NCR Corp. announced plans Tuesday to move its headquarters to a suburb of Atlanta and to "in-source" its manufacturing of automated teller machines in Columbus, Ga., in a bid to improve internal collaboration and cut costs.
The ATM vendor has had its headquarters in Dayton, Ohio, for the past 125 years, since its beginnings as a pioneering maker of cash registers. The moves are to begin in July, and should be largely complete in 18 months, said Jeff Dudash, an NCR spokesman.
Bill Nuti, NCR's chairman and chief executive officer, will continue to work out of the company's New York office, Dudash said.
NCR said it plans to retain a data center and support for local customers in Dayton.
The company said it plans to add 1,250 jobs at an NCR facility in Duluth, Ga., northeast of Atlanta, where it already bases its retail line of business. It said the move would let it centralize business strategy, technology development and support on a single U.S. campus; these functions are now managed from several offices.
The company plans to establish an ATM factory in Columbus, bringing back in-house work that Dudash said is now done by Flextronics International Ltd., which builds NCR's North American ATMs under contract in a plant in Columbia, S.C. A spokeswoman for Flextronics did not return a phone call requesting comment.
NCR said it would begin recruiting immediately for the Columbus plant, and Dudash said manufacturing would begin in the fourth quarter. The city of Columbus is to lease an existing building using federal economic stimulus money and lease it to NCR.
The ATM maker said last October that it would establish a global "center of excellence" for its worldwide customer services business, creating 916 jobs in Peachtree City, Ga., to the southwest of Atlanta.
Nicole Sturgill, the research director for delivery channels at TowerGroup Inc., an independent research firm owned by MasterCard Inc., said NCR has been working for some time to establish "a single innovation hub" as a way to advance its technology.
"It's a great idea, but the stars have to align. In this case it looks like the stars did align," Sturgill said. NCR will now have the bulk of its operations in a single, 150-mile corridor, she said. "It's hard to argue with the benefit."
