ULTRA-SONIC ENGINEERING CORPORATION
James B. Hunt, University of Newcastle

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Dan Rogers Roy Lomas Edward Hyde

Ultra-Sonic Engineering Corp. was a highly successful British-American Enterprise headed by Dan Rogers. Rogers had graduated from M.I.T. in 1980 with a degree in engineering, majoring in aviation. In 1982 he received his MBA from London Business School and immediately went about raising venture capital to start his own company By 1985 Rogers presided over a profitable single-product enterprise; Ultra-Sonic's Jet Fighter planes had made him independently wealthy.

In 1988 Rogers was contacted by Richard Robards, a fellow engineer from his college days at MIT. Richard was an aerospace scientist with the University of Hawaii, and had recently developed an esoteric engine after years of research, which he called the Silver Motor. At the same time, Ultra-Sonic's own research division had produced tantalizingly viable plans for a new product which it was suggested would be called the Gyro-Copter. After some discussion, both men realised that the Silver Motor would require considerable development if it were to be used in the Jet-Fighters, but its design features made it immediately viable as an important feature of the Gyro-Copter.

At the beginning of 1989, Rogers initiated an important corporate restructuring in order to accommodate the development of the Gyro-Copter. He created two separate divisions which he designated as profit-centres. Division A was wholly responsible for the engineering, manufacturing, assembly and quality-control of Jet Fighters. Division B was wholly responsible for the Gyro-Copter. Each division had five separate departments, including an accounting department which reported directly to the Vice-President of the division, as well as to a centrally located Financial Control