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Driving Excellence: How the Aggregate System Turned Microchip Technology from a Failing Company to a Market Leader

Sept. 14, 2006

By Michael J. Jones and Steve Sanghi
ISBN: 0471784842

This is a story about the management and cultural changes that occurred at Microchip Technology, a major microcontroller supplier, covering about ten years starting in 1990. At that time, Microchip was losing cash, customers and EEPROM product lines were spread across three technologies. Jones and Sanghi are now the VP of Human Resources and President at Microchip. They lived through the turn around and this is their story.

The book concentrates on the company’s culture and management versus the technology that Microchip now employs. This is the main reason the book is important to people working in this industry because Microchip’s woes and success are similar to other vendors in the electronic space.

The book was an easy read and useful to workers and managers alike. It shows what you should expect of a company as well as how to improve an existing company. It is nice to know that these are tried and proven techniques for at least one major company.

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.