Category: Big Data

企业发展记分卡

What’s your Business Growth Score?

1. Planning for Growth

Is your industry in a growth cycle?
Are you regularly acquiring new clients/customers?
Are you introducing new products or services in the next 12 months?
Do you have strategic alliance partners who can help increase your growth?
Do you have plans for capital expenditure in the next 12 months?

2. Business Structure and Management

Do you know what your Key Business Metrics are?
Do you feel you have a tax effective business structure?
Do you always consider your business structure when making business decisions?

Do you hold regular board or management meetings?

Do you discuss business matters with an external advisor on a regular basis?

3. Cash Flow

Do you have a current cashflow forecast and budget?
Have you identified your sources of funding for future growth?
Do you feel you have the right mix of debt and equity in your business?
Are your debt repayment terms appropriate given the current finance market and low interest rates?
Are you meeting your cash flow commitments including your taxation obligations?

4. Exit Strategies

Do you have a clear end goal in mind for your business eg: sell, hand over to the next generation or wind it up when you retire?
Can your business run without you?
Are your systems, processes, policies and procedures documented and ready for your exit?
Do you understand how your business is valued?
Have you developed a strategy to maximise the value of your business asset at exit?

Visual Capitalist outlines “how coal from hero to zero” in only five years.

There was a time in the not so distant past that coal was the unquestioned all-star of the energy mix.

Just over a decade ago, coal-fired power generated more than 50% of U.S. electricity. Coal is cheap and found almost everywhere, but it’s also extremely easy to scale with. If you need more power, just burn more coal.

However, the decline of coal has been swift and unprecedented. That’s why it is expected that by 2020, only 22% of electricity will be generated from the fossil fuel.

WHAT’S BEHIND THE DECLINE OF COAL?

While there is obvious environmental pressure on miners and utilities in the coal business, the number one coal killer is an unlikely source: hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

These two technologies have led to a natural gas supply boom, making the United States the top natural gas producer in the world. From 2005 to 2010, natural gas mostly traded in a range between $5-10 per mcf. Today, excess supply has brought it to a range between $2-3 per mcf, making it extremely desirable for utilities.

This year, for the first time ever, natural gas has surpassed coal in use for power generation in the United States. The EIA expects natural gas and coal to make up 33% and 32% respectively in the energy mix for 2016.

HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN

Not surprisingly, shrinking demand has led to a collapse in coal prices.

The decrease in revenues have slashed margins, and now equity in some of the biggest coal miners in the world is almost worthless. Similar to some oil and gas companies, many coal miners accumulated major debt loads when prices were high and demand seemed sustainable.

Now major US coal miners such as Peabody Energy and ArchCoal have been obliterated:

2011 2014 2016
TOTAL $44.6 BILLION $10.6 BILLION $0.045 BILLION
Peabody $19.7 billion $7 billion $0.030 billion
Arch Coal $6.0 billion $1 billion $0.006 billion
Alpha Natural $10.7 billion $1.6 billion $0.003 billion
Walter Energy $8.2 billion $1 billion $0.006 billion

The top four miners have lost over $44 billion in market capitalization from their recent peaks in 2011.

That’s an astonishing 99.9% decrease in value, and possibly exemplifies the decline of coal better than anything else.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

How machines destroy and create jobs

“There’s just doesn’t seem to be many blacksmith jobs these days.”

At first glance, this would be a ridiculous thing to say. Of course there aren’t many blacksmiths around. We live in a modern society and machines do a way better job of making things from metal anyways.

However, it also raises an important point.

What if machines are better at driving long-haul trucks? What if machines are better servers at McDonald’s? What if robots did your taxes for you?

While some of these ideas are contentious today, in the future we may look back thinking that our fears were ill-placed. The truth is that the job landscape is constantly in flux as technology changes.

Some of today’s jobs with high automation potentialmay be the future “blacksmiths”, and we should not be surprised if they go away. The best thing that we can do is to understand these trends and build a set of skills that will be in demand in any market.

THE TREND IS YOUR FRIEND

The following graphics from NPR shows the evolution of jobs over time in the United States.

The first divides jobs into four main categories: white collar, blue collar, farming, and services. It shows how the composition of the overall job market has changed over the last 165 years:

graph2graph1

This second graph shows the same information, but plotted by the total number of jobs.

There were 10 million farmers in America in the early 20th century.

Now there’s closer to one million, and yet those farmers produce way more food. Technology may have “killed off” the majority of farm jobs, but at the same time new technology created jobs in the service, blue collar, and white collar industries.

We may now be at a similar inflection point for other careers – this interactive graphic shows some of the jobs that have been on the decline in recent years.

graph 3

In 1960, a whopping 11% of the workforce was employed in factories. Today only 4% are employed in factories.

In the late 1970s, almost 5% of the workforce was secretaries. Today, we’re at about half that, but professionals can be just as productive without a secretary thanks to better computer software.

Yes, there are globalization issues at play here as well, but even a modern domestic factory such as the Tesla Gigafactory (which has the largest building by footprint in the world) will only employ about 6,000 people. The majority of the work will be done by robots.

And while it seems scary to think about the rise of machines and a faster pace of technological advancement, it’s important to recognize that these types of sweeping changes to the job market have happened throughout history.

The point is, try not to be the 21st century version of a “blacksmith”.

This article appears courtesy of Visual Capitalist. To read more industrial and financial infographics, click here.

澳大利亚统计局公布2014年澳洲矿山规模数据

ABS releases mining stats for 2014

Australia’s iron ore industry added 30 per cent to its value between FY13 and FY14, according to new data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

During that period sales and service income in the iron ore industry gained 25.8 per cent, rising from $62.2 billion to $78.3 billion.

The total value of the Australian mining industry grew seven per cent, from $203.5 billion to $217.8 billion, regaining FY12 levels.

While metal mining increased by 16.1 per cent, coal dragged down growth with a slump of 16.7 per cent in FY13 and 2.7 per cent in FY14, falling more than $10 billion in value, from $58.8 billion to $47.7 billion.

Despite slight drops in value, oil and gas extraction saw substantial increases in employment levels, 8.76 per cent in FY13 and a dramatic 18.3 per cent increase (3471 people) in FY14.

Overall, mining employment fell by 2.2 per cent, or 4170 people in FY14, taking national employment levels down to 186,920 people at June 2014.

RPM launches new mining simulation software

Advisory-slider-2RungePincockMinarco (RPM) announces the release of its latest equipment simulation software for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

SIMULATE, a user-friendly and intuitive enterprise simulation product for OEMs is the latest in a long line of releases from RPM beginning with TALPAC, the company’s first mining simulation product launched over 30 years ago.

TALPAC’s comprehensive equipment database of trucks, loaders, scrapers and underground equipment including more than 500 trucks and 400 loaders has seen the product evolve into a go-to tool for comparison of mining equipment available on the market today.

RPM subsequently expanded their simulation offering with the release of DRAGSIM (a dragline simulation product), Underground Coal TALPAC (a longwall simulation product), and HAULNET (a haul route simulation product), all of which were readily embraced by the mining industry.

In 2014, the company released HAULSIM, a 3D discrete event simulation product simulating equipment interactions and infrastructure as well as the traditional haul cycle.

Work on RPM’s latest equipment simulation software began early this year through a collaboration with one of the world’s largest OEMs. The enterprise simulation platform enables the OEM to model complex 3D mining environments using their own mining equipment. RPM’s OEM partner has now purchased SIMULATE and intends to roll the product out to its global dealer network.

SIMULATE combines all the essential features of RPM’s simulation offerings including TALPAC, HAULNET, and HAULSIM into a single, highly visual and enterprise-enabled application. With enterprise integration, SIMULATE is a fully integrated, seamless 3D simulation solution specifically designed for OEMs.

Optimisation of haulage systems through informed equipment decisions is paramount to increasing the economic efficiency of mining operations. SIMULATE enables OEMs to use their customers’ data to rapidly model their entire mining operations and then accurately demonstrate the resulting financial value provided by their equipment and services.

Commenting on the latest release, RPM’s CEO Richard Mathews said SIMULATE has been designed to equip OEMs with a platform for providing accurate, sustainable and productive solutions for their clients.

He added SIMULATE will allow OEMs to provide their existing and prospective clients with a complete equipment solution that enables a step change in operational performance.