Over
the last three years the global giant has reinvented itself, in part by
spending an enormous US$3.6bn to become a major player in the digital
printing world, in the process buying Creo, Encad, NexPress, Kodak
Polychrome Graphics and Versamark.
The new chief operating office will be led jointly by James Langley, president of the Graphic Communications Group, and Philip Faraci, president of the Consumer Digital Imaging Group, and is effective immediately. Langley and Faraci, who are senior vice presidents of the company, will continue to be responsible for managing the day-to-day operational activity of their respective businesses.
This year the pair will be jointly accountable for achieving the strategic objective of significantly reducing administrative costs and positioning Kodak for profitable growth in 2008. They are charged with putting into place the structures and processes needed to achieve a greater streamlining of management, deeper cost reductions, and greater leverage across the digital businesses to drive revenue growth.
Jeff Jacobsen, chief operating officer of Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group, effectively Langley’s number two, and the former CEO of Kodak Polychrome Graphics, will leave the company on April 30. Jacobsen, 46, wants to get back into to a CEO role. Also leaving Kodak is Carl Gustin, the 14 year veteran chief marketing officer, who retires on July 1.
Kodak says that with the anticipated sale of its Health Group, the company can be managed more effectively and economically by streamlining the organisation. The businesses now will determine the amount of services that they require, thereby allowing the company to reduce cost and improve efficiency by pooling resources at the senior-most levels of the corporate functions.
Langley, 56, joined Kodak in August 2003. Together with Jacobsen he guided the series of acquisitions that resulted in the creation and integration of what is now Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group, a business that offers the broadest portfolio of blended printing solutions in the industry.
“These changes represent some of the final stages of our digital transformation," says Antonio Perez, Kodak’s chairman and CEO.
"We are building a company that will feature growing and profitable businesses in graphic communications, consumer digital capture, and consumer inkjet printing, among a number of other significant product lines. We have the people, the assets, the strategy and the structure to extend Kodak’s presence as the world’s imaging leader.”
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