Efficiency Key To Bauxite Mining Expansion Plan

"In terms of productivity, we have some room to improve. "We definitely need to achieve our efficiency targets."

Jamaica Gleaner Online

Alpart looks to expansion - But project awaits feasibility study
published: Friday | September 28, 2007

By John Myers Jr.
Business Reporter
john.myers@gleanerjm.com

Alumina Partners of Jamaica (Alpart), the largest bauxite mining company and a subsidiary of the Rusal group, plans to expand by 350,000 tonnes, but said the project rests on the result of an audit that the company has commissioned.

The review will both determine the cost of the expansion as well as its financial feasibility, with Alpart managing director Alberto Fabrini noting that until then, the investment could not be priced.

However, the Financial Gleaner , using as proxy the investment just made by rival Jamalco to build capacity, estimates that the St. Elizabeth-based bauxite company may need to spend upwards of US$280 million.

At US$120 million, Jamalco would have injected US$800 per tonne to add to the 150,000 tonnes of capacity, a project completed in the first calendar quarter of 2007 that ramped up production capacity to 1.425 million tonnes.

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Strikes And Productivity

How do strikes affect productivity?
Who Wins?
Who Loses?

The General Motors / United Auto Workers contract provides a dynamic window into these issues.

[Detroit] will have to deliver on their promises that they can create a New Detroit, with lower costs, leaner and more efficient factories and,most important, can build vehicles that more consumers want to buy.

With U.A.W. Accord, G.M. Looks to a New Detroit

By MICHELINE MAYNARD
The New York Times
September 27, 2007

For a generation, executives at the Detroit auto companies have complained that the huge cost of providing generous benefits for its unionized workers put them at a competitive disadvantage with surging foreign car companies like Toyota and Honda.

Now, with a new contract agreement with the United Automobile Workers reached before dawn yesterday, General Motors has taken a momentous step toward eliminating much of that burden, a step likely to be followed by Ford Motor and Chrysler.

The contract’s main feature — a health care trust called a voluntary employee benefit association, or VEBA — means that G.M. will no longer have to carry the debt it will owe for employee and retiree health care benefits on its books. Earlier this year, G.M.’s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, referred to those obligations as “very large and frankly formidable.”

That debt is estimated at $55 billion for the next 80 years. So G.M. will establish the trust with about 70 percent of that amount, making an upfront payment of cash, stock and other assets. The difference is expected to come from gains on investments by the trust.

In return, the union won guarantees that medical benefits for hourly workers and retirees and their families will remain in place for the next two years. G.M. will also invest money in its American plants, and will maintain its current union work force of 73,000, according to Ron Gettelfinger, the U.A.W. president.

“It’s a big step forward in dealing with this problem that’s been quite intractable,” said John Paul MacDuffie, a management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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Poor HR Departments Can Affect Productivity

Sometimes bringing people in from different departments
can give an area a new perspective and reshape productivity ...


Business Week
SEPTEMBER 10, 2007

MANAGING

How To Make A Microserf Smile
While Google was turning heads with its employee perks, an unlikely manager took on morale in Redmond


Steven A. Ballmer had an epic morale problem on his hands. Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT ) stock had been drifting sideways for years, and Google envy was rampant on the Redmond (Wash.) campus. The chronically delayed Windows Vista was irking the Microserfs and blackening their outlook. So was the perception that their company was flabby, middle-aged, and unhip.

Ballmer decided he needed a new human resources chief, someone to help improve the mood. Rather than promoting an HR professional or looking outside, he turned to perhaps the most unlikely candidate on his staff, a veteran product manager named Lisa Brummel.

No one was more stunned than Brummel. The 47-year-old executive is about as un-HR as you can imagine. She shuns business books (her taste runs to historical nonfiction); she takes the bus to work (using the 20-minute ride to zone out); and her wardrobe (shorts and sneakers) is in flagrant violation of the HR fashion police.

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Save Time and Savor the Countryside

Via
NY Times

Editor's Note: Readers must register to read The New York Times. Most articles are free.
As in Europe, many business travelers in the United States are relying on rail service because it is cheaper, less bothersome and often quicker than air travel because of airport logisitics.

By SARAH WILDMAN
New York Times
September 17, 2007

RIDING the rails in Europe was once the province of backpackers wearing tattered jeans and carrying Eurail passes. But today, people on European trains are just as likely to be executives wearing suits and carrying BlackBerrys and laptops.

The train is becoming an attractive option for business travelers, especially when weighed against the time it takes to drive on traffic-choked roads to the airports and then go through security. The convenience of hopping on a train downtown, the speed of high-performance lines, the reduced stress and the knowledge that you have reduced the carbon footprint of your trip (a new must in Europe) all make traveling by rail even more popular.

As high-speed routes continue to open across Europe, and new rail relationships are forged across borders, trains hope to scoop travelers away from low-cost airlines.

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Climate Change Brings Grim Forecast

Via NY Times

A new study by the economist William Cline quantifies sharp reductions in agricultural productivity in many of Africa’s poorest countries by the 2080s if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. Such declines are particularly grave in Africa, where most people still depend on farming. Mr. Cline, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the Peterson Institute for International Economics, projects that Sudan and Senegal could see agricultural production fall by more than half, while it would decline by 30 to 40 percent in other parts of Africa. South Asia would also suffer, with declines of 38 percent in India and 22 percent in Bangladesh.

Police Productivity

Via
BAPCO Journal
Published: September, 2007


Bedfordshire Police is currently rolling out 1100 BlackBerry smartphones to front-line officers in a move to increase efficiency. Dawn Davison-Read talks to Insp. Jim Hitch, Project Manager, Bedfordshire Police and Graham Baker, Senior Strategic Account Manager, Research in Motion, to identify how the use of these mobile handsets are helping to keep officers out on the beat...

Some three years ago, Bedfordshire Police embarked on a pilot using BlackBerry handsets to provide senior managers within the force access to emails whilst out of the office. The success of the pilot, led to a further trial in November last year where operational officers in Luton were also provided with BlackBerrys. However, this wasn’t for email access alone.

In fact, as explained by Inspector Jim Hitch, Project Manager, Bedfordshire Police, the trial, which ran until April of this year, was to ascertain if the use of the BlackBerry’s could further aid the efficiency of the force’s front-line officers. “By front-line, we mean operational officers out on the beat. It rapidly became clear that the provision of a tool, such as the BlackBerry wireless solution, would allow them to become more self-sufficient when away from the station and also increase officer presence on the streets.”

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