The Way They Think at TRW

On the greensward of the drowsy old farm nestled in the Vermont hills, looms a gnarled, majestic elm that the agronomists guess must be at least two hundred and fifty years old. And lounging under its shade this summer day, in slacks and open-throat shirt, Vice Chairman Simon Ramo of TRW Inc. — some 3000 miles removed from his Los Angeles office — is conversing with a quartet of companions. For all the serenity of the surroundings the talk is pretty intense. 'We surely have to anticipate,' Ramo is saying, `that at some point there will be a major effort to break the nuclear stalemate. And it may well take the form of research in systems — in which TRW could take a prime role — that will make major use of advanced technology as a psychological and strategic tool for the enforcement of peace. For example, the development of a global, real-time orbiting system capable of detecting and destroying illegitimate intruders in space.'

Ramo and some forty-eight other top TRW executives gathered in small groups about the premises are on their annual hegira to this pastoral retreat, which is the modest ancestral homestead of Frederick C. Crawford, the company's retired chairman. Here, away from the pressures of daily operations, they spend a solid week each summer in frank and philosophical discussion of the company's problems and potentials, and in the structuring of its long-term plans and goals.

The practice, of course, is not unique with TRW. It is a common complaint of corporate managers that they are often imprisoned by their own bureaucracy, and become so involved in the multiplicity of business doings that they don't have time to draw back and think. So every so often they pick up in a body and flee. Union Carbide maintains a lodge in the Thousand Islands, and Continental Oil, a ranch in Texas, for such occasional soul-searching. Periodically, several hundred General Motors' executives take over the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, for several days of reviewing and previewing corporate policies and plans. Each company has its own style of doing these things.

For the TRW executives, who have been holding these Vermont meetings since 1952, it must be said that the living is extremely simple, and the work load fairly full. Fred Crawford's house can sleep only four or five guests. The rest put up at various small motels and hotels in the area, and drive over each morning to answer the summons of the ancient bell that starts the session promptly at nine o'clock. The formal meetings are held, literally, in a barn. It has been spruced up some, to be sure, and is equipped with a make-do microphone, a screen for showing visuals and a lectern. For the various panel sessions and casual tete-a-tetes, the conferees usually prefer an out-of-doors setting in some nook or corner of the farm. The men take all their meals cafeteria style, carrying their plates to a tent-topped patio that leads out from the small dining room of the house. There is no cocktail hour.

Under the normal schedule, the morning sessions last until twelve-thirty, followed by lunch. The afternoons are free for recreation. Most of the men drive some twenty miles to the Mountain View Hotel's nine-hole golf course, where they stage an annual tournament of sorts, with amusing, inexpensive prizes for winners and losers. At six o'clock they return to the farm for dinner — after which, back to the barn for an evening session that lasts until about nine-thirty. Nobody wears a tie all week, and jackets are slipped on only if the night air chills.

TRW has, perhaps, a rather special need for an annual commingling of this kind. A highly diversified company headquartered in Cleveland, it is the product of a merger of two distinctly different corporate groups, based in two widely separated sectors of the country, which still have a lot to learn about and contribute to each other. The progenitor of TRW was Thompson Products of Cleveland, founded in 1901, a mass manufacturer of precision parts for the automotive and aircraft industries. In 1953, Chairman J. David Wright decided to use some of Thompson's money to back the ambitions of two young California scientists, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge. Ramo and Wooldridge promptly went out and won a contract for the systems engineering and technical direction of the U.S. Air Force's entire ICBM program. In 1958 the two companies were formally merged as Thompson Ramo Wooldridge. In May, 1965, the corporate title was truncated to TRW Inc.

Today the former Ramo Wooldridge unit, together with its subsequent acquisitions in the electronics field, operates out of Los Angeles as two groups - TRW Systems and TRW Electronics. The California contingents accounted for roughly 40 per cent of the corporation's total of $665-million sales in 1965. Though Systems still handles the Minuteman program, its principal activity now is in space. It is a prime contractor or major sub-system supplier for numerous Defense Department and NASA projects - Gemini, Apollo, Pioneer, and so on - and is building a series of global satellites for Comsat. TRW Electronics produces components for both the military and industry, and is a major supplier of coils and color convergence yokes for color T V.

On the Cleveland side of the house there are also two groups. The Equipment group produces parts for military and commercial aircraft jet engines, power systems for missiles and space-craft, and Army and Navy ordnance. The Automotive group supplies valves, steering linkage, bearings, and other parts on a worldwide basis to the automobile and truck companies and to the independent replacement aftermarket'.

After a few difficult years, all four groups are prospering. Total TRW sales in 1965 increased 20 per cent over the previous year. Net income, at $29 million, was up 24 per cent, and earnings per share increased 29 per cent. For the first six months of this year sales were running nearly 30 per cent ahead of 1965 and are expected to exceed $850 million for the year. Still, the top management of TRW feels that the corporation hasn't begun to exploit the opportunities inherent in a more integrated approach of all its talents to the many massive projects - civilian and military, government and commercial - that must be undertaken in the decades ahead in response to critical national and human needs. They believe that TRW is equipped, for example, to play a three-sided role in technological programs for the solution of such pressing civic problems as urban renewal, mass transportation, and pollution and waste. TRW has the systems capability to design and direct the concept of such programs, the electronics capability to supply the required communication and controls, and — in its great Cleveland shops — the capacity and skills to furnish much of the instrumentation and structural equipment required.