Funding for logistics start-ups tightened in 2022. Where are investors focusing their interest now? After surging in 2021, funding for logistics start-ups slowed substantially in 2022. Among the causes of the slowdown: a more challenging macroeconomic environment coupled with a decline in the growth of e-commerce. Investment in logistics start-ups fell by nearly 50 percent year...

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Amid supply chain woes and inflation, five priorities for companies. Manufacturing companies are going through a fundamental rethink of their supply chain structures and long-term talent development plans as they look toward a post-COVID future. There is also a structural shift in priorities, attitudes and investments related to environmental consciousness. While ongoing inflation pains will...

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The war in Ukraine is exacerbating the rise in energy prices and disruptions to supply chains that have emerged during the pandemic. These two factors will weigh on the evolution of transport prices and logistics costs in general. Two years after the outbreak of the pandemic, which generated an awareness in Europe of issues concerning strategic...

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Procurement organizations are uniquely positioned to catalyze cross-functional actions that promote efficiency and resilience in rapidly evolving market conditions. Procurement leaders are facing one of the toughest market environments of their careers. A combination of macroeconomic factors—including COVID-19 shocks, trade policy shifts, workforce scarcity, energy transition, and even extreme weather events—have upended long-running trends that...

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Few chief executives have faced the challenge of leading a company through an inflationary spike like today’s. Lessons from strong leaders and bold action can help CEOs make the decisions that only they can make. ast year, policy makers, economists, and financial-market participants fiercely debated the higher inflation then under way. Was it a transitory problem,...

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Two decades of research show that, while large deals still have their place, programmatic M&A strategies continue to create gains in excess total returns to shareholders, at lower levels of risk. M&A is having a moment—again. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has had to adjust its premerger review process to manage the tidal wave...

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In this episode of “State of Readiness”, I welcome William “Bill” Bierce, co-founder of Bierce & Kenerson PC and author of the book, “Smarter Business Exits“. I have known Bill for some time. He is a multi-faceted and worldly individual who is engaging in conversation on many topics. The topic of discussion for this episode is...

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A continent learns to hustle. After a long slumber, Europe’s animal spirits are stirring The idea of a Europe hostile to entrepreneurs would once have seemed laughable. At its 17th-century peak the Dutch East India Company’s appetite for capital was so voracious that it demanded the invention of the public stockmarket. Investors then did not...

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Summary.   To understand how profitable a business is, many leaders look at profit margin, which measures the total amount by which revenue from sales exceeds costs. But if you want to understand how a specific product contributes to the company’s profit, you need to look at contribution margin, which is the leftover revenue when you deduct the...

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I recently came off a project with a metal fabrication company that was in severe distress. I was originally introduced to the company in October of 2020 by a mentor of the owner who thought they could use my help.  At the time, the owner believed he had the situation under control; he did not. ...

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Despite a recent bout of weakness, the dollar still looks strong. Consider the Big Mac index, our lighthearted measure of currency valuation. Of the currencies of the 20 trading partners studied by America’s Treasury, our measure suggests that all have gained relative to the greenback since July, but that all apart from the Swiss franc...

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There was a recent post in the Operational Excellence Group that I own on LinkedIn.  The post was about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Lean Six Sigma program and the benefits that were realized.  The person who created the post was rather excited that the program had saved NASA $1.3 million. Reading this...

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I welcome Tyrone “Ty” Muse to this episode of State of Readiness.  Ty is the CEO and President of Visions Federal Credit Union, a not-for-profit financial institution with $4.2 in assets and he will share the journey of his career from working with Jack Welch at GE Asset Management, to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and Goldman Sachs.  But...

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Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence…. Good fences make good neighbors — Robert Frost, 1914 In this article, I explore possible uses of blockchain technology in non-financial businesses. Possible uses because the technology and supporting...

This post Blockchain for Business, Or: Things to know before you try appeared first on Operational Excellence Society.

McKinsey & Co means that as the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) increases, the EV-battery market represents an opportunity for European players. This thoroughly revealing article assesses the potential and looks at factors guiding the location of production capacity and might be ever-relevant insofar as it is so far untapped, and a potential great opportunity...

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Should the rest of the world look again at America regarding Household debt? Seeing that it has been shrinking relative to the economy ever since it scuppered the financial system… However, since 2012, corporate debt has been doing the opposite. According to the Federal Reserve, the ratio of non-financial business debt to GDP has grown...

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The Economist means that as life expectancy increases, it is accompanied by the rise of chronic diseases, and this further pushes up healthcare spending across the world. As result, it has become clear to many policymakers and healthcare providers that a business-as-usual approach to cost containment is no longer sustainable. To continue delivering accessible, high-quality...

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The Operational Excellence Society is proudly hosting its latest online business educational initiative, coined the Operational Excellence Webinar series. This webinar’s thought leader is Joseph Paris from the Operational Excellence Society. Webinar Abstract Functional silos remain the primary barrier to strategy execution. Research consistently confirms this fact. But they persist, despite efforts to eliminate them. In fact, 80%...

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According to the contentions of this article by The Economist, Liberalism made the modern world, but the modern world is turning against it. Europe and America are in the throes of a popular rebellion against liberal elites, who are seen as self-serving and unable, or unwilling, to solve the problems of ordinary people. Elsewhere a...

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McKinsey & Co means that management practices focusing on “hard” incentives, rewards, and consequences, as well as on employees’ mind-sets and values, make workplaces safer. Furthermore, that a high level of safety for all employees is important in itself, of course, and when companies fall short they expose themselves to greater liability, reputational risk, and...

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How secure is the global financial system, a decade after the crisis? Great strides have been made since 2008 to prevent a recurrence of the financial crisis and recession that followed. Yet there is more debt than ever in the global financial system. The world economy has recently returned to robust growth. But some familiar...

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The concept of leaders and leadership continues to evolve in the modern world.  Part of that evolution involves the change in who is eligible to be a leader.  In looking at leadership opportunities for females, the evolution has been slow.  In Rhodes book, entitled Women and Leadership (2017),[1] she looked at the history of women...

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McKinsey & Co means that few fiscal opportunities are bigger than reducing revenue leakages from tax and payment abuse. And now, new sources of data and new analytics tools are giving governments the upper hand. Read more here

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Bhu Srinivasan researches the intersection of capitalism and technological progress. Instead of thinking about capitalism as a firm, unchanging ideology, he suggests that we should think of it as an operating system — one that needs upgrades to keep up with innovation, like the impending take-off of drone delivery services. Learn more about the past...

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“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” —John F. Kennedy It seems at every conference, symposium, or other gathering of thought leaders for higher learning where the topic is Lean Six Sigma, many of the attendees—and almost all of...

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McKinsey & Co tackles the big question on everyone’s lips nowadays: How exactly will the great succession of new technologies such as the Internet, the cloud, big data, robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence affect the future of our economy? While we are purposefully creating an intelligence that is external to humans and housed in what...

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“The greatest wealth is health” (Virgil, Ancient Roman poet). There is nothing more important than taking care of ourselves and each other. However, focusing a health system on the appropriate goals in a complex political and social environment requires investment in the right combination of time, money, intellect, and creativity. Government agencies are bringing pressure...

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Ben Nicholson is an experienced Operational Excellence, Continuous Improvement and Process Re-engineering leader within financial services. He has led major projects in a number of the world’s major banks resulting in change and process improvement. In this exclusive interview for the BTN, Ben shares his views regarding changes within operational excellence, the use of continuous...

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Bloomberg reports on the “new face” of American unemployment – one we cannot ignore any longer. Bloomberg finds that as the U.S. labor force crests again, a new complex of problems locks many Americans out of the workplace. Even at so-called full employment, some 20 million Americans are still left behind. While some of America’s jobless are...

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Filling your car up with gas is generally considered to be relatively cheap. But even though the global slump in oil prices has persisted over the last three months, the burden of filling up is yet felt differently around the world. Bloomberg examines gasoline prices around the world, by ranking 61 countries by three economic...

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