Things don't sound good at Tektronix

[EEVblog]

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2012/12/tektronix_five_years_after_sal.html

Dave.

[ivan747]

Danaher, by contrast, was a relatively low-tech industrial conglomerate in 2007. It focused on buying established manufacturing companies and wringing inefficiency out with a rigid management program known as the Danaher Business System ("DBS is who we are and how we do what we do.")

I blame Danaher until proven otherwise! 

Tek employees became Danaher "associates." The new owners reined in research and cut off access to information about the business that Tektronix used to share freely.

This made me mad. It's just stupid. Many of us have mentioned that management can ruin technical companies like Tek. They just don't know how the industries work.

[JoannaK]

Well, tech companies tend to run out of steam sooner or later. And not all of them manage to keep going untill they van figre their problems and start anew..  Tek has had a good run, they have made a lot good products durig the years.

[Bored@Work]

Maybe Rigol should offer Danaher some money for the remains of Tek. That would rock the industry.

[IanB]

It's possibly unfair to blame Danaher here. It seems like Tek was already a failing company before the acquisition.

A parallel might be drawn with the British Ever Ready Electrical Company (BEREC). They were bought out by Hanson Trust and given similar treatment--a relentless drive to efficiency and profitable operations.

But the parallel is this: BEREC had bet the farm on zinc chloride batteries, figuring that alkaline batteries were too expensive and would never take off. They had a huge, luxurious research campus and they poured enormous amounts of money into improving zinc chloride technology. In effect, they were trying to develop a better horse and carriage while the motor car was being developed by competitors. The result was entirely predictable and the company was already doomed by the time Hanson took them over.

Tek was only acquired by Danaher five years ago. But apparently they are still trying to sell technology from 10 or 20 years ago. Like BEREC, they are behind the times and had sown the seeds of their own doom long before the takeover. It is clear today that digital technology is the future and that is where all the competitive products are making an impact in the marketplace. Tek may have good quality steam powered instruments, but we are in the space age right now and their competitors have rocket ships.

[zaoka]

They are investing money into top salesman and marketing with idea that people are still stupid to pay for brand name 

[nanofrog]

They are investing money into top salesman and marketing...

Instead of R&D. 

And they wonder why sales are off? Management was  at the wheel, and now it's caught up with them IMHO.

[zaoka]

I feel that many brands are investing money into top salesman and marketing instead of developing technology.
The fact is that marketing is developing very fast, as fast as electronic industry. They are now using powerful marketing techniques such as NLP to brainwash customers mind.

BY using these techniques they are keeping your attention away from this question: Is this test equipment the best deal for money?

Instead, they are occupying your mind with terms such as "imagine, think of, etc." whose purpose is to put a human mind in position of thinking (during this moments you can not think about something else and they know it) and than feed you with features of their products which are in reality nothing special. End user gets impression that this is what he wants.

At that time he is served with Special Promotion or Free stuff with a purchase making him feel that hes getting amazing deal. On the other side marketer just want you to fell that way so that you do no recall our old question: Is this test equipment the best deal for money?

THey will often include time limiting deals because they know that time will reset your mind back to normal 

[TRIO_Smartcal]

I totally agree with this statement... 

I feel that many brands are investing money into top salesman and marketing instead of developing technology.
The fact is that marketing is developing very fast, as fast as electronic industry. They are now using powerful marketing techniques such as NLP to brainwash customers mind.

BY using these techniques they are keeping your attention away from this question: Is this test equipment the best deal for money?

Normally in the world of sales and marketing, when dealing with competitive situations, we respect what our competitors offer to the market. Our competitors are engineers just like ourselves only they work for a different company. When engineers move from one competitor to another it does not make them more or less of an engineer either. They might just have a different design brief and different levels of investment to work under.   

When faced with a competitive product the correct approach is to recognise the competitive product for what it is, and if it is the case, admit to the customer that company XYZ does make a good product. The next step is to show how your product fits the customer's needs better.  It is not a negative response, the customer's viewpoint is respected and a good sales ENGINEER, not sales person, will have the technical background to understand his product, the competitor's product and of course the customer's application so that indeed the customer ends up with the right piece of test gear for what he is doing. If your product is similar to the competitors or even if the performance is lower but it still does the customer's job, then offer better value for money. Some you win, some you lose but's that's life....  but these new TBS series scopes deserve nothing but contempt and derision. They seem to be the product of a stock-price driven company, not an engineering driven one.

Check this out...   http://www.tek.com/basic-oscilloscopes/tbs1000  ..... Personally I find it very difficult to say anything good about them. The record length and sample rate have not changed in perhaps 15 years?  They are nothing more than 15 year old mutton dressed up as fresh spring lamb, but they still stink of 15 year old sheep.... 

Are these "new" scopes seriously the best new product of what was once one of the world's great test-and-measurement innovators that is now reduced to being vilified  in press articles like the one Dave posted?  Is this what happens when fat-cat shareholder value is placed on a high pedestal far above engineering innovation? Where's the innovation here? It's nothing more than re-marketing old technology.... They want $1,520 USD for a 150 MHz scope with 1GS/s and 2.5K of memory that probably costs them no more than $120-$150 ex-works irrespective of bandwidth.  Anyone paying this quite frankly deserves to own one. 

Remember the value equation  ...   (VALUE = Performance/Price + Service)       These TBS series scopes are a total travesty of it. 

Could it be that the only innovation from Tek here is defining a measurement for low-end scopes called "Dollars per MHz?" It would certainly be something that the Danaher accountant mob would understand.  If indeed we use this metric on this series we see a range of about 20 $/MHz at 25MHz, to 10 $/MHz at 150 MHz for what presumably is a Tektronix Basic Scope (TBS)

So, if you can stop laughing at the price and the 2.5K memory , and apply the same formula to these scopes..... 

https://triosmartcal.com.au/search.php?submit_search=Search&search_query=siglent&orderby=price&orderway=asc

you'll see that at 150 MHz we offer 2.67 $/MHz  with the scope on this link.....  http://triosmartcal.com.au/2952-siglent-digital-storage-oscilloscope-150-mhz-bandwith-2-channel.html

And if you really want to spend around $1,520 on a scope try this ...
http://triosmartcal.com.au/owon/2800-owon-sds9302-300mhz-2-channel-oscilloscope.html

Or even better still add a few more dollars and get the best..... 
http://triosmartcal.com.au/2234-agilent-dsox2012a-4-channel-70mhz-oscilloscope.html

You know it makes sense, because nothing about this new TBS series does. 

[EEVblog]

Could it be that the only innovation from Tek here is a redefining a measurement for low-end scopes called "Dollars per MHz?" It would certainly be something that the Danaher accountant mob would understand.  If indeed we use this metric on this series we see a range of about 20 $/MHz at 25MHz, to 10 $/MHz at 150 MHz for what presumably is a Tektronix Basic Scope (TBS)

Yep, it stands for Tektronix Basic Scope:
http://www.tek.com/document/news-release/tektronix-introduces-entry-level-tbs1000-oscilloscope-series

Alan, who works for Tek, made the assertion in another thread that Tek keep producing them because the customers keep asking for them. I don't buy it. That's just an excuse you use when you have nothing else to offer because you failed to innovate and keep up with the market 

Dave.

[free_electron]

For me it's simple. tek was a technology incubator driven byq 'pet' projects. That is why they were the best for so long. A pool of driven engineers , out for experimenting, wanting to make the best.  In comes the wave of brain-choked business crufts and the first thing they do is shoot the research... At tthe same time adding more brain-choker wearing ( a brain-choker is a tie. You wear a tie around your neck to cut off the flow of oxygen rich blood from your lungs to your brain) nitwits.

30000 people to 1000... I give them two more years ...

[EEVblog]

I give them two more years ...

No way. They can milk the cow, flog the dead horse, and shuffle the deck chairs on the Titanic for a lot longer than that I recon. Plenty left to do 
The chances of seeing a truly new scope out of them again is starting to border on zero, unless they have something in the works already...

Dave.

[TerraHertz]

Tragic.

Uuurgh! Reading the corporate blather at the Danaher site makes me shudder.
Looks like Tektronix has been handed the same poison chalice as HP drank from when they took on Carly Fiorina as CEO.

Here are the people to blame at Danaher: http://www.danaher.com/leadership

[BravoV]

Just wonder how is Fluke doing these day ?

Heading to the same direction as Tek does ?

[TRIO_Smartcal]

Tragic.

Uuurgh! Reading the corporate blather at the Danaher site makes me shudder.
Looks like Tektronix has been handed the same poison chalice as HP drank from when they took on Carly Fiorina as CEO.

Here are the people to blame at Danaher: http://www.danaher.com/leadership

VERY interesting, if you click the "+" after each of the Danaher executive officer names, you'll find that there appears to be just one science degree held between all of them.  The rest are  MBA's, BA's, Lawyers, Accountants, Economists and a spurious Psychologist...........   Hmmmmmm.......
Just what a technology company needs perhaps?   I won't answer that........   Just re-read the article.

[AndyC_772]

It's a terrible shame. I've been a fan of Tek scopes for as long as I can remember, and I'm currently the proud(ish) owner of a TDS754D: 4 chans, 500 MHz. It's a bit long in the tooth, and for a while now I've been looking at possible replacements.

The nearest equivalent new Tek would be the DPO3054, at £6900. 5M points memory, 50k waveforms/sec acquisition rate, and 2.5 GSa/s. I've had a demo and it's.... OK.

Alternatives? The Agilent DSOX3054A offers 2M points memory but 1M waveforms/sec and 4 GSa/s for £7200. From Dave's videos it looks like a much nicer, more responsive piece of kit. It's still hugely expensive, but at least the's some justification: it captures waveforms 200 times faster than the Tek.

On the other hand, the Rigol DS4054 offers 140M points memory, 4 GSa/s, and 110k waveforms/sec. It's still faster than the Tek, but crucially it's much cheaper too: £3900. I've had a demo of this unit too and there's nothing obviously cheap-and-nasty about it - it works just fine.

I'd have hoped that this segment would be fiercely competitive, but Tek just don't seem to have a credible option. They're even still selling the TDS3054C, which is a nice enough piece of kit, but the design is 10 years old, and the price is a joke: £9300!

[EEVblog]

VERY interesting, if you click the "+" after each of the Danaher executive officer names, you'll find that there appears to be just one science degree held between all of them.

And then he blew that by getting a masters in management!   

And it seems they have no CTO either... I guess they leave that up to the individual companies, who are them probably hamstrung by the fiscal strings anyway...

Dave.

[cybergibbons]

The major advantage Tek and Agilent used to have was support and access to knowledge. I found a bug in one of their scopes, called up support in my country and timezone, and 3 days later had a patch.

Rigol can't do this.

But I'm not sure Tek and Agilent can either anymore.

[Achilles]

Yeah well........ one problem is that a lot of those salesman just know better what the user needs/wants.....
Then you have a lot of ideas and possibilities cut down, because another idea was in favor....

My brother is a product manager (first milling and then inductive sensors) and had some basic technological training at his University, but well.....no comment here *rolleyes*. No practical work, more like an overview what is possible.


What these folks learned is to make money (or try it) and so the technological background isn't very deep. They also switch the business from time to time and therefore haven't a clue what is needed wanted, as they barely had contact to someone who actually worked with the stuff. Did anyone ever hear from a sales representative/ product manager if the product is good or could be improved......most times these fellows just wait for you to call because of a bug/malfunction.
Then you still have the problem that some big/well known companies have a good reputation and live on that. You've a problem....you're stuck, because who cares for ONE customer..... I am not talking about Fluke or Agilent, as I heard good stuff most times ( and had good experience with the service). More personal experience with my Photography stuff for example......or automotive stuff.

I think I saw some companies who offered a kind of suggestion box where customers could put their ideas.....can't remember who it was. That's at least a start.

[Bored@Work]

I think I saw some companies who offered a kind of suggestion box where customers could put their ideas.....can't remember who it was. That's at least a start.

Well ... More than one company lets user Nobody and his cousin Dave Null handle the suggestion box. I am currently dealing with one such company, Frontier Silicon. They back their WLAN radios with a web "service" short of any service, and ignore their feedback form. So much for World Class Digital Broadcast Solutions.

Suggestion boxes and feedback forms are something companies do to pacify customers, not because they really want to improve something. What seems to work better is if you manage to start a stink on Farcebook or Twitter

[Achilles]

I think I saw some companies who offered a kind of suggestion box where customers could put their ideas.....can't remember who it was. That's at least a start.

Well ... More than one company lets user Nobody and his cousin Dave Null handle the suggestion box. I am currently dealing with one such company, Frontier Silicon. They back their WLAN radios with a web "service" short of any service, and ignore their feedback form. So much for World Class Digital Broadcast Solutions.

Suggestion boxes and feedback forms are something companies do to pacify customers, not because they really want to improve something. What seems to work better is if you manage to start a stink on Farcebook or Twitter

Yepp, I recently saw an article about social media as possibility to force companies to solve your issues. Well, apart from all that social media rubbish it's a  bad way to use this as primary service organ for your customers.
Hantek handles that really shitty. They have a service email which you can write to, but ignore that one. Then they have a forum where you can ask questions and all that stuff. Most entries there are Customer: "I have a problem with......, but there was no response on the service email"..... Answer:" Try,.... for problem.... See our email".
So they mix that up what really sucks...... People with similar problems have to go through the same process as well.....

A company where my brother worked before had the habit to ignore customer complains as long as possible..... Great way to treat people who you want to get money from. It didn't work very well and because of that ignorance they had much higher costs in the end.

[ptricks]

Tragic.

Uuurgh! Reading the corporate blather at the Danaher site makes me shudder.
Looks like Tektronix has been handed the same poison chalice as HP drank from when they took on Carly Fiorina as CEO.

Here are the people to blame at Danaher: http://www.danaher.com/leadership

  Here is what experience they brought :
Presidential Realty Corporation
Board of Directors for GlaxoSmithKlin
President and Chief Executive Officer of Schwab Corp
Executive Vice President of Wal-Mart Stores Inc
Senior Vice President and Treasurer of The Procter & Gamble Company since 2009,
Assistant attorney general for the state of Maryland.
member of the board of directors of Colfax Corporation
member of the board of directors of Smithfield Foods, Inc. and Choice Hotels International, Inc
member of the board of directors of IAC/InterActiveCorp.,  director of Getty Images, Inc. and TechTarget, Inc.
one of the leading authorities in the United States on emerging trends and issues in medicine and medical care

I can see it now, scopes will be made in china and be on the shelves in walmart for $199.95 and come with complimentary bottle of imitrex for headaches, a picture of the manual you couldn't read anyway, Tide for washing your clothes after you cut yourself on the crappy construction, a coupon for sliced ham at the hotel of your Choice that you will need once you get fired for using the equipment that burned down your work place,  and in case you decide to sue you have to be living in the state of Maryland where they will deny your right to sue.

[orbiter]

Come-on Tek.. Time to lower the prices so we can all afford one. Ya never know.. It might just help keep you afloat too

[Mechatrommer]

Come-on Tek.. Time to lower the prices so we can all afford one. Ya never know.. It might just help keep you afloat too

you dont get it do you? or havent read from page 1? not gonna happen. what happened is those poor engineers are forced to copy 10 years old design (2.5Kb mem) with not so much better to modern UI, at the same price tag as 10 years old before and ask kids to buy it. do you know how it feels like to work with ham burger maker and gambling nuts standing next to you on the right side and an attorney on your left with arm crossed?

[Hypernova]

Looks like the path to the grave is set, given their shrinking resources and the nature of the business having long product cycles, it's unlikely they will have the right scope out the door in time. The means a slow self feeding downward spiral until they get bought out.