When Americans look like this, then the big corporations will be happy
150,000 US Layoffs for IBM? — The way this article is written it sounds like IBM may as well close up shop. I would be seriously surprised if this happened in this manner.
LEAN is about offshoring and outsourcing at a rate never seen before at IBM. For two years Big Blue has been ramping up its operations in India and China with what I have been told is the ultimate goal of laying off at least one American worker for every overseas hire. The BIG PLAN is to continue until at least half of Global Services, or about 150,000 workers, have been cut from the U.S. division. Last week’s LEAN meetings were quite specifically to find and identify common and repetitive work now being done that could be automated or moved offshore…
What does IBM actually do these days?
I saw a Lenovo laptop on sale for $350. How the mighty are fallen…
Hopefully Microsoft will reach the same fate in 10-20 years.
Sad when companies started believing they are as big and important as countries where subjects can be bartered with
To my knowledge, LEAN isn’t really about Outsourcing and Offshoring. It’s about removing repetitive tasks from a process. I’ve been a part of a few LEAN meetings (not at IBM), and none of them ever resulted in work being sent overseas…
Could be different at IBM, though. This kind of reminds me of the general freakout by people about Six Sigma a few years ago.
“Ahhhhhh! It’s something new! Change! Run Away! Run Away!”
#3 – Six Sigma wasn’t new. It was just a fresh coat of paint on Business 101.
For those keeping score, The Seven Habits weren’t all that groundbreaking either.
At my company, we need a program called “Stop Having All These Damn Meetings About Meetings and Actually Do Some Damn Work”
#1 – I used to work there. They still do a lot of networking research, make a lot of blade servers, putting out patents like crazy. They’re still a fairly viable company, and it will take many years before they’re “taken down.”
However, I know one thing is for certain: at IBM, the workers either love it there, or they hate it. There is NO in between.
John…
When Americans look like this, then the big corporations will be happy
Are you saying we don’t look like that now?
Sundance Channel on cable TV is airing a documentary series about an outsourcing company based in India called “Office Tigers” — they do back office support, data-entry, call service center services for global company clients – the names of the companies are bleeped out whenever they are referenced in the documentary. However, in the episode I watched, I think they let a reference to “big blue” slip by. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if IBM was the main client of Office Tigers.
Frank- Lenovo is Chinese. IBM is OUT of the PC Business. I do their warranty service (for both) and they are seperate entities. What used to be excellent support from IBM has turned into another ho-hum experience.
Ah, Six Sigma. It really has spawned a lot of garbage where I’m at. I thought (optimistially) that it was maybe just something to our office, but evidently not.
That and atleast our training mainly goes after manufacturing. The same principles that apply to a line can’t nessarily be applied to writing code.
“The problem with LEAN is that offshoring on this scale creates huge communications and logistical problems, doesn’t generally improve customer relations, and won’t save money for years without the parallel gutting of the pension plan.”
Actually, recent economic studies show a strong correlation (R^2 value of .70) to the size of a company, the amount of off-shoring, and profitability. The relationship should come as no surprise, positive. As a side note this problem is something that IBM will be in a unique position to solve, and assuming that they are successful, giving them another comparative advantage, therefore increasing their profits along with world wealth.
“And it is just plain mean.” Did I just experience a temporal or spacial anomaly that transfered me to a world of middle-school logic and justification? I’ll be sure to check my tri-corder.
“But it hardly has a ring of corporate honesty.” Yet another opportunity to quote Mizzzilton Friedman: ” This view [of corporate/social responsibility] shows a fundamental misconception of the character and nature of a free economy. In such an economy, there is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud.” If IBM did violate “the rules of the game” than this needs to be proven in court, and until that happens I’ll assume that they are in fact innocent, until proven guilty.
To return to increasing profits, Jim Cramer correctly predicted to BUY BUY BUY IBM a year ago, as a sign of good things ahead, and it has paid off. $30+ dollar a share increase with more to come! As a investor who does his homework, (listen to Cramer & TWiT) I for one will not be one of those Americans in the above photo.
IBM’s competitors would absolutely love this, but I doubt it’s true. I’m in the software business and whenever we see a company out-source it’s development we buy stock in its competitors because those companies are going to start losing customers within the first year and be completely crushed by the end of the 2nd as they find they can’t add new features or do decent support any more.
1. it will probably be 90% of the manufactouring from the USA.
2. IBM is abit top heavy.
3. THINK how long it has taken IBM to do this, they are almost the LAST major corp to jump ship.
Mark -
Yes, I know that Lenovo is Chinese, and that IBM outsourced the PC to them years ago – that was precisely my point.
This might be a dumb question but, Is it possible for a ‘rightsized/redundant’ US employee to move to one of these outsource countries and get a job?
I mean what is the whole purpose of the ‘layoffs’? of the ‘out-sourcing’?
I mean, you can eat your children’ only for so long until you start to starve. right?
Why don’t companies join together and have one CEO/Management team that runs 50 or so other companies… Think about how much PROFIT!!!!!!! they could achieve if the management was out-sourced to some cheapo professional management group somewhere!!!
WOW!!!!
LEAN is about process redesign to provide better service for the customer, its not about cost savings. BUT….. IBM higher-ups are using it bank expense savings this year (even if the savings actually come later,…. if at all) and off-shore jobs. IBM higher-ups have perverted the LEAN process and it will cost them in the future. They are already cutting its budget. Sad, really….
*sigh* yet more people not understanding Lean and Six Sigma. Both “buzzwords” are just processes that help to give people/companies ways to find common sense solutions to problems. They are designed for different things, and if misunderstood or missused, they’re not that effective…but if done correctly, both are very effective at what they are designed to do.
Lean is designed to eliminate waste from processes…ANY processes. Manufacturing is an easy one to visualize, but in general, the Lean process is designed to look at what is going on overall and find what ads value and what doesn’t. Basically, if a process is looked at overall, there is usually something there that isn’t needed and doesn’t ad value. Say you’re at the DMV and trying to get your license renewed. Some places will make you stand in one line to fill out a form, then turn around and go to another line to turn in the form. Why do you need the other line? Why can’t the two people each do the same job and eliminate that second wait in a line? That’s the best general idea I can think of right now…but what people need to understand is that lean is NOT a method to eliminate/outsource jobs…GOOD companies use lean to save money and free up resources to do more productive work or figure out new products. Companies that use it to eliminate jobs are really shortsighted.
Six Sigma is used to eliminate variation in processes. It is very data driven, and really only useful when data is available. Most recent problems I’ve seen with Six Sigma implementations is in companies that only use it as a buzzword and don’t understand what it’s real use is. Many people try to apply six sigma to EVERY problem, and it isn’t a universal solution. However, if you have things that you’ve got data for, it can be used to analize the variation and try to determine methods to eliminate that variation. It’s really only useful when lean has already been applied to the process, because there are times I’ve seen six sigma applied to a wastefull part of the process…why improve something you shouldn’t be doing anyway?
Both are just tools to improve things, and can be applied to more than just manufacturing, but they have to be applied in smart ways. GE and Boeing are companies that use Six Sigma in proper ways, and Toyota has been using Lean processes since they started. These aren’t new, just new terms for old “common sense”. The biggest problem is that common sense is NOT common…and any large company will ALWAYS have use for these tools. Anytime the answer to “why do you do that” is “because we always have” is something that should be looked at.
Does anyone know if LEAN or six sigma has EVER been used in US federal or state government operations? My guess is “no.”
13. Frank IBC- Sorry I missed your point. My bad, the Thinkpad is still a pretty decent laptop though, wonder how long it will stay that way. I have had a lot of hardware issues with their desktop systems.
17 – As one who understands what they could do, I would wish they WOULD use it on government, but it will never happen. They keep seeming to forget that their jobs are not to just spend the money, it’s to spend what is NEEDED and that’s it…waste is BAD when it isn’t thier money. I for one would actually be OK with raised taxes if AFTER they did lean and six sigma they could prove they still needed money for the necessities…but by then we’d be barely paying any taxes anyway with all the waste they could eliminate.
mxpwr03 – I quote you – “as a investor who does his homework, (listen to Cramer & TWiT) I for one will not be one of those Americans in the above photo.”
Yeah – my Grampa use to tell me about “Investors who did their homework” and how glad they were for a bowl of soup after October 29, 1929.