Someone is giving a visitor a tour of a company.

· Read the text,

· underline the names of all the departments,

· find the phrases which express responsibilities,

OK, let’s start here, in research and development, or R & D. This department is responsible for thinking of ideas for new products and finding ways to improve our existing products …

This department looks after our computer equipment. They deal with any problems. This is information technology, or IT …

Purchasing buys all the things we need to make our products. They talk to our suppliers and try to get the best price …

This is the main factory area, the production department. Here we make our products. It’s the biggest part of the company …

Here in the finance department, they check how much the company is making and decide how much to spend. They also pay employees’ salaries.

This department looks after the people who work here. Human resources is responsible for recruiting new employees, organizing training and helping with any problems …

Sales and marketing is very important. The marketing people think up the ideas for selling our products. The sales people go out and sell our products to our customers …

Customer services processes orders from customers. It organizes transportation, checks that customers have received their orders and deals with complaints …

Finally, distribution is responsible for transporting our products. They receive orders from customer services, and plan how and when to transport the products so the customers receive them at the right time …

· match the names of the departments with their sort descriptions.

1Sales and marketing 2Information technology 3 Customer services 4 Human resources 5 Purchasing 6 Production 7R & D 8Finance 9Distribution

atransports the products. b pays the salaries. c sells the products. d makes the products. e looks after the computers. f thinks of ideas for new products. g recruits new staff. h processes orders form customers. i buys parts from suppliers.

1. A. Read the first paragraph of the text about MTS Systems Corporation and complete the following “fact file”.

MTS Systems Corporation Headquarters in ¹___________________ Specialises in ²_______________________________________ Factories located in ³__________, __________ and _________ No. of employees ⁴___________________

B. Now read the rest of the text, in which Bernard Levesque describes the

organisation of MTS Paris, draw and complete the organisation chart.

'My name's Bernard Levesque and I'm the Technical and Quality Manager at MTS in Paris and work within the MTD -the Materials Testing Division, which makes equipment used by industrial firms to test the strength and durability of materials like plastics, metals and so forth. We're a subsidiary of MTS Systems Corporation, an American firm based in Minneapolis. MTS employs roughly 2,200 people worldwide and is a leading supplier of mechanical testing and simulation equipment Our major development and manufacturing operations are located in the US,

France and Germany, and we have sales and service offices around the world.

Before I describe the organisation of my department, I'll outline the structure from the top, starting with Werner Ongyert, our CEO, who oversees all aspects of our activities here, just below him is the General Manager, Jacques Mordelet, who is my immediate superior. Then there's Sylviane Villaret, the Human Resources Director, and Genevieve Cornetti, the GM's Secretary, who also report directly to him. We have a management team that includes myself, Dominique Faurieux, the Sales Manager, jean-Francois Reinauld, the Finance Manager, and of course, Jacques Mordelet, who is also the Marketing Manager. There are also two new departments - Customer Service and NVD, the Noise and Vibration Division - headed by Louis Regnier and Patrick Dhommee respectively.

Now, getting back to the way my department is organised, I'm responsible for operations, so I'm in charge of Purchasing and Planning, R&D and Quality. The Purchasing and Planning Department schedules production based on orders provided by the sales team and forecasts from the Marketing Department. In R&D, there are three sub-departments - Mechanical Engineering, Electronics, and Software Engineering - which are involved in developing new products and modifying existing products to meet customer demands. They receive technical specifications from the Marketing Department and provide drawings, a parts list and assembly instructions. Nathalie Launay works closely with me on Quality - an area that takes up nearly a third of my time. And finally there's the head of Shiping, as well as the person in charge of Assembly, who also report to me.’

C.Circle the world that does not belong in each horizontal group.

1 firm company society subsidiary

2 salary manager engineer employee

3 finance product planning marketing

4 ship assemble customer purchase

5 plant facility patent factory

D.Match the following definitions to the groups of three words that you identified above.

amanufacturing sites ____

b stages in the manufacturing process ____

cpeople who work in a company__ ____

dtypes of business organisation ____

edifferent departments in a company ____