Development of a Technical Services Department in IBM

Abstract

To develop the highly complex products required of industry today, it is necessary to provide the research and engineering personnel developing these products with an array of highly specialized supporting services. Since these supporting skills are not required by any one engineering group 100 per cent of the time, economics dictates that these services be centralized. Thus, a Technical Services Department is born. The supporting skills provided by such an organization may vary, for example, from the analytical ability of highly-specialized Ph.D.s, to the manipulative ability of highly trained tool and die makers. IBM has a particular need for such specialized services because of the number of engineering groups which it has working simultaneously on different projects. In this article, it is not possible to cover the develomment of Technical Services in all the IBM Laboratories. Therefore, the discussion is limited to the IBM General Products Division Development Laboratory at Endicott, N. Y. This is appropriate, as Endicott is typical of other IBM Commercial Laboratories.