* * *
At the weekly operating committee meeting, called to order at 1:10, you get the clearest sense of what Zucker is up against.
These meetings, designed to let all department heads know what is going on, were created by Carlisle, and he has always run them. But that is supposed to change.
In a talk with a visitor earlier in the day, Carlisle, 37, explains that Zucker has been hired to assume a huge part of the administrative load. "In fact," Carlisle says, "I have a lot of things to get done this afternoon, so I may let Fred run the meeting.'
Indeed, when the three-hour meeting gets underway, Zucker is at the head of the table. At his right? Brian Carlisle. Everybody who speaks directs his comments to Carlisle, and it is Carlisle who asks the most questions during the 45 minutes he is there.
This is not surprising. Adept is very much Carlisle's company.
Carlisle headed the West Coast division of another robotics company, Unimation Inc., until Westinghouse Electric Corp. acquired it in 1983. Westinghouse thought Unimation should concentrate on supplying robots to the auto industry -- still the market's largest customer. Carlisle thought the market was broader, and so they parted company -- with Carlisle and Bruce Shimano, who worked for Carlisle at Unimation and is now Adept's vice-president of research and development, buying the department.
Buying the company because you disagree with the boss is a nervy thing to do, but then no one who has ever started a company has been accused of a shortage of ego. Carlisle tends to describe his post-Stanford job hunting by saying things like, "I interviewed large companies such as Hewlett-Packard." And he has acquired the Valley's attitude toward money. Carlisle was a Unimation shareholder when it was acquired by Westinghouse.
"How much did you get?" a visitor asked tactlessly.
"Not much.'
When pressed, Carlisle puts the figure at less than $100,000. This was an unexpected check coming to someone who was just 32 at the time, and it is dismissed as "not much." The real money is to be made by going public. Adept was working on its prospectus when the market crashed in October '87. The company, says Carlisle, who owns a minority share of the stock, will probably go public in the next year and a half.
The reason all this is important is simple. In rapidly growing companies, delegating is never easy. Conflicts between the founder and his new COO over everything from line responsibilities to new-product development are inevitable. New COOs tend to be put off by the chaos at founder-run companies -- an excessively high level of inventory, say -- while entrepreneurs tend to resent the imposition of systems by an "outsider," even an outsider they hired. How well Carlisle and Zucker work out those problems will go a long way toward determining the company's future. It is hard to grow when your two top officers don't get along.
So far they seem compatible, although it is clear to even the casual observer that Zucker is much more relaxed when Carlisle is not in the room. But perhaps a more legitimate question to ask in trying to determine if Zucker will work out is: have things improved since he got there?
At the staff meeting, a detailed plan -- which calls for more robots to be built from supplies on hand and a cutback on ordering new parts -- is presented and approved. Within 12 months, inventory should be down at least 25%, maybe 40%.
By those standards, Zucker is doing fine. We will let you know if those standards matter.
-- Paul B. Brown
* * *
CUSTOMER-SERVICE SUPPORT ENGINEER
Bob Swanson
Darkness still shrouds Silicon Valley at 4:35 a.m. when customer-service support engineer Bob Swanson parks his Ford Festiva in the deserted lot, unlocks the employees-only side door, and heads to his cozy first-floor office. A few minutes later, coffee and cigarette in hand, the 32-year-old technician has turned his computer on and is studying his first report of the day.
For the next three hours, Swanson will be the most senior employee Adept Technology has to offer the manufacturers, systems integrators, and universities running 1,500 Adept robots on three continents. If an Australian manufacturer needs new software, Swanson will requisition it. If a Rochester, N.Y., company is having a problem with a power source, Swanson will fax the appropriate programming sheets. If the manager of Adept's European office phones to complain that a Norwegian customer has had malfunctions in two of three robot arms, it is up to Swanson to explain what the problem is, how it was diagnosed, and when Adept will be able to correct it.
"Hardware and software failures, design reviews, customer service and engineering, international service calls -- I do it all," Swanson says. "The number of people who need information from me is phenomenal." Adept has $150 million worth of product out there: robots, controllers, and vision systems. And for the moment Bob Swanson, a lanky, bespectacled ex-basketball player from Grinnell, Iowa, is responsible for all of it. He is the company.
It is five minutes past 5 o'clock when the first call comes, five minutes past 8 o'clock back East. "Good morning, Adept Technology. This is Bob. . . . '
Adept's East Coast field engineer -- since January, the company has set up field offices in Rochester, Cincinnati, Baltimore, and Nashville -- is on the line, asking Swanson's opinion on the proper operation of a joint. "There shouldn't be any play," Swanson cautions him.
A few minutes later, another call. "You want Maria Chavez, our training coordinator," Swanson explains. "She's not in yet. It's 20 minutes past 5:00, sir. That's quite all right. Is there a number she can reach you at?'
Until the rest of the customer-service department arrives around 7:00, Swanson will handle the toll-free line himself. Some 250 to 300 inquiries requiring service come into San Jose every month, and field-service manager Ron Meritt has tried to cut the average response time from eight hours to 30 minutes. Swanson's early-morning shift is part of that efficiency effort; through 1987, Adept ran on an 8:00-to-5:00 basis, Pacific time. "Even now Europe has five hours each workday of virtually no technical support," Swanson worries. "And Australia's even more difficult. If I start at 5:00, there's only a three-hour overlap with their day.'
