Saudi Arabia to invest US$119 billion in energy infrastructure projects

Via
Al Bawaba

Saudi Arabia is expected to invest USD 119 billion in energy infrastructure projects from 2007 to 2009, according to latest studies, with investments in the refining sector being expected to grow by a staggering 2189 per cent within the same period compared to figures from 2004 to 2006. The sizeable opportunities within the oil and gas sector have been identified by SAS, the leader in business intelligence and analytical software and services, which aims to deliver business-critical solutions to aid decision making within the oil and gas sector.

As burgeoning energy requirements continue to mirror the current pace of economic development across the region, National Oil Companies (NOCs) including upstream, midstream and downstream operations in the Middle East are facing challenges such as ageing infrastructure and equipment, lack of efficiency in refinery processes and shortage in skilled manpower. By utilising SAS solutions, proven on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, companies can reduce the decision making cycle significantly, thereby lessening risk, increasing efficiency and enabling better use of investment funds.

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Wales offers more support for entrepreneurs

Via
Western Mail

by David Rosser

THIS week the Welsh Assembly Government will launch its new business support programme for companies in Wales.

So perhaps it is a good time to be looking at some of the issues facing entrepreneurs here – in fact the grouping of business organisations, Business Wales, has put this on the agenda for our next meeting with WAG.

While it is easy to be disappointed at the state of entrepreneurship in Wales, and the figures do not sparkle, there are actually some good quality companies being grown which are addressing external markets.

I have just returned from participating in the judging for the Western Mail’s Business Achiever of the Year award – it was the strongest field for some time and three of the four short listed individuals had each floated their company in the past two years.

So while the statistics on start-ups may not be where we would wish, there are some entrepreneurs showing real strategic clarity and an ambition for their companies.

There are some other reasons to be cheerful – the World Bank last year reported that the UK is the sixth easiest place in the world to set up a company, and also found the cost of employing people here to be relatively low.

And television producers are still mesmerised by the flair and personality of some of our big name entrepreneurs ensuring plenty of airtime for the subject.

But television programmes fade and it would be good to give the UK’s culture of entrepreneurship deeper roots.

We have tended to be a bit more tentative than our counterparts in the US and we need to nurture the UK’s appetite for embracing risk and the possibility of failure.

Innovation is responsible for a growing share of our productivity growth and the US, China and India are setting a fast pace.

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Pot Efficiency Discussed

Via
Popular Mechanics
Questions for Lillian C. Borrone on Boosting Efficiency in America's Ports

Keeping the nation's more than 180 ports healthy means more than just dredging channels and patching wharfs. The ports, which are critical for the movement of food, fuel and manufactured goods, have to link efficiently to America’s road and rail infrastructure. We spoke with Lillian C. Borrone, chairman of the Eno Transportation Foundation, a think tank in Washington, D.C., and member of the National Academy of Engineering, about future challenges, the agile port concept and security issues. —Emily Masamitsu

What is the condition of the ports in the United States?

The ports have done an excellent job of handling both cargo and passengers. We not only rely on ports to handle 90 percent of the goods that move internationally through our commercial facilities, but we also have a very large leisure cruise population. But like many other aspects of the nation’s infrastructure, the next 15 to 20 years are going to be challenging to the maritime community.

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Cuba: Wage Limits Removed

Via
NY Times
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntget=2008/04/11/world/americas/11fbriefs-WAGELIMITSRE_BRF.html&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin&oref=login

Cuba is revamping the state wage system to create more incentive by allowing workers to earn as much as they can, local media said, the latest sign that President Raúl Castro wants to improve the country’s economic performance.

“For the first time it is clearly and precisely stated that a salary does not have a limit, that the roof of a salary depends on productivity,” said a television economic commentator, Ariel Terrero.

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Germany defies euro with exports, but harder work vital: OECD

Via
AFP

FRANKFURT (AFP) — German exports have spurred the economy despite strength of the euro, but social policies should be adjusted to encourage Germans to work and study more, the OECD said on Wednesday.

The OECD expected growth of the biggest European economy to slow sharply "from 2.5 percent in 2007 to 1.5 percent in 2009," it said, shaving downwards estimates released in December of 2.6 percent for 2007 and 1.6 percent for 2009.

Productivity had to rise in the energy and transportation sectors, and education for the poor and immigrants needed to be improved, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said.

Data on a solid German trade surplus released separately on Wednesday showed that exports of machinery and other goods used to make consumer products continued to help the country plow ahead amid slower global growth.

But the OECD said the workforce could be used to greater effect with longer hours and increased efficiency.

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South Africa Brain Drain

Via
SABC News

SA suffers from brain drain, low productivity

South Africa has the world's highest brain drain and worst skills shortages of 55 countries studied and its productivity is plummeting. This is according to Productivity SA and the 2007 World Competitiveness Yearbook.

South Africa also ranked last on infrastructure, internet costs, health problems, availability of qualified engineers and life expectancy. Surprisingly enough, its top rating of number one last year for electricity supply, is likely to plummet this year.

Liza van Wyk, the CEO of major skills training organisation BizTech warns that the situation is worsening and load shedding is exacerbating it. She says managers have failed to find productive work for staff when lights are off. According to Van Wyk, this will cut into profits, see job losses, add to inflationary pressures and see South Africa's economic ratings fall further.

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Slit in Short Skirt Causes Drop in Productivity

Via
U.S. News & World Report

The Inside Job
by Liz Wolgemuth

A sky-high slit in a short, tight skirt is a productivity killer. I know it, because I saw its effects firsthand this morning.

I was on my way to work when I crossed paths with the skirt. The 20-something female who was wearing it was otherwise professionally attired—pumps, shoulder bag, collared shirt, etc. Men and women alike were tripping off sidewalks and causing knots in their necks craning to see this skirt. People backtracked to see if it had been a trick of the eye. Later, the skirt was on my train platform. Again, heads turned faster than wind turbines. People may have missed their trains. How many minutes of manpower were lost in the course of a Tuesday morning, thanks to this skirt? And what happens when she gets to work?

I'm reminded of an episode of the TV show 30 Rock, when Liz Lemon (played by Tina Fey) confronts the barely dressed office receptionist Cerie about her need to wear a supportive undergarment because she's making people in the office uncomfortable. How about the fact that she's ruining their efficiency?

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Interview: Productivity Part Of Vietnam's Search For National Brand Name

Via
Thanhnien News


A national brand will build on Vietnam’s reputation for high quality goods and services

Productivity and efficiency should be uppermost in the minds of every Vietnamese citizen and business, says Do Thang Hai, an Industry and Commerce Ministry official of a new initiative to develop a national brand name.

How will the National Brand Name Program develop a national brand name by 2050 as it aims to do? Is this goal too ambitious?

Do Thang Hai: The program’s goal is to convey an image of a country which is developing according to its values.

Unlike in the past, we must create a national image built on the values of renovation, creativity, quality and leadership capacity so Vietnam further develops its reputation for diverse and high-quality goods and services.

The goal is also to create a uniquely Vietnamese identity and to enhance the attractiveness of the Vietnamese country and people.

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Souping Up a Cellphone for Maximum Multitasking

Via
NY Times

By KEVIN C. TOFEL

WHAT is the one item you never leave home without? Sure, the American Express folks have you conditioned to think about their product, but the more likely answer is your cellphone.

Now, what is the one device you need with you for connecting to vast amounts of information, displaying it, processing it and conveying it to others. You would probably say a computer. But that cellphone you are carrying might be able to do much of that as well.

You can probably be almost as productive with that hand-held device as you are with a laptop weighing 10 times as much, if you know how to tweak your phone. And it does not have to be an iPhone or the latest smartphone to do these tricks. Most recent phones can use these services.

One of the biggest time wasters has to be managing your voice mail. The iPhone offers a “visual voice mail” feature so you can pick and choose which messages to listen to and easily pause or fast-forward through a message to save time.

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Seeing the Sights of Industrial China: 2 Factories, 2 Futures

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NY Times

Seeing the Sights of Industrial China: 2 Factories, 2 Futures

By JOE NOCERA

SHANGHAI

“The RMB is killing me,” groaned Jin Jue.

Mr. Jin, a hip-looking 35-year-old with spiky hair and an all-black ensemble, describes himself on his business card as the “board chairman” of the Shanghai Jinjue Fashion Company. It was my first full day in China, and Mr. Jin was showing me around his factory on the outskirts of town.

RMB, of course, is shorthand for renminbi, the Chinese currency, also known as the yuan, which, since the beginning of the year, has risen more than 4 percent against the declining dollar. Even as the Chinese economy has become increasingly powerful, the government has kept the yuan artificially low, much to the annoyance of the United States. Truth to tell, it is still not nearly as high as it would be if it were unmoored from government control. When the Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson Jr. , was in Beijing this week, he praised the recent rise of the yuan though— as he invariably does when he’s in China — he called on Chinese officialsto let their currency float freely.

This is my first trip to China and, like most Americans, I had an image of what a Chinese factory looked like. Mr. Jin’s operation fit that image almost to a T. It was housed in a run-down building amid a sea of run-down buildings in the Kun Shan industrial zone, just northwest of Shanghai. Except for Mr. Jin’s own office, it was really just one cavernous room, filled with rows of tables, on which stood old-fashioned sewing machines. There was a cafeteria with rickety wooden chairs and beaten-up tables where the workers ate their meals, and a sad-looking dormitory where they slept. Behind the building was a dirty-looking river. Debris littered its banks.

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Basketball Tournament & Productivity

Via
Forbes.com

Commentary
The True Cost Of March Madness
By Chris Schonberger


In 2006, one critic took on a report by Challenger, Gray &Christmas--a report claiming that March Madness costs employers $3.8 billion or more in lost productivity from workers.

The critic, Slate's Jack Schafer, wrote that Challenger--a consulting company headquartered in Chicago--reached this catastrophic figure "based on an average wage of $18 an hour and 58 million college basketball fans spending 13.5 minutes online each of the 16 business days" between the start of the tournament and the championship game.

Schafer poked a few obvious holes in the assumptions behind this calculation--most notably that the base of rabid college basketball fans is probably not that large and that there are a lot of other ways employees procrastinate during a normal workday (such as online shopping and congregating by the proverbial water cooler).

Indeed, an AOL and Salary.com survey from 2005 revealed that the average American worker wastes 2.09 hours per eight-hour workday, mostly by hanging 10 on the Net. By 2007, that number was down to 1.7 hours, so maybe Challenger needs to crunch some numbers on the waning loyalties of NHL fans.

As a writer, I am inherently unproductive. But these calculations--and Schafer's misgivings--spurred me to ponder the true nature of workplace efficiency. For one thing, are those 13.5 minutes of college hoops really in addition to the preexisting 2.09 hours of inefficiency? Even if they are, it's clear that obsessive bracketology is just one prevalent example of a wider phenomenon.

So why did college basketball bear the brunt of this exposé? Perhaps the college basketball lobby isn't strong enough. What about the presidential race? A year of obsessive clicking on URLs containing polls and punditry must take a heavy toll on the nation's productivity, no?

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South Africa mine presses ahead with technological innovation to beat power crisis

Via
Mining Weekly

By: Guy Copans

The Times They Are A-Changin’, sang Bob Dylan. In this instance, the tune could be sung directly in reference to the underground mining environment, which for many years has employed energy-intensive pneumatic rockdrills. The pneumatic rockdrill is now facing serious competition from the energy- efficient electric rockdrill.

AngloGold Ashanti’s TauTona mine, situated 70 km south-west of Johannesburg, near Carletonville, in Gauteng, has been 100% electric- powered within the stoping environment since January of this year, with electric rockdrills from technological products and systems company Hilti.

The electric tools were first rolled out to the stoping environment at the mine in mid-2006.

Hilti’s drill is a 240-v, 2,2-kW water-cooled, flameproof system that uses natural electricity as the drive for the machine, and water to thrust it. It is fully enclosed in terms of electronics and operates with the blessing of both the South African Bureau of Standards and the Department of Minerals and Energy.

AngloGold Ashanti vice-president for engineering Iain Menzies says that owing to the power crisis that the mining industry is facing, it is the perfect time to press ahead with a technological innovation such as electric rockdrilling.

“With Eskom imposing widespread power restrictions, the opportunity to roll out electric drilling and remove compressed air and compressors is as good as it has ever been,” he states.

From an ergonomics perspective, Menzies notes, the drill has many benefits, including improved face advance and productivity, and lower noise levels and vibration. Further, he says, pneumatic drills have a lot of oil mist associated with their exhaust air, while this problem does not occur with electric drills.

AngloGold Ashanti TauTona GM Frans Agenbag says that Hilti’s tools provide the opportunity for increased and quicker mine production, as long as there is orebody flexibility. The drilling time at TauTona, he notes, has been reduced by half.

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