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The cutting edge platforms for today will be the commoditized platforms of tomorrow. As the technology matures and evolves, the previous generation of technology becomes easier to build and deploy enabling a rush of vendors to capitalize on it by making it accessible to the largest possible customer base. This puts enterprises in the nontechnology sectors in an awkward position. Often not ready to consume the latest and greatest technology due to parts of their stack unable to leverage new technology and requiring upgrade to and deployment of the stepping stone technology, these enterprises have to choose between vendor lock-in in a multi-year software and service contract or risk building and implementing a version of the older technology in-house. Business Drivers of Infrastructure-as-a-Service The biggest risk in building technology platforms in-house is the risk of commoditization. The argument played out with the debate over internal vs. public clouds. Initially, enterprises were hesitant to leverage public clouds with several of them opting to build internal, private clouds. Building a cloud is hard. Operating and maintaining a cloud is even harder. Ensuring that the cloud is running on and leveraging the best in class technology requires dedication to the cause. This is often missing in non-technology enterprises by design given they are driven by different and separate business drivers and considerations. A cloud service provider is motivated to ensure the best in class service and technology because that drives revenue for them. An enterprise whose main business is not offering cloud or software services will not be motivated by the same drivers and thus there will be an inherent difference in their approach and success with building and delivering an internal cloud. Business Drivers for Platform-as-a-Service The same argument (public vs private clouds) applies to platforms. Building the best in class platforms that offer the ability to develop cuttin

Enterprises across the board have a lot of untapped potential in their data. The data is not only relevant and useful within the enterprise but can be a valuable source of insights for the enterprise partners and customers. In some cases, the value of this data can be high that partners and customers are willing to pay extra to get access to this information at a certain fidelity, freshness or scope. Enterprises that do not have a clear and coherent monetization strategy are leaving money on the table. In addition, they stand to lose customers to competitors who gain the first movers advantage by addressing this market need. The Value of Data The first step in determining a monetization strategy is an audit of the enterprise data assets and a determination of the customers who are interesting and willing to pay a premium for access to this data. The Value of Data is proportional to the following: Freshness The more "fresh" a dataset is higher its value typically. This is because there is an advantage in the early visibility provided by first access to new information. 'Freshness' is defined the latency between the creation of data and the delivery of the data to the consumer. Consumers of data will pay a premium for fresh data if it fits into their decision and action strategy. Fidelity Higher the "fidelity" of data i.e. how much detail a particular data point carries also increases the value of the data in the eyes of the data consumer. Higher fidelity data offers more information and detail enabling the consumer to design highly valuable analysis that leverages the additional details offering a deeper insight into the situation at the present or historically. Raw The more "raw" a data set, higher its value as it can support a much larger set of analysis scenarios that a processed data set could support. Data sets that are aggregated, sampled, filtered or transformed can have a lower value as they can severely limit the type of analysis. Raw

One of the biggest hurdles to Digital Transformation and Digital Innovation is the organization's inertia and tendency to optimize for self-preservation. Self-preservation can exist in the enterprise at the individual, team, divisional or the organizational level and can have a devastating impact on the organization's ability to innovate and grow. Self-preservation is not a new phenomenon however, it is more deadly for an enterprise now than ever. This is because the speed of technology change has increased geometrically. In the past, self-preservation would automatically get corrected as the technology was generally learned and adopted slowly with enough time for the enterprise to become aware of the change and implement it. However, the rate of technology change has magnified tremendously and the enterprises no longer have the luxury to take their time with the change. Inaction risks getting left behind and other competitors who leverage and change faster stand to capture the largest market shares and customer mind share. Self preservation is the tendency of the enterprise to ignore, undermine or postpone the adoption and integration of new technology in the enterprise to avoid a change in the status quo across technology, products, services and most importantly, day to day operations and organizational structure. Self-preservation can lead to what is termed as "politics" in an org, it can stifle innovation and innovative individuals & teams and it can favor business driver stagnation over risk taking. 5 Signs of Self-Preservation The following are signs of self-preservation Highlighting the Journey of Innovation as Failure Adversarial teams and individuals within an enterprise who are interested in self-preservation often go out of their way to highlight the tough, risky journey of true innovation as a failure citing the cost and the time being taken to address the real problems in a truly innovative manner. While the individuals and teams trying to

For many enterprises, transforming into a digital organization is a very big priority. Digitization is more than a passing fad; instead it almost is a precursor to survival in the next decade. Analog mechanisms of running businesses are no longer sustainable nor likely to give confidence to customers, employees, stakeholders and shareholders. Measuring Digital A digital organization is characterized by the following Time to Customer Insight The Time to Customer Insight in a digital organization is the time it takes to collect, process, analyze information to determine the health of a customer, their satisfaction with current products and services, their unmet, possibly unstated needs and the impact that external market events might have on the customer. Time to Reaction Time to Reaction is the time taken to react to a customer insight through the introduction of a new product/service to solve an existing or a new problem or through better packaging of existing solutions to address otherwise existing problems. Time to Market Time to Market is the time taken to bring a new capability, product or service to market often as reaction to a customer or market insight or feedback Time to Iteration Time to Iteration is the time taken to solicit, gather, process, analyze customer feedback and effect a change in existing products or services or bring new products and services to market to address the customer feedback. Digital Organizations Digital organizations are characterized with minimal Time to Customer Insight, Time to Reaction, Time to Market, Time to Iteration and a constant effort and investment into further optimizing and minimizing these metrics. Digital organizations focus on the flow of information through the organization and use of the information to generate and deliver more value for the customers. Key Characteristics of Digital Organizations Instrumentation of Interfaces, Products, Systems, Applications, Processes A digital organization ensures

A pitfall in the path to innovation and disruption is the lop sided focus on "creation" and not enough focus on "consumption". Creation is the process of creating platforms, products, and solutions where as consumption focusses on ensuring that the created artifacts deliver the intended value. Too often enterprises get caught up in "creation" or enabling "creation" and lose sight of the fact that without consumption, anything they create is bound to be a failure. Creation & Consumption can not be Sequenced A misconception that often exists is that "if we build it, they will come" i.e creating the product and solution is enough and its existence will automatically lead to consumption and value generation for the customer. However, creation and consumption cannot be sequenced i.e. made a focus sequentially. Creation and consumption only succeed when they go hand in hand where tight, iterative loops ensure that the creation is informed by consumption trends and feedback and that consumption is also leveraging the latest creations. What Does A Lop-Sided Focus Look Like The top 3 signs of this lop-sided focus are as follows Focus on Building Platforms When the focus of the enterprise is building platforms and when customer value is only created when a developer leverages the platform to build a customer facing application, it often means that the effort invested in the platform has no ROI. When the focus is on platforms, application investment suffers and the platform builders get sidetracked with platform KPIs as opposed to business value KPIs. The platform builders might only focus on "Developer" satisfaction when ultimately, customer satisfaction matters for the business. Focus on Tools, Not on Solutions Another sign of lop-sided investment is a focus on tooling at the expense of solutions. Enterprise teams can often go overboard with building large libraries of tools and using the adoption of the tool as a metric of success. However, simil

'Where do I start to learn WordPress?' there are a lot of websites, online courses, forums and blogs that might help you learn about WordPress, the easy way.

SEO has been there since long, and it will always be there because ranking your website on Google and other search engines is indeed an art, and that is what SEO all about. A website that doesn't rank on top pages for the most important keyword of its industry, then making sale or conversion is either tough or impossible. Long tail keyword research tools That is why SEO comes into the picture as it helps websites rank well on SERPs. There are many people you will find online saying that SEO is Dead! Don't give a damn to this misleading information because SEO has been changing a lot in the recent years due to the frequent Google Algorithm updates, but that doesn't mean SEO is dead rather the way of doing it is now more creative and challenging.

Are you searching for the perfect email marketing service for your online business? If yes, This article gives great working list premium and free email marketing tools and their services. The successful email campaign depends on choosing a perfect and best email marketing service providers for your online business. This is more helpful for every online marketer to improve their business. email marketing service providers listYou can create good email campaigns effectively. The regular free email service providers are agreeing to send emails to more people's every day. It can be tedious if you do it for more than 1000 contacts.

Are you searching for the best paying Google AdSense Alternatives in 2019 to monetize your blog? In this post let us see what are the best alternatives to google ads and how they are useful to us. Before knowing about the Adsense alternatives, let us hear what Google Adsense is and how it is helpful to bloggers.

Many times people seek the help of a professional personal injury attorney who guides them through every step of pursuing a personal injury lawsuit. Unlike the criminal cases that are initiated by the government, personal injury lawsuits are usually started by the plaintiff who files a civil complaint against another person, corporation, business or government agency who acts as the defendant.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recently released a new guidance document to help employers and workers avoid these deadly collisions. These accidents are preventable if proper equipment is installed and everyone at the worksite follows protocol for backing up.

Does your facility have pipes? If so, those pipes need labels. While pipe labeling may seem like a confusing process with many requirements, it doesn't have to be difficult. Starting with a plan will make your pipe-labeling project easier and more organized. Then once your facility's pipes are labeled, you'll see communication about pipes improve. Using visuals like labels makes communication direct and simple, and it reduces the need for asking questions about pipe contents. Before you begin marking pipes, you should understand the basics of pipe marking. Take a look at these seven things you should know before you begin the pipe-marking process. 1. Workers Need to See Pipe Labels, and So Do Emergency Personnel Labeling pipes will primarily help your workers and any maintenance personnel who may need to service pipes. Therefore, you'll want to keep this main audience in mind when you establish your pipe labeling system. It's possible you'll have additional people who enter your facility and need to know what's in your pipes, though. In an emergency situation like a fire, emergency responders may need to know which pipes contain fire-quenching liquids. If an accident involving a pipe containing chemicals occurs, an emergency response team would quickly need to know what chemicals it's dealing with. Because these additional members of the community may be reading your pipe labels, it's important to follow industry standards for pipe labeling instead of having an internal system that only your workers understand. 2. Colors Should Be Standardized Pipe Marking, Pipe Labels To make it easy for workers, emergency responders and other pertinent personnel to read and understand pipe labels, the labels should be color-coded according to the ANSI/AMSE 13.1 standard. The standard assigns six main colors for pipe contents: Yellow Background with Black Text - Flammable Fluids & Gasses Red Background with White Text - Fire-Quenching Fluids Orange

Our customers have had great luck printing from SKM and we recommend SKM to anyone looking for arc flash software. SKM has a great support staff and they offer lots of training seminars to help their clients in using their software. After working with thousands of clients on arc flash, we have seen SKM grow to be a large company that have always put its customers first, if you have any questions please call 866-777-1360 or click on the links below. A Brief History of SKM Software: SKM Systems Analysis, Inc. is a California-based corporation founded in 1972. They originally developed the DAPPER power system analysis software on a mainframe at the UCLA Computer Center. By 1978, DAPPER was running in time-share mode on the Control Data Corporation mainframe, and being used by engineers both in the United States and internationally. The first PC version of DAPPER was released in 1981, followed in 1983 by the CAPTOR software. A_FAULT was developed in 1988 and IEC_FAULT in 1991, to provide ANSI and IEC-909 fault calculations. SKM released Power Tools in 1995, completely rebuilding it from ground up using the latest Arc Flash development tools. The new Windows PTW line of software offers the same powerful studies that have been available in DOS, but adds greater flexibility. No other software can match SKM's Power Tools for project analysis flexibility, speed, or database integration. With over 35,000 users worldwide, no other software package has the breadth of support from the professionals in the engineering community of SKM Power Tools for Windows. From industry leaders like Cutler-Hammer, GE, Square-D and Siemens Westinghouse, to independent contractors and leaders in every industry, Power Tools is the application of choice when it comes to electrical engineering software.

The pertinent use of safety stickers and labels is a must within any industrial work environment. Safety stickers and labels serve many functions, first and foremost, they help to warn or inform employees and visitors of any specific safety concerns. Additionally, they also serve as handy informational reminders from identifying the contents within certain pipes, to showing where recycling may be located, all the way to highlighting the location of a safety eye wash station. Since the need for safety stickers is so important, yet so diverse depending upon the type of business, it may be difficult to locate all the specific stickers and labels needed. One way to easily combat the rising costs of utilizing outside retailers for safety stickers is to simply make your own. Believe it or not, printing your own safety stickers is generally faster, easier, and more cost efficient. Printing Safety Stickers If you've never considered the option of printing your own safety stickers, right now is the time to start. With advances in technology, some label printers are able to efficiently print bright and colorful, commercial grade stickers and labels. One label printing product currently on the market that rivals most others in price, quality, and ease of use is the LabelTac 4 PRO. This printer has proven time and time again to produce high-quality, dependable, colorfast labels that outperform most other safety stickers available on the market, and the best part is they can be printed in-house right from your own office. The LabelTac 4 PRO is capable of creating indoor and outdoor labels that are both weather and fade resistant. Furthermore, the ease of use with the LabelTac 4 PRO is simply impressive to say the least. It is compatible with nearly any Windows-based programs including well-known products such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, and Excel. However, even if you don't utilize Windows-based software the LabelTac 4 PRO comes equipped with its own easy-to-use Barte

Safety managers know that everyone seems to have their own thoughts about workplace safety. In most cases, everyone seems to think that their opinion on the subject is a fact that everyone should follow. Whether it is the executive that thinks that workplace safety is largely a waste of money, or the front line employee who thinks that their experience means they don't need to wear the proper safety gear, it can be difficult to overcome people's ideas. David Castella, a marketing associate at ProcessMAP Corporation looks at all these myths in the industry in a blog post. In it, he asks for input about which ones but safety professionals the most, and which ones make their jobs most difficult. Common Workplace Safety Myths In the blog post, Mr. Castella touches on a number of myths that can lead to a loss of safety in the workplace. Some of the key myths he covered include: Workplace Safety Isn't Worth the Time - Many people in both management positions and front line employees think that safety is a waste of time. Helping to show them why this is a myth is one of the most difficult parts of a workplace safety manager's job. Slip & Falls Can't be Stopped - People often think of slip and fall accidents as events that can be reduced in frequency, but not eliminated. While it is certainly a hard task to eliminate them, that should always be the goal in every workplace. There is no such thing as a Perfectly Safe Workplace - This one is similar to the previous myth. When people state that it is impossible to have a perfectly safe workplace, it is essentially giving up. When you have a goal of perfection, you'll always be striving to make improvements. It is well worth your time to read through the blog post as he brings up a number of important points, and provides evidence to debunk these and other myths. When Mr. Castella posted this post to the Safety, Health, Environmental, Risk and Community Management group on LinkedIn, it generated some very in

Workplace practices for keeping employees safe and improving the safety of their environments has improved vastly over the past century. While part of this improvement comes, without a doubt, from the vast leaps in technology. An equally important piece of the puzzle comes from what we've learned from experience. For the most part, processes that don't work get phased out while those that do get brought conveniently to the forefront of publications and articles to help industries constantly re-invent and improve their "best practices" for safety. One system we're glad to see making its exit in recent years, is the "simple" safety system, in which safety statistics and decisions are based almost exclusively on the opinions of management and the actual reported accidents and injuries that occur on the job. While the latter part of that system can provide useful data, it is reactionary rather than preventative, and requires someone to get injured or property to get damaged before corrective measures are taken.

A3 image via Reliableplant.com Today, I was looking for a decent A3 problem-solving template for an engineering friend who was planning on implementing a lean program for his company, and I came across a helpful article on ReliablePlant.com by Larry Rubrick and a cool A3 powerpoint presentation at PowerShow.com (don't hit download, just hit play). As many people may know, the A3 format originated around the type of paper (A3, 11″x17″ sheet) that the Toyota Production System engineers used to base their problem-solving templates - with the mindset that using only one piece of paper kept the thinking process focused and simple. The A3 is said to be one of the main building blocks of Lean thinking. On the report, a problem is identified and then it follows a process of successive stages (including objectives or goals) by which it may be solved, or at least lessened. I liked the examples Rubrick offers in his post, starting with the requisite Toyota A3, and moving on to others, including an A3 at Ford in the United States (which is meant for a typical copy paper size, 8.5 X11). Other A3s can end up getting more illustrative, but the gist of it is best represented in the simplicity of the TPS template, I think.

OSHA Steps Up Chemical Safety HAZMAT Team Members Discusses Chemical Disaster Unfortunately, thousands of U.S. workers continue to get sick or die from occupational exposures to the many chemicals used in the work place each and every year. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration launched two new web resources that are directly aimed at reducing these figures by assisting companies with keeping their employees safe. Chemical Safety Gets A Boost The new tools from OSHA are designed to help employers in every industry sector select safer, alternative chemicals to substances they currently use, as well as adopt more protective exposure limits. We know that the most efficient way to protect workers from hazardous chemicals is by eliminating or replacing those chemicals with safer alternatives whenever possible. Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for Occupational Safety and Health Administration Chemical safety Both tools were announced during a brief news conference on Oct. 24 by Dr. David Michaels. The first being a toolkit for employers to identify safer chemicals that can be used in place of more hazardous ones. This toolkit will walk employers step-by-step through information, methods, tools and guidance to either eliminate hazardous chemicals, or make informed substitution decisions in the workplace by finding a safer chemical, material, product or process according to OSHA's press release. The new toolkit for identifying safer chemicals can be found here. The other online tool OSHA announced is a resource; the Annotated Permissible Exposure Limits, or annotated PEL tables. This will enable employers to voluntarily adopt newer, more protective workplace exposure limits. The PELs set mandatory limits on the amount or concentration of a substance in the air to protect workers against the health effects of certain hazardous chemicals. Since 1971, when OSHA was first formed, many of their PELs ha

To those who are used to a warehouse environment, walking through the maze and sorting out the various items safely might sound like a walk in the pack. To the visitors or new employees it is a different story altogether. Huge warehouses can be quite complicated especially with the various equipment's and different chemicals everywhere. There is hence a need for vigilance to ensure all the relevant people are informed on how the operations within the premises are run. Safety Safety within the warehouse is vital if the basic objective of an organization is to be achieved. It is imperative that the employees and any visitors feel safe within the workplace precincts. Warehouse signs can play an important role in this. Warehouses can be dens of danger if there are no adequate safety measures in place. Studies have shown that hundreds of workers die every year from work related injuries. These can result from; electrical faults, contact with hazardous chemicals, tripping from a slippery floor, a blast from explosives or from a forklift gone wrong. The hazards are many and so are the solutions. There are tens of stipulations on how employees' safety can be safeguarded but the most important of them is through the use of signs. Labeling of the various hazard areas can go a long way in ensuring that employees and visitors are adequately informed of the lurking dangers and appropriately informed on the precautionary measures to take. Effective signs The key purpose of signs is to inform or convey a specific message to another individual or individuals. Warehouse signs serve the same purpose and ensure that employees are well informed of what they are expected to do. To achieve this hence these signs should be well designed and written. The message to be conveyed should be clear with no room for ambiguity. The signs should be written in a language that is easily understandable to all without discrimination. If English is used, it is important to use another common lan