Ahold Delhaize (United States)

Robert Cadotte et Anik Meunier, L’école d’antan 1860-1960. Découvrir et se souvenir de l’école du Québec, Montréal, Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2011, 198 p. (Publics et culture.) / Anik Meunier et Jean-François Piché, De l’idée à l’action. Une histoire du syndicalisme enseignant, Montréal, Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2011, 211 p. (Publics et culture.). Un article de la revue Recherches sociographiques (Volume 54, numéro 1, janvier–avril 2013, p. 9-208) diffusée par la plateforme Érudit.

Delhaize Freres is a Belgian supermarket group with 78 supermarkets and a large number of affiliated stores, selling grocery and a number of non‐food Tines including hardware and perfumery. M. Fourez, the technical director, here describes his company's experience on being confronted with the pressing question as to whether to computerise their inventory management or to do it manually. Their final view was that the use of computers did not offer a profitable solution to the problem, owing to the difficulty of including all categories of article in a limited number of easily usable models. But he adds that such a decision will depend on a company's own character, its own philosophy and its own markets; the final decision is an individual one for each company to take. This is a summary of a paper read at the CIES conference.