British industry is dominated by accountants of one kind or another. However, it is argued, the writing is on the wall. The gradual erosion of the efficacy of management accounting systems has largely been a result of the blurring of an initially, historically clear demarcation between control...

When it came to networking Ind Coope′s Burton‐on‐Trent Brewery, Allen‐Bradley′s Communications Division provided an integrated broadband cable solution which has enabled the brewery to produce its vast array of beer and lager products to specific batching demands and with a greater...

Purpose – Vendor managed inventory (VMI) is a model for supply chain collaboration gaining ground in multiple industries around the world. Forecasting is one of several means to predict future demand. The purpose of this paper is to identify what types of advance demand data would be valuable...

A new plan is proposed for small‐sample situations using which a one‐third reduction in sample size can be achieved compared to the sample size of an equivalent zero acceptance number single sampling plan. This plan utilises the results of three successive samples for taking decision on...

We present two contingency rules to control a production process subject to a single assignable cause, i.e. the process shifts from in‐control to out‐of‐control state when the single assignable cause occurs. In this paper, we assume a 100 per cent inspection policy as opposed to the...

The technology of modern‐day production processes has improved to such an extent that situations could arise in which the proportion of defective items is so low that the conventional p chart is no longer appropriate for process control. An alternative charting technique, based on more exact...

In any real time control system, its scheduling and control policy should be reassessed every time the state of the system changes. In large and complex systems, this could be a self‐defeating goal. Implementing real time control in such systems would require an enormous amount of computation...

The concept of flexibility in computer integrated manufacturing is introduced. A production control hierarchy is developed as an evolutionary method towards computer integrated flexible manufacturing (CIFM). A strategically comprehensive implementation model is presented. The components of CIFM...