‘Quiet hiring’ will dominate the U.S. in 2023, says HR expert—and you need to prepare for it
Natasha Piñon
A new year is here, and with it, a new workplace phenomenon that bosses and employees should prepare for: quiet hiring.
Quiet hiring is when an organization acquires new skills without actually hiring new full-time employees, says Emily Rose McRae, who has led Gartner's future of work research team since its 2019 inception, focusing on HR practices.
Sometimes, it means hiring short-termcontractors. Other times, it means encouraging current employees to temporarily move into new roles within the organization, McRae says.
"The reality for the next year is — whether or not we go into a recession — everyone's a little nervous," she says. "In a lot of cases, organizations are not necessarily doing a hiring freeze, or layoffs, but maybe slowing down a little bit on their hiring."
But every employer still has financial goals to meet — often, ambitious ones.
"The talent shortage that we talked about throughout 2022 hasn't gone away," McRae says. "So, you're in a situation where it's harder to get head count, and you have a desperate need for talent."
Why quiet hiring is on the horizon
Hiring usually falls into one of three categories: backfilling old roles, creating new ones to help the company grow or addressing an acute, immediate need.
Quiet hiring is all about that third category, even if it doesn't technically involve any new hiring at all. The idea is to prioritize the most crucial business functions at a given time, which could mean temporarily mixing up the roles of current employees.
McRae refers to that as "internal quiet hiring." She cites a recent example: Australian airline Qantas, which asked executives to address a labor shortage last year, in part, by rotating in as baggage handlers.
"The executives are doing it in part because it's the right thing to do to keep the company going, but it's also just a rotation that makes sense for a lot of people," McRae says, noting that they also gained a deeper understanding of how their operations work.
There's some inherent tension here: If you're temporarily reassigned to a different part of your company, you might interpret that as being told that your regular job isn't particularly important. After all, nobody's getting hired to backfill your old responsibilities.
Bosses can help address that by clearly articulating why the specific project or business division is so crucial to the company's success. It'll help the employee feel valued, and less likely to see the move as a sign that they need to start looking for jobs elsewhere.
Alternatively, companies with few movable employees can hire short-term contractors to help keep things afloat throughout the year. McRae calls that "external quiet hiring."
"We have to deploy our employees against the priorities that matter the most," she says.
How to take advantage of quiet hiring
No one wants to get thrown into an entirely new role if they already like their job. Nobody wants to work for a crumbling business, either — and McRae says plenty of companies could crumble without quiet hiring this year.
With that in mind, an effective quiet hiring process rests in how it's framed to employees. "If you're asking a bunch of people to make this move, you should be able to articulate: What does this mean for them?" McRae says.
If your boss suggests a new set of tasks for you, they'll have more luck motivating you if they can express how much it'll help move your career forward — whether you're more interested in climbing the corporate ladder or improving your work-life balance.
"If you're just saying, 'OK, this is where we need people.' Great, but that's not enough of a reason for people to want to move," McRae says.
Plus, if your company makes an announcement about needing employees to pivot roles, and you're interested, you can use it as an opportunity to discuss your long-term goals. You might even wrangle a promotion for yourself, McRae adds.
"This is a really good chance for employees to sit down and say to their managers, their HR people and to the company as a whole, 'Yeah, I'm willing to do this. Let's talk about what this means for my career,'" she says.
THRIVING IN THE AGE OF ACCELERATION
10 To Do's for CEOs to Reinvent Insurance in 2023
By Michael Moloney, Gaurav D. Garg, Paul Ricard, and Stephen Kerr
We are continuing to face a very uncertain environment — war in Europe, higher inflation, the lingering effects of the pandemic, increased likelihood of recession, questions on the right direction and speed of movement on climate/ESG, evolving market pricing cycles, and moderating rates. We suggest 10 ways CEOs should be positioning their organizations in 2023 to make the most of the Age of Acceleration.
01
Build macro resilience
Proactively build organizational capacity to withstand the coming shocks
The interplay between inflation, geopolitical conflicts, supply chain shocks, uncertain pricing cycles, climate change, and turbulent markets means that we are facing uncertain and volatile conditions in 2023. Many organizations are initiating cost programs as a response. Traditional programs, however, are blunt instruments, cutting resourcing and management bandwidth dedicated to future capabilities and jeopardizing future growth prospects and competitive positioning.
Macro Resilience programs, on the other hand, map costs at a capability level, allowing CEOs to focus cost and capacity allocation decisions — where to double-down, where to exit or pause, and how much to then re-allocate to future-looking differentiating capabilities. CEOs that build Macro Resilience will ensure that their organizations have the strategic headroom to weather whatever 2023 brings, while preserving important long-term investments.
Create “Risk Fluidity”
Massively accelerate the rate at which risk and capital can be shifted based on emerging conditions
02
There are an amazingly rich and rapidly evolving set of protection needs evident today — climate, financial stability, decentralized finance, cyber, AI, supply chain fragilities, macroeconomic instability, and future pandemic risks, to name a few. Through one lens, this suggests that we should be looking at the ‘best of times’ for the industry — evidenced by rapid innovation in products, new distribution channels, flourishing customer engagement and significant, profitable growth in revenue volumes from new areas. It seems, however, that the industry is still struggling with how to ignite transformative growth against these opportunities with price-earnings multiples, for example, trading in single digit territory for many incumbents (brokers excepted) and a continuing mode of returning significant capital to shareholders rather than reinvesting at scale to pursue growth.
What the industry needs is “Risk Fluidity” — an ability to rapidly and frequently adjust how risk and capital flows within an organization across products, channels, business lines, and geographies. Achieving Risk Fluidity requires an operating model designed explicitly for rapid assimilation of market signals and speed of execution transforming organizational clock speed from months to days.
03
Modularize for Growth
Build a platform-based, modular ecosystem
An increasingly fluid market environment demands a more fluid ecosystem — inflation is forcing insurers to optimize costs, MGAs are gaining scale and traction, and plug-and-play infrastructure providers are commoditizing data and technology. These trends provide a transformative opportunity for insurers to modularize their organizations for growth.
CEOs need to focus capital and resources on their firm’s “crown jewel” capabilities and build an ecosystem of partners around these core activities. Successful modularization requires an unbiased appraisal of where one’s unique advantage lies and what it takes to maximize the value from “owning” certain value chain components, while assembling a powerful ecosystem around it. Select platform-based insurance models have emerged, including in the Web3 space, which may provide a preview of where the market may be headed… fast.
Be the Smart Climate Player
Capitalize on the retreat of capacity from Energy and other sectors to enable an orderly green Energy transition
04
Insurers have a crucial role to play in accelerating and de-risking the net-zero transition. In some cases, however, the industry is bluntly reducing its exposure to carbon intensive sectors, such as Energy, Transportation, Heavy Industry and Construction Materials. With many countries still dependent on energy from fossil fuels, along with operations from other high-emitting sectors, the swift retreat of insurance capacity is itself a risk to net-zero transition.
CEOs can ensure that their organizations set foundations for a sustainable energy strategy by dynamically providing capacity to ensure an orderly transition.
05
Triple Down on Escaping Legacy
Drive through legacy technology to enable cost and experience leadership
An inability to escape legacy technology has been a perennial issue for most insurers. This challenge is often quoted as the biggest reason behind the industry’s slow speed to market and difficulty in scaling disruptive technology. Modularization, Risk Fluidity, and Macro Resilience all require modern technology infrastructures. As such, CEOs must triple down on sunsetting legacy through use of rapid transition solutions, which are now available.
Predict and Prevent
Move beyond risk transfer to prevention to maximize customer lifetime value
06
Moving into profitable ancillary services across risk prediction, prevention, and response is a natural evolution for the P&C industry with several insurers embracing it as the new normal. Some incumbents, for example, are introducing digital assistants with an integrated front-end combining insurance and services offerings for home, health, and travel. Digital-native players offer sensors and home maintenance services to their customers to drive customer stickiness and lower claim costs. These services can be highly profitable, have lighter balance sheet requirements than traditional insurance products, and are highly complementary to existing offerings. Given the range of competing models, the winners will be those who effectively tie a ‘Predict and Prevent’ strategy to their customers’ key underserved needs
07
Integrate Backwards
Insulate against inflation by capturing more loss expense
The P&C ecosystem is a complex web of goods and service providers, with P&C carriers leveraging a network of external partners to replace or repair damage instead of servicing customers themselves. For every dollar of premium, approximately 44 cents of that dollar goes directly to external partners, most of which is focused on claims management including medical facilities, auto body shops or manufacturers, and data providers. Many of these businesses earn greater margins than most insurers, with ROEs in highly fragmented markets such as auto repair and physical therapy as high as 25% to 30%.
Insurers can capture more value from each dollar of claims spend by increasing control of downstream activities within the claims’ lifecycle.
When well-executed, this approach can both improve profitability and lead to better customer experience and satisfaction through delivery of a proactive, end-to-end claims experience.
Become an Asset-Management-Led Insurer
Shift paradigm to compete head-on with PE-backed players
08
Over the last decade, private equity has profoundly changed the landscape of the life insurance industry. Traditional insurers view liability origination as their primary business with general account asset management seen as a supporting capability. Private equity insurers, on the other hand, see asset origination and structuring as their primary business with insurance liability origination as an attractive source of long-term funding. This is a profound difference in business model.
Traditional insurers competing in effected areas need to consider if they too must adopt this PE mindset, or how they can preserve a more traditional model, perhaps through strategic partnerships. Irrespective of the route chosen, a different operating model, organization, and culture, may be a necessity.
09
Run towards the gaps
Be the specialist capacity provider for the growth gaps
The insurance industry has suffered from constrained capacity as demand for emerging risk types, such as cyber and climate, has exploded. For these emerging risks, a lack of historical data has led to insurers falling back on first-principles expertise and heuristics leading to excessive caution and, ultimately, limited capacity.
This limited capacity represents a prime opportunity for those willing and able to seize it. By managing exposure through emerging solutions (e.g., parametric reinsurance) and providing services beyond risk transfer, insurers can service these growth gaps without upending their own risk appetite. In turn, they’ll gain better data on these emerging risks and will underwrite them more effectively going forward.
Digitize Customer-First
Reduce digitization costs by focusing on what matters most to customers and distributors
10
Many insurers have often made a mistake when digitizing their operations – they have worked back from the technology and not the customer. Despite substantial investments to modernize and compete with insurtechs, too many organizations default to building an app or new system without a clear, proven link to the customer or organizational benefit. These investments are often a massive cost drain with minimal ROI when they support low-value products or operations.
When investing in digitization, insurers should focus on the customer’s desired experience in a specific circumstance (or the “job-to-be-done”), shifting from an Operator’s mindset to an Innovator’s mindset.
In starting with problems, not products, and thinking critically about servicing customers’ functional, social, and emotional needs, businesses can strategically invest in technology that enhances their value-proposition while avoiding unnecessary costs and maximizing long-term profitability.
5 Facts of Conscious Communication
AMA
In all aspects of life but especially in the workplace, effective communication is about much more than choosing your words. Along with what you say, how you say it—your tone of voice, inflection, volume and rate of speech—and how you look when you’re saying it routinely affect whether your message gets heard in the way that you intended. To avoid misunderstandings and to build better working relationships, every manager needs to be a conscious communicator.
Becoming a conscious communicator starts with self-awareness. Do you tend to speak at a pace that people generally find comfortable and easily to understand, or do you talk so fast that they struggle to keep up? Do you regularly pause to reflect and gauge your listener’s attention and receptiveness? Do you talk with your hands and, if so, do your gestures complement and reinforce your words, or are they excessive and distracting? What about your posture and your facial expressions? Being aware of your communication style and its impact encompasses all of these factors and more. A conscious communicator also identifies any potential stumbling blocks and accepts personal and professional responsibility for communicating well—clearly and respectfully. Finally, a conscious communicator analyzes their interactions with others and takes appropriate actions to maintain relationships while achieving goals and business results.
To help you excel as a communicator with your team members, your colleagues, and key decision makers and stakeholders, the experts at American Management Association (AMA) highlight five axioms of conscious communication. As you work to improve your effectiveness, both in formal presentations and casual conversations, keep these crucial facts of communication in mind:
Axiom #1: When two (or more) people are together, communication naturally happens—it’s impossible not to communicate. Each person will read and interpret some behavior of the other person—whether it’s eye contact, arm motions, an offhand remark or even the positive energy someone gives off—regardless of whether they engage in an actual conversation.
Axiom #2: Each message contains both some content and some statement about the relationship between the two people. Even when it’s not explicitly spoken, communication typically conveys whether the communicators know one another or are strangers, and feel comfortable with each other or have some sort of tension between them.
Axiom #3: While content messages are usually delivered through words, relationship messages are most often nonverbal.Consequently, communicators have to consider both the content and relational aspects of a message, and both what’s said and what’s conveyed through body language, to achieve a full, clear and accurate understanding of its meaning.
Axiom #4: In an ongoing relationship, the messaging from one interaction can affect how the next interaction is perceived and processed. Among co-workers who frequently communicate, “relationship residue” can occur. Impressions from previous interactions carry over, impacting the meaning attached to the message. For instance, if a person tends to be critical and dismissive in early encounters, their messages might be seen and heard in a negative light going forward—even when what they mean to convey is encouraging and positive.
Axiom #5: The real or perceived power of the communicators impacts how meaning is assigned to messages. In any workplace relationship, the role and authority of people with whom we communicate affects how we respond to what they say. Even if the message is similar in content, your response is likely to be different to that message if it’s delivered by your boss than if it comes from your assistant.
Being aware of these aspects of conscious communication will help you improve your skills as a communicator with your team members and throughout the organization.
Why Marketing Goals Must Be Tethered To Strategic Planning Objectives
BY JASON BREWER
“You can be successful in the short term and still end up at the wrong destination.”
I’ve advised many business leaders over the last 17 years, and while growth can be achieved with a mix of good marketing strategy and sound technical execution, there is a major risk in focusing your sights too near-term or isolating your marketing efforts. Many organizations think of their marketing as a separate entity, an island, detached from the core of their business. They think that the marketing department is not connected to the heart of the organization… ops, finance, and sales drive the company. This is a mistake. Only when a leadership team clearly communicates the long-term vision and strategic objectives of the business, can it empower the marketing department to march in the right direction and grow the business in a deliberate, and sustainable, way.
“Find us more leads” is not a motivating call to arms. Marketing should have a seat at the leadership table, but of course the seat must be earned through active participation in the strategic planning process and a desire to be more than just a tool for social posts, email blasts, and print mailers.
Agencies must earn their stripes as well. While agencies throw around the term “partner” often, rarely do they act the part. Under the pressure to fall in line, agencies frequently slink back into the role of executor, comfortable being technicians and implementers with sometimes the most minuscule of tasks and decisions being dictated by distant leaders with no background in marketing.
Marketers and Marketing Teams: You must be growth strategists, in tune with business challenges, industry trends, pricing strategy, and obstacles in the sales process. You must ask hard questions and challenge leaders to communicate their unabridged vision and objectives.
Leaders: To ensure that your organization is doing the right things now, and at the same time putting you on a path for the future you want, you have to avoid getting pulled back into the day-to-day tactics and think long-term: clearly communicate your vision and develop your marketing goals to meet long-term strategic objectives. It starts with bringing all stakeholders into the strategic planning process.
“Understanding a company’s 5-year vision is the only responsible way to start a conversation about marketing.”
Why is understanding a company’s vision so important? Because that is the purpose of marketing — it’s a vehicle to lead you to that future state. Defining a company vision is one of the main tenets of strategic planning, which is fundamental to any good marketing roadmap.
What is strategic planning?
Gino Wickman, creator of the Entrepreneur Operator System (EOS), starts his work with a clear set of requirements to proceed with his process: you must be open-minded, growth-oriented and vulnerable. Gino’s first component is “vision.” A company must have a strong vision to succeed, but even more critical, an organization’s leaders must be able to communicate that vision to their team. Gino goes on to say that often great vision goes unrealized. It’s where many great visionary CEOs go wrong — they don’t have a plan to communicate and implement their vision, and they are biased in their belief that because they see it clearly, their team should naturally visualize it as well. This is not the case.
There are many great resources to help leaders with strategic planning, and more specifically, to help with that first step of coming up with a company vision statement. EOS has a process for it, and another helpful exercise we take clients through in our initial strategy workshops is the hedgehog exercise from the book Good To Great by Jim Collins. The hedgehog exercise helps companies hone in on their best self — a sort of Venn diagram approach to seeing 1) what you are best in the world at, 2) your financial North Star, and 3) your passion/purpose. At the intersection of all three is your hedgehog state — or what you can call your vision.
Defining Your Company Vision
Once you have come up with a vision for your company, the next step should be coming up with a long-term target. That could be 3, 5, 10 years, or more. This gives your team something to buy into and strive for, to help them stay grounded through the day-to-day, and give them a bigger purpose to work towards.
Once you have a long-term target established, you will break that down into smaller steps. If your 5-year goal is $10 million in revenue and 15% net profit, what will you need to reach in year 4? Then back your way into year 3, 2, 1 and so on, until you have granular, achievable goals tied to your vision.
How do I develop measurable marketing goals to meet strategic objectives?
Once you have used your 5-year goal to back your way into your 1-year target, you’re now ready to establish quarterly marketing benchmarks or KPIs. These benchmarks tell you if you are on track to meet your year 1 goals. Some goals may feel intangible, but discipline yourself to make every goal SMART. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. In other words, it should be quantitative, and easy to determine whether you hit your mark or not. If there are differing opinions amongst stakeholders, that means you did something wrong. If your Q1 goal is onboarding 10 new customers, you either accomplished your goal or you didn’t — there is no in-between with a SMART goal.
With a long-term vision, yearly goals, and quarterly marketing benchmarks that are measurable, you will ensure your complete organization is heading in the same direction. Sales and marketing will be aligned and marketing will no longer be an island unto itself, flailing in every direction to reach some vague definition of success.
Marketing can be a formless money pit or a well-oiled machine. The difference certainly comes down to the quality of execution, but before there can be sound execution, there must be a shared sense of purpose and vision for the future that runs through the entire organization.
It’s time to prioritize humane, thriving work environments even if it means slightly less productivity, Stanford scholar says
BY MELISSA DE WITTE
The global pandemic is an opportunity to make fundamental changes to how society approaches work by creating working environments centered around creativity, problem-solving and equity, says Adina Sterling.
Adina Sterling(Image credit: Nancy Rothstein)
When it comes to pandemic-related job losses, the National Women’s Law Center found a dramatic difference between the numbers of men and women returning to the labor market, with women trailing behind men by about 1.1 million jobs. What can be done to bring women back into the labor market?
As a society, we need to use the pandemic as a way to pause and reconfigure our priorities. This means companies need to treat women and men and gender non-binary people, as whole human beings, with lives and loved ones outside of work. What the pandemic has surfaced is what was there all along: Too many people are living and have been living on a tightrope, trying to balance multiple and competing demands. We should stop pushing productivity in the workplace at all costs, and begin to push humane, thriving environments. We need to stop allowing shareholders to have the loudest voices. These voices have led to high levels of efficiency increases in the U.S. workforce over the last four decades to the tune of almost 70 percent, and yet almost none of that has gone to the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution. This is not a new statistic.
We need to redesign companies to center problem-solving, equity, collaboration and creativity so that people can live balanced work lives. We need to move away from an efficiency and the bottom-line model, give workers more power and design better jobs. People are really tired, whether they are retail workers that have to do shift work for 50 to 60 hours a week or executives that are dealing with the 24/7 workweek. If we saw the problem as similar across these groups that are rarely in the same room together, we would make progress.
But we can’t expect companies to shift from centering productivity to prioritizing creativity, problem-solving and equity within the employment relationship on their own. Broad collaborations across multiple stakeholders, including governments, corporations and academic institutions, are needed.
I want to talk also about the role of social networks and careers – one of your areas of study. With the pandemic disrupting the workplace and co-workers no longer networking with colleagues like they used to, how are networks changing? What risks do these changes pose for women in particular?
The thing to remember about networks and careers is that networks cut both ways with respect to inequality. Some studies show the pandemic has likely truncated networks or led us all to have smaller networks because we have fewer opportunities to connect, including serendipitously, like we have been able to in the past. I would also expect it has led to greater entrenchment or the deepening of our relationships with our close contacts, and we are therefore getting less “new” information or ideas that we might get from weaker connections that we now see less often than previously. This can all be bad from a social network standpoint.
On the flip side, though, it means that perhaps companies have had to figure out other means for doing a lot of what they do – i.e., they have had to have more formal processes in lieu of informal, network-based ones.
Take hiring for instance. Over the 2020-2021 recruitment cycle, it was impossible for companies to send their employees to travel to college campuses to recruit early-stage workers. As a result, it’s possible that instead of social networks – e.g., alumni networks – surfacing as a main way companies staffed positions, they had to go through formal means, like advertising their job openings to evaluate candidates even though they might not have come through social networks. Generally speaking, this can be a good thing – whenever companies move beyond using old-style networks to recruit, it tends to open up doors, including for women. So, as long as we can get what I call substitution effects – the replacement of networks for more formal, transparent and open processes to hire and promote workers, for instance, we are likely making some progress. I am finding some early evidence that this is what occurred in my research on the pandemic’s effects on hiring over the last year.
You have also examined the social inequality of networks. Is there anything in what you’ve just described that might exacerbate existing inequalities or biases towards women in the workplace?
It is likely that after the last few years, because we have all had our networks shrink somewhat, they have become more homophilous than what they were previously. Homophily is the idea that “birds of a feather stick together,” so to speak, or that people are more likely to interact when they are of similar backgrounds. As we come out of the pandemic, we all should take a look at ways to diversify our networks. Institutions are a big part of that. They play a role in bringing people together, around projects, initiatives and goals. When people have shared responsibilities and are working across differences, it turns out that this is a really good way to help networks grow. It allows people to have “roles,” which is a great way to get people to interact and develop their networks.
Eyeing the Acquisition of a Direct-to-Consumer Business? Here’s What You Need to Know
LEK
Corporates are stepping up acquisitions of DTC businesses, whose sales are forecast to grow a healthy 16%-18% p.a. for the next several years. The trend reflects corporates’ ambitions to expand their product offerings and cross-market to a new customer base. It also marks a shift in how consumer businesses are adapting to changing consumer preferences by blurring the lines between online and in-person experiences in order to meet consumers where they like to shop.
Corporates have always invested in small brands to further their growth. But DTC businesses are especially attractive because the absence of a middleman often means higher margins. They also tend to have a strong customer orientation, including a deep set of consumer data and a well-developed, wholly owned digital commerce experience — attributes that corporates often struggle to acquire organically.
At the same time, the acquisition trend has yielded several high-profile deals that fell short of expectations. It turns out that many DTC businesses have hidden pitfalls that can trip up even the most experienced of corporates.
In this Executive Insights, we’ll look at where deal activity for DTC businesses has been going and what the attractions are for both buyer and seller. Then we’ll outline some concrete steps you can take to know what you’re buying and increase the odds of a successful transaction.
A robust environment for acquisitions
A growing number of DTC businesses have been hitting the M&A market in recent years. Most have been snapped up by corporates (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
DTC M&A transactions by acquirer type (2018-2021)*
In 2021, about 85% of these corporate DTC acquisitions were consumer businesses. Food and beverage was the most popular category, but meaningful deal activity took place across the consumer spectrum (see Figure 2).
Figure 2
Corporate Consumer DTC M&A transactions by category (2018-2021)*
DTC businesses are an attractive takeover target because they can help corporates achieve their strategic intentions. These include:
Expand consumer reach. The consumer populations of DTC businesses are often younger and quicker to adopt emerging trends. Access to that group was a key driver of Movado Group’s 2017 acquisition of upstart brand MVMT, which sells affordable watches and accessories with help from a significant presence on social media. Serta Simmons followed a similar pattern when it purchased DTC mattress company Tuft & Needle in 2018. The tie-up offered the chance for Serta Simmons to expand beyond its traditional brick-and-mortar channels to reach generally younger bed-in-a-box consumers.
Deepen customer relationships. DTC businesses have direct customer interactions that let them gather consumer data in ways that traditional wholesale brands can’t. With Lululemon’s 2020 acquisition of Mirror, a subscription-based home fitness startup, the company gained more data on consumer fitness preferences that it could use to expand its offerings and consumer touchpoints across fitness occasions. In 2021, women’s beauty and health startup FemTec Health acquired Birchbox, Mira Beauty and Liquid Grid — all data-rich businesses — in an apparent bid to further its artificial intelligence-driven personalized health offerings. This deeper understanding of the consumer allows for more targeted product development and marketing, ultimately improving the consumer experience and deepening customer relationships.
Acquire capabilities. DTC businesses come with digital capabilities that the acquirer can plug into its own business. In this respect, sometimes the brand or product is of less interest than the people and know-how. MVMT came with an experienced management team that could advance Movado’s Digital Center of Excellence initiative. At Serta Simmons, Tuft & Needle’s co-founders have been helping to shake up product lines, ramp up direct channels and change the company’s approach to marketing.
On the other side of the transaction, acquisitions often appeal to DTC brands as a way to tap into the well-developed logistics, marketing and human resources operations of an acquiring company. In addition, a corporate owner can likely help with wider brand marketing and provide access to new channels, which drives brand awareness and creates avenues for reaching a new set of consumers. Since its 2018 sale to Kroger, Home Chef has brought its meal kits into the supermarket company’s stores even as it maintains its ecommerce business. Meanwhile, Tuft & Needle mattresses are now available at Lowe’s and Crate & Barrel along with brick-and-mortar locations under its own brand. Serta Simmons’ capital and expertise fueled much of this expansion.
Best practices for DTC due diligence
But DTC businesses face growing headwinds. Digital marketing costs are rapidly on the rise. Privacy changes are impacting effective consumer targeting and acquisition attribution. Supply chain snarls are taking a toll. For many, profitable customer acquisition has stalled.
Challenges like these can create a cash black hole and become a painful distraction from the business of the acquiring company. After its 2016 acquisition of Dollar Shave Club, Unilever struggled to expand the brand and overcome its high customer acquisition costs. And even the customers that DTC brands already have aren’t guaranteed to stay. ModCloth was supposed to bring younger demographics to Walmart, but the deal turned off customers who liked ModCloth’s unique, independent positioning. Walmart sold the company in 2019, just two years after purchasing it.
So, if you’re in the market for a high-growth DTC business, how can you improve your chances of picking a winner? Here are six considerations for your due diligence:
Align your investment criteria to your goals. Before doing too much work, align on what the strategic goals are for the potential acquisition, whether it’s to reach a new consumer base, access data, jump-start your digital capabilities or something else. With this in mind, be clear on what you’re willing to accept from a profitability perspective (current and future) and how much you’re willing to pay to achieve your aims. Depending on your goals, consider how a DTC acquisition compares with an organic pathway and other alternatives, like acquiring a pure-play technology company that has the capabilities you’re looking for.
Evaluate the target company’s profitability and the quality of its customer base. By analyzing the expansive data set a DTC business has on its customers, you can find out where its margins are headed. Many DTC businesses aren’t in the black yet, and that may be OK. But customer acquisition costs, retention and order volumes are critical to profitability in the long term. Any negative trends in these metrics could signal an issue with the business proposition and long-term sustainability.
Understand brand value. Does the brand have authenticity? Is the product a good one that consumers want to buy? Does it stand out from similar DTC and established brands? Are there any reputational risks? You’ll want a brand that stands the test of time while avoiding any consumer backlash associated with a corporate acquisition.
Model synergies into your offer. Synergies between businesses will likely be your advantage over financial investors competing for the same deal. Many synergies will be revenue based, using the new customer audience (and the data you have on them) to cross-sell and expand share of wallet. This may be especially true when you’re looking to deepen customer relationships with your existing customers through an acquisition or acquiring a new customer base. There may be some cost synergies too, especially for DTC brands relying on contract manufacturers for small-run orders. And shared services could help any acquired DTC reduce its costs. Take these into account to develop a competitive offer but be sure to risk-weight synergies, as they aren’t guaranteed.
Assess how operating models align. DTCs are often more nimble, willing to take risks, innovative and focused on growth versus the bottom line. These cultural dynamics will influence the people they hire, the processes they have and how they structure their organization. Understanding which elements of this are key to success for the target company should play into your acquisition decision, including whether to fully integrate them or let them operate independently.
Consider team retention lock-ins. Certain people may be critical for the continued growth and culture of the DTC business. If that turns out to be the case — or if you’re buying the business for its talent — find out what their intentions are and what it would take to keep them on board once the deal has closed.
Set your dealmaking up for success
M&A transactions involving DTC companies and brands with material online sales hit a four-year high in 2021. Corporates are leading the way, having recognized the value of these businesses as a way to evolve alongside changing consumer behavior.
But success isn’t guaranteed, and DTC businesses have a particular set of challenges that can make it hard for them to become or remain profitable. By making sure you are clear-eyed on the goals of the acquisition and carefully considering the pitfalls, you can increase your chances of a value-creating acquisition.
Defending reproductive rights to promote healthy ageing
The Lancet Health Longevity
The landscape of reproductive rights for women in the USA was drastically altered on June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey, thereby removing the constitutional right to abortion. The response was swift, with abortions expected to be banned in 26 states. Globally, 41% of women of childbearing age live in countries with restrictive abortion laws and, as a result, approximately 23 000 women die from unsafe abortions each year. Stripping women of reproductive rights therefore has immediate effects on their health and wellbeing, with unsafe pregnancies and dangerous self-managed abortions increasing the risk of maternal mortality and crippling mental health issues.
It is important to look beyond these immediate effects to understand the long-term impact of abortion bans on ageing outcomes in women. Research has shown that access to abortions results in higher educational attainment and higher labour force participation for women; a study assessing abortion legislation in 97 countries showed that access to abortion led to a decrease in fertility rates, which in turn increased labour force participation for women. As gendered social roles largely dictate that women shoulder the bulk of childcare responsibilities, the decision to have children must often be considered in the context of education or careers, and women are left juggling competing roles. Education and workforce participation have been shown to reduce the risk of multimorbidity, functional problems, and cognitive decline. For example, the ongoing cognitive stimulation afforded by education and employment aids in bolstering cognitive reserve, which in turn can mitigate the risk of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Thus, depriving women of reproductive choice and thereby access to education, careers, and economic empowerment is likely to have lifelong, devastating effects on women as they age.
Although women are still less likely than men to participate in higher education and employment and are more likely to assume unpaid or domestic labour roles, the past century has seen gendered roles challenged. The narrowing of the gender gap in access to these opportunities has resulted in a narrowed gap in ageing outcomes. A study assessed the effects of birth cohort and education level on cognitive ageing and showed that, while men in earlier birth cohorts and in the low education group performed better on a cognitive battery, women in later birth cohorts and in the high education group outperformed men. Similarly, another study that explored the effect of education and labour force participation on sex differences in functional limitations by birth cohort found that the higher prevalence of limitations in older women, compared with men, from early birth cohorts was attenuated when socioeconomic factors were accounted for, and was entirely eliminated in more recent birth cohorts. The findings of these studies show the crucial contribution of education and employment opportunities to gender differences in cognitive and physical health outcomes in later life, and signal targets for interventions to forge gender parity and thereby promote healthy ageing in women.
The 1973 Roe v Wade decision was monumental in granting American women the freedom to delay childrearing in the interest of pursuing education and careers, with cascading positive effects on health and wellbeing in older age. The Supreme Court's overturning of this decision has stripped millions of women of the human right to age in good health, therefore reversing years of progress to reduce gender disparities in healthy ageing. Although the decision only affects the USA, it has wider implications as it could set a precedent for other countries. Hopefully, its media prominence will guide attention to the importance of promoting reproductive rights globally to protect healthy ageing in women. This is particularly pertinent in regions that have restricted access to family planning services for women and that are experiencing rapid population ageing, primarily sub-Saharan Africa, northern Africa, and western Asia. Reproductive rights are basic human rights, and removing these not only endangers the immediate health of young women but also lays a precarious foundation for their health trajectories into later life. As we continue to live longer, it is important that we recognise that the lifelong health of women today and of generations to come is now severely jeopardised.
IOT TRENDS AND PREDICTIONS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2023
IOT Latest News
The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects things that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies to connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the internet. IoT’s ability to enable devices and equipment to communicate will impact lives. The IoT will continue to deliver new opportunities for digital business innovation for the next decade, many of which will be enabled by new or improved technologies. Take a look at the following IoT trends and predictions that are happening now.
Solutions for Sustainable Energy: Renewable energy was the only energy source that saw increasing consumption throughout the epidemic. Breakthroughs in sustainable energy solutions, when combined with the improved practicality of energy sources like liquid hydrogen, and biofuels, are sure to have far-reaching environmental consequences.
Artificial Intelligence: Data is the fuel that powers the Internet of Things and the organization’s ability to derive meaning from it will define its long-term success. AI will be applied to a wide range of IoT information, including video, still images, speech, network traffic activity, and sensor data. It will be possible to achieve good results with AI in a wide range of IoT situations.
Healthcare Spearheads IoT Adoption: The healthcare industry has been tinkering with Internet of Things technology for years now. IoT will make smart buildings out of healthcare facilities, drive revenue, and help healthcare providers save on costs. IoT adoption has become even more crucial to the healthcare industry during the pandemic.
Infonomics and Data Broking: IoT projects showed that 35 percent of respondents were selling or planning to sell data collected by their products and services. By 2023, the buying and selling of IoT data will become an essential part of many IoT systems.
The Emergence of Smart Cities: IoT adoption will result in the establishment of smart cities. Smart cities do not only focus on making life comfortable for people. These cities improve the social, environmental, and financial aspects of urban living. Smart cities will become a key ingredient in improving sustainability and quality of living.
Cyber Security Mesh: Cyber Security Mesh provides a comprehensive approach to tackling security flaws and gaps connected with end-users and devices situated beyond network perimeters. It employs a distributed structure rather than constructing a perimeter based on the reach of a network.
Hyper Automation: Hyper Automation is a critical tool for firms that want to be future-proof. The future of IoT work with hyper-automation involves performing tasks with robots rather than humans, a re-imagining of work as accomplished by technologically empowered workers.
Powering Smart Stores: IoT can also record how visitors spend their time on the store premises. Using data collected by such systems, store owners can make the needed improvements to their inventory and even the way products are displayed on their shelves.
Intelligent Work-from-Home Technologies: Work-from-home technology has become critical to the post-pandemic era’s ever-increasing speed of IoT trends. Most Internet of Things trends has lately seen exponential growth. Furthermore, investors and analysts seek for these creative remote working rules to assess a company’s adaptability.
IoT Governance: As the IoT continues to expand, the need for a governance framework that ensures appropriate behavior in the creation, use, and deletion of information related to the Internet of Things projects will become increasingly important. Governance ranges from simple technical tasks such as device audits and firmware updates to more complex issues.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is solely the author’s opinion and not investment advice – it is provided for educational purposes only. By using this, you agree that the information does not constitute any investment or financial instructions. Do conduct your own research and reach out to financial advisors before making any investment decisions.
Road to Industrial Real Estate Management: Transformation from heavy assets Investment to light assets management
Justin D. Lee
At present, Industry Real Estate sector is facing the transformation from heavy assets Investment to light assets managemen，which means Business Attracting will play a very important role in the future
However, many people do not look good to do business sttractinh.The reasons for their objection are simple: first, it is difficult to do investment promotion, and it is already very hard to do it yourself, so it is even more difficult to help others industrial parks; Second, if you have the strength to do a good job of Business Attracting, why don't you directly take the land to do the industrial park?
In these people's view, Business Attracting is a false proposition.
However, we must be clear on two points.
First, in the real estate industry, Many industrial parks do business Attracting themselves, but also find business attracting agents to cooperate. The business attracting agent has a profit room. At present, both the government and the industrial park have demand for Business Attracting agents.
Second, there is long-term demand for merchants.Even if the industrial park is saturated one day, it does not need to be built, but there will be demand for Business Attracting. Because the enterprise has a life span. Industries need to be to upgraded, the old to be eliminated, new industries to be introduced, which doomed Business Attracting work will not die out.
It can be said that there is a market for light assets management and it is a long-term stable market.
Of course, selling is not a simple job. Many industrial parks fail because they cannot complete the Business Attracting.
Since it is difficult to attract merchants, how can you earn the money?
Developers used to construct the and transformation to Business Attracting is not easy, there must be strong capability in this sector.
What is the capability of business attracting ?
If we analysis of the agent in this field, it will be found that a good agent has two advantages:
First, is the corporate resources.
Usually business attracting agents will claim to have hundreds of thousands potential industry resources, or even tens of millions of enterprise resources, of course, how much real information, we do not know.
Business attracting agents rely on data, and the more enterprise data, the faster the de-conversion.
Enterprise resources are very important for business attracting agents. This advantage relies on the accumulation of peacetime and the establishment of a reserve enterprise resource pool.
Second is the marketing capacity.
Industrial parks Business Attracting is difficult, and you may only recruit a few enterprises a year. If we are slow to do the park recruitment ourselves, we can stick to it and know that some things cannot be rushed. However,business attracting agents must bear the pressure from the developer, all developers are pursuing rapid to change, not allowed to slowly to do it.
This requires a strong marketing ability to accurately push the project to the target customers, reduce the cost of extension, improve the conversion rate, spend the least money, and achieve the greatest marketing effect.
If there is no rich enterprise resources, and no strong marketing ability, transformation tobusiness attracting is a very difficult thing.
business attracting agents need to pay attention to teamwork.
Many industrial parks have self-built business attracting promotion teams, usually the personnel are all-round talents., the need to develop their own customers, need to contact their own communication, need their own reception to negotiate, need themselves to do business services, and so on.
To be an agent, you must work as a team.
Excellent investment agent has a professional team, the team has planning, marketing promotion, copywriting, design, marketing, sales and other personnel, division of labor cooperation.
After receiving a new project, immediately set up a team, formulate a work plan, carry out market research, project positioning, product packaging, marketing and so on.
Transformation from the development of Industrial real estate to light assets management, the team should also transit, business attracting model should also be transformed.
Whether the transition to light assets management will succeed,In the end, it is a matter of people.
Tuning Your Growth Engine: How Insights Power Market Success
Robert Olsen
“There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.”
― Peter Drucker
Why is it that the best run companies often have the hardest time growing?
I recently had the pleasure of exploring this issue while speaking at the Intelligence Leadership Forum (ILF), led by Liam Fahey — who literally wrote the book (well, actually, eight books) on the subject of insights. What we realized is this: Operational excellence – no matter how good it is – can never be sufficient to win in the long term.
As we peeled back the layers on this puzzling reality, a recurring theme developed; So many CEOs rely on history and instinct to run their businesses. And for all the operational excellence they’ve developed over the years, they often don’t seek direct insights on customers, competitors and even their own employees. But in neglecting this, they are turning their back on the best opportunity to keep their business apace with market forces.
This is especially true in an era where businesses are under assault from many angles: the fallout of a global pandemic, new and renewed competition, and a digital tidal wave that has swept across the landscape.
Here’s the problem as I see it- so many companies have put all of their eggs into the executional basket developing robust processes to manage, manufacture, and maintain. But, while they’ve been focused on operational efficiency within their walls, they miss the insights needed to understand the forces that have transformed their market.
For companies that want to drive top-line growth by attracting new customers, launching new products or simply growing new customers, a heavy execution and operational focus can keep the mindset within its four walls. To drive growth, they need to gain and leverage a reliable market-based perspective.
Insights – The Missing Piece
The Insights professionals I spoke with at the ILF, understand that growth companies need more – not more data or more marketing tactics, but instead more understanding. This includes a keen understanding of how we reach or serve customers in TODAY’S market, and the understanding of real insight data – a laser focus around who we serve, what they need, and whether we are continuing to satisfy and delight.
In a world where the market is doing all the driving, using a car with just the “execution” gear could leave you at the wrong destination or worse, leave you stuck on the side of the road. Adopting an insights-first posture requires a mindset and capability shift but comes with a significant payoff- the restoration of a growth-oriented trajectory to complement operational prowess.
Consider insights as the foundation of this mindset shift – a key for making decisions that will inform the strategies and tactics that follow. Why is this so critical? Because it’s here when we give the voice of the customer its rightful place in our process. We can no longer fall into the all-too-common trap of thinking that we know what they think.
Instead, we need to focus our insight -- creating process on three key areas:
Customers: What do they think of you? What do they think you’re known for? How do we compare with the competition? What are their pain points? What do they truly care about? How do they make decisions?
Competition: What are they known for? How are they perceived by your customers? What is their growth strategy? If they knew your strategy, what might they change in theirs?
Company: How do our employees perceive our offering and our approach to the market? Do they know why the company exists? What are the culture and norms? Though this is often overlooked, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to deliver great customer satisfaction without great employee satisfaction.
Tying it All Together
Insights and a market-based perspective bring us full circle for better execution. If execution isn’t working well, it's likely not the execution activities directly, but a disconnect with one of the earlier steps. Moreover, having the right insights and strategy often allows us to do more with less. Such a mindset shift may take a while to evolve. You can accelerate the process by getting the help you may need. Please reach out if I can be of assistance.
8 Skills to Become More Culturally Adept at Work
AMA
In a global business world and any organization where people of various nationalities, ethnicities, races, genders, and generations work together, cultural competency is a vital skill. Whether you’re the CEO of a multinational corporation, a shop floor manager at a factory, or a team leader within a small or mid-level company just about anywhere across the USA, it’s imperative to develop the ability to recognize and respond effectively and appropriately to cultural differences in perspectives, practices, values, behavior, and norms. When you’re sensitive to and respectful of how people from other cultural groups think and act, you’ll be able to adapt your communication and behavior style as needed to avoid misunderstandings, mitigate conflict, build trust, support collaboration, and, ultimately, improve performance and results.
Improving your cultural competency, like every core business competency, requires a combination of commitment, effort, and education. To get you started on a firm foundation, the experts at American Management Association (AMA) have identified eight related skills that need to be well-developed. Here’s an overview:
Self-Knowledge. Everyone has biases based on our own background, experiences, and preferences. Having a cultural bias doesn’t make you a bad person, let alone a bigot. But it’s important to be able to identify and recognize your own deep-rooted feelings about and reactions to different ethnic, racial, or other cultural groups—and understand how those emotions impact your thoughts and behavior. To prevent a bias from determining how you judge or treat an employee from a different group, self-knowledge is crucial.
Self-Regulation. Becoming aware of your biases isn’t enough. You have to be able to manage the feelings and emotions those biases might trigger. Self-regulation is the ability to consciously choose how you respond to employees from different races, ethnicities, genders, religions, and age groups as opposed to reacting based on unconscious biases and the negative stereotypes attached to them.
Interpersonal Sensitivity. Everyone is their own person, regardless of their group affiliation, and deserves to be seen, heard, and valued as an individual. Interpersonal sensitivity is the ability to accurately assess the abilities, states, and traits of each unique employee from verbal and nonverbal cues—and adjust your behavior as needed.
Cultural Sensitivity. While everyone should be viewed as an individual, it’s important to also acknowledge and validate the influence of larger group ties. Cultural sensitivity is the ability to respond appropriately to the feelings of others who share a common racial, national, religious, linguistic, or cultural heritage. This includes taking care to avoid cultural appropriation. When someone from a dominant culture adopts the dress, mannerisms, slang, or other practices of a culture that is not their own and has been historically marginalized or oppressed, it often reinforces an imbalance of power that still exists and thwarts productive cultural exchange.
Empathy. Despite our cultural and personal differences, we’re all human beings with the same core human emotions. In the workplace, an empathetic leader is sensitive to each employee’s feelings, on a human level. Practicing empathy also means having the ability to take into account others’ perspectives and circumstances, even when they’re vastly different from your own.
Flexibility. Being flexible goes beyond responding to your company’s changing circumstances and expectations with deftness and ease. In terms of diversity and inclusion, flexibility means staying open to and embracing the perspectives that all employees bring to the table, encouraging others to share views that may differ from your own, and respecting others’ opinions and ideas.
Curiosity. Being curious is a wonderful quality for bridging gaps and building bonds among diverse employees. Curiosity is not just being willing to learn about different cultures. In the workplace, curious leaders seek out opportunities to interact with diverse individuals and express a genuine, respectful interest in discovering their culture and its distinctive qualities.
Tolerance for Ambiguity. It’s not unlike being a foreigner struggling to navigate an unfamiliar country. When managing a multicultural workforce, uncertainty, unpredictability, misunderstandings, and tensions come with the territory. A healthy tolerance for ambiguity can help you handle it all with calm and confidence. What’s more, when you understand the dynamics behind cultural clashes, you’ll be better equipped to use conflict as a constructive process to exchange ideas and bring about resolution.
Keeping these skills in mind and practicing them whenever possible is the first step to cultural competency and sensitivity. The payoff: a more productive and happier workplace for everyone.
How to be a great 21st-century CEO
By Gautam Kumra, Vikram Malhotra, and Joydeep Sengupta
What do CEOs do? Why do they do it that way? And what matters most?
To answer those questions, we identified 200 highly successful CEOs and conducted in-depth interviews with 67 of them. We found that there is no simple recipe for success, but there is virtue in simplicity. Indeed, the CEOs we interviewed could describe their business strategy in an elevator ride up Shanghai Tower.
We also found that, in a sense, all CEOs have the same responsibilities, such as working with the board, engaging stakeholders, setting direction, and creating a positive culture. What separates the best from the rest is how they approach these tasks. All excelled at some, were good at the rest—and knew the difference. All are world-class integrators. And all applied a distinctive set of mindsets against these responsibilities. In our own effort at simplicity, we identified the six mindsets that characterize great CEOs.
Be bold. In times of uncertainty, it can be tempting to minimize the downside. However, that all but guarantees either mediocrity or decline. Successful CEOs want to avoid making mistakes, of course, but they also act boldly, actively seeking significant opportunities. They raise the aspirations of the company, and they look for intersections where the business and the market meet. In effect, they are excellent futurists and thus can define the right vision. While they will cut their losses if a move is a dud, they stick to the strategy. The vision comes first; financial performance flows from that.
Treat the soft stuff as the hard stuff. Only one in three strategies is successfully implemented—in large part because change generates resistance. That is why the “soft stuff”—that is, matters related to people and culture—can be the hardest stuff of all to get right. Research has found that companies that solve the soft stuff are more than twice as likely (from 30 to 79 percent) to execute a strategy successfully.1 To carry their organization with them, leaders need to make the case for change, and then keep track of results.
Solve for the team’s psychology. To build high-performing leadership teams, the best CEOs start with roles, not people, asking what the most important jobs are and then finding people who can do those jobs. And they design for overall functionality, bringing in a wide range of expertise. CEOs must engage with each individual while keeping some distance. And, again, the soft stuff counts.
Help directors help the business. The board is the CEO’s boss, but an awkward one—a lot of people, infrequently seen. Like any relationship, the bedrock is trust. That means being open, honest, and prompt about plans and problems. Bad news is, well, bad, but delivering it is also a chance for the board to help, which is its function. CEOs should establish a strong relationship with the lead director and check in with other directors once or twice a year. Finally, introduce the board to the company by connecting the board to managers. As Piyush Gupta, the longtime CEO of Singapore’s DBS Group, put it: “The board, to me, is a partner, and they can talk to anyone in my management team. I believe the free flow of information is helpful for complete alignment.”2
Start with “Why?” Purpose can be difficult to define. At the very least, it should be powerful enough to inspire people, simple enough to be readily understood, and make business sense. And purpose matters: companies with a clear social purpose have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 over the past 20 years.3 The best CEOs ask themselves why their company exists, then make purpose an intrinsic part of the business model, knowing that testing strategy against purpose can open up new areas of growth. Leading with purpose can also enhance employee well-being and build loyalty.
Do what only you can do. Being a CEO is a 24/7 job, but no one can work that way. Great CEOs make it a priority to manage themselves to ensure that they are not being pulled apart. That is obviously personal, but we did find some commonalities. The most important is self-discipline, particularly regarding the use of time. Old-school techniques such as lists, stars, and color coding crop up often as time-management techniques. At the same time, the CEOs we spoke with also build flexibility into their schedule—to respond to the unexpected or simply to think. Many combine high-intensity work with recovery periods, whether that is a ten-minute break between meetings or playing the piano. Ultimately, managing personal effectiveness is about developing a sense of perspective, and then using that to see into the future.
No book can create a great CEO, any more than a boxing manual can produce a Manny Pacquiao. But in business, as in boxing, there is such a thing as good technique. CEOs matter: we calculated that the 200 CEOs we identified created additional economic value of about $5 trillion. By identifying the mindsets that characterize great leadership, we believe that excellence can be cultivated—now and in the future.
Ending child marriage: ensuring healthy futures for girls
The Lancet
One in five women are married before the age of 18 years. This fact has serious ramifications for health and wellbeing. Child marriage is associated with pregnancy at a young age, dangerous complications during pregnancy and childbirth, HIV acquisition, and intimate partner violence. Demographic changes mean that the number of adolescents is increasing and therefore more people will be at risk of child marriage. Disruption to education and a rise in poverty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to put another 10 million girls at risk of child marriage over the next decade, in addition to the 100 million who were already projected to become child brides. Ending child marriage involves health, legislature, the economy, education, culture, and religion, making interventions difficult to coordinate. Harmful norms, including gender inequality and social, religious, and cultural practices, can be difficult to change. For the poorest families, who are struggling to survive, marrying off a child early might appear to be the only option. What, then, will it take to end child marriage globally?
First, is an appreciation that child marriage is a truly global issue. 12 million child marriages happen each year, largely in northwest central Africa, south Asia, and South America. 76% of girls in Niger, 59% in Bangladesh, and 36% in Brazil are married before the age of 18 years. But the idea that child marriage is a concern only in the global south is false. There were nearly 300 000 child marriages during 2000–18 in the USA, where child marriage for girls and boys remains legal in 44 states. In Germany, where child marriage has been illegal since 2017, 813 child marriages were reported in 2017–20.
144 countries have committed to the Sustainable Development Goals target 5.3, to end child marriage to achieve gender equality by 2030. However, essential reproductive health interventions, such as contraception and abortion services, remain illegal or hard to access in many countries, not least in the USA, where the US Supreme Court has rescinded a 50-year-old decision on the constitutional right to abortion. This hypocrisy will lead to more girls and adolescents in poverty, at risk of dying from unsafe abortions, and marrying or cohabiting under the age of 18 years—for some, marriage is the culturally acceptable response to an unintended pregnancy. Keeping child marriage laws in place is often a misguided paternalistic response to the effects of other anti-reproductive health laws that make girls more vulnerable in the first place.
Fortunately, the legal environment surrounding child marriage is not entirely bleak. According to UNICEF, child marriage is decreasing globally because of laws that have raised the marrying age to 18 years and investments in interventions; most progress in the past decade has been in south Asia, where a girl's risk of marrying in childhood has dropped from nearly 50% to less than 30%. In England and Wales, a bill was passed in April, 2022, to raise the marrying age from 16 years to 18 years in the hope of ending forced marriage, with fines and up to 7 years’ imprisonment for any adult facilitating such a marriage. However, punitive laws can lead to unintended consequences, including underground marriages and penalising minors, that might further marginalise families, especially those in poverty. Besides, legal prohibitions are only effective if they are enforced. Rights for children, particularly girls, and women are fragile. Civil society, human rights, and gender watchdog organisations must be supported to hold leaders accountable to rights-based legislation.
Ultimately, raising the legal age of marriage does not address the root causes of child marriage. There are other effective interventions. A 2021 systematic review for the UN found that the most effective interventions to reduce the prevalence of child marriage helped girls to remain in school through cash or in-kind transfers. Expanding labour market opportunities to ensure economic independence and fostering the development of livelihood skills remove the incentives that drive girls into marriage.
Every girl should be able to imagine a future for herself in which she has an education, economic potential, the right to choose when to marry, and the bodily autonomy to decide when and if to have a child. The alternative is a world in which girls are commodities for sexual exploitation and for procreation. Laws permitting child marriage need to change. But the effects will be minimal without investment in programmes that empower girls, change social norms in families and communities, and provide services to address the inequities across health, education, and economic security that cause child marriage to begin with.
How RFID-enabled visibility is helping warehouses navigate through labor shortages
https://www.aimglobal.org
Studies show that rising demands in warehouses will be changing the landscape of supply chains over the next five years. And furthermore, according to a recent Zebra Study, 60% of Warehouse Leaders expect labor recruitment to be a major challenge over the next five years.
In the face of increased demands and a shortage of workers, one of the most important new challenges to overcome is improving asset visibility across supply chains. Enhancing visibility is significant because it provides your warehouse team with intelligent information that helps your business make informed decisions to improve efficiency and productivity.
RFID Solutions for Warehouse application RFD40Implementing RFID technology built to withstand tough warehouse conditions will modernize your warehouse with maximized visibility that optimizes inventory management, picking, and cross-docking. In fact, 77% of respondents agree they need to modernize their warehouse operations but admit they are slow to implement new technology to do so. To remain competitive, today’s warehouses must find the balance between simplistic visibility and warehouse optimization.
Choose higher visibility to create a more flexible and optimized warehouse
Order pickers have been estimated to spend 70-75% of their time traveling from location to location picking inventory for orders. With that understanding in mind, imagine how wasteful it is when inventory is inaccurate or has gone missing. Investing in RFID automated solutions that can improve inventory accuracy to near 100% can double or even triple productivity by eliminating downtime spent traveling for inventory picking.
Maintaining a high level of inventory accuracy is even more difficult during a labor shortage. That’s why warehouses are leveraging automated RFID-systems to maintain efficient operations and empower their smaller workforce with better information.
A2B Tracking is a certified Zebra Advanced RFID Specialist. Our partnership with Zebra allows us to provide cutting edge technology to help organizations digitize their operations to improve speed, productivity and accuracy – even during a labor shortage.
The A2B Tracking RFID software platform provides a secure, cloud-based asset management solution to achieve 99% inventory accuracy or better using advanced barcode and RFID. The key components to the A2B Tracking RFID platform include:
RFID Solutions fixed readersMobile RFID inventories – Transform your warehouse with mobile RFID asset tracking to perform fast and accurate physical inventories. Choose Zebra’s RFD8500 or RFD40 handheld RFID readers to scan hundreds of asset tags per second and update inventory systems instantly. Equip your warehouse workers with fast RFID tag capture to perform cycle counts, commission assets, check-in and check-out or locate specific items that have gone missing.
Fixed RFID reading – Revolutionize your supply chain with hands-free automation to capture items as they move throughout your facility. Fixed RFID gateways automatically improve inventory accuracy by tracking assets as they move throughout your facility. Eliminate human error by routing your assets through a fixed RFID gateway to automatically update location information without interrupting your normal business processes. Have instant visibility into the time and direction that an asset moves through a gateway indicating the new updated location.
Autonomous Mobile Robots – Autonomous Mobile Robots (or AMRs) that have RFID capabilities are designed to move steadily and precisely throughout your warehouse to provide continuous cycle counting and inventory tracking. This automated data collection system is a game-changer for organizations that want to perform inventory counts and checks multiple times a day. AMRs will scan all RFID tags with a location, date and time stamp and record that data in the A2B Tracking asset management platform. These frequent cycle counts create a robust audit history that is accessible to everyone in the organization. Automated mobile inventories can free people from cycle counting and allow them to focus on more high-level work. RFID immediately improves inventory tracking, increases accuracy, and saves time.
A2B Tracking RFID Solutions
A2B Tracking integrates RFID solutions to improve visibility and accountability for all types of assets. We can customize a solution for your organization that includes mobile and fixed RFID technologies to help you achieve total asset visibility. We can also provide AMRs to provide automated mobile inventories to support your warehouse team with continuous cycle counts to maintain extremely high inventory accuracy levels.
Implementing automation like RFID technology into your warehouse helps improve productivity even when your business is short on workers. Learn more about the RFID solutions from A2B Tracking to start streamlining your inventory management today.
Don’t bury it yet: Retail is far from dead
Dan Rafter from RE Journal
Think of the commercial sectors hit hardest by COVID-19. What comes to mind? Office, hospitality and … retail, right?
Maybe. But commercial real estate professionals working the Minneapolis-St. Paul market say that the retail sector in the Twin Cities and beyond is firmly in rebound mode today. That’s because retailers have adjusted to the new shopping habits of consumers. They’re focusing today on in-store pickup, curbside pickup and increased delivery options.
These retailers are taking the omnichannel approach – focusing both on brick-and-mortar locations and their online presences – to succeed in an environment that still remains challenging.
And plenty of the retailers doing this are doing business today in the Twin Cities market.
Drew Johnson, senior vice president of development with Excelsior, Minnesota-based development firm Oppidan, said that retail real estate remains an important part of the company’s business. And, he says, he sees a bright future for this sector.
“By no means is retail dead,” Johnson said. “It is still an important part of our business.”
In the Twin Cities area, several retail types are in expansion mode, Johnson said. That includes car washes, fast-casual restaurants and daycare centers.
And the Twin Cities has an advantage over some markets: It isn’t plagued with much vacant junior box space, Johnson said. Retailers who have wanted to expand in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market are filling any junior box space they can find as an alternative to building new spaces. The reason? Construction costs are so high today.
As Johnson says, most well-located power centers have filled in any empty space that opened during or before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Of the junior box groups that have left the market, names like Kmart, Sears and Shopco, most of that space has been back-filled,” Johnson said.
The exception? Larger spaces in malls. These spaces are more difficult to fill not only because malls themselves are often struggling, but because there are so many additional regulations about which retailers can fill these spaces.
Mixed-use developments that feature retail spaces are also performing well throughout the Twin Cities market. The key, though, is that the developers of these spaces must find sites that work for all the uses at them.
Developers who are building a multifamily tower with first-floor retail, for instance, need to make sure that they are building this development in an area where there is enough demand for both retail and apartment units.
“If something is a bona fide site that works for both the retailers and the apartments, you can make it work,” Johnson said. “It has to be a really good site. Pulling off these projects is a little bit harder than developing straight retail or straight apartment buildings. For the right site, for an experienced developer, mixed-use can certainly work.”
Johnson said that more mixed-use developments should pop up across the country, including in the Minneapolis-St. Paul market. Cities are expecting these types of developments, Johnson said. Minneapolis, for example, has a zoning ordinance that pushes for mixed-use projects.
“When the project has a strong anchor tenant and the rest of the space is built around that tenant, that is usually a good investment in the community,” Johnson said. “But when you don’t have tenants in place and a city wants you to build a lot of retail space into a multifamily project, and the space is not well-thought-out, that can lead to problems. Developers might be susceptible to overbuilding the amount of retail space.”
As in most cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul do face challenges when it comes to the retail sector. This is especially true in downtown Minneapolis, which is still recovering from the impact of COVID-19, a lack of workers in downtown offices and the protests following the murder of George Floyd.
The hope, though, is that downtown Minneapolis will rebound, if slowly at least steadily. Already, more people have returned to downtown offices for work. As that trend gains strength, activity should steadily return to downtown, helping the retailers and restaurants working in this market.
In the future, what kind of person can seize the most scarce dividend?
Sales and Marketing
We often discuss and chase all kinds of dividends,Flow dividend, capital dividend, platform dividend...
However, there is another kind of dividend, which may be the most scarce, the most competitive, and the most easy to be ignored by everyone:Value dividend.
On hearing this, someone might jump right up: What? Values? And dividends? Isn't it written on the wall for others to see? Are you serious?
Of course. Thought determines action.
I also found that as the business environment matured and normalized, "values" were no longer just words. In the future, a "value dividend" may only be available to a very small number of people.
There are certain values that should be known and practiced as early as possible.
Passion
What is passion?
Passion, is a burning dream, is the future section, is what the world will look like, is you mention it is particularly excited.
I'm not kidding. Many people may work hundreds of hours a week for their dreams, tirelessly. For example, let everyone have a computer on the desktop, like the eradication of poverty and hunger, such as the arrival of distant planets. Or simply to improve the lives of yourself and your family. With passion, you have the power to stimulate your heart.
So you know, when a person has no passion, he is a lack of internal motivation. Such people are not worth cooperating with.
Why? Because the loss of passion, it is inevitable to go to the opposite of things - cynicism. What kind of person is this? You said, "Work hard, I'll give you a promotion." He said, forget it, that means more to do.
What you're doing, you say, could change the lives of millions of people. He said, why can't those people change themselves.
You said, you do not want to become CEO, marry Bai Fumei, on the peak of life.
'I'm not interested in peak life, 'he said. You talk to him about dreams and goals, he says the economy is not good, the industry is not, the customer is not bad, the team is not able, in short, these are not good. Nothing could ignite the fire in him. Such a person is not worth cooperating with and cannot cooperate with.
In the same way, you will also know that today many people are beginning to "Buddha," which may not be very good.
What is the real "Buddha system"?
The real Buddha system is after experiencing the big wind and big waves, only to realize the flat light is true.
Today, the "Buddha system" of many people is more like an excuse, which is to give up treatment after being tortured by reality.
We can take "Buddha" as a joke and relaxation, but don't really "Buddhism."
The Buddha, there is no passion.
There is no passion for people, nothing can motivate, no matter how good the car, can only be pushed to go. Without passion, life is towed by a tow truck, and while you sit in the car, all you can do is watch others drive by while you wander around looking for the next gas station.
Passion is a burning dream. Ordinary people use matches, "madmen" use torches. Don't be afraid to be crazy, crazy can be a hero.
And if it fails? That's crazy at least once.
If you can put your own experience into the alchemy furnace of Lao Jun, if only a grain of elixir, that is: passion, fanatical passion
Accept the great challenge
With passion, we can accept and face challenges.
Not just a challenge, but a "huge" challenge.
How is it possible to hear a "huge" challenge and break into a cold sweat? Can't we finish?
But in the face of great challenges, it is possible to stimulate potential, access to several times the speed of growth.
In high school gym class, everyone jumps the pommel horse together. Suddenly the physical education teacher said: "you who dare to try, vertical jump over?"
Vertical jump, very difficult, because in case not jump past, the body may directly stuck above.
But I decided to give it a try. I know, want to jump over, the key is the run-up speed, and the fulcrum of the hand, the hand should try to stretch forward.
When I was struggling to run, "pop" a press down, hard jump, that moment what do not remember. But by the time the reaction came, the man was already standing on the opposite palm pad. The past seems like a long time ago, and now the thing is, I did it.
Confidence, is so little by little.
So the "big" challenge can seem like a small thing, but the key is to overcome yourself again and again.
So I like to take on big challenges after work.
When I was at Microsoft, I applied to join the "hero team," and rushed to the front line of the battle. I would stay awake for days and nights, living in the office, and then find a sleeping bag to lie in the meeting room.
I also took the initiative to apply for the most important customer service, carrying 3 mobile phones, often got up from bed in the middle of the night to answer international calls.
Such things, there are many more.
What I would say is, if possible, take on the "big" challenge.
Because one day you will find that life and the reality of "huge" is really unimaginable.
The great challenge is to practice yourself before the day of discovery.
Responsible and reliable
Reliable, is a precious quality. To say that a person is reliable is a high praise.
What is reliable?
Being reliable is about making people feel reliable, committed, and fully responsible for their actions and results.
Put it more bluntly, can handle the matter.
A lot of people can't handle things.
When fighting to plug the loophole, instead of being the first to rush, but when the deserter.
Things didn't work out well, he said it was the temp doing it, the intern doing it and it was someone else's problem.
That's not good.
One thing to you, a heavy burden, can you carry?
The burden is loaded with the complexity of the external environment, the limitation of internal resources, the evil and cunning of the enemy, and your ability and power. The burden on one's shoulders can be overwhelming.
But can you carry it?
The person who can carry the matter, has the responsibility, can go up.
Sometimes, do not want to carry, can not carry, may be very safe, but will not let people really admire and rest assured.
Openness and respect
It should not be the prologue and disclaimer to criticize others, but really keep an open and respectful mind.
At what level is it open? At what level?
Be open to discussion and respectful of character and outcome.
When I was at Microsoft, I once sat on a conference call between the CEO of Greater China and Microsoft's global CEO, Steve Ballmer.
At that meeting, I was in a cold sweat.
The two CEO, actually in the phone back and forth each other "attack," arguing for red. One said there was a problem with your views, the other said your views were not thought through.
I even think that two people want to choke each other down the line.
Unbelievable.
Such a thing, in the side is difficult to see, we can hardly see a working state called "open."
We see more of, "Boss, what you say is what it is."
At the meeting, the boss said, "Got it?" Got it. Is there a problem? Nobody raised their hands. You know what to do? Nobody nodded or shook their heads.
Anyway, noncommittal.
Wait until the end of the meeting, whoever likes to do it. I didn't say I was going to do it or I wasn't going to. Anyway...
From the perspective of communication, this is not an open state, and from the point of view of work, it is an inefficient state.
Being open is having an open discussion about whether it's right or wrong, good or bad.
Then, respect other people's personalities.
The end of the discussion, even if the heart is not completely agreed, but also respect the results, their implementation.
Perhaps to say a word, sometimes our hearts should be stronger. During the discussion, it is not who wants to deliberately target you and frame you, it may just be that this thing is not done right, and the plan is not good enough.
To be open and respectful is to have the opportunity to build an effective network of collaboration and progress.
Strict demands on self
This, it should not be said. Self-discipline is the basic skill.
A lot of times, people will say, "How he's how," "how he how"...
Try changing "him" to "me."
"How am I how" "how I am how"...
Others how, others have not done, is other people's business. But I'm gonna do it.
The boss said to give me the plan next Monday.
If I'm strict, I'll hand it in this Wednesday.
I know that some people may say sarcastic remarks, or even call you stupid.
However, because you gave it in advance, you have more time to communicate with your boss and change it, so the next Monday will be a more perfect version.
These words sound familiar, but really ask yourself:"Can I try harder today?" "Can I set a higher standard for myself?"
Because I often hear people say that I am smart, I want to bring talent where.
If you're talented, congratulations.
But with the efforts of many people, it is not the turn to spell talent.
It's a little pricked, but it's true.
Sometimes, self-strict requirements sound too empty, too far, then try to start from the simplest things.
For example: get up early.
You decide to get up at 7: 00 tomorrow morning, run, recite English words, or better shape for work.
At exactly 7: 00 a.m., the alarm went off. Here you go. The most important decision of your life. Do you kick the alarm clock, or bravely get up?
Self-strict demands. It will pay off.
Integrity & Honesty
Finally, the most fundamental and important values - integrity and honesty.
Integrity is having a set of standards for judging right and wrong and never doing wrong. Honesty is never lying.
It is reflected in the company's system, the performance of the work, and the day-to-day person.
Once, my colleagues and I were going to see a mayor.
We prepared a small gift, a keyboard, a common keyboard that you can buy in any store.
Can not, can not send too expensive things. Because Microsoft rules: within a year, can not give a regular customer accumulated more than 50 dollars together.
Otherwise, it's bribery.
But that keyboard, in some stores, costs more than $50, in others less. Right on that threshold.
Send? Or not?
On the way to see the mayor, we kept calling, asking the legal department if we could deliver it, and you could give us a definite word. If we can't deliver, we won't take it out.
After a final discussion, the Legal Department gave us permission to send the keyboard.
That's right. It's that strict.
There are times when we really hate the legal department, but they are the ones who maintain the integrity of the company.
Some people know after saying, your company really like this? Too serious?
Really.
I often feel strange, integrity and honesty, this is not a person, an enterprise the most basic bottom line and requirements? Do not know when, integrity and honesty as a joke, or a supreme reward.
So, some things, do not do.
Example: The supplier sends a shopping card at the end of the year. Can't take it.
For example: the company's customer at the end of the year issued a 200 yuan red envelope. Can't take it.
For example: other companies hold conferences, invite you to meetings and cover travel expenses. Can't go.
These things, the form of professional bribery.
Integrity and honesty are important components of business ethics.
Business methods, which determine how high you fly; But business ethics can determine how far you fly.
Perhaps you will say, involuntarily how to do?
You can't do the right thing, at least, you can do the wrong thing; You can't tell the whole truth, at least, you can not lie.
Integrity and honesty are about making the world a simpler, more productive and healthier place to live.
Last words
I know that there are many companies and individuals who want to do things in accordance with very positive values, but a little bit of "positive" will not survive.
So, have to invite people to dinner, accompany people to drink, give gifts, or there will be no orders and business. However, we should also know that many companies and individuals, relying on very positive values to live today, and live well. There are more and more such companies and individuals; Such an era is getting closer and closer.
Some people can make money clean, only some people believe that can clean net money. Some people enjoy the value bonus, only then some people believe that there is a value bonus. As the business environment improves and the business world becomes more regulated, people will desire, need, recognize and like these values. Values, but also the future of the few people can enjoy the potential energy and dividends.
When you believe in and follow these values, you will find that your appearance may not change, your clothes may not be changed, your hair is not changed, but your inner, has been completely transformed.
How managers' time spiralled out of control-
Journal of Business Management
In recent years, enterprises around the world have carried out intelligent transformation, smart factory, intelligent workshop construction boom surging, some places even appeared "work quickly," "no conditions to create conditions to go" situation, this is happy or sad? What is the root cause behind the wide demand for intelligent transformation? What is the relationship between man and machine? Is intelligence more important, or transparency?
The smart factory is "playing bad"?
From the dozens of smart factories and smart workshop cases, the author found that they exist several relatively common phenomenon.
1. The input and output of smart factory is better in industries with large production volumes.For example, in the chemical fiber, cotton spinning, medicine, electronics industries, from the investment to the finished product process, less and less manual work, through the intelligent transition of production equipment, enterprises have won a reliable scale advantage.
A well-known cotton spinning enterprise in Jiangsu has successfully built a smart factory in 2018-2019. The number of workers in the same spindle is only one fifth of the traditional factory. The overall performance is far superior to the local counterparts, and the competitive advantage is significant. Now the investment has been basically recovered.
2. The construction of smart factory in discrete manufacturing industry is easy to focus on hardware, light software and neglect system.This situation is common in machining, food and other industries.
On the one hand, hardware visible, but also relatively good price, procurement, installation will be smooth. On the other hand, the software mainly involves production management, material management and the docking of equipment control system and production planning system, etc. It is difficult to fully consider the situation after normal operation in the construction period, so there are a lot of mismatch in the late.
And systematicness includes not only information system, but also the mutual adaptation of upstream and downstream collaboration mechanism and smart factory. Basically, the problem is solved only after formal use.
There is a home floor enterprise, in the cutting section to achieve intelligent, However, due to the problem of industrial agreement, before the execution of each production task, it takes a long time to adjust the design parameters, and manually input the machine terminal, resulting in low efficiency, no two or three days of batch life, generally not easily arranged here. As a result, the factory "reduced" to a tourist attraction, and rarely turn on.
3. Planning is out of sync.Some enterprises attach great importance to the construction of smart factories, but they are sloppy in planning the new factory, lack of sufficient research and study, often difficult to imagine how to make each station work in a specific space, what will be the conflict and so on.
It was like a family suddenly moving from their accustomed bungalow to a building. There is an enterprise in the layout of a new factory, after the processing center is installed, It was found that AGV car logistics routes and fire channel design conflict, the solution is either hit the wall, or remove a processing center, the enterprise is very distressed.
The planning of smart factory, in fact, involves a lot of fields, including water and electricity pipelines, the spatial layout of production equipment, the shortest logistics route, robot working environment, the convenience of workers' operation, personnel moving line, fire protection and so on.
Usually, the understanding of the smart factory is to carry out the infrastructure work first, and then to consider how to place the equipment and plan the space more carefully after the construction is completed, but it is not effective to realize the setup in advance.
Overall, these phenomena reflect the following problems:
First, the law of scale economy is ignored, and the investment in intelligent factories is not well prepared.
Second, as an innovative container for factory construction, the smart factory has some processes and modes that are completely different from the traditional infrastructure construction. However, enterprises lack foresight in human-machine collaboration, functional space collaboration, upstream and downstream business collaboration.
Third, under normal business conditions, enterprises lack foresight on the allocation of resources, capabilities and external conditions needed to operate a smart factory, leading to an increase in new irreversible costs.
In a sense, the smart factory has been "played bad" in recent years. A considerable portion of the input becomes the "bubble" under these labels of industrial Internet and smart manufacturing. Some enterprises become "martyrs" on the road of innovation. Likewise, more companies are watching, increasingly fearful of the failures they see around them.
So what are the top considerations when making decisions, building and operating a smart factory?
Respect the law of scale economy
The law of scale economy is still the basic law of economy, especially in the field of microeconomics. Unlike in the past, economies of scale now allow for the production of products that are not identical, allowing "no" change-over during continuous production.
The scale economy of the digital era is based on the calculation of the operating share cost. The production changeover has the conditions to achieve completely different products can also be low-frequency changeovers. In order to win the scale, such as 3D printers, as well as CNC drilling machine drill bit in the preset can be automatically replaced according to the needs of the workpiece.
In the industrial scenario, scale is embodied in the efficient "reuse" of industrial capabilities. The higher the frequency of reuse, the stronger the economic value and the better its sustainability. The scale of the industrial scene requires the full socialization of industrial capabilities. In a single, closed value network, industrial capabilities are not often called by other management units (market players).
But through the online way of socialization, industrial capabilities can be more industrial scene "see," this is an interactive process. The scale of the industrial scene produces the order "siphon," bringing the industrial siphon. Keeping the scale means that the processing cost and purchasing cost of a single product can be lower, resulting in a "value depression" and a siphon effect. Scale economy is not the scale of real products, but with the same kind of production process longer, the same capacity structure reuse frequency higher, which brings the time value of scale benefits.
From the above, we can see that the size of the smart factory is limited in two ways:
First, the time cost of smart factory changeover is high, which often comes from the constraints of upstream and downstream industry environment; Second, the coupling between intelligent factory equipment is too strong, order matching cost is relatively high. When the production task is not saturated, the socialization of production capacity is greatly constrained.
Therefore, some entrepreneurs believe that smart factories do not need to develop in the direction of "black light" factories and fully automatic factories. Enterprises also need to proceed from the actual, breakthrough to improve the capacity of bottleneck equipment, and gradually improve the coordination between equipment, as well as between equipment and business order fulfillment.
A pragmatic approach:
1. In some areas of production with more repetitive work and relatively perfect norms and standards, we can make more use of digital technology to improve the level of machine automation, and even use robots.For example, for assembly, painting, handling and other work, workers as long as the monitoring machine status, timely adjustment can be. In the case of uniform working standards, the advantages of machines are more obvious.
For example, a force of one newton is applied to press the first part into the hole of the second part. It is easy for the worker to grasp the magnitude of a newtonian force by his own feeling and experience. Different people, even the same person at different times will have different feelings, the actual work delivery can only be "big difference." But robots do a good job of solving this problem.
With the help of the sensor, the force of a Newton is always that large, ensuring the same standard every time. If there is an abnormal situation, the robot will also make mistakes, for example, there is a foreign object in the hole of the part, but the machine can not sense it, it will still follow the fixed procedure. At this time, the need for human intervention, at any time to monitor the running state of the robot, eliminate hidden dangers. With some sensor settings, this type of problem is not difficult to solve.
Robots and workers have different characteristics, cooperate with each other in specific scenarios, perform their respective duties, and finally complete the delivery, which should be a more appropriate mainstream state.
Should human intervention be necessary in exceptional cases of robotic work? Can we develop new coping strategies, eliminate them independently and restore normal order? This issue may need to be further analyzed in different industries and scenarios, and belongs to the category of continuous iteration.
2. In the field of accessories and tools consumption, digital technology can be used to upgrade.There is a steel processing plant, in the steel cutting workshop, every day to consume more than 200 saw blade, is a high cost. Every day there are more than a dozen reasons for the saw blade aging, saw blade broken in the steel situation, increased the cost of maintenance, rework and other motor burn out.
How to decisively change before the saw blade life advent?
Electrical and energy engineers based on historical data, set a different operating conditions saw blade life of the basic data. At the same time, through the current sensor to detect the changes in current, saw blade aging, the motor working current will slowly increase.
When the current is detected for 3 minutes (different working conditions have different time) more than the rated value, timely with the working conditions of the saw blade life comparison, and through the alarm prompt manual intervention.
Half a month after the implementation of this technical improvement project, the consumption of saw blades in the cutting workshop was reduced by 20% and no additional losses occurred. Surprisingly, energy consumption has also decreased, saving the overall cost of more than 10,000 yuan.
This is a very significant example of "small change and small change" through digital technology, which is actually upgrading the enterprise value chain, saving costs and ensuring better production order. This does not require an immediate introduction of high-end sawing equipment.
Which is more important, transparency or intelligence?
One of the constraints of the smart factory mentioned earlier is that the standard smart factory is more suited to socialization as a whole, that is, for use by other peer enterprises, because it is highly coupled in terms of its components and environment. This is a limitation in areas where agile collaboration is required, particularly in the project manufacturing business.
There are some project manufacturing companies in China, they pay attention to the efficiency of a single equipment, but also pay more attention to how to maximize the benefits of existing production capacity through the transparency of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. In fact, it is to open the dynamic information of the working conditions of its single equipment and equipment combination to the industrial partners through digital technology.
Here is a fictional story based on actual business situations.
In August 2023, Li Ming entered the steel pipe processing workshop of Guangdong Henghong Metal Products Co., Ltd. as the representative of Ardmore Shipping Company in the UAE. He will work here for 3 months, responsible for 22 batches, 16 specifications of the pipeline welding process site verification.
September 5, 9: 00 am, after the regular online briefing, He came to the steel pipe processing workshop, the day's work is the number of C05D 30 steel pipe surfacing, this number of steel pipe diameter 115 cm and below from 260mm to 210mm. Previously and 3 #, 5 #, 6 #, 8 # surfacing machine operator Huang Xuanyu confirmed the process parameters and drawings. According to the plan, 9: 30 Huang Xuanyu test machine, and again in the welding workshop to confirm the processing technology.
Huang Xuanyu is adjusting the machine, as a skilled, he quickly adjusted the three machine parameters, and in the 3 # test machine, all goes well! Li Ming was about to swipe his card to confirm on the terminal in the workshop when a barrage of bullets suddenly appeared on the work app and he also received a text message. It was originally the quality director of Ardmore Shipping Company who requested to adjust the thickness of the inner wall surfacing from 2.5mm to 3.5mm for the parts below 115cm. The specific requirements and reasons for change are in the update package of the system, requiring on-site supervision and immediate disposal.
Li Ming opened the link of the message sent by the quality director on the APP, and immediately entered the process change release page. After clicking on the release, the project manager, technical director and dispatching room of Su Heng company were aware of it for the first time, and the system updated the version of the material surfacing processing parameters involved at the same time. Less than 2 minutes, HuangXuanYu APP also sounded a rapid bell, at the same time 3 # machine has stopped working, its terminal flashing red light in prompt revision of operating parameters, but he can not operate.
Huang Xuanyu rarely contact this situation, after Li Ming tips, he in the workshop terminal card, confirmed the process change. The 3 # terminal adjusted the parameters immediately. Li Ming confirmed that 3 # can work normally, 5 #, 6 #, 8 # welding machine also automatically use the same parameters preparation.
The site quality inspector Chu Chunyan synchronizes the process change on her APP and office PC, and updates the inspection requirements in real time. The parameters were updated in the template for the test report. The inspector's first item inspection work list shows the need for coordination at Huang's workstation at 9: 20 a day in advance.
Huang also confirmed the process parameters of 5 #, 6 # and 8 #. After testing and comparison, the thickness and density of surfacing welding machine meet the requirements, and the current is stable. Li Ming, Chu Chunyan and Huang Xuanyu successively brushed the card at the terminal of the surfacing workshop, and the surmounting operation of the project officially began on this day.
At 11: 12, Li Ming got the same screen interface of the terminal of 4 welding machines in the office. With the help of the system, the parameter check is normal. 8 # work progress slightly behind other machines, he saw Huang Xuanyu over there to confirm the barrage, the reason is that the train sent a new batch of steel 3 minutes late.
In the afternoon, Li Ming went to the workshop again and exchanged views with Huang Xuanyu and Chu Chunyan on the processing technology of a batch of steel pipes the next day. They looked at the inventory and found that the material had been locked in the warehouse, waiting for the process to be confirmed before it could be "ready to go" into the driver's job list.
The three people also connected the big screen to the terminal machine in the workshop. They checked the process change record after May 2022 about the change of surfacing thickness, and found that it was mainly caused by the change in the specific location of the prefabricated parts. They made a knowledge label for this finding, the thickness change scenario, that can be used later by designers.
At 17: 20, the system pushed all the production records, quality inspection reports and electrode consumption reports. Li Ming read, signed an electronic signature.
At 17: 30, Li Ming saw the next day's specific operation plan, which included the detailed time of the substrate (steel pipe) and consumables (welding rod) to arrive in batches. He found that Huang Xuanyu, Chu Chunyan have seen this plan, and confirmed the specific work node. He also refreshes the next day's work nodes, as suggested by the system, where he needs to coordinate with other partners. At this point, the individual's daily work system has also been generated, he signed the electronic signature. There are no more tasks on the to-do list for the day.
This deductive story vividly illustrates how the internal and external roles of an enterprise can collaborate in real-time manufacturing based on a unified system and transparent mechanism.
Factory intelligent transformation priority, or transparent transformation priority? Different companies have different choices. In terms of ultimate business benefits and market competitiveness, it is mutually reinforcing to enhance transparency in the production method dimension and intelligence in the productivity dimension.
Chipotle Tests RFID Technology for Traceability
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.
Chipotle Mexican Grill announced it is testing radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to enhance its traceability and inventory systems at its Chicago distribution center and approximately 200 restaurants in the greater Chicago area. Chipotle is one of the first major restaurant companies to leverage RFID case labels to track ingredients from suppliers to restaurants via serialization.
"RFID labels transform inventory management into an automatic, digital function that optimizes restaurant operations and gives our Restaurant Support Centers access to inventory data in real-time," said Scott Boatwright, chief restaurant officer. "This integrated technology is improving our employee experience in participating restaurants while also benefiting our supply partners."
Chipotle said it has purchased more than 35 million pounds of locally grown produce in 2021 and has spent more than $400 million in food premiums over the last two years to buy responsibly sourced and humanely raised ingredients. The brand is giving further transparency into the direct source of its ingredients. The company has worked closely with the Auburn University RFID Lab to refine the pilot program, which is being tested on meat, dairy and avocados from five Chipotle suppliers. Ingredients in the test arrive at Chipotle restaurants affixed with RFID enabled case labels and are scanned by RFID readers, which complement existing scanners in the restaurants, requiring minimal incremental investment. The tech-enabled traceability system is designed to allow the company to act on food safety and quality concerns swiftly, efficiently and precisely, it claimed.
Participating suppliers have invested in RFID technology using Chipotle specifications, which is anticipated to save suppliers time on inventory management and stock rotation, mitigate human error and increase expiration date visibility and accountability. Chipotle invited key supply partners to participate in the test and provided partners with an RFID playbook with best practices and benefits of the program. The brand is leveraging its stage-gate process to test, listen and learn from employees and suppliers before deciding on a system-wide rollout of RFID labels.
"We have been developing our RFID program for two years and see this innovation as the next evolution of traceability and food safety," said Laurie Schalow, chief corporate affairs and food safety officer. "We are excited to test this innovation in the field with our suppliers and restaurants to enhance our robust traceability program."
Chipotle teamed up with industry-leading RFID partners including RFID software provider Mojix, materials science and RFID innovator Avery Dennison, and RFID reader and encoder solutions provider Zebra Technologies.
Can Drinking Coffee Prolong Life and Reduce Heart Disease Risk? How much daily drinking is the best?
China Medical Tribune
In many people's eyes, coffee is not only a drink, but also a culture, a way of life. For many, coffee has become the "standard" of everyday life.
At home, it allows people to spend time in a room filled with fragrance and experience slow life; When tired, it is the "good medicine" for office workers to recharge; Leisure time, it is an integral part of friends gathering and socializing.
But, drink coffee also should pay attention to method, how to drink will be more healthy?
Multiple studies presented recently at the 71st Annual Meeting of the American College of Cardiology (ACC 2022) Scientific Sessions show thatDrinking coffee, especially two to three cups a day, has been linked not only to a reduced risk of heart disease and abnormal heart rate, but also to longer life expectancy.Moreover, these trends apply to people with or without cardiovascular disease
Researchers stress that,The largest analysis yet of coffee's potential role in heart disease and death confirmed no link between coffee and having or worsening heart disease, on the contrary may have a protective effect on the heart.
Peter M. Kistler, MD, a professor at the Alfred Hospital and the Baker Heart Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and a senior researcher on the study, said "The data suggest that instead of banning coffee every day, it should be part of a healthy diet for people with or without heart disease." He further stated that “We found that coffee has a neutral effect, which means it's not harmful, and it may be good for you.。”
The research team used sample data from UK Biobank, a large, prospective database containing health information on more than half a million people who were tracked for at least 10 years. The researchers looked at the relationship between different coffee intakes ranging from one to more than six cups a day and the development of arrhythmias, cardiovascular disease (including coronary artery disease, heart failure and stroke), all-cause or heart-disease-related death in the subjects. Participants were grouped according to their reported daily coffee consumption (based on questionnaires completed at enrollment), such as 0, < 1, 1, 2-3, 4-5, or > 5 cups / day.
Overall, the researchers found two results:
1) Coffee consumption did not have any adverse effects on the subjects.
2) Controlling for factors that will affect heart health and longevity, including exercise, alcohol consumption, smoking, diabetes and hypertension, significantly reduced the risk of cardiovascular disease in many cases.
Drinking two to three cups of coffee a day has the best health benefits
In the first study, the effects of habitual coffee consumption on cardiovascular disease, cardiac arrhythmia and mortality were studied. Researchers evaluated data on 382,535 subjects with no known heart disease to see if coffee drinking played a role in the development of heart disease or stroke over 10 years of follow-up tracking. The average age of the subjects was 57 and half of them were women. The study found that
In general,Drinking two to three cups of coffee a day has the greatest benefit, reducing the risk of coronary heart disease, heart failure, heart rhythm problems or death from any cause by 10 to 15 percent.
Those who drank a cup of coffee a day had the lowest risk of stroke or heart-related death.
The researchers did observe a U-shaped relationship between coffee intake and new heart rate problems. Because subjects who drank more or less coffee each day had smaller benefits
The second study explored the association between regular coffee intake and improved mortality from cardiovascular disease in 34,279 people with different cardiovascular diseases. The findings:
Subjects who drank two to three cups of coffee a day were less likely to die than those who didn't.
Importantly, drinking any amount of coffee did not increase the risk of heart rhythm problems, including atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter, which the researchers say are often of concern to clinicians.
Among the 24,111 subjects with arrhythmias included in the analysis, the study showed that drinking coffee was associated with a lower risk of death. For example, subjects with atrial fibrillation who drank a cup of coffee a day may have nearly 20 percent lower mortality than those who didn't drink coffee.
“Clinicians generally do not recommend that people who already have cardiovascular disease or cardiac arrhythmia continue to drink coffee, so they are often overcautious and will advise them to stop drinking coffee altogether, But our study shows that regular coffee intake is safe and may be part of a healthy diet for heart disease patients.
Although drinking two to three cups of coffee a day seems to be the most beneficial, the researchers suggest that people should not increase their coffee intake, especially if it makes them feel anxious or uncomfortable.
Dr Kistler said: “Coffee drinkers should feel reassured that they can continue to enjoy their coffee even if they have a heart condition. Coffee is the most common cognitive enhancer - it refreshes and sharpens the mind. "
So how do coffee beans benefit the heart?
Coffee is often equated with caffeine, but coffee beans actually contain more than 100 bioactive compounds. These substances can help reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, increase insulin sensitivity, boost metabolism, inhibit the absorption of fat in the gut and block receptors known to be involved in abnormal heart rhythms, Dr. Kistler said.
In a third study, the researchers explored the impact of different coffee types on cardiac arrhythmic events, cardiovascular disease and mortality. They looked at whether there were differences in the relationship between coffee and cardiovascular disease, depending on whether people drank instant or ground coffee, caffeinated or decaffeinated.
Again, the study found that whether they drank freshly ground or instant coffee,Drinking two to three cups a day is associated with the lowest risk of arrhythmia, blocked coronary arteries, stroke or heart failure.Mortality rates were lower for all coffee types.
Decaffeinated coffee does not work well to prevent arrhythmias, but does reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease, with the exception of heart failure.
Dr Kistler stressed that the findings show that caffeinated coffee is more popular and that decaffeinated coffee has no cardiovascular benefits.
In the future, further medical evidence will be obtained through trials
The team noted that the studies had several important limitations: The researchers were unable to control for dietary factors that may contribute to cardiovascular disease; Unable to adjust intake of any creamer, milk or sugar; The participants were predominantly white, so more research is needed to determine whether the findings extend to other populations.
Although research shows that people's eating habits don't change much in adulthood or over time. However, these results should be validated in randomized trials.
Shanghai Chip Company Vegetable Package Award! In this epidemic, vegetables are worth more than chips!
Electronic Engineering World
Recently, the local government has taken strict "blockade" measures due to the persistence of the Covid-19 epidemic in Shanghai, which has also led to the supply of living materials in some areas being blocked. As the blockade continued, many residents had been facing the problem of food running out and began to appear food shortages, it’s a little difficult to buy vegetables" and other stuff.
In response, many semiconductor companies have begun to support the employees and even some companies sent a rich "epidemic gift package." As the domestic semiconductor talent has been extremely scarce, at this time the major semiconductor companies have urgent staff needs, Timely "feeding," them can win over a lot of old staff's heart, and attract more talent's attention. Thus, the Shanghai semiconductor companies "epidemic package" competition officially kicked off.
Let's take a look at each semiconductor manufacturer's "epidemic gift package" in the end what?
1. Nvidia
Nvidia sent 1,500 pieces of "Epidemic Package" to all employees in Shanghai, covering 6 kinds of vegetables about 5kg and pork about 3kg.
2, Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments' "epidemic gift package" is mainly vegetable based, relatively rich varieties.
3. Qualcomm
Qualcomm's "epidemic package" provides a "three choose one" program, the price of about 500 yuan (including shipping).
4. NXP
NXP's "Outbreak Package" offers a "Choose from Three" option.
5. ST
ST's "epidemic package" is also very rich.
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6、ADI
ADI's "epidemic package" is also a combination of vegetables, eggs, meat and fruits.
.……