Special thanks to David Edwards (Director and Advocate for Hydrogen Energy, Air Liquide US), David Burns (Vice-President of Clean Energy Development, Linde), and Lars Martiny (Head of Hydrogen Future, The Chemours company). When considering which segments of the industrial gas industry have taken off over the past 5-10 years, hydrogen invariably dominates the conversation. Arguably […]
The Business of Helium
Special thanks to Phil Kornbluth, President of Kornbluth Helium Consulting (KHC) for his contribution From time to time, helium has received increased visibility in the B2B press due to product shortages. However, over the last 3-5 years the press has become more mainstream due to the same supply-demand challenges, as well as the effects on […]
Driving Efficiency: Lean Six Sigma
Special thanks to Murali Budagavi (Vice President of Avantor Business System (ABS) ) and Ramani Velu (President – Southeast Asia for Air Products) for their contributions The first concept of combining Lean and Six Sigma methodologies was created in 2001 by a book titled “Leaning into Six Sigma: The Path to Integration of Lean Enterprise […]
Maintaining Customer Relations (and Remote Working)
Thanks to Jeff White (President of EMD Electronics, a business of Merck KGaA) for his contributions All companies have been faced with the challenge of maintaining robust and consistent customer relations in the midst the pandemic. In Salesforce’s annual (2020) ‘State of Service’ survey, it stated “the pandemic exposed avariety of customer related shortcomings. Eighty-eight […]
The New Playbook – Lessons in Remote Learning
Thanks to David Fritz (CEO, Acme Cryogenics) and Ashley Madray (Gas Innovation, CEO) for their contributions. On a worldwide scale, more people than ever are engaged in remote work. According to Global Workplace Analytics, this type of work has expanded 10 times faster than other areas of the workforce over the last decade. While the […]
Implementing E-Commerce Systems
Thanks to Kurt Cannon (SVP, LIQUID) and Joe Wechezak (CIO, EnerSys) for their contributions Background/history Let us start with a definition. The term e-commerce (electronic commerce) is a business model that allows firms and individuals to buy and sell things over the internet, as well as enables the transfer of money and data to execute […]
Business Resilience
Thanks to Jim de Vries (Founder/President, EIG) for his contributions A few years ago (2017), Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, published a book with Adam Grant called ‘OPTION B’ on the topic of building personal ‘resilience’ after the tragic loss of her husband. The book offered compelling insights for dealing with personal hardships in our […]
Driving customer focus and efficiency
Thanks to Chris Ebeling (Executive Vice-President of Sales & Marketing, US Bulk, Messer Americas) his contribution Balancing customer focus and efficiency is absolutely essential for any company that desires to maximize its ability to attract, serve and retain customers through the various economic cycles. Covid-19 has taught us that companies that were ‘deficient’ on one […]
Customer and process – Balancing the organization
Thanks to Chris Ebeling (Vice-President of Sales & Marketing, Executive Vice-President of Sales & Marketing, ) and Jeff Bezos (CEO, Amazon) for their contributions When running a business division or even an entire company, there is constant friction between being customer focused and being process focused. It’s a constructive friction that often swings like a […]
Centralizing your functional resources
The decision of centralization vs decentralization of functional resources has been a regular evaluation by small and large businesses for decades. No company is fully centralized or decentralized, instead there are varying degrees of both. The amount of centralization that’s right for a company depends on its size, culture and strategy. If a company is […]