A public corporation is part of the public sector. It is owned and financed by the government. Possible internal stakeholders could be employees (e.g. machine operators who depend on the company for wages etc.); managers (who supervise the processing and make decisions about investment etc.); trade unions (who represent workers and negotiate pay and conditions on their behalf). Possible external stakeholders could be the government (who puts up the money and expects it to be used well); taxpayers (who expect to see their money being properly used); customers (who wish an efficient value for money service). Possible objectives include providing a cheap and efficient service to customers (many customers will be taxpayers and, as a public corporation, quality of service is very important to the Post Office); covering costs (public corporations do not have to earn profits but the Post Office must not lose money and must ensure it has funds for investment). This is an example of flow production because a large number of items are processed in the same way on an assembly line system – in this case a conveyor belt. The items are standard (i.e. letters); the tasks involved are routine and easily broken down into component parts; the same processes have to be carried out for each letter or packet; it is possible to identify problems (e.g. letters with unclear postcodes); a large volume of items must be processed; items must be processed quickly. Effectively, this is the equivalent of mass production for mass consumption. Examples could include any product manufacturing process involving an assembly line, for example, cars; electronic goods; food manufacture; brewery bottling plant. A database is an electronic filing system which carries information on a large number of items. Databases could be used in business as follows: Employee records – in this way it is easy to find