It’s odd, I think, that more hasn’t been made of the passing of the world’s foremost authority on organizational management, Peter F. Drucker.

Drucker died on Nov. 11; perhaps the news was lost amid all the hue and cry over Productronica. Yet Drucker, who would have turned 96 on Nov. 19 – we should all be that lucky – lived more than long enough to see his hypotheses on management unfold and to be recognized in his own time for his genius – we should all be that lucky.

Drucker first made a name for himself as a social theorist. In 1939 the Austria-born Drucker published The End of Economic Man, an analysis of the rise of totalitarian societies. (Winston Churchill, among others, agreed with his forecast that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany would become allies.)

In the 66 years that followed, he wrote 37 more books, yet never strayed far from his observations on the economically disenfranchised. In an interview not long before his death, he commented on the dichotomy that characterizes China. Free of the Cultural Revolution, in which wealth and intellectualism were looked upon with disdain, China is fast becoming a land of have and have-nots. This gathering of wealth by the few has a historical corollary: the redistribution by the masses. As Drucker said: “On the coast are 300 million mercantile types benefiting from the new approach. Inland are 900 million stagnating.” China, he noted, has had a peasant revolt about every 50 years, with the last one having ended in 1949.

In 1945 Drucker published his best-known work, The Concept of the Corporation. General Motors, the subject of his classic book, used the findings as a new foundation, revamping its assembly processes to give line workers more control (and guaranteed wages) and in the process remaking itself into the largest company in the world. The book itself was an innovation: it was the first company chronicle to become a bestseller.

Every generation responded to Drucker. While former CEO Jack Welch gets star treatment (mostly deserved) for his work at General Electric, his model was based on Drucker’s view that the conglomerate should be first or second in every business it was in, or not in it at all. The organization that came about based on that “radical” concept was actually the second revolution he fathered there. In the 1950s, at Drucker’s urging, GE adopted a decentralized model. By the 1980s, according to one report, about 75% of U.S.-based companies had done the same.

Indeed, most companies use Drucker’s concepts in some form or another. Worker empowerment was a Drucker invention. “Management by objective” was another (in 1954!). And guess who we should blame for the mission statement. Here are three Druckerisms: What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?

Drucker was also among the first to recognize that the world was transforming to an economy of “knowledge” in which workers with specialized skills would gain the upper hand.

Unlike his contemporary, W. Edwards Deming, considered the patron saint of Quality, quantitative work was never Drucker’s strong suit. His observations were arch, not bound by details either nitty or gritty. But they have withstood the test of time.

 

Productronica, the gi-normous biennial trade show, has also withstood the test of time. Last November, as they have for some 30 years, electronics manufacturing OEMs convened in Munich to unveil their latest and greatest. The standouts, according to this observer, were the eye-opening entry into the printer market by Mydata, which lived up to its advance billing, a combination AOI/automatic selective soldering machine (no kidding) from ERSA, and an under-the-radar metal squeegee from Transition Automation that is optimized for lead-free pastes (see our full report on page 52).

What stood out even more, however, was the quality of the equipment being put on the market today. While the levels of functionality vary greatly, it’s getting hard to find machines (Western or Japanese made ones, anyway) that fail to perform to at least a minimum standard.

And while we are getting reports of some Chinese-made equipment making its way to Western plants, we have yet to see a true Asian Invasion. We suspect one is coming, however. Rep firms like Innovative Equipment Technologies (ietechnologies.net) that specialize in Eastern-made gear are coming online. As one head of a major equipment company suggested to me, like with automobiles, customers might get to the point where they don’t really care who is copying who. We didn’t see the Chinese OEMs at Productronica. Their inevitable arrival will not be feared, however, at least not by those who trust in Drucker’s theories.

 

And finally … On the eve of its 50^th anniversary, IPC has commissioned a book to capture the history of electronics manufacturing. We think that’s great. One wish, however, is that the tome will recognize that the PWB industry dates to at least 1903, making it some 50-plus years older than IPC acknowledges.

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