Faced with the prospect of partial closure if it can’t convince its parent that it has a viable future serving third party customers, IBM France SA’s plant is energetically laying plans to exploit its skills in chip packaging, in particular IBM’s proprietary technology for surface-mounting chips on multi-layer ceramic substrates to create multi-chip modules. A series of studies, due to be completed in June, will decide which operations will be spun off as Independent Business Centres – to be up and running by January 1 1994. The only activity at the plant that is secure is mainframe manufacture – as well as the water-cooled ES/9000s it already builds, it is to take over the air-cooled models currently built at the Valencia, Spain plant, as well. About half the 2,000-strong French workforce are employed building Enterprise Systems, with another 500 handling the manufacture of the integrated circuit modules. That is the business that Jean Richet, director in charge of restructuring at Montpellier, sees as particularly promising. Already, says Richet, the Montpellier engineers have made informal contact with potential customers, but large scale exploitation of the plant’s capabilities will rely on a pan-European technology products sales operation, which is being set up in Paris. This will try to find markets for products and services coming from Montpellier and the other three European facilities in Havant, Valencia, Jrflla that are undergoing a similar process. There are also an application development and a manufacturing technology transfer operation: together, the work done by these for third parties account for 10% of the turnover of Montpellier.
