Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
mately 8 to 10 weeks to completely design them and to set up
its manufacturing. This was a fraction of the time spent by Ed-
wards and his group. The authors concluded their report with
the resolution: “We, therefore, contend that current redesign of
the power supply be terminated, and that the final power supply
should be designed, built, tested and guaranteed by Power Con-
version Systems Ltd. We have better things to do.”
Finally, it was evident even to Wallace that the power supply
problem had shut the company down and created a serious fi-
nancial crisis. The next day, on 25 September, he wrote to the
directors urging them to attend the 1 October meeting and look
for a firm financial rescue plan. “I believe you are aware that …
the production machines from our August schedule almost all
had broken down due, among other things, to a failure of the
power supply.” It was possibly more due to the imminent finan-
cial collapse of the company than pressure from employees that
the decision to postpone in-house development of the switching
power supply in favor of a simpler “brute” version was finally
made by the board of directors on 1 October. The directors also
agreed that the decision for approving the new power supply
would lie with Laraya.
But before
MCM
/70s equipped with a new power supply
started to leave the manufacturing plant in Kingston, a number
of key employees would empty their desks at
MCM
and leave the
company. Mike Day, Mers Kutt, Reg Rea, and Morgan Smyth
would not see the
MCM
/70s with “Made in Canada” stickers
leaving the Kingston plant and entering the new personal com-
puter market that those people had helped to define.
