Toshiba Growth in Irvine Proceeding : Telephone Operation to Move From Japan Later in Year

As part of a three-year expansion that will double the size of its Orange County operations, Toshiba will transfer production of some business telephone products from Japan to Irvine later this year.

The move will create just 40 local jobs in October, but Toshiba’s plans call for boosting its local employment by 850 positions by the end of 1991, said Robert A. Wittenberg, a spokesman for Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., an Irvine-based unit of Japan’s Toshiba Corp.

In an interview last March, Information Systems President Kiichi Hataya disclosed a broad plan to expand the company’s local operations by moving more manufacturing from overseas to Irvine and other Toshiba facilities in the United States. On Monday, Toshiba formally announced the latest phase of that expansion. The company declined to disclose the size of its investment in the expansion.

Beginning Oct. 1, the Information Systems unit will move manufacturing of private-branch exchange, or PBX, systems and business telephones from Japan to Irvine, Hataya said.

The first phase of the expansion took place in January when Toshiba boosted local production of laptop computers and began making cellular mobile telephones in Irvine. And in April, it began local production of office copiers.

The Information Systems division employs 850 people in Irvine and 1,200 nationwide.

Hataya said the move is part of a Toshiba program to manufacture more products closer to their markets.

“By producing systems in the United States,” Hataya said, “we will be far better able to maintain inventory control, respond more efficiently to customer needs and react with more immediacy to fluctuations in marketplace demand.”

Hataya said the expansion is also part of an effort by Toshiba “to demonstrate its commitment to the U.S. marketplace” by purchasing more parts and supplies for its U.S.-made products from local suppliers.