Oshkosh It - Missed Opportunities from Acquisitions

Oshkosh IT - missed opportunities from acquisitions

I. Introduction

A. Oshkosh Corporation

The Oshkosh Corporation (Oshkosh Corp.) is a leading manufacturer and marketer of access equipment, specialty vehicles and truck bodies for the primary markets of defense, concrete placement, refuse hauling, access equipment and fire & emergency (Oshkosh Corportion, 2011). Oshkosh Corp. is a publicly traded, global, manufacturing company formed in 1917. Oshkosh Corp. has grown significantly over a ten year period through acquisitions and is headquartered are in Oshkosh, WI. The organization within Oshkosh Corp. that we will discuss is the Information Technology Department for Oshkosh Corporation.

Similar to many capital equipment manufacturing companies throughout the world, Oshkosh Corp. is going thru a slowdown in business due to the current state of the economy which affects are felt globally. Due to the current economic conditions many of the Oshkosh Corp. Segments have been impacted. Many people have been laid-off, forced to take furlough without pay and have reductions in their benefits, all affecting the morale and culture of Oshkosh.

Oshkosh Corp. four different segments: Access Equipment, Fire & Emergency, Defense, Commercial, all which make up the company as a whole. The Access Equipment Segment which builds and sells JLG Industries, Inc. access equipment. JLG also produces and sells SkyTrak and Lull products. Jerr-Dan is also part of the Access Segment, and Jerr-Dan produces and sells towing equipment (Oshkosh Corportion, 2011).

The Defense Segment which produces and sells armored wheeled vehicles, urban assault vehicles, high mobility trailers, worldwide integrated logistics support, and remanufacturing services (Oshkosh Corportion, 2011).

The Fire and Emergency Segment that include the brands Pierce, Oshkosh Airport Products, Kewaunee Fabrications, MEDTEC, Oshkosh Specialty Vehicles, Frontline Communications, and SMIT Mobile Equipment, produces custom and commercial fire apparatus, rescue and homeland security apparatus, aircraft rescue and fire fighting vehicles, ambulances, snow blowers and plow trucks, towing and recovery equipment, and aftermarket services (Oshkosh Corportion, 2011).

The Commercial Segment that includes the brands Oshkosh Commercial, McNeilus, Con-E-Co, London, and IMT which produces cement mixers, concrete batch plants, refuse collection vehicle bodies, stationary compactors, demountable containers, container handling equipment, all-make parts, and aftermarket services (Oshkosh Corportion, 2011). In all Oshkosh Corp. carries thirteen brands with a plethora of products.

The entire corporation has a very diverse employee workforce which is engrained as part of the company's Missions Statement to foster a commitment to diversity. The majority of the employees' at Oshkosh Corp. are union workers. Though the union workers' are mainly employed on the assembly lines that support the defense and airport products sector, the office support staff are non-union workers at all segments.

I am a principal technical analyst for Oshkosh Corporation in the Information Technology Department. I was not working for the Oshkosh Corporation when the company was impacted by the economic difficulties and slowdown in business. Nevertheless, I presently work with people who have been with the company, some for over 30 years. My tenure at Oshkosh started in 2010 and since that time I have gone through some major organizational changes at Oshkosh, most significantly happening at the end of 2010 with the CEO and the VP of IT leaving the company one of which affected me directly.

The Oshkosh Corp. internal motto is "One System. One Team. One Oshkosh" With this motto being emphasized at the company, it is clear that due to the acquisitions of 15 separate companies and 2 divestitures over a ten year period Oshkosh Corporation has not experienced economies of scale or expected cost reductions from the acquisitions. Most importantly in the information technology department the "One System. One Team. One Oshkosh" is far from being achieved. A major reason the acquisitions have not succeeded financially was the hands-off approach taken by Oshkosh Corp. The approach during the acquisitions was to have each company conduct business as usual. However, with the failing economy and downsizing of many of the businesses and governmental agencies supported by Oshkosh Corp, the soon realized that the approach of the acquisitions was a failure and needed to consolidate were redundancy occurred across the businesses.

With the acquisitions of the fifteen companies over a ten year period and no assimilation of resources or elimination of redundant roles in the IT organization it is clear that morale in IT is low. The last company acquired was six years ago and now there is a big push for consolidation of Information Technologies (IT) Operations to a Shared-Services Model which would reduce operating cost for Oshkosh Corp. Currently in the IT organization direction is unclear, caused by the numerous ways of providing service to the acquired companies, the poor job of assimilating business units during acquisitions and defining clear roles and responsibilities for the old and employees.

II. The Problem

Though we can talk about numerous business problems that happened during the acquisitions of the fifteen different companies by the Oshkosh Corp., this paper will focus mainly on missed opportunities and complications experienced by the Oshkosh Corp IT Organization after the acquisitions occurred. The missed opportunities Oshkosh Corp experienced during the fifteen acquisitions are:

1. Poor leadership decisions during hand-off from acquiring to supporting resulting in a multiple support nightmare for operations.

2. The assimilation and consolidation of the IT departments and support infrastructure

3. Elimination of redundancy in the Information Technology Organization that could have saved the company thousands of dollars, as well as stabilized the perception of the IT support groups.

4. Not having an assimilation plan that was well thought out and accounted for risks and issues before, during and after acquisition.

III. Literature Review

A. Identification of sources and uses of information

1. The following scholarly sources were utilized to support