Has the link . . . established
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et-ween productivity and
urnround produced results?'
JANUS
WRITES
ATIONAL Productivity Year is ended, and with it one phase in the joint campaign by the Road Haul
age Association and British Road Services to rsuade trade and industry to speed up the turnround of hicks. There was nothing new in the idea. In common th the railways and other providers of transport, hauliers ye always complained of terminal delays. The novelty is the concentration of the complaints into a single movemt, the focusing of the attention of customers on •a mbol and a slogan, and the organized distribution of mphlets and other material with quicker turnround as 3ir theme.
The complaints will continue, and it is hard to imaaine at the campaign also will not be kept going, even if in a 3dificd form. The appropriate question at this moment Has the link deliberately established between producity and turnround produced results? Of concrete idence there is bound to be little. Improvements at the emiscs of individual traders or within a port may have cell place during the past 12 months, but nobody can be rtain that they have been prompted by appeals from uliers or that they Woufd not have taken place in any ent.
There is little likelihood that a trader will spend money his premises or on other parts of his organization merely please the people who provide him with transport. The nefit which quicker turnround can bring to the customer perhaps the hardest. thing to prove. If it was obvious, he )uld have taken action a long time ago. Throughout the rent campaign it was emphasized that the lack of adequate nspoi t facilities was costing the trader money, but one i.Y doubt whether for the most part he was convinced, ncially when the solution offered appeared to involve rther expenditure.
OST ENDURING EFFECT?
What may have been the most enduring effect of the mpaign was to persuade the trader that transport was portant. His natural pride in his business tends to thdraw his attention from the world outside. He comes introspective. The walls of his factory close him and he concentrates on improving efficiency within am. He must, of course, arrange for the supply of the iterials he needs and for the ultimate sale of his products. it in order to fetch the materials and deliver the products relies to a greater or less extent upon other people. keit worries he does not feel to be his.
Some such process of thought may account for the fact, quentIy the source of complaint by hauliers, that the sponsibility for transport at a factory may be entrusted rhaps to a checker, or to the storekeeper. His reaction a request for transport is to ring up one of several ulicrs and ask for a suitable vehicle often at a stated le. If the goods are not ready when the vehicle arrives, has no compunction about keeping it waiting and has obahls, no authority to rebuke the colleague at whose quest the vehicle was requisitioned. Inevitably also he has made no arrangements for the reception of the traffic at the other end of the journey, where the haulier may find he is refused delivery because he arrives too late in the day.
According to reports, this experience is by no means uncommon. Unaided, the haulier can do little. His complaints find their way to junior employees with no power, and perhaps no inclination, to remedy the situation. The suggestion from Mr. E. G. Whitaker, transport adviser of Unilever Ltd., that the haulier should charge demurrage, is rarely practicable. Where the delay takes place at the premises of the consignee, for example, it is difficult to persuade the consignor that he has any responsibility. In practice, if the haulier is to stay in business, the general level of his rates must take account of the delays he. is likely to meet, but this gives little satisfaction to him and tends to subsidize the bad customer at the expense of the good.
THE PRODUCTIVITY FACTOR •
The many traders enlightened enough to appreciate the importanceof transport have not needed the campaign for quicker turnround. A little ironically, it was largely upon these traders that the first impact of the campaign fell. They realized, perhaps for the first time, the extent to which transport resources were being wasted all over the country. They have absorbed the central lesson of the campaign—that productivity is a factor in a transport service just as it is in the manufacturing process; that it is measured by the extent to which loaded vehicles can be kept moving, and that unnecessary transport delays are a brake on productivity just as much as the failure to use a machine to the best advantage.
Many leaders of industry are paying closer attention to transport than before, or so it would seem. At the recent conference organized by the Export Council for Europe, the chairman of the Council, Sir William McFadzean, voiced their belief that Britain's future place in European markets might be conditioned as much by her transport arrangements as by any other factor. On the same occasion, the Minister of Transport, underlining the same lesson, pointed out that transport was a "surprisingly large item " in the final cost of a product, and that something like 10 per cent of total production costs went on the inland transport of goods.
Hauliers would hardly be so arrogant as to claim that Sir William's remarks, still less those of Mr. Marples, were a direct effect of the campaign for quicker turnround. They could equally well have been made a year aao, before the campaign began. All that can be said is that they fell a little more naturally within the scheme of things because the campaign had done its part throughout NPY in preventing traders and manufacturers from thinking too exclusively about their own businesses and neglecting the larger issues such as transport. The example of such bodies as the Export Council must play a powerful part in helping the change of public opinion, and make the otdinary trader a little more receptive to the campaign, if it is continued.