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Dexion Ltd are the UK‐based subsidiary of an American corporation, concerned with the manufacture and supply of storage and materials handling equipment. The study discussed here originates from a project carried out as part of an in‐company MBA programme. It aims to improve the overall profitability of UK storage installation sales and the quality of service offered to the client. The approach adopted concentrated primarily on information from in‐house sources due to the unwillingness of comparative companies to co‐operate. Much of the information came from in‐depth analysis of performance/trends of the three major UK sales regions, a series of interviews with key personnel involved in the installation process, and previously published in‐house reports. The recommendations will impact on people, the work and structure of the organisation, and its systems, all of which interact with one another. Therefore while many of the proposals will stand alone the full benefit will only accrue with the introduction of the total package and broad acceptance of those most affected.

A BODY known as the Local Government Personnel and Management Services Group has been moved to issue a short paper commenting on the Bains Report issued by the Bains Committee to which the Group submitted evidence.

‘The Wind of Change’ was a phrase coined to forecast the change inevitable for the future of a continent. It could not be precise because the wind bloweth where it listeth and can be harmful and beneficial in turn.

IN 1971 there were 1,207 scaffolding accidents, 14 of them fatal. This revelation was made by Mr. Dudley Smith, M.P., Parliamentary Under‐Secretary of State at the Department of Employment, in his recent speech at the Scaffolding Training Centre. In view of his further comments, and the fact that many construction companies operate work study departments, much of what he had to say is worth more publicity than it has so far received.

THE profession served by this journal lost an outstanding personality when Dr. Lillian Moller Gilbreth died at the age of 93 on January 2nd. As wife and business partner to her husband, Frank Bunker Gilbreth, she was one of the pioneers of motion study. It required rare courage for a shy and retiring person like herself to take over the responsibilities of her husband when he died suddenly in 1924. Yet within three days of that event, after a family conference about the future, she sailed for Europe to fulfil an engagement of her husband to speak at the First Congress of Scientific Management in Prague.

1,200 tool kits, averaging 10 tools each, are made up each week at the Staverton works of the Dowty Group. This entails high density storage at, for instance, the jig and tool department where one row may have to carry 3,500 separate bins.

Statements by Lord Denning, M.R., vividly describing the impact of European Community Legislation are increasingly being used by lawyers and others to express their concern for its effect not only on our legal system but on other sectors of our society, changes which all must accept and to which they must adapt. A popular saying of the noble Lord is “The Treaty is like an incoming tide. It flows into the estuaries and up the rivers. It cannot be held back”. The impact has more recently become impressive in food law but probably less so than in commerce or industry, with scarcely any sector left unmolested. Most of the EEC Directives have been implemented by regulations made under the appropriate sections of the Food and Drugs Act, 1955 and the 1956 Act for Scotland, but regulations proposed for Materials and Articles in Contact with Food (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) will be implemented by use of Section 2 (2) of the European Communities Act, 1972, which because it applies to the whole of the United Kingdom, will not require separate regulations for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is the first time that a food regulation has been made under this statute. S.2 (2) authorises any designated Minister or Department to make regulations as well as Her Majesty Orders in Council for implementing any Community obligation, enabling any right by virtue of the Treaties (of Rome) to be excercised. The authority extends to all forms of subordinate legislation—orders, rules, regulations or other instruments and cannot fail to be of considerable importance in all fields including food law.

AS more countries become members of the EEC they discover many curtailments of their former freedom. Of these few seem quite so irksome as the curb on what are called ‘regional policies’ which are fostered in a spirit of national self‐interest by those who have not yet grasped the fact that they are now part of a far larger organization seeking a similar sense of unity and cohesion.

MANY associations are formed by a diverse collection of people with a common aim. It is probably the one thing that unites them and, in furthering that aim, they are motivated by the best intentions and have its welfare at heart.

BUSINESS leaders recur again and again in their public utterances to the difficulty of obtaining enough recruits of suitable calibre. What they have in mind, as Mr. David Barran, chairman of Shell Transport, implied recently, is university graduates. ‘What I am really pleading for,’ he said, ‘is a stronger bridge between education and industry, starting as far back as the sixth form and extending across the student years at university, helping the graduate to choose a career that will employ his potential to the best advantage.’