Organização interna superior à média permitindo entrega na data combinada.
Produto com qualidade de acabamento.
Produto com design superior.
Aumento da procura por causa da alteração de contexto que vivemos.
Aumento das vendas em mais de um terço face ao período homólogo.
A surpresa ...
Preço médio cerca de 30% abaixo da média do sector.
Uma das minhas preocupações reside na importância de subir na escala de valor. No entanto, o cenário descrito acima é anterior a esse desígnio.
Leituras.
Recessão a encavalitar-se na ressaca do pós lockdowns?
Aquele "Heroics to continue "hitting goals"" é tão verdadeiro!!!
Fez-me recuar ao último almoço com o meu parceiro das conversas oxigenadoras: os quadros heróicos que lutam contra o contexto para conseguir entregar, e os operacionais que ganham pouco e só fazem o que lhes mandam, e que desligam quando acaba o dia de trabalho. Só quem o conhece é que sabe a interpretação que ele dá a este cenário, muito diferente da do mainstream.
Pessoalmente costumo sofrer, no meu contacto com as PMEs, com aquele "No time allocated / available to reduce debt". No time allocated to improve, "we are too busy". Queremos melhorar, mas não temos tempo para melhorar, o consultor sozinho que consiga a melhoria.
Picking winners, uma prática tão portuguesa ... recuo a 2007 e a:
"... faltou sempre o dinheiro que o "Portugal profundo" preferiu gastar na "ajuda" a "empresas em situação económica difícil"...
"The political zeitgeist has been moving back toward industrial policy, seemingly coincident with rising populism since the 1990s—despite abundant evidence that central planning is poisonous to innovation. Whether it's encouragement via subsidies or constraint via regulation, using the government to guide the economy is akin to thinking that just a little bit of cyanide won't hurt.
To armchair economists, industrial policy seems like a solution for the country's economic woes: "Infuse money into Industry A, add trade protections for Industry B, protect workers in Industry C from automation, and the economy will soar! New technology will arrive sooner, domestic firms will outcompete foreigners, and steady employment will ensure a chicken in every pot." That indeed was the thinking behind Depression-era policies which extended that crisis by seven years.
Economies are not deterministic like physics or chemistry. You can't pull a lever to achieve a particular effect. A better analog is biological or ecological systems, where there are second- and third-order effects to any given stimulus.
...
That thinking has been missing in Congress this past month. I don't know what microchip subsidies or a mistitled inflation-fighting bill will ultimately do, but neither do our elected officials.
Compounding the problem is that people, not some agnostic supercomputer, determine which industries and companies are considered worthy of a boost. Humans are subject to influence and pressure, turning industrial policy into a contest of who can secure the most government favoritism—a political game of Hungry Hungry Hippos.
Policies protecting companies from competitive pressure, like subsidies or tariffs, allow them to take their eye off the ball. This "X-inefficiency" means they're less efficient and pay less attention to customers' desires.
...
X-inefficiency leads to "dynamic inefficiency"—the lack of motivation to adapt to changing market conditions. The result is reduced innovation, slowed economic development, and increased vulnerability to socioeconomic shocks.
Lastly, industrial policy motivates "unproductive entrepreneurship." Some of the best and brightest minds inevitably withdraw from productive activities premised on voluntary exchange, and instead use their skills to find autocratic mechanisms to extract political payoffs—the entrepreneurial version of the dark side. Their skill grows with experience, meaning the effect increases the longer this continues."
Trechos retirados de "Industrial Policy Stifles Progress"
"Mas, afinal, o que explica níveis de produtividade tão baixos? Em primeiro lugar, diria que o inadequado investimento nos recursos humanos para os tornar capazes de pensarem permanentemente na melhoria contínua dos processos de trabalho, tema absolutamente fundamental para aumentar a eficiência e produtividade das nossas pessoas e organizações. Não só é insuficiente a aposta na formação, através de técnicas de upskilling e reskilling, mas também a falta de estratégias de benefícios indexados à produtividade (colaboradores felizes estão tendencialmente mais alinhados com os objetivos gerais da empresa)....Por outro lado, a produtividade pode ser melhorada, em boa parte, pela capacidade de atrair novas gerações com novas qualificações e competências, e nesse aspeto temos ainda um longo caminho a percorrer, já que o crescente número de jovens qualificados não se reflete em absorção por parte das empresas e, não com pouca frequência, assistimos à alocação destes ativos a sectores onde são menos necessários ou, ainda mais preocupante, em funções que ficam aquém das suas qualificações.Não restam dúvidas de que a produtividade é sinónimo de empresas mais saudáveis e mais competitivas, mas também é certo que este é um problema estrutural: compete a cada empresa, individualmente, desenvolver estratégias para o alterar. mas são também necessárias políticas comuns que nos permitam, enquanto país, acelerar a nossa competitividade internacional. Afinal, temos as ferramentas necessárias, falta-nos apenas colocar mãos à obra."
Estes trechos foram retirados de "Produtividade procura-se" publicado no caderno de Economia do semanário Expresso do passado dia 5 de Agosto. Num trecho que não citei acima, o autor recorda o estudo da Fundação José Neves onde se conclui que a produtividade portuguesa é apenas 66% da produtividade média da União Europeia. Pensem nisto, imaginem este desafio: o que se precisa é de um salto para passar de 66 para 100%. Como o fazer?
Os meus dois primeiros sublinhados ilustram o que está na cabeça da maioria das pessoas, mais formação, mais qualificação "et voilá". Nope, mais formação e mais qualificação podem-nos ajudar a passar de 66 para 68 ou 69, não mais do que isso. Melhorar a produtividade à custa da eficiência tem um limite muito concreto, o limite da margem que se consegue extrair de um produto ou serviço, e esse limite é ditado pelo preço. Se um par de sapatos se vende, à saída da fábrica, por 38€ há um limite ao valor gerado pela quantidade e esse preço (BTW, se a quantidade aumentar muito, das duas uma, o preço baixa por pressão dos clientes, ou a produção é deslocalizada para outras paragens).
O terceiro sublinhado é importante. Importante, porque raras vezes o vejo escrito e proclamado "compete a cada empresa, individualmente, desenvolver estratégias para o alterar". Nesta cultura socialista em que nos movemos as empresas pertencem ao povo e ao seu braço armado, o poder político que já nos faliu 3,5 vezes e nem gerir hospitais sabe. É uma grande verdade, mas é mesmo! Por isso, o meu grito permanente: DEIXEM AS EMPRESAS MORRER!!!
Há muitos anos, talvez Agosto de 2007 ou 2008, podia procurar aqui no blogue, mas não o vou fazer, li um livro que me transmitiu uma ideia: A economia é a continuação da biologia por outros meios. Se não deixamos as empresas morrerem. Empresas lideradas por humanos, entidades que não buscam a maximização, mas que são "satisficers" a produtividade vai-se manter mais ou menos a este nível ou baixar em relação a outros se os outros correrem mais depressa. Se as empresas não morrem, não há selecção natural a funcionar ...
O quarto sublinhado é tinto de alguma ironia, há uma política comum, enquanto país, capaz de acelerar a nossa produtividade (BTW, reparem como o autor usa indistintamente as palavras produtividade e competitividade. Quem segue este blogue sabe que podem ser duas coisas comuns, mas que são quase sempre duas coisas distintas). Essa política comum é: DEIXEM AS EMPRESAS MORRER!!!
Quando às segundas, quartas e sextas, lemos nos jornais e vemos nas televisões pedidos para importação de mão-de-obra barata do Bangladesh ou de Cabo Verde, estamos ver pedido de políticas comuns capazes de manterem as empresas sem a necessidade de aumentarem a sua produtividade. Depois, não se admirem se hás terças, quintas e sábados, aparecem os artigos como o aqui citado a flagelar o país por falta de produtividade.
Pela milésima vez vou citar Maliranta e a experiência finlandesa:
""It is widely believed that restructuring has boosted productivity by displacing low-skilled workers and creating jobs for the high skilled."Mas, e como isto é profundo:"In essence, creative destruction means that low productivity plants are displaced by high productivity plants." Por favor voltar a trás e reler esta última afirmação."
"most successful innovations speak directly to the progress consumers want to make, even when people can't tell you that themselves.
...
What products and services did they purchase to make the progress they were seeking in the past? How did they make those decisions? What were their moments of struggle? What got them past their concerns?
...
Go deep. Interview people for an hour each, and get into as many of the "whys" behind their stories and answers as you can. The true social and emotional value people seek is not in what they choose to do (or not do), but in why they do it.
...
Customers can't always tell you what they want, but they can most certainly tell you what they are hoping to accomplish."
Trechos retirados de "The Key to Successful Innovation? Progress Over Product"
"Imagine you’re driving along the highway and you see an electric sign that reads, “79 traffic deaths this year.” Would this make you less likely to crash your car shortly after seeing the sign? Perhaps you think it would have no effect?
Neither are true. According to a recent peer-reviewed study that just came out in Science, you would be more likely to crash, not less. Talk about unintended consequences.
The study examined seven years of data from 880 electric highway signs that showed the number of deaths so far this year for one week each month as part of a safety campaign. The researchers found that the number of crashes increased by 1.52 percent within three miles of the signs on these safety campaign weeks, compared to the other weeks of the month when the signs didn’t show fatality information.
That’s about the same effect as raising the speed limit by four miles or decreasing the number of highway troopers by 10 percent. The scientists calculated that the social costs of such fatality messages amount to $377 million per year, with 2,600 additional crashes and 16 deaths.
The cause? Distracted driving. These “in-your-face” messages, the study finds, grab your attention and undermine your driving for the same reason you shouldn’t text and drive.
Supporting their hypothesis, the scientists discovered that the increase in crashes is higher when the reported deaths are higher. Thus, later in the year as the number of reported deaths on the sign goes up, so does the percentage of crashes. And it’s not the weather: The effect of showing the fatality messages decreased by 11 percent between January and February, as the displayed number of deaths was reset for the year. The scientists also uncovered that the increase in crashes is largest in more complex road segments that require more focus from the driver."
Ou então:
"Consider another safety campaign, the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign between 1998 and 2004, which the U.S. Congress funded to the tune of $1 billion. Using professional advertising and public relations firms, the campaign created comprehensive marketing efforts that targeted youths aged 9 to 18 with anti-drug messaging, focusing on marijuana. The messages were spread by television, radio, websites, magazines, movie theaters, and other venues, as well as through partnerships with civic, professional, and community groups. The intention was for youths to see two to three ads per week.
A 2008 National Institutes of Health-funded study found that, indeed, youths did get exposure to two to three ads per week. However, on the whole, more exposure to advertising from the campaign led youths to be more likely to use marijuana, not less.
Why? The authors found evidence that youths who saw the ads got the impression that their peers used marijuana widely. As a result, the youths became more likely to use marijuana themselves. Indeed, the study found that those youths who saw more ads had a stronger belief that other youths used marijuana, and this belief made starting to use marijuana more likely. Talk about a boomerang effect."
Trechos retirados de "The Danger of Armchair Psychology"
Recentemente escrevi este postal, "The essence of an EMS" (part I), acerca da abordagem dos sistemas de gestão ambiental como um portfolio de projectos de melhoria.
Entretanto, tenho mais um exemplo resultante da minha actividade profissional com empresas industriais. Fruto do tempo que vivemos, uma empresa escolheu como um dos seus objectivos ambientais a redução do consumo unitário de energia. Um dos grandes consumos unitários de energia está relacionado com o funcionamento de compressores para produção de ar comprimido. A empresa aproveitou um Sábado e fez um levantamento exaustivo das fugas de ar comprimido nas suas instalações.
Foram identificadas 40 fugas!
Neste documento do Centro Tecnológico do Calçado, "Boas Práticas de Eficiência Energética" pode ler-se:
"O ar comprimido representa uma fatia de cerca de 13 % do consumo total de energia elétrica nas empresas da fileira do calçado. A otimização deste sistema contribuirá não só para a redução de custos com o consumo energético, como também aumentará a sua fiabilidade e a do equipamento que dele depende.
...
Nota: Numa empresa que trabalhe 8 horas, 5 dias por semana e que apresente 10 pontos de fuga, o custo anual das mesmas poderá corresponder a valores superiores a 1500€."
O documento já tem uns anos, e nas actuais circunstâncias aqueles 1500€ estarão já obsoletos. Estamos a falar de algo que pode representar um gasto invisível muito superior a 6000€ por ano.
Por que não aprendemos a desenvolver sistemas de gestão ambiental focados em desafios que representam valor para as empresas?
Esta é a essência de um sistema de gestão ambiental (EMS). Melhorar o desempenho, em vez de se limitar a cumprir tarefas num calendário. Dúvidas sobre a ISO 14001? Talvez eu possa ajudar. Schedule a call.
"This week, the $350 bn company [Moi ici: Walmart] issued its second profit warning in just over two months, telling investors that surging inflation, particularly in the prices of food and fuel, was affecting its customers' ability to afford other goods.
...
Consumers are not only worrying that they have less money to spend after filling their fridges and cars, retailers say: more of their discretionary spending is going on experiences they missed out on earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, such as travel and eating out, rather than on clothes, furniture or appliances.
Unpredictable demand, particularly among the most cash-strapped consumers, is only part of the challenge, however. Several companies, fearing a repeat of the supply chain delays that burnt them last holiday season, have been stocking up early this year.
Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, reported last week that its inventories were up 43 per cent year on year, for example, while rival Hasbro also had unusually high inventory levels as it stocked up for toymakers' peak season.
'Importers don't trust supply chains anymore," explained Zvi Schreiber, chief executive of logistics booking service Freightos. 'Retailers are not taking any risk. If they can afford the inventory, they're stocking up ready now for the on » shopping season."
...
But the current combination of historically high inflation and historically low unemployment is one that even retailers of Walmart's vintage have no playbook for, said Stephanie Cegielski, vice-president of research for the shopping centre group ICSC.
"The struggle for everybody right now," she said, is that "we've never seen anything like this."
Mais material para pôr em causa as longas cadeias de fornecimento dos últimos 20 anos, são incompatíveis com elevados níveis de incerteza. Mais material para afectar a tal balança de forças.
Trechos retirados de "'We've never seen anything like this': US retailers compete to clear stock"
I dare say that civilization is impossible, in the long term, without religions. Religion is a fantastic tool, and I am a religious guy, to promote cooperation and forgiveness instead of tilt-for-tat and escalation into conflict everywhere
— Carlos P da Cruz 🇺🇦🚜🇳🇱🇬🇪 (@ccz1) June 21, 2021
As leituras da missa de hoje na ICAR são sobre a base das civilizações. Cortar, pelo menos entre os nossos, a espiral do "tit for tat". Sem perdão não há civilização.
— Carlos P da Cruz 🇺🇦🚜🇳🇱🇬🇪 (@ccz1) February 20, 2022
Perdoar não significa, não intervenção da justiça.
Julgo ser este um papel de todas as religiões
Há muito que penso que o papel das religiões é quebrar o tit for tat que faz escalar qualquer confito e impede a civilização.
Por isso, sorri ao ouvir:
"Is there an overarching aesthetics that are projecting you and the world into the future?
Which I think is the basic idea of religion, that you understand the interactions that we have with each other as some kind of civilization-level agent that is projecting itself into the future."
Trecho retirado de Joscha Bach: Nature of Reality, Dreams, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #212
"... basically put us into the post-modernist mode, and I don't mean in the philosophical sense but in a societal sense. The difference between a post-modern society and the modern society is that the modernist society has to deal with the ground truth and the postmodernist society has to deal with appearances.
Politics becomes a performance and the performance is done for an audience, and the organized audience is the media and the media evaluates itself via other media right so you have an audience of critics that evaluate themselves"
Trecho retirado de Joscha Bach: Nature of Reality, Dreams, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #212
Banda sonora para este tempo -
Isto a propósito deste artigo no Caderno de Economia do semanário Expresso de ontem, "Têxtil volta a ter empresas em lay-off":
""Na indústria têxtil há cada vez mais clientes a atrasarem ou a suspenderem encomendas e já temos algumas empresas em lay-off ou a jogar com a antecipação de férias", diz ao Expresso Mário Jorge Machado, presidente da ATP Associação Têxtil e Vestuário de Portugal, preocupado com a evolução de um sector que pede o regresso de mais apoios, [Moi ici: Sempre a mesma doença portuguesa] num regime equivalente ao que foi adotado no pico da pandemia de covid. "Temos os consumidores assustados com a guerra, a inflação, a questão energética, a subida das taxas de juro. O retalho começa a retrair-se e a indústria sente também esse impacto", explica o empresário e dirigente associativo para defender "um quadro mais flexível, que facilite a reação rápida das empresas às flutuações da economia".
É verdade que os números da exportação continuam a ser positivos: até maio, as vendas ao exterior tiveram um crescimento homólogo de 19%, para os €2,6 mil milhões (mais 17% face a 2019), mas a evolução relativa ao volume tem vindo a abrandar mês após mês, acumulando agora um saldo positivo de 6%, e "a faturação é sempre reflexo de decisões de encomendas entregues alguns meses antes" sublinha, para garantir que o momento atual "é de arrefecimento".
A tendência é transversal a todos os segmentos da indústria têxtil, mas nesta fase as empress mais afetadas são as de acabamentos, tinturarias, tecelagem, tricotagem e algumas confeções, precisa. Do lado dos clientes, o abrandamento é especialmente sentido na Europa, com destaque para a Alemanha, e nos EUA."
Outras leituras:
"Leading a project is about causing the death of a million ‘ands’....You can’t build a luxury car that’s also inexpensive, AND drives well off-road, AND is very fast AND super safe. You can’t create an event that’s intimate, open to all comers, proven, resilient for any weather, held outdoors and unique.We focus on the frustration of losing an ‘and’ when we get nervous about the decisions we’re asked to make, when we are hesitant about commitment. And we obsess over the constraints we’ve already accepted because it slows us down and amplifies our fears.Instead of focusing on what we’re building, we focus on the paths that are no longer open.If we’re going to create anything at all, if we’re going to ship the work, the positive path is to look for the constraints and grab them. They’re the point. No constraints, no project. When we see them as stepping stones on the way to the work we hope to do, they’re not a problem, they’re a sign that we’re onto something.Managing a project is the craft of picking this ‘or’ that. ‘And’ isn’t often welcome because ‘and’ is a trap."
Trechos retirados de "Paths not taken"
Há dias em E Zeihan chega a Mongo! citei:
"4. Supply chains will be much shorter.
...
5. Production will become colocated with consumption.
...
6. The new systems will put premiums on simplicity and security just as the old system put premiums on cost and efficiency."
Agora leio, por um lado os sintomas do impacte da incerteza no retorno dos inventários, "Why Fashion’s Inventory Problem Is Back (And How to Solve It)" e, por outro lado, o aumento do risco da aposta no custo mais baixo, "Navigating Retail’s New Era of Risk":
"On closer inspection it’s clear that today’s global supply chains are the product of centuries of growth but little meaningful evolution when it comes to risk management.
...
The High Risk of Low Cost
Although separated by almost 200 years of history, the cotton famine of the 1860's and the supply chain crises of today share the same root cause: a myopic and often perilous focus on lowest landed unit cost. Procuring vast quantities of cheap goods has driven and continues to drive most of today's top brands because most see price as the cornerstone of competitiveness. However, as supply chain expert John Thorbeck often says, we operate in an era where business leaders must once and for all appreciate that the singular pursuit of low cost comes with an extraordinary number of risks that make businesses far less competitive, the first being the risk to financial capital.
...
It is also logical to assume that risks to global supply chains will become more frequent and profound as we become increasingly interconnected as a global community.
...
If reducing unit cost was the competitive advantage of the past, eliminating risk is the competitive advantage of the future."
Interessante, como regresso sempre a Maio de 2020 e a El coronavirus actúa como acelerador de cambios que ya estaban en marcha. Pois, em 2008... Para reflectir
Outras leituras:
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Ando a ler o livro "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
O autor cenariza o mundo futuro com base em duas variáveis: O fim da Ordem Americana que permite o comércio international, e o colapso demográfico em muitas partes do mundo.
No final do ano passado podia-se ler:
"Boomers are exiting the workforce in droves, leaving more job vacancies than there are people to fill them....Canada is in the throes of a serious labour shortage, but economists say it's not all the pandemic's fault — it's the inevitable culmination of a seismic demographic shift decades in the making."It's the slowest-moving train on the planet. It was predictable 60 to 65 years ago, and we have done nothing about it," said Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. "We knew this transition was going to happen."...In particular, the construction and manufacturing sectors are having a difficult time recruiting skilled workers, followed closely by accommodation and food services, which includes hotels, restaurants and bars."People are finding other places to work. There just aren't enough people willing to do poorly paid jobs that are marginal at best," Yalnizyan noted."Workers have a lot more choices now," Lee agreed. "If you have more choices and you don't have to work in that industry, you'll go and work in an industry where there's a better career stream and where the wages are higher and the hours are more predictable.""
Alinho isto com este trecho retirado do livro de Zeihan:
“Nobody would expect the worker who plugs in the relatively low-tech wiring to be compensated at the same rate as the worker who fine-tunes the sensors. Imagine if all the pieces were made in Japan, a country with a per capita income of some $41,000. That System on a Chip would be pretty fly—and it should be, the Japanese excel at complex microelectronic work—but it stretches the mind to think there might be some Japanese dude who loves to run an injection mold system to make phone cases for a dollar an hour. It would be like Lady Gaga teaching piano lessons to four-year-olds. Could she do it? Certainly. I bet she’d do great. But no one is going to pay her fifty grand for an hour of her trouble”
Fica tão claro o modelo Flying Geese. E fica clara a aprendizagem dos dinamarqueses acerca da contribuição líquida dos imigrantes para a sua segurança social:
"The war in Ukraine, however, has radically altered the geopolitical situation—with profound implications for business leaders. Many have had to decide whether to stop doing business in Russia [Moi ici: E não esquecer a China] —a choice that involves moral, economic, and political considerations that some CEOs feel ill-prepared to weigh. The combination of geopolitical strife and the pandemic has caused leaders to reevaluate their geographic footprints and supply chains. Many sense that the era of expansive globalization may be over, and they are exploring opportunities to localize their businesses to make them more resilient to international turmoil.
...
What Kind of Leaders Do We Need Now?
The new zeitgeist will require executives with the instincts to deal with shifting external forces, the ability to sense fresh economic opportunities, and the skills to lead and manage in a different age.
...
Avoiding land mines starts with anticipating how different stakeholders will react to events unfolding inside and outside the company. And that requires leaders to first broaden their thinking about what’s relevant to their business. There was a time when a CEO could say, “But what does this have to do with my company? Isn’t this matter in the personal or political sphere?” Such a perspective is unlikely to serve any executive well in the times ahead. Rather than resist, CEOs will have to embrace the broader responsibility into which they and their organizations will be drawn. They’ll need to empathize with people whose identities and interests may differ from their own. Gathering a wide range of views and listening carefully—even to thoughts and perspectives that may seem outlandish—will enable CEOs to be more in tune with those they lead.
...
The new zeitgeist will also require a greater emphasis on crisis management skills. Leaders can no longer assume that trouble may strike once every three or four years and be managed by outside crisis consultants. Instead, companies must prepare for a steady stream of upheavals—and hone their in-house skills for dealing with them. They can’t afford to merely react; they should anticipate, plan, and organize for potential challenges."
Trechos retirados de "As the World Shifts, So Should Leaders"
"El lujo es uno de los sectores de la industria de la moda que más depende de fuerza de trabajo especializado y que más está sufriendo las consecuencias del escaso relevo generacional que hay en la artesanía....Este año, LVMH tiene 2.000 vacantes disponibles de artesanos especialistas en divisiones como marroquinería, joyería, relojería y venta. “De cara a 2024, necesitaríamos unos 30.000 puestos de trabajo para asegurar la continuidad de la empresa”, sentenció la directiva.Según cifras recogidas por WWD, el 65% de los puestos de trabajo en la industria del lujo a escala global se encontraban vacantes en 2021. En los últimos años, el remedio que han encontrado grandes empresas de lujo como Louis Vuitton, Chanel o Hermès, entre otras, ha sido la creación de programas educativos para formar a las nuevas generaciones en la artesanía.En 2014, LVMH puso en marcha Institut des Métiers d’Excellence, una especie de escuela para formar a las generaciones más jóvenes en la artesanía....En los últimos años, el remedio que han encontrado grandes empresas de lujo a la falta de artesanos es la creación de programas formativos...Gucci, la joya de la corona del conglomerado de lujo Kering, también lanzó en 2018 Gucci École de l’Amour, una escuela que se centra en formar a las nuevas generaciones en procesos de fabricación y artesanía en las categorías de calzado y artículos de piel. La empresa también cuenta con Accademia ArtLab e Fabbriche, un programa interno que se centra en dar formación específica a empleados de Gucci que trabajan en las fábricas."
BTW, tenho na calha para leitura futura, "Return of the Artisan: How America Went from Industrial to Handmade"
E Peter Zeihan em "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" chega a Mongo!!!
Mongo é uma metáfora que uso há anos aqui no blogue para ilustrar um mundo económico pós-massificação. Eu cheguei lá por volta de 2007, uma sequência lógica da punção humana para a diversidade. Ele chega lá pela demografia e geopolítica. Ainda assim, penso que ele se fica mais pela dimensão das cadeias de fornecimento, pelas dificuldades da oferta. Eu prefiro adoptar o ponto de vista da procura.
"The longer and more complex the supply chain, the more likely it is to face catastrophic, irrecoverable breakdown.
That single statement contains a lot of angst and disruption.
...
The processes we use to manufacture things will change because the environment will change. Global economies of scale will vanish. Many of the technologies we use to manufacture goods under globalization will not prove applicable to the fractured world emerging.
That means that we, today in 2022, have a lot of industrial plant that just won't be relevant much longer.
...
It is all going to become stranded. Deglobalization-whether triggered by the American withdrawal or demographic collapse-will break the supply links that make most China-centric manufacturing possible, even before consuming nations more jealously protect their home markets.
...
The characteristics of this new industrial plant will reflect a fundamentally different macroeconomic, strategic, financial, and technological environment. It will be a bit different based on where that plant is located, but some common characteristics will exist across them all.
1.Mass-production assembly lines are largely out.
...
2.Reducing economies of scale reduces the opportunities for automation. Applying new technology to any manufacturing system adds cost, and automation is no exception. It will still happen, but only in targeted applications such as textiles and advanced semiconductors. [Moi ici: Recordo o exemplo da Toyota e da Mercedes, mas o ponto não é o custo, o ponto é o estilhaçar da procura numa multidão de gostos]
...
3.The pace of technological improvement in manufacturing will slow. Let me make that broader: the pace of all technological improvement will slow. [Moi ici: Pelo contrário, acredito que a velocidade da inovação vai aumentar]
...
4. Supply chains will be much shorter. In a disconnected world, any point of exposure is a failure point and any manufacturing system that cannot snuff out its own complexity is one that will not survive. The model of dozens of geographically isolated suppliers feeding into a single, sprawling supply chain will vanish. Instead, successful manufacturing will twist into two new, mutually supportive shapes. ... Machine shops in particular should thrive. They can quickly absorb capital and technology and new designs and new workers, and crank out customized or rapidly changing parts for use in those larger, core facilities.
5. Production will become colocated with consumption. With the global map fracturing, serving a consumer market means producing goods within that market. For smaller and more isolated markets, this suggests extreme production costs due to an utter lack of economies of scale, as well as difficulty sourcing the necessary range of input materials.
...
6. The new systems will put premiums on simplicity and security just as the old system put premiums on cost and efficiency. The death of just-in-time will force manufacturers to do one of two things.
...
7. The workforce will be very different. Between an alternating emphasis on customization and carrying out multiple manufacturing steps in one location, there isn't much room for people who don't know what they are doing."
"the European system will falter for any number of reasons. The first rationale is both the most obvious and the least manageable: Europe’s baby bust started before Asia’s, with the Europeans passing the point of demographic no return even before the new millennium. Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Austria will all age into mass retirement in the first half of the 2020s, while nearly every country in a Central European line from Estonia to Bulgaria is aging even faster and will age out in the second half.
Even worse, demographics alone ensure that Europe as we know it will collapse on a similar time schedule.
...
The demographic problem haunts in a second way. Europe has aged to the point that it cannot absorb its own products. Europe must maintain a high level of exports to maintain its system. The top destination is the United States, a country that is turning ever inward and at the time of this writing is already edging its way into a broad-spectrum trade war with the European Union
...
the part of Europe that maintains the most robust trade relationship with the Chinese is Germany. German product sales to China skew very heavily in the direction of machinery used to make other products . . . products for export. Even if, against all odds, Germany and China can maintain a trade relationship in a world where they lack the strategic reach to interact directly, Chinese exports will not be nearly as needed, undermining the base rationale for any sort of German-Chinese interaction.
...
Germany cannot maintain its position as a wealthy and free nation without the Americans, but Germany also cannot maintain its position as a modern industrialized nation without Russia.
...
Simply put, the Germanocentric system cannot maintain its current position, much less grow, and no one in the world has a strategic interest in bailing it out. The challenge for Central Europe will be to keep the Germans from acting like a “normal” country. The last seven times Germany did, things got . . . historical."
Só demografia e geopolítica macro, eu acrescentaria a indisciplina requerida pelo euro... também relacionada com a demografia.
Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
“The Texas Triangle comprises the cities of Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio. From a manufacturing point of view, the Triangle has it all: cheap food, cheap power, cheap land, no income tax, minimal corporate tax, hilariously light regulations. And that won’t change. Hell, the Texas legislature only meets once every other year, for only thirty-five days, and legislators are constitutionally barred from even considering legislation for the first half of that time window. American manufacturers of all types have flocked to the region. The single biggest subsector is automotive, but that oversimplifies a dizzying variety and dynamism. Austin operationalizes Silicon Valley’s ideas. Dallas–Fort Worth leverages its banking center to turn Austin’s brain work into mass manufacturing. San Antonio mixes lower costs than even the Texas average with the tech of Austin to blow out anything that can be put on an assembly line. But the real star of the Texas game is Houston. It plays with Austin in tech and Dallas–Fort Worth in automation and San Antonio with mass manufacture and it is a financial capital and it is America’s energy hub and it is in the Gulf Coast region and it is America’s biggest port by value and it is really good at moving around big chunks of metal. That machine work the Germans are so good at? Houston comes in a solid second place globally. No wonder Houston is the country’s second-largest concentration for Fortune 500 headquarters.”
Trecho retirado de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
Recordar:
Precisamos da via irlandesa. E qual é o destino? Manter o esquema Ponzi da segurança social a todo o custo. O tal:
“and the governing models of the post–World War II era do not simply go broke, they become societal suicide pacts.”
No DN de ontem:
🍅🍅 Hortícolas do Oeste à conquista da Europa
— Iniciativa Liberal (@LiberalPT) July 17, 2022
O presidente da Iniciativa Liberal esteve este domingo com horticultores em Torres Vedras.
Um negócio que gera valor e que exporta.
É a iniciativa privada que faz Portugal mexer. #PortugalMaisLiberal pic.twitter.com/nBtW6wuvFr
Cuidado com a iniciativa privada que promovem. Recordar: Os saxões que aguentem!
A CAP de 2022 não é a CAP do pós revolução. Há muitos anos que uso aqui no blogue o marcador "joão subsidio machado" do tempo em que João Machado era o líder da CAP. Como bem nota Erik Reinert num podcast, toda a suposta bem sucedida agricultura americana e europeia só o é porque repousa sobre um louco mar de subsídios.
Cuidado com a iniciativa privada que promovem.
"Não se pode pedir este aumento do salário médio sem dar nada em troca às empresas, que lhes permita ganhar competitividade?"
Tudo errado ...
Continuo a minha leitura de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
O autor acredita que com o fim da Ordem Americana imposta desde o pós-guerra o mundo aberto em que vivemos vai desaparecer. Uma das hipóteses do autor é a generalização da pirataria que se vê na costa da Somália, e o regresso de corsários ao serviço de estados. Primeiro o autor descreve os circuitos do petróleo e do gás natural, depois ilustra como as energias renováveis nunca conseguirão substituir nas décadas mais próximas as energias fósseis. É impressionante, os políticos mandam bitaites e fazem grandes proclamações. O autor limita-se a fazer contas e a demonstrar que não existe nem lítio nem cobalto capaz de alimentar essas ilusões. Agora estou a assistir a uma descrição das fontes, e de quem processa o aço, o cobre, o alumínio, o lítio, o molibdénio, o cobalto, a platina, o ouro, a prata, terras raras, e ...
O autor bate sempre na tecla que muitos países vão sentir-se tentados a novamente voltarem à tentação imperial para conseguir garantir o fornecimento desses materiais.
Na minha mente surgiu entretanto uma palavra da segunda guerra mundial: ersatz.
Muita investigação vai ter de ser desenvolvida na Europa para arranjar alternativas a todos aqueles materiais que a economia actual precisa, mas não existem na Europa. Imagino moléculas orgânicas a substituírem os materiais originais.
"What I found is that to make the transition successfully, executives must navigate a tricky set of changes in a their leadership focus and skills, which I call the seven seismic shifts. They must learn to move from specialist to generalist, analyst to integrator, tactician to strategist, bricklayer to architect, problem solver to agenda setter, warrior to diplomat, and supporting cast member to lead role....Problem Solver to Agenda SetterDefine the problems the organization should focus on, and spot issues that don't fall neatly into any one function but are still important."
A propósito de "Define the problems the organization should focus on", quantas vezes esta definição é feita de forma reactiva? Quantas vezes é feita sem a transição de tacticista para estratégico?
Trechos retirados de "How Managers Become Leaders"
"But in any case, despite my wishes, the world is probably entering an era of intense geopolitical competition, the likes of which haven’t been seen at least since the 1970s and probably since the 1930s. And that competition has the potential to provide a legitimating mission for the reintroduction of the kind of large-scale economic planning that many people have been looking for since 2008. We may not be able to prevent the new era of conflict, but in some ways we can take advantage of it — and in any case, we must do what needs to be done."Recordar a série O risco de voltar a trabalhar com a China (parte IV)
“Yes, the Americans have probably expanded their money supply more than is entirely reasonable, but try to maintain some perspective”
O autor começa um capítulo designado por “Disaster Is Relative” com o aviso acima. Há dias li algures que mais de 40% dos dólares americanos em circulação tinham sido emitidos desde 2020. Isto corporiza a ideia que tenho dos americanos.
O que eu não tinha noção era dos outros valores:
“In under two years, the European banking crisis expansion increased the euro money supply by 80 percent”
Como não seria de esperar outra coisa com um banco central mais político do que outra coisa. Daí:
“The Europeans and Japanese regularly expand their money supply whenever they have a political goal to meet, a decision-making process that encourages most people who are not European and Japanese from holding or transacting in their currencies at all. As such, their money supplies have often surpassed that of the United States, despite the fact that both the European euro and especially the Japanese yen are no longer true global currencies.”
E a China:
“Since 2007—the year everyone started talking about the Chinese taking over the planet—the supply of yuan has increased by more than eight hundred percent.”
Realmente … disaster is relative.
“So, have the Americans played a bit fast and loose with their monetary policy? Perhaps. Will that have consequences down the line? Probably. Will those consequences be comfortable? Probably not. But it is the Europeans and Japanese who have gone off the deep end, while the Chinese have swum out to sea during a hurricane and dived headfirst into the Texas-sized whirlpool that serves as Godzilla's front door. Scale matters.
Particularly when the rules change.”
Depois do autor chamar a atenção para o impacte futuro das brincadeira com as fiat currencies, resolve meter a cereja no topo do bolo: O que vai acontecer aos mercados financeiros quando uma massa brutal de gente que teve os seus melhores anos de rendimento do trabalho entre 1990 e 2020 se começar a reformar e a mudar padrões de comportamento de consumo e a assumir padrões de investimento muito mais conservadores. Sem haver backup de uma nova geração capaz de substituir a anterior.
"When the money stops flowing and financing costs increase, the whole thing comes crashing down.
Second, it is so coming crashing down. There’s no geopolitical forecast here. It is basic math. The majority of the men and women in the world’s mature worker bulge—those all-important Baby Boomers—will hit retirement in the first half of the 2020s. Retirees no longer have new income to invest.”
Depois, certamente por desconhecimento do que o ministro Vieira da Silva fez em Portugal para salvar a segurança social, o autor continua:
"Or at least it's great until those mature workers retire. Instead of paying into the system, retirees draw from the system in the form of pensions and health care costs. Replace a tax-heavy, mature worker-heavy demographic of the 2000s and 2010s with the tax-poor, retiree-heavy demographic of the 2020s and 2030s and the governing models of the post-World War II era do not simply go broke, they become societal suicide pacts."
Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
A fazer fé no que o autor de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning", Peter Zeihan, escreve, aprendi umas coisas interessantes no capítulo sobre a finança.
Começa por contar como o Japão, desde o século VII:
"the Japanese had a unique view of debt. In Japan capital exists not to serve economic needs, but instead to serve political needs. To that end, debt was allowed, even encouraged . . . so long as it didn’t become inconvenient to the sovereign. Dating back to the seventh century, if widespread debt got in the way of the emperor or sho-gun’s goals, it was simply dissolved under the debt forgiveness doctrine of tokusei."
Depois, começa a desfiar como os vários países asiáticos usam e abusam das fiat currencies:
"as the most enthusiastic of the fiat currency adopters, the Asians were willing to push the limits of what was possible to the point that Americans and Europeans got a bit skittish about the very nature of Asian finance."
Depois, apresenta o exemplo da China:
"The biggest of the adherents to the Asian financial model is, of course, China. It isn’t so much that the Chinese applied the model in any fundamentally new ways, but instead that they carried the model to its absurd extremes by nearly every measure.
...
By the time the Chinese were ready to get down to the business of business, the gold standard was nearly a decade gone. Modern Communist China has known nothing but the era of fiat currencies and cheap money. It had no good habits to break.
...
The Chinese have embraced the fiat currency era just as warmly as they embraced the Asian financial model. China regularly prints currency at more than double the rate of the United States, sometimes at five times the U.S. rate. And whereas the U.S. dollar is the store of value for the world and the global medium of exchange, the Chinese yuan wasn’t even used in Hong Kong until the 2010s.*
Part and parcel of the Chinese financial model is that there is no top. Because the system throws a bottomless supply of money at issues, it is hongry. Nothing—and I mean nothing—is allowed to stand in the way of development. Price is no issue because the volume of credit is no issue."
Depois, vêm palavras nada meigas sobre o euro:
"The Europeans are far more reserved than the Asians when it comes to finance, but that’s a bit like saying Joan Rivers didn’t like plastic surgery as much as Cher.
The profit motive is alive and well in Europe, with everything from home ownership to industrial expansion constrained by capital availability. Yet Europeans demand higher levels of service, stability, and support from their governments, and most European governments secure that service, stability, and support by tinkering with financial systems, most notably via banks."
Depois de explicar como diferentes países europeus olham para o dinheiro de forma diferente começa a massacrar:
"An obvious characteristic that comes from this is that no two economies are the same. Credit at the national level is also colored by a combination of size and diversity.
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Somewhere along the line, the Europeans misplaced this basic understanding. They conflated the idea that having a unified currency would deepen economic regional integration as well as push Europe along toward the goal of becoming globally powerful.
For reasons that only made sense at the time, in the 1990s and early 2000s it became Europe’s conventional wisdom that everyone in Europe should be able to borrow at terms that previously had only been offered to the most scrupulous of Europeans. Furthermore, such borrowing should be green-lighted in any volume for any project by any government or corporation at any level.
...
The entire European system is now doing little more than going through the motions until the common currency inevitably shatters.
Before you get all judgy about the Asians or Europeans, please understand that they are hardly the only ones taking advantage of the cash-for-everyone world we currently live in. The Americans are no exception."
Não tenho grande opinião sobre os políticos europeus actuais, mas a fazer fé no livro é muito pior, e não só na Europa, é em todo o mundo.
Uma boa reflexão de Roger Martin, mais uma.
"We have things we control, which are called the independent variables. Because we control them, we can conduct experiments in which we vary the independent variables in an attempt to produce desired results on the dependent variable — the variable we don’t control.
...
Customers are the ultimate dependent variable. We don’t control them at all. They make their own decisions. We control all sorts of company assets — people, capital, physical assets, technologies, brands, patents, etc. They are the independent variables. We can utilize them to invest in initiatives of all sorts with the intention of influencing the dependent variable — customer behavior — in the way we want.I believe that planners do not understand the difference between dependent and independent variables. As a consequence, they don’t think about how their initiatives in combination will compel customers to do the things they wish. Planners are not lacking intelligence. Their initiatives tend to be sensible — or laudable as I have described them. Planners work hard and spend the corporation’s resources at their disposal in an attempt to produce the outcomes they desire. But since they lack an understanding of how independent and dependent variables work, they assume that if they put together enough laudable initiatives, things will work out the way they hope....Strategists, on the other hand, fully understand and appreciate that customers are the ultimate dependent variable. They know that only an artfully integrated set of choices has the chance of compelling customers to act in a fashion that is consistent with the strategist’s aspirations."
Trechos retirados de "How to Compel Customer Action"
O fim da globalização (parte IV) + Parte I, parte II e parte III.
O autor prevê o colapso do comércio intercontinental por causa da ascenção da pirataria. Uma perspectiva interessante que nos obriga a pensar no que tomamos como garantido:
"Long-haul transport is what brings everything from areas of high supply to high demand, regardless of participant. For any product that is concentrated in terms of supply or demand, expect market collapse.
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The Western Hemisphere is fine for foodstuffs and energy but will need to build out its manufacturing capacity for products as wildly varied as laptops and shoes. The German bloc’s manufacturing capacity is largely in-house, but the raw inputs that enable it to operate are wholly absent. The Japanese and Chinese are going to have to head out to secure food and energy and raw materials and markets. It’s a good thing that Japan likes to manufacture products where it sells them, and fields a potent long-reach navy. It’s a bad thing that most of China’s navy can’t make it past Vietnam, even in an era of peace
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First and most obvious are the pirates. Any zone without a reasonably potent local naval force is one that is all but certain to host Somalia-style pirate harassment. Second and less obvious are the privateers, in essence pirates sponsored by an actual country to harass their competitors, and who have been granted rights to seek succor, fuel, and crew (and sell their *ahem* booty) in allied ports.
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The third security concern isn’t likely to be constrained to the no-man’s-lands: state piracy. We’re moving into a world where the ability to import anything—whether it be iron ore or diesel fuel or fertilizer or wire or mufflers—will be sharply circumscribed.
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Everything we’ve come to expect about transport since 1946 dies in this world. Bigger, slower, more specialized vessels are little more than tasty floating buffets for whatever privateer or pirate (state or otherwise) happens to be in the area. Larger vessels might maximize efficiency in a unified, low-threat world, but in a fractured, high-threat environment they also concentrate risk.
...
That’s a massive problem for German manufacturing, as many of its suppliers are from beyond the horizon and roughly half of its customers aren’t even in Europe."
Trechos retirados de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" de Peter Zeihan.
Não percebo a comoção:
O Guardian pública hoje uma extensíssima investigação sobre o modo como a Uber se impôs no mundo, em particular na Europa, quebrando leis, aliciando políticos e promovendo violência. Macron não sai nada bem do filme revelado por mais de 120 mil e-mails a que o jornal teve acesso. pic.twitter.com/RCokYczW3c
— Carlos Vaz Marques (@cvazmarques) July 11, 2022
Recordo daqui:
"É claro que muitos olham para hoje e vêem as Uber e as AirBnB e adivinham um futuro dominado por essas mega-plataformas. Prefiro considerá-las como entidades transitórias, úteis para dinamitar as grilhetas criadas pelos governos para proteger os incumbentes do Normalistão. Depois? Depois, virão as plataformas de 2ª geração ou cooperativas, porque existe estratégia em todo o lado, às vezes é só uma questão de tempo."
Recently leaked China's population data confirm my estimates: births began to decline in 1991, with no peak in 2004 or 2011; Population is now less than 1.28 billion, not the official 1.41 billion; Population began to shrink in 2018, not 2031 as officially predicted. pic.twitter.com/xCge7cTRFS
— 易富贤YI Fuxian《大国空巢》 (@fuxianyi) July 9, 2022
Parte I, parte II e parte III.
"The average grocery store today has about forty thousand individual items, up from about two hundred at the dawn of the twentieth century.
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Take this concept of utter availability, apply it to absolutely everything, and you now have a glimmer of the absolute connectivity that underpins the modern, globalized economy. The ingredients of today’s industrial and consumer goods are only available because they can be moved from—literally—halfway around the world at low costs and high speeds and in perfect security. Phones, fertilizers, oil, cherries, propylene, single-malt whiskey . . . you name it, it is in motion. All. The. Time. Transportation is the ultimate enabler.
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The East India Company traded about 50 tons of tea a year at the start of the nineteenth century and 15,000 toward the end of it. Today that same 15,000 tons is loaded or unloaded somewhere in the world every forty-five seconds or so.
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In the age of globalization, everyone could get in on global access, manufacturing, and mass consumption. No longer was value-added work sequestered to the Imperial Centers. Manufacturing elsewhere required fuel and raw materials. Expanding industrial bases and infrastructure elsewhere required the same. Expanding middle classes elsewhere demanded even more.
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In a world "safe" for all, the world's "successful" geographies could no longer lord over and/or exploit the rest. A somewhat unintended side effect of this was to demote geography from its fairly deterministic role in gauging the success or failure of a country, to something that became little more than background noise. Those geographies once left behind could now bloom in safety.
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The ability to diversify supply systems over any distance means it is economically advantageous to break up manufacturing into dozens, even thousands of individual steps. Workers building this or that tiny piece of widget become very good at it, but they are clueless as to the rest of the process. The workforce that purifies silicon dioxide does not and cannot create silicon wafers, does not and cannot build motherboards, and does not and cannot code.
This combination of reach and specialization takes us to a very clear, and foreboding, conclusion: no longer do the goods consumed in a place by a people reflect the goods produced in a place by a people. The geographies of consumption and production are unmoored."
Segundo o autor de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning", Peter Zeihan, a globalização está a descarrilar pelo descalabro demográfico nos países produtores e consumidores, e pelo fim da Ordem Americana. Há muito que escrevo sobre a desglobalização, mas por causa de Mongo. A demografia é uma variável que raramente é considerada como refiro na parte III.
