Gerencia De Operaciones: Caso Motorola

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Motorola’s Global Strategy For years Motorola and other U.S. firms such as RCA, Magnavox, Philco, and Zenith were among the world’s most successful consumer electronicsfirms. In the face of withering competition from the Japanese, however, these firms began to fall by the wayside. Motorola has remained the exception: Today it is one of the world leaders in mobilecommunication technology, including the manufacture of cellular telephones, paging devices, automotive semiconductors, and microchips used to operate devices other than computers. Motorola has taken onthe Japanese head-to-head. Although it may have lost a few battles here and there, the firm has won many more. Motorola heard the call to battle in the early 1980s. The firm then controlled theemerging U.S. market for cellular telephones and pagers but, like many other firms at the time, was a bit complacent and not aggressively focused on competing with the Japanese. Meanwhile, Japanese firmsbegan to flood the U.S. market with low-priced, high-quality telephones and pagers. Motorola was shoved into the background. At first, managers at Motorola were unsure how they should respond. Theyabandoned some business areas and even considered merging the firm’s semiconductor operations with those of Toshiba. Finally, however, after considerable soul searching, they decided to fight back andregain the firm’s lost market position. This fight involved a two-part strategy: First learn from the Japanese and then compete with them. To carry out these strategies, executives set a number ofbroad-based goals that essentially committed the firm to lowering costs, improving quality, and regaining lost market share. Managers were sent on missions worldwide, but especially to Japan, to learn how tocompete better. Some managers studied Motorola’s own Japanese operation to learn more fully how it functioned; others focused on learning about other successful Japanese firms. At the same time,...