The ignominious fall of Dell
Dell may never recover from the revelation that it sold faulty PCs -- and
then blamed its customers:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/the-ignominious-death-dell-882?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2010-07-01
<Snip>
...Blame the man at the top
Business culture is formed in the corner office. Even the largest
enterprises are a reflection of the men and women who run them, particularly
if those executives were founders. The Hewlett-Packard steered by Bill
Hewlett and Dave Packard was very different than the HP run by Carly
Fiorina.
Dell, though, has always been Michael Dell's company. Sure, Kevin Rollins
was CEO during the period when quality plunged. But Michael Dell was
chairman at the time and, by all accounts, in close touch with Rollins; they
even shared an office for a while.
So blaming Rollins doesn't cut it, and neither does blaming the company that
produced the faulty capacitors at the heart of this story. Dell, along with
many other manufacturers of PCs, used capacitors produced by Nichicon, a
Japanese electronics giant. According to court documents [PDF] in the suit
against Dell brought by a major customer, Nichicon sold faulty capacitors, a
key motherboard component, that leaked and failed with alarming
regularity -- and Dell knew it...
</Snip>
midrange.com
