Toshiba to Invest $9 Million in Irvine Plant
In the latest phase of a three-year expansion of its Irvine operations, Toshiba America said it will invest $9 million in a manufacturing facility to build computer printed circuit boards and will hire 145 new employees by 1992.
Toshiba America, the U.S. subsidiary of Japanese electronics giant Toshiba Corp., said the project will create 60 new jobs when production begins in April, 1990, and an additional 85 jobs by 1992.
The company said it will build state-of-the-art “surface mounted” printed circuit boards for personal computers. Printed circuit boards are pieces of fiberglass or pressboard on which microchips and circuitry are mounted. They are the “guts” of personal computers and many other electronic products.
Toshiba spokesman Robert A. Wittenburg said the factory will be highly automated and many of the production tasks will be performed by robots.
Initially, most of the circuit boards built at the plant will be used in Toshiba’s lightweight laptop personal computers, which are manufactured at a separate company facility in Irvine. Toshiba said the new plant will produce boards needed for 4,000 laptop computers per month, with plans to boost production of boards sufficient for 15,000 laptops by 1992.
In total, the plant will be capable of producing 80,000 circuit boards by 1992. Besides laptop computers, the boards also will be used in other products that Toshiba manufactures in Irvine, such as computer printers and desktop copiers.
Toshiba, which previously has not built circuit boards in the United States, said moving production to Irvine “will offer increased flexibility to source, manufacture and deliver” products to the U.S. marketplace.
“An important part of this decision was our commitment to eventually classify our laptop personal computers as ‘Made in the U.S.A.,’ ” said Kiichi Hataya, president of Toshiba America Information Systems. During the past year, Toshiba has increased production of its laptop computers and transferred production of facsimile machines and desktop copiers from Japan to Irvine. In March, company officials announced plans to hire more than 800 new employees in Irvine by 1992. The Information Systems unit now employs about 900 people in Irvine.
