Materials management is an integrative approach to control the flow of production materials. It has been successfully practiced by numerous manufacturing firms to decrease materials cost and improve the employment of scarce resources. The need for better utilization of resources is also prevalent in service sector industries. This dissertation focused on the public utilities industry and its practices in the materials management area. Major emphasis of this research was to (1) define the state-of-the-art of materials management within the gas and electric utilities in Texas, (2) determine its impact on the corporate structure, and (3) identify opportunities for materials management in the future of the Texas utilities industry.

Hospitals have increasingly come under close public scrutiny in the last several years because of the constantly escalating price of health care in the United States. It has been estimated that approximately 30 per cent of a typical hospital's operational budget is devoted to purchasing consumables plus the cost of materials support. The purpose of this study is to examine and compare materials management practices of selected individual hospitals in Texas Health Services Area 5 in order to determine the extent and manner in which they utilize the materials management concept. In addition, the investigation focuses on determining if there are any relationships between the variables of type of ownership, size and the extent to which the study hospitals utilize the materials management concept.