A marriage made in Shenzhen
It was a Japanese-American marriage, but its happiness depended in large part on how the couple would get along in China.
When Hitachi and IBM merged their disk drive businesses three years ago in a $2bn deal, China accounted for only about 10 per cent of the units' combined shipments. Today the merged entity, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, ships35 per cent of its output to China-based customers - most of them computer or consumer goods exporters - and expects that figure to grow to 50 per cent by 2007. The company has simply followed its industry in an era in which 95 per cent of the world's notebook computers are manufactured in China.
"The view is and was that the customers were moving their footprint to China," says Dirk Thomas, Hitachi GST vice-president and president of its Greater China operations. "It's a big shift but it's on track."
Mr Thomas's last assignment at IBM, where he worked for 26 years, was in what company executives referred to as "discontinued ops", where he helped negotiate the transfer and eventual sale of Big Blue's loss-making, $3bn-a-year disk drive business to Hitachi.
With disk drive revenues itself of $1bn a year, the Japanese company was swallowing a much bigger fish. But from IBM's perspective, the disposal of its disk drive and other hardware businesses was consistent with the financially focused services-driven model IBM had adopted under Lou Gerstner - a strategy that reached its climax with Lenovo's $1.75bn acquisition of IBM's personal computer business in December 2004.
Mergers of the Hitachi-IBM variety have been a dime a dozen over recent decades. Mr Thomas cites a McKinsey survey that counted 46,000 deals valued at $4,000bn over a 22-year period. But most fail, and Hitachi GST likes to brag that its merger was the first in its sector in more than 20 years where the combined operations increased their revenue in the first year. (Since the mid-1980s the number of hard disk drive manufacturers has shrunk from more than 80 to just seven, with the top four alone accounting for almost 90 per cent of output.)
Profitability, however, has remained elusive. Despite a 25 per cent rise in hard disk drive shipments last year and a profitable fourth quarter, Hitachi GST has yet to finish a year in the black.
Mergers also present daunting cultural challenges, especially in third countries - such as China - that are critical to their success. "The real challenge is the integration of people and products - in getting what amounts to two fundamentally different cultures to work together," Mr Thomas says.
As Hitachi GST's senior Japanese and American executives got to grips with each other and their then 19,000 employees around the world - today they employ 27,000 - Mr Thomas turned his attention to the new company's challenges in south China, where he had worked for IBM in the early and mid-1990s.
His daunting task was made somewhat easier by the fact that Hitachi and IBM's disk drive businesses did not have a large overlap in China. Though Hitachi operates more than 80 group companies in the country and employs more than 30,000 workers, its hard disk drive arm was not well established on the mainland.
Instead, Hitachi GST inherited two "legacy IBM" facilities in Shenzhen - one wholly owned and the other a joint venture with China's Great Wall Computer group. To this Hitachi GST added a new $500m hard disk drive plant, which opened in December 2004. The new plant began with 900 workers last year and the number of staff is expected to reach 4,000 by the end of 2006.
"We have a demonstrated skill base in south China and we're ramping up at a good rate," Mr Thomas says. From having just 15 per cent of its global manufacturing capacity in China last year, Hitachi GST estimates its China operations will account for 50 per cent of production by 2008.
While its China manufacturing plants remain separate entities, Hitachi GST has recently consolidated their back-office, human resources, government relations and procurement functions. Through this process, interests have been aligned and a common culture moulded across all three units. "Putting the cultures together is the interesting thing," Mr Thomas says. "We are driving a cultureof open communication because mistakes are going to be made, and we want people to talk about them and to own them."
Another glue has been language. Based in San Jose, California, Hitachi GST adopted English as its internal language - a cultural attribute that applies even in China, where it employs just 13 expatriates. "You really need to operate in a language that is conducive to customers and suppliers globally," Mr Thomas says.
The final condition for Hitachi and IBM's thus far happy Chinese wedding has been lots of guests. This week Hitachi GST is playing host to 170 representatives from its 80-odd suppliers, and - as in previous years - its message to them will not be subtle.
"Our strategy is to have them relocate to Shenzhen," Mr Thomas says. "When our engineers can talk to their engineers, problems get solved a whole lot faster. And if they can't move here physically, we do ask for technical support in Shenzhen."
Whereas last year only30 per cent of the company's suppliers were in south China or planning to establish operations there, this year 60 per cent are. In addition to helping facilitate communication, Mr Thomas says proximity to suppliers changes "commodity-based relationships" into true business partnerships.
日立环球：中式的日美婚姻
这
是一桩日本人与美国人的联姻，但其美满与否，很大程度上却取决于这对新人能否在中国融洽相处。
当日本日立公司(Hitachi)和美国IBM三年前通过一笔价值20亿美元的交易，将硬盘驱动器业务合并起来时，中国仅占该部门总发货量的10%。如今，在合并后的实体“日立环球存储科技公司”(Hitachi Global Storage Technologies，以下简称“日立环球”)，有35%的产量发运给在中国的客户――其中多数为电脑或消费产品出口商――而且，预计到2007年，这个比例将增至50%。这家公司只是在顺应行业的发展而已，在如今这个时代，全球95%的笔记本电脑都是在中国制造的。
“目前和以往的观点都是：客户的足迹正转移到中国，”日立环球副总裁兼大中华区总裁德克?托马斯(Dirk Thomas)表示，“这是一个巨大的转变，但是它正在发生。”
在他供职于IBM的26年里，托马斯的最后一项任务是负责公司高管们所说的“停业部门业务”，在那里，他协助了将“蓝色巨人”的硬盘业务转让并最终出售给日立公司的谈判。当时该项业务处于亏损状态，年收入为30亿美元。
日立自己的硬盘驱动器业务年收入为10亿美元，所以这家日本公司当时吞下了一条比自己大得多的“鱼”。不过，从IBM的观点来看，出售硬盘驱动器和其它硬件业务，符合IBM在郭士纳(Lou Gerstner)领导下采取的关注效益、以服务为驱动的战略模式。2004年12月，中国联想集团(Lenovo)以17.5亿美元收购IBM的个人电脑业务，使后者的这一战略达到了极至。
近几十年来，“日立―IBM”这类的合并一直屡见不鲜。托马斯援引麦肯锡(McKinsey)一项调查称，过去22年间共出现过4.6万笔类似交易，交易金额达4万亿美元，不过其中大多数都失败了。而日立环球喜欢吹嘘说，20多年来，在这个领域，合并后业务在第一年收入就增加的，它还是头一家。（自20世纪80年代中期以来，硬盘驱动器制造商的数量已经从80多家缩减到仅剩7家，而排名前四位的制造商几乎占到总产量的90%。）
不过，赢利方面仍很难说。尽管去年硬盘驱动器发货量增长25%，且第四季度实现赢利，但日立环球存储科技公司还是没能实现全年赢利。
合并还会带来令人生畏的文化挑战，特别是在对于合并成功与否至关重要的第三国――比如中国。托马斯表示：“真正的挑战在于人与产品的结合，还要让两种根本不同的文化和谐共处。”
正当日立环球的日、美两国高管人员彼此之间、以及与他们当时的全球1.9万名员工（如今的2.7万名）紧密携手之际，托马斯把注意力转向了新公司在中国南方遇到的挑战，20世纪90年代初期和中期，他曾在那里为IBM工作。
由于日立和IBM的硬盘驱动器业务在中国并没有太多的重叠，他那令人畏惧的任务变得多少容易了一些。尽管日立公司在中国设有了80多家企业、雇佣着3万多名员工，但其硬盘驱动器业务在中国大陆并不很出名。
相反，日立环球倒是继承了两家“IBM遗赠”的深圳工厂――其中一家是全资子公司，另一家是与中国长城计算机集团公司(Great Wall Computer group)成立的合资企业。在此基础上，日立环球又增建了一家价值5亿美元的硬盘驱动器工厂，于2004年12月投产。去年新工厂开始时有900名工人，到2006年底，预计员工总数将达到4000人。
托马斯表示：“我们在中国南方拥有可靠的技术基础，我们正高速发展。” 日立环球去年只有15%的全球制造产能来自中国，但该公司预计，到2008年，中国业务的产量将占到公司总产量的一半。
尽管日立环球在中国的各家制造厂仍是独立的实体，但该公司最近对它们的后台系统、人力资源、政府关系和采购等功能进行了整合。通过这一过程，三个部门的利益就结合了起来，并形成了一种共同的文化。“把各种文化聚合在一起很有趣，” 托马斯说道，“我们在推行一种公开沟通的文化，因为错误总是会出现，我们希望大家能讨论并承认错误。”
另一种凝聚力是语言。日立环球总部位于美国加利福尼亚州圣何塞，它将英语作为内部语言――这种文化特征甚至也适用于中国，而在那里只有13名海外雇员。托马斯表示：“你确实需要以一种有益于全球客户和供应商的语言开展经营。”
迄今为止，日立和IBM的中式婚礼尚称幸福，但最终条件是要有众多来宾。本周，日立环球正款待来自80多家供应商的170名代表，而且――与往年一样――日立环球向他们传达的信息也不会难以捉摸。
“我们的战略是让它们迁到深圳来，” 托马斯表示，“如果我们的工程师能够与它们的工程师交谈，解决问题要快得多。如果它们自己不能迁到这里，我们肯定要求在深圳提供技术支持。”
在去年，这家公司的供应商只有30%在中国南方或计划在那里开设业务，但今年这一比例已达到了60%。除了有助于沟通以外，托马斯表示，紧靠供应商还可以把那种“建立在商品基础上的关系”变成真正的商业合作伙伴关系。
