To bolster research capability and to develop new electronic information products and resources, we've started a new partnership with Paul Lowrey, called SteelBase Partners. We'll have some exciting news about products in the coming months. Here's the press release:

SteelBase Partners

New steel industry consulting partnership promises
to improve industry data availability

June 10, 2003

SteelBase Partners is a new consulting partnership between James Moss and Tony Taccone of First River and Paul Lowrey, formerly of Metal Strategies. The partnership reunites the three long time steel industry consultants who worked together at Beddows & Company, now Hatch Beddows. SteelBase Partners will focus on providing steel industry information products. First River will continue to focus on helping senior executives with the managerial problems of strategy development.

Paul Lowrey, SteelBase Managing Partner, resigned his position with Metal Strategies where he was a Principal to pursue the new opportunity with SteelBase. "I wanted to continue providing solid data and analysis to companies in the steel industry, but I wanted to do it in a more dynamic way using the power of on-line databases. SteelBase is exactly what I wanted to do and the guys at First River are the ideal partners for it. We have some great products in the pipeline and I'm really looking forward to introducing them to clients."

SteelBase is focused on providing market and industry information and analysis to a variety of decision makers in the steel industry and in a variety of media and formats - particularly electronic. The company is already working on a number of client assignments and will unveil a series of steel industry information products over the next few months.

"The US steel industry has always been short of critical information required to make sound business decisions," explained Tony Taccone of First River. "As overhead budgets are cut due to the industry’s on-going consolidation, the resources available to gather and analyze industry data are shrinking. As a result, information from external sources needs to be comprehensive, accurate and easy to access. SteelBase is designed to meet that need."

For further information:

Paul Lowrey,
Managing Partner,
SteelBase Partners,
9800-A McKnight Road, Suite 308,
Pittsburgh, PA 15237
Phone: (412) 635-7016
Email: plowrey@steelbase.info


posted by James Moss at 8:14 AM

The steel industry content is pretty much all in Steeltown now. We're working on some new elements of the steeltown site that will make it more useful. The letterhead is done - it's based around the logo on the home page. It has squiggles. (No one knows what else to call them.) But we like it a lot and will now attach it to all manner of goodies.



posted by James Moss at 8:10 AM

Over the last couple of weeks, we've migrated some of the steel content on this site to Steeltown which will increasingly be where we post what we have to say about steel. It will also get a bunch of other useful industry resources. That means, for instance, that the links page here is just forwarding to Steeltown now & the steel news page isn't here any longer. In making Steeltown the focus of our steel efforts, this site will become increasingly focused on strategy and First River.

We've also started revision of our company letterhead design. Once that's done it will be applied properly to this site giving it a bold fresh look! I bet you can't wait.
posted by James Moss at 11:46 AM

Added a .pdf file describing some of the minor, but critical aspects of organizing a strategy development session. You can find and download it on the meeting page here
posted by James Moss at 3:58 PM

Those looking for survivors of the World Trade Center attacks can find a list of survivors maintained by NY.com. You can also make inquiries or post news at the discussion forums at Steeltown.

Our deepest sympathies go out to the families of all those colleagues and friends we lost.
posted by James Moss at 11:13 AM

Updated the discussion area of Steeltown (our steel industry links site) so that unregistered users can post to a forum called 'Steeltown Guestbook'. The discussion area hasn't been used much since it was put up, but feel free to comment about either the Steeltown or the First River sites there - or anything else for that matter. This is a direct link to the discussion area.
posted by James Moss at 8:26 AM

This new What's New Page needs a little redesign to get it integrated into the site properly - but it allows us to post news more frequently and easily than our previous system. It uses blogger a weblog system that so far is very easy to use. This streamlines the addition of new content to this page so that we can be that much more current about what's going on in the business and on the website.
posted by James Moss at 4:02 PM

Frederick Taylor must have been a socialist. If you thought scientific management was dead, then see what management scientists have been doing at steel mills in China. Here is the output of the study of 83 production managers in 23 steel mills of Panzhihua Iron & Steel Group over 9 months. Like Taylor, who also started in steel mills, these earnest scientists believe that given enough data any process can be improved and made more rational. Unlike Taylor, who for the most part restricted himself to manual tasks, these guys have tackled the vexed question of managerial efficiency - this is China after all. It makes for interesting reading though, (be sure to study the data table at the end), and their conclusion is stirring.

"Labor productivity is, in the final analysis, the most
important and the most principal factor to ensure the
victory of a new social system."

Amen.

Here's the whole text:

CASE STUDY
ON IMPROVING MANAGEMENT EFFICIENCY IN PANZHIHUA IRON
& STEEL GROUP COMPLEX: INVESTIGATION AND ANALYSIS ON
THE PRODUCTIVITY OF "WHITE COLLARS"

by Zhao ZHONGYU
& Zhou XINGYU

Unfortunately - the file (as of July 2002) has been removed from the Napier University site. I'll try to find out where it went and link to it again.

posted by James Moss at 3:53 PM