The American economy grew at a slightly downgraded but still robust pace of 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2023, primarily due to a slower accumulation of unsold goods. This growth followed an even stronger expansion in Q3 and points to a surprisingly resilient economy at the start of the year. Current forecasts suggest continued above-average growth surpassing 3% in Q1, exceeding the long-term sustainable rate of 1.8%.
Beacon, distributor of roofing and building materials, has acquired Virginia-based Metro Sealant & Waterproofing Supply, a commercial construction supplier of sealant and waterproofing solutions. The deal includes Metro's three locations in Virginia and one in Maryland.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's latest survey indicates that manufacturing activity in the Fifth District showed signs of improvement in February with the composite manufacturing index rising to –5 from –15 in January. Among component indexes, shipments came in at –15, new orders saw a rise from –16 to –5, and employment surged from –15 to 7. The gauge also recorded a slight increase in optimism among firms regarding local business conditions.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, supported by Amazon, have applied a deep-learning model to build a neural network architecture for warehouse robots that divides them into smaller groups to decongest and coordinate them more efficiently with traditional algorithms. "It can encode hundreds of robots in terms of their trajectories, origins, destinations and relationships with other robots, and it can do this in an efficient manner that reuses computation across groups of robots," says researcher Cathy Wu, senior author of the paper on this technique.
There are signs of cooling in the warehouse sector after the pandemic-driven boom, with employment down 0.9% in transportation and warehousing in January on a year-over-year basis, according to the Labor Department. The impact on the economy is particularly evident in areas such as Stockton, Calif., which has been a major beneficiary of the industry's growth. "I would still characterize the market as quite healthy," said Cushman & Wakefield's Kevin Dal Porto, who is negotiating a lease with a prospective tenant for a property in Stockton.
Walmart cut 15% off its store-to-home delivery costs and 20% off its last-mile deliveries over the past year, according to John David Rainey, chief financial officer. Rainey partially attributes the gains to increased package volume per route and being able to spread delivery costs over multiple customers.
Business-to-business marketers can better connect with buyers by adopting a human-to-human marketing approach, which should include sharing behind-the-scenes content on social media and other channels to showcase the people behind the brand, advises Republic Floor's Rotem Eylor. Be transparent about your business, delight customers with loyalty programs and make live service a priority, Eylor writes.
ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for a sales team when researching potential clients, but it can't answer the most detailed and intimate questions that need answers; only old-fashioned leg work and relationship building can do that, writes David Brock. Every individual client and company will have different needs, and while AI may provide assistance, it can't formulate the right questions for each client, Brock notes.
Astronauts must be skilled in self-regulation to work well with others in confined spaces where stress can be high almost always, says psychologist Suzanne Bell, who leads the Behavioral Health and Performance Lab at NASA. Leaders should seek to develop astronaut traits such as emotional regulation, adaptability, teamwork, flexibility, a dedication to self-care and connection with social support systems, Bell notes.
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