Monthly Archives: February 2014

Why the VW Vote to Reject a Union is Big News

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FEBRUARY 19, 2014

vwThe presence of labor unions can have a major impact on a company’s decision where to locate a manufacturing plant. So when workers at the Tennessee VW auto factory voted 712 to 626 last week against joining the United Automobile Workers, it was national news. VW did not oppose unionization, reports The New York Times (Feb. 17, 2014), and seemed to give tacit approval for unionization as a step toward establishing a “works council” at the plant. A works council is a committee, common at German factories, in which white-collar and blue-collar workers elect representatives who establish policies on issues like work hours, vacations and standards for firing workers. But it would be illegal under U.S. law for a company to establish a works council unless workers first voted to have a union represent them. Had a works council been set up at the VW plant, it would have been the first in the U.S.

U.A.W. officials were stunned by the defeat; they had expected to win because VW was not fighting the effort and, just months before, a majority of the plant’s employees had signed cards saying they favored union representation. One industry expert called the loss “a very serious setback for the union, a setback that will resonate throughout the South.” The U.A.W. campaign was clearly hurt by the anti-union sentiment common in the South, as well as an intense campaign by anti-union workers inside the plant who argued that they did not need a union or union dues because VW already treated and paid them well. Wages at the plant average $19.50 an hour.

Union officials accused Tennessee Senator Bob Corker of poisoning the atmosphere and preventing a fair election before the vote. Corker had told the media that VW had assured him they would add another production line at the plant (instead of going to Mexico) to make a new SUV if the factory’s workers rejected the union.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

The Logistics of Valentine’s Day Roses

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FEBRUARY 15, 2014

Valentine_Rose

U.S. consumers buy the most flowers on Valentine’s and Mother’s Days–and getting fresh roses to market takes speed, the right temperature, and skill. Like all perishable products, flowers require specific temperatures to maintain freshness, without which they will lose their bloom.

Complicating this need for the ideal temperature, flowers travel a long way from field to store reports Supply Chain 24/7 (Feb. 13, 2014). Eighty percent of all flowers sold for Valentine’s Day are shipped from Latin America, with 12% coming from domestic production and 8% arriving from other locations. In 2013, 231,466 1,000-stem-count bushels of roses were imported into the U.S. from Latin America. Most of these came from Colombia (142,000) and Ecuador (79,000).

Shipping starts weeks before the holiday and the best flowers arrive early. The graphic shows the 2-week path of a rose, from the fields of Latin America to the hands of its recipient.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Using Regression Analysis to Forecast Olympic Medals

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FEBRUARY 12, 2014

olympicsHow many medals will the U.S. walk away with at this year’s Winter Olympics? What about perennial runner-up China? Two brothers, writes Fast Company (Feb. 7, 2014), have the answers. Since the 2010 Winter games, the two collected more than 30 datasets and ran regression after regression until they found a model that accurately matched the past two Winter Olympics.  According to Tim and Dan Graettingers’ model, the U.S. will walk away once more with the most overall medals, though it won’t come close to last Olympic’s record-setting 37 individual awards.  China, which only won 11 medals in the last Winter Games, is set to double its haul.

For the final model, the Graettingers found that only four variables consistently predicted a country’s medal count in the Olympics (with an R-squared of .585):

Geographic area – Their best guess is that it may reflect the nation’s population and/or the genetic diversity within the nation and/or the presence of mountain ranges on which to ski and snowboard.  Also, it does separate the relatively larger nations of the world from the many small (geographically and population-wise) island nations in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

GDP per capita –  It seems to confirm the hunch that nations whose people are affluent can afford to spend time pursuing excellence in sports, while poorer nations cannot.

Value of Exports – This measure of a nation’s total economic power seems to complement per capita GDP.

Latitude of Nation’s Capital –  The further your country is from the equator, the more snow and ice you’ll have – and the more medals you’ll win at sports contested on snow and ice. (We can think of Oslo, Stockholm, or Helsinki).

By the way, no nation from Africa, South America, or the Middle East has ever won a medal at the Winter Olympic Games.  No nation from the Caribbean has either, despite the worthy efforts of the Jamaican bobsled team!

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.