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Two views of trade prospects with the Soviet Union are offered in this article and a companion study by Messers Coplin and O'Leary, Prof. Naylor is guardedly optimistic, while his brother Soviet watchers are guardedly pessimistic. Moscow has wooed Naylor with private meetings, and he has firsthand experience with this new willingness on the part of the Soviets to be forthright about discussing the problems and future of their system. Coplin and O'Leary are professional power analysts who see Gorbachev's stage as a cramped place with little or no room for fancy fandangos with U.S. business. But both the optimists and pessimists are intrigued by the sparks of change they see flying in the Russian wind.

Through direct personal contact we have identified over 2000 corporations in the United States, Canada, and Europe that are either using, developing, or planning to develop some form of corporate planning model. In 1974 we mailed questionnaires to 1881 of these corporations to ascertain (1) who is using corporate models, (2) why they are being used, (3) how they are being used, (4) what resources are required, (5) which techniques and structures are being employed, (6) what the costs and benefits are, (7) what enhancements are planned, and (8) what the future holds for corporate modeling. A total of 346 corporations responded to the survey—a response rate of 19 percent. No definitive statements can be made concerning the 1535 firms that did not respond, but one possibility is that they considered the completion of a 47‐question questionnaire to be an excessive demand on their available time.

A recent survey by Social Systems, Inc., indicates that since 1970 over 1000 corporations in the United States and Canada have begun developing and using corporate simulation models. However, the percentage of corporations that have experience with corporate models remains relatively small. Why aren't more corporations using these models today? Why are the corporate model users restricted to the larger corporations? Are the primary constraints impeding the use of these models technical problems, computer hardware problems, software problems, or political problems?

On October 9–10, 1975, representatives from approximately 75 companies in the United States, Canada, and Mexico attended a symposium in New Orleans entitled “The Future of Corporate Planning Models.” The symposium, sponsored by the Corporate Modeling Users Group of Social Systems, Inc., featured 13 presentations on the application of corporate planning models.

In theory, the annual budget for a company should not be formulated until after the long term strategic plan has been developed, and goals, objectives and business strategies have been defined for the company as well as for its individual business units. Specifically, the budget should be consistent with the financial plan of the first year of the strategic plan. Unfortunately, in all too many organizations it does not seem to work this way.

The essence of strategic planning is to provide a conceptual framework for the company's chief executive officer (CEO) and line managers to enable them to make decisions today that will affect the company in the future. Strategic planning involves the formulation of long term goals and objectives and the selection of strategies to achieve these goals and objectives for the company in light of an uncertain environment in which the firm must operate.

The January issue of Planning Review contained an article by Bradley T. Gale which described the PIMS Program of SPI. Utilizing a database of strategic information on over one thousand product‐line businesses, the objectives of The PIMS Program according to Gale are “to discover the general ‘laws’ that determine what business strategy, in what kind of competitive environment, produces what profit results,” and “to produce reports for the managers of each business unit which they can use as a basis for decision making.”

The purpose of this monograph is to examine the types of data that are required in the design and analysis of physical distribution systems, and to establish a method for obtaining such data to successfully accomplish the objectives of a distribution study. The development of the data base includes determining: (1) data specification; (2) data collection; (3) data analysis; and (4) data validation. All of these stages in data base construction are analysed and evaluated in this paper. This discussion will probably be of most importance to those managers contemplating a computer‐oriented study; an attempt has been made in the monograph to provide a managerial as opposed to a technical overview of data base requirements.