Demag Work at Hendrickson International

Expanding Industry Presents Demands Load Handling Know How
Hendrickson is the world's leading supplier of truck, tractor, and trailer air suspensions, auxiliary lift axle systems, steel leaf springs, and bumpers for the heavy-duty transportation industry.

From the beginning, Hendrickson's only business has been to serve the needs of the commercial vehicle industry. This focus, bolstered by an unrelenting pursuit of technological leadership, is the key to our status as the world leader in the design and manufacture of high quality truck, tractor, and trailer suspensions, liftable suspensions, steel leaf springs, bumpers, and stamped components for the heavy-duty transportation market.

For over 15 years, Morrison Company has served Hendrickson with material handling solutions. Demag hoists have been an integral part of the systems that have been designed, installed and serviced. Hendrickson recognized the value in having Demag cranes and hoists along with the expertise of a premier distributor.

Ron Marling, Manufacturing Engineering and Quality Assurance Manager, appreciates Morrison Company's professionalism and responsiveness to their needs. "They also have a wide-array of products to offer. From cranes, lift tables, guard railing, and rack Morrison Company has been a trusted partner for many years."

Demag is a world leading producer of overhead bridge cranes, wire rope and chain hoists, gearmotors and other material handling products. Load handling know-how and expertise based on years (over 180) of experience. They provide optimum solutions to meet a broad spectrum of crane application requirements with the highest level of efficiency, reliability and safety.

Morrison Company is a distributor of integrated material handling components and systems. Located in Cleveland, OH, Morrison Company services the needs of Northeast Ohio as well as most states in the US. Since 1929 Morrison Company has proven to its customers their passion for long-term relationships.

Is your company’s warehouse or manufacturing area a mess? Do you suspect it could be operating more safely and efficiently? If so why not request a no-obligation facility assessment.

US Chamber of Commerce Lobbying Efforts

Counterfeiting and Piracy
According to the World Customs Organization and Interpol, the global trade in illegitimate goods increased last year to more than $600 billion. U.S. companies lose an estimated $250 billion per year, costing 750,000 American jobs.

These are serious crimes that put consumers at risk with fake prescription drugs, untested consumer electronics, harmful cosmetics, exploding batteries, and substandard automobile and aircraft parts. Additionally, U.S. manufacturers are reeling from unfair competition from “knock-off” products. There are even links to terrorism. For example, the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 was largely financed through counterfeit goods.

The Chamber will lead an unprecedented global initiative to fight these illegal activities with the following strategies:

• Educate businesses, the media, and lawmakers on the growing economic threat of counterfeiting
• Work with manufacturers, retailers, and law enforcement agencies to disrupt the use of legitimate distribution channels to peddle fraudulent products
• Implement country-specific initiatives in priority nations— beginning with China and Brazil and then expanding to Korea, India, and Russia

To focus on China's major role in both the problem and the solution, they recently established an on-the-ground lobbying presence in Beijing as well as a China-focused global business coalition to enhance IP protections. The Chamber also released the first-ever study about the impact of IP theft and related crimes on the Brazilian economy.

In 2006, while expanding lobbying and education in China and Brazil, the Chamber will also move ahead with education and enforcement programs in Korea, India, and Russia.

Project Management

Implementing for Success
All of your hard work getting a project planned, prioritized and approved may now be in jeopardy. It’s now time to actually implement the project so your company can begin to realize its touted benefits. What’s next?

With the right project selection, planning and delegation of responsibilities should be a breeze. Still this is an area where sticking to the plan and maintaining discipline can make or break the ROI of a project.

Change orders add complexity and risk to the outcome of a project. In some instances those changes are inevitable, but in many it gets back to whether or not you tied your project into your overall business objectives at the start.

That’s why one of the most important best practices associated with the implementation is to avoid scope creep.

Just what is scope creep? For example, you start off with a plan and your customer requirements have changed and marketing wants you to change the project. To avoid scope creep, it’s important to create a project steering committee that includes a project sponsor from the company executive team as well as representatives from its financial and IT communities.

The steering committee’s role is to weigh in on any change requests relating to time and scope. They can decide whether to expand the scope of the project now or wait until the second phase to make changes.

The second important best practice associated with implementation is training of the operations, maintenance ands IT groups that will work with the new systems or equipment. Operations people need to be familiar with the equipment they’re going to use through small training sessions where they can conduct a trial run in a work environment. Likewise the maintenance group needs to know how to perform proper maintenance and trouble sheet new equipment. There will be glitches in the early stage of a start-up.

Finally the IT and mechanical systems need to be put through their paces before officially going live. Generally you want to do point testing of equipment and systems solutions; and end-to-end test to make sure the solution operates the way it was designed to operate; and finally a performance test to make sure the overall system can handle projected volumes including peak rates.

Operations Manager Issues

Hiring Strategies
As all employers quickly learn, there's a world of difference between a worker who's correctly matched to their job and their organization, and one who is not.

But how do you find and match the right people to the right jobs? By including, in your comprehensive people strategy, a well-structured recruiting and selection program. The key to successfully developing such a program is to follow a proven recruiting process for the positions you need to fill. Resist the temptation to omit steps, because shortcutting the process can shortchange your results. Here's what you'll need to do:

• Compile a "success profile." In addition to creating job descriptions, it's important to develop a "success profile" of the ideal employee for key positions in your company that are critical to the execution of your business plan. These might include such positions as team leaders, district managers and salespeople. For example, let's say you currently have 20 salespeople. Within that group, you have four that are top performers, 12 that are middle-of-the-road and four that aren't quite making the grade. If you could bump the number of folks in the top group from 20 percent to 33 percent, that could have a dramatic impact on your company's performance.
• Screen candidates by phone. Once you've narrowed your stack of resumes to a handful of potential applicants, call the candidates and use your phone-screening questions to further narrow the field. Using a consistent set of questions in both this step and your face-to-face interviews will help ensure you're evaluating candidates equally.
• Assess your potential candidates for their skills and attributes using a proven assessment tool. A resume and phone interview can only tell you so much about a job applicant, so you'll need a dependable assessment tool to help you analyze the core behavioral traits and cognitive reasoning speed of your applicants. For example, a good test will provide insights as to whether the individual is conscientious or lackadaisical, introverted or extroverted, agreeable or uncompromising, open to new ideas or close-minded, and emotionally stable or anxious and insecure. The success profile you created for each position will help you determine which behavioral traits are important for that position. For example, you would expect a successful salesperson to be extroverted. On the other hand, someone filling a clerical position might be more introverted.
• Schedule and conduct candidate interviews. Once you've selected candidates based on the previous steps, schedule and conduct the interviews. Use a consistent set of 10 or 12 questions to maintain a structured interview and offer a sound basis for comparing applicants.

Additional Pre-Recruiting Tips
Before you start the hiring process, determine your strategy relative to how people fit into your organization. What is your process for making sure they're a good fit with your company's culture? Decide whether your approach to the cultural question should include a second interview. Also, who else, if anyone, do you involve in the interviews to help make this selection and judge the candidate? Your goal is to have a plan that will help you determine whether you have a qualified applicant who will fit into your company's culture.

In addition, decide whether you're going to conduct pre-employment testing. How much is it worth for you to know an individual's strengths and weaknesses, not just as a hire/don't hire test, but as a coaching tool to help you determine their training needs and the best approach to maximize the person's productivity? Pre-employment testing is often overlooked, when it could be a very valuable tool. For example, if you find an applicant who fits the job description and appears to be the person you want to hire, pre-employment testing can help you determine how to work with them more effectively and move them along in your organization.

If you want your business to attract and retain good clients, your comprehensive people strategy must include a recruiting and selection strategy that attracts and retains quality employees. Following a well-thought-out, structured process will help you best match the right people to the right jobs in your company.

Business School Book Review

Harvard Business School
Are you a reader? If so this article will feature book reviews by some the county’s best and brightest business school professors. While they’re recommendations may not always be about business, the books do have something to say about perseverance and integrity. This month’s featured professor is Rosabeth Kanter, the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

LONG WALK TO FREEDOM by Nelson Mandela
"This is an inspiring story about leadership in the most difficult of circumstances. Nelson Mandela led the struggle against apartheid in South Africa from a prison cell. He had a long-term view, persisted against all odds, had a support system of colleagues and knew how to build coalitions, negotiated a settlement, and then, when he won and became President of South Africa, he forgave his enemies."

THE PRINCE by Nicolo Machiavelli
"I recommend this for its insight into the dynamics of power. In addition to the technical side of business and the financial fundamentals taught in MBA programs, it is important to understand the forces that drive people in organizations. Decision-making is not always rational; it is sometimes, maybe even often, affected by executive egos and power struggles. Its enduring insights are relevant to the crisis in modern corporations today, because of the Enron collapse and subsequent revelations about financial missteps in other companies."

"This pair of books helps anchor two ends of a continuum -- the best of leadership and the dark side."

Biographical Info:

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, specializing in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. She advises major corporations and governments worldwide, and is the author or co-author of 15 books. For more information on Rosabeth Kanter, please visit: http://dor.hbs.edu/fi_redirect.jhtml?facInfo=bio&facEmId=rkanter&loc=extn.

Industry Trends

Acceptance of Third Party Logistics
The decade of nineties witnessed a new trend in Logistics, which is becoming an accepted practice in the industry. The new trend is a culmination of experiments done by various companies during the eighties to outsource a certain part of their Logistics functions as a part of re-engineering which swept the industrial nations. In the early nineties, outsourcing of individual Logistics functions led to terms like Contract Logistics or Logistics Service Providers which by the middle of this decade evolved into a new concept referred to as 3PL.

In simple terms, a 3PL can be defined as a firm that provides multiple Logistics services for its customers'. Clearly, the third party is external to the company and is used for its expertise to provide more than one or two aspects of Logistics. One desirable attribute of a 3PL is that the multiple Logistics services can be integrated as opposed to being performed on a stand-alone basis. Bu providing integrated Logistics solutions, the service provider can solve its customer's business problems more effectively.

The advent of 3PLs could be better understood in the context of dramatic changes in the view of top managers about their Logistics function. According to a survey in USA specifically focused on Supply Chain, the function of Logistics has emerged as an important area of management strategy. According to the survey findings, the most important strategic utilization of Logistics is towards improving customer service followed by gaining market share. Cost reduction, which has traditionally been the main focus of Logistics, ranks third in the importance of Logistics focus. The survey has concluded that distribution, shipping, trucking and transportation are successful areas of outsourcing. The survey also showed as many as 51% companies were at various stages in the process of Logistics outsourcing.

Viewed in the context of these survey findings, it comes as no surprise that providers of third party Logistics services, who started with very narrow range of services around 1995, have gradually moved up the value chain and expanded their offerings across the breadth of the Supply Chain.

They are also developing innovative services that are pushing the bounds of conventional practice. Most importantly, 3PL trends have helped the Logistics industry to consolidate through alliances, mergers and diversification so as to play a strategic role in the customer's Supply Chain.

The most important reason for the rapid acceptance of Third Party Logistics providers has been the quick gains by the users of the service of 3PL firms.

Between 1998 and 2002, the early users of 3PL firms reported the following benefits:

• Logistics costs dropped by 7.8%
• Logistics assets fell by 21.6%
• Order cycle time was reduced from 6.3 to 3.5 days

As the usage of 3PL firms became more common in 2003 and the year 2004, more and more companies begun to use 3PL as a source of strategic advantage with a view to achieving broader business objectives than just cost saving and cycle time reduction. These were:

• More' value added' services to customers
• Source of process improvement
• Increased access to larger markets
• Source Logistics resources, which were difficult for the user to acquire

As the business grows and customers begin to develop more confidence in Third Party service providers. 3PLs are rapidly maturing into a distinct discipline in the Supply Chain area. A few interesting trends are emerging:

• Over the last two years, 3PLs are becoming niche service providers for one or two specific industry segments.
• Substantial investments are being made by 3PL firms towards assimilating advanced IT practices to provide shipment tracking capabilities, real time data access and analysis.
• Vertical alliances are taking place between 3PLs and their customers to ensure long term strategic benefits to both parties concerned.