Over the past decade, union power has pushed the steel, automobile, meat‐packing, machinery, and transportation industries into paying unusually high wages. As a result, many firms in these industries are finding it very difficult to compete. While there are a number of possible strategies these firms could employ, none are ideal. Some can only be implemented if favorable action is taken by others, and some are downright dangerous.

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This article looks at the industrial disasters of Bhopal and Mexico City in late 1984, from a production manager's point of view. What errors in production management and safety were made? What can be done to lessen the likelihood of such disasters? What "lessons" should be learned, or reiterated? 0360-8581/86/0900-0033$01.00O©1986 IEEE the poisonous gas methyl isocyanate, which killed over 2,000 people and injured many more.What could have been done to prevent such disasters? What production management decisions in factory location, design, operation and maintenance went wrong? What should be done by top management if such accidents occur?In this article, we will deal with these safety considerations by production topicfactory location, factory layout, maintenance policies, and so on.Many of these considerations have long been known and adhered to by conscientious company managers, But they need to be summarized and reiterated, because sometimes safety considerations can be forgotten or skimped on, when there is pressure to produce immediate profit results and cost reduction.

How can microcomputers best be integrated into the business system? It depends on the type of application. Microcomputers allow decentralisation and user autonomy. Large clerical data‐processing applications can be left unaltered, and the big “number‐cruncher” jobs will still need the mainframe computer, but the mainframe′s time will be freed up by the “loss” of small calculation jobs that can be done on the microcomputers, along with spreadsheet and word processing applications. Software and hardware needs, data security, microcomputer network linkage, computer viruses and electronic mail are also discussed.