China Edges Up On UNIDO's Rankings Of Industrial Competitiveness

Via China View

BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Singapore led the world in industrial competitiveness while China rose five places up from the 31st in 2000 to the 26th in 2005 in the rankings of the competitiveness industrial performance (CIP) index, according to the Industrial Development Report 2009 released here on Monday by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO.

The Industrial Development Report 2009 said China's CIP has overtaken the Philippines and is approaching Thailand. In 2000, China ranked the 31st place by scoring 0.387 points in CIP index value. The value rose to 0.418 points in 2005, when data collection ended.

The UNIDO said the CIP index, which measures the ability of countries to produce and export competitively, was used to help assess national industrial performance in the global economy.

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Staffing Up, Productivity Down

Via Inside Higher Ed

by Doug Lederman

Colleges' enrollments have risen dramatically in the past 20 years, so it's not surprising -- and arguably is even appropriate -- that the size of their staffs has grown, too. But the rate of growth has come among support staff employees rather than instructors and has outstripped the enrollment growth, resulting in a decline in productivity over that time, a new report asserts.

The report by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, "Trends in the Higher Education Labor Force: Identifying Changes in Worker Composition and Productivity," analyzes federal employment data from postsecondary institutions showing that that higher education workforce grew by about half from 1987 to 2007, or a little over a million jobs. More than 60 percent of those jobs were in instructional staff, but the vast majority of those jobs were part time.

So in the center's analysis, the number of full-time equivalent instructional positions grew by about 53 percent, while the number of support staff jobs grew by 100 percent, fully doubling, over that time. The number of full-time equivalent management jobs grew by about half, while the number of clerical and maintenance positions actually shrunk over 20 years.

The number of full-time employees relative to the number of students increased slightly in all sectors except for four-year nonprofit colleges, but when the center looks specifically at "back office" (management and support) as opposed to "front line" (instructional) employees, the growth is much sharper -- increasing by at least 30 percent in every sector.

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Productivity: Yes, we can (go paperless)!

Via Canadian Business Online

From PROFIT magazine, May 2009

Achieving the paperless office is no longer just a dream — it's a real competitive advantage.

By Laura Pratt

It would have been a ridiculous job posting: “Security firm seeks person to keep track of paper.” But three years ago, such a hiring seemed inevitable for Michael Jagger, CEO of Vancouver-based Provident Security. That’s because in the 10 years since starting his one-man security guard operation in 1996, the firm had exploded into a full-service security provider with more than 200 employees and 4,500 customers. In the blink of an eye, it seemed, Jagger was drowning in paper and administrivia when he should have been focusing on business strategies.

“If you don’t have control over every aspect of your business when you have a few thousand clients, what will happen when you are 10—or a hundred—times bigger?” asks Jagger. “To replicate the client experience we offered when we started out, we knew we’d need to spend our time and money on customer service, not administration.” So, in 2006, he began pulling the plug on his photocopiers, fax machines and printers.

When the “paperless office” buzz first sounded in the mid-1970s, office computers were clunky and the law didn’t recognize digitally signed documents. But today, it is possible to run a business sans paper: most offices thrum with network-linked computers loaded with software that lets users create, read, duplicate and distribute digital documents, the latest scanners are modern miracles and the digital signature is ratified. Yet, more than ever, we live in a world that encourages hard-copy proof, proliferated by the rock-bottom prices of printers. In the eyes of most businesses, operating without paper is impossible; but a handful of entrepreneurs are discovering that such a corporate change in today’s economic climate is not only possible, it’s preferable.

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Hong Kong Still Most Competitive Chinese City

Via People's Daily Online

Hong Kong has retained its position as the most competitive Chinese city in 2009, according to a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) published on April 14, 2009.

The report, entitled the "2009 Chinese City Competitiveness Blue Book: A Report on Chinese Cities' Competitiveness," compared the all-round competitiveness of 294 prefecture-level and above cities around the country.

The ten cities with the strongest competitiveness in descending order are: Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Guangzhou, Qingdao, Tianjin, Suzhou and Kaohsiung.

The top 10 cities are situated in four regions, with three in the Pearl River Delta, two in Yangtze River Delta, three in the region around the Bohai Sea, and two in Taiwan.

The report was completed by a group of experts led by Dr. Ni Pengfei, from the Institute of Finance and Trade Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The group was made up of competitiveness experts from four places on either sides of the Strait, as well as hundreds of experts from renowned domestic universities, authoritative statistical authorities and local scientific research institutes. Reporters learned that the blue book will be published in Hong Kong on April 15.

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Communication Key Productivty Factor: Study

via Trade Arabia News Service

Communications barriers and latencies can cost small and medium businesses (SMBs) up to 40 per cent of their productive time, according to a Siemens-sponsored global study.

On average, 70 per cent of employee respondents of SMBs with up to 400 employees said they spend 17.5 hours each week addressing the pain points caused by communications barriers and latencies, according to a global study sponsored by Siemens Enterprise Communications and conducted by SIS International Research.

The research also showed that while SMB awareness of unified communications as a solution is rising, nearly 60 per cent of SMBs do not currently employ one based on the sampling.

In addition, researchers at SIS International Research determined that the time spent per week dealing with communications issues was more than 50 per cent higher in companies with more than 20 workers.

In hard costs, the study concluded, companies of 100 employees could be losing more than $500,000 each year by not addressing their employees’ most painful communications issues.

Key findings

The Siemens-sponsored SMB study ascertained the top five pain points to be, in order of their estimated expense to an SMB: inefficient coordination; waiting for information; unwanted communications; customer complaints; and barriers to communication.

Specifically, they obtained the following responses to each of these pain points:

1. Inefficient coordination: Sixty-eight per cent of respondents have trouble coordinating communications among team members, affecting their ability to respond quickly to time-sensitive customer requests. They also average 3.7 hours per week attempting to coordinate communications across team members, slowing the realization of goals and deadlines.

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Alcoa Banks on Chinese Growth Amid "Lousy" Prices

Via Bloomberg Press

By Rob Delaney

Alcoa Inc., the aluminum maker that just reported its first back-to-back losses in 15years, is counting on productivity gains and China’s economic-stimulus plan to prop up results as demand keeps falling throughout 2009.

Chief Executive Officer Klaus Kleinfeld said yesterday that the company will save $400 million a year by reducing its payroll and trimming other costs. China will be the only market where demand for the metal doesn’t drop this year as the nation’s $585 billion economic stimulus takes effect, he said.

“If they can continue with the cost reductions, their earnings should be significantly better” in the second quarter, Chuck Bradford, a metals analyst at Bradford Research Inc., said in a telephone interview. Still, Alcoa may post another loss because of a “huge inventory overhang” that is depressing aluminum prices.

World aluminum consumption will drop 7 percent in 2009, and sales may decline as much as 15 percent in global building markets and 18 percent to automotive customers, the company told analysts and investors in a presentation yesterday.

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"Meetings on the Move" Can Increase Workplace Productivity

Via EHS Today

by Laura Walter

In celebration of Public Health Week April 5-11, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis challenge employers to try a “Meeting on the Move” to improve health and productivity in the workplace.

"Forty percent of the population are absolute couch potatoes," explained Debra Haire-Joshu, Ph.D, professor of social work at Washington University and director of the Obesity Prevention and Policy Research Center at the Brown School. "That's almost a learned behavior. You learn to sit at school; you learn to sit at work. What 'Meetings on the Move' really does is get us active like we used to be when we were kids. We can learn then to bring activity back into our daily life, just like we learned to take it out."

According to Tim McBride, Ph.D., associate dean for public health at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University, these meetings present an “inexpensive, easy way” to get employees on their feet and out of the office environment.

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U.K. Manufacturing Output Sinks

Via The Wall Street Journal

By JOE PARKINSON

LONDON -- U.K. manufacturing output declined for the 12th straight month in February, while the quarterly measure recorded its steepest drop since records began in 1968, the Office of National Statistics said Tuesday.

Manufacturing output fell 0.9% on a month-to-month basis in February, compared with a revised 3.0% drop in January, marking the smallest monthly drop since August 2008. Transport-equipment output -- specifically the production of auto parts -- contributed most to the decline, although basic metals and nonmetallic-mineral products also weighed.

On an annualized basis, manufacturing output dipped 13.8% in February in the largest year-on-year drop since January 1981, compared with a revised January fall of 12.9%. The ONS originally reported that January manufacturing output fell by 2.9% on the month and by 12.8% on the year.

A Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists had forecast manufacturing output would slide in February by 1.6% month-to-month and 14.3% on the year.

Economists said the slower-than-expected monthly decline suggests the worst is over, but cautioned that the sector remains in bad shape. "February's better-than-expected industrial production figures tentatively suggest that the drag on output may be easing," Capital Economics said in a research note. "However, the sector's still in pretty bad shape."

News that the decline in output slowed in February chimes with separate surveys that suggest the pace of decline is easing. According to data from economics research group Markit Economics last week, the U.K. purchasing managers index for the manufacturing sector improved significantly in March from a record low in February.

However, according to ONS, the less volatile three-monthly measure fell 6.5% in the three months to the end of February, which was the steepest drop since records began forty years ago and lower than the 6.4% drop in the three months to the end of January. That points to another sharp contraction in U.K. gross domestic product in the first quarter, following a 1.6% decline in the final quarter of last year.

"The extremely sharp decline in industrial production in the three months to February reinforces fears that U.K. GDP contracted at a rate close to the 1.6% in the fourth quarter," said Howard Archer, an economist at IHS Global Insight.

Meanwhile, ONS reported that the wider industrial production measure fell 1.0% on a monthly basis in February compared with January's revised 2.7% drop. On the year, the index slumped 12.5%, the steepest drop since records began in 1968 and compared with a revised 11.6% annual drop in January. ONS previously said that industrial production fell 2.6% on the month and by 11.4% on the year in January.

Business Books - "Instant Turnaround"

Via The Dallas Morning News

By JIM PAWLAK / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

Instant Turnaround

Harry Paul and Ross Beck (William Morrow, $22.99)

"Instant" may be overstating the case because management must change its decades-old view of employees as expendable assets and build through trust, not fear. Building trust takes time.

The authors point out that managing strictly by the numbers makes the numbers more important than the people counted on to drive results. That's the wrong message; as far back as the late-1920s, studies have shown that the big-stick, command-and- control approach leads to unhappy employees, low productivity and costly, high turnover.

What approach increases productivity and lowers turnover? Engagement. Make employees a real part of the team. Asking, not telling, acknowledges that there are many smart people in the room – and you want, and value, their input.

The authors believe customers come second; employees come first. Why? Employees treat customers only as well as they are treated.

Another message to senior managers: Get involved with the frontline people. Spending time in the trenches reinforces the employee-first message, and provides a broader, unfiltered perspective of how the business works.

Jim Pawlak reviews business books for The Dallas Morning News.

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Competitiveness and Productivity

by Bob Jacobson, APS Chairman

All too often there is too much information from too many sources to go through, but the two best sources for competitiveness information by country come from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland

http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm

and

the National Competitiveness Report by the Institute for Industrial Policy Studies at Seoul National University

http://www.ips.or.kr/site/IPS_english/research/
download/NCR2009_01_e.pdf

If you are trying to determine where in the world you might want to look to set up a place of business, either of these tools is extremely helpful.

China Factory Data Suggest Recovery "Still in First Gear"

Via The Wall Street Journal

By Liu Li

BEIJING -- Manufacturing activity in China declined in March for the eighth consecutive month as prices and new orders continued to weaken, according to the CLSA China Purchasing Managers Index issued Wednesday.

The index, a gauge of nationwide manufacturing activity, fell to 44.8 in March from 45.1 in February, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said.

The data, the first broad economic indicator published for March, likely mean that the world's third-largest economy hasn't yet managed to reverse its sharp downturn in growth. Government statistics for March are due to be issued in coming weeks, but data for the first two months of the year show some encouraging increases in bank lending and investment.

"Although China's proactive monetary and fiscal policies are yielding positive results, the country's economic recovery is still in first gear," said Jing Ulrich, chairman of China equities with J.P. Morgan Chase.

A PMI reading below 50 indicates that manufacturing activity is contracting compared with the previous month. March was the eighth month below that level, but it followed three months when the index had risen, a trend that had raised hopes that the rate of decline in manufacturing was starting to bottom out.

"A worsening of domestic manufacturing orders lies behind the drop in the PMI and accords with what we are seeing on the ground in the steel industry," said Eric Fishwick, CLSA's head of economic research. He said he expects further weakness in production in April.

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