In common with its US and European counterparts, NEC Corp is seeking to expand its facilities management business. It has a contract from the Federation of Japan Consumers Co-operative Associations for development and operation of an ordering system that will be run on an Acos mainframe at the NEC value-added networking computer centre in Chiba outside Tokyo, and will be linked to various regional centres of the Federation, which will have NEC office computers installed. NEC currently has around 30 bureau customers, but to date these have shared time on a host computer. This is the first time NEC will run a dedicated machine for one customer. It plans to use this opportunity to expand its facilities management business to other firms in the retail distribution business.
