Acer India facility increases capacity

PONDICHERRY: Acer India, the fully owned subsidiary of Acer Inc, has
increased the capacity of its ‘unique loading’ facility called Uniload in
Pondicherry to reconfigure up to 4,200 PCs per month. Following what it calls
the Fast Food Model, the facility configures Acer certified components procured
directly from Acer sources worldwide to build machines according to customer
specifications. It has four stages of quality assurance processes to fine tune
the machines to the Indian environment including auto-run tests to avoid human
errors and online storage of test results for detailed analyses.

"The Uniload facility enables us to offer cost-effective solutions to
our customers despite being a late entrant in the Indian market. It has also
helped us launch new products in India around the same time as international
launches," says deputy general manager, (operations and support) Sudhir
Goel.

The facility in Pondicherry, which had a total investment of about Rs 2.5
crore till date, configures all models of desktops, entry level and mid range
servers and storage boxes. Acer India, whose entire sales and delivery is
through its partners, has an ERP program linking all the functions relating to
manufacturing. "We are planning to take the entire process of placing
orders on the net in the coming months so that it becomes easy for our
partners," adds Goel.

Acer India’s major customers include the banking, insurance, financial and
public sector units and government departments. It is looking forward to
manufacture about 50,000 units this calendar year. Though the home segment is a
lucrative, we have no immediate plans to plunge into the sector as we don’t have
adequate infrastructure in place to meet their demands. But we might look at it
after one or two years, said Goel.

Acer India, which has an investment of about Rs 3.5 crore till date from the
parent company Acer Inc., generated a turnover of about Rs 125 crore last year.