Period 4 (1981 - 1987)
Houston, Texas. A different world.
I had heard that in Texas everything was bigger, larger, stronger, faster, taller, etc., than in any other state.
Some data:
During the summer of 1981, Houston paper reported a number of events, beating previous Houston's records.
> In July and August the temperature never went below 40° for 60 days in a row, day and night. During this time the humidity stayed between 80% and 100%. (mostly 100%).
> In one single week-end, the newspapers reported 23 murders, all incidents unrelated to each other. In one case one bullet went through the body of two people, killing both.
> In Houston the economy was booming that year. The newspapers wrote that about 1000 people, looking for jobs, were drifting into the Greater Houston Area each day, .
> The traffic was impressive. The SW freeway was literally packed with cars heading towards downtown. The heavy traffic started at about 5:30 AM, lasting until 10. In Texas Instruments people told me that it was not unusual for some people to drive each day up to 150 km to go and return from work.
Now let's get back to my job in Texas Instruments. This 7 year period was divided in the two parts. Two years spent in Houston Texas, and five years spent in Nice France. They have a lot in common. There wasn't a written job description, especially for the second assignment (the five years in France). Also I did not have day-to-day operational supervisor. If the management teams of the five European entities of TI were happy with my support from Houston, all was well.
My office in Houston was located in the Headquarters of the microprocessor division. My title was Marketing Liaison, between the TI organization in Europe, and the microprocessor division in US.
Major European customers would come to TI to discuss either technical issues, or commercial aspect of the business. It was my responsibility to plan in details their visits so that they would meet the right (TI) people, capable of providing the answers they were looking for.
The details of my jobs are not of much interest. However, some of the European customers I met were unique and interesting people.
> A French middle manager arrived at the meeting with his personal secretary.
During the presentation she sat on his left side, very close to him. She was in charge of taking notes based on what he whispered to her during the the presentation. It is my personal assumption that she had an additional task to perform, that is: look beautiful and charming as only French women can. I can testify that her performance was impressive.
> A Swiss distributor of electronics components came every year to US to visit their major suppliers. It was a team of four people. One of them was the owner of the business. During their daylong presentation one of the participants told me the following anecdote. In Switzerland it was customary to address each other with their formal titles and use the last name. As soon as they arrived in US soil, the procedures agreed called for dropping all formalities, and call each other by their first name only, as it is done in US. By the same token, as soon as they boarded the plane to return to Europe, the protocol called for returning to the customary formal greeting approach.
> An electronics engineers working for a German company came to Houston to talk with the technical staff of TI. His company was developing an electronics controlled system for the Automotive Industry. Such control system, which is now standard in all automobiles, commercial vehicles, and trucks of all dimensions and shapes was not common at all in 1981. It's acronym is ABS: (anti-lock braking system) ... a safety system ... preventing the wheels from locking up .... Nowadays ABS is synonymous with safety. This was not the case, 30 years ago. For companies operating truck fleets Cost was concern number one.
Trucks, in some case have up to 16 wheels. If every time the driver stepped on the breaks, 2 wheels locked-up, it meant that at the end of the day, 2 tires were badly damaged, and had to be replaced. Not only the tires have a considerable cost, but also the truck and the driver would be idle for a number of hours (at best) or days. The financial impact was considerable.
The world market for semiconductors (SC).
During the late 70s the European and American manufacturing of SC were losing market share to components produced in the Far East, especially from Japan. The concern was high since the SC market was worth several billions of dollars. It was known that the quality of the Japanese products were much better that similar components produced by Western companies. What was not known was the degree of improvement achieved in the Far East.
Toward the middle of 1982 a research paper presented in San Francisco provided quantitative data showing that the gap in quality (and reliability) of Japanese products vs American ICs. The workmanship quality of the manufacturing process of ICs in Japan, were anywhere between 10 to 100 times better. The impact on the electronics industry was enormous. Companies like Texas Instruments were confronted with the hard reality that they would continue to lose market share unless a step function improvement in their manufacturing process was implemented. No more discussions on fine points. Action had to be taken, now. It was a matter of survival.
At the headquarters of TI in Dallas, Vice President (Morris Chang) became responsible to lead this program in all TI operating units worldwide. (More on Morris Chang in Part IV of my Bio).
The event described above provided the springboard for my next assignment which lasted five years. This period was marked by constant learning, either from external sources, or by experimentation. It proved to be the "knowledge-platform" for the future of my professional career, to these days. By the end of 1982 I had moved with my family from Houston TX, to Nice France, headquarters of Texas Instruments Europe.
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