# IBM 1985 Annual Report

## Automated manufacturing equipment is helping IBM's Boigny, France, plant reduce the cost and improve the quality of print ribbons produced at the plant.

**Joint ventures**

IBM Japan and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Japan's domestic telephone company, established a joint venture company in Japan to market telecommunications products and services. The firm has been named Nippon Information and Communication Corporation. Among planned products is a telecommunications system that will provide customers access to remotely located computers via telephone lines for exchange of text, graphics and computerized images.

In June, IBM, Aetna Life & Casualty and MCI Communications Corporation announced an agreement under which MCI would acquire substantially all the assets and operations of Satellite Business Systems. SBS had been owned jointly by IBM and Aetna Life & Casualty.

In September, IBM Italy and the ELSAG-Stet Group completed the formation of a joint venture

**European Networking Center**

IBM Europe has established a European Networking Center in Heidelberg, Germany, to carry out advanced systems communications projects. The center will permit IBM engineers, working with other European scientists, to perform studies in telecommunications and networking with particular focus on Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) applications.

Based on a reference model for computers developed by the International Organization of Standardization, OSI is designed to permit systems operating under different architectures to exchange data. IBM has been a major contributor to the development of OSI and has implemented OSI standards in several recent product offerings.

**Reorganization**

IBM announced a major reorganization of its U.S. marketing divisions during the fall of 1985. The new structure, which began operations on January 1, 1986, is designed to provide customers quality support and service while making efficient use of the company’s resources.

Under the realignment, divisions that marketed IBM’s products to traditional customer accounts were reorganized into two geographic marketing divisions that will market the company’s product line to customers within their respective geographic areas.

Field service operations were realigned to be symmetrical with the new marketing organizations. The division which directs the company’s marketing efforts through alternate channels realigned its value-added remarketing and authorized dealer operations into a single sales organization.

The company continued its efforts to decentralize decision-making and improve efficiency, realigning one of its major business groups into two new groups. One is responsible for developing and manufacturing large processors, storage systems and associated programming; the other, logic, memory and other semiconductor devices and packaging.

**New facilities**

In line with IBM’s goals of growing with the industry and being the low-cost producer, the company continued to invest in new manufacturing and development facilities.

One of the newest facilities, a state-of-the-art production plant in Charlotte, N.C., is designed specifically for volume production of high-quality, low-cost products. The facility, which recently began manufacturing the IBM Proprinter, makes use of automation throughout its manufacturing operations. A series of special control programs directs the production process, which was

**Staff at IBM's European Networking Center in Heidelberg, Germany, reviews early results of an experimental networking study.**