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To: Abbas who wrote (578)	3/10/1998 7:22:00 PM
From: thedewar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3645

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.