Astro Tech Case Summary

By doing this, Kerr was exuding incompetence as an administrator by turning over absolute power and discretion to a company who was open about the fact that they didn’t have the expertise. This proved to be the case as Boeing put forth projects by using inductive processes that were failing. By doing this, the pieces of the project that didn’t work, cost millions and didn’t work because of faulty parts. Had they checked out the parts first before assembling the equipment, they might have realized the parts were defective before they wasted time and money again.

The industry environment was also in Boeings favor at the time. Boeing had a history of dedicated customers. The company had been making commercially successful jet aircraft since it first developed the “707”. Boeing was so successful at manufacturing the jet aircraft, that it was one of two companies left making them. This advantage gave them the ability to be a powerful supplier. The expense of the development process also made it extremely difficult for new companies to even enter the market. Boeing faced only one competitor at this point; Airbus (Pearce, Robinson, 2003).

Purchased plant for good price…with new equipment and deleted marginal product lines as they expanded nationally

One of the contributing factors to the project failure is lack of management. The Chief Information Officer, Art Smith, is a former plumbing supplier who is not very tech savvy assigned the MARs project to Kate Cohen. Kate, a programmer, had no prior project management experience. Kate is knowledgeable in computer systems, but lacked the leadership and management skills required to drive this project. When implementing a systems change at a scale this large, the project needs experienced management and proper planning. These characteristics were not accounted for when Art appointed Kate as Project Manager.

The IT folks couldn’t communicate properly with the business about their ideas and strategy that confused the business and made them reject the ideas that were actually worth trying.

With limited budget to spend for upgrade, BAL had to consider a more rational way to improve current system. In addition, regarding the company size, there wouldn’t be economy of scale at

As mentioned previously, NASA faces a serious problem regarding to the product transfer to EROW. For

Bottom-line, they put all their eggs in one basket; they failed to have a backup product to develop a quick revenue stream to further fund their long-term goal. However, without a crystal ball that was a difficult decision.

the early 1990s, the company made a series of small, “tuck-in” acquisitions. It targeted companies

There are three factors that led to Solectron’s downturn in the early 2000s. First is the

The company was too reliant on orders from the US Government. They need to expand its operations into other areas.

The Boeing corporation had been a very successful company in the mid-1990s. At the time, it dominanted the market in commercial aviation with an additional thriving sideline in the military and space contracts market. Boeing faced and then overcame a huge number of challenges but also took advantage of many opportunities that were offered up by the aerospace market in the late 1990s. The company faced a number of challenges. In wake of he the first Gulf War, the incumbent economic slowdown severely decreased the market demand. Also, the Boeing encountered stiff competition from the company Airbus which many experts have attributed to heavy subsidies by European government that gave the company an unfair advantage market advantage. For instance, in 1999, Airbus outsold Boeing for the first time in the company's history and delivered to the market more airplanes than the Boeing company did in

In order to achieve its goals clear guidelines were set that specified the degree and timing of acquisitions – focusing only on companies that exhibited stable earnings or earnings countercyclical to the gas transmission industry. Cooper focused on acquisition targets that possessed strong assets with high quality manufacturing and market-leading positions. Cooper continued to refine this acquisition model seeking companies with stable earnings using well-known technologies that served a broad customer base. Furthermore, Cooper focused on firms with high quality products and recognized brand names.

It also commenced the re-organization of the business and the markets. Although, everyone had a strong belief that company needs a new launch to take it out of the situation however till mid of 2007, they had no products. Additionally, the credibility of the CEO was

Doing these acquisitions at some certain stages were important to diversify GE technologies and maximize its market share (Immelt, 2005), however, the balancing between growing organically by empowering the company from within and acquiring some companies is even more important for setting up the company directions. Since more than half of the company revenue is derived from its financial services (Company Data 2008), this brings the argument onto the table about the nature of the company making it a financial company with a manufacturing arm.