Help for exporter

Press, 26 October 1982, Page 32

Help for exporter

Bv

PETER ISAAC

One of Wellington's earliest exporters of manufactured products. Flight Luggage, found that tight control on the information concerning its own business was an important factor behind its best sales yet last year. *,‘Everyone was informed all the time,” said the managing director, Mr Richard Osborne. "We centralised our information. We set our own budgets and through the computer, we kept to them.” Month by month budgets were quickly evaluated against real costs measured by the computer. The company’s Cado system was designed to detect exceptions to a planned course of events and then act on it. For example, to compute the company's payroll, exceptions only are entered. The system thus concentrates on a departure from a standard procedure. The various procedures are all

intermeshed by the computer. Invoicing, debtors, private ledger, stock control, all interrelate. Thus the price list and the catalogue are derived from the stock system. The Cado prints cheques and invoices. “We are still discovering new applications as we go along,” notes Mr Osborne. The application of the microcomputer system has been applied at a time when Flight is adding a more diversified range of products to its already diversified manufacturing activities which include custom plastic sheet and packaging fabrication. ■ Growth through acquisition has meant that Flight has production units spread through the North Island, and the application Of the system has given management an enhanced centralised control over the company, which exports 20 per cent of its production.