Monday, September 23, 2013

Made in the U.S.A. is Comming back

The U.S. economy continues to struggle, and the weak March jobs report–just 88,000 positions were added–spooked the market. But step back and you’ll see a bright spot, perhaps the best economic news the U.S. has witnessed since the rise of Silicon Valley: made in the usa is making a comeback. Climbing out of the recession, the U.S. has seen its manufacturing growth outpace that of other advanced nations, with some 500,000 jobs created in the past three years. It marks the first time in more than a decade that the number of factory jobs has gone up instead of down. From ExOne’s 3-D-printing plant near Pittsburgh to Dow Chemical’s expanding ethylene and propylene production in Louisiana and Texas, which could create 35,000 jobs, American workers are busy making things that customers around the world want to buy–and defying the narrative of the nation’s supposedly inevitable manufacturing decline.


The past several months alone have seen some surprising reversals. Apple, famous for the city-size factories in China that produce its gadgets, decided to assemble one of its Mac computer lines in the U.S. Walmart, which pioneered global sourcing to find the lowest-priced goods for customers, said it would pump up spending with American suppliers by $50 billion over the next decade–and save money by doing so. Airbus will build JetBlue’s jets in Alabama. Meanwhile, in North Carolina’s furniture industry, which has lost 70,000 jobs to rivals abroad, Ashley Furniture is investing at least $80 million to build a new plant. “If you go back 10 years, we didn’t think we’d be manufacturing in the U.S.,” says Ashley’s CEO, Todd Wanek.
This isn’t a blip. It’s the sum of a powerful equation refiguring the global economy. U.S. factories increasingly have access to cheap energy, thanks to oil and gas from the shale boom. For companies outside the U.S., it’s the opposite: high global oil prices translate into costlier fuel for ships and planes, which means some labor savings from low-cost plants in China evaporate when the goods are shipped thousands of miles. And about those low-cost plants: workers from China to India are demanding and getting bigger paychecks, while U.S. companies have won massive concessions from unions over the past decade. Suddenly the math on outsourcing doesn’t look quite as attractive. Paul Ashworth, the chief U.S. economist for the research firm Capital Economics, is willing to go a step further. “The offshoring boom,” he says, “does appear to have largely run its course.”
Today’s U.S. factories aren’t the noisy places where your grandfather knocked in four bolts a minute for eight hours a day. Dungarees and lunch pails are out; computer skills and specialized training are in, since the new made-in-America economics is centered largely on cutting-edge technologies. The trick for U.S. companies is to develop new manufacturing techniques ahead of global competitors and then use them to produce goods more efficiently on superautomated factory floors. These factories of the future have more machines and fewer workers–and those workers must be able to master the machines. Many new manufacturing jobs require at least a two-year tech degree to complement artisan skills such as welding and milling. The bar will only get higher. Some experts believe it won’t be too long before employers expect a four-year degree–a job qualification that will eventually be required in many other places around the world too.
Understanding this new look is critical if the U.S. wants to nurture manufacturing and grow jobs. There are implications for educators (who must ensure that future workers have the right skills) as well as policymakers (who may have to set new educational standards). “Manufacturing is coming back, but it’s evolving into a very different type of animal than the one most people recognize today,” says James Manyika, a director at McKinsey Global Institute who specializes in global high tech. “We’re going to see new jobs, but nowhere near the number some people expect, especially in the short term.”
If the U.S. can get this right, though, the payoff will be tremendous. Labor statistics actually shortchange the importance of manufacturing because they mainly count jobs inside factories, and related positions in, say, Ford’s marketing department or at small businesses doing industrial design or creating software for big exporters don’t get tallied. Yet those jobs wouldn’t exist but for the big factories. The official figure for U.S. manufacturing employment, 9%, belies the importance of the sector for the overall economy. Manufacturing represents a whopping 67% of private-sector R&D spending as well as 30% of the country’s productivity growth. Every $1 of manufacturing activity returns $1.48 to the economy. “The ability to make things is fundamental to the ability to innovate things over the long term,” says Willy Shih, a Harvard Business School professor and co-author of Producing Prosperity: Why America Needs a Manufacturing Renaissance. “When you give up making products, you lose a lot of the added value.” In other words, what you make makes you.

The Rise of the Industrial Internet
As soon as you step into ge’s battery plant–as clean and bright as a medical lab–you begin to see how it’s possible for a rich country like the U.S. to profitably export a commodity like batteries to Kenya and other emerging markets. The 200,000-sq.-ft. facility requires only 370 full-time employees, a mere 210 of them on the factory floor. The plant manager runs the operation–from lights to heat to inventory to purchasing and maintenance–from an iPad, on which he gets a real-time stream of data from wireless sensors embedded in each product rolling off the line.
The sensors let the batteries talk to GE via the Internet once they’ve left the factory. Each part of the product and, indeed, the factory, including the equipment and the workers who run it, will soon communicate with one another over the Internet. Not only does the data allow production to be monitored as it occurs; it can also help predict what might go wrong–recording, for instance, the average battery life in Bangladeshi heat vs. Mongolian cold. Designs will be altered in real time to reflect the knowledge. “It’s not about low-cost labor but about high technology,” says Prescott Logan, general manager of GE Energy Storage. The key to the division’s future, he says, is “listening to our batteries. We have to listen to what they are telling us and then think about how to monetize that.”
The approach has the potential to create entirely new businesses and jobs. While the technology in Schenectady has downsized the number of machinists needed to make a battery, it has also fueled the creation of a GE global research center in San Ramon, Calif. Over the past 20 months, 400 highly paid software engineers, data scientists and user-experience designers have been hired to churn out the software for the industrial Internet–otherwise known as the Internet of things–that will enable the equipment in the factories to talk. GE will add 200 more employees by the end of the year.
A Plant in Every Garage
A different glimpse into manufacturing’s future can be found near the roots of its past. Not far from Pittsburgh, whose vast furnaces turned out steel to build 20th century America, a new kind of industrial engine is powering up. Thanks in part to its proximity to the engineering powerhouse of Carnegie Mellon University, North Huntington, Pa., and towns like it are home to companies developing specialized metals, robotics and bioengineering–all critical to shoring up the nation’s ability to make things. But one technology being developed there may help foster a new wave of manufacturing outfits that will have as much in common with Silicon Valley start-ups as with the classic image of a factory.
The technology is called additive manufacturing, or more colloquially, 3-D printing. When most people talk about 3-D printing, they mean fun devices for hobbyists that can print plastic toys and other small objects when hooked up to a computer. When they talk about it at ExOne Corp., they’re describing something a lot bigger. Additive manufacturing involves what looks like spray-painting a metal object into existence. These 3-D printers lay down a very thin layer of stainless-steel powder or ceramic powder and fuse it with a liquid binder until a part–like a torque converter, heat exchanger or propeller blade–is built, layer by layer. ExOne’s employees are ramping up production lines to make 3-D printers at a price of about $400,000. Would-be manufacturing entrepreneurs can buy the devices and begin turning out high-tech metal parts for aerospace, automotive and other industries at lower cost and higher quality faster than offshore suppliers.
The 3-D-printing process is attractive because it can produce parts in shapes that would be impossible or unduly expensive through traditional manufacturing methods. That helps engineers rethink designs and outdo their competitors. S. Kent Rockwell, ExOne’s CEO, says one potential client asked him to reproduce a traditional heat exchanger and price it, which the firm did. The customer wasn’t that impressed. “Look,” Rockwell told him, “give me your optimal design for the heat exchanger.” The customer returned with a new design, doubtful that it could actually be manufactured. “We printed it in five days,” says Rockwell.
ExOne’s 3-D-printing machines, like a lot of new technology, will displace some labor. A foundry, for instance, no longer needs workers carting patterns around a warehouse; it can print molds and cores stored on a thumb drive, and no patterns are needed. An ExOne shop with 12 metal-printing machines needs only two employees per shift, supported by a design engineer–though they are higher-skilled workers. Rockwell envisions a thousand new industrial flowers blooming. “There’s a world of guys out there who say, If you can deliver parts in six or seven days, hey, I don’t need the machines. That’s where job creation is going to come from.” Overseas competitors will not be able to deliver that quickly or at the same level of quality.
Nurturing the Makers
The tale of additive printing is notable as much for its backstory as for its likely impact on the manufacturing economy. The technology, it turns out, was developed by MIT, nurtured by grants from the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation before being adapted by private industry. It’s the kind of triple play–government, academia, industry–that’s held up as an ideal for public-private cooperation, as opposed to, say, the Solyndra debacle. Traditionally the U.S. hasn’t been as keen as other nations on those kinds of linkages. But now states are doing their own versions of an industrial policy. Virginia boasts the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing to help companies translate research into high-tech products. To bridge the skills gap, North Carolina links community colleges with specific companies like Siemens.
President Obama has called for such efforts to go more national. He has proposed new manufacturing tax breaks, more robust R&D spending and vocational training for workers. Insiders say there are also conversations under way about how to create the kind of industrial policy–the phrase itself is still something of a political third rail–that would give U.S. manufacturing the kind of competitive advantages held for decades by the French and German economies, both of which enjoy trade surpluses when it comes to advanced manufacturing. Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council and a point person for Obama’s plans, is pushing a number of policies that sound more like Germany than the U.S., including the development of high-end-manufacturing research institutes to knit together private companies, educators and public resources. But Sperling says these policies are vital–and often misunderstood.
“Industrial policy suggests a top-down government effort to pick winners and losers, which is not good policy,” says Sperling. “What is sound policy is recognizing that location matters because manufacturing has innovation benefits that spill over to the economy at large, just like the location of R&D does. Policy that supports creating strong manufacturing ecosystems is not only economically sound; it is economically imperative.”
It also means creating federally funded research centers, including one to promote 3-D printing: the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute in Youngstown, Ohio. The institute, which received a $30 million federal grant, will connect 32,000 manufacturers across the Rust Belt with top universities like Carnegie Mellon and technical experts from the Departments of Defense and Energy as well as NASA to accelerate innovation in key areas of high-tech manufacturing. It’s a system modeled on Germany’s Fraunhofer institutes, which have been widely credited with keeping wages and competitiveness high in that country even in the face of competition from countries like China. This year, the U.S. government will hold competitions and award similar grants for three more institutes nationwide. “We believe there can be a manufacturing renaissance in this country if we are smart about how to put some wind at the back of the trends moving in that direction,” Sperling says.
Competitive Edge
While new technologies like 3-d printing point to a brighter future for U.S. manufacturing, there are reasons for optimism in the present as well. The American worker is more competitive than you might think. For a long time, it seemed as if the cost gap with developing nations that swallowed millions of U.S. jobs would never close. But inevitably, it does. Emerging nations keep emerging: they get richer, wages rise, and factories abroad just don’t stay as cheap as they used to be. China is promising 13% average annual pay increases for minimum-wage workers as it moves toward a consumer society. And workers, in turn, are demanding more. Witness the groundbreaking union deal at China’s Foxconn electronics company, the outsourcer of choice for many American firms like Apple. Foxconn has been increasing pay over the past couple of years.
The comparison is even more favorable when you look at Europe, where manufacturing costs can be 15% to 25% higher than in the U.S. That is one reason firms such as Rolls-Royce and Volkswagen are expanding in America. To help fill its $96 billion worth of orders, Rolls recently announced a $136 million addition to its Advanced Airfoil Machining Facility south of Richmond, Va. In July, VW’s year-old assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., added a third shift, boosting employment to 3,300 for a company that in the 1980s had stopped manufacturing in the U.S. “It’s about the inflexibility of the European workforce,” says Boston Consulting Group (BCG) senior partner Hal Sirkin. “No one admits it, but you are going to see more and more of it.” BCG estimates that there will be 6,840 new job openings in manufacturing in Virginia’s former tobacco region by 2017, creating a shortage of about 1,000 skilled workers.
Based solely on wages, of course, American workers aren’t a bargain compared with workers in emerging economies; they still make 7.4 times as much per hour as their Chinese counterparts. But increasingly, the cost arbitrage done by companies when deciding where to put jobs isn’t just about hourly pay. It’s also about relative labor productivity–which has been rising sharply in the U.S. over the past decade while remaining flat in China–as well as how flexible a workforce is, how close factories are to customers (which reduces the time needed to meet orders), what kind of subsidies states can offer companies for manufacturing and how well a company can leverage all that to cope with quickly changing customer demands. Add the effect of those higher oil prices worldwide–ratcheting up long-distance shipping costs–and there are sound economic arguments for buying American.
Bob Parsons, the head of Parsons Co., a midsize Illinois-based firm that does small runs of specialty parts for Caterpillar, says he’s increasingly getting business that might have gone to China or elsewhere. “We can do faster delivery with higher quality,” he says. “By the time you factor it all in, it makes sense to keep some of that work here. I think the insourcing trend is going to be huge.”
All these factors are reflected in Ashley Furniture’s decision to spend at least $80 million to build a new plant south of Winston-Salem, N.C., that will employ 500 people. It represents the reshoring of a traditional industry in a state that had lost jobs to China. According to Wanek, Ashley’s CEO, speed in meeting customer demands has never been more crucial. “Today the expectation is that you’d better be there in a week and it had better be perfect,” he says. The company still sources some items globally–glass and mirrors–but heavy components and upholstery are made in the U.S.
Workers are expected to step up their game. At Ashley, they are schooled in the continuous-improvement model used by Toyota–known as kaizen–which Ashley translates as “systems thinking” to improve quality and efficiency while reducing cost. It works as well for armoires as it does for autos. Wanek says Ashley will reward workers who are adaptive. Part of that involves acquiring new skills while on the job and taking responsibility for devising and implementing improvements. In exchange, workers can get profit sharing tied to company performance. “If we’re going to compete, we need people who are willing to step out of their comfort zone and embrace change,” Wanek says.
The takeaway is clear. China may still be the factory of the world, but the most advanced American exporters are taking manufacturing to an entirely new level. The gains won’t be distributed evenly in the U.S.–by geography or by industry. Despite Apple’s highly publicized announcement about manufacturing in the U.S., labor-intensive, highly tradable industries like consumer electronics are unlikely to return en masse. Energy- and resource-intensive industries (chemicals, wood products, heavy machinery and appliances) may do better, powered by that cheaper homegrown energy. It’s win-win when companies can combine low-cost energy with more productive local labor and cost-saving automation technology.
“We are probably the most competitive, on a global basis, that we’ve been in the past 30 years,” says GE CEO Jeff Immelt, who led Obama’s jobs council. “Will U.S. manufacturing go from 9% to 30% of all jobs? That’s unlikely. But could you see a steady increase in jobs over the next quarters and years? I think that will happen.” Indeed, it may be our best hope for real, shared economic recovery in the USA.
Correction Appended: April 12, 2013

Ref: http://business.time.com/made-in-the-u-s-a/

Friday, September 20, 2013

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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

9 Daily Habits That Will Make You Happier

Happiness is the only true measure of personal success. Making other people happy is the highest expression of success, but it's almost impossible to make others happy if you're not happy yourself.
With that in mind, here are nine small changes that you can make to your daily routine that, if you're like most people, will immediately increase the amount of happiness in your life:

1. Start each day with expectation.

If there's any big truth about life, it's that it usually lives up to (or down to) your expectations. Therefore, when you rise from bed, make your first thought: "something wonderful is going to happen today." Guess what? You're probably right.

2. Take time to plan and prioritize.

The most common source of stress is the perception that you've got too much work to do.  Rather than obsess about it, pick one thing that, if you get it done today, will move you closer to your highest goal and purpose in life. Then do that first.

3. Give a gift to everyone you meet.

I'm not talking about a formal, wrapped-up present. Your gift can be your smile, a word of thanks or encouragement, a gesture of politeness, even a friendly nod. And never pass beggars without leaving them something. Peace of mind is worth the spare change.

4. Deflect partisan conversations.

Arguments about politics and religion never have a "right" answer but they definitely get people all riled up over things they can't control. When such topics surface, bow out by saying something like: "Thinking about that stuff makes my head hurt."

5. Assume people have good intentions.

Since you can't read minds, you don't really know the "why" behind the "what" that people do. Imputing evil motives to other people's weird behaviors adds extra misery to life, while assuming good intentions leaves you open to reconciliation.

6. Eat high quality food slowly.

Sometimes we can't avoid scarfing something quick to keep us up and running. Even so, at least once a day try to eat something really delicious, like a small chunk of fine cheese or an imported chocolate. Focus on it; taste it; savor it.

7. Let go of your results.

The big enemy of happiness is worry, which comes from focusing on events that are outside your control. Once you've taken action, there's usually nothing more you can do. Focus on the job at hand rather than some weird fantasy of what might happen.

8. Turn off "background" TV.

Many households leave their TVs on as "background noise" while they're doing other things. The entire point of broadcast TV is to make you dissatisfied with your life so that you'll buy more stuff. Why subliminally program yourself to be a mindless consumer?

9. End each day with gratitude.

Just before you go to bed, write down at least one wonderful thing that happened. It might be something as small as a making a child laugh or something as huge as a million dollar deal. Whatever it is, be grateful for that day because it will never come again.

Friday, May 31, 2013

Quality Quotes


SCM Quotes

I consider a bad bottle of Heineken to be a personal insult to me
Freddy Heineken, founder of Dutch beer giant

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing, layout, processes, and procedures
Tom Peters

All we are doing is looking at the time line from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we reduce that time line by removing non-value-added wastes
Taiichi Ohno ( 大野 耐 ) 1912-1990, Toyota Executive and father of the Toyota Production System

If you can not describe what you are doing as a process, you do not know what you are doing
W. Edwards Deming 1900-1993, American continuous improvement management guru and father of the Deming Cycle

The best supply chains aren't just fast and cost-effective. They are also agile and adaptable, and they ensure that all their companies' interests stay aligned
Hau L. Lee, US Professor of Operations, Information and Technology in Harvard Business Review, Oct. 2004

Outsourcing is no panacea. It's often called the "make or break" decision. Well, let me tell you, it can quickly become the make or break decision
Joe Neubacher, CEO of food-services firm ARA Services (1993)

Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is
Robert M. Pirsig 1928-, American philosopher

Operational excellence remains a greater imperative than most companies and most executives acknowledge
Gene Tyndall in Supercharging Supply Chains (1998)

Leadership Quotes

Know thyself
Plato 428 BC-347 BC, ancient Greek philosopher

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much
Donald Rumsfeld 1932-, American Republican politician and businessman

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things
Peter F. Drucker 1909-2005, American management guru

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm
Publilius Syrus 1st century BC, Latin writer of maxims

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership
John Kenneth Galbraith 1908-2006, influential Canadian-American Keynesian economist

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress
Mahatma Gandhi 1869, 1948, Indian deep thinker and constant experimenter

The boss drives people; the leader coaches them.
The boss depends on authority; the leader on good will.
The boss inspires fear; the leader inspires enthusiasm.
The boss says 'I'; the leader says 'we.'
The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.
The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how.
The boss says 'go'; the leader says 'let's go!'
H. Gordon Selfridge 1864-1947, American-British retail magnate

A leader is best when people barely know he exists
Lao Tzu 4th century BC, ancient Chinese philosopher

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
Edmund Burke 1729 - 1797, Irish-born English political writer

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organization. When that happens people feel centered and that gives their work meaning
Warren G. Bennis 1925 - , American leadership scholar, consultant and writer

Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them
Stephen R. Covey, American leadership consultant and writer

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out
Stephen R. Covey, American leadership consultant and writer

Treating people with respect will gain one wide acceptance and improve the business
Tao Zhu Gong 500BC, Assistant to the Emperor of Yue, 2nd Business Principle

Leadership is not about being nice. it's about being right and being strong
Paul Keating 1944-, Australian statesman and Prime Minister in Time, January 9th, 1995

To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind
Lucius Annaeus Seneca 5BC-65AD, Roman tragedian, philosopher, and counselor to Nero

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles", Harper Collins, 1992, Chapter 7, Section 3)

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900, German philosopher

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power
Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, sixteenth American president

A leader is a dealer in hope
Napoléon Bonaparte 1769-1821, French General and Emperor

 

Responsibility Quotes

Business Ethics Quotes


There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other
Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592, French essayist

It is a commonplace executive observation that businesses exist to make money, and the observation is usually allowed to go unchallenged. It is, however, a very limited statement about the purposes of business
Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn in The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966)

It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities
Josiah Charles Stamp 1880-1941, English Economist and President of the Bank of England

We may pretend that we are basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise
Terry Hands 1941-, British theatre and opera director

The market has no morality
Michael Heseltine 1933-, British conservative politician

Ethics is not definable, is not implementable, because it is not conscious; it involves not only our thinking, but also our feeling
Valdemar W. Setzer, Brazilian anthropologist

Being good is good business
Anita Roddick 1942-, British founder of The Body Shop

The advantages of having decisions made by groups are often lost because of powerful psychological pressures that arise when the members work closely together, share the same set of values and, above all, face a crisis situation that puts everyone under intense stress
Irving L. Janis, behavioral scientist, in Groupthink: The Desperate Drive for Consensus at Any Cost (1971)

If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization
Robert Noyce, inventor of the silicon chip

The time is always right to do what is right
Martin Luther King 1929-1968, American leader of civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize winner

Quotes about Strategy

There is always a better strategy than the one you have; you just haven't thought of it yet
Sir Brian Pitman, former CEO of Lloyds TSB, Harvard Business Review, April 2003

Unless a variety of opinions are laid before us, we have no opportunity of selection, but are bound of necessity to adopt the particular view which may have been brought forward
Herodotus, 5th century BC, Greek historian


However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results
Sir Winston Churchill 1874-1965, English statesman

The processes used to arrive at the total strategy are typically fragmented, evolutionary, and largely intuitive
James Quinn in Strategic Change: Logical Incrementalism, 1978

In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell
Jack Welch in Winning, 2005

How many senior executives discuss the crucial distinction between competitive strategy at the level of a business and competitive strategy at the level of an entire company?
C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel, in their article: The core competence of the corporation, 1990

What's the use of running if you are not on the right road
German proverb

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me
Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, sixteenth American president

Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things
Miyamoto Musashi 1584-1645, legendary Japanese swordsman

Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances
Sun Tzu c. 490 BC, Chinese military strategist

Knowledge Management Quotes

The single greatest challenge facing managers in the developed countries of the word is to raise the productivity of knowledge and service works
Peter F. Drucker 1909-2005, American management guru, in Harvard Business Review Nov-Dec 1991

Imagination is more important than knowledge
Albert Einstein 1879-1955; German-born American theoretical physicist

The soft stuff is always harder than the hard stuff
Roger Enrico, Vice Chairman of PepsiCo, referring to areas like HRM as opposed to quantitative factors in Fortune, November 27th, 1995

Innovations are created primarily by investment in intangibles. When such investments are commercially successful, and are protected by patents or first-mover advantages, they are transformed into tangible assets creating corporate value and growth
Baruch Lev, Intellectual Capital guru in Intangibles (2001)

It would be hard to find a corporate annual report in my country that does not state "Our most important asset is our people"- yet our accounting rules make it literary impossible to reflect this on the balance sheet, and we have just completed a decade in which business after business in the US has flagrantly ignored its reality in part because this is not the way we "keep score"
John Diebold, Chairman of consulting firm Diebold

Companies...have a hard time distinguishing between the cost of paying people and the value of investing in them
Thomas A. Stewart 1948-, US journalist and author in Intellectual Capital (1997)

Of central importance is the changing nature of competitive advantage - not based on market position, size and power as in times past, but on the incorporation of knowledge into all of an organization's activities
Leif Edvinsson, Swedish Intellectual Capital guru in Corporate Longitude (2002)

There is less to fear from outside competition then from inside inefficiency, miscalculation, lack of knowledge. Beat your competitors with the knowledge edge! Train your staff!
Anonymous

A person who graduated yesterday and stops studying today is uneducated tomorrow
Anonymous

The store of wisdom does not consist of hard coins which keep their shape as they pass from hand to hand; it consists of ideas and doctrines whose meanings change with the minds that entertain them
John Plamenatz

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted
Albert Einstein 1879-1955; German-born American theoretical physicist

I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand
Confucius 551 BCE – 479 BCE, ancient Chinese thinker and philosopher

Knowledge is power
Sir Francis Bacon 1561 -1626, English philosopher, statesman, essayist and scientist

Quotes on Decision-making and Valuation

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted
Albert Einstein 1879-1955, German-born American theoretical physicist

Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves
Andrew Carnegie 1835-1919, Scottish industrialist

Uncertainty is not a result of ignorance or the partiality of human knowledge, but is a characteristic of the world itself
M. Taylor in The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture, 2001

Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred
William of Ockham 1285–1349, English Franciscan friar and philosopher, from Ockham, a small village in Surrey

For every complex problem there is a simple solution that is wrong
G.B. Shaw 1856-1950, Irish critic and poet

He who owns a hundred sheep must fight with fifty wolves
Plutarchus 50-120, Greek philosopher

Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832, German poet, novelist and dramatist

However good our futures research may be, we shall never be able to escape from the ultimate dilemma that all our knowledge is about the past, and all our decisions are about the future
Ian Wilson, American scenario planning expert and strategy consultant

Do not count your chicken before they stopped breeding
Aesopues 550BC, Thracian poet

Earnings can be pliable as putty when a charlatan heads the company reporting them
Warren Buffet 1930-, American Investment Entrepreneur

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads: One path leads to despair and hopelessness, and the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly
Woody Allen 1935-, American author, director, producer and writer

Erroneous assumptions can be disastrous
Peter F. Drucker 1909-2005, American management guru

You can analyse the past, but you have to design the future
Edward de Bono 1933-, Thinking consultant and originator of the Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749-1832, German writer, poet, humanist, and scientist

Opportunities multiply as they are seized
Sun Tzu  c. 544 – 496 BC, ancient Chinese military strategist

Sunday, May 26, 2013

A sex symbol becomes a thing...

Quotation by Marilyn Monroe 


 A sex symbol becomes a thing.... I just hate to be a thing .

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962), U.S. actor. As quoted in Ms. magazine, p. 40 (August 1972). The beautiful movie star was considered her era's prime example of a "sex symbol.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Transitions to democracy and free market economies require patience and persistence.


From Karkheh to Rhine...By Majid Entezami
"Transitions to democracy and free market economies require patience and persistence. In the United States, we became a newly independent state in 1776 and for the past 222 years, our democracy has been a work in progress. It took us more than 10 years to draft a constitution, 89 years to rid our nation of slavery, 144 years to give our women the vote and 188 years to make all our citizens equal under the law. Democracy does not end with a constitution and the right to vote. It is a never-ending struggle that we must grapple with every day."
[Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator and wife of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, speaking in Ukraine in November 1997 on her tour to some of the former Soviet Republics-Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Ukraine.]
We, iranian people, have a long history of monarchy and kingdom [which some of us love it very much and are proud of it!]. Authoritarianism is now in our blood, hard to get rid of. We may reflect some selfish behaviors which may don't seem much of a bad thing for us. It may become a very common experience to hear someone call an iranian [opposition] radio or TV discussing about democracy, speaking after all people and calling for "The Great Shah" to bring back democracy to our country!!!!

About one hundred years ago we had a sad-ending effort to achieve freedom and democracy. Azerbaijani generals, "Sattar khan" and "Bagher khan", were among our National heros fighted for freedom. Sattar Khan, who was heading the rebels from Ayirsiz district of Tabriz, capital of Eastern Azarbaijan province, in 1907, had become favourite general of all his fighters because of his heroism and courage. After Board Assembly shooting incident, 40 thousand armed forces of Shah attacked Tabriz, the cradle of Constitutional Revolution. High Military Council was established under the leadership of Sattar khan in June 1908. By April 1909, Tabriz rebels lost huge number of their fighters in driving out the armed forces of the enemy from Tabriz. Taking into account Sattar Khan and Bagher Khan's heroism at this fight, Sattar Khan was honoured by the title of "Sardar-e Melli" (National General) and Bagir khan "Salar-e Melli" (National Leader) by the order of the Assembly... Many freedom-seeking fights occured that year and ... afterall Constitutional Revoloution had an unhappy-ending in Iran. Democracy story in Iran is a very sad but instructive story. As I quoted at the first of this post, democracy needs time, patience and persistence specially for a nation like us whose fights for democracy are two lines out of a huge monarchic-tyrannic history book. It is time-consuming process but we should be patient and consistent in this way.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them


"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." Mark Twain

I have been tagged by Negar recently to talk about 5 books meant most for me. It is pretty tough question for me as I really don't have much of a memory specially when it comes to books and movies...

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Marketing Quotes

The purest treasure mortal times can afford is a spotless reputation
William Shakespeare 1564-1616, English dramatist

Now we understand that the most important thing we do is market the product. We've come around to saying that Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool
Phil Knight, CEO Nike

Human Resource Managment

The only vital value an enterprise has is the experience, skills, innovativeness and insights of its people
Leif Edvinsson, Swedish Intellectual Capital guru in Corporate Longitude (2002)

True motivation comes from achievement, personal development, job satisfaction, and recognition
Frederick Herzberg 1923-2000, US psychologist
 

Friday, May 10, 2013

Program & Project Management Quotes

Program & Project Management Quotes

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things
Machiavelli 1446-1507, Italian statesman and philosopher

The real problem is what to do with problem solvers after the problem is solved
Gay Talese 1932-, American (Italian-born) journalist

Quotes on Communication and Skills


When I am at Milan, I do as they do at Milan; but when I go to Rome, I do as Rome does
St. Augustine 354-430, Roman theologist and philosopher

Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret
Ambrose Bierce

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it
Albert Einstein 1879-1955; German-born American theoretical physicist

Investment And Finance Quotes

In some mergers there truly are synergies - though often times the acquirer pays too much for them - but at other times the cost and revenue benefits that are projected prove illusory. Of one thing, however, be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked
Warren Buffet 1930-, American investment entrepreneur

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

The 14 Management Principles from Henri Fayol (1841-1925)

The 14 Management Principles from Henri Fayol (1841-1925) are:
  1. Division of Work. Specialization allows the individual to build up experience, and to continuously improve his skills. Thereby he can be more productive.
  2. Authority. The right to issue commands, along with which must go the balanced responsibility for its function.

Monday, May 06, 2013

Quotes on Change and Organizations

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two

Octavio Paz 1914-1998, Mexican poet and essayist

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit

Henry Brooks Adams 1838-1919, American writer and historian

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change

Monday, April 29, 2013

The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal


Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever:

The money required to eradicate hunger for everyone in the world has been estimated at $30 billion a year. IT IS A HUGE SUM OF MONEY... about as much as the world spends on the military every eight days.

Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is...

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires ranking of the world's 100 wealthiest individuals, the richest people on the planet got even richer in 2012, adding $241 billion to their collective net worth: http://goo.gl/oKAJ5

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

What is Body Mass Index?(BMI)

BMI Calculator is used to calculate your body mass index and determine if you are at a healthy weight for your height. Use this calculator for adults, 20 years old and older.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Science and Human Life"by Bertrand Russell (1955)


Science and the techniques to which it has given rise have changed human life during the last hundred and fifty years more than it had been changed since men took to agriculture, and the changes that are being wrought by science continue at an increasing speed.


Studies Prove That These Drugs Make Your Brain Stop Working

Drugs commonly taken for a variety of common medical conditions negatively affect your brain, causing long term cognitive impairment. These drugs, called anticholinergics, block acetylcholine, a nervous system neurotransmitter.
They include such common over-the-counter brands as Benadryl, Dramamine, Excedrin PM, Nytol, Sominex, Tylenol PM, and Unisom.
Other anticholinergic drugs, such as Paxil, Detrol, Demerol and Elavil are available only by prescription.
Physorg reports:
"Researchers ... conducted a six-year observational  study, evaluating 1,652 Indianapolis area African-Americans over the age of 70 who had normal cognitive function when the study began ... '[T]aking one anticholinergic significantly increased an individual's risk of developing mild cognitive impairment and taking two of these drugs doubled this risk.'"
 Many view over-the-counter (OTC) drugs as safe because they don't require a prescription. Well nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, many OTC drugs were previously carefully monitored prescription drugs. Many people are not aware that while I was in college in the 1970s, I worked as a full time pharmacy apprentice and helped sell drugs to patients all day long.
Motrin was the first non-salicylate prescription NSAID. Now it is a popular OTC ibuprofen option. Similarly, anti-ulcer drugs like Tagamet, Zantec, and Prilosec used to be carefully controlled. Now they can all be easily purchased in a smaller "OTC strength" that nearly doubles the number of pills required to equal the prescription dose.
Just because a drug is available without a prescription does not make it any less dangerous. It is still a chemical, which in no way, shape, or form treats the cause of the problem and can lead to complications that can seriously injure, if not kill, you or someone you love.
So this is clearly important information that can help you or someone you love reduce your risk of dementia as you get older. Based on the findings of this study, I would strongly recommend that seniors in particular avoid all anticholinergic drugs, like Benadryl (generic is diphenhydramine) which is a pervasive and commonly used in virtually all of the OTC sleeping pills.Researchers will continue studying the matter to see whether anticholinergic-induced cognitive impairment can be reversed, but don't hold your breath. Avoidance is really the best solution.What are Anticholinergic Drugs?Anticholinergic drugs block a nervous system neurotransmitter called acetylcholine. Those suffering from Alzheimer's disease typically have a marked shortage of acetylcholine.Anticholinergic drugs are available both over-the-counter and by prescription, as medications used for a variety of symptoms can have this effect. Examples include night-time pain relievers, antihistamines, and other sleep aids, such as:
Excedrin PM
Tylenol PM
Nytol
Sominex
Unisom
Benadryl
Dramamine
Prescription drugs with anticholinergic effects include certain antidepressants, medications to control incontinence, and certain narcotic pain relievers.
Examples of prescription meds in these categories include:
Paxil
Detrol
Demerol
Elavil
A Special Note for Aspartame 'Reactors'
Many of the drugs listed here, as well as a long list of additional ones, contain diphenhydramine. As an important side note, you need to beware that chewable tablets and rapidly disintegrating tablets that contain diphenhydramine may be sweetened with aspartame.
If you have the genetic disease phenylketonuria (PKU), you must be particularly careful to avoid these types of drugs and all other types of aspartame-sweetened foods and beverages in order to prevent mental retardation.
But many other people also suffer detrimental health effects from aspartame, so you should know that this is yet another potential source of this toxic sweetener.
Anticholinergic Drugs Increases Dementia in the Elderly
I've previously written about the health dangers of many of these individual drugs. Paxil, for example, is an addictive antidepressant that is well known to increase the risk of suicide in children and teens. It is also known to increase violent behavior.
Benadryl and Sominex have previously been found to cause hallucinations in the elderly, and a number of the drugs on the list also promote dental decay.
The results of this study indicate that drugs with anticholinergic effects may be yet another piece of the puzzle that might explain the sharp rise in dementia and cognitive decline.
According to the University of Michigan, dementia strikes about 50 percent of people who reach the age of 85. Of those, about 60 percent go on to develop Alzheimer's disease.
In this study, the researchers tracked the intake of anticholinergic drugs and monitored the cognitive abilities of 1,652 African-American seniors, aged 70 and older, for six years. All of the participants had normal cognitive function at the outset of the study.
Fifty-three percent of the participants used a 'possible anticholinergic,' and 11 percent used a 'definitive anticholinergic' drug.


They found that those who took drugs classified as 'definite anticholinergics' had a four times higher incidence of cognitive impairment.

In those who were not carriers of the specific gene, APOE ε4 allele, the risk was over seven times higher. (The APOE ε4 gene is known to influence many neurological diseases, and is considered a high risk factor for Alzheimer's.)
Taking two of these drugs further increased the risk of cognitive impairment.
PhysOrg reports:
"Simply put, we have confirmed that anticholinergics, something as seemingly benign as a medication for inability to get a good night's sleep or for motion sickness, can cause or worsen cognitive impairment, specifically long-term mild cognitive impairment which involves gradual memory loss.
As a geriatrician I tell my Wishard Healthy Aging Brain Center patients not to take these drugs and I encourage all older adults to talk with their physicians about each and every one of the medications they take," said Malaz Boustani, M.D., IU School of Medicine associate professor of medicine, Regenstrief Institute investigator and IU Center for Aging Research center scientist."
Even More Reasons to Ditch the Sleep Meds
In 2008, Americans filled more than 56 million prescriptions for sleeping pills and spent more than $600 million on over-the-counter sleep aids. But anticholinergic sleep medications in particular may be causing far more harm than good, especially long term, without providing any benefit at all.
In a recent article, CBC News reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has had data for 15 years which shows that over-the-counter sleep aids like Tylenol PM and Excedrin PM do not offer any significant benefit to patients.
There's no explanation for why the FDA took 15 years to evaluate the industry's research, but upon final analysis "the data suggests the combination products are statistically better than a placebo but not by much," CBC News reported.
I guess it can be chalked up as yet another vibrant example of how industry research frequently amounts to little more than corporate wishes and good PR fodder.
Another analysis of sleeping pill studies from 2007 (financed by the National Institutes of Health) found that sleeping pills like Ambien, Lunesta, and Sonata reduced the average time to go to sleep by just under 13 minutes compared with fake pills -- hardly a major improvement.
Yet, the participants believed they had slept longer, by up to one hour, when taking the pills.
This may actually be a sign of a condition called anterograde amnesia, which causes trouble with forming memories. When people wake up after taking sleeping pills, they may, in fact, simply forget that they had been unable to sleep!
You would be far better off putting your money toward authentic solutions to help you sleep than on sleeping pills, as it's now clear that they do next to nothing to help you sleep – in fact, they may actually make it more difficult for you to get a good night's rest naturally – and may significantly increase your risk of dementia.
Sleeping Pills are NOT a Safe Solution for Sleepless Nights
Please understand that resorting to sleep medications is risky business, and that these pills do not address the underlying reasons why you're having trouble sleeping in the first place.
In addition to the long-term problems already discussed, there are other serious, not to mention bizarre, risks involved.
For starters, these pills are notorious for being addictive, which means that once you want to stop taking them, you'll likely suffer withdrawal symptoms that could be worse than your initial insomnia. Some, such as Ambien, may also become less effective when taken for longer than two weeks, which means you may find yourself needing ever higher dosages.
Ambien may also make you want to eat while you're asleep -- and I don't mean sneaking down to grab a piece of fruit. The sleep eating can include bizarre foods such as buttered cigarettes, salt sandwiches, and raw bacon.
Sleeping pills, and again Ambien in particular, are also known to increase your risk of getting into a traffic accident. Ambien actually ranks among the top 10 drugs found in the bloodstreams of impaired drivers, according to some state toxicology labs.
Among the elderly, using sleeping pills may increase the risk of nighttime falls and injuries, and anyone who takes them may find they wake up feeling drowsy if the effects of the drug have not worn off yet.
You're far better of finding safe and natural solutions that will actually address the underlying causes of your sleepless nights instead of just cover up the resulting symptoms.
How to Get a Good Night's Sleep Without Dangerous Drugs
If you are having trouble sleeping, please do not ignore the problem or simply wait for it to go away. Quality sleep just as important as your need for food, water, and pure air -- and there are very simple methods to help you get yours.
Please read my comprehensive sleep guide 33 Secret's to a Good Night's Sleep for my full set of recommendations, but to start, make certain you are exercising regularly.
A Stanford University Medical School study found that after 16 weeks in a moderate-intensity exercise program, subjects were able to fall asleep about 15 minutes earlier and sleep about 45 minutes longer at night. However, don't exercise too close to bedtime or it may keep you awake.
Stress is another major reason why people have trouble sleeping, which is why I suggest you start to wind down from your day at least an hour before your bedtime (but preferably two or more).
Calming activities such as journaling, meditating, sipping herbal tea, washing your face, using the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or reading a book may soothe your mind and help you unwind. Be sure your phone, email, and television are all off during this time.
Make sure your sleeping environment is comfortable and conducive to sleep.
This includes keeping the temperature cool, adding in some white noise if you need it and making sure your room is pitch-black. If there is even the tiniest bit of light in the room it can disrupt your circadian rhythm and your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin. For this reason, I highly recommend adding room-darkening drapes to your bedroom, or if this is not possible wearing an eye mask to block out any stray light.
Again, by following my 33 Secrets for a Good Night's Sleep, the majority of people will be able to fall asleep and stay asleep. However, for times when sleep is especially difficult, these eight natural remedies may also help and are far safer than sleeping pills of any kind.
Source: mercola.com