Word: demanding
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...kept pace until 1998, but then they dropped more than 20% from a year earlier, to $29 million. Partly that was bad luck, the delayed effect of late rains in 1996 that ruined harvests and kept the company from making enough of its best-selling Woodbridge Chardonnay to meet demand a year later. But Mondavi neglected to warn retailers of the shortage and failed to put them on allocation--tell them each store could get only part of its order. Instead the winery just shipped what it could, then stopped. Angry retailers canceled their orders--not just for Chardonnay...
...nearly a fifth of Rockwell's total 1998 volume of $6.8 billion. But Rockwell CEO Don Davis insists that the move was necessary to allow Rockwell to concentrate more on its core businesses, principally factory automation and aviation controls. (A possible result of divided attention: Rockwell in 1998 overestimated demand for new high-speed computer modems and got caught with what turned out to be outdated products.) Why this particular target for surgery? The semiconductor business is more volatile than Rockwell's other lines, says Davis; its investment needs are different, and the way employees are paid and promoted...
...also speeded up. And marketing errors such as Mondavi's are relatively easy to recover from in an atmosphere of rising incomes and free consumer spending. But even if the 1998 profit lag was an aberration, as many economists think, U.S. and global production capacity still exceeds demand, and price competition is relentlessly sharp. Keeping profits up still requires astute strategy--and not a little ruthlessness...
What really concerns me is not the educational philosophy of Resnick's editorial but its general attitude. When one has the chance to spend four years largely isolated from the demands of the modern economy, to study and to live with a few thousand other young students, it seems remarkably selfish to whine about "customer service." This is not to say that students should be cowed into gratitude and never ask anything from Harvard. One would hope, however, that when they do demand something, it might be for people other than themselves...
...according to Wilson, meeting the deadline is a high priority that continues to demand the attention of top administrators...