Reminds me of the time (10 years ago now) of when I ran a mortgage
company's MIS.  We were in the process of being sold and a president of
another mortgage company of the same size sat in my office and asked
basically the same thing.  How could we run a $1.6 *billion* annual
funding mortgage company with *3* people and one HP3000?  They had 34
on some kind of an IBM.  I didn't take the credit because I figured it
was too easy for them to figure out that it wasn't anything
extraordinary that I was doing -- Everyone who ran 70s in those days
had just a few people compared to the IBM shops (or DEC, or ...).

LB

On 26 Mar 97 at 20:48, F. Alfredo Rego wrote:

> A friend sent me this note:
>
> >Years ago APICS (American Production & Inventory Control Society) did a
> >study of manufacturing companies to determine a typical range of
> >expenditures on computer stuff. The study showed that the typical mfg
> >company's total I.S. budget was between 3% and 6% of the company's total
> >sales dollars. At that same time the manufacturing company I worked for was
> >spending 0.5% of the sales dollars on I.S.
> >Was this because I was a GREAT manager... or because we had an HP3000?
> >
> >Subsequent discussion with other mfg people in the HP user group indicated
> >that either we were ALL great managers... or it just costs a lot less to
> >run your business with an HP3000 as it does when you use what the other
> >companies in the APICS study used.
> >
> >I wonder if there are any similar studies being done these days?? and if
> >they're broken out by platform??
>
> This is an excellent lead.  Does anyone have any connections to APICS (or
> equivalent)?  If you can do a little digging (to continue on the
> gold-mining metaphor), it would be great.  I have the feeling we are into
> something nice here.
>
>  _______________
> |               |
> |               |
> |            r  |  Alfredo                     [log in to unmask]
> |          e    |                           http://www.adager.com
> |        g      |  F. Alfredo Rego               Tel 208 726-9100
> |      a        |  Manager, R & D Labs           Fax 208 726-2822
> |    d          |  Adager Corporation
> |  A            |  Sun Valley, Idaho 83353-3000            U.S.A.
> |               |
> |_______________|
>
>
>                                                                 .
>
>