Solectron Corp., an electronics manufacturing services company, has bought Vaughan, Ont.-based Nulogix Technical Services Inc., a repair depot subsidiary of IBM Canada.

Nulogix, which was founded in 1991, repairs and remanufactures electronic and electromechanical assemblies, including LCD technology, printed circuit board assemblies and monitors. It also provides warranty service programs for OEMs, including same unit/same day repair at customer walk-in centres.

"They're in what I would call the remanufacturing industry, so basically their core competency is the remanufacture of component parts to equivalent-to-new status," says John Ostrander, national service delivery executive with IBM Canada.

He says that the takeover doesn't foretell of any change to what Nulogix does. He simply sees it as an expansion move on Solectron's part. "I think that Solectron has a global services strategy in this industry, and they're building their capabilities quickly," he says.

Kimi Nishita, a communications specialist with Milpitas, Calif.-based Solectron, agrees. She says Nulogix "is continuing to do the same thing. We are actually using it to, first of all, go into Canada, so it expands our global footprint because this is our first step into the Canadian region, and then also to expand our global services business unit. And so our intention is to keep it as a repair remanufacturing and refurbishment facility."

While financial details were undisclosed at press time, the acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of this year. It gives Solectron control of Nulogix's 80,000 square-foot repair facility in Vaughan.

Nulogix has no presence in other provinces, but it does have about 300 repair, engineering, customer service and related support associates across Canada. Solectron already operates dedicated American service centres in California, Texas, Georgia and Tennessee, as well as international ones in Brazil, France, Japan and the U.K.

Neither Nishita nor Ostrander say that Nulogix's numerous current contracts will be affected by the hand over.

Not only will the current contracts remain largely unaffected, the staffing and operations at the Vaughan facility will remain the same.

"Solectron does not anticipate any job reductions as a result of the transaction," says Nishita. "In fact, Solectron plans to increase the head count of the Global Services business unit (which is taking over Nulogix)."

So why is IBM giving up what appears to be a perfectly functioning subsidiary?

Essentially, IBM prefers to simply replace warrantied items and then ship those in need of repair to contractors like Nulogix on a business-to-business level, rather than employing them as a dedicated customer-end repair service.

But Nulogix will continue to do customer-end repair as well.

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