120 Part I • Information Technology
VisionGoals
Provide market leadership
Customer satisfaction
Quality
Reliability
Delivery
Service
Serve the market with optional products
and services
Be the technology leaderZero failures
On-time performance
Low throughput time for orders through
the factory
High productivity of labor
Return on capital employed >30% (pre-tax)
Revenue to total compensation growth of at
least 5% per yearTo be perceived by each of our customers as
superior to the best of our competitors in the overall
quality of our products and services.Achieve business (operational) excellenceThe following was issued throughout the Fort Wayne
plant on June 25, 1997 by Edward Fortesque,
Manager of Quality Assurance.Mission
To be recognized as the outstanding custom
machine manufacturer in the world.EXHIBIT 4 Mission/Vision Statement, IMT Custom Machine
Company, Inc.
The following was issued to top division and plant
management on July 30, 2002, by Joe O’Neil,
division MIS manager.
Direction
Pursue a more structured MIS strategy with a
reasonable and manageable level of risk that will
be consistent with our being a leader in the custom
machine industry.
Develop and execute a plan that will continually
upgrade our hardware, software, applications,
database, and network environments to accomplish
the above.
Objectives
Recognize our business is designing and
producing custom machines, not chasing ever-changing
computer technology and theories.
Coordinate MIS strategy with our business objectives of:
Zero defects
Low throughput time
ROCE (return on capital employed) of 30%
Control our own destiny.
Minimize risk and hidden costs.
Work from a total systems architecture plan to:
Develop an applications architecture
Select the hardware plan required to best
accomplish our goals
Maintain an integrated environment that supports
the various functions of our division.EXHIBIT 5 Fort Wayne MIS Direction and Objectives, IMT
Custom Machine Company, Inc.CMCI’s Information Systems
Charles Browning began his investigation shortly after
receiving his charge from June Page. By mid-September
2002, he had uncovered considerable data about the infor-
mation systems at Fort Wayne and Chicago.
Support for Fort Wayne’s information systems was
split into two groups: an engineering systems (ES) group
and a management information systems (MIS) group (again
see Exhibit 1). The ES group consisted of eight of the 25
people who reported to Dr. Michael C. King, Fort Wayne’s
Development Engineering Manager. Dr. King had been
trained as an engineer and was known as an industry-wide
expert on the design of automated fabrication technologies.
Twenty MIS support staff members reported directly
to Bill Gears, who in turn reported to Joe O’Neil, the
division MIS manager. Chicago had its own one-person
MIS “group” who reported directly to O’Neil. O’Neil
reported through the division controller’s organization.
O’Neil was a former IBM employee with extensive experi-
ence on large mainframes and on the IBM AS/400
platform. He had been the MIS manager at another IMT
site before coming to Fort Wayne in 1998.
On July 30, 2002, O’Neil circulated a memo to the
top division and plant managers that summarized his objec-
tives for Fort Wayne’s MIS group (see Exhibit 5). O’Neil
later told Browning, “I do not have a formal mission for the
MIS group, but essentially I am looking to provide an ade-
quate, responsive, and economical network structure of
data processing support for all sites within the division.”
Browning found that a variety of computing hard-
ware was used to support the division. (See Exhibit 6.)
The division operated an IBM mainframe located at
Fort Wayne that could be used by anyone in the division