Wang Laboratories Inc, which still employed 31,000 people as recently as March 1989, is undergoing one of the fastest shrinkings in the history of the computer industry, and it says that in the wake of its agreement to phase out most of its own products in favour of ones made by IBM Corp, it must cut its surviving 17,500-strong workforce by a fifth more – 3,000 to 4,000 are to go over the next few months. About half the cuts will come in already ravaged Massachusetts, where its rolls are already down to 6,000. It will not immediately stop making its own personal computers, but will now try to sell them through mass market retailers. It is also restructuring into three divisions – an information systems division that takes in about 70% of turnover and embraces both the VS and the IBM AS/400 and RS/6000; a personal computer systems division; and an Office 2000 division for the emerging document image processing push.
