Mr. Mike Trainer, purchasing director
I would say yes to the extent that we hoped because I think, it’s the classic situation with any new thing. You cut over and cut of the advantages, you don’t naturally anticipate that you’re going to have too many difficulties and we have had a lot of difficulties. To start with the machine response time was very very slow to start with, its still not particularlly good at the moment but that was a major stumbling block at the beginning. We also had a way of doing things in terms of allocating material from the warehouse to the plants that was overly complicated. That got us into a problem with stock accuracy hence our stock and our inventory balance weren’t accurate. The information we’re getting out is crap, and we spend a lot of time second guessing the system.
As a whole there is no reduction within the company. The system wasn’t designed or atleast wasn’t justified , on the basis of losing people. It was really to make us more efficient , which I think in the long term it will. So no people haven’t been displaced by the system. There was another aspect to this which was about changing people and being able to live in this new environment. I guess that has not worked out as expected either. I thinkl out of the plant maybe there are some people who are less keyboard able than opthers and I suspect that some people just trust to other people to do it for them.
I has happened that forcing responsibility and accountability down the management line, chaning the culture and redistributing power, but I don’t think anybody has come out it with any greater power.. I recognize that Dave’s view was I’m going to take power from those accountants. I’m going to stop them hiding stuff in the bottom draw and all that.
There have been problems also and the root of these problems is that we have a great difficulty forming teams and teamwork. You know we’ve put a lot of effort as a company into this but we haven’, got there yet. We went through a very good spot when the project was first rolling. Think there was a lot of anticipation and people are trrying to be tolerant but what we’ve got now is a situation where people have begun to say well this rubbish and maybe their patience has run out but the finger pointing is starting. I don’t think they really appreciated the importance of transaction accuracy and timely transaction. I don’t think they appreciated that what other people did, especially people say in purchasing were totally dependent on the accuracy of the electronic stocks they entered.
The root of the problem is thatbtraining, discipline and an appreciation by the guys out there that if they don’t do it in a timely fashion they’re cocking purchasing up. There are sufficient people around still thinking in the old way to cause those sorts of problems. Plant managers are very busy people they’ve got a lot on, their supervisors have got a lot on, and it hasn’t been their number one priority.
Their priority is production , that there is number one priority but in the longer term if you don’t do the transactions timely and accurately you don’t do any production because you haven’t got any bloody raw materials. We’re thinking forward all the time, if something goes wrong down the line we need to know about it. That has been one of the big stumbling blocks. I don’t think we’re alone in this.
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