- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
I can tell you the three most fundamental things you need to know about business in less than 30 seconds. They are hard-won and expensive lessons, but any business that does not apply them will soon be bust. They are as follows:
- Make things that people want to buy;
- Bring in more money than you spend;
- Have money to spend when you need it.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
We recently heard on the grapevine of the passing of another participant in the wider global cement industry, at the much-too-young age of 46. Whenever we hear news like this, which is all-too-frequently, we always loosen our collars and wonder at our own mortality. We will all die - that is a certainty - but we all hope to spend a reasonable amount of time on this Earth before we go, and to depart with dignity and without pain. Ideally, we will leave the planet a better place, through our actions, than when we first arrived. How many of us can say that?
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
Industry 4.0 was and still is a buzzword for a purported ‘revolution’ in industrial technology, based on artificial intelligence, machine connectedness and automation. Critically, reliable and accurate sensors are used to deliver information - like the senses deliver sensations to the brain. Industry 4.0 (also known as I4.0 or I4) involves cyber-physical systems, which exist in both the physical and virtual worlds, including cyber-twins of machines that can be interrogated and experimented-upon more easily than their real-world equivalents. The machines and computers work together by using transparent data that can be used in a number of systems.
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
I am currently in the process of moving house. While this is a stressful life event, there’s not normally much to report: Pick up the keys, move your stuff over, notify everyone of your new address and put the kettle on. The stress mainly happens before the actual move.
- Written by Peter Edwards Editor, Global Cement Magazine
'The Good Life’ was a 1970s British sit-com with a simple premise.1 Fed up with his meaningless job designing plastic toys for the insides of cereal packets, Tom Good decides to quit on his 40th Birthday. Escaping the rat-race, he and his wife Barbara turn their suburban home into a small-holding in an attempt to become self-reliant. They only have themselves, the weather, their land, animals and whatever machinery they can cobble together. Of course, being a sit-com, they also have to navigate the rapidly-changing social landscape of 1970s Britain while knee high in pig manure. ‘Comedy’ then ensues, much of it derived from the ongoing love-hate relationship between the Goods and their materialistic neighbours Jerry and Margo.
