Conference 7.286::digital

	Just heard on the radio something about a 5% DEC lay-off...any
    truth to this rumor, or is it just another media mixup?

	I believe one of the notices in LIVEWIRE talked about the need to
	reduce head count some more. Who knows how the media is going to
	interprit that. There is a DVN broadcast at 3:30 that I believe is
	going to talk about the year end results.

			Alfred

    There was a comment on one of cable t.v.'s business channels
    that Digital had not only announced it P&L statement, but 
    said they would be "...reducing their staff by 5-6 thousand."

Path: rust!bacchus.pa.dec.com!decwrl!looking!clarinews
From: clarinews@clarinet.com
Newsgroups: clari.tw.computers,clari.biz.finance.earnings,clari.biz.labor
Subject: Digital to cut 5,000 to 6,000 workers
Keywords: computers, manufacturing, corporate earnings, corporate finance,
	employment, labor
Message-ID: <Udigital_156@clarinet.com>
Date: 25 Jul 90 16:40:26 GMT
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Approved: clarinews@clarinet.com
Xref: rust clari.tw.computers:549 clari.biz.finance.earnings:972 clari.biz.labor:430
ACategory: financial
Slugword: digital
Priority: urgent
Format: regular
ANPA: Wc: 287; Id: f1393; Sel: nf--f; Adate: 7-25-1230ped
Codes: ybfcrxx., yfccrxx., yfujrxx., xxxxxxxx


	MAYNARD, Mass. (UPI) -- Digital Equipment Corp. took the first
quarterly loss in its history Wednesday -- because of a charge for a
restructuring plan that would include eliminating up to 6,000 jobs in
the fiscal year that began this month.
	Digital took a $400 million charge and reported a $256.7 million
loss for the fiscal fourth quarter ended June 30. However, the company,
the nation's No. 2 computer maker, still managed to earn $1.073 billion,
or $8.45 a share, for the year.
	Wall Street responded positively to news of the plan, driving the
company's  stock up $1 a share to $76.50 in early New York Stock
Exchange trading.
	The company did not rule out layoffs, but Mark Steinkrauss,
director of investor relations, said there were none planned. Instead,
the company will offer targeted workers a severance package.
	However, Steinkrauss said the severance package to be offered
likely would not be as attractive as the one offered to selected workers
and taken by 3,000 employees by the end of the most recent fiscal year.
	The company also said it will continue to cut costs through
consolidations and closings of facilities.
	A cut of 6,000 employees would amount to 4.8 percent of the
company's worldwide workforce of 124,000. Steinkrauss said there was no
``target'' number for a company-wide headcount because there may be
selective hirings while the broad-range cuts go on.
	He said the cuts would come across the board in the company, with
the emphasis probably in manufacturing, where Digital has overcapacity.
    

RE: <<< Note 1147.5 by DECWET::DUNLAP >>>

>However, the company,
>the nation's No. 2 computer maker, still managed to earn $1.073 billion,
>or $8.45 a share, for the year.

The UPI twit who wrote this was obviously confused. the $1.073B figure is
*last year's* (FY89) earnings. For this year (FY90), after taking the $400M
Q4 restructuring charge ($550M for the year), our net income was a mere
$74M, or 59 cents a share. 

I wonder, then, how much of the rest of the story is accurate.

/kevin

re: .6,

> The UPI twit who wrote this was obviously confused. the $1.073B figure is
> *last year's* (FY89) earnings. For this year (FY90), after taking the $400M
> Q4 restructuring charge ($550M for the year), our net income was a mere
> $74M, or 59 cents a share. 

	Maybe this explains why the stock price went up?  ;^)

				    -davo

    Back when I was implementing the first AP news-reader for the late
    lamented VTX news service, I spent a lot of time watching stuff come in
    over the wires.  It was not unusual to see the same story go by 5 or 6
    times with corrections, over a period of a few hours.  This is why the
    VTX service went to some pains to identify updates to old stories and
    replace the old with the new.
    
    By the time this story shows up in a newspaper, presumably several
    updates will have arrived.  The poor newspaper whose deadline falls
    right after the first version is going to get it wrong, of course.

	Will someone affluent enough to have access to a DVN dish please
    fill in the rest of us poor sods on today's broacast?

	Thanks in advance...

				    -davo
			    (current PKO employee)

Ken, Jack Smith, and various others were on the DVN broadcast from DECworld 
today. They did not offer much beyond what was in the official company 
release that is available on Livewire and elsewhere. 

Ken did state, however, that the 5% or 6000 person "layoff" was just 
someone's guess, and not a company statement. He said that there will be 
some separations, but the $400M number "does not translate into any kind 
of" layoff figure. 

He also said, in response to a call-in question, that no new salary freeze 
is being discussed.

/kevin

	Three interesting questions and answers from the DVN:

	Q: Are you going to have an other pay freeze?

	A: No one is even suggesting one. The last one "didn't go
	   over too well." (KO)

	Q: The media is already talking about numbers of people Digital
	   will be getting rid of, are they right?

	A: They are guessing. Even top management does not have a number.

	Q: Will there be a layoff?

	A: No but they are getting ready to introduce a new voluntary
	   program.

			Alfred

    ............re .1......he also used his Post Office analogy again when
    talking about job security.  Someone really ought to get to him to stop
    doing that.  I believe the Postal Service has had some rather
    significant lay-off throughout the years

re .12:

He did say something about there being risks even at the post office.

    Heard on the radio this morning that the analysts are looking favorably
    at the Company despite the recently reported loss.  The Company did
    what it needed to do, and the analysts expect that the next quarter
    will be much more favorable.
    
    Rgds,
    

.1>"In light of the current results, the company will be making a major effort 
.1>to increase profit -- through increasing revenue, increasing customer 
.1>satisfaction, meeting customer needs and eliminating unncessary jobs," 
    
    Seems like after 15 years...I've been here before...are we going to
    "burn down the barn to get rid of the rats?"
    
    I came out here and opened a new office for DEC...stired up about $1M
    in a matter of a week.  Asked for a terminal/modem/printer, etc so that
    I could crank out quotes ... people were ready to B--U--Y.
    
    Well, couldn't do that ... you know ... the "crunch" and all that.
    I was told to have someone in an office 100 miles from me do the quotes
    and mail 'em to me.  If the customer has a one line change in a quote,
    well, he'll just have to wait...we have a "crunch" on.
    
    That's only part of the story...
    
    Ken?  Dave?  Are you listening?
    
    Jerry

    re: .10 & .11
    
    Ken may say that the 5% or 6000 jobs to be eliminated are just a
    guess on the media's part and does not come from management, but
    the account that I read last night in my local paper attributes
    those figures to Mark Steinkrauss (from Investor Relations, I
    believe).  I wonder if Ken knows what Mark is telling the press?

    You're assuming the press is correctly quoting Mark. A risky
    assumption. What with editors who cut articles in weird ways,
    reporters who don't understand the issues, and wireservice
    articles with incredible numbers of typos (have you ever watched
    a live AP or UPI wire?) I read the papers with a grain of salt.
    Especially when they report on Digital. I've heard/read incorrect
    information so often that I sometimes wonder if they get things
    wrong intentionally.

    		Alfred

    
    
      I'm not a finance person, but I seem to recall that last quarter
    we took a $150m writeoff  and provided severence packages to
    3,000 people.  (Roughly 50k a-piece if you assume nothing was
    spent on COD.) 
    
      If you make the assumption that the average for the severed employee
    was closer to  $30k, then they spent roughly $90m on severence
    packages, or roughly 60% (and the rest on COD/training/overhead etc.)
    
      This quarter there is another $400m allocated to "restructuring".  
    Assuming a similar ratio (60%) will be spent on severences, 
    there is roughly $240 m available.    Again assuming an average
    of $30k per employee, that leaves enough money for 8000 severence
    packages of the size of the last program.  (With the balance to
    be spent on plant closings, consolodations, relocations etc.)
    
      Now - consider that with the last package, 2200 people were
    expected to take the package, but 3000 actually did.  In other
    words, the estimate was 25% low.   Using this as a metric, it
    seems possible that the current target of 6000 people could be
    off by the same amount.  WHat to do?  Budget 25% higher.  125%
    of 6000 people is 8000 people!
    
      This is based on my own speculation, and numbers I've seen in
    the news media. My assumptions may be way off base particularly
    with respect to the amount of money/employee for the previous
    and next package, but  it appears that the 6000 person number is
    not an unreasonable estimate...
    
    
    						-al
    

    re: .15:
    
::.1>"In light of the current results, the company will be making a major effort 
::.1>to increase profit -- through increasing revenue, increasing customer 
::.1>satisfaction, meeting customer needs and eliminating unncessary jobs," 
::    
::    Seems like after 15 years...I've been here before...are we going to
::    "burn down the barn to get rid of the rats?"
    
    
    	Wait!   It looks like you didn't read the quote precisely enough.
    What you're talking about (the "crunch") is reducing expenses, yet
    strangely enough, that's the only thing not mentioned.
    	.Increasing Revenue
    	.Increasing Customer Satisfaction
    	.Meeting Customer Needs
    	.Eliminating Unnecessary Jobs
    
    When I first read the quote off the Business Wire, it jumped right out
    at me that it *doesn't say "cutting expenses"*.   For the past two
    years, that's all we've heard:  "Cut costs", "Reduce expense", etc.
    Now, all of a sudden, we're going to "increase profit -- through 
    increasing revenue, increasing customer satisfaction, meeting 
    customer needs and eliminating unncessary jobs." 
    
    I've always wondered why the other half of the profit equation never
    seemed to be taken into account.
    
    Of course, the real remedy is to increase revenue AND reduce marginal
    costs.
    
    -DM-

    re: .18
    
    Remove the Plant closing factor...Smith said there were not planned.
    
    Lloyd

re .18:

Some problems with your analysis:

1.  The amount set aside for restructuring doesn't necessarily reflect
    what's actually spent.  We don't know how much of the $150M writeoff
    in the 3rd quarter has been spent.

2.  You assume the same ratio of severence costs to total restructuring
    costs.  According to Jack Smith (as paraphrased in the Globe [caveat
    lector]), the next severance package won't be as generous as the last
    one.  We don't know whether the emphasis will be on severance or
    reskilling/relocation.

3.  Smith emphasized in the DVN broadcast that eliminating unnecessary
    jobs will be an ongoing process.  The $400M may be intended to last
    a number of years.

    
    
      re -.1
    
      Yup, you're right in all your observations...
    
      The idea behind the analysis was to show that the 6000 person
    number was at least a plausible scenario, not necessarilly the
    only scenario.   
    
      One has to assume that DEC management gets the big bucks for
    acting logically.  This was the most logical scenario I could
    work out based on the available data.   It'll be interesting
    to see how close I came...
    
      It's kind of like saying "it rains when there are clouds"...  
    It doesn't *always* rain when there are clouds, but the chances
    of rain are far greater than when there is just blue sky...  
    If you're planning a Picnic, you're more concerned with the 
    fact that it *might* rain than with the chance that it might not...
    
    						-al
    

    Unfortunately, all we can do is speculate as to the specific plans
    relating to the restructuring charge.  However, having dealt directly
    with Big 8 accounting firms for the better portion of my career, I find
    it difficult to believe that Coopers & Lybrand would let even DEC take 
    a $400M reserve against current earnings unless there was a pretty 
    detailed plan as to how the money would be spent.
    
    If you look into some of the quotes from the DVN broadcast, they were
    very careful to say that they did not know how much headcount would
    be reduced because selective hiring would be taking place as well.
    
    I strongly believe that there is a definitive plan in place as to how
    many people will be offered a "package", which facilities will be
    consolidated, etc.  
    
    I also strongly believe that, right, wrong, or indifferent, no details
    surrounding the plan will be released until it is exercised, probably
    in Q2.
    
    Please bear in mind that all of the above is strictly my opinion.
    
    

    ...all very interesting, and I think .23 has hit the nail squarely on
    the head.  Now, would someone who has the appropriate smarts please
    help me understand some numbers buried deep in the financials???
    
        - Accounts Receivable at 3.2+ BILLION bucks????
        - Days sales outstanding 86???
        - Total inventories at 1.5+ BILLION????
    
    Now, I know we are a big company, but isn't the above somewhat out of
    line?  Especially the A/R.  Should we be doing a lot better than this?

    I believe that days outstanding a/r is improved over a few years
    ago. Still I think part of the problem is that customers don't
    usually pay before the system is up and running. This sometimes
    takes us a while. I see it as a quality issue. I know that when
    I was at an other vendor we used to install similar systems (price,
    power,disk, etc) in a couple of days and hear from customers that
    their VAX took 2 weeks + to get going. I believe we've improved quite
    a bit but may still lag where we should be. Let's not forget the
    economy either. When times get tough many companies tend to let their
    payables go a little longer. And times are tough.

    Last I heard our inventory turns (related to inventory or rather
    how efficient we are with it) is much better then a few years ago.
    Also we have less on hand at any given time. Still we could use
    improvement I'm sure. I have heard talk that improving a/r and
    inventory are and have been major project goals for the last several
    years. You can't quick fix them though.


    		Alfred

    
    Some caveats on reducing inventory:
    
    1.  Delivery schedules are considered by _many_ customers before
    placing an order.  Often, 30 days is not acceptable.  Reducing
    inventory would by default increase delivery schedules possibly
    resulting in significant revenue loss.  In this case, inventory is 
    a necessary cost.
    
    2.  A hallmark of Customer Services is quick repair time.  Reducing
    their inventory would most likely result in longer repair times and
    lower customer satisfaction.  Often, we are winning service business
    because competing vendors aren't able to offer Digital's level of
    service.  Again, inventory is a necessary cost.
    
    While there may be areas that inventory can be reduced, the overall
    sales and customer satisfaction impact must be carefully analyzed
    first.
    
    rkp

    How's this for a journalistic mistake - one announcer on CNBC
    said Digital reported a $234 *BILLION* Dollar loss!  Thats' the
    size of the national debt!  Gee, I knew we were big, but...
    
    He never caught the error. :^)

<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>

 Edition : 2118               Friday 27-Jul-1990            Circulation :  8302 

        VNS COMPUTER NEWS .................................  378 Lines


 Digital - Posts first loss, plans job cuts
	{The Boston Globe, 26-Jul-90, p. 1}
   ...
   "The economy is going to hell in a hack," said John Adams of Adams, Harkness
 & Hill in Boston. He said Digital's costs also remained too high.
   ...
   John F. Smith, Digital's senior vice president of operations, told a news
 conference yesterday at Boston's World Trade Center, where the company is
 holding its DECWorld sales exposition, that company officials were clearly
 disappointed with the results.
   But asked if the worst was yet to come, he replied, "I'm not quite sure how
 it could get much worse."
   Wall Street also had reason to be optimistic. Analysts had not expected
 Digital to move so aggressively to cut its payroll, and were thus pleased by
 the size of the reserve. In addition, Digital said it was moving ahead with
 shipments of its new VAX 9000 mainframe, which had been delayed by technical
 problems. The new machine should give a big boost to sales, generating
 anywhere from $700 million to more than $1 billion in revenue in the fiscal
 year that began July 1.
   "They addressed the two majors issues, costs and the VAX 9000, that
 concerned analysts," said Stephen Cohen of Soundview Financial Group in
 Stamford, Conn. "There is light at the end of the tunnel - and it isn't a
 train."
   Digital expects about 6,000 workers, or 4.8% of its worldwide work force of
 124,000, to accept the voluntary severance deal. It will be offered to workers
 in Massachusetts, where Digital employs about 32,000, throughout the United
 States and, for the first time, at Digital operations overseas.
   Smith said Massachusetts would not be hit harder by the cuts than other
 regions, with many fewer than 2,000 Bay State workers expected to leave. Areas
 affected will include administration, finance, personnel, information systems
 and other "overhead positions."
   Although he would not discuss specific terms of the offer, Smith said the
 benefits would not match the highly lucrative severance plan that ended June
 30. About 3,000 workers took that package, which combined cash payments based
 on years of service with one year of extended health insurance coverage.
 Employees who turned down the previous offer will generally not be included in
 the new program, he said.
   ...
   Digital's share price initially rose as high as 78 on the New York Stock
 Exchange following release of its results. Analysts attributed the rise to the
 feeling that the size of the reserve signaled that Digital was getting very
 serious about cutting expenses.
   But the price sank later in the day, closing down 7/8 at 74 7/8 on volume of
 1.13 million shares. Analysts said the stock retreated after Digital suggested
 in a telephone conference call with analysts that earnings might just break
 even in the first quarter, compared with a profit of $150.8 million a year
 earlier.
   Digital spokesman Mark Steinkrauss said first-quarter earnings would be hurt
 by continued economic weakness in the United States and the possibility that
 markets in Europe, which have bolstered Digital's sales, could soften further.
 Also, Digital's first quarter is traditionally very slow, he said.
   Steinkrauss said savings from having fewer employees will exceed $100
 million in fiscal 1991 and grow to several hundred million dollars the next
 year.
   ...
   Although it was Digital's second straight year of lower profits, Smith, who
 has been with the company since 1958, said he felt Digital's slump in 1983
 had been more difficult on the company.
   "That certainly felt a little bit worse to me than this does," he said.


    Permission to copy material from this VNS is granted (per DIGITAL PP&P)
    provided that the message header for the issue and credit lines for the
    VNS correspondent and original source are retained in the copy.

<><><><><><><><>   VNS Edition : 2118      Friday 27-Jul-1990   <><><><><><><><>

The whole Just In Time approach to inventory reduction has a lot of merit.  
It does take work for everything to run smoothly.  The Japanese are very
good at it.   If it does work correctly, the savings are in the millions.
There are several software companies that make their business selling systems
for a lot of money to  help large companies reduce their inventory.  It's 
quite easy to charge $1 million dollars for a system that reduces your 
customers overhead by many many millions.  

				Bob 

    Anent .27 (Chavez):  To pick a nit, $234 billion is not the (U.S.)
    national debt.  It's more like the *interest* on the national debt 8^(

    The Japanese are very good at JIT because typically all their vendors
    are within 50 miles of their manufacturing plant.  Thus it is not
    too difficult to call a vendor 40 miles away and ask them to drop
    a shipment on their receiving dock in 3 hours.  We are a long way
    from being in such an ideal situation, having our vendors all over
    the country, and in fact all over the world.  If we ever get to
    the point of having all of our vendors within a 50-mile radius,
    it shouldn't be too difficult to reduce inventory significantly.
    But until then, if we want to provide customer service and
    satisfaction, we will have to carry inventory.  But there are so
    many in management who are so obsessed with numbers, that they would
    scap everything we don't need this quarter and buy the very same
    material 3 months from now saying "See, we reduced our inventory".
    
    Norm
    

>                     <<< Note 1147.31 by SALEM::LORANGER >>>
>                          -< We could do it, too---- >-
>
>    The Japanese are very good at JIT because typically all their vendors
>    are within 50 miles of their manufacturing plant.


    JIT works best in a manufacturing-type environment where it is
    semi-possible to predict when more materia is needed.  In field
    locations, it is much more difficult to predict when a given
    part will fail.  Most customers whose system is down would like
    it to be repaired right now, not tomorrow morning when the
    Federal Express delivery is made.  It appears as though local
    Customer Service logistics sites have been running extremely
    thin on spares for quite awhile now.  It seems spare parts for
    systems are not in stock locally at least 50% of the time.  This
    doesn't mean that for example, a spare KDB50 is not currently in
    town, it means that the disk kit, or the one spare KDB50 is
    currently at another customer site.

    d

    Maintaining 'spares', like maintaining any other parts, is overhead,
    pure and simple. JIT was never meant for field service use. (The
    Japanese probably figure their stuff simply won't break.) 
    
    Japanese companies, including and especially suppliers, are far
    more service oriented than US companies. "You want 37 parts this
    morning, and 43 parts this afternoon ? No problem." as opposed
    to "We'll get the parts to you next week, or as soon after as 
    possible."  It is *easier* to get parts from Japan than from, say,
    Eastern Mass. With better quality to boot. Sad but true.

    Do not use the fear of "under-stocking" (and hence bad service) as an
    excuse for poor inventory management. Good management provides for
    adequate inventory to maintain service and deliveries to customers,
    without the financial strain of excess inventory. In my experience,
    excess inventory often includes many obsolete and unneeded items, and
    these do not improve service!
    
    The high DSO and inventory may indicate that we need to look much more
    closely at revenue cycles, including speed of delivery, installation,
    invoicing and collection of A/R.  Also are we producing what our
    customers require and at the time they need them?  Or are we producing
    "shelf decorations"?
    
    Locations with poor inventory and DSO results should be the subject of
    a cross-functional audit, with representatives of Marketing, Finance
    and Logistics, from another more successful location in the company.
    The aim should not be to criticise the operation,but to assist them to
    improve.
    
    Shalom
    Baruch

    .30 (Steve Jong)
    
    Take all the nits you want!  ;^)

re:      <<< Note 1147.34 by TAVIS::BARUCH "in the land of milk and honey" >>>
>                         -< Provide what is required >-
>
>    Do not use the fear of "under-stocking" (and hence bad service) as an
>    excuse for poor inventory management. Good management provides for
>    adequate inventory to maintain service and deliveries to customers,
>    without the financial strain of excess inventory. 
>>    In my experience,
>>    excess inventory often includes many obsolete and unneeded items, and
>>    these do not improve service!
    
	This may be true in your experience, but in my experience ( turning
	wrenches in Digital Field Service for 4-1/2 years ), the
	Logistics organization handles parts supply as follows:

	1) Logistics:"You have this whole 8xxx kit here. You haven't used any
	   parts out of it for 4 months.  We want it back, out of
	   your stockroom."  It goes somewhere else.

	2) 8xxx on DECservice ( 2 hour response-time committed by
	   DEC corporate ) breaks horribly.  Engineer goes onsite,
	   twiddles thumbs, runs tests, orders part P1(Federal Xpress).  
	   Logistics now gets upset that P1 rate for cost center is
	   "excessive."

	3) Logistics next gets upset that a part ordered for repair
	   is not "consumed" ( put into a machine and a failing part
	   returned "red-tagged".  They complain about this, 
	   despite the fact that replacing a board may have either
	   cleared a contact-type problem, or the problem may
	   lie elsewhere.  Logistics begins pinging on Field
	   Service types to "consume the board or don't order it."

	4) So, FSEs consume EVERYTHING.  They just want folks off
	   their backs.

	5) Logistics complains "Parts consumption rate too high."

	What would you do ?  You wouldn't feed the bad boards
	back into the parts kit, non-red-tagged to avoid the
	harangue, would you ?  Or would you ?  Anything to 
	silence the accountant-types up-the-line ?

	We (Digital) expect customers to buy our big ( million $ )
	systems to run their entire businesses on, yet often 
	we won't even keep the parts in town to repair them.

	Sorry, but on a large VAXcluster, "parts tomorrow" is not
	sufficient, when we have contracted for 2-hour response time
	and charged our DECservice rates.  

	I suspect if most customers knew what parts were available
	in the branch I left, they'd run screaming to 3rd-party
	vendors.  After all, they provide about the same parts availability.

	Steve H

    re -1
    
    That about hits the nail on the head. You forgot one thing.
    
    LOGISTICS: We are providing 9x.xx% Level of Service.
    
    I have yet to figure out where this number comes from.
    
    Reis

    re: .36
    
    Why can't you just tell Logistics to shove it?  (Politely, of course.)
    The fact that an 8000-series system which is under a 2-hour response
    time commitment hasn't broken in 4 months is a tribute to the people
    who designed, manufatured, installed and maintained it.  In spite of
    its good record, it might break in the next 15 minutes.  Even if you
    haven't consumed any of the parts in 2 years, you still need them in
    your stockroom.
        John Sauter

   re .38
   
   AMen. I can remember in my days in Field service, taking a new "vigorous"
   look at Preventative Maintenance on Disks in my accounts. So I started
   ordering lots of filters etc. (THis is back in the days when Disk drives
   had filters, for you young ones... RP02's 4's etc.) I was told there was no
   histiry of consumption of those parts so I couldn't have them. THey hadn't
   been changed for a couple of years! I am/was not arguing the merits of
   changing them, but the fact that I couldn't get them when I did need them. 
   
   Equally, when working on installations, I liked to make sure that ystems
   had cables properly dressed, labelled and routed. Logistics carried a
   number of Parts including Tie-wraps etc as 9x class parts which, in theory,
   were zero cost consumables. I had to fight for sometime to have a stock of
   those brought in and maintained so that I has an Engineer could take that
   little extra aesthetic pride in my work.
   
   q
   

	re .39:

>>>	I had to fight for sometime to have a stock of
>>>     those brought in and maintained so that I has an Engineer
>>>	could take that little extra aesthetic pride in my work.

	You do yourself an injustice, Peter. While I am sure you took
	an "aesthetic pride" in your work, the use of cable ties to secure
	cables is 100% practical. Back in those days, it was distressingly
	common for cables to be left "swinging in the wind". Result: every
	few times someone pulled out the processor chassis and pushed it in
	again, something like the UNIBUS would get trapped. If it shorted
	to ground, it could lead to two senior engineers spending a whole
	weekend replacing bus driver and receiver chips for every device
	in the system.

	Often, inexperienced or careless engineers would neglect the
	humdrum business of "tidying up". What always burned me was the
	way supervisors were apt to blame the conscientious engineers for
	"taking too much time over each call". In the long run it's
	quicker to do things right - this is the message of quality, and
	it's the same for an individual or a corporation.

	As so often, an engineer's pride in his work is enormously functional.
	It may be hard to reduce to facts and figures, but for me, the words
	"the team like this solution best" carry a lot of weight.

	/Tom