Known as the Centre of Excellence (COE), the unit is based in Singapore. Its staff's responsibilities include forecasting supply/demand patterns, setting pricing and developing sales and product strategies, as well as managing inventory and measuring the company's performance.

The COE's basic task is to bring Lenovo even more ‘in tune with its customers around the world in terms of how the vendor designs, builds and sells its products, says Lenovo CEO and president, Bill Amelio. The company needs to respond more quickly to changes in the market and alter its manufacturing and supply chain capabilities accordingly, he adds.

David Schmoock, 37, former vice-president of marketing for the Asia-Pacific/Japan region at rival vendor, Dell, will head the COE unit and report to Amelio.

Schmoock joined Dell in 1997 and previously worked at Xerox. He is one of several Dell executives in Asia to move to Lenovo in recent months. The new presidents for Lenovo's Asia-Pacific and its Japanese operations also hail from Dell - David Miller, former president of Dell China, and Sotaro Amano, ex-corporate director for Dell's Japan home and business sales, respectively. Lenovo CEO, Amelio, is himself a recruit from Dell, leaving the company in December to join Lenovo after heading Dell's Asia-Pacific operations since 2001.

Lenovo became the third-largest global PC vendor behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard in May last year, after closing its $1,75bn purchase of IBM's personal computing business.