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Most engineering companies have a customer service policy, but 82 per cent believe their sector trails behind other sectors in this area, according to a recent survey.
The number of global automotive suppliers will fall sharply over the next eight years as car manufacturers source their parts from fewer and larger firms, according to the industry’s European trade body. The European Association of Automotive Suppliers (Clepa) has predicted that supplier numbers will drop from 2,000 to just 150 by 2008.
The National Farmers’ Union is to report food retailer Safeway to the Competition Commission over its request that suppliers share the costs of a sales campaign. Safeway sent letters to 300 of its key suppliers last month asking them for a one-off £20,000 for each of their product lines they wished to be included in a drive to guarantee customers full availability.
Partnerships UK (PUK), which is to emerge from the privatisation of the Treasury’s private finance initiative (PFI) task force, will handle a third of all future PFI deals.
Professor Daniel Jones, director of the Lean Enterprise Research Centre at Cardiff Business School and co-author of the influential The Machine that Changed the World and Lean Thinking, has written a persuasive foreword to this book.
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The Ministry of Defence has announced that food for the armed forces will be sourced in the UK wherever possible. The MoD’s food contractor buys 1,000 of the forces’ 1,300 food items from UK companies. Stocks of beef are so low in the UK that some must be sourced abroad, but the MoD and farming representatives are working to maximise the amount from the UK.
The Buying Agency is to be the first of three executive agencies to join the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), the organisation being set up next month to oversee central government procurement.
UK haulage firms need to be more energy efficient, a survey by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions has revealed. Only half of lorry capacity is being used and energy savings could be made by cutting the amount of time refrigerated trailers spent loaded and stationary, it said. The study measured 46 road logistics firms against five key performance indicators.