We had an APICS student case study competition last weekend in San Diego. It was the best turnout yet – 12 teams, both undergrad and grad teams. The students were quite impressive in reviewing and resolving the case study. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo won 1st place for the [...]
Logistics has been making a comeback in the Inland Empire in the last 6 months! The port activity is up, employers are beginning to look at projects to improve operations and hiring is on the rise. Earlier this week, I attended Norco College’s Logistics Advisory Committee meeting for their [...]
As innovation is key to succeeding in the “new normal”, I thought a few tips might prove helpful: Create a culture of innovation – it’s not enough to encourage innovation in R&D. Those companies who create a culture of innovation will be those who succeed. Start with the customer [...]
In order to succeed in today's business world, it is imperative to become excellent at change management. After all, almost every new project or initiative requires change of some sort. Therefore, the better you become at managing change successfully, the better your bottom line impact. According to Harvard Business [...]
What is vital to building a culture of innovation? There’s one word – leadership! A recent Industry Week article showed several examples of innovation success – the key is that executives must be committed, patient and ready to lead by example. Doesn’t this sound like something we should do [...]
Most economists and media are concerned about inflation. For example, a new McKinsey & Co study offers up inflation as a fresh concern. And the media talks quite a lot about the printing of money in Washington – and how that could easily lead to inflation. In my opinion, [...]
According to the UCLA Anderson Forecast, it is predicted that California employers will shed another 90,000 jobs this year and job growth will remain slow. Overall, it’s expected to remain around 12%. California is far worse than the national average (which hovers just below 10%); however, there is much [...]
According to a study released in 2009 by Deloitte, the Manufacturing Institute and Oracle revealed that nearly a third of companies were experiencing a modest to severe shortage. Gaps in such skills as problem-solving and communication also were noted in the study. This doesn’t seem to add up vs. [...]
As originally written for AMA – April 2010 In today’s “new normal” business environment, leadership is even more critical to achieving bottom line results because customers are demanding more for less, employees are concerned about the future, and cash is tight. In my experience in working with clients across [...]
I was recently quoted in a World Trade Magazine article, “Made in the USA Gains Momentum”, and so I thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss on my blog. Read the full article here. Actually, I am quite interested in this topic, as I believe we MUST [...]
