3M Company | Early 21st Century: Outsider at the Helm for the First Time
Early 21st Century: Outsider at the Helm for the First Time
DeSimone's stewardship of 3M ended at the end of 2000 with his retirement. At the beginning of 2001, W. James Mc-Nerney, Jr., took over as chairman and CEO, becoming the first outsider at the helm in the company's nearly 100 years of existence. McNerney was a 19-year veteran of General Electric Company (GE)—like 3M a diversified, manufacturing-oriented corporation—having most recently served as head of GE Aircraft Engines. McNerney had lost out in a three-way battle to succeed legendary GE leader John F. (Jack) Welch, Jr. One of McNerney's first initiatives was to launch Six Sigma, a quality control and improvement initiative that had been pioneered by Motorola, Inc. and AlliedSignal Inc. and then adopted by GE in the late 1990s. The aim of the statistics-driven program was to cut costs by reducing errors or defects.
McNerney's cost-cutting focus was shown in other early initiatives, and 3M...
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