Distribution Business Articles

I would like to focus on an important topic today for businesses.  It is the concept of keeping your employees bounced.

It is very important to keep your employees balance so that they can make rational and informed decisions without letting emotion or subjective views sway them down a path that is bad for business.  This is difficult for any business to achieve and definitely requires the support of system and structure that promotes and fosters an environment for employees.  The concept of helping employees establish a life balance is actually very similar to running a good business. 

I've been reading a great audio book by Clay Nelson, a life coach and motivational speaker.  In his book "Getting Started Series: Having a Say in How Your Life Turns Out" he walks through several concepts that are very important for individuals looking to establish balance in their life and achieve their goals.  (read more on CD)

These include concepts of:

• creating your purpose
• How not to be stopped by fear
• Commitment

He covers this in a three CD set, one CD for each concept and I'm currently just starting on CD number two.  CD number one does a very good job of walking through the concept of building a purpose statement for individuals. One of the concepts here is that it's very difficult to keep yourself balanced in life if you don't know what your purposes you don't know where you're going.  When you have no purpose, everything that happens in your life has the potential to put you off balance.

Clay walks through the process of establishing a purpose statement for person and how to live by that statement so that people are always working to stay on track, stay focused and in essence or by default keep their life balance.

After reading this section of the book, the concept has been sticking with me for several days.  I do have a purpose statement for myself that I've built quite some time ago.  After reading the section I found a few flaws in my statement and have revised it.  The key thing that I took away from this particular CD was the concept of always paying attention to what you're doing and asking yourself if it fits with your life purpose.

Sure there are some things in life that you have to do, but if you're not tackling those items that are most important towards achieving your purpose, and odds are your life is going to be off balance.  I'm looking forward to the next sections of the book and will be happy to share some of those with you as I get into them.  I do write book reviews on a different site, and you're more than welcome to read some of those reviews whatever you like.  This particular book resonated with me from the perspective that companies need balanced and rational employees to make good decisions, and to achieve that goal than you employees that know how to balance their lives out.  I do think that this book is a good resource both for employers and employees looking to achieve this purpose of life balance.

This is not a new concept for me, I have read many books on the subject in the past and attended several seminars on the subject as well.  This audio book does a very good job of providing some practical and applicable steps of the person can use to achieve life balance and in that, it is a valuable resource.

Contract Negotiations between General Motors and UAW started to stall and ended in a strike today.  Over 73,000 workers will now go on strike unless talks can be put back on track.

General Motors has sought a number of concessions from the UAW as the automobile giant loses money and loses its number 1 position to rival Toyota.

It is however a sure thing that sending 73,000 workers on strike, three months before Christmas in the middle of an economy that is in the midst of a mortgage crisis as well.  Both GM and the Union workers may literally have everything to loose, if they can only get back to the table they might have everything to save as well.

It is almost assured that this will now be a bad year for GM and for the union workers of GM, this could be the beginning of the end.  Christmas will be difficult, no home theater systems, or home theater popcorn machines.  This will be a year of cold picket lines and scabs. 

There is nothing worse sorry about the recent chain of recalls than the sorry companies that fail to manage their products, build and manage their product designs, feel to manage their licenses, and failed to manage their subcontractors in China.

Mattel is truly a sorry company.  To Mattel's credit, they have been apologizing left right and sideways.  Many people were awestruck by the fact that they even apologize to China for damaging China's good reputation at manufacturing.  I'm sure you're surprised that China had a good reputation as a manufacturing country.  Yes they do have a reputation but it has not been a good reputation so it's a little ironic that Mattel is apologizing to China.

The reality is however, that Mattel's gigantic number of recalls were largely Mattel's fault in designing bad and dangerous products.  Regardless China was definitely complicit.  It was Chinese subcontractors that replaced paint with lead-based paint it was given to children all over the US and possibly elsewhere where there is less oversight.

If China wants to develop a good reputation, they should help to identify dangerous products and not react to dangerous products reported to them after the fact.  If China was truly a good or even a great manufacturing country, their own engineers would have done due diligence on the products that they were manufacturing to ensure a small magnets were safe and that Mattel having given them a bad design that could harm the Chinese manufacturing reputation.

China is so far away from being able to accomplish that level of due diligence and demonstrate that level of competency that the suggestion almost seems ridiculous.  However, if China wants to be seen as a great manufacturing country, a country that manufactures excellent products, safe products, products that make the world better, and that is what they have to do and that is the level of competency that they had to achieve.

If they want to have a reputation that doesn't include operating manufacturing systems like there in the wild West and they could care less if their customers are killed or maimed were supplied with products provided by slave labor, and China needs to step in up and show that it can truly be a great country.  China may have been a great country wants, but they are definitely not a great country right now.  The choices they make now will determine if they ever become a great country again.

The massive number of recalls coming from Chinese related products this year only serve to demonstrate the potential that China could have if they do something to realize that potential.  Far too often they engage in common thuggery, theft of intellectual property, financial Ponzi schemes, and outright fraud (I've personally witnessed at all), that shows the country and its true aims and ambitions for what it is.  They are slightly better than criminals at this point in time and they have a long way to go if they're ever going to be a valuable partner to the world.

Mattel can apologize to China all they like, however I haven't heard any Chinese official come out and make a major statement apologizing to the world for supplying dangerous products.  Mattel is shown that they are actually a better company in China is a country.  I'm not saying Mattel is great, but they're definitely a level above China. 

Behind Mattel’s Apology to China

Where's My Drivers?

Where are my drivers?  That is the question that every fleet owner will ask at one point or another in their business.  They're just times when your drivers disappear from your visibility.  This usually happens exactly at the point in time when your customers need to know where their delivery is, where their service provider is, where their contractor is, where their medicine is, or where their transplant organ is.

These days GPS solutions are getting very cheap and when combined with online tracking functionalities they can be extremely powerful.  When GPS systems first started to come out, they typically requires long-term contracts.  The technology has gotten cheaper and the systems to manage that technology have also been simplified and scaled out.  You shouldn't have to get a GPS system shackled to a long-term contract. You should not have to get a GPS system that requires you to maintain a large number of GPS tracking units even when the size of your fleet varies over time moving up and down.

With that said we would like to provide a review of GPSInsight, an online company that provides a relatively cheap and very powerful system for tracking fleet vehicles.

What are My Drivers Doing?

GPSInsight provides a number of different capabilities with their systems.  These GPS systems among other things enable you to identify what your drivers are doing.  You can figure out where they're going, if they're staying on Route, you can even determine if they are exceeding the speed limit for driving dangerously or taking the most efficient path to their destination!  

Being able to confirm whether or not your drivers are being safe can help you get better insurance rates and lower costs, it can help you defend liability lawsuits, and it can help you take corrective measures to train your drivers to be safer avoid accidents and possibly save their lives.  It's very important to know what your drivers are doing with your vehicles.

How Can I get GPS Tracking systems Fast and Cheap?

GPSInsight can enable you to quickly set up a GPS tracking system for your fleet of vehicles.  When I say quickly I don't mean a few weeks or a few months or a few quarters, were talking about days.

GPS tracking devices are small and powerful these days and can be quickly shipped overnight to any location in the United States. Furthermore you can take a look at a number of online tutorials at GPSInsight where you can see just how powerful their systems are and all of the advantages that you can manage with the online systems that support the actual devices in your vehicles.  Furthermore the only charge a couple bucks per unit and that means you don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars per vehicle to buy the equipment and hundreds more to install it. The installations are fast and quick and very cheap to get the system up and running.

Furthermore they provide excellent support systems and they are constantly evolving their online tools such that you'll receive new product services on a regular basis.

Where can I get World Class Support to track fleets with GPS Systems without a Long Term Contract?

It simple to find world-class support for GPS systems about having a long-term contract.  You can establish a month-to-month relationship that can expand and contract with the volume of your fleet and the business that you do.  Some transportation businesses are seasonal as well, and GPSInsight can enable you to quickly ramp up or ran down as your business and its business cycle requires.

Unlike cars, diamonds might be the safe bet for a Christmas present this season.  After all, you don't want to get her a present that will remind her of you after she gets in an uphill accident because her breaks went out on her Jeep Grand Cherokee after she missed the recall card in the mail.

There may have never been a safer time to purchase diamond rings as a present than this year.  Diamond rings are rarely coated in lead paint, they don't have to many life threatening recalls associated with them at all.  Diamond ring scandals at their best deal in zirconiums (zirconii sp?) or poorly fitted settings and at worst might wipe out a family or even a tribe of children in Africa, but they won't threaten your loved one here in the US.  If you are looking for a safe present, skip the car and get a safe present.

Like anything, good things happen in threes, so do bad things.  The recall of canned chili and other products made by Georgia-based subsidiary Castleberry's Food Co. was announced on 18th of July 2007 after two incidents of botulism poisoning involving four people, and was expanded on the 21st of July 2007 to include all goods from the suspect product line.

The recall includes a list of 87 food products and four different pet food products.   The majority of the 87 food products are based on different combinations of chili, .

This list of recalled products has over 25 different brand names.

http://www.castleberrys.com/news_productrecall.asp

On a separate note, we have been covering a lot of recalls from China.  I'd point out that American businesses have gotten in trouble in other areas of the world, such as India where soft drink manufacturers were basically booted from the country due to the perception of tainted bottle water.  In fact I was reminded of this tonight, during a talk radio show that mentioned Cokes attempts to build the largest plastic bottle recycling center in South Carolina (biggest in US to be located in SC).

A critic mentioned that Coke wouldn't need to recycle so much if they stopped bottling water in the first place and if the government encouraged people to drink the same water out of tap, even if its some extra fancy Delta faucets, whatever it takes to put the image of sexy back into tap water and stop wasting so many resources to bottle water in plastic, pack it, ship it, carry it home, send it to the recycle bin, pick up the plastic, and haul it to SC where it can happen all over again!

Late July 2007, Hasbro cooperated with U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, announced a nation-wide voluntary recall of new Easy-Bake Ovens.   The recalled Easy-Bake Oven is a purple and pink plastic oven that resembles a kitchen range with four burners on top and a front-loading oven.

The Easy-Bake Oven is a purple and pink plastic oven that resembles a kitchen range with four burners on top and a front-loading oven. "Easy Bake" is printed on the front of the oven. Model number 65805 and "Hasbro" are stamped into the plastic on the back of the oven. This recall includes all units with the retrofit kit. The Easy-Bake Oven is an electric toy and is not recommended for children under eight years of age. Ovens sold before May 2006 are not included in this recall.

The recall affects Easy-Bake Ovens sold at Toys "R" Us, Wal-Mart, Target, KB Toys and other retailers nationwide from May 2006 through July 2007 for about $25.

For additional information, contact Easy-Bake at (800) 601-8418 anytime, or visit the firm's Web site at www.easybake.com

So again, as you are looking to pursue a product line strategy for the christmas season, you might want to hedge your bets with something not manufactured in China, otherwise you might find your self with lots of spare time to pursue other interests at the local hobby shop.

Chinese manufactures may be getting a bad rap, but American businesses are the ones with their necks on the lines and the ones likely to be hit the hardest from lawsuits, especially as its just about impossible to collect anything in a lawsuit from a Chinese manufacturer.  So call in your buyers and huddle up, and start finding ways to hedge your product mix with supplier products that can be trusted.

Since March 2007, Menu Foods and several other companies issued numerous pet food recalls due to the contamination of wheat gluten from a single Chinese company.  This recall came in response to reports of renal failure in pets.   The scope of the recall also affected pets located in Europe and South Africa.

Without going over the number of fatalities, lets focus on the money issue.   This blunder created an economic impact on the pet food market that Menu Foods alone lost a minimum of $42 million from the recall, even without taking into account reduced sales.

Many of my friends who have dogs and cats as their animal companions have taken the cause of making their own pet food instead of buying it.  Whether they can maintain that discipline is a different story.

Some people can provide pets and animals with more attention and discipline than others from the people that raise them to fight like Michael Vick, to the people that patrol the beaches saving turtles from encroaching street lights, to people that go for seagull lighting to spice up the entry way to their side entrance with a chandelier.

Beside The Barbie and Tanner Playsets, the magnetic problems also affect other Mattel toys.
They are:  Polly Pocket Play Sets (multiple products); Batman Magna Play Sets (4 products); Barbie(r) and Tanner Accessory (1 product); Doggie Daycare Play Sets (multiple products); and Shonen Jump's One Piece (1 product).

Including the Barbie and Tanner Playsets, over nine million play sets were sold.

More information can be found by contacting Mattel at (888) 597-6597 anytime or visit the firm's Web site   ( service.mattel.com)  for instructions on receiving a replacement toy.

So if you are having a difficult time coming up with early christmas gift ideas, maybe you should consider non-toy gifts.  Right now, its up for grabs weather Santa's Gifts will be safe for kids.