IV. Speaking Practice

allowed, accounting, demand, drain, depends, delivered, employed, facilitates, leak, integration, minimized, represents, recession, production.

Once the decision of starting a business have been made, it will be necessary to implement it and start the manufacturing process as soon as possible.

Until the business has a product for which there is a 1 , and has succeeded

in selling that product, there will be a continuous 2 from the pool of money.

If the business finances are not properly managed, it may well disappear

altogether. The “pump” 3 the points at which good management can speed

up the whole process. The successful 4 of people and materials requires

good management, and the more effectively this is done, the better for the business.

There is always a 5 of resources through the tap at the pool of stock.

This is a controllable leak and its size 6 upon the success or otherwise with

which the raw materials are managed. If store 7 are poor, and the storeman

is not very interested in his job, the leak will be large. The loss can be 8 by

a good system of stores control backed by well-trained staff. During and

immediately following the 9 process, there are two other “pools” in which

the resources employed in a business become trapped. These are work in progress (WIP) and finished stock. In even the most successfully managed businesses there

will be, at the end of each 10 period, some items that are between the raw

materials and finished goods stage. Management would like all items to be produced as quickly as possible but, as things take time to make, work in progress

can never be eliminated. It should not, however, be 11 to build up to an

unnecessarily high level. There are problems, too, in deciding how work in

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progress should be valued, and the system necessary to keep track of it has to be

specified. Finished stock should be sold and 12 as quickly as possible,

although in some cases – where the demand for the goods is seasonal – it may be necessary to have facilities to hold quite a lot of finished stock. Toy manufacture, where the bulk of the sales takes place at Christmas, is one example of this. The loss of resources at the finished stock stage can be serious unless a good system of

store control is 13 . The loss can be due to pilfering, breakages and general

deterioration. Stock levels in the UK used to be much higher in the manufacturing sector than in America, Germany and Japan, but the de-stocking brought about by 14 lowered them.