What makes Pixar Tick?

I was watching some of the Pixar behind the scenes documentaries, and wondered what program they actually used. I knew they had their own team of computer engineers to write their own, but was fascinated to learn that they use a variety of programs (including Maya of course) as well as Marionettte. Marionettte is customized for each Pixar film and thus is almost useless for the average artist using 3D. While there is very little known about the program (if you were on top of the animation mountain, would you give away your secrets?) it is supposed to be more intuitive for 2D trained artists.

But what do the competitors do? According to Flushed Away's supervising animator, Jason Spencer-Galsworthy, "PDI works with EMO and DreamWorks works with Maya, though this will change after Flushed Away, with DreamWorks adopting EMO. This is a tech pipeline whereby your 3D software interacts with a database and other departments, such as lighting. And that was all put together by PDI. Over the Hedge was the first project done with EMO. It handles the way your work fits in with everyone else’s." (http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no=3064<ype=cat)

While the two different systems are basically the same, some seem to think that Pixar would still be the leader without its upper hand because they take more time and effort into each movie instead of churning them out like other studios. Whatever the case, you can't argue with the phenomenal results.