The week that was: 11 Mar 08 - 18 Mar 08
For someone who sometimes struggles to remember what he did yesterday, it’s fair to say that my future planning needs some fine-tuning, the same, apparently, can be said for large number of companies when it comes to their supply chain (note to self – you’re not alone). According to a study by the University of Tennessee, many supply chain organisations are so consumed with tackling issues such as cost and inventory management that they are failing to plan for what lies ahead. Here at ELP towers we have a little saying “fail to prepare, prepare to fail” – don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Figure of the week - $1021.70 – the price of gold per ounce at midday on Monday as investors ploughed money into commodities to escape the market turmoil.
There’s nothing ELP likes more than a skim through the well-thumbed pages of the office copy of The Economist over a cup of Earl Grey, and one article in particular caught the eye over this past week. Edward McBride’s piece on China’s seemingly never-ending quest for resources revealed some startling facts concerning the extraordinary lengths our friends in the east are going to power their economy. Among many startling discoveries, the figure that caught our eye was that relating to number of Chinese ships reportedly docked outside Australia’s biggest coal port, Newcastle, in June of last year. If the economist is to be believed (and we don’t doubt for one moment that it should be), China had 79 ships queuing patiently for bags of the black stuff in Australian waters. That’s quite some traffic jam.
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