Word: kodak
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...leaner and meaner company, no doubt. Yet Wall Street still isn't convinced that Kodak can compete in the digital marketplace. Its latest camera, EasyShare-One, available this summer for $600, features the largest display screen around, a memory capable of holding 1,500 high-resolution images and, for an extra $100, wireless communication. But competition is intense, especially in photo printing, which is still where the money is. In film, Kodak had only two major competitors, Fuji Photo Film in Asia and Agfa-Gevaert in Europe. Now, both its old foes are in the printing market...
Similar doubts dog Kodak's most promising digital adventure--medical imaging, a process that extends from the nonfilm capture of X-ray images to their dispersal through a hospital network and their digital manipulation to produce detailed images. Kodak sells digital radiology machines and software that manages the diagnostic and other information that accompanies each image. It even posts the bill. Not ready to go fully digital? No problem: Kodak will sell you bridging devices--like laser printers to transfer the picture to film. The company also provides consulting services, putting KOS into operation to make patient care more efficient...
...cycle times are half as long. So far, says Brown, KOS has saved "tens of millions of dollars worth of capital and hundreds of millions in inventory" and has contributed "hundreds of millions in productivity." Impressed by such stats, Carp asked Brown in late 2003 to inject KOS into Kodak's entire corporate plumbing, from human-resources management to product development to the products themselves. "It's an entire management philosophy," says Brown...
...helping put some of the shine back on Kodak's prospects, but its hometown, Rochester, is hurting. It has borne the brunt of the company's downsizing, as Carp has sought cheaper manufacturing abroad. Most of the company's digital cameras are now made in China. In Rochester's northwest, the 2,200-acre Kodak Park, once the hub of Kodak's industrial operations, is full of vacant lots and demolished buildings. At its peak in 1982, the firm--once called the Great Yellow Father--employed more than 60,000 people in the city and had long been famous...
Carp says Kodak's workers understand the pressure the company is under. But that does not necessarily mitigate their misery. The tyranny of micromanaged productivity, says a veteran employee, hangs like a cloud over Kodak's rank and file: "You're accountable for everything you do, or don't do, all the time. You're worried that you may not have a job from one week to the next, and you don't know whether, if you come up with a good idea to save the company money, you could cost people their jobs...