Former Prisoner of War Saved NCR From Obsolescence
By James R. Hagerty, 7/6/21, Wall St. Journal

William S. Anderson was starving in a POW camp during WWII
when he received career advice that sounded promising. At
the time, subsisting on small amounts of rice, occasional
scraps of meat & a spinach-like vegetable the prisoners
dubbed “green horror,” he wasn’t certain he would survive
long enough to have a career.

When the Japanese military released him in 1945 after
nearly 4 years, however, he took the suggestion of a fellow
prisoner & applied for work at National Cash Register Co.,
later known as NCR Corp.

Anderson, who died June 29 at the age of 102, impressed his
bosses by managing rapid growth in Asia, making NCR Japan
one of the company’s most profitable offshoots. In 1972,
NCR’s board, alarmed by deteriorating results elsewhere,
reached across the Pacific to name him president of the
parent company, based in Dayton, Ohio. He soon rose to CEO
& chairman, even though he had made his career entirely
outside the U.S.

The same self-belief that kept Anderson alive as a POW
gave him confidence he could save NCR.

“The most important message I try to get across to our
managers all over the world is that we are in trouble but
we will overcome it,” he told Business Week, which reported
that he had the “stance & mien of a middleweight boxer.”

Founded in 1884, NCR was comfortably entrenched as a
dominant supplier of mechanical cash registers & machines
used in accounting & banking. It underestimated the speed
at which microelectronics & computers would wipe out its
legacy product line. By the early 70s, NCR was losing
sales to more nimble rivals.

A factory complex covering 55 acres in Dayton made hundreds
of exceedingly complicated machines rapidly becoming
obsolete. Anderson found that NCR was using about 130,000
different parts, including more than 9,000 types & sizes
of screws. For 1972, his first year as president, NCR took
a $70 million charge, largely to write down the value of
parts & inventory & replace outdated production equipment.

Anderson slashed the payroll & invested in new products,
including ATM's & computers. Profitability recovered, &
NCR reported record revenue of $4.07 billion for 1984,
the year he retired as chairman.

William Summers Anderson was born Mar 29, 1919, in Hankow,
China, now part of Wuhan. His father, an engineer born in
Edinburgh, designed & operated an ice-making plant in
Hankow. His mother, the daughter of a tea merchant, was
Eurasian. When William was 6, his father died. As a
teenager, he was sent to a British-style school in Shanghai.

As Japanese troops advanced deeper into China in 1937, he
& his mother fled by train to Hong Kong. He found work as
an internal auditor at a hotel company & enrolled in night
school to study accounting. That led to a job at an
accounting firm.

When Japanese troops invaded Hong Kong in Dec 1941, he
was a member of the Hong Kong volunteer defense corps,
backing up regular British troops. After the Japanese
snuffed out the British resistance, Anderson & others were
imprisoned. Among their chores was improving an airport
runway with picks & shovels.

Undernourished, Anderson suffered from swollen feet,
fevers & chronic skin sores. He passed part of his time
talking about business with a gregarious British prisoner,
George Haynes, who had been NCR’s Hong Kong rep & urged
Anderson to consider a career with the company.

In late 1943, Anderson & other prisoners were shipped to
a camp in Japan. The passage was difficult. “With many
cases of dysentery, almost universal seasickness & no
toilet facilities, it was a nightmarish scene,” Anderson
wrote in a 1991 memoir, “Corporate Crisis.” In Japan, the
prisoners worked in a factory making steam locomotives &
were often beaten by their minders. One assault left
Anderson’s left eye swollen shut for 3 days.

At one point, the Red Cross delivered packages including
tubes of shaving cream. Some of the famished prisoners
promptly ate it.

In Sept 1945, after Japan surrendered, Anderson was
treated on a US hospital ship, where he found the
showers “indescribably refreshing.” He eventually made his
way to London, joined NCR & received sales training before
being sent to head the company’s business in Hong Kong.

In 1947, asked to testify at a war-crimes trial of prison-
camp leaders in Japan, Anderson identified one of the
defendants by the nickname of Fishface. A defense lawyer
asked why he didn’t know the man’s real name. “Well, you
see,” Anderson recalled replying, “we were never formally
introduced.”

During that visit to Japan, he met an American, Janice
Robb, working as a civilian at the Pacific Stars & Stripes
newspaper. After their first date, she recalled later,
“he grabbed my datebook and crossed off the names of
everyone in there for the next two weeks.” They were
married within six weeks.

Though many Hong Kong merchants still used abacuses rather
than cash registers, Anderson persuaded local banks to
buy NCR machines. He was promoted to run NCR Japan and
the rest of Asia in 1959.

Hailed as a savior when he became president of the parent
company in 1972, he warned employees that some of his
decisions would be unpopular. The company’s manufacturing
employment fell to 18,000 in 1974 from 37,000 in 1970.

He found an NCR maxim—“We Progress Through Change”—on the
wall of one of the soon-to-be-demolished brick factories.
“No rational person could deny its truth,” he wrote in
his memoir. “But no compassionate person could help
regretting the fact that progress often exacts a high price.”

He found that U.S. corporations had too few managers brave
enough to openly question the boss’s views. Big companies
also tended to pile on costs carelessly during good times,
then panic in downturns. Dependence on consultants, he
added, “borders on the ludicrous.”

Anderson is survived by his wife, 3 daughters & 5 grandkids.
He lived in a retirement home in Palo Alto CA., in recent
years. A man of strong habits, he followed a daily regime
of All-Bran cereal for breakfast, swimming, brisk walks &
a glass of Dewar’s whisky on the rocks at 7 pm.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-prisoner-of-war-saved-ncr-from-obsolescence-11625580000