Cemex in the Oct. 15, 2005 edition of "The Economist"

Title: "The Master Builder: How Lorenzo Zambrano built a global leader from modest origins in Mexico"

Excerpts from the article:

"Lorenzo Zambrano, the boss of Cemex since 1985, has built up his company from a middle-sized cement company--not even the largest in Mexico when he took over--to a world powerhouse with operations in more than 50 countries. Last year Cemex bought the RMC Group, a British cement firm, for $5.8 billion. The purchase turned Cemex into the largest producer of ready-mix cement (the stuff one sees tumbling around in trucks, ready to be poured) in the world...."

"...Mr. Zambrano attributes the change [in productivity of a newly acquired plant in England] to the implementation of the 'Cemex way'. This is MBA-speak (Stanford, in Mr. Zambrano's case) for a highly centralized, yet flexible model. Cemex's plants around the world are monitored from a Star Trek like computer facility in Monterrey. But remote monitoring will not let a plant run with fewer stoppages [sic, don't know what it means]. This was accomplished largely by the simple measure of turning off all non-essential alarms--increasing efficiency without, it is claimed, compromising safety."