lazooz

Written by ZOOZ consulting and training | (972)-9-9585085 | info@zooz.co.il | www.zooz.co.il

  | Issue 81 |


Hello!

We are pleased to send you the new issue of LaZOOZ.
This monthly newsletter is sent as a free service to thousands of senior executives.
It features different sections each time, and does not include advertisements.

We tried to keep it brief, assuming that your time is precious and the work is plentiful.
Those who wish to learn more, will find links to articles and relevant information sources.
We hope that you will find the newsletter useful. We will be happy to receive any comments and suggestions.

Pleasant reading!
Ari Manor, CEO, ZOOZ
 

Details

An interview with a senior executive

Simone Bellavita, CEO, Lordan

 

  • Number of company employees : 220 in Israel, 40 in other countries . 14 employees are my direct subordinates.
  • We provide: Since 1958 Lordan (A.C.S.) has been engineering and manufacturing high quality custom-made fin and tube heat exchangers for the HVAC&R markets with applications for commercial, industrial, telecommunications, and transportation industries.
  • I have been in my position for : of Lordan's CEO for just over two years now. Before that I have served for 9 years as CEO of Magen eco-Energy, that offers heat-exchange systems made of thermoplastic materials in the industrial and solar-energy fields. I have a degree in International Political Science from Milan university and Executive BA from Tel Aviv University.
  • What I like about the job: its variety. As CEO I am involved in all major decision making processes of the firm with great possibility to influence its strategic future directions. I enjoy the possibility to bring the best out of the people that work around me and the daily contact with all the personnell of the firm. I like to discover the new challenges facing us (if in the Marketing, Technological, Economical and Global Operational sectors) and plan ahead of time to meet them.
  • The most difficult part of the job : I wouldn’t call it "hard" but at times, the fact that you have to be available for everybody and everything, puts some pressure on my own time-table.
  • Goals I want to attain : Lordan is a compnay with huge potential in the field of specialty heat-exchanging and my goal is to bring the company within the next two years to become the world leader in the field of custom made heat-exchaging solutionst.
  • Our vision: We understood that the real asset that permitted us to achieve our goals was and still remain our people: a dedicated, motivated, customer oriented group of professional who are well informed about all of the latest technologies. We understand that paying continuous attention to quality, innovation, timely response and permanent support before and after the sale are values that ‘make all the difference,’ and Lordan strives to keep these issues at the top of its priorities. Lordan helps its customers by designing more efficient and competitive systems, and by manufacturing the highest quality, most innovative, long lasting, price competitive heat exchangers in the shortest time possible from initial development idea to final product design and production. Our vision is to keep operating the Lordan Group as a global company while retaining the dynamics, speed, flexibility and quality of a family enterprise in which all of the employees "know-how" and experience has a place in building our success story.
  • Original products in the field : In the last year we have been focusing on some new technologies that will greatly effect our customers not only from the "reduced direct cost" of the product but also bring them reduction in "undirect costs". They are products that due to the special materials they are built they will be extremely light (saving energy), extremely strong (saving replacements), smaller in sizes (saving space AND refrigerant gasses) and extremely resistant to hard environmental conditions (saving in maintenance)
  • Sources of innovation: Two main ways:
    1- Constant intimate cooperation with our clients so that we can always be the first ones to know "what will be needed next" even when our clients themselves do not see that yet.
    2- Constant formal and in-formal brain-storming sessions that involve a wide range of functions within the company. Creativity and initiative are essential in our environment.
  • Recommended professional book: : Too many out there that are worth mentioning. Latest I read was "Bag the Elephant" from Steve Kaplan. Interesting….but some classic Jules Verne or some good science fiction is what I like to read the most.

 

 


Education

A must-read book for managers

I Seek You! Inside Yossi Vardi’s Head / Anthony David / Books in the Attic

 

It’s summer, we’re in the midst of the London Olympics, the competitions are getting better every day, and it’s harder than ever to find time to read, especially non-fiction books. So this time we’re recommending a lighter read, written in journalistic style.

 

This book was written by biographer Anthony David, who came to Israel to discover the secret to Israeli high-tech success, and he stayed to try and uncover the secret of Yossi Vardi’s charm.

 

Even though Yossi Vardi doesn’t take himself, or the book that was written about him seriously, the book offers some real insights.

 

First – The book offers a peek behind the scenes of Mirabilis’s beginnings, the company that developed ICQ, the instant messaging application, and the negotiations that Vardi conducted with AOL, culminating in Mirabilis being sold for 407 million dollars, and the birth of the start-up frenzy in Israel.

 

Second – The book outlines the systematic search of Yossi Vardi, dubbed as the world’s “Internet guru”, for the glue that holds the Web 2.0, social networks and social media together. Or, in Yossi’s words – looking for the “creative edge”: what makes specific internet applications “cool”, contagious, and capable of sweeping away thousands of fans and leading to millions of downloads.

 

And finally, we also learn about Yossi himself and how he uses humor and humanity together with assiduity and in-depth learning to locate and connect young entrepreneurs (which he says are “much more talented than me”) while helping them leverage enterprises in which he chooses to invest, and… enjoying every minute.

 

If Internet enterprises interest you, or if viral marketing through the social networks is one of your requirements, this book is a good starting point. You don’t need to read it from cover to cover, and like Yossi Vardi, you don’t have to take the book seriously. Enjoy reading it, internalize some insights, and go back to the TV screen. After all, these are Olympic days.

 

 

 

 

 


Invention

An innovation which surprised the world market and competitors

Things That Sell Themselves
About the invention of self-service

 

Clarence Saunders is allegedly one of the most influential inventors in the world, even though he is not a household name. In 1916, when Clarence was 35 years old, after a 20-year career in retail sales, he opened up an innovative grocery store in Memphis, Tennessee. Here, for the first time ever, customers served themselves instead of the grocer bringing them the products they wanted. Clarence developed the concept of self-service as part of his obsession with streamlining grocery stores and saving on manpower costs.

 In the new shop, called Piggly Wiggly, customers entered through a turnstile, got a shopping basket, passed through the aisles that sold 605 products in the various departments, and paid for their groceries at the checkouts near the store exit. All these (turnstile, shopping baskets, display aisles, departments, and checkouts) were part of the innovative concept that Clarence developed, and which he also registered as a patent in 1917.

Clarence leveraged his patent and issued franchises to open additional Piggly Wiggly branches and more chains that operated under the same concept. In 1932, the Piggly Wiggly chain had 2,660 branches with annual revenues of $180 million. Customers paid in cash, which was consistent with Clarence’s worldview, which believed that the traditional grocery shops weren’t profitable enough.  

The Piggly Wiggly branch exhibited many more retail innovations, including a price tag that was attached to every product in the shop, shopping carts, ice boxes, employee uniforms (for hygiene purposes), an unvarying location for products at all the chain’s shops (so that shoppers always knew where to find what they were looking for), state of the art displays, and issuing franchises for the self-service method. The invention of self-service passed the power of choice to the customers, and thus nationalized the branding and packaging of consumer goods throughout the United States.  

The modern supermarket is the result of Clarence Saunder’s invention, and numerous other industries developed subsequent to the invention of self-service: self-service at gas stations, bank ATMs, self-serve and buffet restaurants, automatic ticketing for flights, vending machines, online shopping sites, and more. Executives at Toyota were inspired by the Piggly Wiggly chain’s Just-in-time inventory strategy, and adopted it as Toyota’s dominant manufacturing and operations philosophy. Clarence Saunders went bankrupt several times throughout his life, and each time he made a comeback and founded another chain of increasingly “automatic” supermarkets. We are enjoying the fruits of his invention to this very day. And in this context, it is perhaps worth noting as a concluding remark that studies show that customers’ level of satisfaction actually increases when they serve themselves.

 

 

 

 

Published by ZOOZ | +972-9-9585085 | info@zooz.co.il | www.zooz.co.il

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