I suspect that this is part of the problem with many big manufacturing companies these days. Ford was a leader for so many years was because their leadership was passionate about engineering and manufacturing. Henry Ford was an engineer for the Edison Company before he was a manager and is famous for obsessing about every detail of the manufacturing process. That sort of spirit infected the company up through the 1960's and 70's when the MBA's took over and everything was reduced to a column of numbers.

It appears that many early tech companies (TI, HP) have headed in the same direction. Maybe 30 - 40 years is the limit before the accountants take over.