A thought about outsourcing at holiday time by Tony Green

Holiday time has arrived, and as a parent you are contemplating getting your children the latest gaming technology whether it would be a new Wii, XBox, or Nintendo DS. Have you ever wondered who actually manufactures these products? Logically enough your first guess would be the manufacturer in this case Microsoft, Nintendo, or Apple. The truth is in many cases could not be farther from reality.

Manufacturing in time for the holidays

A company who manufactures another companies’ equipment is referred to as an Electronics Manufacturer Services (EMS) provider. The reason many companies chose not to make their own merchandise is that it is much cheaper to hire someone to manufacturer their products. The price a EMS provider charges to manufacture a product for per unit is summation of the expenditure to purchase the parts, referenced to as the standard cost,  plus a percentage of the cost of the material as a markup, in addition, to the labor charges to account for the time and effort to assemble. Any added fees, for example, SG&A and profit, can be added in as a fraction of the material cost or all of these costs can be incorporated in the material markup.

So when you are opening those gifts for Christmas and you find that things are not working as they should you may curse the gaming company but keep in mind the contracting manufacturing company who built the product who should really bearing the brunt of your angst. On the other hand they are not paid to placate customers, they are paid to build. And build they will.  

Cold Calling by Tony Green

Woman hearing the spiel from yet another cold call

            The debate over the merit of cold calling never seems to cease. There are those who live by the practice and others who find the act calling someone unsolicited selling products/services a waste of time. A Linked In posting I read a while back raised the question of whether quantifiable metrics existed which would allow determining the value of the old fashioned cold call. 

           

             Moreover, the arguments for both sides of the issue have been documented in various mediums. For instance, there are a number of books written on how to cold call well. One title I would recommend, is “Cold Calling techniques that work“written by Stephen Shiffman. On the other hand, Frank Rumbauskus, the author of Never Cold Call Again eloquently voiced the feeling many sales people embody which is a better way exists to generate sales of a product or service.

My experience a salesperson tells me more efficient and less interruptive ways can be employed to entice customers to buy from you.  However, I would be negligent if I failed to point out on there are a few, very selected instances where cold calling is the way to go.

The first instance is to provide insight to encourage interest in a potential offering. Occasionally a prospect has an idea about how your product can help but needs to wrap his/her hands around the technology in order to fully understand your value proposition. In this case the easiest way to move forward is to engage the prospect in a conversation.

Another instance is to determine if your potential customer is using a competitor. If you can obtain that key information out of the person (even if the prospect tells you only to get you off of the phone) at some point in the future you can plan approach them in response to your competitor and penetrate the account.

I am sure other examples which you could add. In short, although contacting someone without previous communication can be painful in selected instances you should not dismiss picking up your telephone and reaching out as a method of beginning the process of getting to the sale.

Go Nuclear, Close cycle by Tony Green

Steaming nuclear plant 

Many validated and well researched arguments exist supporting going ahead with nuclear power as a partial solution to our energy woes. Some on the pros include reduced environmental energy production and carbon emissions. Those in opposition suggest the high costs, requirement for waste disposal, environmental, safety issues, and fuel availability are reason enough not to move forward.

In spite of these arguments nuclear power still provides 20% of our nations power requirements. Without a doubt this number would be higher it not for the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear accidents.

In my view nuclear power works. I may be biased as a result of my experience as an Ex Navy Nuke but I have seen nuclear power plant run safely thanks in a large part to the disciplined attention to detail demanded as part of the training process.

With that said one of the “enemies” of nuclear power still needs to be addressed before the public can but into a growth of nuclear power on the large scale. The issue is of nuclear waste. Since there is material which needs to be disposed of after its use in the nuclear generation process this is referred to an open cycle.

Uranium occurs naturally in two forms: U235 and U238. U238 more abundant but it is not readily fissionable in light-water reactors. Light water reactors are reactors which use water to slow the speed of the neutrons to the level which will result in sustainable fissions.

U235 is fissionable but its concentration is 0.7% in natural uranium. Reactors in general require up to 5% U235 by weight. The enrichment process is how you get from natural levels of uranium to the levels used in nuclear reactors commonly referred to as Low Enriched Uranium (LEU). The process to convert natural Uranium to LEU fuel is known as the nuclear fuel cycle.

Low-enriched uranium (LEU) is defined as having a concentration of U235 of less than 20%. For use in commercial light water reactors (LWR), the uranium is enriched to concentration of 3 to 5%. 

The steps for producing the material begin with Mining and milling. In this step the natural or enriched uranium is removed from the earth in the form of ore then crushed and concentrated. The next step is conversion in which the concentrates are combined with fluorine gas to produce uranium hexafluoride. UF6 is shipped to an enrichment plant.  Once at the enrichment plant the material is processed to increase concentration of U235 isotope in the UF6 in its natural state to 5% which is usable as fuel in light water reactors.

The uranium which is at a useable concentration is it ready for fuel fabrication. The LEU is converted to uranium oxide and formed into small ceramic pellets by fabricators. The pellets are loaded into metal tubes which form fuel assemblies which are shipped to nuclear plants and used in nuclear reactors. Once the reactor lifetime is completed the material which remains produces high levels of radioactivity.

Currently when a nuclear reactor is decommissioned the materials with its core are still highly radioactive. Many of the by-products boast half lives of thousands of years therefore precautions must be taken in order to protect the environment. Most nuclear facilities utilize local places on site to store waste in the short term. In the long term the waste will be deposited to a repository. At the moment the principal location for eventual disposal of nuclear waste is a Yucca mountain in Nevada.

As technology has cleared the way to change our lives technology in this case will be needed to avert having to handle the radioactive material. A pair of possibilities is developing fast fission reactor which produce a reduced amount of waste, or develop the technologies where the uranium used can be recycled which would effectively close the cycle. 

If not the anti nuclear folks could win out in their argument and ensure nuclear plans are not utilized as a possible solution of our increasing power requirements. What a shame that would be.