B. B. Perry Technologies

B. B. Perry Technologies is a microcomputer design and manufacturing company that was started in a garage by Bob Perry in 1973. In the early years, Bob ran the company and was largely responsible for making it a huge success. He often worked 20 to 22 hours a day to accomplish that success. The company grew to be an $800 million company in 1980, when Bob sold the company. Substantial stock holdings of the company are presently held by early company employees, who are all of digital electrical engineering background, and who now head the company. Sales of the company peaked at $3 billion in 1984. The company presently employs about 4,500 people. The market has evolved such that almost all competing companies build to a de facto standard (a standard to which Perry products do not adhere), and have gained the majority of the market share. Perry is losing substantial business in both its general-purpose machines and its engineering computer-aided design (CAD) workstation markets. In attempting to resolve its present problems, two camps have arisen. The marketing branch of the business is taking the stance that modifying the Perry product to be compatible with the presently popular standards will solve its present problems, while in the design branch it is widely held that the present market for its products can be expanded through constant redoubling of efforts to make the Perry products technologically innovative and lead the market. To make matters worse, engineers from the manufacturing environment are now arguing that by cutting manufacturing costs, the present products could be dumped on the market at extremely low costs.128 Triple C Model of Project Management After attending a project management seminar, the company heads have decided a project management approach could help in the unification of efforts in future product development and have set a course of action to internally train personnel in the marketing, design, and manufacturing groups in concepts of informal project management.

Case Study Discussions

1. What would you expect the present project management plan to do?

2. What strategy would you suggest in the companys present circumstance