Kodak Announces Eric-Yves Mahe as New President of Consumer and Film Division

[markjwyatt]

Very true. With demand down 96% from it's high, there is an awfully large amount of capacity going unused.

I can't imagine what my company would do if we had to idle 96% of our capacity. We'd probably just shut down.

I think EK has been shutting down plants, facilities, lines, etc. for years. What they have left is probably still excessive, but I doubt they are running at 4% of capacity.

 

[barzune]

Yeah, well, presidents of companies aren't all like we hope....
anymore than are the presidents of countries.....

 

[fdonadio]

I can't imagine what my company would do if we had to idle 96% of our capacity. We'd probably just shut down.

From what I understand, based on @Photo Engineer ’s posts (IIRC), Eastman Kodak has shut down some of their coating lines already. I believe whole building(s?) have been demolished or renovated for other uses, including being rented to third parties. But I might be wrong, of course.

 

[RattyMouse]

From what I understand, based on @Photo Engineer ’s posts (IIRC), Eastman Kodak has shut down some of their coating lines already. I believe whole building(s?) have been demolished or renovated for other uses, including being rented to third parties. But I might be wrong, of course.

I recall PE saying that building 38 at 100% operating capacity could coat the entire worlds need for film in a day. (not counting changeover time for different formulations). Hopefully he will chime in here and either confirm or deny. HIs point was that today's film demand is a pittance what it used to be, -98% off its high.

 

[cmacd123]

From what I understand, based on @Photo Engineer ’s posts (IIRC), Eastman Kodak has shut down some of their coating lines already. I believe whole building(s?) have been demolished or renovated for other uses, including being rented to third parties. But I might be wrong, of course.

Whole Campuses (like Toronto and Kodak France have been torn down. Building 38 is Kodak's VERY LAST production coating facility as far as I can determine. They do have some small coating lines for Product development still, but that one main line is it. It even had a companion in the next building which shared some support facilities but that was torn down a while ago.

these coating lines are like Paper mill Machines, the line and the building it is in are really one and the same. It would be hard to scap the machine and find a use for the building. The only building left at Toronto is the former employee support building and that has been repurposed as a transit station for the Housing development that has taken over the site.

it MIGHT be posible for Film to be made at the former Kodak plant that is now owned by Carestream, in Colorado, some colour parer is currently made at that site.

 

[AgX]

I recall PE saying that building 38 at 100% operating capacity could coat the entire worlds need for film in a day. (not counting changeover time for different formulations).

All big players used coating lines with a productivity crazy on today sales.

 

[Photo Engineer]

At the consumption rate today, Kodak can outdo anyone in production of any film product being made today. At one time it took minutes to make Kodachrome for all of National Geographic's needs in about 15 minutes. And, this was at the peak.

So, yes, they have huge capacity but yes, they have scaled back. So has Fuji. Is it enough? Well, Fuji is exiting some product lines.

PE

 

[Europan]

Wasn’t the thread about a person?

On Kodak’s website we read: Mahe earned his MBA in Marketing and International Trade from Ecole Superieure de Commerce et d’Administration des Enterprises in Bretagne, France.

At such high levels of hierarchy it doesn’t matter anymore whether one understands something of the things made on production floors or not, these people stack papers and talk figures. What disappoints me is that Americans have no respect for the diacritics of French. It should be Mahé and école supérieure. The upper case letters are ridicule.

George Eastman photographed, it was the bulkiness and complexity of photography, in his eyes, that motivated him to ease things for everyone. The base of the Kodak’s success lied in the dry gelatine roll film, the Kodak being a box camera. I guess Mahé couldn’t explain the connections of film sensitivity, lighting, exposure time, and iris stop.

 

[AgX]

At such high levels of hierarchy it doesn’t matter anymore whether one understands something of the things made on production floors or not, these people stack papers and talk figures.

Not long ago, at least in the photochemical industry, such was different. The CEO may have bee an economist, but the next level heads were from the chemical or engineering field. All typically from within the company.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...At such high levels of hierarchy it doesn’t matter anymore whether one understands something of the things made on production floors or not, these people stack papers and talk figures...

Corporations are machines designed to make profit, nothing more. How one makes that profit is a concern for underlings. How to skim the maximum percentage of that profit into their own pockets is the concern of executive management.

...What disappoints me is that Americans have no respect for the diacritics of French. It should be Mahé and école supérieure. The upper case letters are ridicule...

What you're asking is for someone to search out a document with those marks in it, then copy the ASCII character and paste it into whatever they're composing. I go to that trouble sometimes when referring to a non-American-English word, but most people won't. Remember, our keyboards don't include those keys.

 

[Lionel1972]

Great! Now I’ll have someone at Kodak to ask about the return of Kodachrome in my native tongue!

 

[Photo Engineer]

Yes Sal, and we can't type Russian, Greek, or Japanese characters. This is not a valid criticism by Europan. I agree with you.

PE

 

[Europan]

Criticism is dissection, kritein means to see all the slightest differences. I only said that I’m disappointed about something.
Hold your horses, men. To criticise Kodak would imply to work out all the major moves of that enterprise since 1881. No,
it’s about management here, the everlasting subject of our time. Don’t we scratch our heads about the announcement of a
new Super-8 camera Kodakers have made two years ago now, about the announcement of the reintroduction of Ektachrome
a while ago and still nothing? One could apply criticism but it’s not even necessary. The Eastman Kodak Company of the
thirties or the fifties would have prepared something quietly and announced it a month before bringing it out.

Of course can you type Russian, Greek, and Japanese. You have a text processing software open on your PC, you can
have Google translator do some work for you. I use Windows 10 and Words. Here are some extra signs in Arial: !"#$%&'()*+,-./
АБВГДЕЖЗЙКЛ αβγδεζηθικλ. Πoυ ειναι το προβλημα? Für ein paar deutsche Sätze schenke ich Ihnen auch noch ÄÖÜäöü
und ß. éèàâ for free. Really now.

 

[Photo Engineer]

No problem here. It is not all Greek to me. Just don't forget that we all don't have those characters readily available. And you did leave out circonflex and cedilla yourself. Where are they?

As for problems in industry, one of them is letting the money experts lead the scientific or product work, and the scientific lead the money spending. Many disasters there. I've seen it.

 

[cmacd123]

Most computers do have the option to add alternative character sets. Cut and Paste from Google Translate is an option. Couper et Coller de Google Translate est une option. Ausschneiden und Einfügen von Google Übersetzer ist eine Option. Kivágás és beillesztés a Google Fordítóból lehetőség. 从Google Translate中剪切并粘贴是一种选择。 Google翻訳の切り取りと貼り付けはオプションです。 Vyjmutí a vkládání z Překladu Google je volba.

perhaps he is from the école extrême!

I don't use Windos, but their is probably an application to add "special Characters" either installed or readily available.

But I am not surprised that someone who only does PR in English would miss the French capitalization difference.

 

[Europan]

I’d like to add something about the Kodak brand. I find it a catchy and intriguing word, well chosen. Learnt to know it as something big and constant, it was simply here. No photo dealer without Kodak with her or his shop. Later I understood that professional motion-picture products were named Eastman so-and-so film while amateur films went Kodak. From that I deducted an awareness of things not common in Europe. But what is the American supremacy based on?

Practicality. It went lost, everywhere. Peoples’ minds work so abstractly today, frightening. Common sense, a feel for things seem to be unimportant, people have decided theoretically before having made their feet wet. When I clean the drawers of my fridge I need a long circular brush to reach down into the narrow valleys. Things get clicked together on computers without a thought of their use. Managers who don’t know how a product performs in everyday life can’t serve a company. Whether Kodak can afford to sustain theorists is outside my knowledge. As an experienced cameraman and repairman of movie cameras I’d have thrown the prototype of the announced Super-8 camera through the window. May the future disabuse me, it still has no decent finder, a finder that lets me use the camera without the consumption of electric energy, a finder that does not shine in the dark, a robust finder that lets my eye relax on a longer distance. The display shown needs to be observed over a rather short distance, the more so, if I want to control focus.

Analog renaissance? You don’t say, Jeff Clarke.

 

[Agulliver]

Not long ago, at least in the photochemical industry, such was different. The CEO may have bee an economist, but the next level heads were from the chemical or engineering field. All typically from within the company.

Sadly, modern management theory states that a manager needs know nothing abut the business he or she is running....but just needs to know about management theory, how to set targets and shout at people in order to achieve those targets....oh and that responsibility is delegated along with tasks, so they never actually take responsibility when things go wrong - but are often quick to laud themselves when things are going well. Targets usually are defined monetarily these days, which is also a problem.

Personally I believe this is wholly wrong and why a number of companies and state run endeavours around the world are in trouble. while it's true that somebody needs to count the beans, you also need people in senior positions who understand the product, the customer base and have some understanding of how the product is made and even of the history. When someone asks M. Mahe about Kodachrome or Panatomix-X, he needs to have an answer which comes from a position of understanding the film business past, present and future.

I reserve my judgement on the gentleman until we see how he does. We still don't know much about him.

 

[Rudeofus]

Πoυ ειναι το προβλημα?

You've got to be kidding me. You rag on Americans for failing to use accents, and then you write a complete Greek sentence without accents. I guess you involuntarily proved everyones point: accents are a pain to type without the suitable keyboard. Εδώ είναι το πρόβλημα!

 

[AgX]

Up to this thread I was not even aware that the GB/US keyboards were lacking the accents. I myself am missing at least a sole diaeresis/trema on my german computer keyboards and from the start I failed to add it to my boards, which makes writing in Flemish/Dutch a problem. My disk typewriter still got it.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Yes Sal, and we can't type Russian, Greek, or Japanese characters. This is not a valid criticism by Europan. I agree with you.

PE

PE, I type in all Japanese characters all the time on a PC, MAC, and my phone...

 

[fdonadio]

I don't use a Windows PC, but on my Mac I use an USA keyboard and can type all the accents I need for writing in Portuguese. I just need to know some key-combos (which are not really meaningful, IMHO) like Option + E for the grave accent, Option + U for the umlaut, Option + C for the C with cedilla and Option + N for the tilde... Once you get used to it, it's pretty much natural.

 

[Europan]

I guess you involuntarily proved everyones point: accents are a pain to type without the suitable keyboard. Εδώ είναι το πρόβλημα!

Got me. Thing is, I’ve never learnt Greek. I have no idea about the accentuation with ancient Greek. I do speak some dimotiki. French is one of our four official languages. Thank you anyway for putting up a correct answer. Oh, before I forget, you missed the correct English genitive. It should be everyone’s.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Up to this thread I was not even aware that the GB/US keyboards were lacking the accents. I myself am missing at least a sole diaeresis/trema on my german computer keyboards and from the start I failed to add it to my boards, which makes writing in Flemish/Dutch a problem. My disk typewriter still got it.

Apple Mac keyboards have always had them. One must learn to access them to use them.

 

[Photo Engineer]

PE, I type in all Japanese characters all the time on a PC, MAC, and my phone...

I have a page full of my handwritten Japanese from years ago and can no longer read it. With age I am forgetting it all.

PE

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I hear you! I've been out of Japan since '02 and every time I go back I sound like a babbling idiot.