Winston-Salem, N.C., Plant Exceeds Dell’s Expectations

By Richard Craver, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.

Nov. 8–When the Dell Inc. business model requires producing a computer unit about every three seconds, it takes a lot to impress company officials when it comes to speed.

But the Winston-Salem community has managed to exceed Dell’s expectations in building its largest plant, providing a quality work force and hitting initial production goals in less than a year, said Dick Hunter, the vice president for the company’s Americas manufacturing and distribution operations.

Hunter spoke yesterday at the annual meeting of the Greater Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce at the downtown Embassy Suites.

Hunter said that it remains “hard to imagine” that it was November 2004 when Dell announced its plans to open a North Carolina computer plant.

“Yet a once vacant piece of land off Temple School Road has been transformed into the largest and most modern plant at Dell,” Hunter said. The 750,000-square-foot plant at Alliance Science and Technology Park contains about 500,000 square feet of production space.

“About 70 percent of the companies responsible for this building were local, and they have a lot to be proud of in building it on time and so safely,” Hunter said.

Hunter said that the Forsyth plant “will be at least 15 percent more productive than any other Dell plant worldwide,” Hunter said.

“We expect to build one of our OptiPlex or Dimension desktop computers every two to three seconds, or around 15,000 units a day” by June, Hunter said.

But that kind of production volume doesn’t just happen without a quality work force, Hunter said.

“It would be like putting a 12-year-old in a state-of-the-art race car,” Hunter said. “They may have the right equipment, but without the right people in place to operate it, the technology only goes so far.”

Hunter said that Dell recently completed the hiring of its third wave of local employees to boost its work force to about 500. He said that Dell expects to have 700 employees by April, which would be five months ahead of its initial hiring goal.

Hunter said that local employees having “nothing to worry about” concerning the company’s Oct. 31 announcement that it expects third-quarter earnings to be lowered than projected because of weaker-than-expected sales.

“With this Winston-Salem plant becoming the most efficient and lowest-cost producer of desktop computers, why wouldn’t we run this plant hard?” Hunter said. “Being low-cost is the rocket fuel that keeps Dell going.”

At the meeting, Harold Martin, the chancellor of Winston-Salem State University, was presented with the Duke Power Citizenship and Service award.

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