2 ms·
This IBM no longer exists, physically or spiritually. Physically speaking: near as I can tell, the printer plants in Armonk, NY and Charlotte, NC are long-shut
by hapless 12y ago
This IBM no longer exists, physically or spiritually.
Physically speaking: near as I can tell, the printer plants in Armonk, NY and Charlotte, NC are long-shuttered. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, by all means, post it.
Spiritually: The low-end printer division was part of the 1991 divestments. It became part of Lexmark. As far as I know, Lexmark no longer manufactures anything in the US. They just slap their name on various imported OEM designs.
p.s. This case study was written in 1998 about events in the late 1980s. The Lexmark divestment had already occurred. The manufacturing capacity was probably already dead before the study was published.
- chiph 12y agoThe Charlotte facility doesn't make printers any more (I worked nearby at Wachovia/Wells Fargo CIC for a while). A story I heard from an IBMer was that the robotic assembly systems weren't ready at time of product launch, so they were hand-assembled using temp workers. IBM thus discovered that designing for robotic assembly meant that humans had a much easier time of building the product. They did eventually install the robots to save on the labor cost, though. I installed hundreds of those printers while on another contract. They were a little dated by then, but still a solid office printer. We only had to replace a few of them, and that was because of a lightning strike close by the customer's office. Very reliable. I don't miss the massive Centronics parallel cables one bit - what a pain it was to route those things up from under people's desks.