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It's all gone to Schmitt: New OCZ boss rips 'n' replaces execs

Tries to prove to $30m backer that the biz can make money

Flash storage biz OCZ's new CEO has replaced almost a dozen executives - and he's banging on about quality as he strives to resuscitate the near-dead OCZ flash business.

OCZ over-extended itself drastically under founder and previous CEO Ryan Petersen, who was ousted last year, leaving the company with far too many under-performing SSD product brands, a legacy of product quality issues and catastrophically bad financial records in the customer incentive area.

Incoming CEO Ralph Schmitt is fighting to keep OCZ's Nasdaq listing in the face of a failure to file the last two quarter's financial results with the SEC and to rebuild the battered business.

The firm is trying to rebuild itself after a loan agreement with Hercules Technology Growth Capital gave it a last-minute $30m cash and credit lifeline. The terms of the loan agreement are partially contingent upon the company being current in its SEC filings and achieving certain revenue levels for two consecutive quarters.

El Reg has seen a copy of an OCZ presentation deck for customers discussing the OCZ Quality System as of Q2 2013.

It robustly declares:

There is no substitute for quality. It’s created, maintained, and improved upon every day by every employee in the company.

There is a also a list of new staffers as evidence of OCZ's new found zeal for quality control and increased revenues:

  1. New VP Engineering
  2. New VP of Operations
  3. New VP Global Sales
  4. New Director of Quality
  5. New Senior Manager Quality Systems
  6. New Director of Product Engineering
  7. New Director of Software Engineering
  8. New Manager Test Engineering
  9. New Manager Product Compliance
  10. New Director Enterprise Sales
  11. New Director OEM Sales

There is more about the improvement of in-house manufacturing as well as new quality control measures and vendor and supplier monitoring processes and then a review of how OCZ's Vertex product quality has improved over three generations of product:

If nothing else Schmitt deserves huge, huge plaudits for trying so very hard to rescue OCZ. ®

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