came out of the Corporate Communications department and had no heart, people skills or aptitude for the job.

The manager from 5 - 6 years ago came out of the Accounting group, and while she may have not had an HR background, she had managerial experience and good people skills. Unfortunately, she was also in over her head.

Again, please do not mistake the preceding for any type of support or defense of the current management, I'm just trying to keep it honest.

What does surprise me are the repeated "If you don't like it leave." comments. Folks, we're instrument people, recorder people or systems people and the like. We don't grow on trees and neither do our jobs. For many of us, changing jobs means a major relocation. If you have a working spouse and kids entrenched in schools, churches and sports, uprooting them is simply not an option.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The one person that continues to write all the negative comments about Yokogawa seems to be quite content on continuing to work at this awful place. If it was that bad, it seems they would leave. The job market is tough; but if the job is that bad you can always find a job somewhere else (or maybe this is the only job this person can find that will have them). I am sure some of the information that is being printed is true, but I am sure that half of it is NOT! You are a bitter little person that needs to move on.

I am a former employee of Yokogawa, and not everyone that leaves is fired.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

To see this manufacturer get discraced, as they currently are today, is quite a shame. Here we are again making major territory changes just to save a CEO's poistion. Since my time with Yokogawa, I have seen this inner operational restructure happen several times usually about every two or three years. The problem doesnt lie within the Rep-network, or the previously direct outside-sales, but realistically lie upstream in the very top level management. As many of you read this post, who are still employeed within our faboulous Houston location, are aware of the current pay increase to our Tier 1 board immediately after the headquater sales change this week. I just can't seem to understand why the Ninja hasnt fallen on his sword yet.

Friday, February 12, 2010

I just found out from a Manager earlier this week that an old HR person is returning. She sucked 10-years ago; why would they want her back again? Oh wait I forgot... friends of the new HR Manager (soon to be VP of HR) as I was told. What do you think?

Friday, February 12, 2010

I did read over most of the blogs and do agree with all these issues, but I think we need to be more mad at the fat-cats up top getting fatter. Most of us are every day people, trying to survive. We just want to come to work, do a great job and be paid a reasonable amount of money. I did have a hard time reading some of the stuff. I had no idea that some of the people that we have in HR are so ruthless and got their jobs from knowing someone. I believe that we are letting good people go, and that is a shame. Most of these people will find something else. But why should we promote like crazy and then have layoffs and then turn around and give money back to our employees? Don't get me wrong, I do love the fact that some of my money was returned; but I would have much rather have seen this money be kept and keep some of the good people we let go.

With that said, I do worry about the direction of our HR Team. We don't have a true leader. Just a bunch of women brown nosing to see who can climb the ladder the fastest. Come on, fearless leaders, stop looking at the high heels and whats under the chin and look what's above the shoulders. We have new/old HR people coming back. Did they do a good job when they were here before? Or are you just trying to proove a point with the person that hired and fired them many years ago?

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 - Re the blog from Sunday Feb 7th

No surprise really my esteemed colleague, is it not the natural reaction of a salesman to find fault with everything apart from their own performance? Earlier blogs spell out exactly why projects struggle to deliver on time and to cost; you can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear!

I (and most) agree though about your comments about the ‘Teflon coated’ interim? Manager. After 5 years, what exactly has he contributed? He started life here as a strategy implementer because our wonderful management team were too busy to develop the business. His first assignment was helping (controlling/directing) our old service manager develop low cost servicing which resulted in buying 2 vans, 3 extra service engineers and no additional work, just adding to overhead. He also moved the responsibility for commissioning projects to service which accounts for their rapid increase in sales and prevented the projects group increasing our margins on a project i.e. robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I remember being told that he was turned down for a job at SCE and after the service manager left, he was in charge? Temporarily (the service manager told quite a few people before he left that Mr Teflon and the DD was the reason he moved on due to his manipulative, bullying, interfering mismanagement). His next project was to set up an installation service for projects, high risk and never tried before, resulting in probably the biggest loss on a project in the UK. He then took over projects where he couldn’t lose in that he was only trying to minimise the losses, if it improved he took the glory, if it failed it was a bridge too far.

Anybody noticed a pattern here? The DD always manages to keep him occupied, pay him twice as much as the senior managers but keeps the failing managers on in a reduced role with their old salary/perks. Both Mr Teflon and the DD used to work at Invensys so it looks like another case of jobs for the boys.

Perhaps when the Amersfoort ‘thought police’ review this blog they should start asking questions and Japan should investigate why they are reducing costs everywhere but allow this to happen. It appears that a lack of engineering management experience doesn’t stop you getting paid over the odds and bleeding the place dry for years, all you need to be is a buddy of the DD.

Monday, February 8, 2010 - Blog response to Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - Re: Yokogawa Business Ethics:

Ex colleagues have pointed me to this blog and from what I have read so far, ethics doesn’t seem to have the same definition in Yokogawa as every where else. When I worked there, the emphasis was always minimising the loss making situation sales put us in with no expectation, or in my opinion desire, to do future business with a customer afterwards. The blog earlier about the Iranian projects sums up for me what was (is) wrong with the place. I’m not a sales or business person (and have no desire to be one) but a good old fashioned engineer who knows what is good ethical practice, so my comments are related to that side of things.

I can’t remember which of the 2 Iranian projects it was, but the cabinets housing the ESD system were dropped off (fell from a great height!) the container ship at the (Bandar Assaluyeh?) docks in Iran, had not been fitted with impact indicators so we didn’t know how or if the electronics on the safety system (pro-safe) had been damaged or not. The safety cards had not been fitted properly at the factory and had all fallen out of the 19” racks. The cabinet was repaired but the safety cards were just plugged back in without any inspection. Management knew all about this but it was kept quiet from the customer/contractor. The reason for this I was told was that the pro-safe ESD was made by Siemens for Yokogawa who had announced they wouldn’t be making it anymore and any spares/new cards etc went up in price by nearly 100%. I far as I could see, the decision not to replace or even investigate and at least inform the client of any concerns Yokogawa had was made only for financial reasons. Sort of contradicts the spirit of IEC61508 me thinks. Hope they don’t ever have an emergency shutdown on site.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

What a surprise! All we are seeing is engineers calling sales staff in the UK, never questioning their own lack of ability. As I have asked in a previous blog – If you are so talented, why are you still at Yokogawa? There is a shortage of good engineers at many companies.

This is typical under skilled engineering staff, taking the easy option and blaming sales. It gets more difficult to sell Yokogawa systems job’s due to poor delivery by engineering on previous work.

I must agree though on the comments about the project director, and once again we have the Mr Teflon ex-service now as the ‘lack of engineering manager’

Friday, February 5, 2010

Yokogawa UK - I have resisted the temptation to post here previously, as I agreed with a previous bloggers comments that ‘dirty washing should not be aired in public’. Having read some of the blogs about who we are as a company and what we apparently represent these days, here’s my 2 cents/pennies/euro’s worth.

Management claim that the strength and success of the company is down to the people that work here. What is not said thought is that most employees do need leadership that can be respected and have trust and confidence in. In the words of the ex-service manager "we have employed a bunch of suits who don’t care about the place or the people that work there and every decision they make is to further there own self interest". I have worked for a few companies and have never known a company to tolerate poor performance and abject failure the way Yokogawa does, especially from its managers.

We have a projects director who doesn’t anymore after managing the 2 worst financially disastrous projects in the UK’s history, now working as a glorified clerk/secretary/sales support person, presumably on the same pay scales and package as he was when he was a Director. If he couldn’t do his job, why wasn’t he sacked?

We have a Financial Director who only does about 30% of what his predecessor did with twice as many staff and seems to spend most of his time on Linkedin. You have more chance of seeing a UFO than seeing this guy take ownership of anything.

Our Damaging Director, as he is now referred to, actually has set an example to us all, especially to those in sales. His excuses for his own failure to steer the ship in the right direction is that it’s not his fault, it’s the global downturn, it’s Amersfoort’s poor management bla bla, has given the sales guy’s the perfect reason to do as little as possible (certainly not busting a gut anyway) and if questioned about performance, trot out the DD’s excuses, what a brilliant example to us all.

There is no price for failure in management, but a big price to pay at the coal-face. Like a previous blogger commented: if Japan does read these blogs, why hasn’t anything been done before now? Would any sales guy who didn’t make his targets after 7 years be still in a job? I (we) think not. I am mindful of the old saying of small people always hiring smaller people than themselves to make them look good. We now have a significantly vertically challenged management team.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 - Blog response to Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - Re: Yokogawa Business Ethics:

The blog re. the project that was for the Iranian companies cost the projects manager his job. Sales had quoted for something like only 15% type-testing and the customer ordered 100%. Sales either missed this point or ignored it when they accepted the order, which resulted in extra costs and 1000’s of man hours. The MD did not want to know about the problems as usual and left it to the PM to sort out. The PM had no choice but to comply with the contractual requirements, but he lost his job but no one in sales did. At the end of the project on internal close out and review, which lost over £750K, sales informed us of a fee to be paid to the middle-east just as the project was being closed out which made the loss almost double. Unbelievable, such mistakes can happen, but as usual projects got the blame and the PM lost his job as a result of this. The PM was an experienced professional who ran a tight ship and was respected by his team. Most of the good project people left after this, and it seems Yokogawa have lurched from one project disaster to the next. I could never understand why the MD accepted that sales didn’t review with projects before order acceptance. The accepted orders at a claimed 15% margin and after order acceptance we found in most cases the profit was virtually zero within 2-3 weeks of accepting the order. How projects were supposed to make up the loss and maintain good customer relationships was something that none of understood. Virtually every project was the same. I worked for Emerson and ABB and both had problems of some type or other, but the Yokogawa sales teams negligence and a company philosophy of ripping customers off with extra’s is the worst I have ever come across. I hear the UK MD is still there, how can this be?

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Gunter glieben glauchen globen
All right
I got something to say
Yeah, it's better to burn out
Yeah, than fade away

-Lyrics from Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages"

Monday, February 1, 2010 On the comment about send in the clowns, don't. They need to send in a OUTSIDE ADUIT TEAM TO FIND ALL THE MONEY THAT IS GOING INTO A BANK ACCOUNT. From the outside looking in, sounds like someone or someones pocket is getting fat. This company is miguided by it's mangement and that is sad!!

Monday, February 1, 2010 - Re: Sunday, January 24, 2010 "Joke":

The joke going around Runcorn, UK at the moment is: Osama Bin Laden has released his latest video, to prove he’s still alive. In the video, he included the statement that he knows that Yokogawa UK is still losing money with the UK Damaging Director still in charge. After examining that specific statement, the CIA and MI5 are saying that this video is not authentic proof of a recent recording, as it could have been made at any time in the last 7 years.

Monday, February 1, 2010 - To the blogger on Thur 28 Jan:

Maybe you're talking about the HR group in Houston? The HR head here in Newnan (who is relocating to Houston) was with YCA Newnan years ago as an HR Generalist. She left for a year or two for a higher position in HR at (I believe the Red Cross here in Atlanta). She came back to YCA/YIA as the Newnan HR Manager. She "survived" several HR managers who were based in Newnan and were absolutely wrong for YCA/YIA. One had absolutely no HR background and she embodied the myopic, cold lack of humanity that has become YCA/YIA. The next was from a much larger company and it was obvious from the start that employees were not people at YCA/YIA, only numbers.

Please do not interpret this post that I am in any way defending the current "Power Elite". I just want to clarify that, IF you're talking about the current HR Manager in Newnan, soon to move to Houston, she does come from an HR background.

Having said that, HR has no role in deciding who leaves YCA/YIA "to pursue other opportunities..." All they do is process the paperwork once DJ and the boys finalize the list.

Regarding the CEO's Ex-secretary/girlfriend going to HR, she obviously couldn't stay as his secretary; but it's a shame when a rich, successful CEO and his girlfriend need a second income to make a go of it. Oh, wait. Did I say "successful"? Not from where most of us stand. Rich? Yeah, maybe he should look at that big salary of his first the next time he needs to find a way to cut costs. It'd have a much larger impact and save the jobs of 5 or 6 of the folks who are doing the real work around here. Not to mention sending the message that he's going to shoulder a little of the pain. Something that hasn't happened to this point, to be sure.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Being in this industry and reading other blogs here, I have stumbled on Yokogawa. It seems that a lot of people have come here to vent about personal opinions and feelings. It seems that those that have posted here have a lot of negative comments about Yokogawa.

No matter where you go, you will find things to criticize. However, in this time of our economy and the extremely high rate of unemployment, shouldn't you all be thankful you have an employer? And if you are truly that dissatisfied with the company, why are you still there? Wouldnt you be better off somewhere else? Or would you find all their faults as well?

It's easy to find fault in every employer. However, stop to think of those who don't have a job and would give anything to have a job that paid half of yours to support their family. If you knew you would lose your job today and had to tell your spouse, wouldn't it make you just a little more thankful for that job? And maybe ease up on criticizing people personally at the company. You never know what kind of stress they are going through, or where they are in their lives. You may think you know their story, but there is always a piece or pieces that you DON'T know, which could change your perspective and the story you have been told.

Even when I get frustrated or ill, i take time to stop and become thankful for having a job to be ill at. It somehow changes things to seem a little easier to deal with.

Just my 2 cents, based on what I've read here. I hope it might help.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Comments: Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.

Just when I'd stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No one is there.

Don't you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don't bother, they're here.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer,
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.

Thursday, January 28, 2010'

I do agree with the 1/26 blogger that we have a terrible HR Team. The Management Team at YCA is terrible, and the HR group is no exception. It's very hard to take the group seriously when we've seen an HR GM get promoted from Marketing, then we hire someone that was a little "off" from GM and now what are we doing? Yep, promoting like CRAZY a friend of the CFO's. Not to mention the former secretary of Mr. Johnson's that is now working in HR. What is she a Manager of now? Secretary to Manager of HR? Did she get a degree that we all don't know about?

We laugh at lunch when we talk about the HR Team. We've seen a couple good employees that have been hired but they are asked not to help the employees out. What? Most of us have agreed to put in for the next HR Generalist position we see posted since all you need to have is some voice skills to tell people to call a number if you are having issues. Year after year we have issues with payroll and benefit deductions. Nobody seems to care that are paychecks seem to suffer.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - Re: Yokogawa Business Ethics:

I used to work in the Yokogawa UK projects group and witnessed on many occasions how the rules were breached/bypassed on export control to countries that were on the UN/Uk or even Japan’s own METI (Ministry of Economic Trade and Industry) organisation’s ‘banned list’.

A previous blogger reported a couple of projects for Iran that were sold by the UK and these almost certainly broke the rules. There were official procedures in place that clearly stated the even before a quotation was be made, that the final destination must be known and an export license obtained from HQ Tokyo before any quotation could be made as permission would not be given retrospectively.

I know on these projects that sales ‘forgot’ to do this, but they were granted retrospectively by Japan in breach of their own rules as the EPC would have sued Yokogawa for the full cost of the contract value, and more if they hadn’t delivered.

I remember a colleague also pointing out in a memo to the MD that the instrumentation supplied on these contracts fell under the UK export regulations in the dual-use category (i.e. could be used for WMD purposes) but he refused to let us contact the UK Export authority to confirm our suspicions and clarify the situation. This was completely at odds with the memo’s he used to send out saying we must be vigilant in these matters! We used to joke amongst ourselves that his response was part of his own ‘dodgy dossier’.

I also remember another case which was documented internally about how a Yokogawa company in Europe had an arrangement to take an order for a DCS locally and, for a small fee, pass it on to Yokogawa in the Middle East so it looked like an internal order.

The DCS was then sent to the client in Europe who then shipped it to the Tabriz Petrochemical Company in Iran who were on the ‘UN/US/METI banned list’ as they made WMD (missiles and nuclear I think). By the time Japan found out, the DCS was on site. As far as I remember it was just kept quiet. I don’t blame Japan for this as it was the other Yokogawa companies who broke the rules but the policing of the policy didn’t work in practice.

There was also a trading export company in London that bought DCS spare parts from the service dept destined for Libya/Iraq/Iran for years before it became too obvious and it couldn’t be ignored that all of these countries were on the banned list. We also used to receive in service, requests from small export companies in the Uk who provided part numbers of old Centum h/w, destination to countries and companies who had always been on a banned list for over 20 years, so who supplied the systems to them in the first place?

In the time I worked there I had the feeling that the only reason that instructions on export control were issued by Holland HQ was to cover them in case something went wrong. As has been said before, good people, poor management, lousy company attitude.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Cutbacks and layoffs in product sales-force – The latest plan from our leaders in Amersfoort is to reduce the size of the sales-force by up to 40% across Europe and only deal directly with the 20% of the customer base that gives 80% of the revenues. Must have originated from the Yokoboro/Foxagawa mafia as this is what they did years ago and lost most of their business eventually. The systems guys have never seen the point of instrument sales and even Hauptmeijer has said we should be a services and systems company for years. It’s easy to cut but hard to grow and everyone now realizes that our senior and middle managers milked the company when it was growing but have no clue how to deal with the crisis except to cut costs (people).

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Let's see...1/8/2010 we laid off 75 employees, and then Monday we are told that we will get back 2.5%. Glad to have the money returned, but are we struggling or not? Confused. Sounds like too many fish and not enough Indians!

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

An interesting aspect of the Japanese management style, even more so than any other culture, is that most decisions are made by large committees after an endless series of meetings. If the outcome is good, everyone in upper level management adds it to his list of accomplishments. If the outcome is a disaster, then it was not carried out properly by subordinates and everyone covers everyone else's backsides (you don't actually think that a group of high level execs could make a bad decision, do you?). That philosophy is carried to an extreme, and the folks in the trenches bear the brunt of poor decisions by upper and middle level management. It truly does roll downhill.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

I find myself not being able to hold back from the comments in the 1/7/2010 blog. I won’t get the writer excited and say that it was very upsetting. But we all know that YCA is using the “tough economic times” comment as a front to furlough a lot of good, hard working employees that didn’t get their jobs from knowing the CFO. Most of us didn’t have kids that babysat or washed hair of our “power elite.” Sorry, 1/7/2010 blogger, I reused your wonderful word but I do think we need to use it sparingly especially since the GM of HR “gets off” on this type of “writing skills” especially when it pertains to herself. Our HR Team is sorry. I believe if we are going to survive we need to stop hiring our buddies and look at credentials. It has been a long time since we’ve had a good HR Team. I’ve been lucky enough to survive the furloughs, but I’m not sure what will happen in the future. Scary to think of that situation when you are the major bread winner in the family.

I can’t say we are too happy about the HR Team in Newnan moving to Texas. We have an HR Manager that is a Finance transplant that we are happy to get rid of. The former Jr. HR Clerk from 10 years ago (now GM Manager) will not be any better. It seems if we do get someone that is willing to help the employees, we let them go.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

The joke in HQ now is that last week, our superman chairman Isao Uchida called his President, Senior VP’s, VP’s and Regional CEO’s to a meeting in Tokyo to mend the company and improve results. The meeting was held on the roof of the tallest office and Uchida ordered them all to jump off the roof as the journey to the bottom, and the adrenalin rush would inspire them to think of a strategy to resolve the company crisis. All but 2 of them landed at the bottom, some injuries but no new ideas. The 2 that still haven’t landed yet are the 2 regional CEO’s, Hauptmeijer and Johnson, who keep stopping asking for directions......

Funny, but this also shows the graveyard humor that exists in the company today, and it is also an accurate reflection of how most employees actually see their leaders performing.

I was asked last week by an old timer from production - what is being done to make our business better? I was embarrassed, because I could not give a truthful answer. Everyone blames Harry Hauptmeijer for the loss of production, which started when he was VP for instruments and has been given away to pay for the new building. Analyzer Instruments are what produced the money and we used to export everywhere. When the situation was bad before, the Analyzer profit kept us all OK; but now we buy, not sell, and the money is no more. Most I know think Harry is like a book-keeper with no personality, and is not a motivational manager who can give us confidence in these times.

We have serious problems and I don’t know what can be done to improve. But worse is that, along with my colleagues, I don’t think our managers know also.

Friday, January 22, 2010 - To the management responder of the blog 01/19/10, ‘Yokogawa is not the center of the universe’:

It is, if it pays your mortgage, utilitys and food bills! What arrogance to assume that if you don’t like it, you can just leave. Surprisingly, a few of us joined because we were sold the Yokogawa message, and believed we had a future to the extent we relocated with our wives and kids and all the upheaval that involves.

Friday, January 22, 2010 - Re: Yokogawa Ethics and how they do business:

I remember when I worked at Yokogawa many years previously; I attended a global strategic selling program at Amersfoort HQ. I had been on the same course many years ago at a previous employer, but this one was run by an ex-Yokogawa Japanese senior VP who was well known historically to European management through his local involvement with Shell, Chevron etc.

I clearly remember the shocked and embarrassed faces of the participants when this ex VP gave his definition of the term 'coach' used in the program. It was not the same as described in the official course program notes. His explanation was not only how this type of person could 'guide you' through the sales process to make a sale, but went on to explain how in his experience what must be done for this type of buyer/influence. There was no doubt about what he was saying, and never before or since have I heard such a blatant admission or suggestion that customers should be paid to win business. As is normal, unfortunately, nobody challenged him on this, but it was the topic of conversation in the bar later that night.

I saw enough in my time at Yokogawa to realise that the Japanese meet with your key accounts without telling you before or after the event and are very secretive about their dealings with customers. If a project engineered out of Europe has Japanese connections, we often used to find our Japanese colleagues were meeting in secret behind the backs and without the permission of the EPC contract holder. For any US or European Key account manager, when a project surfaced at best the role they performed was that of a bag carrier for the Japanese Global Account manager. I used to think at first it was because they didn’t trust us to win the business; but now I think there were inappropriate reasons why they didn’t want us to meet their contacts.

After I left Yokogawa, I wasn’t surprised to read that they were winning all these global agreements but even after employing their own unique win strategies, most customers I know think they ‘hit and run’. But as previous bloggers have commented, it’s a regretable purchase decision they have to live with for 20+ years.

My opinion is that Yokogawa are collapsing now due to how they have gone about their business in the past, and the quality of the management they have. They can’t blame the economic crisis forever. Restructuring (as they always seem to be doing) is the desperate strategy of amateurs who don’t know, and probably have never known, how to run a successful business. The issues of subsidies to prop up businesses in the US and Europe sounds to me like the old nationalised industries in the UK many years ago, and we all know what happened to them. I see on their web site their intention is to restructure, to break even by 2012. I’m glad I don’t work there any more, but I’m even more pleased I’m not a shareholder!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

In response to the problems in YCA (13 January) my colleague is misleading in his comments about European performance. It is only recently we have been in profit, and this is not in all areas. It is also not correct that no subsidies/financial help have been received to Europe from Tokyo.

If my memory in my mind is correct, the UK only has been in benefit over the years to an amount that must be greater than €8M, including monies from Japan for what are undocumented activities/reasons and various recapitalizations due to the debts they had with Amersfoort. An earlier blog referred to the advantages enjoyed by GB (below manufacturing cost buying of DCS components, hiring of illegally non EU nationals etc) which again causes a question to be answered about why the loss is so great over the many years?

Other subs have had problems before, but always recover within 18 months. Why not GB? Someone suggested earlier about an external audit being a good idea. It would be interesting what could be revealed in GB. Where has all the investments gone to? And why they have only made one really small profit in the last 10 years?

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - Re: Blog from 9 December about new GB sales manager:

With recruitment freeze and firings or short term daily workings across all of European operations, why is it possible that this has occurred. Why is not the GB country manager not running the sales teams?

As this operation is the continuous failing for many years across Europe, why can they still be hiring? Can anyone explain what he is doing all week? From the small number of information and talk, we are told he never visits customers, or talks to the sales people, or is involved in the loss-making project activity. So, like my GB colleagues, I must ask what is he paid for. Many of us in Europe are suffering the pain mainly due to the economics but GB is like a disease in the operation and should be cured or removed. It is their negative results again that drag us all down. It is no more a paper reporting problem, but the loss of real peoples jobs. Why does Harry protect them so much for so long? Does anyone know this?

Thursday, January 21, 2010 - Yokogawa blog versus other blogs:

In response to the blogger from Tuesday 19th January, re: all company blogs are similar, I would agree to a certain extent - apart from the fact that, having read as much as I can of the other blogs, I can’t recall any of our competitor blogs exposing:

1. Unfair (illegal?) financial support to compete in overseas markets
2. Pricing (dumping?) solely aimed to gain market share
3. Alleged payments/gifts to customers to win business
4. Misleading authorities by lying to them in order to hire cheap overseas labour in the EU
5. Paying a salesman US$1M for winning a new contract before any orders were placed
6. Senior management falsifying expense claims

There are so many blogs on Yokogawa that I see now we have our own space. Perhaps if senior management in Tokyo took the time to investigate only 10% of what is said or reported, they would start to realise how bad things are and there is a direct correlation between bad management and disasterous results. To my way of thinking, this blog is no different than the company staff mailbox, apart from the fact it is more secure. But still management ignore what is reported.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

I was recruited to join YCA late 2008 and was let go in a period of seven months. Coming there was the worst decision of my career. I am glad to be back on my feet again after another seven months. The time at YCA was pure hell, a blessing in disguise. Apologies for the dirty laundry, but it is an honest opinion.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - To the Tuesday, January 19, 2010 blogger:

A true reflection of the YCA management mind set. I quote: "if they don’t like his management decisions then quit. Everyone is expendable and replaceable". If you are not a manager, you certainly qualify for the position at YCA.

It doesn't give me a good feeling to know that someone working at YCA has that philosophy. People can't just quit in this economy; they try to hang in and hope that they can help make a change. This blogging is a desperate attempt to encourage change. In YCA you cannot speak up. If the management doesn't like it or you have a question that may implicate management, and if that manager is a friend of the chief, you can bet you will have some misfortune fall upon you.

YCA problems are not just due to the economy; some of the problems were created by plain old bad management. You did get one thing right: the person at the top of YCA is to blame. Your comments on "business decisions" are laughable. You should list out all the great "business decisions" YCA has made since April 2005, then the status of those decisions and how they were based on customer trends.

Keep your pennies you may need them after April 2010.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

I find it admirable that people give their thoughts on a company they hold so dear, yet I'm disappointed by the blatant airing of dirty laundry on the Internet. It's a love-hate relationship. I just wanted to share my thoughts on the matter.

Every company has its share of problems and internal politics. They are just rarely shown to the public. Just take a look at one of the other blogs on this site, like Honeywell or Siemens. Some of the problems there resembles the problems happening at Yokogawa. It's just the nature of having an organization with many conflicting mindsets.

If there is a problem, the first instinct is to blame the person at the top. He is the scapegoat. It comes with the job and he should accept it. People should also realized that they have a choice. If they do not like his management decisions then quit. Everyone is expendable and replaceable.

Yokogawa, like all business, exist to serve customers. Customers spend money. Take off all the smokes and mirrors of "employees first" and, ultimately, all that matters is serving the customers. Business decisions are made based on customers trends and not employees reactions.

Yokogawa is not the center of the universe. By reading some of these blogs, it seems to most people that it is. Granted some of these people here probably spend more time at work than with their families, but they all had to go home some time. If you were fired or laid off, move on with your lives. If you still work there, do the best you can to keep your job to support your lives at home.

Change hurts. It's human nature to resist change but it's necessary to move on.

And there's several pennies for my thoughts.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

I am a current employee and wanted to make a few statements about the blogs on YCA, that have become popular within the company.

I have taken my time to carefully read the statements and have come to the conclusion that many of the comments are true, based on my knowledge of the company. The comments have raised the awareness of many employees on how wide-spread poor management is noticed within the company. The overwhelming comment from many of my fellow employees is: why isn't Japan taking any action to correct obvious problems? One of the previous bloggers said we shouldn't hold our breath; I am beginning to think that is right. I have heard that in the past Japan has stepped in and made corrections, but it looks like they are unaware of what is happening.

The current state of YCA has caused a great lack of enthusiasm from all the employees. No one I know will bring up any negativity to our President/CEO; this would surely result in being singled out and eventually dismissed by our direct managers, when the time was right. So I finally decided to write a blog.

The politics within YCA are present and troubling, in my opinion; they have hurt our overall ability to do business. Even though the products are great, we need leadership that can build a company and bring everyone together. I look forward to a time when things get better, but can’t see the current management leading the way. This is just my opinion based on what I have seen and discussions I have had.

Friday, January 15, 2010 - Response to YCA Field Instruments colleague 13/01/10:

When I first read your comments I thought you were discussing the UK situation, the parallels are frightening. The instrumentation business in the UK as far as anyone can remember has propped up the systems group who lose money for fun it seems.

Only a complete moron could argue for taking a project at a low margin and expecting to recoup money later on MRO business. How many times have the system sales not even bothered to try and get instruments included as part of the project and then we find ourselves in a price fight with Emerson, ABB etc. Even if they do remember we actually make instruments, MRO actually means in the real world small additions that the customer initially forgot about at the project start. Most automation systems/instrumentation has an operational lifetime expectancy of at least 20 years and since we make the most reliable/never go wrong products in the world our MRO business is virtually zero. The same can be said to a large degree for our serious competitors, ones or two’s on a plant per years is a reasonable normal expectation for MRO so that philosophy when examined by anyone with at least a couple of brain cells is dead in the water.

You could try the argument that our leader now prefers that you take the lifetime profit of all the service contracts on a project/add ons/extensions etc and over a 25 year spread, the profitability will be OK. This argument is flawed when our last 2 projects for BP and Exxon Mobil, lost over €4M, it’s a lot of service and MRO business to make up for!

Most businesses are judged on a year on year basis, not a 25 year period unless you are a financial services provider and we all know what a great success they have made of things lately. The upside of management supporting the 25 year view is that most of them will have retired or left in 25 years when judgement day comes a-calling.

Despite it seems buying the h/w and s/w at a really good (less than it costs to make?) transfer price and using cheap but illegal engineering services and I’m told by my colleagues in the know at Amersfoort, that after receiving over €5M including monies from Japan and various recapitalizations due to the debts they had with Amersfoort, our business has only ever made an €80k profit over the last 7 years and losses of many millions, not bad for a company employing 60 people! We are also told that our MD is the worst performing employee ever employed by Europe and like the rest of us, are confused as to why he is still here. I wish I had his KPI’s.

What is worrying is that despite all the global financial subsidies Tokyo have provided over the years, the business is still in a mess. Which ever way you look at it, propping up failing businesses, accepting loss making activities for so long, market pricing less than the levels in Japan, only spells one thing, dumping. All of us who have worked for other companies before have been naïve in not acknowledging that Yokogawa works a lot differently than other companies in the pursuit of its objectives and should have seen this coming.

I agree what is really frustrating is that you invest a good portion of your career into the company, try to be as successful as you can be and see all your good work flushed down the pan because of the Forest Gump management philosophy preached and practiced by so many. It seems sometimes that we have been constructing the building brick by brick only to find that the foundations of the building (put down by management) were made of wet sand and sawdust and it all comes tumbling down.

For those bloggers calling for Japan to sort this out, don’t hold your breath. Has it not occurred to you that if you have a poorly performing employee you should look at the person who hired them in the first place? You would think they would realise by now that all this slash/burn/restructuring results in shock, awe and eventually exodus of the people that make the business successful.

Personally, career wise, I’m going to do my best to reach a senior position within the company where I can live out the rest of my days in a state of true unconscious incompetence like the rest of them.

I feel better for this, it’s been a cathartic experience and also it’s the weekend.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - To the blogger from Europe who wrote "Unlike Europe, YCA has been in great benefit of generosity from Tokyo......":

I assume that you're talking from the perspective of the Systems group? Field Instruments have long been profitable, until recently that is, and have carried the Systems side of things for years. They carried Japan when they went through their domestic and regional downturn a few years ago. I think the same can be said of T&M and Recorders more than carrying their own weights.

Yokogawa has excellent products from a technical standpoint, and used to have very solid technical people in the field to back them up. Over the last 6-8 years, however, any technical expertise has been culled, in favor of smiling bobble-heads who have no clue how this stuff works, but have a hell of a smile and are on Mr. Johnson's "A" list.

The Systems group has always been a "loss leader". The supposed rationale being: "Bring in the project at little to no margin and you'll make it up in MRO business." Again, it shows a complete lack of understanding as to the reality of the beast. So you win a 6 million dollar project. It does you no good if it costs you 9 million dollars to execute it. AND the MRO business never materializes.

The "Tell me who you are and I'll split my bet money with you" comment would be laughable if it wasn't such a pathetic attempt at finding out who someone is so that another "problem" can be eliminated.

As to "having an axe to grind", a "hidden agenda", etc. What the ex-employees who post here have to gain is - absolutely nothing. We've already taken our shot and reaped the "rewards" of Mr. Johnson's approach to correcting problems.

Am I upset? You bet! I put a lot of effort into making things work, only to have it laid waste by a management team who didn't have a clue, but knew how to spend money; and middle level management who didn't have the courage to present a unified front to the top levels in addressing chronic problems. I have friends who are still trying to make a go of it, with no cooperation, appreciation or direction from the anyone above them.

All that we can do is express our opinions on what is wrong and what needs to be done, to correct it for the sake of our friends and colleagues who are still employed at YCA. If we can improve the situation for them, so much the better. They have seen what happens when fellow-employees try to address problems "within the system".

That's my $0.02 worth and I'm sticking to it.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010 - To the blogger from Europe:

You hit the nail on the head. YCA was making it to be self sufficient, or at least looked as if they we were. What changed was the forced effort to be "Number 1 by 2010". The YCA management analysis called for unlimited and unjustified spending as a strategy to get to the lead position. I actually heard a manager say we need to spend more to get to number 1, and they would try as hard as they could, and did. Crippled by a small customer base, and management staff designed around loyalty to the CEO, it was doomed from the start. We can't forget to add up the new office allocations for Sugar Land, Mexico and Canada. What is really remarkable is that Sugar Land was in the process of spending more money to expanding the building until Japan put a stop to it.

It seems as if YCA management had no idea that a business should grow based on its own sales and the quality of its employees. It appears to some degree that the financing from Japan is being taken for standard operating income. This goes back to the comments on mismanaging, the qualifications of the CEO and the friendship-based (not qualification-based) setup headed by Dave Johnson and supported by Kaihori and so on.

I don’t see how some of the employees let go from YCA can help clean up this mess. Short term, sure the reduced head-count can show a reduction in the loss on the books. Long term, can it improve the company’s position in the industry? Not likely. Sweeping changes need to be implemented by Japan to get YCA back on its feet. This includes a complete replacement of management starting at the top, and some across the pond. The end of the fiscal year is right around the corner, and I am sure a few of the so-called 'power elite' will be dusting off their resumes, if they haven't already done so. Since this is the same thing most of the staff is doing, I am not sure how much of a qualified company staff will be left between resignations and readjustments.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The recent blog activity from our colleagues in YCA would have been laughable if it were not so serious. Unlike Europe, YCA has been in great benefit of generosity from Tokyo with subsidies as far back as anyone can remember. It seems the entire business has been supported at the expense of investment to other Yokogawa areas and they still have the nerve to complain!

We too used to be a negative contributor many years ago, but guess what, we worked hard and used our talent to make it good again. I would suggest that you all do the same and as well as ‘talking the talk’ (which you seem to do better than everyone else) start the walking also.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

This is the worst I have seen it at YCA. I don’t care if Dave Johnson wants us to come into his office and discuss problems. It will put me between my manager and the CEO and I have to deal with my manager regularly. I am sure my manager’s relationship with DJ is better than mine. It will also put me in the spot light and next on the short list, or at least a more favorable fit for the next readjustment. He should have thought about this before, but I guess he was busy mismanaging, budding up and all that playing executive stuff. Wish I had the courage to speak up in person, but I have seen what happens to people in this company that speak up. That’s why I have placed a blog, after hours of course. It’s the only voice I have here. I think they should change Dave’s title to CUO Chief Unemployment Officer, that’s the one thing he seems to be good at.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

I worked for Yokogawa when Mr. Johnson first "ascended". On one of his first trips to Newnan, he wanted to meet individually with the employees in the PMK's (that's Yokogawa-speak for Product Marketing Groups). We were told to bring a resume with us for him to look at. As soon as they realized how transparent that request was, they dropped it. BUT, it was obvious from the start that he was sizing people up.

To pick up on another blogger's comment, again, take a look at who is on the recent list and you will see no managers, at least none that I am aware of. If you are in the "Power Elite" you have nothing to worry about.

On the other hand, some of the recent recipients of Mr. Johnson's business acumen are very long time employees in Newnan. They are, again, the ones in the trenches, the gears on which the inner workings of the company turn. They know the ins-and-outs of the products, the processes, the relationships in Japan and how to get things done.

In his wisdom, Mr. Johnson has further hobbled Yokogawa's ability to carry on it's day to day operations. The only thing worse than a CEO who makes bad decisions is a CEO who repeatedly makes bad decisions and is good at implementing them.

As usual, the views expressed here are strictly my opinion, yada-yada.......

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 - To the Angry Blogger from the Current Employee:

You are wrong in guessing my identity, but I note that you're off base in your comments about the company, too. You are clearly motivated to find destructive information and spin it to hurt YCA. You could be an employee, since you had access to the layoff date and some other YCA gossip. Most point to a couple of inside politicians, one who got demoted and deserved it, and one who had fantasies about becoming a manager and did not deserve it. That would certainly explain the grudge you have against the people you've attacked. I guess we'll never know. So, if I've guessed wrong, why are you so dedicated to attacking YCA? What's in it for you? If you will reveal your name and I'm right, I will split my bet winnings with you.

Monday, January 11, 2010

The bloggers that are posting positive comments in response to very detailed complaints have provided comments with no substance. Many of the comments on this blog are true. What you have heard in the message from Dave Johnson is called putting the spin on it. You have very detailed blogs that are to the point about the ongoing problems within YCA. Many of you may not have access to the real story behind many of the facts listed here. I don’t think any bloggers assassinated Mr. Johnson’s character; the comments were directed at his inability to manage and how he has structured the chain of command within YCA. The politics in YCA are not like most companies, they are much worse.

The 09 fiscal year ends on March 31, 2010 and Newnan hasn’t completed its move to Sugar Land. I would be skeptical of the propaganda provided in a meeting from the person (Dave Johnson) at the center of the problems that has his job along with his friend’s jobs on the line.

At the end of June 2009 similar statements were made after that layoff. More layoffs occurred between July and up to January 7, 2010 with a more noticeable layoff on January 8, 2010.

The count of employees laid off in one of the Friday blogs is wrong. YCA has now had 3 different layoffs (excuse me, restructurings) during this fiscal year. The first and the third layoff near the end of the first and third quarter the second layoff was spread over the second quarter. The total is well over 200; plus or minus some employees that resigned. According to Mr. Johnson’s own statement; 811 people worked for YCA in May 2009, with the reductions YCA has had an approximate decrease of 25% of its staff overall. The remaining staff has more to do and will need to rely on a few to answer simple questions and get real work accomplished. This will become more evident over the next few months.

Pull up a copy of your organizational chart (org. chart) on the intranet. Of those laid off how many across the top horizontal lines (management) are still on the org. chart? How many of those listed on the vertical lines (workers) are still on the org. chart? What has changed? Answer nothing, if you are in, or a friend of the power elite.

Do an internet search on your manager or fellow employee’s name with or without the word Yokogawa. You will find almost all YCA management and a few friends of management with a posting on an employment website (linkedin.com). For some reason I could not find some of the managers and workers in Newnan on this site, although I was surprised to see a few names pop up. I saw so many names I started to think a posting on this site was a perk for working at YCA. If it is a perk why isn’t everyone listed? Many of the managers have “career opportunities” and “job inquires” marked on the “Interested In” section of each person’s posting. Do they know something we don’t know? This is starting to sound like what happened at Enron around August 2000; investors and employees were told one thing while management had the inside track.

Monday, January 11, 2010

I want to begin my comments by stating that I am a current YCA employee. I am not a manager or a member of any power elite group that other bloggers have reffered to. Dave Johnson just addressed us in an all employee meeting and the man was a stand up guy. He explained how he made the decision to readjust the company size to fit current business conditions. He spoke straight to the point and told the facts. I am OK working for this guy. He invited us employees to come tell him our honest opinions, and I think he means it and will listen. While I am at it, I will add that there are politics in YCA, like most companies, and it is probably the politicians who are making most of the negative posts here. Much of what I read is pretty radical spinning of the facts. Most actual employees are not going to participate. It just looks like some folks have grudge to bear.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

YCA is having problems due to the policies and practices initiated by CEO Dave Johnson. Employees are divided; those brain washed by repeated claims of product reliability, others who are overcome with the fear of being laid off; and yet another group in fear of being asked to move to the Houston office from Newnan. If you could speak freely to the reduced staff they would tell you that they are leaving as soon as they find another opportunity.

Some employees will tell you that the products are good and YCA is restructuring due to the economy, that’s what they have been compelled to say. If you go deeper you will see that the company is not supported by its own sales. It has been propped up for years with financial support from Japan. This did not affect the over hiring and wild spending associated with expenses, conducted by many General Managers and underlings in the last two years. Apparently it was a spending free-for-all and CEO Dave Johnson looked the other way. This type of management should concern customers, investors, employees, managers and board members. As stated in a previous blog, an outside audit of YCA would be suitable at this time to track the funding provided by Japan.

The positive comments you see from bloggers are from Management and Sales trying to offset the negative comments. The comments that they place are aimed at preserving the hierarchy not solving the issues. Many of the comments from Yokogawa US and Europe on this blog were aimed at solving issues, exposing poor management and uncovering activities deemed inappropriate. Little has been done to change the companies’ practices, unfortunate for those in the trenches. Politics exists in all companies but YCA under CEO Dave Johnson has brought it to an all time high.

During the evaluation process to determine who would be laid off from what department, some managers created false chargeability for members of staff in an attempt to insulate themselves by retaining friends. Chargeability is normally defined as hours billable against available work measured over twelve months. However YCA managers artificially inflated hours associated with employees they viewed as friends to help preserve the buddy system. This did nothing to boost moral or retain qualified individuals it only confirmed the preferential treatment provided to managements friends. You can expect more changes between now and the end of the fiscal year.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

I work for another company and read this blog. It has to make me wonder why a company like YGA is laying people off. If the products they offer are good and they say, have great service, who is going to mind the store? We continue to pickup more business from former YGA customers who were dis-satisfied with service. It would make sense to me to keep or hire more personal to keep the business going. It has been my experience when this happens, it was management not doing their job and one if not a few people were on the take to rob the company blind. I feel sorry for the people that were laid off, because the (management) was not doing their job. Good luck Yokogaw, and thanks for the business!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Why isn't management held accountable by Japan? Instead they are allowed to fire (notice I said fire) employees and blame it on poor company performance. What happened to a system of employee reviews, goal based performance systems with follow-up during the year. If the employee didn't achieve their goals, or were insubordinate, it was noted in their file. After two or three strikes... the employee was let go. This is not how it works at Yokogawa. Employees daily just do what they think they should be doing with no direction from their managers. With their job descriptions and duties left to total ambiguity, it allows management to say and do whatever they want when the workforce has to be reduced. The manager should be blamed on the employees lack or poor performance; not the employee. Job ambiguity is both a sickness and power tool for management. It allows the company to make hiring, promotional, and firing decision based wholly on personal opinions, friendships, cronyism. This is what is taking place at YCA.

Also, I believe it needs to be made clear that this is not a layoff. It is a reduction-in-workforce and firing of employees. They dangle the carrot of giving a weeks salary for every year worked and paying your health insurance for a few months if you agree to sign the paper that says you will not sue them and you hold them harmless. Sounds like blackmail to me. Especially for those of us that only have enough savings to pay the mortgage and bills for a couple of months. It also allows the CEO, the CFO, and VP's to sleep at night and convince themselves that they are handling this the "Christian" way.

What happened to telling the employee that "you have done a good job and we value you at our company. Because the economy has slowed and orders are down, we have to lay you off temporarily. We would like you to consider working for us again and would like to reserve the right to call you back at a latter time. We are sorry that this has happed. Unfortunately we do not know how long this will be and that you may never be called back. Thank you for your service." I am sure they will hang their hat on some legal reason for handling the downsizing in this manner.

YCA is "shooting themselves in the foot" and the skilled employees will never return. I know I will work in Home Depot to make a living before I would return, just because of the way they have handled this. A little "sour grapes"... maybe, but I am a realist and know that companies must take this action sometimes. What happened to professionalism. It just goes back to poor personnel and operation management of should I say, the lack thereof.

Friday, January 8, 2010

It's interesting that the "airing of dirty laundry" does make one feel better, but it is doubtful that anything really changes in a company unless comments are taken serious by a company's decision-makers. Yokogawa's problems are deep and systemic.

1. To begin with, YCA is not much more than a big distributor in the US. It purchases both complete products and parts from Japan at various xfer rates. While some manufacturing is actually done in Newnan (almost the same amount as 10 years ago) and many of those parts are purchased domestically, the rest is bought from Japan. Japan doesn't consciously "dump" products in North America, moronic decisions by management allow the products to be sold below that xfer cost. And Japan treats YCA like a customer! Not much more than that. Day-to-day support from them is desperately needed but still not there even after 20 years.
2. There is no real engineering at YCA. While there are many "system engineers" that configure the DCS hardware and systems HMI interfaces and control schemes, there are only a couple field instrument engineers in service, technical assistance, and marketing. Support is provided by technicians. And there is a skeleton staff of them in certain departments. As a matter of fact, marketing does 10% marketing, 30% insides sales, and 60% applications engineering. There are a few manufactuing engineers in Newnan that keep the product assembly and test department operating but that's it.
3. Operationally, from a human resource standpoint YCA is broken. There are no more performance reviews, no annual goals, no day-to-day leadership except fire fighting, and no management training programs. The only continuing education reimbursement is for undergraduate degrees and the $$ is pathetic. Education is not valued, respected, or encouraged. Only a few upper management personnel even have bachelor degrees. Many of the upper managers have been with the company for 20 years or more. Like one of the original bloggers pointed out below, many "don't even know what they don't know". This was referred to as "unconscious incompetence". That description is very accurate.
4. As previously stated, there are only skeleton department numbers in certain areas. Management is still under the assumption that marketing personnel should know how to do everything (and do it) from enter an order to shipping the product out the door and all tasks in between. This thinking is valid in a "Mom and Pop" operation but in a $250 million operation?? This is not efficient nor cost effective. Tasks and job duties should be defined and segmented. How can a company scale up or down its resources??
5. Account managers, managers of account managers, and senior managers continue to be hired at ridiculous salaries. Today was the first time an account manager or regional manager were let go. But this takes place while middle management and hourly personnel suffer with the 5% pay-cut and no cost of living raise in several years. As another blogger pointed out, the "good ole boy" network prevails. Mr. Johnson has promoted or hired only the people that tell him what he wants to hear. The CFO, VP of Marketing, and GM's have put in place their friends at various levels. If you are viewed as negative or do not subscribe to their method of management, you might as well say goodbye to your job. And for goodness sakes, don't have Human Resources report to the CFO. That could be a major conflict of interest!
6. Yokogawa's independent Rep force have both strong sales personnel and weak sales personnel. Some are also strong technically and weak technically. Yokogawa Gulf Coast (the former Yokogawa Southwest organization and the former Dixon Engineering organization) also have similar attributes. But this inconsistancy is a major drag on Yokogawa product and system sales and service. Yokogawa does not have the infrastructure to support the technically weak sales personnel. The manager of Yokogawa Southwest had the opportunity to hire real sales engineers when the independent Rep was fired. Instead he hired the former Dixon personnel that were very weak technically. That was the easy way out.

So how can Yokogawa be fixed?

• First, the President needs to step down, or be removed along with 2-3 of the VP's and possible 2-3 of the GM's. Unfortunately, Japan must take control, but only until qualifed personnel can be found.
• A six-sigma or Lean element for Office must be introduced. An operational consultant will have to be used unfortunately, to help Human Resources revamp and implement a goal-based performance, review, and incentive program. Job duties should be documented and then redefined.
• Applications, inside sales, and marketing should be segmented and personnel hired. They should then come up with a real objective at the top and drive it down.
• Re-evaluate the Global Major Account objectives and perform a cost analysis. Sales at any cost is not a wise business plan for a company that is no more than a big distributor.

Friday, January 8, 2010

I've worked in both Newnan and Sugar Land for Yokogawa since the 90's. All in all...a good place to work.

A company that added 500 staff over the past 5 years and has to cut 50 in this economy is not the scum of the earth. I think all of our competitors laid off a much larger % of their staff.

It's also entertaining that both happy and unhappy current/Ex employees have tried to disguise themselves as customers!

One last comment of support from a previous blogger... Do we have to keep sharing our blog with Omron? Surely all this hand-wringing merits a blog of our own! (no offense to our Japanese cousins at Omron).

Note: This is now the Yokogawa weblog

Friday, January 8, 2010

The layoff did happened as predicted, which would make one think that someone is an insider with the knowledge of the ins and outs. If they do what they did after the last layoff, they will bring in temps to replace some of the ones laid off. They were already very short-handed before. I would be surprised if we see Yokogawa much longer. Current management is running the company into the ground. Morale has dropped even more, leaving the remaining empolyees wondering if they are next.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Short personal barbs aimed at employees and customers that have identified problems within YCA that have resorted to blogging as a last resort, are usually answered with arrogant statements by management further adding to the impression nothing will ever change. This type of attitude is nothing new for Yokogawa management and is at the root of the problems created by the leadership of YCA. As the company continues its downward spiral, management continues to attack everyone outside the power elite. It sounds a bit narcissistic.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Perhaps the former Yokogawa employees, now fiction writers, are being joined by a few trolls from competitors. Doesn't smell right to me.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

The products are fine the management and internal issues are the problem. It doesn't matter how good the products are if the company is not functional. Yokogawa has lost presence in the field and in front of the customer and they don't plan on any replacements.

Yokogawa has long lead times and has been dropped by long time users for this. If you have a catastrophic loss call YCA and ask for replacements in large quantity. A situation like this just happened in Georgia close to the YCA plant. Why? Because they ship the equipment in from China and keep stock to "just in time" that is never on time.

Lack of skilled local presence has always been a problem and continues to be today. Many customers are pulling Exaquantum and replacing it with Pi. Why? Lack of support and the price of support. A Japanese company in the southeastern US dropped Yokogawa and replaced the system with Delta V. More Japanese companies to follow just ask the competition.

If you are looking forward to this Friday January 8, 2010 I would call out sick.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

I've been using Yokogawa products in the US for many years, and the reason why is that they offer the most reliable products I've ever used, as the previous blogger pointed out. In addition, I've received top-notch support over the years.

Yes, a few times over the years an issue would come up; but in every case Yokogawa has bent over backwards to take care of me and my operation. I can not say the same thing about most of the other automation vendors. Furthermore, contrary to the previous bloggers comments, I've always found Yokogawa products to be one of most, if not the most, technologically advanced products around. A lot of vendors disguise weak core measurement and control technology with extra and often useless bells and whistles, which does fool many users. But for me I've always sided with highly accurate and reliable measurements in products that outlast the competitors. No company is perfect, but in my opinion Yokogawa is certainly better than most.

Thursday, January 7, 2010 - In response to the January 7, 2010 blog on YCA:

I don’t see you disputing any of the facts, but confirming the reduction in the work force at YCA. Further confirming the "restructuring", or as you call it, "managing tough economic times".

Restructuring was repeated in every management statement ever issued, blogged about since 2002, and in every Yokogawa press release, including that from Kaihori in his message to investors in July of 2009. (http://www.yokogawa.com/pr/IR/pr-ir-message-en.htm) I suggest a change from "Vigilance" to "Restructuring" as the Yokogawa motto.

I suspect you are one of the "power elite", trying to appear loyal to keep your own job. You have only demonstrated your lack of understanding by calling facts "fiction" and you need to reconnect with reality.

Current employees care about the company and see the lack of support for staff and favoritism within management. YCA's problems are also recognized by customers and potential customers. How could you be so blind? Maybe that's how you helped YCA get to this point. The only coincidence in the blogs about Yokogawa (domestic or international) is that the employees and customers have had enough.

You are the epitome of the YCA "power elite" and can only see and hear what you want to. If for some reason I have mistakenly called you this and you are not, you have successfully passed the test and are now fully qualified.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

There is no doubt Yokogawa is a good company and its products are good. Unfortunately what users have blogged about Yokogawa America is true. I have been using Yokogawa for more than a decade, and didn't find anything to complain. The products are not that technologically great compared to American counterparts, but run for a long time, troublefree.

Engineering was a real mess and Yokogawa America doesn't know how to use the proper resources. They sent few inexperienced folks to site, even though they have good experienced people. What n trusted insider tells is that they have started laying off few top brass on 6th January, 2010. The laying-off spree continued today for some middle level and contractual employees. But what the trusted sources comment is that the gala event would be this Friday, 8th January,2010.

It appears that Yokogawa North america leadership failed miserably and couldn't set the company back on thye right track. Other Automation companies have recovered and are back on track. One of important thing that the insider told me was that it appears everything is on a friendship basis, and many inexperienced folks are being given a lead position at sites, which is really pathetic.

As a Yokogawa user, I feel really sad about how North American management has messed up, and assume this blog would be read by their Japaneese counterparts in Japan. The fact in Yokogawa America is that they are not capable of grabbing a project and are losing to competitors.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

I see an obvious cooincidence here between a company that is performing reductions-in-force to manage tough economic times, and the number of blogs with extreme comments. I suspect that a few former Yokogawa employees should exercise their real talents and pursue new careers in writing creative fiction.

I know Yokogawa reasonably well, and see a large degree of poison-pen work in this blog. The work of "customers" and "insiders"? Not very likely. I take many of these comments with a grain of salt. No, make that a pound of salt.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

I was just referred to this blog by a contact within the industry. After reading some of the comments here, I can see I am not alone. I wanted to express my frustration with Yokogawa/YCA somewhere, and will try to limit my comments. Fortunately I was able to remove them from our vendors list due to a consistent lack of responsiveness; I am sure they don’t even realize it. When I needed help I couldn’t even get a return phone call, so we found help elsewhere.

I had heard from other vendors that Yokogawa seems to be in a constant state of flux, but I did not believe it at first. My relationship started out very positive with YCA, on the initial sales level, but I need action not words to support my plant. I can receive more responsive and personalized service from one of my other vendors or a smaller company that has more on the line. I only found out late in the game. I intend to spread the word about this blog to any other YCA customers I hear of, and suggest that other readers and bloggers do the same.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

As a recent prospective customer of YCA, it was very interesting to read the various comments on this topic here as some of these comments were experienced during our evaluation process for a significant project.

Initially we were quite impressed with YCA, as the many meetings with Sales, their Mid-Level and Senior Management staff was such that we had a clear preference for Yokogawa at the end of the bid stage. Their proposal was straightforward, and the highest quality of those received.

Only when we began to interview former and current clients of YCA at the urging of our management team did we uncover problems. We expected to receive a few negative comments regarding past performance as no vendor has an unblemished record of performance. However each and every YCA client interviewed by our team provided the same story. While fully impressed with the quality of their equipment, the unanimous comments were with regard to YCA's inability to deliver projects in a professional manner. All interviewed clients expressed an extreme degree of dissatisfaction with YCA's project execution and project management staff totally unexpected and previously experienced by our team members.

As a result, we were unable to recommend a decision to purchase Yokogawa to our management team based on these negative referrals. Based upon our initial opinions of YCA, we can only hope that they are able to correct their project execution problems quickly.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Does anyone know what is going on at Yokogawa Corporation of America (YCA)?

In May 2009 in an interview featured in Control Global, current CEO Dave Johnson said "We have had NO layoffs." Here is the link:

http://community.controlglobal.com/content/dave-johnson-yokogawa

"We are now $320 million in YCA. Products are $140 million, systems and engineering $160 million, with services at $20 million. We have 387 employees in Atlanta, 370 in Houston, 47 in Canada and Mexico, and 73 others (our regional sales people). We have had NO layoffs."

Layoffs occurred between June and December 2009 with an additional loss of more YCA direct employees. This was kept quiet and performed sporadically so customers would not be alarmed.

December 2009 ended the YCA third quarter with more bad financials resulting in additional layoffs scheduled for January 2010. Mr. Johnson will need to make major modifications to both his FY09 year end financials and employee count for the next interview.

The layoffs are apparently aimed at removing most of the experienced staff and firming up the power/friendship base in the Sugar Land office with new less experienced personnel. This was a strategic move to confirm the perceived position of management as a knowledge base.

In the same article Mr. Johnson indicates the official corporate office will be relocating to Sugar Land (Houston) Texas. Not a surprise, this has been in the works since the Sugar Land office opened. As stated previously, Human Resources, Finance and Legal are the first groups to be “requested” to move to the Houston area from the original Newnan Georgia location. This has left the Newnan staff depressed and demoralized; these are the people that helped build YCA. Rumor is the Newnan move will be accelerated in 2010 and you will also see a restructuring of the engineering center.

But we need to look closer at the rise to power of Mr. Johnson. During the reign of the previous YCA CEO, Shuzo (Shu) Kaihori, apparently Mr. Johnson made himself invaluable to him. As we all know Kaihori structured his current rise to CEO and President of Yokogawa Electric Inc. (YEI) and placed his friends in positions to support him. Unfortunately the process industry looked at the selection of Mr. Johnson as one of the least qualified individuals to hold the helm at YCA. I am sure the board of directors is taking a closer look at both Kaihori and Johnson, they can’t continue to blame the economy with the decisions they make.

The Senior Vice President (VP) of Sales, a former Invensys/Foxboro employee; adding to the “home for Ex-Foxboro” comments made by the industry and internally named “Foxagawa” by YCA employees. You would think that anyone in a position of this magnitude would have more to offer to the sales staff then a berating to meet the numbers; obviously limited in his sales abilities and mentoring skills. I will say his skills are enhanced only by his overall lack of understanding of the departments he “inherited” after the abrupt departure of the former Senior VP, at the hands of Mr. Johnson.

On 8 December 2009 a press release was issued by YCA, see the links below:

http://www.yokogawa.com/us/cp/aboutus/news/2009/937_Yokogawa_NextNine_AdvancedRemoteMonitoring_YCA.pdf

http://www.nextnine.com/index.aspx?id=2935&itemID=2096

I understand that the board of directors and senior management of Yokogawa Japan are reading this blog. Not surprised since US employees forwarded or brought copies to Japan. This being the case since Mr. Johnson and his “power elite” (quote from previous blogger) took over what has changed within YCA? I know the Sugar Land office is nicely decorated and the same old customer base is impressed with it; but you can’t be blind to the strangle hold Mr. Johnson and his “power elite” have on this regional office. Although Japan has deep pockets, investors and board members need to begin questioning financial allocations made to support YCA. Go beyond SAP and take a closer look at how the allocations are distributed and what the backing is actually used for; an outside audit may shed some light.

I have seen the rumor on this blog noting that a person from the US (YCA) may be added to the board of directors. I hope this is just the sake talking.

Recently Human Resources (HR) sent a request to all personnel asking them to verify that your spouse is really your spouse. Seems as though some employees signed up "friends" for medical benefits; how was this discovered? Guess we will never know as long as you are a friend of the CEO. This does give new meaning to the old term "friend with benefits".

Recently the General Manager (GM) of HR in Sugar Land was "requested" to move to Newnan Georgia and the HR Manager of Newnan was "requested" to take over in Sugar Land as GM. It is well known within YCA that the former Sugar Land GM of HR was from Finance and had little experience heading the HR department for the last two years. Again another friend of the CEO, this person did little to help employees and the company but did get the CEO to create a management position for her son-in-law.

As you can see from the many blogs on Yokogawa the problems are not limited to regional operations. Could this be the result of the direction set by the supreme leader and Chairman of Yokogawa, Isao Uchida? Maybe he started as a humble instrument salesman but he is a legend in his own mind now. He has lost touch with the employees and is unaware of the problems within his management. Remember his statement “Yokogawa will be number 1 by 2010”. This was not based on any logical business process or reasonable percentage increase over time. It resulted in an international assignment of quota to meet the expected financial results necessary to be number 1. The problems are complex and are compounded by the ineptness of YEI leadership.

If you are one of those hit by the layoff samurai in January 2010 don’t forget to ask HR and Mr. Johnson about the sayonara party that includes open bar and fine steak dinner, similar to that provided to Mr. Johnson’s girlfriend when she was asked to leave by Japan.

Happy New Year?

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - Re Border Agency/Corruption:

I know for a fact that these blogs are reviewed by HQ in Tokyo and Kaihori and his underlings have been asking questions to Amersfoort and it’s caused a big stink. What I don’t understand why has nothing been done about it and all of those Directors (MD, FD, Projects etc) not been fired for bringing the company into disrepute? Don’t they care about the companies reputation or are they just interested in lining there own pockets by using cheap and illegal labour? Or more than likely UK management has lied to HQ or Japan are hoping it just blows away.

I remember the projects director in a budget update meeting that had been presented to top management in Amersfoort, showing us a copy of all the engineering resource proposed for various projects and clearly it showed GTS were being used for 1000’s of man hours of work in the UK. Was Amersfoort stupid, negligent or complicit in all this?

This really does not set a good example to any employee and management should not be two faced if employees take small advantages. Someone (from Holland I think) asked if our managers were also our MP’s?, I can go along with this as they all seem to have the same standards after reading what they are claiming for on their expenses.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - Re: Yokogawa/Border Agency (blog Saturday, December 12, 2009):

The blogger is correct in what he has found on the GTS web site (probably to be removed shortly!) but previous blogs were incorrect to say the GTS engineers were in the UK on visitors visas, the were here on a business visas, which gives you the right of stay for 6 months to conduct your business i.e sales/business visits for your employer.

I remember a memo from the UK financial controller that confirmed that he was aware of how GTS were entering the UK and thought they/we couldn’t get away with it any longer by saying the GTS engineers were in Runcorn for business meetings when in fact they were working over here illegally. Another question is why didn’t any of the customers question what was going on (BP, AMEC/Shell, BBL, Kent Enviropower etc) as they must have been site inductions and identifications checked? Did our management lie to their clients about all this as well?

The rules were and are very specific – ‘The skilled worker category (Tier 2 General) is for people coming to the United Kingdom with a skilled job offer to fill a gap in the workforce that cannot be filled by a settled worker.’ Yokogawa must have acted as a sponsor and confirmed to the Border Agency that these skills did not exist in the UK, which is totally untrue of course.

A previous blogger commented about ‘if anyone was unhappy, they should LEAVE’. Totally agree - if I wasn’t working for a company that has no morals or ethics and deliberately lies to a government body at the expense of British jobs. So I’m staying, doing the best I can, looking forward to Friday, dreading Monday’s and now my loyalty lasts until I can leave when I chose to. Is this wrong, probably; but not as bad as what Yokogawa are doing, and I’m not harming anyone.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - Re non Japanese on main board of directors:

There are only 2 runners and riders - one from the US and the other from Europe. Don’t know anything about the guy in the US, but he sounds like another compliant management clone. Europe is struggling badly, but the US business seems to have disintegrated; so it’s probably the US guy who will join!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - UK budget - From our usually reliable source:

Systems – 1 systems position to go, as no short to medium term business can be relied on for next year. Sales manager to work key accounts mainly in North (Scotland?), Aberdeen office to concentrate on selling services with review in 6 months. Questions over Irish office to be discussed at budget meeting.

Products – Netsol products to be sold by IA team. Netsol sales team to go - possibly one integrated and re-trained. Inside sales, 1 to go. Admin. under review with 1 position under review. Product managers role to be discussed, key account responsibilities? and possibility of Netsol and T&M tie up. All outside sales to have minimum target of €1M (£1M). Service and projects to be discussed in separate meeting in January, Amersfoort HR to assist in discussions/redundancys.

Heard the new HQ FC is pushing for big changes for immediate and sustainable profitability. As usual, the chiefs are safe but the Indians are to be banished from the reservation.

Looks like we are due to have another Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 - Re 'Moral High Ground':

This guy really grinds my gears. Does he not realise that there are international laws against behaving this way? I can’t say that I’m surprised though. When I was a global account manager for an automation vendor in the US (who didn’t behave this way or condone these practices), no one was more surprised than me when Yokogawa won the Chevron account from us after a 20 year successful global relationship with very few problems. There were all sorts of rumours that the Yokogawa account manager was paid a $1M bonus for landing the account. I knew this guy from years ago at Foxboro and I heard a large amount of what was paid was compensation for ‘expenses’ he had incurred in winning the business. How the hell do you stop these practices?

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Just heard that Euro HQ IT is spending a lot of time analyzing network traffic, especially people logging on remotely. Wouldn't be surprised if the next move is to recall laptops for an 'upgrade' of the anti-virus program to make sure it’s blocking the now famous 'JimPinto.com weblog virus'. Good housekeeping/cleaning is always good practice on a computer...

Monday, December 14, 2009 - Re Yokogawa and ICI:

I remember this situation, but more detail is that in 1988 (I think) when they were awarded the contract, there was only a small office in Middlesex with 2 Japanese salesmen and not much else in Europe. The criteria for selection, as I remember, was a physical presence in the UK for at least 10 years and an installation in at least 1 ICI plant, preferably 2 or 3. I worked for Honeywell at the time as a service engineer and we had lots of references + local support offices, but didn't even get on the final list. Shameful as 2 of our offices closed down and the staff laid off.

Looks like this was the 'entry tactic' to gain a foothold in the UK. Came from nowhere and looking like going nowhere now, unless of course these desperate times make them 'resort to type' even more so than it sounds like how they have been making gains in the UK over the last 10 years or so.

Monday, December 14, 2009 - Re Yokogawa and corruption:

Why all the moral high ground stuff? Anyone with an ounce of business savvy knows that 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do'. This is why GE probably teamed up with Yokogawa to enter the Japanese market as they knew how to do the business there and what is required; unfortunately they got caught out.

Anyone who has worked for a Japanese manufacturer in whatever industry knows this is how they operate. They pay to ensure success and increase (totally) the chances of winning an order. Yokogawa are no different than a lot of companies including European ones, they are just better at it as it’s in their cultural DNA to do business this way, they don’t see anything wrong with it.

Ask yourself this question, would you pay a customer to make sure you won an order and kept your job and your family secure along with those of your colleagues, or would you embrace a period of unemployment for the sake of a few misplaced 'holier than thou' principles?

Monday, December 14, 2009 - Yokogawa – From a British 'resting' project manager with 20 years experience in process automation DCS systems, subject; Corruption & hiring of illegal workers:

If Yokogawa have done this, they deserve to never win an order again. Totally disgraceful, a morally bankrupt company, should be reported to the authorities.

Monday, December 14, 2009 - Re the ‘Large gift’ to a Shell Engineer:

I remember this from when I worked at Shell Chemicals for 6 months commissioning the TDC3000 on the Carilon LDPE project. I know the engineer concerned and was told the 'gift' in question was a basic model Ford Fiesta. He had no idea what this was about and reported it to his manager.

Apparently Yokogawa firstly claimed it was a misunderstanding, but then denied everything when they were officially asked to explain in writing. The car had been registered in the engineers name and was parked in the staff car park for about 12 months before it was decided by the engineer and his management it could be auctioned off for a local charity.

I remember the engineer he said his wife was so embarrassed when it was delivered in front of the neighbour's as she drove a BMW at the time. Could have been worse, could have been a Datsun!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

OK, these are just my OPINIONs, but... It looks as though my 24-June-09 post has struck a nerve. I'm glad to see that my displeasure with management wasn't just a result of an individual experience. It seems as though this is cultural within Yokogawa. I am also very happy to see such a high level of input from the EC.

To the gents who commented "Please motivate yourselfs (sic) and follow the rules.", and "Most of this is just rubbish, and similar comments, I would say this: Mny of us have tried for YEARS to get these issues addressed. The lack of insight at the top, and middle management's reluctance to bring reality to their attention, are what has led to the demoralization in the trenches. If middle level management had addressed these concerns, people wouldn't have to resort to using this web site to vent.

In response to the 23-Oct-09 post regarding the MarComm memo, I would respectfully suggest that it's management who is damaging the company by not having the courage to bring chronic issues to upper level management in a forceful manner.

In a further step toward isolating itself, Yokogawa's top financial and HR folk are transitioning to Houston. It's obvious that there is no recognition of the fact that it's the talent in Newnan that has been carrying things in the States.

I was most interested in the comment that a "Non-Japanese" is rumoured to be joining the board. If this person is from the States, this will bring the myopia to the very top levels, if it is not already there.

All of this is, of course, just my personal opinion.

Saturday, December 12, 2009 - Re: Yokogawa/Border Agency:

As a British engineer who is currently out of work, and who has recently applied for work and told there is no work at Yokogawa in Runcorn, I am incensed at the way they have employed workers outside of the EU illegally, in preference to firstly British engineers, but also EU ones for financial gain.

Having spent years at Brunner Mond being responsible for the Yokogawa DCS and being highly experienced, I was told there were no vacancies, I now realise why. Out of curiosity having read these blogs I checked the GTS (Global Technical Services) web site
http://www.globalts-eg.com/CMS.asp?ID=54
and found these references:

G.T.S. service engineers working with Yokogawa UK (YEF) for Commissioning and startup for the follwing projects:
• Kent Enviropower, Energy from waste Facility, UK, 2008.
• Chevron Nigeria, Nigeria, 2007.
• Bp. watch farm CCMS & HMI Replacement project UK 2007/2008.
• AMEC/Shell, BBL GAS Reception Project, Bacton, UK, 2008.

Also, I read on other blogs that the UK has made massive losses for the last few years, how can this be unless they are diverting profit from the UK to avoid paying taxes? They take money from UK companies and pay nothing back to the infrastructure. It makes me so angry! I now have to work overseas to feed my family and make a living.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

I have been following with some interest the comments on Yokogawa and their 'market approach'. I worked at ICI Wilton in the UK during the period the DCS standards were being finalised, as part of the technical assessment panel. With no UK installations and no installations at any ICI facility worldwide, Yokogawa were all of a sudden the preferred DCS vendor.

I can't recall any engineer involved in the standards discussions either agreeing or understanding the decision made by the head of purchasing and supply; we were just told to accept the decision. Visits were made to Japan by the commercial team and one of them must have liked it so much in the Far East that he took at least 3 holidays out there with his family after Yokogawa were made a key supplier.

The first system installed was a micro-xl on the Monomer 8 plant that was OK. But all the ops manuals were initially in Japanese, again completely confusing as how they got on to the approved vendors list in the first place as none of the information met the required ICI standards.

After leaving ICI, I joined a major DCS vendor who was one of the losers in the ICI assessment. I was responsible, amongst other things, for the Shell account and when we were bidding for a project there in the early 90's, became aware of Yokogawa's interest. Fortunately, the Shell engineers were not stupid and resisted the overtures to visit Japan and one I know even sent back a large 'gift' sent at Christmas during the technical evaluation. The Shell engineers involved told me that he felt that Yokogawa were underhand in their approach and as a matter of principle found ways to reject their offer of a hugely discounted DCS. A lot of these engineers ended up at Shell in Aberdeen, which probably accounts for why they did no DCS business up there for years.

I think this business culture/approach has probably served Yokogawa well over the years and may account for their rapid increase in market presence. Most projects/accounts that I have lost to Yokogawa have all told me afterwards they regret their decision, but it's then too late as most DCS's have a lifetime of 20 years+ and the damage has been done. The other issue that people may not know is that the Japanese government 'funded' overseas activities by incentives etc. to break into and develop overseas markets. I'm not aware of any UK/US/European government offering similar incentives, so it's not exactly a level playing field.

Something's worked out though. The head of p&s at ICI took early retirement about 10 years ago and immediately walked into Yokogawa as their head of purchasing in the UK. Don't know if he's still there, but it was lucky for him there was a vacancy. Don't know where he takes his holidays these days though.

Friday, December 11, 2009

A question I would ask would be, apart from supporting systems on their bids, what is the point of product sales? The world has moved on and customers want solutions not products. What is the reason for supporting this activity with the size of the current salesforce? I can understand the reason for keeping pressure and temperature products as 90% of our bids use these instruments. But, who buys recorders these days? Outdated thinking and a new approach is required.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Anyone else heard that Kaihori is stepping down at the end of the year? Replacement is supposed to be Yamamoto, with Uchida playing a mentoring role, all due to lack of shareholder confidence. Also rumoured a non-Japanese will be joining the board.

Friday, December 11, 2009 - Subject new sales manager:

It's clear there is no long term plan for the business. There are internal candidates with experience that haven't even been considered. So much bull about a company 'that always looks from within' and promotes the philosophy of career planning. It's a joke. A friend of mine was approached about the job by a headhunter months ago. He was told that the plan was to reduce project execution capability even further in the UK with Amersfoort still taking the larger project orders away, but a network of integrators was to be established (Tenet, ONG etc) to handle any UK work. He said they wanted someone who could run a lean and mean operation and not afraid to make difficult decisions. I think Runcorn is being run down - as commented on in earlier blogs. Another great move by the UK Damaging Director.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

I have contributed to these discussions before, about the lies told to the UK Border agency and the corruption that went on with GTS. Having read the criticism of the projects group from people who really should know better, I feel I must put the record straight.

When I joined there was no QA systems for projects in place apart from the high level stuff you get in ISO9000:2000 which if the management understood the standard would realise was none prescriptive. With no detailed procedures in place and no leadership on this issue and deadlines to meet with customers, PM’s did what any professional would do and used their experience to sort out the mess. We tried to co-ordinate between us but as soon as something went wrong we always got blamed.

What was never explained is why we had a contractor PM who had been there for years who refused to use our own engineers in preference to agency engineers he kept hiring. He did this with the full knowledge of the management who knew we had our own engineers with little or no work. His boss and my boss knew about it but I didn’t work for him at another company before so that’s probably what made the difference!

What nobody understands is that this contractor PM who was responsible for the Bruce project with BP was paid a bonus for his work on the FEED study. They were his estimates of man hours and risk but he was was not removed/fired after the project man hours were out by thousands and he didn’t warn anybody until it was too late.

Anywhere else you would be out so why were management right up to the top protecting him at this time? I came across many irregularities in my time there, some were oversights but others had the smell about them.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Just heard that the new UK Sales manager is from Invensys and more recently Honeywell. As our new manager is in his 60’s, sort of perpetuates the myth that this is a retirement home for these guys. On the bright side, his previous experience in doomed companies should serve him well here. The Invensys mafia strikes again and looks after their own as always.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

I would observe that most of the bloggers on the Yokogawa UK site are either employed in projects or product sales. What I don’t understand is the role of the product managers. They are supposed to be marketing strategists, but apart from a few adverts placed originating from European marcom, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of activity in this area. When I talk to colleagues about the inside sales team, they seem to know all there is about the products and have little or no need to interact with the product managers. So that leaves a few people in the outside product sales team who should know all about the products they are selling anyway, and if not, why not? In systems sales we don’t have legions of product managers in the UK, but always manage to make our bids technically and sales wise OK. Every time I visit Runcorn, the product managers seemed glued to there desks, and from what I understand hardly ever visit customers. This is unlike other companys within Yokogawa Europe, who seem to get on fine without this role, or the product managers are proactive and always visiting customers. They seem to have got themselves in a position where they have a special category regarding company cars (high range BMW's etc) and presumably paid a lot more than a senior sales person. Only a guess, but could be possible to save over £250K p.a. by removing this function, training up the outside product sales more and adopting what other Yokogawa companies do. Every where else in the company we are being encouraged to question how we do things, so perhaps this is an are that needs attention.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Just found this March 2009 article on the "Automation Insider" website, discussed earlier in another blog.

http://www.iainsider.co.uk/IAIMar09.pdf

Yokogawa top brass take 40% pay cuts as third quarter net loss tops $400m and orders plunge by 25%
Triple whammy - This dramatic change in policy is the result of Yokogawa finding itself the victim of a triple whammy comprised of plummeting domestic demand, rapidly contracting overseas markets and a soaring yen which has appreciated by some 15% against the US dollar since September.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - Re - Yokogawa Projects:

I used to work for one of the major contractors in the UK. They had won a couple of projects about 6 or 7 years ago for a client based in the middle east. Our DCS vendor of choice was ABB, we knew the ABB system from previous projects, knew the project team really well and had some good pricing in place. After we were awarded the contract, we came under pressure from the client to change to Yokogawa from ABB.

Yokogawa's first quote was overall more expensive and we had severe doubts about their execution capability and experience on our first fieldbus project. Negotiations took place and the revised pricing was submitted. The new prices were unbelievable. We informed the client that something had to have been missed off but, due to the structure of the contract, we had to be 'guided' by the clients wishes. After we started the project it all became clear they were trying to pull a fast one.

I think the expression used in an earlier blog is appropriate, 'Caveat Emptor'. The whole project was hostile from the start and we were sure that Yokogawa was influencing the client behind our backs to pressurize us into accepting Yokogawa's claims for the extra work they should have bid for in the first place. The project was very late and caused many problems with our client. I know of many other UK contractors that have experienced similar problems with the UK operation. Some of their ex engineers now work for the contractors and have some interesting tales to tell as well. Good kit but not a good company.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Has anyone heard anything about what is to be happening with Euro T&M? There are stories about an integration and downsizing, but now it is quiet again and the budgets season are being made but with no feedback this time. Also why is the mw100 being recalled quietly with customers? Is it a hardware or software problems?

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

I agree with the comments about Emerson being a great place to work. I work in the UK, and since I joined a few years ago I have enjoyed everyday I have worked here. The systems and people are first class and the customer service delivered is outstanding. Sure there are problems like any other company, but there is willingness to sort them out together.

I was interviewed twice by Yokogawa over the last ten years. The first time I was told verbally I had the job but no contract ever arrived and no explanation. The second time I met with them you could see that nothing had actually progressed in the organisation. Talking to a few customers and ex colleagues about their experiences with Yokogawa led me to not discussing any further, even though they wanted me to work for them. Yokogawa weren’t even aware of my previous situation with them.

I was lucky that Emerson came a knocking. Like all buys, it's not only how the system performs, it's what’s behind it and what support you get. It appears that, unlike Yokogawa, Emerson people enjoy where they work so that there is no need to whinge and complain on these blogs.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

I worked at Yokogawa UK a few years ago in the projects group when we had an audit by a Manchester contractor to determine our suitability for work in the pharmaceutical industry. It was a joke and only lasted 30 minutes as it was so obvious that even a basic quality system for project management didn’t exist. The audit team made strong comments that Yokogawa were only interested in price and that the pre-bid quotes they had made were significantly cheaper due to the fact they had missed out some major parts and didn’t understand the risks or the project requirements. I notice that the UK has signed an agreement with Tenet Consultants as they know there own quality systems would not stand up to scrutiny by the nuclear industry. Anybody who is thinking of buying from them should ask to speak to customers on their last 10 projects to get feedback of how they perform!

Monday, November 30, 2009

Colleagues who have blogged previously keep missing the point that dissatisfaction and 'despair' arises from believing that you have been sold a pup career wise, when you left a promising career elsewhere for the opportunities and future you were promised at Yokogawa.

Once you realise there is no prospect of advancement, that there are no annual pay increases for the foreseeable future (you should ask your manager what's been put in next year's budget) and all your hard work and contributions are actually worthless because other parts of the company are so unprofessional and ill disciplined, it does get demoralizing.

Do I feel guilty about blogging, complaining and admitting I’m hanging around until something better comes along? NO I DON'T because I'm sure as hell my boss doesn’t lose an ounce of sleep worrying about the promises made to me and others when he convinced me to join 'Jokeagawa UK.'

Monday, November 30, 2009

The problems in the UK engineering group seem never to have been solved, and have been worse over the recent years. The issue is that almost every project with a global, important customer has developed a bad customer relationship, and engineering badly managed. The system sales people have only won their business due to global agreements won by others with the EPC happening to be located in the UK. The number of projects where Amersfoort was forced to intervene (Seagas, BP etc) became all too frequent. When we tried to help after customer insistence, the UK management behaved always like it was not their problem and we were faced with stresses from both the customer and the UK. We only became involved because the UK engineering could not provide solutions to customer concerns. If the UK could make successful projects, our involvement would not be there or needed. The UK engineers we dealt with are good, the problem is always from PM in the upwards direction.

Professional companies demand professional competence. Amersfoort management are also sometimes to blame, as they know it is the same people causing problems on each project. To have contractors in senior decision making positions is not a good idea. This is why the man-hours are always excessive. With the new facility in Amersfoort, I think the solution is, for now, based on experience, that all but the smallest projects are handled here, as we now have the experience and respect of the UK customer.

Sunday, November 29, 2009 - Response to, "Well said Mr William Gibbons" - Tuesday Nov. 24, 2009:

Most people I work with 'do care about taking the company forward' but are frustrated by the lack of professional management by people who obviously have no doubt about their own abilities. I think this is referred to as being 'unconsciously incompetent'.

An alternative proposal to leaving would be to remove the source of their feeling that they are in a 'pit of despair'. This would involve:

1. Remove any project director/manager who has not run a project to on time and on budget over the course of their employment with Yokogawa UK. To make it fairer, after an analysis of all the projects they have been responsible for, the net result should be a profit
2. Any systems sales person who has not made his target at any stage over the course of their employment and has not even covered their own costs should also be dismissed.
3. Anyone in netsol who has not made his target at any stage over the course of their employment and has not even covered their own costs should also be dismissed.
4. Remove any director who has not made a net profit over the course of their employment with Yokogawa UK. To make it fairer, the cumulative losses should be <£4M over the last 6 years.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - from Larry Bolton [larry.bolton@emerson.com]:

Re: Sunday, November 22, 2009 "Has anyone read any of the other blogs? The only company no one seems to complain about is Emerson, perhaps they are the perfect company to work for."

I have worked for Emerson for 8 1/2 years, after 22 years with Honeywell. I love it here. The company is dedicated to customer service, customer satisfaction, engineering and shareholder value. Do we have our problems? Absolutely. But everyone is commited to fixing them from the top down and the bottom up. I'm in sales and nowhere is there a company with better, more innovative products addressing customer needs. When you stop the politics then a company can shine. I'm proud to work here.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Well said Mr William Gibbons! Yokogawa UK is a great place to work. I find it incredible that a number of bloggers on this site have not taken time to read past posts, as they do indeed seek to identify and comment on a number of people outside of the management.

There is though one simple answer to the unhappy individuals – LEAVE. Please do not hide behind 'there are no jobs around'; if you spend time looking, you will find good engineering staff are in demand. Maybe you doubt your own abilities.

So it is simple really, go and work for someone else and leave Yokogawa UK to the people who care about taking it forward.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 - Re: Bill Gibbons blog:

Bill has fallen into the trap of being righteously indignant in front of his management and then being challenged to do something about it if he felt so strongly about it. It would have come across better if he hadn't criticized his colleagues in the way he did. To pick up on his earlier comment about 'having confidence in the systems and services he sells' it's a great pity he didn’t actually sell more, so projects would have at least something to do. People who live in glass houses...

JimPinto Note: It adds credibility when a people choose to use their name. And, it's too easy to criticize anonymously.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

BP again. A friend of mine who works at Yokogawa told me that the BP manager who flew to Tokyo to test and approve their system took early retirement shortly afterwards. He set himself up as a consultant and made a presentation at a Vigilance meeting in Germany in 2007 for which he was handsomely paid. Now I understand Yokogawa is a good customer for him. Nice work if you can get it.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I respect the right of everybody and anybody to hold an opinion, regardless of whether I agree with them or not. It's a pity Bill Gibbons doesn't understand this, and resorts to criticism of his colleagues who hold different views.

Most people who blog here are expressing real concerns. From what I can see and hear, they are obviously concerned at what's happening within Yokogawa. Unwarranted attacks on your colleagues and veiled threats of 'while it is possible to recognise individuals I work with, from the descriptions of their home life, job title or even bids they have won or lost' may give colleagues the impression he will, or more likely has, expressed his suspicions to management of which colleagues have been contributing to this blog. That is why this blog remains open to anyone who has an opinion but doesn't feel confident or chooses not to be identified. Long may it continue.

The best advice I can give him is to print your comments from the blog and have them inserted in his personnel file for his next review. Might take the heat off explaining his sales over the last three years.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

If Bill Gibbons took the trouble to actually read the comments that have been made, he would realize that nobody has critisized any work colleagues (apart from the PM) either in the UK or overseas. The comments are critisizing management and the policies. Perhaps he would have more credibility if he responds by making a statement in full support of his management and the way they are conducting business.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

As a former customer of Yokogawa on one of those not very successful projects mentioned previously, I now fully subscribe to the old saying 'Caveat Emptor'. Systems are great, engineering technical competence and delivery the worst I have ever experienced. You won't get fired for buying Yokogawa, but neither will you get a promotion afterwards.

Monday, November 23, 2009 - from Bill Gibbons [bill.gibbons@uk.yokogawa.com]:

I have worked for Yokogawa twice; I rejoined after a stint with an American competitor some 3 years ago. I came back to Yokogawa as I preferred the culture of cooperation and integration that exist here, compared with what I experienced elsewhere.

There are too many topics on this blog for me to attempt to comment on them all. However, I will say this: while it is possible to recognise individuals I work with, from the descriptions of their home life, job title or even bids they have won or lost, what I cannot recognize here is the company I work for.

I enjoy working at Yokogawa and I find the willingness of my colleagues both in the UK and overseas to assist me if requested, refreshing when compared to my experiences with previous employers.

It would seem to me that huge amounts of this blog are written by no more that a handful of current and ex-employees, who seem intent on trying to drag us all into the pit of despair they inhabit. I for one like the company I work for, the job I do, the people I work with and I have confidence in the systems and services I sell.

Monday, November 23, 2009 - Re: "Has anyone read any of the other blogs?"

Sounds like a Yokogawa Marcom comment to me. Perhaps this bolog is serving a purpose in exposing what it is really like to work here at the moment. If the blogger took the trouble (and had the time, but if you work in marcom you will have) you would see there are plenty of negative comments on the Emerson blog but obviously not as many as we have. Maybe it is something to do with how our company is managed?

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Has anyone read any of the other blogs? The only company no one seems to complain about is Emerson, perhaps they are the perfect company to work for. Or perhaps the Emerson blog is edited. An ex-colleague of mine and member of the Emerson sales team did add negative comments on to the Emerson blog regarding the management of the sales force. For some reason these comments are no longer on the blog. Just thought to mention it.

Jim Pinto Note: I do NOT edit any weblogs - no reason to. I do exclude specific names (except for CEO-level) and blogs with un-necessary foul language.

Friday, November 20, 2009

What sort of company does the 'BP Account Manager' work for if he thinks he will lose his job after losing one order? I bet there were other factors involved; presumably he's still there?

Friday, November 20, 2009

I have worked for both Yokogawa and Siemens. I was at Siemens when all the bribery stuff kicked off in the telecoms group. Didn’t notice anything funny in the Siemens PA section on overseas bids but Yokogawa definitely had some strange pricing agreements overseas. Perhaps the Japanese are more subtle/clever? UK bids were straightforward, from what I understood, most if not all of the losses on UK business was down to incompetence in systems/projects. Good systems but not as good as they claim.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Most of this is just rubbish. Check out the following and stop reading this garbage. Does this sound like a company just trying to survive?

• November 10, 2009 Differential pH sensor features sealed reference cell for long life and stability
• November 4, 2009 Yokogawa Releases Enhanced Version of CENTUM® VP
• November 2, 2009 Yokogawa Releases Enhanced Version of ProSafe-RS Safety Instrumented System – New modules for large-scale plant applications.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Re - Wednesday, July 25, 2007, Yokogawa wins a BIG Chevron order away from Honeywell on the Yoko blog. "Yokogawa said it has received an order from U.S. energy company Chevron Corp. for an oil refinery management system estimated at US$813 million; euro606.6 million).".

Yet another lost account for us the competition. If you look at the Yoko web blog on here, market share is still the aim by dumping with key global accounts but there may be other factors we had not thought about. If you Google for ‘Yokogawa + GE’ you find lots of info on how they have won business in the past.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

If that's true about managers claiming for fictitious customers visits and subsistence, they want shooting or firing at the very least. It's a disgrace. I too hope someone from HQ is reading this. My blood is boiling!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The editor and journal referred to in the 6/11/09 blog is Andrew Bond of AUTOMATION INSIDER (not Auto information). I don’t think he was a pain; he just didn't get sensible answers to the questions he asked. On the Vigilance roadshow at Brands Hatch a few years ago, he tied 2 of our Directors up in knots over the defence of the Number-1 statement. Everybody from Yokogawa was cringing at the explanations given. It's all in the past now as we have other things to concentrate on, like survival!

JimPinto Note: This posting is based on an article in the April 2003 issue of the Industrial Automation INSIDER newsletter. This has been substantially modified and includes comments by the blogger not found in the original text.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

As the Account Manager for BP for one of the unlucky competitors who nearly lost his job after losing the BP Bruce account/project, after reading the Yokogawa blog I now understand what I was competing against. There is a world of difference between competing fairly and pricing so it inevitably means the customer has no choice but to accept the lower bid (I hesitate to use the phrase dumping). If is true the h/w and s/w cost less to buy than make, no wonder it is not a level playing field. A financial search on the UK operation shows massive cumulative losses over the last 5 years. So how much other business was won by these methods? Now the economic climate has changed the foolishness of how Yokogawa operates, is there for all to see, you can’t support activities like this indefinitely. The comments from the blog of the 6th November re Yokogawa getting caught bribing university professors (it's also detailed in the novel by Micheal Crighton – Rising Sun) are probably not appropriate for me to comment on, apart from that old saying that springs to mind about 'leopards not changing their spots'.

On the positive side, I find that Yokogawa's reputation to deliver on time to customers expectations in the North Sea have suffered badly and my accounts hopefully realise that buying the cheapest is not always the most sensible option.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

From the blog of the 6th November, literal translation of 'Snoeien' is to cut back dead stalks to allow new flowers to grow. As the MD of Marex has been spending time in HQ lately perhaps it means changes soon for UK. It may be that Marex is closed to there old business which is more or less in Tokyo anyway and becomes new UK sales office also with London sales office, providing old issues with GKN pension fund can be hidden successfully from the trustees.

2 Country Managers are not normally required and the Marex MD is very popular in Amersfoort. Is everybody aware that Runcorn is the only office that is owned by the company in Europe as all others are leased and is currently valued at €950k? Watch out for the for sale signs and a new boss.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

I think the respondee to my missive of 21st October misses completely the point I was trying to make. Discussion and an honest appraisal of our current strengths and weaknesses are the only way to move forward. If our sales force isn’t adequate, then it either needs more training until it is, or new hires. Since I joined, my frustrations have been many, but hopefully our Japanese colleagues will read these blog comments and speak to us directly without involving the source of everybody’s frustration i.e. Amersfoort and Rota.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A few observations on the financial results for H1 which are now available and make for interesting reading. Orders and Sales up from initial forecast, and operating losses held at -$27M, net loss improved to -$161M for H1. Seem to be guilty of late? Re-evaluation of assets/investments, but presume there was a limit to how much bad news could be reported in 2008.

The ratio of where the business comes from hasn't really changed that much, with Japan at 47% (but market saturation at home) and the market they really need to break into, the US, languishing behind with a $6M loss for H1. These ratios haven't really changed that much since 2005, so it makes you wonder how we were aiming for number 1 with so low a market share in key areas. Can only assume those super intelligent investors spotted this, or not as the case may be. As has been said before, if this were a US corporation, the execs would have been exited a long time ago and the stock flung in the can.

One subtle change seems to be the re-classification of product groups where Industrial Recorders sits in the control domain now and not T&M. Recorders used to produce 50% of the profit and now presumably make the control group look healthier. A move to lessen embarrassment at the top?

Year end forecast is now $2.9B (Control only) sales and a net loss of $222M, not bad for a company employing 18,000 people. Much worse sales/employee ratios than the competition, but that's another story.

Ironic that Invensys is growing and in profit and out of all the majors, we are the worst performing.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Earlier comments about Electrofact hit the spot accurately. From the day of the takeover, HQ in the old Amersfoort building was always most profitable. The funds from the analyzers helped to pay for all the recorder business and systems business. We broke into new markets in the US and strengthened our position in Europe. The money we could re-invest to R+D was always limited which is why our product range always looks old in the end. When transmitters (not flow) joined the camp in the early 90's, it was always analyzers which funded the development. Sure we had some new product disasters such as the 150 but this was a joint activity with Tokyo who always in my opinion had the hidden agenda. We had our own MD and when he had to leave, the structure and spirit changed and disappeared. Next we lost the transmitter business to Tokyo. Sales are down, market share decreases year on year over the last 5 years, this must be the reverse midas mentality/strategy. You never recover from such mistakes. Ask our competition.

Contributors on the other blogs say that their top management monitor and read these blogs. I really hope ours do and do something about it!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

To our friends on the island with the funny currency, do not despair. Since the pay freeze, your managers not in sales have been making so many customer visits and claiming the mileage and meals, we are sure your business will be back on track soon with all these activities. Last 2 years no visits made; now so many you cannot believe it. Perhaps your managers are also your MP’s. SAP now gives you so much detail you should take a look yourselves.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

It's nice to know that the person (from 21st Oct. blog) with experience of both Emerson and Yokogawa thinks that the Emerson sales people in the UK "are of better quality (experience, education, etc)." We must try much much harder to convince him otherwise. Very motivational.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I thought long and hard about posting here, as I believed there had to be a better way of expressing your concerns and frustrations. Unfortunately, I now realise there isn't, and join my colleagues who have already posted earlier.

I joined Yokogawa UK, not because of the products/benefits/nice car etc. but because I believed in my manager, his team and what he wanted us all to achieve. We had a great team spirit and took pride in achieving together the fantastic success that we had. We had support and felt valued.

Despite all this, the man in charge always managed to make us all feel insignificant and isolated. The previous blog about him turning up at our sales meeting and demotivating us, is totally true. Almost every sales person (including foreign colleagues) has a tale of how negative he is against the company and his managers. Even his boss doesn't appear to like him, but nobody can understand why nothing is ever done about it. All the sales engineers know the story of Harry Hauptmeijer at the Netsol meeting in Manchester telling them that, if this person didn't perform he was out. Nothing happened and that was 3 years ago.

We knew the writing was on the wall of how things were going to be when the first cuts in April took place in the most successful group, yet system sales, which loses all the money, escaped intact. We just know that if the results continue as they are, we won't be given 6 years to turn it round; we will be out without so much as a thanks.

People (especially us) aren't respected anymore for who they are, what they have contributed and what they achieve. HR is just a tool of management, and I don’t know one individual in the company that trusts them or feels they can approach them. Complaints/concerns are just ignored. I don't recognise the company anymore and with all the stories of corruption, hiring illegal workers, staff turnover, etc. I now understand why my manager probably chose to leave. I would too if I could.

The company has definitely lost its moral compass in many ways. Somehow, we still manage to keep our spirits up. But when the economic situation improves, believe me, there will be an exodus so fast it won't be believed.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

These messages are too negative. We have many successes and are failing less than our competition. We have new DCS’s and upgraded world class safety systems, new instrumentation with 2-wire magmeter. We still invest for all our futures. Be positive.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

I have worked in the UK for many years and it saddens me to see what is happening. In a company of only 60 people, it is wrong that we never see the md. I can think of at least 6 people, all with over 10 years service, who have left over the years, and not once did he make any effort to be there to personally thank them for their contributions. We used to know where this company was going and were motivated by our manager; but now there is nothing, only gloom and day-to-day drudgery.

The md made a bad impression almost since he joined. After a meeting, where we were told we had exceeded again all our targets and everyone was given a thank you present from our manager, he joined us afterwards and completely demotivated us by saying that the company was in a bad way and that we were selfish to celebrate our success in our silos. He didn’t even appear to know how many people worked in our department. Nobody believes him when he offers explanations for our current situation. Most think he doesn’t care.

Since I joined, the problem has always been the systems/projects group. They have always made losses and nothing has been done to correct this. Other departments have always made money but never enjoyed bonuses from their efforts because the losses have always been so huge. The outside sales guys are again demotivated and always complaining about things, but don’t have the guts to say to the manager what they say amongst themselves.

If I could afford to leave or retire now, I would.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - First comment from Yokogawa Belgium.

If it the truth that our offices are to close, we to can blame our manager. Here also the morale is bad and the manager has done nothing for years. He comes to his work office at 11 am every day and leaves at 4 to go to his home. This behaviour is since he was not made regional manager 5 years ago. He complains to everyone that the company is going nowhere and makes a bad atmosphere everywhere. Our customers will not like dealing with Amersfoort as we offer the best service.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Latest rumours are: 30 more Amersfoort HQ jobs to go, no details yet. Tokyo requested much details of glass electrode making (back to investigating automation of process again?) Subs in Benelux and UK to lose offices and people under restructure of NW area, more Account Managers at HQ to cover job cuts in subs. Tokyo insisting on big price increases across range and insisting profit forecast remains same or improves.

What planet are they on? Competition is reducing prices everywhere, discounts to our customer are already highest ever. Does anyone know what 'Project Snoeien' is? a few hushed management conversations in the former Norit hatchetmans office are picked up.

Friday, November 6, 2009

George Orwell has been mentioned in a previous comment and it is true. The goal setting, 'To be Number 1 in the process automation world' is like what happened in the other novel by this famous Englishman, Animal Farm.

You have to go back 10 years to Mikawe's idea of ETS or Enterprise Technology solutions, to realise where the seed of this ridiculous objective of being a global first was made. After Uchida became President, he did so after many years of working in the US. He sees himself as a Japanese version of Jack Welch of GE. He knows Welch from the GE-Yokogawa JV which ended in shame with several Yokogawa Directors being arrested for bribing University professors. Colleagues in the US will state what a strange man he is, and nothing really progressed when he was in charge.

All was told to him (which was true) by the salesman was that Yokogawa was 'Yoko who?' in the market, and there was no branding of Yokogawa anywhere. This was the birth of a new campaign called internally BEAT (Beat Emerson and Triumph).

This work started in 2002 and John Berra from Emerson heard about it. Berra and Uchida had dinner at Berra's country club and (according to Uchida) he refused to sit down with Berra until Berra admitted that there was an internal program called 'Kill Yokogawa' which Uchida found grossly offensive and Berra was forced to cancel it. BEAT had then to become 'Vigilance' in case Berra found out. Vigilance was a big internal success, the people were motivated but more importantly, it was felt that at last something was happening. But typical Yokogawa, Vigilance was not for all. It didn't affect T&M, Netsol or services, so much for one company.

After the disastrous result of 2005, Uchida felt he had to do something to silence the normally passive shareholding institutions who were not satisfied with the overall performance. This made the 'Number one by 2010' statement. Here in Amersfoort, nobody from the president down could offer any help on how this was to be achieved. It meant overcoming Siemens who are 3 times larger, and Emerson who are 2 times as big. We had to grow between $3-6Billion in 5 years to become the number 1, depending on which criteria was used to say who was number one.

In 2007 the 'Animal Farm' strategy started. What Uchida meant, but did not explain, we were told was that we would be number one in only the fields we operated (Four legs good, two legs better = number 1 good, number 1 in what we do better). Even internally we couldn't understand this. Number 1 at least meant being bigger than Emerson. We used to receive an industry newsletter from and English editor called Auto Information. This man became hated in HQ as he kept asking the same questions as we had done, but everything that was said to him made it worse. When we again asked the same question of managers about this questions, we stopped having copies of the magazine soon afterwards. We used to think the press were so stupid, along with the shareholders, as none of these objectives were possible without buying a big company and Japanese companys don't do that.

Between Uchida's statement in 2005 and the collapse of the goal in 2008, nothing actually changed. Apart from a small analyser company, no companies were bought. Normal growth happened, but nothing to bridge that $3-6Billion gap. Most now think this was Uchida trying to save his neck, or being on some doctors medicine.

The original internal message of Vigilance was that we are all one global Yokogawa, everybody counts, everybody is valued, we are all in this together. The result is that now people are fired to cut costs but the Presidents and managers that took us down this route to save their own necks are still here. It is clear that 'ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS' when it comes to paying the price for Uchida's mistakes.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Why the panic? We are not like the banking industry whose managers can’t cope because they have never experienced anything like this before. We have all these experienced Foxboro guys who have been through this type of situation before many times and come through it. It's easy, either cause or be a part of the problem, let your natural 'unconscious incompetence' take over and pretend (or believe you can) to do something, then wait a while until you can join a mirror image company of where you once were to start all over again. You can also watch endless re-runs of 'groundhog day' but don't forget not to learn any lessons.

The Invensys blog is so bad they even have to archive the stuff. On second thoughts, let's all panic because there are probably more Invensys people on their way over here.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The whole issue of MBAs running (ruining) the process automation majors are a topic that our masters in Yokogawa Japan ought to study carefully. Taking Europe as an example, the current President had no real experience apart from a fairly anonymous career as a project engineer, then working in a sales office. But hey, studies for an MBA and he’s an out of the box business expert.

Wrong, the problem with the MBA is the same as any new graduate with say a Masters in engineering. You know the theory, had some practical exposure but the competence bit comes much later when you can demonstrate you are actually good at what you do and put into practice what you have been taught. The problem seems to be that the MBA is seen as an immediate passport to running for higher office, competence and capability are seen as read. The saying the devil is in the detail is so true when running any type of business, equal concern for customers, shareholders and employees make a successful business, mutual dependability is the key.

Perhaps we need to turn back the clock to having savvy engineers who know the business, can talk the customer’s language, have credibility and knows what it takes to run a process automation company

Friday, October 30, 2009

Yet another Yokogawa expected financial results press release from 10/27/2009.

Losses for H1 only $153M! Still aiming for number 1? Don't think so. 20 years ago, Yokogawa was number 1 by a mile but has not been for years. Why isn't this viewed as a decline similar to what happened at Foxboro, Honeywell etc? Poor management and a strategy stuck in the 1950's are to blame. Thank goodness for patient and understanding shareholders!

Revision to FY09 full-year forecast:
After a careful review of the negative impact on sales of the change in photonics business strategy, the strong yen, and other factors, the revised full-year forecast will be announced on the same day that the FY09 1st half results are announced (expected announcement date: November 10, 2009).

Friday, October 23, 2009

Yokogawa UK is not the company I joined and now is not a nice place to work. I would estimate that over 60% of the workforce has left in the last 3 years, including the best managers. When will the MD and his toothless minions realise that motivation is more than a few rah-rah words at the staff company meeting twice a year? There are still people here who have never met him, or know who he is. The comments earlier about subprime management are oh-so-true here.

Also, what ever happened to the great Yokogawa team building exercise in the UK, and the wearing of the coloured hats? Remember the MD was a yellow hat - isn't that supposed to be an inspirer? (lol) How much time was wasted on that? I wonder if the colour of your hat was a factor when you were chosen to be made redundant? Just imagine the process, all colours "in the hat", except yellow please.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Perhaps the UK PM with extensive experience of Emerson and Yokogawa should spend more time doing what he is paid for rather than composing egotistical drivel or working on the RAMCON-I project in BU07.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Yokogawa Europe just heard that marcom are discussing what to do about the blog activity. Options:

1. Memo to staff to say they are damaging their own company by blogging here.
2. Set up an internal (positive comments only!) blog on the intranet for all the HAPPY employees.
3. Marcom to blog on this weblog with a positive view of the company. Meeting called by the Foxboro exiles.

Friday, October 23, 2009

As a new arrival from Invensys, I can say that it will be our experience that guides Yokogawa Europe from the crisis and save you from yourselves. Please try doing your daily jobs better rather than posting on this blog. Unhappy and unsuccessful people at Invensys only post on their blog page because they can't do their own jobs correctly. Yokogawa will become a true leader in automation. Please motivate yourselfs and follow the rules.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Up until the problems of this year, we were always told that we are a company going to the top and, we will be number 1 by next year. This was told to us all by Harry himself.

Analyzes of the facts are opposite. Our sales in Europe are no more than €350M. If you removed all the international projects works (Saudi Kayan etc) the true value of the business is more real like €130-150M with nearly 1,000 peoples. This is nothing, and is where we came from 10 years ago. Our normal business in Europe is very low and our competition knows this. A friend of mine in competition says we cause fear in their salesmen due the advertisings, but after a while everyone realizes it is back to the normal Yokogawa.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Yokogawa Europe's obsession with hiring ex Foxboro people has caused the problems we have today in the products BU. The first arrived in the mid 90’s and had no clue as to the modern market conditions, thinking that Foxboro was still Nu.1 in transmitters and flow, and that ABB, Endress, Khrone, etc. were 2nd rate players. For sure the business took off in some areas, but it would anyway when you promote with salesforce and expensive adverts/promotion, that is a natural happening.

When he became ill he brought in his friend as marketing manager who never did the job fully as he returned to his old job. When analysis merged with flow and transmitters, he went to marcom and another manager, not from Foxboro, who had no experience of our customers and markets, was brought in by Harry. He had no support from the Foxboro mafia (I like this term).

So far we have from Foxboro Harry at the top, Country managers in Italy, Benelux and GB (tried 2 both failing). Senior positions in IA marketing are now influenced by ex-Foxboro people brought in by Harry. All the valuable experiences of people is no longer here, as they have either left or been removed and nobody can understand why. The current BU manager is Harry's friend from his time in France and he only does what the Japanese want and not what Europe subs need. We are thinking here that the next step is to hold Foxboro reunions here, to save them the monies on traveling. There is plenty of space shortly in the area where they make the project engineering.

Friday, October 23, 2009

We at Rota-Yokogawa are also like Amersfoort, in crisis for our flowmeter making activities. Last few years have seen big investments in our plant, but now we hear that, due to the crisis at YHQ, many things are possible. Some time recently we had a visit from a senior chief from Amersfoort and a customer from the company Danaher. We were told that this visit was to introduce as a possible OEM partner. After a meeting in YHQ, our collegue was told privately that Harry is trying to sell Rota to these people. YHQ would not move on the 12% R+D fee we have to pay on our best selling digital Yewflo, and want to manufacture Rotamass in China, and are to bring in a new ultrasonic technic. Harry concludes we have no real business futures at Rota, so we must go. He uses analyzers as example of why it must not cause problems, he says it works ok. All existing products parts for flowmeter-making will be at the modification centre, like transmitters and analysers are and standard delivery from China. Danaher would get the plant and the Rotameter, nothing else. We should MBO please.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Good news for Yokogawa. Since we have so many Foxboro employees working within the company already, it is great to learn we have hired one more who just left Invensys (Foxboro) to join the team. I hope he can figure out how to make things work around here.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

I am a 25 year veteran of Yokogawa and have worked in both Europe and the US.

The issue of the connection with Yokogawa and Foxboro is more perhaps an emotional and cultural problem than anything else. Since the 50’s, when Yokogawa first manufactured Foxboro products under licence, there has always been a Foxboro comfort blanket. Even the GS sheets were copied directly from Foxboro. The EJ/EJA/EJX pressure transmitters are a copy of a product that Foxboro couldn't manufacture, the resonant wire sensor. Yokogawa are not innovative in process automation, they are copyists and a copy is never as good as the original.

This is why they also hire so many Foxboro people; it makes them feel as they still are connected to their roots. In an attempt to be more global, guess whose organisational model they adopted: surprise, surprise, Invensys/Foxboro. Most of the Foxboro people in HQ still carry a torch for the good old days at Soest. The Foxboro mafia lives on.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Some more detail from the blog of 16th October re Yokogawa UK, GTS and the Border Agency. It was the customer services dept that first became concerned about the engineers from GTS in Egypt working on the South Hook project. This project had been taken away from the UK and was being built in Holland at SCE and the UK MD was not happy about it. It seems it was agreed with SCE that the UK could commission the system but it was on a fixed price basis. This is why the GTS company was used. The GTS engineers were travelling to the UK on visitor/holiday visas, not work visas. To avoid detection, they used to fly to different UK airports every time and the UK service engineers had to pick them up from the airport. A bit of an inconvenience to meet someone at Newcastle airport and have to drive them down to South Wales!

It was then decided to use the GTS engineers on the BP Wytch Farm and Bruce projects to reduce costs and supposedly increase profits. It was around this time it was discovered by a project manager that GTS did not have the correct visas and would not be able to obtain the Tier 2 approval from the Border Agency as the work they were doing was not of a sufficiently specialist nature and the skills to carry out this work were already present in the Yokogawa UK workforce or local temporary labour could have been used. At first, the UK management said it was GTS’s problem but then realised it wasn’t as they were aware of the visa irregularities and also there were company insurance liability issues that they were ignoring. What brought everything to a head was when GTS realised that their costings for hourly rates were based on 12 hours/day, 7 days/week utilisation and site were insisting on 3 weeks on/1 week off shift patterns.

Faced with GTS walking away in the middle of a project, it was agreed that the 1 week idle time would be spent by GTS in Runcorn working as engineers on projects, again standard type of work. None of this work was offered to staff engineers with the result there was no work for them and one by one slowly they were let go. It was then the projects director/service manager/financial director under the guidance of the HR manager made a declaration to the border agency that these GTS engineers were needed as their specialist skills were unavailable internally and elsewhere due to a skills shortage, completely untrue.

At one stage, due to the costs restraints imposed by the GTS management, their engineers were actually living/sleeping/eating at the Christleton court facility as they had no money for hotels/decent level of subsistence etc. A few misguided staff tried to feed them until it was pointed out they were stealing work from staff project engineers. If you google the web for ‘Yokogawa and GTS’ you will find plenty of CV’s from GTS engineers that have details of their time spent working in the UK for Yokogawa. The blog of October 19th re the current service manager may or may not be correct, but more likely is that as he and the projects director know where the bodies are buried, they may be immune to a period of unemployment, unlike the rest of us, hence the cushy jobs they now enjoy.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Having worked for both Emerson and Yokogawa in senior product-marketing roles in the UK, I can offer a unique insight into the approaches to market of both companies.

Emerson has the widest range of Industrial Automation products in the market place. They are an American owned company which have had, and continue to retain, a very dominant market share (~60%) in the North American market. However they have evolved as an organisation to develop products and supply channels to meet the needs of the global market. Although their global market share (~35%) is lower than in their local market, they are market leader in the Industrial Automation global market.

Although Yokogawa has a smaller range of products than Emerson, they represent the closest competitor to Emerson in terms of product quality and performance. Yokogawa have also become the dominant market leader (~60%) in the Japanese market. However they have so far not been as successful in the global market as Emerson.

In Emerson, employee involvement and empowerment are essential to increase motivation to improve product quality and customer service. The first stage in the process is informing the employees of their value to the company. The future direction of the company provides both security and opportunities for the employee to develop within the organisation. Short term SMART goals are set during an annual appraisal. Regular monitoring allows feedback and rewards to the employee of their progress to meeting these goals. Through this consultation process a partnership between the employees and Emerson is formed and benefits are distributed evenly throughout the organisation. Finally successful employees are empowered to execute the plans developed at the strategic level. Increased morale levels leave individuals feeling part of Emerson rather than just being employed by the company. There is no similar process from what I can see within Yokogawa.

The benefit of this approach is that employees are motivated, as well as the company achieving its objectives. However there is a very real danger that employees will take this as a subversion strategy to tell them what to do. There are already clear indicators that some employees within Emerson do share this theory. Employees can react by taking the attitude of doing what they are told, rather then thinking for themselves. This statement goes totally against the principle of empowerment. If this trend continues, the morale of employees will reduce significantly. An indirect outcome could be that disaffected employees will appear arrogant to customers, as they doing too literally what they are told by Emerson.

The corporate culture of Yokogawa has developed and been tailored to meet the needs of their domestic market. The Japanese economy is very complex, with many Japanese companies holding small financial stakes in other Japanese companies and each other. This is of course illegal elsewhere globally, but not Japan. This policy makes it very difficult for companies outside Japan to penetrate their domestic market. The outcome is that Yokogawa has a similar market share to Emerson in their respective domestic markets. A dominant market share within your domestic market provides an opportunity to maximise profits through higher pricing and reducing costs. In the industrial automation market, particularly in Japan, customers are more willing to buy products from local suppliers at a higher price than from foreign suppliers, typically 3-4 times the price elsewhere. Whereas Emerson has transitioned their strategic planning to the global market basis, Yokogawa is still aimed at their domestic market. Consequently Yokogawa does not have a similar approach to set the strategic objectives for the organisation.

Yokogawa does have world area marketing groups (Europe, North America and Asia Pacific), but the relationship to corporate planning is very difficult to qualify. One very basic problem is language. Although most Japanese people with Yokogawa do speak English, they are more comfortable speaking their local language. Consequently there can be considerable noise in the communication of their messaging. Mis-interpretation in the meaning of these communications creates confusion and great frustration with the world area marketing groups.

In the past Yokogawa have developed me-too products, based on the designs from Emerson. This strategy has reduced the element of risk while launching products in the Japanese market where Emerson has very little presence. However Yokogawa have had to revise this policy to establish themselves in the global market. Due to their connections in the electronics industry, Yokogawa have had access to brand new technology which has the potential to transform the industrial automation sector. Although some customers have seen the benefit of this new technology, the majority have stayed with the tried-and-tested technology from Emerson. However an interesting development is that Emerson is looking at using a similar technology. So Emerson could be following Yokogawa with a me-too product range. This scenario will have a major impact in the industry and propel Emerson to even greater heights of market acceptance.

Although innovative product development will propel Yokogawa into the market, the process of existing product enhancements is very tortuous. Again, communication or language, is a major factor, and the corporate culture does not help. Yokogawa has a very introverted approach, compared to the market-led strategy from Emerson. Their main driver for product enhancement is whether it can be done rather then asking whether it will be something customers want to buy. However once they decide to do an enhancement, the development process is completed very quickly. The net result is that the enhanced product generally gets launched to the market in the same time.

Yokogawa tend to be less successful than Emerson in their marketing strategy. Emerson focuses on the strengths of their product range to develop a benefits message to customers. Coupled with their market leadership position in the market, this has created a very strong corporate identity. On the other hand Yokogawa are less selectable in the marketing and present both their strengths and weaknesses in all their product messaging. Although some customers find this novel approach very reassuring, by far the majority of the market still has the perception that Emerson is better.

The biggest gulf between the two companies continues to be the resource available to both companies on a global basis. Resource allocation is fundamental component of the control system to ensure the objectives of the strategy are achieved.

Although marketing activities, such as advertising, are useful it is essential to have enough sales people to visit customers, talk about this application and promote solutions. Most customers in the industrial automation market still buy products from people rather than the company. Emerson has approximately twice as many sales people in the UK than Yokogawa, and are of better quality (experience, education, etc). Therefore customers have more opportunity and time to talk to sales people from Emerson than Yokogawa.

The other main functional department where there is a massive gulf in resource planning, is Operations. Yokogawa delivers all it’s product from a factory in China. China was selected to reduce manufacturing costs, but delivery times are longer than those from Emerson to European customers, sometimes approaching 8-12 weeks for standard product. Therefore if a customer needs a product in a short time, Yokogawa can rule itself out, even though it might already have a customer preference. Also the process of gaining local approvals is more complicated than Emerson because they are all centralised in one place and outside the region.

The process of generation of ideas for new products and product enhancements flows freely within Emerson. However it could be suggested that there are too many ideas or suggestions are overwhelming the development resources within Emerson. Also there is a danger that Emerson will dilute its marketing message away from core products to a more generalist supplier. As the old saying goes "jack of all trades, master of none". Another potential issue is that these ideas are coming from senior management. Although they will have considerable experience they might not be as up-to-date with the current requirements of customers.

Although I share many of the frustrations of my colleagues at Yokogawa, the way forward I feel is an intelligent discussion of what can be done to improve the situation in an ever competitive market place.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Don't worry colleagues in GB. If things were really bad, would your MD and his cronis spend over €3k visiting the Directors institution in London for a nice day out? Sap and gossip is a really good reporting system. Whose job paid for this?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The problems in the UK are not the making of Netsol, but the merger of YISS in 1999/2000. Ever since the merger, all the profit made by products and service disappeared due to the year-on-year failure by the systems/projects group. There is one salesman, sorry account manager, oops business development – power, who has been here for 7 years and not brought in one order. Have any of the orders in systems made a profit? I work really hard and stupidly worry about these things, I'm in the wrong job and will request a transfer.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Surely the Yokogawa GB OBN should go to the former Customer Service Manager. Promoted by the MD despite having no management experience, a period of blind obedience for several years gets him promoted to a systems sales role in Scotland and brings in probably the least profitable order in the company's history. No orders since though, which is probably a good thing. Apparently according to one of his ex-colleagues, his past experiences in sales included a bit of import/export.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Yokogawa Europe T&M is in deep trouble. 2 years ago after losing Phillips as an account, sales dropped by over 50%. The T&M Top Gun now spends his time training everyone on blue sheets and responding to advertisements. Another great Harry hire, took over a growing and profitable business and then ruined it. Did he come from Invensys/Foxboro?

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I have only recently joined Yokogawa UK and must admit it's one of the biggest mistakes I think I have ever made. The morale here is the worst I have ever seen. People do care, but there is no support or visibility from the management. I am told by our accounts dept that technically we would be classed as bankrupt/insolvent if it was a normal business as we can't pay for the goods from HQ most months. Part of a new-joiners induction is being told we are all "One European Organisation". This is laughable, as any reasonable sized orders are handed over to Holland as we are not trusted to deal with our customers. We are told we work in a democratic organisation, it is as long as it suits Holland. I think they all deserve one another in management but I feel sorry for the majority of the staff as they are talented people. Can't wait for the market to pick up, and I'm off!

Monday, October 19, 2009

I used to work in the services group in the UK and left around the time the 1st redundancies were announced. It was a bit of a shock to find your boss is being laid off, even more of a shock to him, as he was one of the really compliant managers. I spoke to him a few weeks later and was happy because his wife had sorted it out for him. She’s Japanese and used to work at Yokogawa HQ in Japan. He reckons he won't get promoted, but equally so he will never get fired. Obviously it's who you know again. Wonder if this service will be offered to anyone else.

Monday, October 19, 2009

A good way to to reduce costs in GB is to stop product managers (analysis and netsol) riding round in 5 series BMW’s. Most senior managers in HQ don't get this level of cars. The car policy is ridiculous. Also, why does the financial controller ride around in that gas guzzling, pollution emitting monstrosity? Does the car & environmental policy bypass him?

Monday, October 19, 2009 - Yokogawa GB blog:

Why is it not a surprise that GB has these problems. Every QA audit fails them and nothing is ever done. Poor quality of people (mostly at the top) = poor results. The solution is not to hire a contractor to do the work of the project manager and the services manager and still keep them on full salary. If they can't do the job, remove them. You should be asking also: What is the relationship with this contractor and the MD, and why was he not hired by HQ? There is a reason.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Nice to see this blog getting some attention at long last. I agree about what needs to be done to shift us from being an exporter to a global corporation. I don't think this will ever happen, due to the culture that exists with the parent in Japan.

Nobody robustness (Employee’s and customers alike) who has ever experienced Yokogawa Systems/Products will criticize them for their performance, and that is not the issue. The issue seems to me to be that we have lost a lot of the inspirational leaders at middle management level, along with really knowledgeable people with Industry and application knowledge, and replaced with 'sub prime management'. It is interesting that most of the senior new hires are qualified in Marketing and not Engineering. We are not talking about an engineers BS supplemented by a marketing qual, but people who have never seen a process plant before, let alone a pressure transmitter or control system. They all seem to know the "words to the song but can't carry the tune". This is a big problem for the Japanese. They see no limits to enthusiasm, the right things being said, but can't spot the BS.

This depletion of knowledge and talent will make us no better than everyone else. From the financial side, things have changed dramatically. The focus is totally on the bottom line, to the exclusion of everything else. It's the most simple equation there is: Revenue generated – costs = profit and shareholders pay back. Not enough revenue? Slash the costs and you don't need a marketing qual to understand that. The cultural difference is that in Japan, management foregoes bonuses/pay rises (really), the factory is put on a 3 day week (subsidized by the Japanese government) and in some cases salary reductions for general management (not the people we deal with). Over here and in Europe people just get laid off.

It has never before been more self evident that we are not a global "all for one, one for all" organization, but are only here to serve the interests of our parents in Japan HQ.

Monday, October 19, 2009 - Yokogawa is a good place to be:

This site obviously claims to serves a useful purpose, but c'mon guys - let's not get like the other competitor blogs that are just whining and moaning. If you have a genuine beef about anything, there are plenty of channels for you to get your points across. Bring it up with your supervisor, or post it on the company secure staff input mailbox. Let's not hang the dirty washing out in public. There are plenty of worse places to work than Yokogawa.

Monday, October 19, 2009

In Yokogawa Germany, we had similar troubles as GB. Our morale was low due to 3 leaders in 5 years; but our new leader is settled and supportive. He has a good relations with Harry, but also knows that Harry does not have the real power - it is the Japanese colleague who sits at the same desk. Your MD is so negative about everything, really with Harry. He is negative with all the sales people from everywhere at IA meetings and it cannott be believed how he should speak like this for Harry. We are told that the HR manager in Amersfoort knows why Harry won’t take the actions with him. You should speak with the Japanese friend.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

We are at the airport, travelling to the Yokogawa Europe latest Vigilante meeting. We have to pay for our own coffee but are grateful the company pays for our flights in our own time. Really good that most of us don't have a family to be with. Its our first team meeting of the day. Agenda is – 1) Why have you no orders, 2) Why aren't you working hard enough, 3) What can you do to make it better?

Going from "No 1 next year" (lol) to just surviving is strange. It is obviously all the Indians fault and not the chiefs, we should be ashamed!

Friday, October 16, 2009

Interesting comments about the SAP detail. Also, what is confusing is how we manage not to pay the European Community Common Customs Tariff (CCT) in BU 7, 11, 14 etc when they are arrive at Schipol and then freighted to everyone. Even seen this on direct shipments from Tokyo. Mind you with the exchange rates at the moment, I suppose we need every advantage we can have.

Friday, October 16, 2009

This is wonderful! Thank you to my ex-colleagues in the UK for directing me to this site.

I had to leave last year after discovering problems with the Egyptian engineers from GTS that Yokogawa UK were hiring. I used to stand-in for the projects director, and it was during one of these periods that I discovered the visa irregularities. And I was given information regarding possible conflict of interest/corruption regarding the owner (who is also a property developer) of GTS, and Yokogawa employee(s) who have taken advantage of "investment properties" in Egypt.

I tried, in conjunction with the FD, to correct the situation but it was too late. GTS had already been working for months on BP Wytch Farm, BP Bruce, Styrene and in various capacities in the Service Group. All this was originated by one Project Manager (in conjunction with the projects director, MD, system sales director, service manager) and he is one of the people that has purchased an "investment property".

All the UK management knew about this all along, and the hours for GTS were part of the years engineering budget, way in advance of GTS doing the work, so it was a deliberate plan. If Yokogawa pulled the GTS engineers off these jobs, the projects would be delayed and bonuses paid for on-time delivery would not be paid by the clients. The clients were fully aware of the situation.

I got told to keep my mouth shut, and in the end and I wasn't asked again to stand in for the PD. How they got away with this amazes me. At one stage GTS engineers were actually living on site in Runcorn last year. I complained to both HR and Finance and was told to leave it alone. The FD is a Director and should have known better. I don't know if it was him that provided false information to the Border Agency in the end about the status and history of GTS, but he was aware of the deception. The payoff makes me slightly less bitter.

Friday, October 16, 2009

There were rumours years ago that Yokogawa GB was going to close down Runcorn and move to High Wycombe. This was fuelled by the UK MD living near there and never visiting Runcorn. Wasn't he called the invisible man? T&M has nearly disappeared and left the High Wycombe offices some time ago and what’s left of them work from home. T&M and Recorders only sell £1M - £1.5M combined with 8 people. This is where the axe should fall first. Perhaps this is the future model: an office in High Wycombe and everyone works from home; quotes, finances etc. from Amersfoort. As most of the costs are staff-related, it makes sense. You would have thought that the offices in Aberdeen and Ireland are also under review, as no business seems to arrive from them. Ah well, who knows and who cares anymore about what will happen will happen, I suppose.

Friday, October 16, 2009

The blogger from Yokogawa in August is right. The SAP system did cause many problems. Fortunately in Europe not so many as we already had the SAP since 1998.

What is interesting now is that we can see into the heart of SAP and what prices are really paid by everyone. For our UK friends, this is very interesting as it seems they have been buying DCS hardware at less than it costs to make in Japan. The engineering costs for low-cost engineering from Romania (or less in their case as they use the services of Ghiza in Egypt) are only 15% of the GB staff engineering rates. So my question is this: With all these advantages, how do you still manage to lose so much money on your projects? Perhaps you should look inside yourselves before complaining about HQ.

Friday, October 16, 2009 - To my English colleague at Yoko UK:

Wrong, HQ in Netherlands already laying more people off, mainly due to your sections bad performances. Thanks!

Friday, October 16, 2009

I think everyone in Yokogawa UK is looking at this site now - not seen so much excitement for ages. If anyone is worried about security, send it from your iPhone! That can't be traced by the company.

Friday, October 16, 2009 - Re: Yokogawa Blog:

Wordwide number 1? We don’t even have our own blog section on here, and have to share with Omron!

Friday, October 16, 2009 - Re: Yokogawa:

What a blog site! I didn’t know this existed, but word is now spreading like really fast. All the competition is on here, ours has less contributions. Perhaps that will change now.

We, old Electrofact guys, used to call the place 'Yokoboro' due to the amount of ex Foxboro guys brought in. Includes MD's, Marcom managers, Field BU managers... Think it might be a retirement home for them.

Seriously though, most of them still live in the past and have tried to recreate the good old days of Foxboro here. What the Japanese never learn though is that these guys left (were asked to leave?) Foxboro after guiding them to near disaster. I think Invensys may know what they are doing after all.

PS: Be careful if you contribute from the office or from home on the VPN. They monitor all over Europe, who visits what sites!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

At least in Holland you have the benefit of saying where the work goes! At Runcorn (UK) we have had no new projects for nearly 3 years, and the ones we did win were taking off us because your management said we were incompetent at project management. Both projects cost twice as much to deliver as the customer was quoted and eventually paid for. No wonder we can’t make a profit here.

If you think your morale is bad, you should try working in the UK. What project work there was, was farmed out to low cost engineering (Egypt) with their engineers working in the UK to the detriment of UK engineers who were laid off. When we complained to management about thier work permit status not being correct and they shouldn’t be working here, some of us were fired for making a fuss.

We never see the MD, and the management is akin to the politburo. We renamed the internal magazine Yavda (Yokogawa + Pravda) due to its insistence on telling us how lucky we were to still be working here and taking pay cuts. The grapevine indicates more job losses soon. Bet they are mostly outside of Holland!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

If the writer of the blog "Yokogawa continues its downward spiral" thinks the problems are exclusive to the US, he should try working here in the Netherlands.

There is no substance in the company anymore. Opinion is divided, due to the hiring of so many failing Foxboro people in top management positions, to the failure of top Japanese management to understand the issues facing us. The Electrofact business is dead in the company; first the loss of transmitter production to Japan, and the profits that were produced no longer support Europe, and then the disaterous systems business which all the new resources were spent on. The merger of the Dutch companies is a joke. No one knows what is expected, and now so many people are beaten that they just don't care.

The Vigilance program was meant to make us number one (internally it is official called BEAT, "Beat Emerson and Triumph") -but that is just smoke and the mirrors. We are told we are a services company not a products company, but we have no idea what this means except for the products used to make us money. Too many top managers waiting to be fired, or to collect their retirement plans. When things improve, expect what's left of the best people to leave.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

More changes at Omron Canada. Mike Snow, President has been terminated. Craig Smith, Director of Sales, has been terminated. Len Apps has taken over as the National Sales Manager, Jeff Neal is now the National Channel (Distributor) Manager. The USA is NOT taking over control of Omron Canada. This is a managerial direction change.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 - Yokogawa continues it's downward spiral:

The downturn in the economy aside, Yokogawa's troubles can be traced to an overwhelming lack understanding in middle and upper level management. The uninspiring and uninformed management style has fostered an environment where the people in the trenches, i.e. the Sales Reps, Customer Service and Product Support/Specialists, are tasked with completely unrealistic goals without the tools or authority to do what needs to be done.

Since the "Power Elite" was moved to Houston, all Senior Management exposure to the realities of a manufacturing operation have ceased. Anyone who brings the problems that exist to management's attention is labeled a pessimist, or not a team player, and they don't last long with the company. The result is a further alienation of the decision makers from any valid source of timely or accurate information.

Middle level management is unwilling to stand up for their subordinates, who at this point are battered, bruised and completely demoralized. A current employee confirmed to me the salary cuts, at varying levels for salaried and hourly employees. Other overseas Yokogawa factories are apparently also working abbreviated schedules.

The SAP project is currently also a major source of problems. There was no transition or overlap from the old system to SAP. In spite of two years or more of preparation, few of the issues raised to the Japanese SAP Advance Team were addressed. The old system was switched off, and SAP was switched on. The resulting problems have led to huge delays in order input, manufacture and shipment. As the paperwork trail is also compromised, invoices can't be paid, and obvious other problems result.

All this from the company who boasted that they would be the top of the heap next year. One thing is certain. It's going to be interesting to see where they go from here.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

No news on Omron acquisitions, but a bold move by Japan to leave America's leader in hands of recently hired American executive. High level of trust being built, strategies are right for the marketplace, economy will help with rapid growth in business as prior 2 years of work will pay off high reward. Still questionable on why there has been no integration of their STI acquistion in US, losing a lot of sales and channel leverage. This is bound to be their next move.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Any new news on Omron since changing the top level management? Now being run in the US by an American. Huge step for Omron Japan. Anybody hearing any rumors about acquisitions? It's about time. They need to acquire a strong business software company that can fill the enterprise level solution.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Like Rockwell, Yokogawa has cut salaries by 10% for 90 days, suspended 401K matching, and suspended executive bonuses. Business is down almost 30% from the same time last year. Adding to the depressed state of affairs, Yokogawa began preparation for switching over to a new SAP enterprise system over a year ago. The system was switched on the week of April 13 without running concurrently with the legacy system. They continue to struggle to get orders in and shipments out. This will eventually straighten out.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Yokogawa Acquires US Company with Unique Gas Analysis Technology

Yokogawa Electric Corporation announced the acquisition of Analytical Specialties, Inc. (ASI), a company with a unique gas analyzer technology. Yokogawa's North American subsidiary, acquired all the stock of ASI on April 1, 2008.

With this acquisition, Yokogawa is adding the TruePeak Tunable Diode Laser Gas Analyzers to its analyzer lineup and strengthening its ability to deliver comprehensive solutions in the industrial automation market.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Lots of new upper management at Omron Electronics (2 top dogs recently hired were former leaders at a Rockwell/allen-bradley multi-million dollar distributor). Lots of focus on distribution and marketing. What can this mean for Omron's future in the US, where they've previously been weak?

Sounds like the company to watch for a complete automation solution - truly complete with Vision and RFID in addition to the plcs, hmi, networks, software (only need 1 package to tie it all together), sensors. They have the best quality products, making new investments and acquisitions, and are focused on customer needs from a product portfolio offering.

Does anyone have any news about their transformation? I've been an avid Omron user for several years, switched out my allen-bradley and siemens in the plant, and was wanting to know more about their recent changes. Very exciting times.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Omron's been going through a lot of Sr. Management changes over the past year. Do you have any comments on where you see Omron headed and whether or not this will make them a key player in the United States?

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Yokogawa wins a BIG Chevron order away from Honeywell. Why hasn't this made more news??

Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Japanese major electrical machinery maker, Yokogawa Electric Corp., said Wednesday it has received an order from U.S. energy company Chevron Corp. for an oil refinery management system, estimated at more than 100 billion yen (US$813 million; euro606.6 million).

Yokogawa Electric Wins Chevron Order - Yahoo Finance
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070620/japan_yokogawa_chevron.html?.v=1

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Omron technology is extremely reliable, and remains undiscovered by most of North American. For hardware costs that are lower than major US based automation solutions, have greater open communication and flexibility, and significantly lower software maintenance costs (virtually zero), Omron is one company that should be thoroughly considered for total automation. For those who do not investigate Omron, thank you for leaving this valuable source of technology and support to us who enjoy currently use and enjoy it.

Thursday, November 9, 2006

Responding to the previous weblog, what is there to comment on? I know of several major suppliers to the automobile industry that use STI safety equipment with Omron controllers for their presses and other equipment; it's just Omron trying to get a bigger share in that particular market. They (Omron) face major hurdles in growing in the U.S., but competition is always good.

Friday, September 8, 2006

I am surprised that no one has commented on the acquisition Omron made of the STI safety business.

Thursday, November 3, 2005

Omron has great technology -- however it will never penetrate the North American Market. Most automation solutions begin at the PLC level. AB, GE, Square D and Siemens are marketed through Tier One distributors. A smart sensor revolution is about to take place and Omron could change the market landscape. But it will not happen from the Chicago's suburbs.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

I supposed with the explosive use of IPV6 and 4G communication technologies, with which Japanese companies have the upper hand now, we will see the power shift from US and Europe to Asia, in terms of building applications into control technology based on M2M. This push is lead by Japan and Korea (two manufacturing power houses, other than China). The US and most of Europe are still try to recope their investment in the "wired" world, where Japan and Korea will treat as traditional market leaders mainly from non-Asia players.

Friday, April 15, 2005

How can Yokogawa even hope of becoming the top Automation supplier with the current and long standing political anti Japan sentiment in China? China remains the biggest growth market for Automation and with the current strong anti Japanese sentiment in China leading to demonstrations and attacks on Japanese interest and visitors. The US base automation players like Emerson and Honeywell are doing far better in China than Yokogawa.

Monday, February 7, 2005 - Yokogawa targets the top-spot:

Proclaiming its intention to become the world's leading process automation supplier, Yokogawa unveiled it's new Vigilant Plant system concept, at the ARC Forum on February 2, 2005 in Orlando, Florida.

Yokogawa's President and CEO, Isao Uchida, openly boasted (unusual for the Japanese) that Vigilant Plant systems will win a leading market-share for Yokogawa by the year 2010.

Extract from JimPinto.com eNews, 7 February, 2005. This includes Pinto Pointers and commentary.

Click to read:Yokogawa targets the top-spot

Thursday, February 03, 2005

From the CONTROL magazine weblog:

We're coming to get you and we're coming on strong! That's the message Yokogawa CEO Isao Uchida delivered last night at the introduction of their new DCS concept, Vigilant Plant. Pointing out that this is Yokogawa's 90th year in the controls industry, Uchida-san claimed large sales increases "outside Japan": "20% sales increases outside Japan annually since 2000, so we are gaining market share. Some of the competitors in this room are not happy," he said, "but competition is...competition." Uchida-san declared his corporate intention to be number one by 2010.

Now, one can argue that combined with the sales decreases inside Japan, Yokogawa's recent growth rate is really about 10%, which is in line with every other major automation vendor, and in fact, one of those "competitors in this room" did argue that with me over dinner later. But the fact remains that Uchida has definitely thrown down the gauntlet to Emerson and the rest of the Big Six.

Click to read:CONTROL magazine weblog

Saturday, 22 January, 2005

From - JimPinto.com eNews #173, 22 Jan. 2005

Omron's total revenue in 2004 was $5.5B, with growth of about 10% and profit of about 5%, very healthy for a Japanese company. Omron has been consistently profitable over the years, recovered from a loss in 2002, with essentially break-even in 2003.

Omron's largest business segment (39%) is industrial automation at $2.2B. The company has a very broad range of products - PLCs, I/O, networks, sensors, vision systems, operator interface, temperature and process controls, printed-circuit-board inspection equipment, timers, counters, panel meters, power supplies, servo drives, motors and inverters; the list of products is almost overwhelming. Omron's supports this broad range with strong local engineering capability.

Omron's automation business has grown consistently over several years. About 50% of automation revenue is in Japan, with N. America contributing 8%, Europe 26%, Asia 4% and China 8%.

Other Omron businesses include Electronic Components (15%), Automotive Electronics (10%), Social Systems (traffic and financial services - 23%) and Healthcare (8%) - you'll find Omron blood-pressure monitors and thermometers in many US department stores.

Click to read:Omron sustains unique mission with profitable growth in 2004

Monday, November 1, 2004

News is emerging about a major reorganisation of Yokogawa Europe under the direction of the European President Harry Hauptmeijer. The changes will see a consolidation of operations and a strengthening of management in the Dutch HQ.

Has Hauptmeijer been talking to Van der Veer at Shell (a big Yokogawa customer), who also announced last week that it intends to consolidate management control of its operations into their Dutch HQ in the Hague?

Tuesday, October 5, 2004 - Re: Omron:

It would be nice to know what's really going on at Omron USA. Look at their new business strategies and talk to their long time, loyal employees. There is some real talent going to waste over there. It's a real shame....

Saturday, February 28, 2004 - from ARC Automation News:

Yokogawa Restructures: Focus on Measurement and Control

Yokogawa is accelerating its effort to restructure its businesses. This restructuring consists of a business reorganization focusing on the company's main business lines of measurement and control, the consolidation and merger of subsidiaries, and the redistribution of management resources.

For the measurement business, which includes communication, test and measurement, and automatic test equipment (ATE) segments, the strategy will be to focus on waveform, optical, digital, and wireless measuring instruments. The ATE segment has also been designated as one that adds high value and it will be strengthened. Yokogawa aims to become one of the top three suppliers worldwide in this segment by fiscal year 2008. In the ATE segment, the company is set on exceeding a 50% share of selected markets by fiscal year 2005.

In the control business, the company will focus on overseas markets, high value added products, and business solutions. China will be receiving particular emphasis. The company plans to introduce competitive products continuously. Yokogawa aims to exceed a 50% share of the Japan industrial automation market and to achieve the top share in the world industrial automation market by fiscal year 2010.

Thursday, September 25, 2003 - from: Asia-Pacific user:

According to my experiences in working with Yokogawa and other control companies, Yokogawa normally offers the best products with lower cost. Surely the local company can make a very minimal margin but in fact, the Japan parent company needs to absorb the loss. Some unfair competitive practices are used as sales strategies.

Many Asia-Pacific customers have found that they can buy a product with the cost of USD 8,000 if they buy with Yokogawa application package. BUT if they want to buy only a product to use with for example Honeywell / Aspen / OSI packages, the cost may eat up to 70,000 USD.

Think ahead when purchasing products that need to work only Yokogawa. Yokogawa tries to cut price when they need the job, and will mark up the price when you need maintenance.

Thursday, July 10, 2003 - from Gerry Shand [gshand@babco-electric.com]:

The three planks mentioned in a previous weblog (3 Feb. 2003):

Yokogawa's basic business strategies are built on the following planks:
• Bullet-proof hardware with exceptional reliability.
• Software that may not be cutting edge, but actually works when released, without bugs.
• Competitive price.

Friday, July 4, 2003

Harry Hauptmeijer is not the only ex-Foxboro employee. They have added John Lewis (released from Houston to APV NY and laid off from APV) as VP North America (April), and others from the Houston Foxboro Office, Construction and Supply Chain Management. This to help the struggling office cope with work from the Saudia job, as well as the newly aquired Shell work, after which Shell quickly noticed the weakness of the field engineering group.

Wednesday, June 4, 2003

Yokogawa financials for the complete year ended March 31, 2003 are not available on their website. Does anyone know where they are available?

Thursday, May 29, 2003

Please make no mistake, Stardom is not a DCS. It uses Fuji PLC I/O and it does not have the integrated diagnostics - not the integrity you would expect from a DCS. Check its redundancy before you buy, you may concider the product redundant! This is why CS3000 will be maintained as flagship prodcut (their terminolgy) for a couple of years.

Some weblog refers to Hans Dik as the manager who maintained a reasonable structure in Europe. Hans has retired. His successor is Harry Hauptmeijer who is also ex-Foxboro Netherlands but with a strong engineering background only. Customers in Europe should be aware of a hidden restrucuring which has started under Harry's "leadership". Lay-offs are on a one for one basis and therefore not reported. Yokogawa has lost good and experienced sales people in the UK. The European system center lost their knowledge on Fieldbus, and is no longer allowed to provide services to the African territories. All handled from France. Yokogawa Europe in Apeldoorn survives on a long term contract with the Dutch Gas board, and left overs from the Middel East ONLY!. No meat on the bone. Think long term before you buy.

Saturday, May 10, 2003 - from a customer who is considering buying CS 3000:

• Most DCS requirements can be covered by systems capable of 5,000 I/O
• Yokogawa Stardom has an upper limit of 5,000 I/O
• Stardom is much more modern than Centum (web based; small distrbuted controllers)
• Stardom has a better cost position than CS
• Yokogawa normally has the lowest sell price
• There is no clear separation of functionality between Stardom and CS
• If it is announced that Stardom is replacing CS, sales of Centum would decline quickly
• Will the new Stardom (build in 2002) prevail over Centum (early 1980s)?

Thursday, April 24, 2003

Yokogawa sells only on discounts.The gentleman who is supposed to be from Yokogawa sales claims that they never sells anything below 50% discount; that is not correct. We have, as an enduser, bought Yokogawa EJA transmitters for $200/each, which is below 50% of their List Price. The Yokogawa sales engineer who sold this unit to us, told us this works out to be around 85% off the List Price. Can anyone dispute this price? We have heard that this level of discounting has caused the CEO of Yokogawa India to lose his job recently.

Sunday, April 20, 2003 - JimPinto.com eNews (extract):

Yokogawa loss grows - major restructuring continues

Yokogawa's results for the year ended 31 Mar. 03 have not yet been formally announced, but sources suggest that profits are much worse than the initial estimated net loss of $110m - perhaps $ 200-250m. This includes a special loss of $100m for restructuring costs at Ando Electric (Yokogawa controlling stake last year) plus $75m on reduced value of shareholdings. This on top of last year's net loss of $196bn.

Click to read: Yokogawa loss grows - major restructuring continues

Saturday, April 19, 2003

Two Japanese acquisitions comes to mind. One would be when Proface (Digital Corp) purchased Xycom a couple of years ago, and another when Omron bought IDM. With regard to the Japanese "complex" of being defeated when buying or merging with another company, it is of interest to note that foreign companies have been acquiring them for years.

A brief final note on the comments regarding Japanese and German companies, and the superior feelings they have over US management: It is exactly the same when a US company is operating in Germany or Japan; the US management looks down on them as well.

Tuesday, March 25, 2003 - concerning Pinto's comments about Japanese companies not acquiring/being acquired (previous weblog):

Tokyo, Japan - May 14, 2002
Yokogawa and Ando Join Forces to be One of the World’s Top Three Test & Measurement Suppliers - Yokogawa Acquires All Shares of Ando through Stock Swap

Pinto comment: Yes, I know about Yokogawa and Ando - indeed an exception. This merger/acquisition did NOT have good results for either Yokogawa or Ando.

Does anyone know of any other Japanese acquisition, big or small?

March 20, 2003 news release :
Yaskawa Electric and Omron establish a joint venture company

Omron Corporation and Yaskawa Electric Corporation are joining forces to strengthen motion control product sales in the European market. A joint venture company will be established through each company's European subsidiaries, with joint sales activities to begin from April 1st, 2003.

Someone asked: "Do you believe this means any merger preparation? What is the backstage message?"

Pinto comment: Japanese companies do NOT acquire or merge - the Japanese culture is not conducive to successful acquisitions. The acquired company feels "defeated" and the acquiring company feels "victorious". In my opinion, this agreement between Omron and Yaskawa is just a business alliance, nothing more.

Tuesday, February 04, 2003

The previous weblog (below) is naive and simply wrong! This person clearly has not been involved with or looked at publically available large-tender records, where Yokogawa's bid is as much as 50% to 75% or more below list price.

Monday, February 3, 2003

My employment history has been with Foxboro for many years, and two stints with Yokogawa, including the present.

Firstly, I have never seen Yokogawa sell a product below cost, even in the good years when prices in Japan were buoyant. So, through lack of evidence, I cannot agree with your inference that Yokogawa "dumps" products on the international marketplace. Maybe things are different in the USA, but I don't think so - most of Yokogawa's customers are multinationals and I can't see any of them letting Yokogawa get away with selling a product at a significantly higher price in Europe or Asia than in the USA.

Yokogawa does, however, sell at low margins, which are felt to be necessary when first penetrating a marketplace to establish some market share. I think that there is some sense in this strategy. Unfortunately, it gets to be a bit of a habit after a while, and it is difficult to get out of even in those markets where penetration has been successful - Asia-Pacific for example. Margins there are lower than they could be - driven by a combination of habit, competitive pressures, and customer expectations, all of which are hard to break.

These days, it is my experience that Emerson is most usually the low ball competitor - perhaps they are following your "long-sighted Japanese approach…..to come in low, eliminate the competition, and then slowly raise prices"!

Yokogawa's basic business strategies are built on the following planks:

• Bullet-proof hardware with exceptional reliability (ask any of their customers!)
• Software that may not be cutting edge, but actually works when released, without bugs.
• A competitive price.

Extract from JimPinto.com eNews - 20 Jan. 2003

Yokogawa strategy: Good products + low price

About 70% of Yokogawa's total revenues are from Japan. Market segments are 50% industrial automation, 20% test & measurement (including a recent acquisition of Ando Electric), 10% information processing and 20% miscellaneous. With slumping demand in domestic Japanese markets, the company shows slim growth in foreign markets, though this seems to be generated through significant price reductions, contributing to losses (Y/E March 03). Yokogawa's market cap is $ 1.6b, about 60% of sales; its poor performance would not support its stock price in any other market than Japan.

Here are some objective Pinto business comments:

Yokogawa's products are good, especially the field instruments; but in a flat market there is little or no real product differentiation. So, Yokogawa's strategy seems to be to market penetration through low-price. In selected target geographies (including the US) they cut prices (often as much as 75-80% off list), and certainly not based on lower costs. Their aggressive pricing is far below the level of any US or European competitors, who simply cannot offer comparable discounts. For selected products, this makes operating profits woefully inadequate and ruins the market.

Recall that America was once the leading supplier of automotive, steel, radios, television sets, shoes etc. The reputedly 'long-sighted' Japanese approach then (and now) was (and is) to come in low, eliminate the competition and then slowly raise prices.

Historically, Japanese tactics have been helped by two factors:

1. The lower profit expectations of Japanese stock holders and banks, with tolerance for losses - even extended losses. The Japanese government supports these tactics as long-term business wisdom, to counteract (in their view) American business short-sightedness.
2. There is a price differential between products sold in Japan vs. the price outside Japan. For example, it seems clear that control and measurement products sold by Yokogawa in Japan have been priced as much as 2-3 time higher than those same products sold outside Japan. This price difference has been reduced somewhat because Japan itself is in an economic slump and the safety-net of high priced domestic sales has dwindled.

Yokogawa will continue to be a major automation player, though their strategy is flawed. They still suffer from the outdated and mistaken perception that good products and low pricing is all that is needed. In a fast-moving new-age environment, that may be a very bad mistake.

Yokogawa's home page

Monday, January 13, 2003

Has anyone actually worked or installed a Stardom system? Any good? Any comments would be welcome. It is supposed to be a DeltaV killer. I only heard that some Food Flavouring plant in Indonesia has installed it.

Going by the brochures it seems ready to take on most conventional projects...

Thursday, November 7, 2002

CS3000R3 has been presented at the European Users conference. It includes XP and can co-exist with CS3000R2 in the same system. During the conference Yokogawa made very clear they will continue with CS3000 as their DCS solution.

Stardom is more intended for applications where you are now forced to use PLC because of cost/small size or a too large/expensive DCS cabinet because of control complexity.

Thursday, November 7, 2002

Migrating CentumV to DeltaV:
CentumV I/O will still be available for several years. If you overhaul the controller power supplies and buy a spare processor, Centum V should serve you many more years to come. The stuff never fails!

If you really want/need to migrate, see your Yokogawa sales guy and ask for 'Turtle' for CentumV. (CPU and bus converter kit). Without changing the I/O (though the card files will have to be lowered a little) you can turn your CentumV into CS3000R3. Step-by-step.

Reuters item - 11 October 2002

Yokogawa to shut 15 plants in Japan

Japan's Yokogawa Electric Corp plans to step up its restructuring plan and shutter 15 of its 19 domestic plants by March 2004, relocating 1,000 workers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported.

Yokogawa will focus production on the remaining 4 domestic plants and 4 other facilities in South Korea, China and Singapore. The company said last November it would cut 700 jobs, or 5 percent of its workforce, by March 2002 and close up to 9 domestic plants within two years in a bid to weather a persistent downturn in the info-tech sector.

The paper said the 1,000 staff will be relocated to other facilities in Japan, without employing a voluntary retirement program.Yokogawa plans to close the first 3 plants this month, as part of the restructuring aimed at halving production costs.

Monday, September 30, 2002

Looks like the latest release is a features/maintenance upgrade fromtheri website. XP support but R3.0 released last year was Windows 2000 - wonder what's going to happen to the users that went to Win 2000?, FDA 21 CFR 11 enhancements and wide area remote I/O (via ethernet, I think). All these are for CS3000 only - maybe they will "kill" CS1000 and sell Stardom in its place. From what I hear from Yokogawa sales people, the division that "owns" Stardom is different from the DCS (CS3000,Cs1000)people. That may be why they are 2 different products except maybe I/O - Stardom I/O looks like CS3000 remote I/O.

Sunday, September 29, 2002

just heard the news that yokogawa has released some new version of cs3000? what are they upto? they are sending confusing signals to the market - one side releasing stardom and other side releasing new version of cs3000

Thursday, September 26, 2002

What's the real issue with Yokogawa? It seems they are unsure of what they want to do. Introducing new systems every three years and leaving users in lurch on continous investments towards keeping the older generation systems working. Typical philosophy - enter a really low price and reap benefits thru'out life cycle on services, supports, etc.. Hope better sense will prevail and users stop looking at Yokogawa as a reliable Systems Supplier.

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

To the End-User with a Centum V - either way you will be faced with a hefty migration costs. Centum V to CS3000 will involve major controller CPU hardware upgrades as well as manually intensive software conversion (Yokogawa's utlities provides only partial "automated" conversion - there is significant cleanup to do). Stardom may not be mature enough for replacing a Centum V and there does not appear to be a Centum V-Stardom migration path anyway apart from a complete teardown and replacement. If you are in this position, then one is better off looking at other products out there - Emerson's DeltaV comes to mind. Think it thru ...

Monday, September 23, 2002

As an end-user, I have a dilemma of migrating existing Yokogawa's Centum V System to current version - Centum CS 3000 or Stardom ? What is Yokogawa's position worldwide - is it Centum CS 3000 or Stardom ? We would like to know, since, in Asia Pacific local Yokogawa office is hesitating to quote Stardom to customers.

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Fuji used to be dominant force in the Indian market when represented by IL. However its is no longer active in the market. They seem to be interested in huge project requirements (200 - 300 Nos.). However when it comes to small volume requirement Fuji is conspicious by it absence and the other comeptitors are are having a field day.

Same is the scenario with Honeywell, understand that they have closed their Temperature manufacturing facility in France. Long time user are left in a lurch.

We are also not getting proper response for spares & services for Fuji transmitters in Indian market. No of fly by night operators claim to represent Fuji but unable to provide proper technical support. This will have far reaching repurcussions on image and reputation of company.

On Saturday, September 07, 2002 - this was logged:

Responding to fuji transmitters business, it may be true since in india too they have changed hands more than once in last couple of years.

We also understood from a rep in Thailand who is handling Fuji Transmitters for more than a decade,that Fuji are going to EXIT this non-core business of their's which is going down continuously in volume.

On Thursday, September 05, 2002, this was logged:

We understand Fuji Electric is existing from their Pressure Transmitter business as their worldwide volume has dwindled to approx. 15000/ units in a year and we are all using many of their old transmitters in the plant. Any info on this??

On Tuesday, September 03, 2002 - in response to the weblog about the departure of Dale Langham, a knowledgeable Yokogawa observer wrote :

"This is the old Measurementation in Houston, an analytical systems integrator. Their sales must be abysmal now and I suspect that there are a number of their folks on the street. If this is the case and you hear of any of them please let me know. These are by and large good people as I recall.

Their next move will be a change in management, to bring in one of the Yoko who can execute the superior Japanese management style.

It would be nice to know their 2000, 2001 and expected 2002 sales. It would confirm or deny my supposition.

On Tuesday, September 03, 2002 a Yokogawa insider wrote:

"The GM Sales (Dale Langham) of the Yokogawa America, Analytical systems integration group, Measurementation (Cold Springs, TX) separated from YCA last week. John Williams, Measurementation president, will serve as acting Sales Mgr. Is this a downward spiral, or what?"

On Thursday, July 25, 2002, Walt Rovira of Teledyne Technologies [walter_rovira@teledyne.com] wrote:

As a former VP and GM for Yokogawa America (resigned 3/02) I read your article on Yokogawa with great interest.

I felt the comments from Chris Carnavos (former VP of Yokogawa Systems) were a bit outdated. Yokogawa HQ now has US as the #1 growth market and requires Yokogawa America to make profit (#1 priority is operating income).

In the past few years they have experienced flat to negative sales growth. Yokogawa America has learned how to run a profitable business in spite of lack of growth.

An ex-Yokogawa-USA employee (name witheld by request) wrote, on Thursday, June 13, 2002:

Like Mr. Carnavos, I too am an ex Yokogawa employee. But maybe a middle management point of view is worthwhile. I worked as a Product Specialist for a couple of years in the Yokogawa Field Instruments group.

YCA has many strategic management problems which both directly and indirectly affect their success within the US.

1. They do not seem to be able or are unwilling to learn how to market, sell and promote their products here. Selling through independent Reps is a "foreign" experience for them, (pun intended). Even after many years of utilizing this channel. Japanese management usually have little communication with those Reps, often giving confusing and unrealistic sales expectations. As was pointed out, gaining marketshare at any cost still continues to be a prevalent philosophy.
2. Receiving test, marketing, and technical product information from Japan is like "pulling teeth". Helping their US counterparts with customer technical service is not a priority. Also, unless your job title includes the word "manager", there is a snide, condescending attitude and tonality to much of the communiqué. When help is needed in the US, There is an "art" to requesting information from Japan which can improve your chances of actually getting any information back. It is a daily struggle for the personnel in the US.
3. Personnel management skills. While there are many excellent and competent managers in both their Newnan and Houston locations, like most companies there are several managers that are lacking in both business and personal interrelationship acumen. Those managers are allowed to practice their "personal agendas", going unchecked. Japanese upper management blindly supports them because they rarely take the time to really learn about their personal or professional skills. College degrees and past titles dictate their respect. Unfortunately, this negatively affects business decisions and the treatment of employees.
4. Contrary to what many Westerners believe, the famous Japanese "humility factor" that they are known for doesn't seem to apply to their business practices. In the two years while employed by YCA, not once did I hear "We were wrong" or "We are sorry" for any decision that was made which proved incorrect or was professionally or personally hurtful.

On Monday, June 03, 2002, an ex-Yokogawa sales manager wrote:

"Yokogawa Corp of America tidbit - they are seriously planning to the bulk of their systems project and engineering resource from Newnan GA to Houston (Stafford). There will probably be some attrition as the I know some of the project and engineering people will not want to move to Houston. They have got some folks running live projects commuting between Houston and Newnan. Not a vert satisfactory state of affairs for customers and Yokogawa people if you ask me."

A sales manager (name witheld) who has previously worked for Yokogawa, wrote on Monday, April 29, 2002:

"Glad to see you finally wrote a piece on the Japanese automation companies in general and my former employers in particular. I must say you got it pretty much right on.

"Yokogawa in NA has been pretty much thrashed because of the JYC fiasco and the fall out that is continuing albeit to a lesser degree. Examples are the continuing Rep turmoil in the Chicago area, and the identity crisis with the Systems business and its multiplicity of products and sales channels.

"A lot of the overseas Yokogawa entities - I have experience with the NA, UK, ME and Asian offices - suffer from the rotating door syndrome with regards to their management as you describe. The exception may be the European operation, HQ in The Netherlands that has a local (Hans Dik, ex-Foxboro) as their head for a good number of years (~10). There they have a solid local personnel infrastructure and rotate the 2nd management tier expats. In my opinion, Yokogawa Europe is relatively successful because of that. Anyway, my nickel's worth."

On April 26, 2002, this exchange took place :

Q : Yokogawa was doing IA business in the US in 1984. Where were Emerson Electric, Invensys, ABB... (Rosemount, Foxboro, Bailey) in the 1980's?

Jim Pinto:
For a long time, Yokogawa was the largest IA company in the world. Emerson, Invensys, ABB - all grew by acquisition. Yokogawa did not (could not, culturally) make acquisitions.

Q: Why does Jim Pinto think Yokogawa is a flash in the pan (short term plan) while US & European based companies are right on the mark?

JimPinto:
I never, ever suggested that Yokogawa was a short-term, flash-in-the-pan. They are indeed a long-term player.

Q: Why has Yokogawa survived (financially) if the global marketing plan was out of date?

Jim Pinto:
They have survived because Japanese financial expectations are low (compared with US goals ) - and the real financial data is well hidden (not disclosed). By US standards, the company is VERY BADLY managed, but continues to surive because of the Japanese financial sturcture and culture.

It is interesting that OMRON has overtaken Yokogawa in size and financial strength.

This is all my own opinion. I hope I have helped.

Ricardo Pessoa [ricardo@ibiseng.com]wrote about the similarities between the Japan and Germany approaches to business:

"German and Japanese cultures have much in common, specially regarding the view towards aliens and foreign cultures.

"Japanese countries cannot, as well as Germany, be clearly understood from a US-based paradigm. One has to understand how these cultures have evolved over time to avoid misconcepts and myths.

"I'd suggest a revisitation of one of the clearer books on Japanese culture written in the times when Japanese juggernauts assaulted the business world, initiating the TQM, TPM and other initiatives in manufacturing. It is "The Enigma of Japanese Power" by Karel van Wolferen."