From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Strategic memorandum outlining challenges and plans for post-war production and business diversification.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 148\2\ scan0247 | |
| Date | 18th September 1939 | |
| -2- (1) At the end of the war, our production capacity will exceed many times the demand for our products. (2) For five years after the war, the potential demand looks as if it would with difficulty keep the Derby works employed. (3) The five years after the war are going to be the most difficult. After that re-equipment of the air force and expansion of civil aviation should improve the situation. (4) At the moment the only civil as opposed to servive activity that we shall have to fall back on will be the automobile business. We shall not be able to start right away on the ration-alised range of cars because tooling is incomplete. If Park Wards fail to survive, we shall have no bodies for these chassis unless we get tools made in the interval on conventional pressed steel body lines. In any event in view of the running cost of the type of car designed and the economic exhaustion of the country we should not expect to sell much more than 1200 cars a year or a chassis turn over of about 1¼ millions. We ascertain that the capacity necessary to deal with this output amounts to the present capacity of the Derby factory working under day shift conditions only. (5) It is therefore clear if we are to attempt to keep the other Rolls Royce factories occupied, we have got to think up some new products and these have got to be such that they will create a turn over of several million a year. (6) They will be needed most, 12 months after the war. (7) We have not more than four years to cope with the situation. We believe that if a successful attempt is to be made to deal with the post war situation the steps to be taken must be decided upon now. | ||