Another AST Executive Resigns Top-Level Post : Management: The manufacturing chief cites a desire to move back to the Bay Area for becoming the firm's fourth top officer to leave in a week.

Another AST Executive Resigns Top-Level Post : Management: The manufacturing chief cites a desire to move back to the Bay Area for becoming the firm’s fourth top officer to leave in a week.

By GREG MILLER

Sept. 21, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

IRVINE —

The unsettled management ranks at personal computer manufacturer AST Research Inc. were shaken again Wednesday by the resignation of the company’s head of worldwide manufacturing.

Kirby Coryell, 45, who helped direct the Irvine-based company through a number of layoffs and plant consolidations in recent years, said he was leaving AST partly because he and his family wanted to return to the San Francisco area.

He will be replaced by Gary Weaver, who joined AST last year and has led manufacturing operations in the company’s Ft. Worth, Tex., facility. AST also said that Bob Parmelee, an executive hired last year to manage the company’s supply chain, will now also oversee AST’s service and support group.

Coryell’s departure comes a week after AST announced the resignation of three top executives, including President James T. Schraith, and disclosed that it expects to lose more than $40 million in the upcoming quarter.

Coryell, who left Apple Computer Corp. in Cupertino two years ago to join AST, said he had accepted a position as vice president of manufacturing in North America for NEC Corp. in Mountain View. Coryell said he had been looking for a job in the Bay Area over the past few months so that he, his wife and teen-age daughter could move back to Half Moon Bay, a coastal community south of San Francisco.

He also said he had grown weary of the heavy travel schedule his job at AST required, and that the workload was likely to grow as the company tries to return to profitability. AST, the seventh-largest PC manufacturer in the United States, reported a loss of nearly $100 million last fiscal year amid numerous product delays and marketing missteps.

“There is a massive amount of change that’s yet to come,” Coryell said in an interview. “We dropped our labor and overhead manufacturing costs in half over the last year. I said [to chief executive Safi U. Qureshey] that I’ve done all I know how to do. It’s time to get someone else.”

AST is seeking a replacement for Weaver to lead operations in Texas, Qureshey said.