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Project Management 411

June 12th, 2008

Green is the New Lean?

Marketing message experts, driven by global warming fever, are more often linking green with lean. The Association for Operations Management’s annual conference brochure (no link but check out www.apics.org) indicates that “green is the new lean”. It can be if you use lean approaches, concepts and culture change.
Value stream mapping, a lean analysis approach, is […]

By Bob Turek -- 4 comments

June 11th, 2008

Green Messaging Gone Amuck

My fascination with how global warming and green messages are being used and abused by companies continues with a brochure advertising The Association for Operations Management’s annual conference (go to www.apics.org for more info). In it they promote a “learning path” called “sustainability/green” (my emphasis provided):
“Green is the new lean. Attend this Learning Path to […]

By Bob Turek -- 0 comments

June 10th, 2008

Emerging Market Prejudice?

Strategy+Business proposes more attention be given to “emerging markets“:
Many corporate leaders recognize this opportunity, but few are developing the capabilities or the management focus that they will need to realize its full potential.
That’s a legitimate comment based on some of the facts involved. But they then go on to assume that they know what these […]

By Bob Turek -- 0 comments

June 6th, 2008

Did the Fed Contribute to Poor Risk Management by Banks?

CFO’s article on risk management brought up a fascinating point about how the Federal Reserve policies contributed to poor risk management in banks during the subprime mess. CFO makes a shaky link to Alan Greenspan’s role. Banks had been shedding, instead of managing, risk for years by passing it on to investors. They claim that […]

By Bob Turek -- 0 comments

June 5th, 2008

Risk Management Problems Are Culture Problems

“Risk was not integrated but split between a credit risk officer and a market risk officer, both of whom reported to the CFO, who then reported to the CEO. That may work at a place like Goldman, where decisions are made collectively among executives. But at a firm with a strong-willed CEO, like Merrill, it […]

By Bob Turek -- 0 comments

June 4th, 2008

Risk Management: What Can We Learn from the Sub-Prime Crisis?

CFO magazine covered how poor risk-management techniques, and more importantly, organizational culture and structure, contributed to the subprime problems:
“the inability to properly manage risk, and the failure of stress tests have so far resulted in global bank losses of $265 billion. With a few notable exceptions, bank CFOs seemed willfully ignorant of snowballing risk.”
The worst […]

By Bob Turek -- 0 comments

June 2nd, 2008

Just Thought You Should Know: Europe Leads in Tracking Carbon Emissions

For those of you who believe that your carbon emissions won’t be tracked, just look at what Manufacturing Business Technology is reporting:
David Simchi-Levi, cofounder of LogicTools and now an ILOG consultant, says companies in the European Union, which has agreed to abide by the Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gases, already have a financial incentive […]

By Bob Turek -- 0 comments

May 28th, 2008

The Google Way: Do Whatever You Want, Just Tell Us What You Are Doing

Miki at Leadership Turn deals with innovation the Google way. It’s a great read- take a look. I’d like to focus on a couple of things that she brought up:
1. Google’s allowing people to work on their own ideas 20% of the time as long as they track what they are doing.
2. The idea of […]

By Bob Turek -- 4 comments

May 27th, 2008

Brazil! How is Your Energy Policy Doing?

Another country that provides readers to projectmanagement411 is Brazil. In fact they are fifth and rising (behind the US, Australia, Czech Republic and Canada) on the list of most readers by country this month.
One reason I’m intensely interested in Brazil is because of their energy policy. Wikipedia says that Brazil…:
“is the world’s second largest producer […]

By Bob Turek -- 0 comments

May 26th, 2008

The Arguments For, and Against, Energy Policies: Join In or Be Left Behind!

Manufacturing Business Technology made us aware of competing energy policies and the arguments being considered. I thought John Engler, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) CEO, made some excellent comments that point to the importance of contributing to the discussion:
“Manufacturing is the most energy intensive sector of the economy,…The energy plan in Sen. McConnell’s amendment will […]

By Bob Turek -- 2 comments

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