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The correct design of gating and risering is essential for a foundry to be successful in the production of high-quality castings. As customers demand that the lead-time for new parts [...]

This article is based on our study that provides a behind-the-scenes look at the way incentives are being structured to connect pay and performance. Because incentive compensation comprises the bulk [...]

Like Richard Wagner's epic opera, 'Parsifal', which depicts King Arthur's knights in the quest to find the Holy Grail, companies strive heroically to find the right performance measures to improve [...]

There are several ways to compare severance packages between private companies including emerging pre-IPO companies, and public companies. While public companies routinely provide severance protection for their senior executives, private [...]

A properly designed feeding system for iron castings (both gray and ductile) requires an understanding of how these alloys differ from others, such as steel. If these differences are not [...]

Good governance mandates alignment of practices with 'best fit' and not just 'best practice,' driven by internal and external factors. Internal factors drive alignment of compensation strategy with business objectives [...]

Designing efficient gating/feeding systems for investment castings has been difficult, involving established design rules with cumbersome calculations that, for commercial castings, must be simplified to reality. Approximations reduce design accuracy. [...]

Short-term incentive plans enhance executive performance, but very little is revealed to investors about them, according to new research by James Reda and Associates LLC. And while companies are disclosing [...]

Long considered two sides of the same coin, credit and collections have always had their differences. In the B2B world, however, they have more often than not been grouped together [...]

Ask any credit pro about 'Best Practice Guidelines' and chances are the subject of industry conventions will soon be broached. It almost goes without saying that trade receivables management is [...]

In the past decade, the Internet has evolved from a novelty enjoyed primarily by techno-enthusiasts to an indispensable business tool. In the beginning, it offered credit pros little more than [...]

Despite the sour economy, this has been another exciting year for credit and collection technology enthusiasts. The vendors have continued to come out with new products and new features. Whereas [...]

It has now been over a quarter century since I first entered the commercial credit profession (would you believe I was a 12 year-old junior achievement participant?).At that time, credit [...]

It's become an all too familiar story. Your company replaces their legacy software with an ERP system and, looking forward to the greater productivity the new system will generate, mandates [...]

Ten years ago, if you wanted to automate the tasks being performed by your credit department, you would not have had many options. At that time, the best you could [...]

It has become increasingly obvious that e-commerce is not an end unto itself but just one aspect, and admittedly a very important one, of a new commercial paradigm for conducting [...]

Ask any credit pro what their biggest challenge is, and chances are they will answer 'not enough time.' Suzanne Koch, CCE, Corporate Credit Manager with Foster Poultry Farms, Turlock, CA, [...]

More than ever, information forms the cornerstone of a top line receivables function. Without good information, credit limits are set arbitrarily, collection priorities lack coordination, cash application turns into an [...]

Keeping up with the rapid pace of technology in any one discipline is challenging. Assimilating the advances being made across a broad spectrum of business processes is nearly impossible. This [...]

Computer simulation of the casting process is being used increasingly in commercial foundries to improve quality and decrease cost and lead time. One drawback of this technology is that it [...]

An updated survey of available solidification modeling packages illustrates how technology is advancing to ensure sound, cost-effective castings. The purpose of simulating any industrial process is to model the underlying [...]

Investors and the business media maybe vexed about rich executive pay plans, but 'golden parachute' severance packages stir particular outrage. Too often, it seems, this departure pay rewards failure, is [...]

Credit professionals should anticipate the numerous technological and organizational changes transforming the nature of credit and collections to gain a competitive edge. They must be innovative and constantly on the lookout for trends. This technique in turn involves learning new skills and updating old habits. Also, innovations selected must be put into practice and completed in an excellent manner., Ever since Alvin Toffler penned Future Shock, the idea of accelerating change has been accepted by many people as a given. The technological revolution, ushered in by integrated circuits, more [...]

Innovation: new idea, creative thought, new imaginings in the form of device or method. I believe we all can agree that the quagmire that is the U.S. health system in [...]

Uncertainty is not a strange concept to farmers: the weather, markets, government programs, politics, insurance, technologies, regulations, and the list goes on. The task of the national Extension effort, titled [...]

The solidification of metals occurs in different ways for different materials. The temperature at which solidification takes place, and the range of temperatures for the process varies dramatically between irons, [...]

Garbage disposal and hot water systems manufacturer In-Sink-Erator (ISE) has developed software to speed up remittance processing. Benefits of automated remittance processing include reduced data entry costs, improved accuracy of cash receipt data, shorter credit holds and increased information on customer paying habits. The software also enables ISE to focus its efforts on other collection activities that can improve credit department performance., The mantra for business process improvement is better, faster and less costly. Proponents search for process changes that will produce significant improvements in product quality and process time while reducing [...]

The concept of reengineering has become popular with organizational experts. The idea does not pertain to automating tasks or reorganizing management structures but the creation of a new process that would completely replace an existing process. The credit manager and his department may cease being a separate entity after the application of the process. Functions which used to exist because of the separation of labor may have to be abolished or shifted to other areas., 'Reengineering.' It's the buzzword we're all hearing. Management gurus are making fortunes preaching reengineering's virtues and helping businesses implement it. Reengineering turns organizations upside down. Though it's expensive and difficult [...]

A firm's credit function and policy may be reviewed based on critical success factors. These factors are components of a business plan and are essential to its success. Moreover, critical success factors work on the principle that credit and collection efforts can fail. Thus, the efficiency of business plans may be evaluated by keeping these failures to certain limits., It only requires a brief exposure to credit and collections to learn that no matter how successful your efforts may be, there will also be failures. Success in credit and [...]

Byline: James F. Reda and David M. Schmidt Short-term incentive plans enhance executive performance, but very little is revealed to investors about those plans, according to new research by James [...]

Small Foundry Can Gain Efficiency by Computerizing Operations Smaller foundries often have greater difficulty than their larger counterparts in maintaining control over production and quality. Typically, such foundries are owner-managed, [...]

Over the last forty years, computers, faxes and now the Internet have transformed the ways credit and collection pros practice their trade. Computers have profoundly changed how transactions are processed [...]

Multivariable optimization moves one step beyond solidification modeling, enabling the computer to automatically search for optimum casting gating, risering and design. Casting process simulation is being used by foundries to [...]

Opening General Session Credit professionals gathered for NACM's 105' Annual Credit Congress in Seattle, Washington. This one-of-a-kind conference included dozens of educational sessions focusing on risk analysis; credit scoring; e-commerce [...]

Trade receivables are inherently messy. Never is that more apparent than when posting receipts. Compared to consumer credit transactions, where there are very few questions regarding where and how a [...]

Kirk L. Rogga [a] David B. Schmidt [a] Carla Shull [a] Neal Schmitt [b][*] Abstract The degree to which organizational climate mediates the relationship between human resource practices and customer [...]

It has been a decade since the credit management profession has had to deal with a recession, but in comparison to its predecessors, the recession of 1991 was quite mild. [...]

Commodity: Something used or valued, especially when regarded as an article of commerce. Webster's Third International Collegiate Dictionary For centuries, only things mined or grown were considered commodities. With the [...]

Thanks in large part to the Internet, data acquisition costs have been plummeting throughout the global economy. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the information product that is of [...]

The number of products and services available to credit managers is growing faster than ever. Twenty-five years ago, once you got past Dun & Bradstreet, there was not much more [...]

The Role Technology Has Played in Shifting the Credit and Collection Paradigm For the better part of this century, credit and collection processes were centered around the customer ledger card. [...]

As old line corporations delve into e-commerce, commercial credit professionals need to evaluate the role they should play. What they should not do is sit back and just wait for [...]

Credit professionals have been slow to accept the concept of receivables' outsourcing, and it is understandable why. They initially feared outsourcing was just another euphemism for downsizing (the bane of [...]