Making Your Warehouse Profitable Is a Never Ending Process
When distributors talk about “setting up” their warehouse facility, it's obvious that the “setting up” phase really never stops. Building or renting the space? Stocking the materials? That's one thing. What goes into making the warehouse profitable is a task that is never really finished.
Source: Industrial Distribution, http://manufacturing.net/

Survey Contends that Companies Led by CEOs with Military Background Perform Better
Military experience parlays into better business performance, according to a recent study by Korn/Ferry International, a Los Angeles-based executive search firm. The study, "Military Experience & CEOs: Is There a Link?" found that firms led by CEOs with a military background outperformed the S&P 500 Index by as much as 20 percent. Another interesting finding is that CEOs with military experience tend to last longer on the job. Civilian CEOs had an average tenure of 4.6 years, while CEOs with military experience had an average tenure of 7.2 years.
In terms of shareholder return, 59 companies on the S&P 500 headed by CEOs with military experience provided an average annual return of 21.3 percent over a three-year period, compared with only an 11 percent return from the S&P 500 Index.
"There are clearly certain traits [ex-military] CEOs possess that drive their approaches to leadership, communication and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to translate company vision into tangible results," says Joe Griesedieck, vice chairman of Korn/Ferry.
Source: Industry Week, http://industryweek.com/

We're Paying for These Phones, But Is Anyone Actually Using Them? Hello? Hello?
Rob Ingalls, senior manager of telecommunications at Sodexho, knew he would have to spend a lot of time on the phone, but he never thought he'd have to make calls to each of the company's 4,000 to 6,000 workers who carry mobile phones and other devices.
Sodexho, the $6.3bn North American division of a global food services and facilities management company, employs 125,000 remote workers, most of them in 6,000 field locations, which include corporate, university, government and hospital cafeterias; sporting arenas; hotels and convenience stores. Roughly 5,000 of its U.S. employees have cell phones, handheld wireless devices, pagers and air cards, according to Ingalls.
A spring 2004 audit conducted by Atlanta consulting firm Advocate Networks, however, revealed shortcomings with Sodexho's oversight of wireless devices. Among the findings: Sodexho had about 500 idle or barely used phones, no official policy for procuring and managing wireless devices, and a paper-based invoice processing system. Moreover, the external audit concluded that Sodexho was overspending at the time between 20 percent and 25 percent—which could have added up to $1m annually, according to Forrester Research estimates, though Sodexho would not confirm that number—on its wireless communications.
Ingalls needed to quickly get a handle on which phone accounts were live and which were inactive. For four months, he and his team called each mobile phone, direct-connect phone, BlackBerry and wireless air card user to make sure that the employees who were supposed to be using the devices were actually using them.
With the audit, Ingalls says, "We saw that the way we were operating was less efficient than it could be."
Source: Baseline, http://www.baselinemag.com/

Spain's Military Said to Have Implemented World's Largest RFID Project
The Spanish Armed Forces (SAF) report themselves to be radio frequency identification technology ready.
SAF is using the same RFID backbone as that employed by the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency. Both networks were built upon technology from vendor Savi, which was acquired by Lockheed three months ago.
While SAF is now ready to track consignments all over the world, the U.S. Department of Defense seems to be slightly behind in terms of getting production-ready. This is ironic, given that the U.S. has many more battlefield commitments than Spain and is faced with bigger human stakes.
Gartner Research considers SAF's RFID project to be the largest RFID project in the world despite the fact that SAF has only about 77,000 active troops.
SAF began to set up RFID gateways in February of this year. The fact that it was able to go live and worldwide in six months is an encouraging precedent for DoD, which is setting up gateways of its own right now.
Source: Line 56, http://www.line56.com/

Trucking, Air Cargo Industries Find Cooperate to Mutual Advantage
“U.S. shipping has moved to a regionally-based, surface-driven model, and there is no turning back," says Ted Scherck, president of the Colography Group, a Georgia-based research and consulting firm.
Industry experts say the long-established move by expedited shippers to the ground in the United States is taking on a new shape as manufacturers and retailers reconfigure supply chains and transportation providers close the gaps between services.
That gap is no longer closing merely because truckers are encroaching on traditional air cargo business, air forwarders and truckers say, but because both wings of the transportation world are increasingly using each other's services and capabilities.
Rather than simply trying to lure shippers to lower-priced trucking services, some truckers and truck brokers are launching air cargo divisions to get more of the high-yield business while meeting the specialized demands of airfreight. At the same time, domestic air forwarders are finding improved time-definite trucking services a needed antidote to tight common-carriage capacity and numbing fuel surcharges.
Source: Air Cargo World, http://aircargoworld.com/

No Off-the-Shelf Solution, No Off-the-Shelf Systems Integrator
Software systems—from off-the-shelf applications to enterprise suites—have become easier to use and implement, Stephen Kerr, a managing consultant in PA Consulting Group's IS Implementation practice, is the first to admit. That relative ease of implementation is obvious from the end user's perspective, at any rate.
Does that mean that systems integration of these applications has become easier as well? Not hardly, Kerr says.
"Complexity always exists—it's just a matter of where it is solved," he explains. "Vendors conceal complexity within an application so that the client experiences a software application that is easy to use and implement."
Except for the smallest of companies, there is seldom a single off-the-shelf solution that meets all of a client's needs, he adds. "That means that organizations have to buy multiple applications, orchestrate and integrate them. The firm still has to tackle the problem of complexity."
The firm also has to tackle the problem of selecting the right systems integrator.
Source: CRM Buyer, http://crmbuyer.com/

Some Chinese Begin to Object to Takeover of State Assets by Foreign Companies
In the rush to gain a foothold in a market of 1.3 billion people, multinationals are pursuing mergers and acquisitions in China more religiously than ever. Foreign companies have so far this year bought stakes in 248 Chinese assets, many of them state-owned, worth $14 billion, according to data provider Dealogic. In some cases, multinationals proudly play up the size of their prospective deals or the regulatory hurdles they intend to overcome. But the recent backlash against foreign-led buyouts means acquirers may now have to enter China more tactfully.
M&A still offers foreign investors faster access to market share than joint ventures or wholly-owned enterprises. But the social tension that simmers beneath the rich/poor divide in China is now spilling over into foreign acquisitions. Some farmer-led protests against new developments have turned violent. Populist local economists and commentators have been attracting media attention by accusing the central government of selling valuable assets to foreign firms at huge discounts. Banking M&As are a typical target, because China had spent close to $45bn to recapitalize some banks before selling small chunks of them to the likes of Bank of America and HSBC. No protests aimed at foreign acquirers have yet taken place, but the government is mindful of popular sentiment.
Source: CFO, http://www.cfo.com/

It's Counterproductive for CIO, COO to Square Off Rather than Cooperate
Companies that look to the IT department to bring a competitive edge and drive revenue growth may find themselves facing an unexpected roadblock: Their CIO and COO are butting heads.
Organizations have always struggled with how best to structure their leadership teams and effectively divide responsibilities among C-level positions. One key to success is to monitor and manage the alignment of roles and responsibilities as the business changes over time. As IT takes on increased business importance in many companies, the CIO's role can change significantly, even to the extent of overlapping with the COO's.
Two important trends are blurring the traditional line between these two positions. The first concerns the CIO position itself in companies that are looking to technology to give them a competitive edge, as opposed to those that see IT as merely a necessary cost of doing business. Related to this is the fact that the CIO is being asked to play a more externally focused role while many of the technology competencies that once distinguished IT executives become little more than commodities.
Source: Optimize, http://optimizemag.com/

End User Resistance Usually at Fault When Strategies to Implement Mobile Technologies Fail
Every line-of-business owner needs their mobile workforce to be more productive in the field, and it is only natural to look to technology to deliver that goal. This in turn drives CIOs to investigate and deploy new technologies to improve processes and enable mobile workers to be more effective and efficient. Given the strategic importance of automation and the technologically savvy decision makers involved, why do efforts often fall short of expectations, or worse, fail altogether? In most cases, the technology does what it is supposed to do. So if it isn't the technology itself that causes the projects to fail, is it end user resistance to change, lack of user adoption due to complexity, poor training … what? Reasons range from a steep learning curve for the nontechnical end users, to users being creatures of habit who are averse to change, to users not wanting “Big Brother” watching. The bottom line is, it is the lack of user adoption that causes the most pain. Most employees are willing to withstand a reasonable level of frustration during any new system deployment. Regrettably, that line is crossed all too often. Perhaps the decision makers were ignorant of the current process, specific uses, or the day-to-day environments that mobile workers encounter. Or, perhaps the technology's capabilities are over-exaggerated and employee impact is overlooked.
Source: Integrated Solutions, http://www.integratedsolutionsmag.com/

Airplane Manufacturer Learns from Automaker How to Be Efficient, Productive
From Boeing's perspective, its turnaround has been the result of a change in thinking from the top to the very bottom of the company. Twenty years ago, Boeing was in many ways a company adrift. Granted, it was still making a lot of airplanes. But cracks were appearing in the edifice as it strove to fight off the competition.
At the heart of Boeing's manufacturing problems were the twin issues of efficiency and productivity, which the company has attacked through what it calls the Boeing Production System. Central to this effort has been an almost fanatical dedication to lean manufacturing. Between 1993 and 1998, some 1,500 Boeing employees from all levels of the organization traveled to Japan to see how Toyota gets things done firsthand. The Boeing system also includes a heavy helping of Six Sigma methodologies to root out quality problems before they become major assembly issues.
The result has been an empowered workforce that takes an active role in influencing how Boeing puts its airplanes together. For example, small groups called “moonshine” units are continually finding smart, often low-tech solutions to ongoing assembly problems. Six Sigma teams throughout the organization work to root out quality problems wherever they occur, be it in a Boeing facility or somewhere along the supply chain.
Source: Assembly, http://www.assemblymag.com/


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