Baseline Magazine slideshow showcasing 2010 CIO priorities. Among them, cost cutting and revenue generation —– revenue generation?
Baseline Magazine is an excellent magazine for ALL management not just CIOs. Just my .02.
What did they miss? What were you surprised by? Which ones should not have been in the top 10?
I generally do not have too much in this blog that may be viewed as “political” however, I read a blog post that I thought was particularly provoking and feel compelled to spread the word…… In the “edge blog” (a blog about business and technical issues critical to manufacturers) the author Jeff Moad, an editor at Managing Automation, makes a point in “GM: Why the Double Standard” that I must agree with “While many of GM’s problems have been self-inflicted, its current crisis has been caused, in large part, by the recession brought on by the misbehavior of banks and other financial institutions. There’s no reason why a restructured, properly capitalized GM can’t compete with other automotive manufacturers from around the world when the recession ends and demand for cars rebounds. GM may very well need to declare bankruptcy in order to finally get its house in order. But simply giving up on GM — and, by extensions, thousands of suppliers that do business with the company — would be a big mistake.”
We need manufacturing in this country for many reasons. GM “needs work” may be a real understatement, but why destroy them while the firms (and the government that made the rules that allowed, and even encouraged the insane practices that caused our current sitaution) as well as the people that caused this situation seem to be getting “bailed out”. While I do not favor a “bank-like” bailout of GM; it seems a particularly bad idea to have government telling manufacturers how to run their business when they really do not know what they are doing. Hey, how about “Lean Government”, how’s that for a concept? GM may need to go through bankruptcy to get through this, but let’s not let government run or direct yet another sector of the economy they know nothing about.
What do you think?
THe link that follows is for an “on demand” webcast sponsored by Industry Week that discusses just what the title says: “Lean Manufacturing in a Lean Economy“. It is about an hour long, however, you can fast forward through instructional parts as well as some parts that you may be familiar with. If you are not familiar with “Lean Manufacturing” or Lean, this webcast will help understand some of the ideas. If you are familiar with “lean” it will give some insight into how, in our current economy lean principles can help. The webcast is based on one of the largest studies conducted in this area.
What do you think about it? Do you think lean is a tool for the times? What did you learn?
