To The Gates of  

(February, 2008)

The Taberna Tribune regularly features tales of travels by fellow Tabernians to intriguing ports of call:  the Galapagos Islands, Dubai, Switzerland, England.  This month’s computer article is another in that continuing series of journals, as I relate the wondrous sites beheld on an adventure to the western part of our fair state….in Winston-Salem.

OK, it may not sound scintillating unless your roots extend back to mother Moravia, but this is the space where a computer article regularly appears, and Winston-Salem is home to Dell Computer’s latest factory.  I recently had an opportunity to take part in a tour of their 750,000 square foot facility which opened in late 2005, joining domestic factories in Texas and Tennessee.   Dell builds its factories where local governments pay it to build them, and if Dell can meet certain employment levels by the year 2010 in its so-called WS1 facility in Winston Salem, they can benefit from over $300 million in tax incentives – your tax dollars at work, and no orange barrels required.

            It’s been estimated that one in every three personal computers sold in the US comes with the name Dell stamped on the front.  Dell and HP have battled in recent years for the title of Grand Poobah in world wide PC sales.  I can tell you from my computer service calls in and around New Bern that those estimates of market penetration sound about right.

            I had hoped that, among other benefits, a tour of Dell might yield an insightful Tribune article. That plan was severely hampered when I was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement before setting off on the tour.  Consequently, I have had to limit my revelations here to what I could find elsewhere divulged on the World Wide Web.

            The first thing one sees as they approach the plant is a vast fleet of FedEx trucks, waiting to carry off PCs to businesses and homes all across the eastern seaboard.  Dell primarily builds two lines of PCs at WS1: Dell Dimensions for home and office and OptiPlex business class machines.  Servers are made only in Texas and Tennessee, and laptops come exclusively from the Far East via plane.  Machines are assembled to customer order in a series of ‘pods’ where a small team of employees can assemble any of the models the plant builds.  The basic chassis arrives via conveyor belt to the pods, where drives and miscellaneous circuit boards are added per the custom order.  From there, the machines go to the “high-value” area, where the expensive stuff is added:  the microprocessor, the memory modules, and that all-important Microsoft Certificate of Authority (COA) sticker that attests that the machine is run by a legal (e.g. paid-for) copy of the Windows operating system.  The high-value area is well secured.  I had to stare in through chain link fencing, mesmerized by stacks of CPUs and RAM chips.  Yet that COA may well be the most expensive ‘component’ of the machine.  One thing I was unable to glean was the price Dell pays Microsoft for each copy of Windows.  I know when I build a PC the cost starts at about $90 and goes up quickly from there depending on version.  If someone has any info to share on that subject, send me a surreptitious email from your Romanian email account.

            You know what it’s like to pass through the TSA security stations at the airport?  That’s what it’s like to pass through the High-Value area.  Not to get in, mind you, but to get OUT!  Dell makes it very difficult for its employees to be tempted to create a black market for processors, RAM chips, or COAs. 

            Once the brains are assembled into the PCs, off they go to the ‘burn room’ where the software is loaded onto the hard drive in accordance with the customer’s order.  It takes at least an hour for this process.  From there, the machines are boxed and sent off to the loading docks to get fed to the belly of those hungry FedEx trucks.  Surprisingly, the majority of the machines find their way to businesses, not residences, which sure was the opposite of my going-in assumption.  When business is going well, a computer pops out of the factory every three to five seconds.  That’s just a bit faster than the six hours or so it probably takes me to custom build and configure a machine.  Of course, it helps to have several hundred pairs of hands to help you, and hundreds of feet of automated conveyors moving machines up, down, and sideways.

            Everything in the factory is overseen by people in a control room who have video surveillance over the whole process.  We did not know what this room was when we first saw it.  We just saw several fellow North Carolinians in front of monitors, all talking on the phone.  I told our group that I thought that this was surely where all the people who buy Dell PCs in India are made to call for tech support.  That even got a chuckle out of our Dell tour guide.