Killer Results Without Killing Yourself

"As far as I'm concerned," says David B. Marsing, "having to change your life when you arrive at work each morning is tantamount to slavery."

Revolutionary words from a professor or labor organizer? Not exactly. Dave Marsing, 41, sits in one of the highest pressure jobs in U.S. industry: plant manager of Intel Corp.'s http://www.intel.com $2 billion Fab II near Albuquerque, New Mexico, the largest microprocessor fabrication plant of the most successful electronics company in the world.

Marsing is an agent provocateur -- he calls himself a "transformational virus" -- in a company legendary for long hours and "creative confrontation." Marsing knows that "if I'm too aggressive, the corporate immune system will kick in" and consume him. He also knows that if he can successfully infect Intel, he will save it.

The medical analogy is no accident. Five years ago, at age 36, while trying to pull an Intel fabrication plant out of a crisis, Marsing suffered a near fatal heart attack. Lying on a gurney in the hospital, he remembers thinking, "How can I live my life as meaningfully as possible?" To this day, he visits cardiac units every six months, "just to look at the gray faces and remember."

It's tough to be a rebel in any business. But this is the semiconductor industry, a take-no-prisoners battle among silicon killers, hardly the kind of place to find a soft-spoken nice guy -- especially one who's using a multibillion-dollar facility to experiment with new management theories.

Intel corporate knows only a little about the intensity of Marsing's views. But it does know the bottom line -- and here Marsing excels. According to Marsing's boss Mike Splinter, 45, vice president and general manager of the company's components-manufacturing group, Marsing is one of Intel's best fab managers. Throughout his career, he's surpassed every target and quota set for him; every plant Marsing has run has ranked number one on the company's productivity charts.

That's why Intel's management has selected Marsing to help train its next generation of fab managers as the company prepares to springboard off the success of the Pentium chip into the greatest expansion in its history. By the end of the decade, Intel will have at least 10 giant new fabs directed by as many as 300 newly trained managers. Intel also expects to be the most profitable company in the world.

By placing Dave Marsing in charge of its next generation of leaders, Intel, long known for its business brains, may unwittingly have made its smartest move yet. And if Marsing succeeds, he may not only transform his own company but also set the model for the new breed of manager who will lead U.S. industry into the next century.

The Road to Damascus

Like most apostles of change, Dave Marsing had an awakening on his own road to Damascus.

Until five years ago, his had been a typical career for a young manager in high tech. After earning a degree in physics from the University of Oregon in 1976, Marsing followed his interest in thin-film technology and solar power to Texas Instruments to work with industry legend Jack Kilby on that company's then-secret solar-panel project. Marsing got the job he wanted, only to see the project collapse a year later.

But that was long enough for Kilby to be impressed by the young man and to recommend him to his Intel counterpart (and integrated circuit coinventor) Robert Noyce, who sent Marsing to work in development at the company's plant in Portland, Oregon. By 1986, at just 32, Marsing became the product engineering manager at Intel's Fab 3 in Livermore, California. Fab 3 was an older plant with established production levels, but by the time he was done, the plant was the company's leading manufacturer of the 80386, setting new standards for productivity.

Tired of the pressure of fab life, Marsing took a three-month sabbatical at the end of 1989. When he returned, he accepted an assignment as director of the company's Chandler, Arizona factory automation group -- only to find a new kind of pressure, learn a new kind of lesson. "I saw how fab treats support," he recalls. Now I was the enemy. And it was obvious neither group knew how to deal with the other." In the world of semiconductors, where the construction of a single chip is as complex as the Manhattan Project, processes developed in the lab must be copied exactly on the factory floor. What were the odds of making mistakes if the two sides were locked in combat?

The more conflicts Marsing saw between department and department, between employee and company, and between employee and supervisor, the more conflicted he became. Without realizing it, Marsing internalized Intel's civil war. But to others it was obvious. As Mike Splinter later noted, during this period Marsing was summed up by the car he drove: a nondescript Volvo, "very meek on the outside, but with a big monster engine under the hood." Marsing even suffered the requisite divorce, brought on in part, he admits, by the stresses he was feeling on the job.