Google does it again.
The Google phone, perhaps "G-phone" is another transformational innovation in this industry driven by the most consistent innovator of the last decade. The standard business model in the mobile phone industry has been to effectively give the phones away in return for...
Henry was not the first.
It is generally accepted that Henry Ford was the first to automate production along a line, dramatically increasing productivity and reducing costs as a result. Not the case. There were remarkable instances of mass production much earlier, the most interesting and...
Parable of the bungled baggage.
Customers remember the best and the worst. When you absolutely "nail" it, they remember, and when you absolutely "stuff" it, they also remember, but guess which one they remember when you do both. The parable of the bungled baggage, and variations of it is a story...
Machine utilisation & efficiency, only half the story.
Machine utilisation and machine efficiency are probably the most commonly used KPI's used to measure the performance of factory management. Both serve a purpose, but they do not by any means describe the "whole". The factor that completes the picture is "flow", the...
Green is now mainstream
Like it or not, "Green" is now mainstream, and the market, not the motley bunch of politicians, bureaucrats, activists, and assorted hangers-on who showed up to the failed Copenhagen party, will determine what happens. Make no mistake, this is a seismic change in...
The siren song of services.
Manufacturing is fundamentally important to a thriving, vibrant economy, and the notion that the economy can evolve and grow based on services alone is nonsense. If we ever needed evidence, just look at the impact of the GFC on the "service" economies compared to...
Risk and reward of social media.
I wonder at the success of social media, the apparent contradiction between the convention driven and often stilted behavior that occurs face to face, and the lack of inhibition displayed on social media. Perhaps this is because the social media offers the illusion...
What is a brand?
A brand is the expression of consumers equity in a product offering. This offering is a mix of tangible and intangible factors, a bundle of benefits, each being inter-related to the others in ways that may vary depending on the differing consumers. Brand strength =...
Responsiveness and responsibility go together.
In a small business, every action has someone responsible for it, whereas in a large organisation , or worse, a public bureaucracy, nobody has responsibility for the dumb things they do, they just become an automatically imposed "rule" that carries the sanction of...
Successful alliances manage the dissimilarities.
Alliances form because organizations have similarities, and commonalities that promise synergy. However, most alliances fail because they fail to manage the areas if dissimilarity. Leo Tolstoy remarked that happy marriages were the result of the manner in which...