《《Cisco Systems》.pdfVIP

For the exclusive use of C. LEE Harvard Business School 9-600-015 Rev. February 15, 2000 Cisco Systems, Inc.: Acquisition Integration for Manufacturing (A) David Keller, vice president of manufacturing, new product introduction, and technology at Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco), hung up the phone and sat back to think about the challenges that lay ahead. He had just spent the last hour talking with Gary Wilder, director of manufacturing operations, and Dick Swee, vice president of engineering, at Summa Four Inc. (Summa Four)—a systems company which developed and manufactured programmable switches used in the development of telephony applications. Cisco had announced in July 1998 that it had reached an agreement to acquire publicly held Summa Four for $116 million in stock. The conversation had been about the major effort that lay ahead to integrate the two companies’ manufacturing organizations. While the deal was not expected to officially close until November 1998, Keller had called Wilder and Swee to give them an overview of how Cisco managed these types of integration projects so that they could begin to prepare the Summa Four organization. Keller had reviewed the due diligence report on Summa Four written by a team from his department and knew that the integration process would be complex. While Cisco had made 25 acquisitions prior to the Summa Four acquisition, most had been of Silicon Valley-based software or pre-production