Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [87]
“Oh, Tom,” Conley said. “I was just trying to arrange an appointment with you. Cindy tells me that you have a very busy schedule and may be out of the office most of the day.”
Sanders looked at Cindy. Her face was tight. “Yes,” he said, “at least for the morning.”
“Well, I only need a few minutes.”
Sanders waved him into the office. Conley went in, and Sanders closed the door.
“I’m looking forward to the briefing tomorrow for John Marden, our CEO,” Conley said. “I gather you’ll be speaking then.”
Sanders nodded vaguely. He had heard nothing about a briefing. And tomorrow seemed very far away. He was having trouble concentrating on what Conley was saying.
“But of course we’ll all be asked to take a position on some of these agenda items,” Conley said. “And I’m particularly concerned about Austin.”
“Austin?”
“I mean, the sale of the Austin facility.”
“I see,” Sanders said. So it was true.
“As you know, Meredith Johnson has taken an early and strong position in favor of the sale,” Conley said. “It was one of the first recommendations she gave us, in the early stages of shaping this deal. Marden’s worried about cash flow after the acquisition; the deal’s going to add debt, and he’s worried about funding high-tech development. Johnson thought we could ease the debt load by selling off Austin. But I don’t feel myself competent to judge the pros and cons on this. I was wondering what your view was.”
“On a sale of the Austin plant?”
“Yes. Apparently there’s tentative interest from both Hitachi and Motorola. So it’s quite possible that it could be liquidated quickly. I think that’s what Meredith has in mind. Has she discussed it with you?”
“No,” Sanders said.
“She probably has a lot of ground to cover, settling in to her new job,” Conley said. He was watching Sanders carefully as he spoke. “What do you think about a sale?”
Sanders said, “I don’t see a compelling reason for it.”
“Apart from cash-flow issues, I think her argument is that manufacturing cellular phones has become a mature business,” Conley said. “As a technology, it’s gone through its exponential growth phase, and it’s now approaching a commodity. The high profits are gone. From now on, there will be only incremental sales increases, against increasing severe foreign competition. So, telephones aren’t likely to represent a major income source in the future. And of course there’s the question of whether we should be manufacturing in the States at all. A lot of DigiCom’s manufacturing is already offshore.”
“That’s all true,” Sanders said. “But it’s beside the point. First of all, cellular phones may be reaching market saturation, but the general field of wireless communications is still in its infancy. We’re going to see more and more wireless office nets and wireless field links in the future. So the market is still expanding, even if telephony is not. Second, I would argue that wireless is a major part of our company’s future interest, and one way to stay competitive is to continue to make products and sell them. That forces you to maintain contact with your customer base, to keep knowledgeable about their future interests. I wouldn’t opt out now. If Motorola and Hitachi see a business there, why don’t we? Third, I think that we have an obligation—a social obligation, if you will—to keep high-paying skilled jobs in the U.S. Other countries don’t export good jobs. Why should we? Each of our offshore manufacturing decisions has been made for a specific reason, and, personally, I hope we start to move them back here. Because there are many hidden costs in offshore fabrication. But most important of all, even though we are primarily a development unit here—making new products—we need manufacturing. If there’s anything that the last twenty years has shown us, it’s that design and manufacturing are all one process. You start splitting off the design engineers from the manufacturing guys and you’ll end up with bad design. You’ll end up with General Motors.”
He paused. There was a brief silence. Sanders hadn’t intended to