When it comes to smoking weed there is nothing more closely associated with the experience than a nice blunt or joint. But not all joints are rolled equally and the difference between the good and the bad is cavernous. Frankly, if you want the best smoking experience, then you need to learn how to roll

Keep reading..

The post How to Roll a Perfect Joint, Blunt or Backwood for Smoking appeared first on Colorado Cannabis Tours and 420 Hotels.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Welcome! Here’s our list of introductory investor materials for learning more about blockchain technology. These readings touch on the industry’s main themes such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, and explain why blockchains are a transformative technology. Blockchain Basics (Coincenter) What is Blockchain Anyway? – 2014 – A primer on the basics of Blockchain technology and its […]

This is not a political or even an economic posting relative to the tariffs and the current "tariff war".  Rather, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what this teaches us about supply chain and specifically global supply chain design. 

First, this topic has been talked about for a long time and it goes under the banner of "supply chain disruption".  We have always thought of these disruptions as either "natural disasters" (think hurricanes and earthquakes) or "man-made" disasters such as wars.  In either case the recommendations have been for supply chain professionals to stay very close to the impact of these and how long a company could survive should one hit.  Perhaps this tariff war is a way for us to practice before something we really cannot control occurs.

In 2011 both the hard drive industry and the auto industry were hit hard and interrupted significantly by flooding in Thailand.  Closer in time, the graph below from EPS news shows the types and number of disruptions just in the 2017 / 2018 timeframe:

1. Plan, Plan, Plan - scenario planning and conducting FMEA's are a must in this environment.  You should not have to make it up as you go along when a disruption hits.
   
2. Think about your supply chain as a portfolio.  You likely would not invest your entire life savings in one stock would you?  Why would you do it with your company's supply chain?  Diversity is critical to mitigating risk
   
3. Develop early warning indicators - each with a plan of action if it appears it is happening.  As you develop your FMEA you will likely identify a bunch of interruption scenarios along with probability and severity ratings.  You will then want to work diligently on the scenarios with the highest likelihood with very severe outcomes.  But, it is not good enough to just know them.  You then have to determine what the indicators you will begin to look at to determine if something is going to happen.  How can you monitor the global situation and determine the likelihood of an event?
   
   For example, on tariffs, this was a topic of the election and the US is doing pretty much what it said it would do during the election.  This was a red flag.  While you would never have known for certain what you did know is the "likelihood" of supply chain disruptions due to tariffs increased dramatically on January 20, 2017.  Was it enough to change everything that day?  Probably not.  Was it a good time to pull out your disruption FMEA's off the shelf and update them?  Absolutely.  

As a kid, I thought I’d grow up to be a mathematician or a physicist. I understood very early on that I wanted...

All veteran Python developers (Pythonistas) preach about writing Pythonic code. If you're someone who has spent some time writing Pythonic code, you will...

I had such a great experience this weekend I had to, as always, relate it back to customer value chain fulfillment.  We decided to spend the weekend at a beautiful resort owned by the Ritz-Carlton company and it was fabulous.  So, how does this relate to order fulfillment - the business all logisticians are truly engaged in?  It is called service.

Many of you may be saying "well of course it was a great time because it cost a lot and you were in a beautiful setting".  True and I will certainly say I am not naive of the fact the Ritz gets paid for all it does.  However, I do have to wonder which came first?  Are people willing to pay higher prices because the service is so incredibly better than the competitors or do they charge more because it costs more?  My hypothesis is it is the former rather than the latter.  Lesson 1:  People are willing to pay more if your service is significantly better than the competition.  Not just a little bit better and not just sometimes but consistently and significantly better than the competition. 

Now, the good news is most of what differentiated the company from the competition was free or very low cost!  I never walked by an associate at any level of the organization without them smiling and greeting me.  If they had a work cart in the aisle they immediately moved it so I did not have to muscle around things.  The place was spotless - every employee was part of the cleaning staff because everyone picked up even the slightest thing which may not belong where it was.  The bottled water was free!  Small bottles of water free!  It likely cost them almost nothing to provide that but rather than leave a bad taste in your mouth about the overall experience by ripping you off on $5 for water they just gave it to you!

My wife needed contact lens solution and the front desk offered to drive her to CVS to get it.  They did not say "I can call you a cab".  They just offered to fix that little problem for us.  Lesson 2: Don't make your customers feel they had a bad experience over some very small petty thing.  Just fix the problem and move on.

I could go on and on about the Ritz-Carlton and its great customer service but I think you get the idea.  So, here are a few lessons for supply chain / 3PL companies:

• Most actions which drive very high customer experience ratings are not very costly.  They are the basics.  Make your customer feel human again!
• Train everyone to be a customer experience evangelist.  The driver, the customer service agent, the building and grounds people.. everyone.  One thing you will find is not only will your customers be wildly excited and promote your company but it will also have the positive effect of making your workplace a desired location for recruits.  Want to recruit top talent and retain them?  Treat them as customers and not machines. 
• Fix the little stuff and move on. How many times do you find your company arguing with a customer over some petty thing (Think free bottled water).  At a company I worked we provided surveys on the delivery experience and I reviewed those surveys.  One customer had rated us all 10's (great) and put in the comment field "please bring donuts next time".  I went ahead and had the driver deliver donuts on the next delivery.  Nike had the right approach - Just Do It.
• Finally, when you do make a mistake, own up to it with your associates and your customers.  No one is perfect and no one expects you to be perfect.  They expect you to own up to it and solve it.  

When a company sells securities in the United States, they must comply with many state and federal laws. This article will attempt to...

Xilinx, as one of the creators of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology for integrated-circuit design, has long embraced high-level synthesis (HLS) as an...

SimpleFX, one of the fastest growing CFD platforms, has just released a new version of SimpleFX WebTrader with the goal of becoming the...

Vigilant Aerospace was a sponsor and presenter at the recent 2018 UAS Summit & Expo produced by UAS Magazine and held in Grand Forks, ND this past week. Vigilant Aerospace CEO, Kraettli L. Epperson, presented “New Models for Integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Into the National Airspace (NAS)” on the second day of the […]

The post Video: “New Models for Integration of UAS Into the NAS: Airspace Management as a Service” – a 2018 UAS Summit & Expo Presentation appeared first on Vigilant Aerospace Systems, Inc..

Reading Time: 4 minutesThe RSA Conference is one of the biggest events in the world of cybersecurity. I wasn’t there this year, but...

Confused about what should be on your Kickstarter Homepage? Madeleine Holly-Rosing, author of Kickstarter for the Independent Creator and writer/creator of Boston Metaphysical...