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Technology Stocks : Compaq -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dwight E. Karlsen who wrote (20245)	3/7/1998 2:29:00 PM
From: WeisbrichA	Respond to of 97611

DK, They still assemble from other than their own parts. I would only assume that they would buy the best and most reliable parts from a wide range of available sources with a wide range of quality. They indeed have a wide choice of cabinet, power supply, keyboard, mouse, motherboard, Video, sound, modem, network and monitors to put into their systems. They test, of course, before they build. When it all works together, they put their logo on it and ship it. The big step up comes when you design, engineer, and build a complete system with BIOS and diagnostics and integrate it with O/S. Now you have a full manufacturing process. Some of manufacturing can be subcontracted to SCI or Solectron, et. al. To bring all or part of manufacturing in-house, you now need a full blown ERP and CRP system. Compaq, by the way, should be up on SAP R/3 in all plants (I think that is the correct version) this year, according to my "deep throat" source. A white box integrator merely has to add lines to the floor to expand volume. Dell and other assemblers could become a manufacturer simply by buying key suppliers. Our company (Value Added Reseller)could compete with Dell or CPQ in boxes if we deliver, install and setup software and train on-site. The last two provide the best part of the profit. The hooker is that we are no longer in the hardware maintenance service business. So we sell CPQ et. al. with three year on-site warranties. I would not go just into web, mail or catalogue because the margins are way to slim to do a startup. I still maintain that Dell is a branded "white box". They are an assembler/integrator. A very good one. RW