The Reading Room – What’s The SCOOP?
By Philip Spagnoli Stoten Founder of SCOOP
In a regular Friday spot, this is the Reading Room, a weekly roundup of what we’ve been reading, watching and listening to. You can see these updates even more regularly if you follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
We’re still in the grips of Covid-19 and things aren’t really getting better as fast as we’d like. In terms of manufacturing, many factories are getting beck to higher levels of production, but there are still many disruptions in the supply chain. Here is Australia the crisis has sparked some panic shopping and we find ourselves with toilet paper rationed.
- One side effect impacting the manufacturing industry globally is the cancellation of events, and I don’t just mean the postponed launch of the next James Bond movie, No Time to Die. Hannover Fair, one of the world’s largest industrial trade shows, has been postponed to July, EPP’s InnovationsFORUM has been postponed and I suspect more will follow. It really is a good time to think about shifting some marketing effort and budget to online activities and to have a plan B around each event participation.
- This Sunday, March 8th is also International Women’s Day, with the theme #EachforEqual. There’s some great content out there around the topic, including “Women powering Amazon”. Take a look at the 22nd list of “Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business. The 2019 ranking is comprised of more CEOs, more promotions, and more competition than ever. It includes 10 newcomers, most of them chief executives. In fact, there were so many qualified candidates that even a few of the record 36 female CEOs in the Fortune 500 didn’t make the cut. The list includes Flex CEO, Revathi Advaithi. Also check out some of the great video with female superstars from APEX last month on the SCOOP APEX 2020 YouTube channel.
- This week saw the passing of Jack Welch, an extraordinarily successful CEO, who in two decades made GE, a legacy company if ever there was one, the most valuable company on Earth, and then lived long enough to see it all fall apart. Read, or listen, to this piece from Steve Forbes, in Forbes, “Jack Welch: Managerial Genius Who Made One Disastrous Mistake”
- Also in Forbes, more from Fictiv CEO, Dave Evans on what a supply chain or manufacturing ecosystem might look like in the future. In an article, entitled “A Manufacturing Industry Fit For A Post-Coronavirus World”, Dave explores the idea of a self-driving supply chain and what that might look like.
- IndustryWeek tells us it will be “Pain First, Then Progress”, adding that when technology and the way society decides to relate to it advances sufficiently, there will be a period of remarkable advancement.
- IndustryWeek also poses the question, “What Is Manufacturing’s Greatest Challenge?” The answer might surprise you.
Webinar of the week: I will be moderating a webinar on March 12th, entitled “The Hidden Costs of Supply Chain Unpredictability” with guests Ron Keith of Supply Chain Resource Group, and Jean Olivieri of Fictiv. Registration is already over 300, so sign up soon!
Video of the week: The full list of APEX videos is live on the SCOOP APEX 2020 YouTube channel, as are numerous APEX videos from other outlets. Check out the Koh Young special of That SCOOPshow as well as The Eric Miscoll Show – Women in Manufacturing.
That’s it until next week! For more regular musing connect or follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Read more, watch more, hear more, know more – that’s the SCOOP!
