Worldwide, managers are setting SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely) goals, expecting these to make this "the year" to revitalize or transform their businesses. Instead, most of these professionals should retire SMART, or at least rescind its status of standard operating procedure.
Will a robot run my organization in 10 years? Maybe, even though a chief executive's job, which requires a fair amount of problem-solving and creativity, is probably less susceptible to automation than middle-skill jobs such as machining and bookkeeping. At the same time, new research shows that most jobs have some proportion of tasks that can be substituted by workplace automation. Including a CEO's job.
The Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant, part of the China National Nuclear Corp., has deployed a system that uses passive ultrahigh-frequency RFID tags and readers to identify the locations of thousands of workers, according to zone, as well as help locate individuals in the event of an emergency and prevent anyone from entering unauthorized areas.
The people who manage a company's supply chain determine what a company is made of - or at least what its stuff is made of. It's hard to imagine a more important role. And it's a difficult one.
ManpowerGroup's annual Talent Shortage Survey, reveals that 32 percent of U.S. employers report difficulties filling job vacancies due to talent shortages. This marks a decrease of 8 percent, falling from 40 percent in 2014. Globally, the percentage of employers experiencing difficulties continued to rise, increasing from 36 percent in 2014 to 38 percent in 2015.
For the past five years, the Pyhäsalmi mine in central Finland has been using passive high-frequency RFID tags to record when workers enter or leave a mine shaft. Since that time, says Kimmo Luukkonen, the mine's managing director, the technology has improved management's visibility into who is underground and when, and hence has increased its safety program's efficiency and accuracy. The company plans to expand that RFID solution to monitor who carries explosive detonators into the mine.
More than 4,400 ships bring nearly $400bn worth of goods through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach every year, a crucial link in the global supply chain of factories, warehouses, docks, highways and rail lines. Most blue-collar workers along the chain have seen their wages slashed with the quick rise of global trade. But the longshoremen who move the goods the shortest distance, between ship and shore, have shrewdly protected pay that trumps that of many white-collar managers.
With a tentative agreement in place between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), the 7-month-long West Coast port crisis has come to an end. What comes next is the final body count - what percentage of GDP shrank because of the slowdown? What was the impact on the trade deficit? Who got hit hardest, and just how hard? Then what? There may be a collective sigh of relief in the air, but can things really go back to normal? Should they?
Congestion at the U.S. West Coast ports could take as much as two months to unwind, according to port and trade group officials, with retailers and other companies bracing for further shipment delays after the apparent resolution of a months-long labor dispute.
