Toshiba, Fujitsu to build PCs to order in U.S.
By Rob Guth
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 2:41 PM PT, Mar 10, 1998
Toshiba and Fujitsu separately plan to start build-to-order sales schemes next month for select PC lines in the United States, company officials said
Tuesday in interviews.
The new strategy could put machines in the hands of customers more quickly than in the past and offer users a wider set of options, the officials
said. Both companies are responding to an industry move toward just-in-time manufacturing and building PCs more closely in line with actual
customer orders.
In April, Fujitsu's U.S. subsidiary, Fujitsu PC, will open the doors of a PC configuration center in Memphis, Tenn., officials said Tuesday. The
center initially will handle basic final assembly of PCs, but by the middle of the year, it will begin taking orders for specific configurations based
on customers' choices of components including processor, screen, and hard drive, officials said.
Toshiba will begin its U.S. build-to-order scheme next month with its desktop line, and later in the year it will expand such sales to include its full
range of notebooks, officials said. Also by the second half of the year, Toshiba will offer its high-end Tecra series on a configure-to-order basis,
officials said.
Toshiba emphasized that it will continue to build and configure all its machines in-house. Some vendors are following configure-to-order strategies
that ship bare-bones machines to channel partners, which then add key components based on customers' needs.
But under that system, Toshiba feels it is "very difficult to guarantee the quality [of PCs] as a manufacturer, so for the moment we will build the
products," said Fumio Yamashita, senior manager, PC division, international operations, at Toshiba.
Toshiba's build-to-order plan calls for dealers to maintain a minimal inventory of popular machines in stock, and if end-customers demand
machines not on hand, the dealer can order the specific configurations from Toshiba's factory in Irvine, Calif. When the company begins
configure-to-order sales of Tecra notebooks, again through dealers, users will be able to specify more choices of components such as processor
and hard drive, according to Yamashita. |
