"Charlie Self" writes:

Atlas Copco bought Milwaukee less than a decade ago, and appears to have
done
little or nothing to expand its market share, yet the brass at AC stated,
"The
business is, however, still far from the Group's desired position of
globally
being number one or two in the markets we serve."

They have taken a page directly out of Jack Welch's approach of how to run a
company. (Retired CEO of GE)

Having said that, Atlas-Copco is no General Electric.

The rest of Welch's approach goes like this:

You will be #1 or #2 in market share.
You will have at least 25% market share.
You will contribute at least 20% net after to the profits of the General
Electric Company.

If a business didn't meet those goals, GE either sold the business or shut
it down.

One has to wonder what people like that use for thinking equipment.

Sounds like the just tried to copy GE, but without all the other stuff that
is required to make it happen.

Neither
Milwaukee nor AEG had the kind of market penetration, though both made,
and
make, marvelous tools, that would lead to a fulfillment of that kind of
expectation without one helluva lot of tool research and development at
several
levels. Neither company produces what can be called consumer level tools,
meaning their numbers are never going to go over the top and sweep
everyone
else away.

What you say is absolutely correct; however, you can define a market segment
as other than the Homer Homeowner market, in which case the GE approach
would work quite well.

That should have been obvious to even to even the most solidly
MBA-ed dolt in management, but it seems not. Then again...when a company
thinks
annual plans are the same as long term plans....

Long term planning:

What's for lunch?

It should be in interesting run. Ryobi R&D has always come up with of the
more
interesting tool concepts, and some damned good tools in particular price
ranges (and some that are not all that good...I'm not a fan of their
routers).

There is a step up in quality with the Ridgid tools...and I noticed the
Dirt
Devil vacuum (another TTI brand) was cheaper than the one I bought 5-6
years
ago, but seems identical in power, etc. (not a durability problem: it was
stored at the top of basement stairs when we had a basement fire).

IMHO, Emerson has totally destroyed Ridgid, but then again, I'm prejudiced.

I was at Ridgid in Elyria, Oh the day is was announced that Emerson had
purchased the company. It was not a happy place.

I have no idea how it will all shake out yet, nor am I enamored of one
tool
company for all the world, which sometimes seems to be the way things are
headed with all these mergers, but I am curious as to where things will
stand
next year at this time.

That makes two of us.

Lew