Rambling warehouses whose mysterious contents were a tightly kept secret of the storeman and his acolytes are fortunately a thing of the past. Modern single storey warehouses now sprawl across the landscape at every strategically situated motorway intersection. Yet there is much more to...

Sooner or later every manager is faced with finding the route out of a difficult dilemma; choosing the solution which will cure the company's ills — not complicate them. All too often, as Chesterton wrote “It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.” In...

In this analysis of a progressive Co‐op society—Cambridge & District Co‐operative Society Ltd—one characteristic which clearly emerges is that of an integrated management system which uses modern management techniques to maximise its success. Contribution accounting has been found most...

A cyclical upturn in the economy began in the autumn of last year. Government policies preclude any significant rise in consumer spending this year, but there should be a modest recovery in the volume of retail sales in all sectors in 1977. This is the view of Lady Hall, of NEDO, who recently...

This is the second part of an article previewing the results of a research programme aimed at studying the effect of recent developments in data capture and data transmission on management information in retailing. The results are to be published in full later this year by the National Computing...

The lack of negotiating skills is one of the weakest points in the armoury of the retail buyer, our authors assert, and this is largely because the buyer has never received any instruction in it. But negotiation training can be provided—and this article explains how.

There's nothing new in the disappearance of small shops. “A sign of the times” or “no place nowadays for the small trader” were once familiar comments as the for sale signs appeared over the corner shops. Now there are questions in the House and academics research into the difficulties...

Historically, the application of computers to distribution has been characterised by a number of mistakes and incorrect assumptions; it was not until 1971, in this writer's view, that it was put into perspective. His case is that the computer packages Roadnet and Transit are capable of producing...

Quality assurance, pioneered by such firms as Marks and Spencer, has been with us for many years and is even specified by a British Standard. In this article Hans Kerner argues the case for a similar “delivery assurance” which could help reduce stock levels, save some manufacturers from...

As residents' associations lobby their local councils to ban lorries from their particular street, width barriers and weight restrictions sprout throughout suburbia. Will the residents be quite so pleased when the local store is unable to deliver in their area because the delivery van is too...