Word: bradleys
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...late 1970s, though, Whitney and President J. Tracy O'Rourke realized that the marketplace was changing, and Allen-Bradley would have to evolve to survive. The company was too dependent on the machine-tool industry and its biggest customer, Detroit's automakers. Both were reeling under the attack of lower-cost foreign competitors. Although Allen-Bradley's domestic sales had not been severely hurt, the day when they would be seemed just around the corner...
What to do? A planning team assembled by Whitney came up with the answer: Allen-Bradley, since its founding a parochial company doing almost all its business in North America, would aggressively expand in Europe, but with a major new twist. Instead of making industrial controls almost exclusively to American standards, the company began designing them to the specifications of the International Electrotechnical Commission, the European arbiter. And instead of buying a foreign company to make the controls, which several competitors had done, it would make them in Milwaukee, in a new facility...
...came on." But an unprecedented degree of automation would be required to pull it off. Reason: a representative contactor that sold for $20 in the U.S. sold for just $8 in the highly competitive markets of West Germany and Australia. To make a profit at the lower price, Allen-Bradley had to get costs down. By using automated equipment, the company could produce contactors for 60% less than it could by relying on a manual assembly line. "Labor costs," says Whitney "obviously had to be a nonissue...
...advantage was that since Allen-Bradley would be making entirely new + products, it could design them in tandem with the new assembly process. Moreover, by labeling each product at the outset with a computer bar code, Allen-Bradley could program its assembly line to vary the specifications; as a result, contactors and electrical relays can be tailored without slowing down the line...
...excitement swept through the company. Even organized labor went along with the idea. Since the planned products had never been made before by Allen-Bradley, workers would not be displaced by the new operation. Mindful of past job cuts, the union's leaders were at least happy to see the operation take root in Milwaukee. Says Ted Krukowski, president of Local 1111 of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers: "There's concern, but there's also a feeling of accomplishment that our folks played a role...