Materials Management by Computer

Materials management is an important and specialised function existing in all industries and utilities. Although the store management and purchasing functions have co‐existed for a long time, the need to integrate and streamline these functions, as well as planning them on a scientific management basis, is considered increasingly important and urgent. Computers can be used to look after their resources optimally and aggressively. Future trends will see the emphasis shift from the mainframe computer to the microcomputer, from traditional inventory monitoring to materials and capacity planning based on decision support systems, and from centralised processing to distributed processing at the microcomputer level.