You don't fix a company by getting rid of skilled workers. And this isn't about modernizing or a vision for the future either.
Make no mistake, this is GE's fall, and anyone with half a brain has seen it coming for years. Only those in deep denial can't see what's obvious to everyone else.
GE bought engineers (they bill them out to clients for their expertise, unit some of then actually commissioned while part of Alstom), they paid a premium for these guys, and after acquiring them, proceeded to summarily dismiss them, while clients ask for so and so because they understand the unit inside and out, and they're bragging about layoffs of personnel's Alstom ABB paid millions to train in their specific machines, thinking they can replace them with people who can't figure out why their English tools don't work with the metric systems, that's like congratulating yourself for cutting your throats. In the power sector, your money is billing Engineers out. Sure you can fill the order with subpar Engineers who have no clue about those systems, like buying a disposable spoon when you had titaniums. Yes the customers will swallow because they signed the dot. You just won't get repeat orders because the tools that actually work, the ones Alstom trained specifically on these machcines for millions of dollars, the ones the customers knew by name, asked for by name, had been nabbed by somebody else. Filling the orders done from Alstom days, GE had clients, and they filled them with disgruntled cut up waged soon to jump ship people, without admin support, or new GE hires who have never seen Alstom units. If you're the customers looking at the efficient Alstom and faced by incompetent GE, would you hire them after warranty? See that's where the cash flow missed. You gave your product blueprints to someone else and complaining about failing to capture a market you gave away. Sure, plastic spoons are cheap but you only use them once. Penny wise, pound foolish.
GE Power has really screwed up the cost structure of business by too many bad management decisions made by new breed of manager that has little knowledge of business, products, or customers. These "Change Agents" have really screwed up getting rid of people who know what they are doing and replacing with people who don't.
Moving out of high efficiency legacy engineering and manufacturing facilities, and farming out all over the country and globe has destroyed cash flow, transportation costs, and organization synergy. Now they have duplicate and bloated functions all over working at low efficiency.
Gutting out manufacturing where raw materials used to be turned into finished goods has others capturing the value added and cash flow. GE Power is bleeding cash flow vs generating and capturing it.
Its all about cash flow and bad management that screwed up the previous GE cash cows.
GE management is very poor. Look at the numbers
Jeff Immelt’s fault. So angry that he walked away with $211M.😠
Power is what’s killing GE right now. The other businesses could stand alone and survive, but Power is borrowing money from them to cover the cash shortfall. Selling off Power (or spinning it off) could be done but it would need a significant recovery first, and this secular downward trend makes that very challenging. There just isn’t enough demand to support the big 3 manufacturers and I expect one of them to get out of the game in the next 5-10 years. GE will be around for many, many years...it’ll just look different, and possibly not be in Power.
The company needs the refocus on quality. Nobody is going to buy GE if the quality is bad. They buy cheapest parts they can get their hands on regardless of quality. Not only that but they want to eliminate as much testing as possible to ram jobs out the door. If something isn’t right they fix it on site. Damn embarrassing if you ask me.
@dys Healthcare is even further down the spiral than Power is. I came from there and watched it yet gutted in 2010b like we are on the way to being now. That leaves Aviation to stand alone. Good luck with that.
Whoever is posting these thoughts really doesn't understand the big issues that exist. I don't disagree with the sentiment. But it's not as simple as you suggest. GE can't be split up because of the massive debt and goodwill on the balance sheet and not enough cash flow to cover it. So we are stuck with the idiotic decisions the leaders have made and are making. They can't rif the people that need to be layed off in Baden because of the socialistic agreements that exist in the EU and then bolze and his merry band of idiots agreed to other crazy employment orders to buy a failing company that should not even exist. So we are screwed. If you don't know how companies fail, I suggest u read this link about the fall of our (previously biggest) competitor, Westinghouse. GE clown suite is making the similar bad decisions.
http://old.post-gazette.com/westinghouse/
Make no mistake, GE will survive. We might sell or spin off Power if we can’t revive it, but Aviation and Healthcare will be under the GE name for many years to come. I’m in Power by the way. We need to modernize our thinking about energy production, storage and consumption going forward, or we will fail. Storage solutions, in particular, are going to be important for clean energy technologies.
Survival also depends on being able to continue to function after the cuts and selloffs. At this point, that is very much in doubt.
Survival depends on cuts.
Cash flow in danger.
Completely agree! Twisted culture in R&D, ignorance in management set for the fall