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Caterpillar's $7.6 billion acquisition of Bucyrus (byoo-SEYE'-rus) International seems to be good news for southeastern Wisconsin.
Bucyrus President and CEO Tim Sullivan says Caterpillar has agreed to locate its mining business headquarters in the Milwaukee area. Bucyrus is based in South Milwaukee. It makes surface mining equipment used for mining coal, copper, iron ore, oil sands and other minerals.
Caterpillar of Peoria, Ill., says it's buying the company to expand its mining business and take advantage of rapid growth in emerging markets.
Wisconsin recently gave Bucyrus $20 million in state tax credits to help it expand its operations. The company plans to use the credits to consolidate and expand its operations in nearby Oak Creek.
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TRW Automotive: The Trend Continues Higher
Nov 11, 2010 (SmarTrend(R) Spotlight via COMTEX) -- SmarTrend identified an Uptrend for TRW Automotive (TRW) on September 03, 2010 at $38.36. In approximately 2 months, TRW Automotive has returned 34.2% as of today's recent price of $51.46.
In the past 52 weeks, shares of TRW Automotive have traded between a low of $20.82 and a high of $51.03 and are now at $51.46, which is 147% above that low price.
TRW Automotive is currently above its 50-day moving average of $41.73 and above its 200-day moving average of $33.16. Look for these moving averages to climb to confirm the company's upward momentum.
In the last five trading sessions, the 50-day MA has climbed 3.88% while the 200-day MA has risen 2.01%.
SmarTrend will continue to scan these moving averages and a number of other proprietary indicators for any shifts in the trajectory of TRW Automotive shares.
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Copyright, Comtex News Network, Inc. 2010
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The numbers aren’t dizzyingly high. But the conservative methodology used for a recent study counting the number of environmentally friendly jobs makes the study’s conclusions all the more striking. State leaders who review a recent Pew report – as all should – will discover that growth in the clean-energy sector provides Hoosiers with one reason to celebrate.
The Pew Charitable Trust’s study, “The Clean Energy Economy: Repowering Jobs, Businesses and Investments Across America,” found that while overall jobs declined 1 percent between 1997 and 2007, jobs in clean energy grew 17.9 percent. Indiana was one of seven states, as well as the District of Columbia, where the number of jobs fell overall, but the number of jobs in clean energy increased.
“The study shows that the clean-energy economy is not something unique to states like Massachusetts, California or Oregon,” said Kil Huh, project director for research at Pew Charitable Trust. “Indiana has a significant number of jobs in that sector, and Indiana has some strengths it can build on.”
Huh points specifically to Indiana’s recent advancements in wind power. According to the American Wind Energy Association, Indiana has had the fastest growth in wind power in America in 2008. And the wind industry has become a leader in generating patents and attracting capital investments. Indiana has attracted $26 million in venture capital in the past three years.
“One out of 10 jobs were in the clean-energy economy,” he said. And wind had a lot to do with that growth.”
It’s very easy – and fashionable – to slap the word “green” on nearly everything and call it a day. But merely calling something green does not automatically make it environmentally friendly. Instead of using the term “green jobs,” the study refers to clean-energy-economy jobs. The study also uses a stringent definition for which jobs qualify and only counted those jobs that could be verified.
Huh said Pew researchers reviewed about 50 studies on green jobs and then verified that each of the jobs they were including was directly related to clean or renewable energy.
Companies that actively engaged in clean-energy production, increasing energy efficiency, conserving natural resources or reducing pollution were counted. Companies that served as direct suppliers to those companies and used environmentally friendly production methods also were counted.
But the study doesn’t include companies that simply bought green products or services. The study also leaves out a number of jobs that are included in other studies, such as those related to nuclear power. The question of storing nuclear waste safely makes the overall greenness of nuclear energy open to debate.
“We tried to be precise about what we were counting,” Huh said. “It’s probably a conservative count, but we were trying to be as precise as possible.”
The study makes a strong case for Indiana’s investment in clean and renewable energy. And the methodology behind the study should make it more compelling for those in doubt about the wisdom of the state’s investing in clean energy.
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GKN Aerospace
On a number of fronts, engineers at GKN Aerospace are pushing forward the boundaries of current technology - achieving results now and opening new avenues for tomorrow in the drive to develop ever quieter, more fuel-efficient and lower maintenance aircraft.
The Company is in the final stage of developing one piece acoustic engine and inlet liners which have already demonstrated 4db noise level reductions and promise to be 40percent lighter than current liners. This honeycomb technology is ready to go into production in its current form with further development already underway, as Phil Grainger, Senior Technical Director and Chief Technologist at GKN Aerospace, explains:
"Installed today, this is a development that offers the operator real performance improvements and significant noise reduction. And it is a technology we are still evolving, moving towards a future product with fully versatile honeycomb layers that are constructed on a cell by cell basis to give the optimum solution for each application and to maximise noise reduction."
In the aero-engine, the aircraft wing and rotor-blade, the Company's embedded electro-thermal ice protection technology is reducing weight, enhancing performance and improving safety. This equipment will fly within the flying surfaces on the wings of the Boeing 787 during trials later this year. These anti-ice systems are a key future market for GKN Aerospace and the Company continues to advance the technology in a number of directions, largely through involvement on the 'Integrated Wing' (IW) and 'Next Generation Composite Wing' (NGCW) research programmes. Miniaturisation of the control system is a major goal, offering the pilot individual, finely tuned ice protection directly to each slat. This increase in system control will bring fuel savings, improved performance and greater aircraft safety. The Company is also investigating using thinner coatings in the construction of the heater mats to further reduce the weight of this already extremely lightweight system.
In its aerostructures business, GKN Aerospace is investing in new robotic technology, in particular at its new Filton, UK, operation. Later this year the Company's newly equipped satellite site to GKN Aerospace-Filton will commence work on the manufacture and assembly of the rear wing spar and trailing edge for the A350XWB. This new manufacturing and assembly operation will house manufacturing 'cells' in which the production item will remain static whilst multi-taskable robotic heads move over the structure, completing all the required tasks.
Grainger continues: "Using robotic technology offers us speed, consistency and, crucially, flexibility. With this choice we are avoid investing heavily in costly plant that is dedicated to the manufacture of single item. Instead our capital equipment has 'cartridge like' functioning heads that can be re-formatted for new tasks as we require. The quality of consistent, high rate production this technology offers, with this level of adaptability, would just not have been achievable in the recent past."
Looking further ahead, GKN Aerospace aims to find an alternative to the traditional autoclave curing process for composites which can represent an expensive and inefficient 'bottleneck' in the production process. The Company has already evolved an effective Out of Autoclave (OOA) process which avoids the component size limitations inherent in using an autoclave.
However, the time commitments required by both autoclave and OOA processes remain similar at approximately 8 hours of curing at sustained high temperature. GKN Aerospace engineers are now testing microwave curing processes which could bring average curing times down by 80%, to only 90 minutes. In addition microwave curing could offer the ability to selectively cure parts of the structure leaving other parts unaffected, which would open up a completely new range of possibilities in airframe manufacture.
Grainger concludes: "These are just a few examples of the many initiatives underway at GKN Aerospace that are producing tangible benefits today and offering the promise of even more tomorrow - gaining even better airframe performance as we move to meet the challenging emissions reduction targets for the aviation sector in the future."
GKN plc is a global engineering business serving mainly the automotive, industrial, off-highway and aerospace markets. It has operations in more than 30 countries, nearly 40,000 employees in subsidiaries and joint ventures and sales of GBP4.4 billion in the year to 31 December 2008. GKN plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: GKN).
GKN Aerospace is the aerospace operation of GKN plc, serving a global customer base.
Operating in North and South America, Australia, the Asia Pacific and Europe, GKN Aerospace offers 24 hour 'follow the sun' engineering. With sales of GBP1bn, the business is focused around three major product areas - aerostructures, propulsion systems and transparencies, plus a number of specialist product areas - electro-thermal ice protection, fuel and flotation systems, and bullet resistant glass. The business is equally split along military and civil lines with significant participation on all major aircraft programmes today. GKN Aerospace is a major supplier of complex composite structures; offers one of the most comprehensive capabilities in high performance metallics processing and is the world-leading supplier of cockpit transparencies and passenger cabin windows.
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By SCOTT MORRISON
Concerned a brain drain could hurt its long-term ability to compete, Google Inc. is tackling the problem with its typical tool: an algorithm.
The Internet search giant recently began crunching data from employee reviews and promotion and pay histories in a mathematical formula Google says can identify which of its 20,000 employees are most likely to quit.
Google officials are reluctant to share details of the formula, which is still being tested. The inputs include information from surveys and peer reviews, and Google says the algorithm already has identified employees who felt underused, a key complaint among those who contemplate leaving.
Applying a complex equation to a basic human-resource problem is pure Google, a company that made using heavy data to drive decisions one of its "Ten Golden Rules" outlined in 2005.
Edward Lawler, director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California, said Google is one of a few companies that are early in taking a more quantitative approach to personnel decisions.
"They are clearly ahead of the curve, but a lot of companies are waking up to the fact that there is a lot of modeling that can provide you with critical data on human capital," Mr. Lawler said.
[google staffing turnover] Associated Press
Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can't make the same impact as the company matures.
The move is one of a series Google has made to prevent its most promising engineers, designers and sales executives from leaving at a time when its once-powerful draws -- a start-up atmosphere and soaring stock price -- have been diluted by its growing size. The data crunching supplements more traditional measures like employee training and leadership meetings to evaluate talent.
Google's algorithm helps the company "get inside people's heads even before they know they might leave," said Laszlo Bock, who runs human resources for the company.
Concerns about a talent exodus have revived in recent weeks amid the departures of top executives, including advertising sales boss Tim Armstrong and display-advertising chief David Rosenblatt. Meanwhile, midlevel employees like lead designer Doug Bowman, engineering director Steve Horowitz and search-quality chief Santosh Jayaram continue to decamp to hot start-ups like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.
Current and former Googlers said the company is losing talent because some employees feel they can't make the same impact as the company matures. Several said Google provides little formal career planning, and some found the company's human-resources programs too impersonal.
"They need to come up with ways to keep people engaged," said Valerie Frederickson, a Silicon Valley personnel consultant who has worked with former Google employees. "If Google was doing this enough, they wouldn't be losing all these people."
Google spokesman Matt Furman said the chance to contribute to "constant and often amazing innovation" keeps employees engaged. The company is determined to retain top product managers and engineers.
Google wouldn't say how many people have left, but says it has managed to hang on to its most important staffers. "We haven't seen the most critical people leave," Mr. Bock said. |
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