Benefits of the New System.

Supposing more material is ordered than is actually required for any job, the surplus, instead of lying around, untended, on the chance of being required later for some other job, is now taken back into stores stock, and credit is allowed at the actual rate charged when the stores were issued. This system prevents waste and the undue depletion of stocks. It also facilitates accurate costing. The position is that all stocks not in actual use are now stores stocks.

Under the new system, stores which had been withdrawn from stock for various purposes, but not used, have been taken back into the stock of the stores department, and are available for re-issue as required.

An interchange of stock-sheets between the various stores throughout New Zealand gives each storekeeper knowledge of what other stores hold. This increases the availability of stocks on hand for supplying the needs of other districts, while helping to reduce the proportion of slow-moving stores on hand.

Practically all the manufactures of the workshops are now being taken over by the Stores Branch. This will enable a control to be exercised over the quantities manufactured in each centre according to Dominion needs. This control will also apply to stocks of manufactured goods held in sub- and trust-stores throughout the whole system, and it is expected will extend to the hundreds of running-sheds and depots of various kinds, all of which have drawn manufactured goods from the workshops. Their stocks will be examined and recorded, maximum and minimum supplies decided upon, surpluses and deficits noted, and the whole summarised and re-allocated. Thus will the control of manufacture, to prevent either over or under-production, be made feasible.

The stage of full efficiency in Stores re-organisation, a work which has been under way since the general re-organisation throughout the Department was undertaken, has not yet been reached. The work is one of great magnitude, but what has been said given a good notion of the ideal which the Management of the Stores Branch has set out to attain.