Enthusiasm wanted at factory workers’ level

Press, 26 January 1988, Page 9

Enthusiasm wanted at factory workers’ level

PA Hamilton People in senior management positions should take their enthusiasm and hype down to the factory workers’ level, according to the Minister of Overseas Trade and Marketing, Mr Moore. He told delegates to an International Marketing Institute 1988 programme at Waikato University on Sunday evening that workers on the factory floor needed to feel some sense of achievement. Too often one' group of workers saw only the cost side of productivity while others saw the profits. "We don’t need to be told pride and quality of product has to be right,” Mr Moore said. Citing B.M.W. as an example, he said they had a superb product but if something went wrong in

the delivery or ordering there would be trouble. “We don’t want to get the order, then lose it because of late delivery,” he said. Mr Moore stressed the need for New Zealand companies to “grow up.” “We are cutting each other’s throats by competing against each other for overseas markets. It is Kiwis against the rest of the world, not you against him,” Mr Moore told the audience in a lighthearted speech to formally open the programme which 24 of New Zealand’s senior management officials are attending for four weeks. Mr Moore also touched on the strength of the New Zealand dollar. He warned that dropping the dollar, and therefore lowering interest and in-

flation rates, would not bring about the economic renaissance. The officials on the course will be studying various forms of marketing, particularly computers in the marketing world. The International Marketing Institute holds the course once a year for people in top management positions to go back to the basics of marketing. The institute is in its twentieth year and was formed by two Americans from Harvard Business School who saw the need for teaching marketing in New Zealand. The Institute’s executive director, Mr Gerry Mos, said contact still remained with the school and two American professors were expected for this year’s course.