David J. Nims | Phone: 425-397-9814 | Fax: 425-397-0489 | nimsd@aol.com |
When I accepted the offer with MDA, they were in the process of booking an order from the Israeli Air Force, for a meteorological imaging satellite ground station, basically the ground-based system that receives weather imagery from orbiting satellites, records the data, analyzes it, and images it on film. Because of immigration issues, it was nearly 6-months from the time I accepted their offer to the time I started work. This is the project they had hired me to manage, and they still hadn't booked the order.
So I joined the small team that was working on this sale. The first thing I did was to review the proposal. It was a jumble of specifications, work description, and terms. I reorganized it into the standard 3 documents: Specifications, Statement of Work, and Terms and Conditions. After I understood the scope of the project, I reviewed the cost estimate, and concluded that for a military customer, the job was more than 50% underbid. The price must double! I presented my analysis to MDA management, and they agreed they had a problem. So, our agent in Tel Aviv presented this to the customer. They were understandably upset, and ended the negotiations.
I was then assigned as Project Manager of several of MDA's smaller remote-sensing jobs. Meanwhile, after failing to get the cooperation of Goodyear Aerospace, MDA had decided to develop a low-cost film recorder on their own. With my background in the development of film recorders, I was also assigned as Project Manager of this activity. Eventually I was promoted to Operations Manager for Met Systems, with all their Project Managers reporting to me.
While this was going on, our potential customer in Israel managed to get the budget increase needed to fund their ground station project. Two of us traveled to Tel Aviv to begin negotiation of this contract. It was a long and arduous process, but eventually we ended up at the Israeli Mission in New York for final negotiations. We finally booked the order at more than twice the amount originally bid.
However, in the time between booking the order and starting work, MDA underwent a reorganization into 6 Business Areas. I was offered the choice of being Business Area Manager for Meteorological Ground Stations, or for the Electro-Optical Products (EOP) business area. MDA had decided to market the new film recorder (which cost less than 1/3 of Goodyear's cost) as a stand-alone product, independent of their systems business. EOP had been formed for this purpose. I chose EOP. (So I never did manage the IAF project. With their demanding on-site project officer, even though we doubled the price, we barely managed to stay within budget.)
As Business Area Manager, marketing, engineering, and production reported to me. Sales still reported through the V.P. Sales, however, they effectively worked as part of our team. Initially we focused on the international remote sensing ground station market. MDA had about half the world market for ground stations, so we found ourselves marketing to our direct competitors in the systems business. Tricky. Nevertheless, we were successful in capturing nearly the entire world market, only about $3M annually, but very profitable. Through my contacts, we also booked an order for a High-Resolution Film Recorder for Rome Air Development center in the U.S.
After the remote-sensing market was firmly in control, we began to look at other markets for the FIRE film recorder. In parallel, we developed products for three commercial markets:
Both the graphics arts application and the printed circuit application were quite successful.
Around this time, because of problems in the company’s core systems businesses, MDA was experiencing severe cash flow problems. This resulted in a venture-capital investment, and a new President. To reduce the number of people reporting directly to him, he hired a V.P. of Products, and a V.P. of Systems, each with three Business Area Managers reporting to him. The V.P. of Products was hired from Black-and-Decker, and had a strong manufacturing background. Soon after, the other two product Business Areas ran into problems and were discontinued, so I was the only person reporting to him.
For the first time in my life I was working for a person that I couldn't get along with. And coming from different backgrounds, we had major disagreements on business strategy and how to pursue it. Sparks were flying. Eventually he was let go, but I was severely damaged in the process. EOP was spun off as a fully independent Division, and the new President still wanted someone with more of a commercial manufacturing background to run it. I became Marketing Manager for the new Electro-Optical Division. I knew why this had happened, but was still disappointed with my new role.
One of the major players in the printed circuit market was Optrotech. They had introduced a new product line, the Image 2000, to supplement their traditional market of optical inspection systems. The market for PCB imaging consisted of 2 segments: the PCB manufacturers, and the imaging service bureaus that supplied film to the smaller manufacturers. MDA's FIRE 9000 was clearly superior to Optrotech's Image 2000 photoplotter, so MDA dominated the service bureau market. However, the Image 2000 had a CAM front-end, needed by the PCB manufacturers, so they dominated this market.
For awhile Optrotech and MDA held discussions about cooperation, so we wouldn't be beating each other up in the marketplace. During this time, I met many of Optrotech's key people, including Amos Michelson, President of Optrotech's U.S. subsidiary, Oprtotech Inc.. These discussions eventually broke off. However, when Amos Michelson was planning to return to Israel and began searching for a replacement, he contacted me. By this time, the first V.P. of the Electro-Optical Division, had already been fired, and had been replaced by another new recruit, this time from IBM. I could see no future for me at MDA, and I viewed Optrotech's offer as a good opportunity to gain experience managing sales and customer support, as well as having corporate P/L responsibility for the first time. So I left MDA and took the position of President of Optrotech Inc., then doing around $20M in sales in the North American market. At the time I left MDA, the Electro-Optical Division was doing around $17M in sales.