Speeding your water bills
| Published date | 01 January 1981 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb057172 |
| Date | 01 January 1981 |
| Pages | 36-39 |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Data
Systems
Editor
Clare
Smythe
M.A.
Speeding your
water bills
High speed printing systems have been remarkably
slow to catch on in the UK. Why that should be so is
not clear. Perhaps computer users are suspicious of
the technology, or reluctant to take on a pioneering
role,
or maybe they're merely unaware of the poten-
tial.
In this article Nicholas Enticknapp describes a
Water Board's experiences with a laser printer.
The Severn-Trent Water Authority
has an unusual data processing
requirement
—
2,000,000 bills have to
be produced once a year in the space
of a single month. Delays in produc-
tion have a serious effect on cashflow.
This led the Authority to invest in an
ICL LPS14 laser printer, and it
proved a good move
—
the system paid
for itself within four months of instal-
lation.
Re-organisation
The background to the decision takes
us back to the controversial local gov-
ernment reorganisation of 1974, the
time when lots of our familiar coun-
ties acquired new and unfamiliar
names. The country's water supply
was administratively reorganised at
the same time; in this case, hundreds
of little bodies were reformed into ten
big bodies. The Severn-Trent Water
Authority is one of these big bodies,
and was formed from no less than 236
smaller undertakings. Obviously such
a change could not be managed all at
once.
Initially, the Authority was
divided into 28 Divisions; these have
now been reduced to eight.
Taken as a whole, the Authority, is
the second largest in the country, both
in terms of number of consumers
(after Thames) and in terms of geog-
raphical area covered (after Anglia).
Within its boundaries it contains the
first and third largest rivers in the
country. It serves over 8 million con-
sumers. Not all of these receive bills —
in many cases an owner of a property
INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT + DATA SYSTEMS
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