The dollars and sense of lithium-ion battery technology
Though the material handling industry continues to see lithium-ion batteries as a greener solution to their lead-acid predecessors, switching to this battery technology can also add a little greener to your bottom line in the form of dollars. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be difficult to grasp how a technology that requires a larger upfront investment can actually result in cost savings over time. “There’s a lot of interest and...
Quarter One: Here we come.
I am composing this month’s column after opening the presents Santa left for me. All I can say is he must have enjoyed the shot glass filled with 30-year-old Scotch I left under the tree. Also been wondering how you reacted to last month’s column which did not express much hope for 2021. Adding another six weeks of data to the thought process has not changed my mind much, and in fact, I came up with another risk or two that need...
The Idea Men
As a full-time consultant, I get many opportunities to sit with dealer principals and their leadership teams and plot different strategies for making tangible change and improvement in the organization. I was in a meeting a couple of years ago with a group of service and parts managers. We were trying to put the tools in place to launch some new initiatives. During the meeting, we were assessing the bottom-line value of current...
The less lead you start with, the less lead you have to clean up!
Li-ion batteries became widespread not only in personal electronics, medical devices, aerospace, and automotive but also in heavy industrial applications like electric forklifts in the Material Handling industry, and even mining. Nevertheless, many industries continue to rely on a lead-acid battery pack, including electric forklifts applications. Are you using traditional lead-acid forklift batteries in your operations? If yes, this...
Do you have a Quantification Addiction?
We love numbers. We’re quite obsessed with them. Everything we do in business has to be measured and tracked in a nice, neat metric, often color-coded with a red-yellow-green indicator. We also pick numbers that are easy to capture, typically pulled from a report already being generated for another purpose. And oftentimes, performance bonuses raises, and other incentives are tied to these dashboard numbers. So needless to say,...
Additional Tax Relief: Consolidated Appropriations Act 2020
The President has now signed the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (The Act) as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, providing several new COVID-related relief programs. Amid funding for virus distributions, multiple relief causes, an extension of unemployment benefits, and $600 per person stimulus money, the bill provides $285 billion of funding and direction for a second round of Paycheck...
Paycheck Protection Program 2: The Sequel
On Monday evening, both the House and Senate passed the CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE AND RELIEF SUPPLEMENTAL APPROPRIATIONS ACT (“The Act”) as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which provides a wide array of COVID-related relief programs. Amid funding for virus distributions, multiple relief causes, an extension of unemployment benefits, and $600 per person stimulus money, the bill provides $285 billion of funding and direction for...