Cash flow Clue-doh! The Mystery is Revealed…

Over 1,500 colleagues have now downloaded our cash-flow murder mystery activity - Cash Flow Clue-doh! And we’re getting an increasing number of enquiries asking what the solution is!

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Brompton Bicycles - Guardian Profile

Terrific news for Edexcel Unit 4a students - the Guardian has a feature article today looking at the growth and strategy of Brompton Bicycles.  Its a really useful article which focuses on the added value that Brompton provide to its growing customer base.  Some great examples in too there on the role and benefits of staff training, the challenges of retail distribution and on production capacity.

There’s a great quote too from the Managing Director:

“Our patent ran out nine years ago, and if we were making this bike in Taiwan, staff turnover would mean that knowledge would be lost. Years of love have gone into our staff,”

Q&A - What is globalisation?

Globalisation is a process where an increased proportion of economic, social and cultural activity is carried out across national borders. The process of globalisation has significant economic, business and social implications.

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Managing Cash Flow - Beware the Economic Recovery

An excellent recent article in the ACCA magazine examines an interesting phenomenon - more businesses collapse at the beginning of a recovery than during the depths of a recession. Its all to do with working capital…

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Economist on Lean Production

I spotted this brief overview of lean production techniques in the Economist - it might be a useful handout for students wanting to understand more about the potential benefits of lean manufacturing.
Here is the link: Lean production

Plastic car is a blast from the past

One of my favourite stories from the Business News this month has been the possible relaunch of the original plastic car – the Trabant.

Demand and supply in action - tea prices surge

The new Edexcel GCSE Business Unit 1 specification encourages students to look at commodity markets to develop their understanding of how demand supply interact to determine market prices. 

Here is an excellent example of how two significant shifts in the demand and supply curves can affect the global price of a commodity. Failing crops and surging demand for tea is pushing prices higher.

As a leading exporter of tea, Keyna is benefitting from the surge in prices, after suffering from higher production costs in recent years.

Flexible working thrives in the recession

A very useful article in the Guardian takes a look at how flexible working arrangements have thrived during the UK recession as employers have tried to find ways of reducing production capacity and operating costs without always resorting to compulsory redundancies…

Batch production in action - cricket bats

Forget those boring textbook examples of batch production - loaves of bread, school dinners, building a house etc etc.  Here is a great pictorial example of batch production in action…

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Stock control - de-stocking was over £5bn in Q1 of 2009

Fascinating evidence from the Office of National Statistics about what happened to firms inventories during the first three months of 2009.  Data form the ONS estimates that the value of stocks held fell by £5.4bn during the quarter - a significant reduction.  Students might consider why this happened.  There will be a variety of causes:

- Deiberate attempts to reduce finished goods stocks by converting them into cash (perhaps by offering lower prices or promotional discounts)
- Closure (temporary or permanent) of production capacity
- Delays in ordering new raw materials and components as a way of conserving cash