The Mheda Journal

I’ve been hyping up the Third Quarter 2010 issue of The MHEDA Journal for a while now, and the wait is almost over. The new issue will be published in just over two weeks, on July 15. There’s a very important change in the works too and I’m pretty excited about it.

In addition to a flurry of great articles all about MHEDA distributors who were able to acheive Top Dealer status in 2009, this issue will be the first to be presented online at a new and improved website. The website for The MHEDA Journal will now be more than just a place to archive that quarter’s magazine—we are going to be updating frequently and encouraging reader feedback. Video will play a prominent role, too.

The new site is a long time in the making, and I can’t wait for you to see it. Stay tuned over the next couple of weeks, and we’ll have more to share. Let me know if you have any tips for what you’d like to see on the site!

Yet another low-budget (and I’m guessing low-quality) reality television show has turned to the material handling industry for help. On the heels of last January’s “Conveyor Belt of Love,” an ABC show that featured single ladies trying to pick a date from the men moving by on a conveyor belt, comes the newest dreadful combination of material handling and reality TV.

The new show, “Downfall,” premeired on June 22. It’s a trivia show and the contestants must answer the questions correctly and quickly enough to keep their possessions, which are scrolling by on a conveyor belt, from being dropped on to the ground below. Here’s a preview.

One reviewer said that ABC must have seen that old Conveyor Belt of Love lying around and decided they may as well use it. I did not watch the show, but I did read several reviews. It doesn’t sound like I missed much. The good news for material handlers who want to see the big belt in action: Downfall has several more episodes scheduled to air, whereas Conveyor Belt of Love only made one appearance. Check your local listings.

This isn’t my typical blog style, and I promise to get back to more pressing industry news with my next one, but I am so fascinated by this story that I could not pass it up. (It takes place in a warehouse so, techincally, it’s industry related.)

Apparently there is a guy in Brooklyn named Mark Suppes, a web developer for Gucci (the fashion designer), who built a nuclear-fusion reactor in his spare time. Yes, you heard me right.

It is housed in a Brooklyn warehouse, and Suppes has spent more than $35,000 to build his reactor, the 38th independent one ever built. His goal, he says, is to “help solve the world’s energy crisis.” It’s a noble idea, I suppose, since an article on yahoo.com called fusion energy the “holy grail of green technology, since it produces no nuclear waste or greenhouse gases.”

There a lot of ways to go with analysis of this story, but I’ll just say, “Wow.” With all the talk in our industry of green technology and ways to build more efficiency into a warehouse, this isn’t the angle I thought I’d find.

Best of luck to Mr. Suppes and all the “fusioneers” out there.

Yesterday was, obviously, Father’s Day. Congrats to all the dads out there. I wonder if Father’s Day takes on a little added significance for those of you in family businesses, who work alongside your children day in and day out.  Those of you who have children in the business see your children almost every day and get to spend a good deal of time with them. That’s not the case for everyone, so I hope that doesn’t get taken for granted. I also hope that the little inconveniences and arguments that can crop up in a family business are able to be put aside, at least for one day.

But I’m not here to moralize and spout family values. It just got me thinking about family businesses, of which there are many in MHEDA. One such company is Bode Equipment Company, a storage & handling dealer in New Hampshire. President Steve Fawcett and his company are profiled in the upcoming issue of The MHEDA Journal. Steve was interviewed by another storage & handling/engineered systems dealer, Past MHEDA President John Cosgrove of Atlantic Handling Systems. The two had an animated conversation about strategic planning, succession planning, utilizing your MHEDA membership, product diversity and more. Look for it soon in the next issue of The MHEDA Journal, available online on July 15.

In my June 4 post about accountability in business, I mentioned, almost as a throwaway comment, that the BP oil spill is a reminder of the importance of developing and implementing a disaster plan in your business. In the days since, the storms and floods that have hit the Southern United States have brought the issue of disaster planning even more to the forefront.

You never know when Mother Nature will wreak havoc, be it in the form of a tornado, hurricane, wildfire, volcano eruption, earthquake, flood or who knows what else. Yes, I’m sure you have insurance to take care of short-term closures and pay for facility damage. But who’s going to take care of your customers if you’re forced to shut down for an extended period? Can your business withstand such a closure? Do your employees know how to react?

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, The MHEDA Journal offered a few tips for businesses to set up a plan for dealing with such natural disasters. We also published helpful suggestions for repsonding to a pandemic. You never know when you’re going to need it.

Do you have a plan in place? What is it? Leave a comment here to let me know!

As I have mentioned before in this space, the next issue of The MHEDA Journal (set to publish on July 15) recognizes Top MHEDA Dealers—those distributors who were honored by their manufacturers as a top-performing partner.

Earlier this week, I spoke with Mary Lou Jacoby, owner of warehouse1 (Kansas City, MO), a distributor of storage & handling products who earned Top Dealer honors from Tri-Boro Shelving & Partition Corp. Mary Lou had an interesting thing to say about how the poor economy impacted the market for allied products.

“Everything that we sell is made out of steel. As the market went down, so did the price of steel and, in turn, the price of new products. Therefore, revenue went down. If the price of new product was off 20%, then you could certainly expect sales volume to go down 20%. That was something about the year before that most people don’t take into account. In 2008, the steel market increased in price, so our equipment increased in cost. When you say your sales volume in 2008 was up 20%, really you were just breaking even because steel was up 20%. So for us, 2009 was down, but a part of that difference in revenue is based on the cost of the material.”

Most people, myself included, have thought about the economy in terms of a lack of customers with capital to spend and that’s why sales are down. Or, prices have been reduced by the seller in an attempt to spur sales. I hadn’t given too much thought to the actual cost of the item itself. Obviously, if that goes down, the retial price goes down, which impacts a distributor’s revenue. Thanks, Mary Lou, for the perspective!

It’s Friday, so there may be a few of you headed out to Happy Hour for a cold one with the gang after work. Those of you in the Atlanta area can do so without straying too far from the material handling field, one of the few places I know of where it’s OK to have a beer on the job.

All right, that’s probably a bit of a stretch, but there is a restaurant in suburban Atlanta that has incorporated RFID technology into its offerings. According to an article I found in Wireless Week, “a restauranteur in suburban Atlanta has introduced connectivity to a Wall of Beer, incorporating connected flow meters on the beer taps and a pair of NFC card readers next to the taps.”

Unfortunately, the article does not name the bar, but here’s how the system works. Bar patrons who are members of the establishment’s “beer club” can go to the Wall of Beer, log into the system with a card and serve themselves. The system records which beer was tapped and how much, and charges the member’s account accordingly. Sensors in the taps detect the flow, pressure and temperature to monitor the product.

For the consumer, the benefit is convenience and a feel of exclusivity. For the restaurant, the benefit is much more accurate tracking of beer dispensing. (According to the article, a restaurant typically only gets paid for 75% percent of the beer it dispenses, due to spillage, bartenders who give away free drinks and other factors.) You may notice that each of those outcomes positively benefits the restaurant’s bottom line. Satisfied customers buy more beer, and the bar is not turning its inventory quite so quickly. Win-win.

The article notes that this isn’t legal in all states; there are 16 that do not have an alcohol self-service provision. But the sensors can still be used for tracking purposes. At the very least, it’s another innovative use of RFID capabilities. Who knows, the next time you’re tipping back a pint at the local pub, you may be in the middle of your next sales opportunity.

One of the biggest sporting events in the world literally kicks off tomorrow. To us in America, it may not seem so, but the FIFA World Cup is believed to be watched by more viewers globally than any other event. So it’s nice to know that our industry will be playing a role, even if it’s a small one. My colleague Dan Vest, editor of MHEDA Edge, came across a news item that I wanted to share with you.

Evidently, several JCB forklifts will be present at six World Cup venues for use both inside and outside, mainly for preparking hospitality suites, concession stands and other visitor facilities in and around the venues. The trucks were also used during the final construction and fit out phases of the construction of Soccer City in Johannesburg, the 94,000-seat stadium that will play host to the first and final games of the tournament. Other venues featuring the forklifts include Royal Bafokeng Stadium at Rustenburg, Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein, Peter Mokaba Stadium, Polokwane, the Durban Stadium and Green Point Stadium at Cape Town.

If nothing else, it’s more good exposure for the industry. I’d love to hear if anyone spots one!

U-S-A! U-S-A!

Before we get too far into the month, I wanted to make note of the fact that June is National Safety Month. I didn’t know that at the time I started planning the Third Quarter issue of The MHEDA Journal, but it works out well because we’re hitting on the safety theme in this issue.

Two members of the MHEDA-NET safety group, David Hermann of Wisconsin Lift Truck (Brookfield, WI) and Rudy Cuevas of Associated Material Handling (Carol Stream, IL),  agreed to write articles for this issue. Safety is a topic that we’ve often focused on in the magazine in passing, but it had been a while since we’d done a focus on it. Thanks to David and Rudy for their help in doing so.

I don’t want to give away too many of the details before their articles are published on July 15, but I will say that Rudy’s article about creating a safety policy is a must-read for anybody looking to develop rules and regulations to promote safety at their distributorship. David’s article talks about an often underrated piece of any successful safety program–the employee. All the rules and regulations in the world can be put in place but won’t make a difference if the employees choose to ignore them. How can that be avoided? Read the upcoming issue of The MHEDA Journal to find out.

Accountability is one of my favorite traits. There’s not much I respect more than someone who makes a mistake and says, “Whoops, I messed that up. Sorry. I will do my best to make sure that doesn’t happen again.” When you think about it, that’s all you can ask. If what’s done is done, a little “I’m sorry” goes a long way. Of course, part of accountability is also following through on making sure that it doesn’t happen again.

In one of the most bizarre, most talked-about moments in recent baseball history, Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was deprived of a perfect game on June 2 when first-base umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly ruled that a Cleveland Indians batter beat out an infield hit when, in fact, he should have been called out. (For those among you who aren’t baseball fans, a perfect game means that nobody on the opposing team reaches base. No hits, no walks, no errors, no hit batsmen. 27 batters go up, 27 make outs. It’s one of the rarest feats in the game.) Galarraga eventually retired the next batter to complete the shutout and earn a victory, but was denied only the 21st perfect game in major league history and a chance at so-called immortality by a call that replays confirmed was blatantly incorrect.

After the game, Joyce owned up to his mistake, admitting that he blew the call and apologizing personally to Galarraga. I give him credit for doing so, for holding himself to a standard of accountability, and most of America has been willing to do so as well.

How does all this relate to business, you ask? Well, accountability goes a long way in business too. Just look at BP and the current situation in the Gulf. While their CEO and PR team are busy downplaying the amount of oil spilling into the gulf (only 1,000 barrels of oil daily? Really, BP?), denying their level of blame for the initial explosion, and pointing fingers for reasons why each attempt to close the pipe is failing, the public trust in anything that happens from here forward is plummeting along with BP’s stock price. Some level of public discontent was inevitable given the severity of the situation, but BP could have mitigated the outcry somewhat by some old-fashioned honesty and accountability.

We made it a company exercise a few months back to read “Journey to the Emerald City,” a book  by Roger Connors and Tom Smith about how to create a culture of accountability in your business. It’s a good, quick read and it provides a good framework for setting goals and holding people accountable. I recommend it.

Just one more comment: The oil spill tragedy also is a reminder of the importance of having a business disaster plan in place. Be ready for the contingencies!

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend!