Changing Attitudes

One thing I have noticed over the last fifty years as being a storeman all my working life, in the RN, agriculture machinery dep't and now in a manufacturing factory, is that companies do not keep the stock like they used to.

Royal Navy, we used to keep 100% of spares for everything.

Agriculture, between 1973 - 1985 we used to keep 100% of spares for all of the machinery we sold. Between 1985 - 1991 we kept only 50% because we got took over by a consortium. Their reasoning was that there were five depot's in the group if we haven't got it one of the depot's will and we will get the part to you tomorrow, try explaining that to a farmer/contractor who's got to get their field mowed or whatever tonight.

Now in the plastic injection manufacturing we seem to be dictated by the customers. as in "I haven't put an order in for at least a year, I want this tomorrow"

And do you know who who the worst customers are?

Actually, I won't name the country involved because one of our members comes from there.

Aye, its the same throughout the economy, stock is seen as dead money, only when Acme Inc's Wankenfurtler machine breaks down and the part is not on his shelf, his employees get it in the neck, the employees then have to ring around the world to try to find one at the same time as trying to make a running repair (bodge). Its all due to the multinationals squeezing costs out of their business and into everyone elses. Its all stress.

Agriculture went this way years ago. "When I were a lad" and we used to roam miles over the local country side with not a care in the world, practically every field had a crop in it around here. Today, apart from oil seed rape, there's bugger all in the fields as the multis insist that we can only have fruit/veg of an equal and consistent size/shape/colour, produced in eastern europe where labour is cheaper. If too much is produced in a good year, bury the excess as it might lead to cheaper food if made available to the masses. Thanks, European Union, lets continue to pay our mega landowners taxpayers cash for growing nowt to keep the price up.

I hope I am wrong when I say that in future years, we will heavily regret what has become our dependency on others for our food supplies

Boy, I've had it on me these last few days