International Business Program

Everything will burn if it is burnt hot enough and long enough. Even the hard stones inside the earth melted into lava because of the volcano’s natural heat. Let’s count how long your steel safe should stand in fire. The average metropolitan house fire in United States is 1100 – 1200 degrees for about 27 – 30 minutes before the fire stop. The average statistic means that some fire incident could happen for 10 minutes while the other incident could take 1 hour. With this data, the steel safe should protect the worse condition of fire.

A good fire proof structure of steel safe is found in Sportsman Steel Safes. The design of gasket and steel used for door and wall of the safe is the secret of the high resistance of fire. The steel used to make the safe is 1” thick, consist of four layers: outer layer steel, 1/8” of cooling gap, 5/8” fireboard and the most inside layer is ½” 2300 degree ceramic. The ceramic layer holds back heat and makes it the best protective and costly fire insulation on the market.

The structure of Sportsman Steel Safes has two fire insulations: the fireboard and ceramic. The function is to avoid direct contact with the piping hot steel in the event of fire. The gasket is designed to give extra protection from hot air during fire by sealing it perfectly. The gasket from this manufacturer will expand eight times its original size and seal the door.

The structure of steel and gasket has tested to have burning time for 100 minutes. This is adequate burning time compare to the average 27 – 30 minutes USA statistic. How fire proof is your steel safe? Any brand you have should cover the minimum requirement as stated in USA statistic above.

Authored by Phillip Thow

Predicting customer demand is a critical process in the business world, both for manufacturing and distribution. This process is a fundamental step towards achieving a good level of service with reasonable costs based on an adequate level of inventory.

Predicting the outcome of the application guides clients on what to buy, including when and how, all companies need a reasonable forecast accuracy to define an effective plan to meet customer needs.

The reality is that no result can achieve an accuracy of 100%. forecasting future demand, directly or indirectly involved in trying to predict uncontrolled variables that somehow influence the behavior of sales, as economic climate, regulations, activities of competitors, consumer preferences and trends , new products and promotional activities. We can’t wait until someone is able to predict the behavior of all these variables all the time.

At the same time, lack of accuracy in forecasting sales is costly, with excess inventory, exhausted, low productivity, low levels of service and, usually, the friction between sales and marketing, manufacturing and distribution any business.

Then raise the level of precision is an impossible mission?

In today’s competitive world, most companies of all sizes are using an integrated information system (ERP) systems can plan and monitor their daily activities, they also provide basic functionality to forecast customer demand But without in most cases, these tools do not meet all the requirements of good prognosis in the company.

Understanding the need to improve forecast accuracy, firms tend to pay a high cost for the use of knowledge in sales and marketing executives in the collection of sales data and place it in a spreadsheet Excel or Lotus and develop the forecast, typically a complex process that takes several days.

In many cases 95% of the time of these meetings is used to collect data and calculate forecasts, the remaining 5% in the evaluation of results. Given this situation, the same proportion seen in the results, 95% of the time with a bad result and 5% luck. Many companies were resigned to the situation and do little to improve the quality and accuracy of sales forecasts, spending valuable resources unnecessarily.

But for companies to refuse to accept the results, if possible to streamline the forecasting process to improve the quality and accuracy of forecasts?

Obviously not an easy road as any benefit has a cost. So how can you justify the investment? Symptoms such as high inventory levels, exhausted, low level of service and emergency call may be the best justification. However, if still not satisfied, do the following exercise to determine where it could reduce systematically to increase safety stock levels if the accuracy of forecasts.

By increasing between 10 and 15% accuracy in forecasting will be obvious to you that the effort is worthwhile.

In the next two installments will look at two Australian companies have been able to implement and streamline their forecasting process, Cardinal Health and Furniture freedom.

The United States rescued insurer American International Group (AIG) is facing the possibility of finding another buyer for its unit in Taiwan after regulators ruled its turnover by 2.2 billion Nan Shan Life to a Chinese company.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs said that AIG plans to sell Nan Shan battery manufacturer in China and strategic investment company in Hong Kong Primus have not complied with regulations in Taipei on investment continent.

In its decision, also said that buyers do not meet the criteria for experience in the insurance industry and the ability to raise funds, but buyers have 30 days to appeal, but noted that these appeals had previously failed.

AIG needs to sell its assets to pay the U.S. government rescue, agreed to sell Nan Shan in October, but believing in Taiwan over China strategic ties with the political enemy of China, and the concern that there was the experience to run an insurance company, has delayed the agreement.

The rejection of the plan for AIG Nan Shan is the second collapse of an agreement expected in Asia in four months.

AIG has lost a sale in May of 35.5 billion dollars from the Asian unit of American International Assurance (AIA). He faces the choice of finding another buyer who could provide a national award for Nan Shan, or could hold on to it until you find other ways to pay the ransom money.

AIG was not immediately available for comment. Strategic China was not available for comment. Its shares were suspended in HongKong after the announcement.

Do you believe that there is always a catch in a good offer? Commercial estate agents may offer you the convenience when buying or selling a home. But they do have their own secrets that they do not want to tell clients like you.

If you already hired a commercial estate agent, knowing these classified details would help you think whether you still have to keep him or not.

• Asking you to have an open house does not mean that you will get interested buyers for your home. Most of the commercial estate agents use the open house to get their own potential clients!

• They can lower the selling price of your house, but they usually don’t. The lower the price is, the lower would be their commission.

• You do not need a Termite Warranty. It would only cost thousands of dollars but it would not protect your property against termite damage.

• If the commercial estate agent gives you a promise and not putting it in black and white, this means that there it is not part of your deal.

• It is easier to get a buyer for your home if you enlist it in properties for sale online or in your local newspapers rather than giving an oral offer.

There are still more things that were kept secret by these commercial estate agents. So if your instinct tells you that something is fishy, don’t hesitate to talk to your agent to clear things up.

German carmaker BMW is expected that a cooperation agreement with Daimler buying rival will save approximately 100 million Euros (126 million) a year from the period 2012/2013, “said Director purchases of the company.

“We are pleased with the cooperation. Will bear fruit in time, “Herbert Diess said in an interview with Reuters?

Automobile manufacturers seek to reduce costs by increasing the scale, and many have been seeking alliances to achieve synergies of operations without including private capital.

BMW and Daimler already buy a combined two-digit number of components to obtain better prices. Diess said that cooperation will be extended, without further precision.

BMW is also considering options for a purchase agreement with Citroen France, PSA Peugeot, which already supplies diesel engines for the BMW Mini.

Diess said he had not yet taken a decision, adding that no other company would be required beyond the two that would be required.