Manufacturing: Beating the Old Hands

Like most German industries at the close of World War II, the sprawling electronics operation of Siemens AG was mostly rubble. When the country began to reindustrialize, Siemens was pump-primed with Marshall Plan money—then German determination took over. The company's aggressive salesmen traveled the world to sell a full range of electronics products. Late last month, Siemens won a $75 million contract to build a nuclear power plant in Argentina—Latin America's first. In the process, it defeated such old nuclear hands as G.E. and Westinghouse.

For the Munich-based corporation, whose 1967 sales of $2 billion and profits of $40 million made...