ABSTRACT
Marks & Spencer, a well-known British retail chain, used what we call the systems approach back in the 1930s. It designed and tested its products before management decided to sell them. It also used only one manufacturer to produce each product. It worked closely with that manufacturer so that the products, whether textile or food, were produced at the right time and right price to sell to the customers. It was also a pioneer in forecasting methods. In the 1990s, when Peter Drucker wrote about Marks & Spencer, he indicated that the systems approach was still rare in the contemporary manufacturing environment.2
