From the 70s, the Fletcher Jones company was a leader in the manufacturing field through their adoption of new technologies to improve efficiencies.
FJs were pioneers in the introduction of point of sale equipment in their shops to gather sales information. Using telephone based communications equipment to retrieve sales data, they introduced one of the earliest email systems in Australia!
This was followed by a system to manage customer orders for made-to-measure garments. The company could track orders from their shops through the automated pattern adaption, laser cutting and machining operations and then back to the shop where the order was placed for the customer to collect on the promised date!
They also had extensive stock keeping systems, including one of the earliest use of bar codes in Australia and portable bar code reading equipment to assist in the management of stock records.
"We even sourced and modified a garment dispatch system used in the USA to support the selection and despatch of garments to our shops from the Warrnambool warehouse." Bill Hewett Information Systems Manager 1976-1991
