Baldwin's last gasps?

[Richard Brekne]

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Like I said... buy the company for the 49,95 it takes and put Del in
Charge... ok.. the 49,95 think was a joke... but I have little doubt
that Del,  grin .. given dictatorial powers and a fat enough
operating budjet for a few years ... could make this thing work.

>       Under the circumstances, I'll take it in cash up front,
>      thank you... I feel duty bound to point out, of course,
>      that I'm not at all equipped to function as a company
>      CEO. A piano designer, yes, but I do know my place. And
>      Willem is right, of course. It will take considerably
>      more than $49.95 to purchase Baldwin. Even the past 25
>      plus years of somewhat less than enlightened management
>      has not managed to wreck that much havoc. Still, much
>      opportunity has been lost and as to whether there is
>      enough time and enough resources to turn the company
>      around at this point, only time itself will tell. It the
>      company is able to bring someone in soon enough to start
>      putting the pieces back together again -- who
>      knows. Several have mentioned that Baldwin has the
>      capability to build great pianos. Well, let's just say
>      that they have the potential to build rather nice pianos
>      when everything goes well. That means they have the
>      potential to build pianos that are -- with one or two
>      notable exceptions -- the equal of most anything being
>      built in this country today. But it won't happen. No
>      matter how hard they work on 'quality.' Because it's no
>      longer a quality issue. It's a design and manufacturing
>      issue. Baldwin made the decision to transition itself
>      out of the high-end piano market when it left
>      Cincinnati. Not that there is anything at all wrong with
>      the workers in Arkansas -- properly trained and
>      supervised they are quite capable workers. But the
>      company left behind a long-term and very experienced
>      work force that was used to turning out first rate
>      instruments at a moderate, but steady and dependable
>      pace, and attempted -- with a new and inexperienced
>      workforce -- to speed up the production of a fundamental
>      design that simply does not lend itself well to fast
>      production. It was like Steinway's experience during the
>      1970s when it was owned by CBS: there was a directive to
>      increase production from something like 2,500 pianos a
>      year to 5,000 per year without adding appreciably to
>      their facility or their workforce. Couldn't be done
>      without great damage to the product. Those designs also
>      were not amenable to rushing, something Steinway's
>      current management seems to understand quite well and is
>      capitalizing on. Baldwin has five grand piano designs
>      that were intended to be built relatively slowly by
>      workers who were highly skilled and experienced at what
>      they were doing. When everything works properly most of
>      these designs yield pianos that sound and perform as
>      well as any other similar, traditional design. The
>      problem, of course, is that if anything goes wrong along
>      the way none of them are going to sound all that great.
>      Unfortunately, the way they are being built today,
>      things go wrong more often than they go right. Which is,
>      of course, a complex way of saying that all of Baldwin's
>      first line of pianos are obsolete. As are most of their
>      vertical designs. Their 43" (109 cm), or whatever,
>      console piano is a joke. It was originally designed as a
>      40" (101.6 cm) scale and stretched to whatever it is
>      today by adding a 2" (5.1 cm) flange to the bottom of
>      the plate and whatever to the casework and casters. The
>      243 Hamilton (what is it now, 46"?) was originally
>      designed in the 1930s, if memory serves, and given a
>      superficial redesign in the late 1980s. It should have
>      been replaced. The 248 is the only relatively new design
>      in their vertical lineup. Except, of course, for the
>      rather eclectic Model 6000 which is very much a love
>      it/hate it sort of piano. No one wants to listen to my
>      solution. Which is to start over one by one with state
>      of the art designs that are planned from the start to be
>      built using simple, but sturdy tooling operated by
>      semi-skilled to skilled workers. Designs in which most
>      any task or process can be learned by any reasonably
>      intelligent worker in just a couple of weeks. Designs
>      which can be built with precision because they are
>      designed to be simple. Designs in which there is a
>      sufficient margin of error built into the materials
>      selection and assembly process so that even if
>      perfection is not always attained -- and it won't be --
>      the resulting instruments are still going to perform up
>      there with the best instruments of the world. Is this
>      just daydreaming? No. Not really. A lot has been learned
>      about both piano design and piano building during the
>      last seventy-five to one hundred years. And it's been
>      about that long since most of these pianos were
>      designed. We can do much better now. Such designs are
>      now possible. 'But new piano design is problematic and
>      uncertain, isn't it? I mean...how do you know if it will
>      'come out all right.' Easy. By understanding the basics
>      of piano design. How does an architect know that the
>      building she is designing is going to stand up through
>      the next earthquake? Through study and experience. It's
>      not rocket science. (Well, designing buildings for
>      earthquakes might be -- piano design is not.) 'But this
>      would really take a long time, wouldn't it?' The company
>      doesn't have much time. No, Not really. With a suitable,
>      though not large, staff, a company committed to the
>      project the whole line could be done in a couple of
>      years. 'But such a program would be extremely expensive,
>      wouldn't it?' Again, no not really. At least not for a
>      company already in business. At least it wouldn't have
>      been in Baldwin's case since one of the more expensive
>      components of a new design is the plate pattern and they
>      were already investing in quite a bit of pattern work
>      when they switched foundries. New vertical designs can
>      be incorporated into ongoing production processes. And
>      air operated rim presses are not all that complicated or
>      expensive to make. Good grief, if we can make one in our
>      small workshop surely a company the size of Baldwin can
>      do it as well. Work tables and assembly fixtures can be
>      modified from stuff already on hand. Pinblock fitting is
>      still pinblock fitting. Stringing is still stringing.
>      Except for spacing actions aren't going to change much.
>      Keys are keys. Well, you get the idea. But none of this
>      is going to happen. This scenario would require a
>      considerable amount of courage and long-range thinking
>      on the part of the companies top management. An
>      understanding of things like long-range product planning
>      and an understanding market trends early enough to deal
>      with them pro-actively rather than trying to react to
>      them after the fact. Bob Hoff wrote in the latest
>      Journal that the U.S. manufacturers could not compete
>      against the imports. I pretty much reject statements
>      like this out of hand: American piano manufacturers
>      simply chose not to compete out of -- depending on the
>      company -- a combination of greed, arrogance, lethargy,
>      fear and ignorance. They had a solid head start, but
>      instead of reinvesting in their company's future the
>      various managers allowed their plants to run down and
>      their products to become obsolete while in other
>      countries other managers were investing heavily in
>      production equipment and new designs (albeit designs
>      often patterned closely after old U.S. or European
>      designs). No, we didn't lose an industry -- we
>      deliberately threw one away. So, there. This seems to
>      have been another of my nights for ranting and raving. I
>      think I've gotten it out of my system now. At least for
>      a while. Regards, Del
>
--
Richard Brekne
RPT, N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway
mailto:rbrekne@broadpark.no


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