THE FOX GUARDING THE CHICKEN COOP OR FROM STRATEGIC PARTNER TO SINGLE SOURCE

摘要

In order to provide depth to its in-house engineering services department, a billion dollar company enters into a strategic partnership with a major engineering consulting firm. Within two years the number of directly employed company engineers has diminished from twenty-two to one, the corporate engineering knowledge base is lost, and the client departments in the company are finding the engineering work to be high cost, low quality, and off schedule. The company's chief engineer became redundant and left, and now the organization is totally reliant on the external consulting firm. The Case Study highlights how the subtle factors: corporate knowledge, physical location, hidden overheads, and temporary workers can change the promise of savings to the reality of costs.