Tandon Corporation
The Tandon Corporation was a manufacturer of floppy disk drives , hard drives and PCs , which in 1975 became Tandon Magnetics Corp. was founded by Sirjang Lal Tandon, a former mechanical engineer from India .
History of the company
Production in India
The company originally produced magnetic read and write heads for the then burgeoning floppy disk drive market. Due to the labor-intensive nature of the production, it was carried out in the low-wage country of India, which was crucial for the company's competitiveness. Sirjang Lal Tandon's brother, Manohar Lal Tandon, founded Tandon Magnetics India on March 1, 1978 in India to work for Tandon Magnetics Corp. for the American market . to manufacture the required magnetic heads cheaply. ML Tandon previously worked in the USA as an employed developer for IBM . Before Tandon could become the preferred supplier for IBM's floppy drives, however, three major manufacturing challenges had to be overcome: hiring a dedicated workforce, manufacturing high quality components and complying with government regulations.
It was difficult to find committed workers in India in the 1970s. The men, who typically filled entry-level positions, moved from city to city in search of alternative work opportunities. The costs for the continuous training of new employees quickly added up. So Tandon Magnetics India should n't hire men for production. Women, on the other hand, were prohibited by law from working at night. For cultural reasons, the families often did not want them to work at all. So there weren't any jobs for them anyway. Tandon recognized this as an untapped pool of industrial talent. An all-female team was hired for electronic assembly. These women delivered a high work ethic, were very loyal to their employer, and had superior craftsmanship for high-precision electronics manufacturing.
At the time, India also had a reputation for not manufacturing products that met international standards. Indian engineers and workers were unaware of the technology standards for the read / write heads and floppy disk drives manufactured by Tandon, which was a major challenge. Rather than trying to retrain the existing workforce to learn new ways of working under the microscope to assemble small, complicated electronic components, they mainly hired high school graduates and college dropouts. Without prior training, they were easier to train and learned from the start how to manufacture products according to international standards.
When Tandon's Mumbai facility opened in 1978 , employee training became a top priority. ML Tandon quickly realized that the Indian mentality, reflected in the core by the adage chalta hai - that is good enough or the little things do not matter , is not good for the future company and production. So this approach to work had to be abandoned first. From then on he taught the workers Chalta hai, nehi! - Chalta hai is out of order.
Another challenge in order to be able to compete with Western standards as an Indian producer was to learn to respect the individual as an entrepreneur and as a whole company, which was unusual and unusual in India at the time. Managers and employees should act on the same level, so to speak, in order to create trust, security and transparency among one another. This open door company policy gave Tandon a positive response from employees that was previously unknown in India. As a result, Tandon was the only company in India that didn't have a union because the workers didn't want it.
The third major challenge for Tandon was government regulation and implementation. In Tandon's early days, women could only work legally during the day. With an all-female production hall, this meant that the system remained empty and unused all night. However, Tandon was able to influence the Indian High Court positively to give women in the tech industry the right to work at night. This increased their freedom at work and helped improve their personal life. This made Tandon the largest employer for women in the technology sector from 1984 to 2000. Tandon also convinced government agencies to create tax-free zones across India, which has since led to increased production, foreign investment, and faster economic growth.
In 1983, Tandon was the first company to set up hard drive manufacturing in Singapore . The Singapore HDD design and manufacturing business was later merged with Western Digital's chip controller division . From 1985, the factory in Mumbai also began producing PC power supplies.
Development in the USA
Tandon Magnetics, on the American side, developed the DS / DD version (double-sided, double density) of floppy disk drives based on the Shugart drives in the late 1970s, which became their most important product in the early 1980s.
In 1979, Tandon introduced the TM-100 floppy disk drive, a 5.25-inch device that supports 40 tracks as opposed to the 35 tracks of the Shugart SA-400 drives. In 1980 Tandy ordered 50,000 units of the TM-100 drive for about $ 12 million and equipped the TRS-80 Model III with it. The following year, Tandon received an even more lucrative contract when IBM released its personal computer: Tandon was the only supplier of floppy disk drives for IBM PCs until 1985. First, the same single-sided writing drives that were used in the TRS-80 were installed, later the newer double-sided writing drive TM-100-2 was installed. Tandon became the world's largest independent manufacturer of hard disk drives for personal computers and word processors. In the mid-1980s, Tandon introduced a number of different hard disk drives. Several models were made with the same basic design and a stepper motor on the side, and portable hard drives that could be easily removed from personal computers were introduced. Tandon hard disk drives have been used in computers from IBM, RadioShack, Commodore , Victor, DEC , Wang Laboratories, and Kaypro . When hardware developer Chuck Peddle switched from Victor Technology to Tandon in 1985, the decision was made to expand the product range with their own microcomputers. The first computers called PCAs were IBM- compatible XT and AT models. Other models were the XPC, the PAC and the LT, a laptop introduced in 1989 with either a 286 or 386 Intel processor and 1 MB RAM . Tandon sold its original data storage business to Western Digital in 1988 for nearly $ 80 million . The company was transformed into a leading manufacturer of personal computers. In 1989, 90 percent of all sales were made with personal computers in Europe.
From 1982 to 1984 Tandon Corporation was a member of the National Computer Conference NCC .
Bankruptcy of the Tandon Corporation
At the end of 1989, tough price competition began in the PC market, which escalated so much in the summer of 1992 that Compaq Computer Corp. aggressively lowered its prices and invited other market players to follow suit. "Spectacular price reductions - 32 percent in June 1992 - forced the competition to follow suit," said a quote from the magazine “Vertriebswirtschaft”. This largely eliminated Tandon's advantage as a lower cost alternative to these devices, and significantly impacted profit margins.
Tandon could not avoid the price cut, as it mainly focused on the European PC market and, according to the market research company International Data Corp. ranked 12th among PC manufacturers with a market share of 2% to 2.5%. As a result of the price cuts, Tandon lost $ 48 million on sales of $ 461.4 million in 1991 and another $ 42.3 million in the first nine months of 1992 after sales fell 19% was down to $ 249.5 million.
Tandon, in his report for the third quarter of 1992 to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), stated his inability to negotiate new terms with certain suppliers. This has led to "bottlenecks in parts and components, which in turn have led to delays in production, to inefficiencies in manufacturing and to sales losses". Regardless, Tandon's declining fortune was clearly characterized by its share price. The shares, which rose to $ 35 apiece in 1983, traded on the NASDAQ market for "the price of a cup of coffee" - about $ 0.50 in 1993 .
As of September 30, 1992, the company owed its suppliers, dealers, and other creditors $ 72.9 million with a cash reserve of $ 10.2 million. In early November 1992, the company stopped almost all US operations to focus on Europe, but also planned to close its European manufacturing center in Vienna, Austria, and hired low-cost Asian and European contractors to manufacture its products. The company also stopped selling its computers through US wholesalers such as Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In December 1992, the company changed its name to TSL Holdings Inc. to signal a willingness to restructure.
In July 1993 the German subsidiary , Tandon Computer GmbH, filed for bankruptcy due to overindebtedness and insolvency. Together with the subsidiary Tandon Europe Service, which was also closed, the German branch recently generated sales of around 200 million D-Marks. The branches in Austria and Switzerland were closed in January 1993.
Around 2002 Sirjang Lal Tandon became CEO of the internationally active Indian electronics manufacturer Celetron, and Manohar Lal Tandon became Chairman of the Tandong Group. The Tandongroup, which consists of a merger of 45 companies, u. a. that Tandon Magnetics India exists continues to exist (2019).
computer
Tandon PC
The Tandon PC was presented at the CeBIT 1986 computer fair . The introductory price was DM 5,000 . It is an IBM-XT-compatible computer with an Intel 8088 processor with 8 MHz clock frequency, 256 KB RAM, a 14-inch monitor with 80 lines and two 5.25-inch floppy disk drives each with 360 KB storage capacity ( double Density ). MS-DOS was supplied as the operating system .
XPC
The performance data correspond to those of the Tandon PC. Instead of the second floppy disk drive, it came with a 10 MB hard disk drive.
XPC 20
The XPC 20 is a version of the XPC with a 20 MB hard disk. It was offered in 1989 with 512 KB RAM and a VGA graphics card and monitor for an MSRP of DM 3195 .
PCA
In the spring of 1986 the IBM AT-compatible PCA was offered for DM 5624. It contains an Intel 80286 processor, a 1.2 MB floppy disk drive ( high density ), a 20 MB hard disk and 512 KB RAM, which can be expanded up to 16 MB.
Tandon NB / 386sx
The Tandon NB / 386sx notebook was developed by the Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Full Power Investment Co. Ltd. produced. Two different processors were installed: Either an Intel i80386SX with 16, 20 or 25 MHz, or later a Cyrix 486SLC with 25 MHz clock frequency. As standard, it was delivered with 2 x 1 MB RAM memory modules, which can be upgraded to a maximum of 16 MB RAM. The VGA-compatible graphics chip is a Cirrus Logic CL-GD610 / 620 and delivers a maximum graphics resolution of 640 × 480 pixels on the 8.4-inch FSTN grayscale display. A 30, 40, 60 or 80 megabyte 2.5 inch IDE hard drive was installed as mass storage. The notebook also has a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive. The battery capacity is 5000 mAh at 4.8 V operating voltage .
See also
Liberalization of India since 1991
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Company profile , CIO, June 1991
- ↑ Company Details , Zaubacorp.com, accessed on May 21, 2019
- ↑ Tandongroup - Founder story. From Barnala, India to a global change catalyst. , accessed on May 20, 2019
- ↑ Tandongroup - Milestones , accessed on May 21, 2019
- ^ Tandon rides computer crest , NY Times
- ↑ United States Patent , Patent Specification "Magnetic Recording Device For Double Sided Media"
- ^ Tandon - Computermuseum Munich , accessed on May 20, 2019
- ↑ Report on Problems with Sales of Hard Disk Business , May 24, 1988, LA Times
- ^ Certain Double Sided Floppy Disk Drives And Components Thereof, May 1986, p. 322
- ^ Tough price competition among 386 PC vendors , September 1, 1989, Computerwoche
- ↑ The Compaq Revolution Made in Germany , April 1, 1994, ASW No. 04, page 18
- ^ Tandon in Nose-Dive Toward Chapter 11: Bankruptcy: Newly renamed TSL Holdings, the Moorpark computer maker is now flirting for the third time with financial insolvency. , Jan 12, 1993, LA Times, Cached
- ^ Report on the bankruptcy of a German subsidiary , July 16, 1993, Computerwoche
- ↑ Computer Museum Munich , accessed on May 20, 2019
- ↑ Tandongroup , accessed on May 20, 2019
- ↑ Overview XTs , Data Welt, edition 5/1989.
- ^ Tandon in the Computer Model Catalog , accessed May 20, 2019
- ↑ Stephan.win31.de - The Tandon NB / 386sx page , accessed on May 23, 2019
- ↑ List of Tandon computers , CC Computer Archive, accessed on May 20, 2019