IdeaPaint: Turn Your Entire Office Into a Whiteboard October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in new products and technologies, personal productivity.Tags: new products and technologies, personal productivity
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Now, you just *KNOW* I’m going to do this.
IdeaPaint is a paint that turns any paintable surface into a dry-erase board.
Besides being able to brainstorm on almost every inch of your office, the paint is half the cost of whiteboard and better-performing–you can leave marks up indefinitely and they won’t stain the wall. For the green wonks out there, you should also note that one other benefit is that you’re not incurring all the carbon involved in manufacturing and shipping a whiteboard.
Read FastCompany’s write up here, which includes a video demo of the product.
Generator in Montgomery County, MD Turns Plastic Waste into Oil October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in green business, new products and technologies.Tags: green business, new products and technologies
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The ground-breaking Envion Oil Generator (EOG) gave its first public performance at the Montgomery County Solid Waste Transfer Station in Derwood, Maryland recently. The EOG can be fed almost any petroleum-based waste plastic and will convert it into synthetic light to medium oil for less than USD$10 per barrel. As with crude oil, the synthetic oil can then be processed into commercial fuels or even back into plastic.
Read more here.
New ‘Green’ Concrete Delivers Win-Win for Industry and the Planet October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in green business, new products and technologies.Tags: green business, new products and technologies
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Concrete is the most prevalent building material on the planet, but it does come at a price – around 5-8 percent of all human-generated atmospheric CO2 comes from the concrete industry. A culprit is Portland cement, the binding agent in concrete. Production of Portland cement is currently exceeding 2.6 billion tons per year worldwide and growing at 5 percent annually.
A greener alternative, inorganic polymer concrete (geopolymer), utilizes ‘fly ash’, one of the most abundant industrial by-products on earth, as a substitute for Portland cement.
Geopolymer concrete has a number of benefits. It has the potential to substantially curb CO2 emissions. It can also produce a more durable infrastructure capable of lasting hundreds of years, instead of tens. And by utilizing the fly ash, it can conserve hundreds of thousands of acres currently used for disposal of coal combustion products, and protect our water ways from fly ash ‘contamination’, too.
Read more here.
Uncovering Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in personal productivity.Tags: personal productivity
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Steve Jobs does not sell computers; he sells an experience. The same holds true for his presentations that are meant to inform, educate, and entertain. An Apple presentation has all the elements of a great theatrical production—a great script, heroes and villains, stage props, breathtaking visuals, and one moment that makes the price of admission well worth it. Business Week’s Carmine Gallo recently wrote a book about Jobs’ presentation style. Here he reveals the five elements of every Steve Jobs presentation. Incorporate these elements into your own presentations to sell your product or ideas the Steve Jobs way.
Read the five elements here.
Real Time Simulation of Global CO2 Emissions October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in green business.Tags: green business
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Global warming. The worlwide scientific community is virtually unanimous in its agreement that climate change is happening now, and necessary steps must be taken to lessen the effects (flood, pestilence, plague, apocalypse). So it’s startling to see a real-time simulation of carbon dioxide emissions by country, especially when paired with birth and death rates. How is overpopulation affecting our collective CO2 output? Look at the screen caps in this FastCompany article, then click through to Breathing Earth to see animation that gives a feed for the full impact of carbon dioxide-heavy nations (United States, China, India) and for other interesting country facts.
Lean Methods for Aerospace and Health Care in Ontario October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in aerospace, automotive, healthcare, lean.Tags: aerospace, automotive, healthcare, lean
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On his Lean Blog, Mark Graban points out an article from Canada about how Toyota (an automaker) manages to be influential to Bombardier (maker of planes) and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario (a fixer of people).
A sample of the results from St. Joseph’s:
Since the new system was implemented, St. Joe’s wait times have fallen on average by a couple of hours per patient, Dr. Smith said. Roughly 90% of St. Joe’s patients now have a wait time of less than four hours, as opposed only 50% before, he added.
See the original article here.
See Mark’s analysis and comments here.
Lean at Windsor’s Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in healthcare, lean.Tags: healthcare, lean
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Mark Graban points to a video from Hotel-Dieu Grace Hospital (HDGH) in Windsor, Ontario Canada about their Lean effort, the video is part of their main Lean page.
See Mark’s post here.
Hotel-Dieu Grace is a member of the Healthcare Value Leaders Network.
Dow Solar Cells Nearly Invisible on Rooftops October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in Creativity & Innovation, green business, new products and technologies.Tags: Creativity & Innovation, green business, new products and technologies
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Dow has worked out how to make solar panels into rooftop shingles and also to blend them in with a house’s existing roof. The cost is about forty percent cheaper than the roof top solar tiles reported last year. Because they are built into the conventional shingle design, there’s no real specialized knowledge required to install. That means that weekend warriors and your average roofer can put these up with the same whack of a hammer and tack nails as they do right now.
Read more here.
County Exec Calls Six Sigma a Survival Tool October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in economy, six sigma.Tags: economy, six sigma
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Chris Collins has embraced Six Sigma both in the private sector and in his current role as executive of New York’s Erie County. And he said he believes the business discipline can be a lifeline for companies during tough economic times.
Lean Six Sigma is probably the best survival tool there is. And someday as your competitors go out of business, I have a saying: If you’re the last restaurant in town, you’re going to be busy Saturday night.
Erm, I’m not quite sure what he is driving at there, but read the article anyway here.
Nine Productivity Lessons from the First Two Months of Parenthood October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in personal productivity.Tags: personal productivity
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New father and creator of the Lateral Action blog, Mark McGuinness, recently shared some of the lessons he’s learned from road-testing his newly-developed productivity system (written in e-book form) in a high-demand, low-sleep environment. Extreme conditions, he points out, are great for revealing truly essential behaviours, so most of these lessons should hold true for ‘ordinary’ life as well.
As a newly minted father myself, I read Mark’s post with great interest. He has some great tips that anyone can use, parent or not.
Read his post here.
Nano Structure of Butterfly Wings Could Lead to Better Solar Cells October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in Creativity & Innovation, green business, new products and technologies.Tags: Creativity & Innovation, green, new products and technologies
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Researchers have developed a technique to replicate biological structures, such as butterfly wings, on a nano scale. They focused on the tiny nano-sized photonic structures that are found in the insects’ cuticle, and which give insects their iridescence – that slightly metallic sheen that also seems to shift in color depending on the viewing angle. By replicating the biotemplate of butterfly wings, the researchers hope to be able to make various optically-active structures, such as optical diffusers or coverings that maximize solar cell absorption.
Read more here.
Medvedev Pushes Russia to Go Green October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in green business.Tags: green business
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Last week, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev spoke of a “depressing situation.” Russian factories use up four or five times more energy than their Western counterparts. In addition, district heating systems are profoundly wasteful, with much of the heat being lost before it even reaches consumers. In mid-September, Medvedev wrote a much-read article in which he stated that “the energy efficiency of the majority of our companies is shamefully low.”
These days, Moscow’s rich and powerful are learning to acquaint themselves with a new set of priorities—those of the man who took office in May 2008. Medvedev is now hell-bent on modernizing the Russian economy, an undertaking which has implications for the oil and gas industry. The Russian president wants to make his country a superpower in energy efficiency.
Read the full story here.
Profitable Manufacturers Focus on Talent Management October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in manufacturing.Tags: manufacturing
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In order to maintain profitability and stay competitive in the future, manufacturers need to embrace new and progressive talent strategies, according to a new study released by Deloitte, The Manufacturing Institute and Oracle. The study shows that surveyed manufacturers, especially the most profitable, rank employing a top-notch workforce high on their priority list.
However, the study also found that many companies still rely on traditional approaches and old tactics when managing and developing their employees, and it furthered revealed that progressive tactics have failed to gain traction.
Read the full article here.
Will Lounge-Like Office Furniture Inspire Big Ideas? October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in Creativity & Innovation, personal productivity.Tags: creativity, personal productivity
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PearsonLloyd, the British design firm, has a knack for making boring design challenges sexy; one of their greatest hits has been their nightclub-ish interior spaces for Virgin Atlantic.
Our attitudes towards work–and what “work” actually consists of–have undergone a rapid shift, as companies have begun emphasizing the value of ideas and innovation. It’s only natural that office-furniture companies such as Bene–and also Vitra, Herman Miller, and Steelcase–have followed suit.
Check out the pics of the work spaces and links to others here. Could you see yourself being more productive and creative?
Innovation Inside the Box October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in personal productivity.Tags: personal productivity
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Eric Ries recounts a very bad meeting in his Lessons Learned blog. His description of the disfunctional event sounds like many of the meetings I have been in. I’ll bet it will sound familiar to you, too. Do you have the right data to make the decisions you need to make in a meeting, for example? He uncovers some common problems, root causes, and suggestions.
Read Eric’s thought-provoking post here.
Report: Rising Costs on Manufacturers Threaten Job Growth, Competitiveness October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in economy, manufacturing.Tags: economy, manufacturing
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A new handbook produced in by The Manufacturing Institute, the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI and the U.S. Department of Commerce, concludes that U.S. manufacturing is being challenged by increasing costs including corporate taxes, health care and pensions, regulations and energy and tort litigation.
Manufacturing continues to generate more economic activity per dollar of production than any other business sector in the country. And manufacturing drives innovation by conducting nearly half of all research and development and creating the bulk of technology in the nation.
Read the article here.
How to Calculate Total Landed Cost October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in manufacturing, strategy, supply chain.Tags: manufacturing, outsourcing, supply chain
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An occasional collaborator of mine, Larry Loucka (a brilliant supply chain consultant, by the way), recently blogged and listed all the many elements of total landed cost. This is one of the better lists I have seen, and I wish more business leaders used it in considering their offshoring strategies. In many cases I have personally seen, decisions to move a product to China, or source a product from India, have delivered negative financial results. In some of these cases, the companies don’t even know it, simply because they are not adding up all the factors.
I am not anti-globalization, per se. I would simply prefer that leaders do all their homework before they make a shortsighted, “me too” decision.
See the list of Total Landed Cost elements here, and see how bad the problem is according to the Aberdeen Group Global Supply Chain Benchmark Report here.
Dean Kamen Reinvents Coke’s Soda Fountain October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in Creativity & Innovation, Uncategorized.Tags: Creativity & Innovation
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Dean Kamen, the maverick inventor behind the Segway and the first wearable insulin pump for diabetics, had teamed up with Coca-Cola on the beverage giant’s much-touted, next-generation soda fountain: the Freestyle.
Why was Kamen busying himself on a soft-drink dispenser? Kamen says he saw in Coca-Cola, and in the Freestyle project specifically, a way to advance two of his pet projects. For years, Kamen has been the driving force behind FIRST, which is aimed at encouraging kids’ interest in science and technology. Coke became a FIRST sponsor six years ago. That’s how Kamen got to know Nilang Patel, the head of Coca-Cola’s research lab.
In early 2005, Patel’s team started thinking about how to reinvent the company’s fountain business, which controlled 75% of the market but hadn’t changed much in decades. Knowing Kamen’s reputation as a clever inventor, Patel approached him. Kamen saw Coke as a potential future partner in his plan to deliver potable water to kids in the developing world, his other world-changing project. The Freestyle project uses technologies originally developed for chemotherapy. All parties see this as a “win-win”.
Read the full article here.
Harvard Study of Corporate Silos October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in culture, leadership, workforce.Tags: culture, leadership, workforce
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In her Lean Reflections blog, Karen Wilhelm points to new research that describes the strength of functional silos within organizations. We know that organizations have silos that hamper the development of a leaner enterprise, but is there a way to quantify and understand what’s happening within and across divisions and subgroups?
Harvard Business School postdoctoral fellow Adam M. Kleinbaum, and professors Toby E. Stuart and Michael L. Tushman took on the challenge by analyzing server logs of e-mails and calendars, publishing their findings in a working paper, “Communication (and Coordination?) in a Modern, Complex Organization.”
“Two people who are in the same SBU, function, and office interact about 1,000 times more frequently than two people at the company who are in different business units, functions, and offices, but are otherwise similar. Practically speaking, this means that there is very little interaction across these boundaries.”
Read the post here.
New Measure for Carbon Footprint Inside Supply Chains October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in green business, supply chain.Tags: green business, supply chain
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The Green Supply Chain Initiative of the World Resources Institute (WRI) will develop and deploy a new set of accounting tools to measure the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of a company’s supply chain and of the products that are sold to customers. The project, which is funded by Walmart, also involves creating a web tool that will bring clarity to the various environmental certifications given to products.
Read the full article here.
Florida County Manufacturers Going Lean October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in Lean Thinking, manufacturing.Tags: Lean Thinking, manufacturing
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The Ocala Business Journal (Florida) reports, “It’s lean times for Marion County manufacturers and they say that’s good news,” as they are trimming “errors, inefficiency and waste from the production process.” In a broader perspective, the US “remains the No. 1 manufacturing country,” but “in recent years there’s been a steady exporting of manufacturing jobs to overseas markets where labor and operating costs are cheaper and regulatory burdens aren’t as stringent as in the U.S.”
To compete, notes the article, “U.S. manufacturers must operate as efficiently as possible.” Because of the international competition in manufacturing, the Business Journal says, “many in the manufacturing industry are seeing increased interest in going lean.”
We’re not on a level playing field with other countries. We’ve been able to combat it…with improvements in the manufacturing process…constantly trying to keep costs down to compete worldwide. Lean principles will bring jobs back to the U.S.
Read the full story here.
Why Sustainability Is the Key Driver of Innovation October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in green business.Tags: green business
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An article in the Harvard Business Review reports that executives falsely believe they must choose between the largely social perks of manufacturing sustainable products the financial burdens that accompany those perks, according to business strategy experts.
Most organizations progress through five stages on the road to achieving sustainability. Read the synopsis in APICS e-News here.
Collaborative Innovation: Leaders Discuss Best Practices for Manufacturers, Retailers October 30, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in Creativity & Innovation.Tags: Creativity & Innovation
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Collaborative innovation — a strategy in which manufacturers and retailers partner to create compelling consumer product and service offerings-can help manufacturers and retailers increase their sales and profitability by 15% to 20%.
At a Leadership in Retail and Consumer Products Forum on September 30, 2009, executives at Kalypso, Coca-Cola, Aerosoles and Unilever joined a panel discussion and explored best practices for consumer packaged goods companies, as well as strategies overcoming the roadblocks to successful collaborative innovation. Four key lessons emerged.
Read the full article here.
GM To Shut Down Saturn Brand October 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in automotive, economy, Lean Thinking.Tags: automotive, economy, Lean Thinking
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GM's Bob Lutz: Kiss my Astra.
At the beginning of October, news hit the streets that Saturn, GM’s experiment of “A new kind of car company. A new kind of car.” had come to an end. Saturn was unique. It was lean. It was collaborative. It was innovative. All this, for a while. Over time, GM failed to invest and back the Saturn brand. As an owner of two Saturns myself, it was disappointing to see GM water everything down. GM senior leadership’s lack of investment, commitment, and vision were a slow death for Saturn. The deal by former racing legend Roger Penske was a longshot, and in the end, it failed.
“Audio 5S”: Airline Cockpit Chatter Violations Cited In Six Crashes October 12, 2009
Posted by Jeff Fuchs in 5S & Visual Management, Lean Tools & Techniques.Tags: Lean Tools & Techniques
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USA Today reports that “airline pilots regularly violate federal law by chit-chatting or joking during critical phases of flight.” A review by the paper found that the NTSB cited “sterile cockpit rule” violations of this rule in six crashes since 2004. “More than half – 11 out of 20 – of the cockpit recording transcripts released in serious accidents during the past decade contain evidence of violations, USA TODAY found.”
Typically, when we think of workplace organization, we think of a physical space. However, as this article makes clear, audio clutter interferes with the aural cues required of an organized workplace, just as visual clutter can reduce the visual “signal to noise ratio” in a work area.
Read the full article here.
