Summary Interview with Mr Ken Smith, senior MIS manager:

First, the Company Y does not have a policy towards the use of information technology in general. Only in that it will support the business objectives of making chemicals for our customers at high quality and low cost.

The way in which the use of information technology is developed in the company:

The first department to take it on was the accounts’ department who used computers to automate repetitive manual processes. A classic illustration. Payroll, accounts payable, general ledger, financial modelling, standard costing, all these things that you can do much more easily on a computer than you can with people. From there we moved into plant inventory control, so it’s a warehouse stock system if you like.

Specifying a software that wasn’t flexible enough for the needs of the Company:

The Company did a world-wide evaluation of software on IBM equipment, the system 34/36/38 environment, and concluded that MAPICS II was the best. That was done in 1983 and that was the policy they were following throughout 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 and that’s when we banged heads with them. MIS department only really came into existence in 1985.
It’s a service department of all the other departments.