About this issue

SCHNITTGER´S paper represents a long-term trend in many industrial companies toward long-range techno-economic planning. It is far advanced in many large U. S. companies, and is beginning to appear in individual companies in Europe and elsewhere. This kind of activity, long advocated by academic people, is being performed by a variety of groups inside the industrial corporation. Some of these groups are called “long-range planning,” “economic analysis,” “management science,” “operations research,” etc. The majority do not currently appear to be within the Research and Development department or activity, although at one time this was a common location for them.¹