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Improving Private Equity Due Diligence and Growth – Ed Marsh Announces Quality of Sales Event

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Ben Tagoe and Ed Marsh Will Share Tips on using Quality of Sales to Buy Smarter, Grow Faster and Exit Stronger – June 18th, 11:30et LinkedIn Live

BOSTON, June 5, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — High rates, lots of eager money chasing deals, and increasing prices are challenging private equity managers. The playbook of operational efficiency improvements is less effective. The other lever, revenue growth, is the least predictable. The margin for error is shrinking just as investment thesis realization now hinges on the most subjective of criteria—the sales team’s ability to execute.

Quality of Sales empowers financial buyers in several ways through informed buying decisions with accurate models, insights into root causes of portfolio underperformance, and tools to consistently hire superb sales talent.

“Quality of Sales” solves for this, as Ed Marsh and Ben Tagoe will explore in an important LinkedIn live event on June 18th at 11:30AM ET. (Registration required.)

Recent Bain research predicts that revenue growth and margin expansion will determine 65% of PE value creation for exits by 2025 – a 48% increase over the relative contribution of those two factors for exits in ’16-21.

But how often are sales teams delivering? Most sales teams struggle with implementing price increases and closing more deals with new logos. Traditional Quality of Earnings (QoE) due diligence only indirectly infers the sales team’s ability through pipeline review and renewal rates.

Ed Marsh, founder of Ed Marsh Consulting, says “Retrospective QoE due diligence is no longer adequate for investors’ high-stakes decisions that hinge on sales team execution. I’m really excited that Ben will bring his PE experience to this QoS briefing.”

Quality of Sales delivers highly accurate quantitative and qualitative insights into a sales team’s ability to execute key elements of an investment thesis including market share expansion, price increase implementation and opportunity creation. It also looks at specific factors that impact deal qualification and forecast accuracy

Research shows that 40% or more of sales reps are chronically missing quota in today’s market, and that 40% of forecast deals end in no decision. Those weaknesses carry large direct, and enormous opportunity cost implications for financial investors.

Ben Tagoe, CEO of PE-backed Objective Management Group continues, “Quality of Sales provides sponsors with diagnostics about a company’s pipeline health, insights into root causes of sales underperformance, and tools to consistently hire superb sales talent.”

The LinkedIn live info session will be held on June 18th, at 11:30AM ET (attendees must preregister here) and will cover the following aspects of Quality of Sales:

Sales Team Evaluation – deep dive insights into aggregate and individual strengths and opportunities. This includes sales leadership, management, and individual contributors in all sales roles. Investors will clearly understand the potential of the team to execute on the investment thesis, as well as required personnel and organizational changes and training requirements, including a reasonable timeline.Identify root causes of underperforming portfolio companies – as holding periods lapse, frustrating sales symptoms come into focus. But addresing symptoms doesn’t deliver results. Just as in operations the key is to understand root causes. Quality of Sales delivers that detail.Improved sales hiring – Hiring is a crap shoot. Even successful sales leaders from elsewhere in the portolio may not replicate success as markets, sellers, and buyers change quickly. The direct and opportunity costs of average hires is huge. Quality of Sales enables confidence in consistently hiring 2nd and 3rd standard deviation talent.

The Quality of Sales event will be broadcast live on LinkedIn on June 18th at 11:30AM ET. Register here to save your seat and gain critical insights into how you can quantitatively improve results.

Buy smarter. Grow faster. Exit strong.

A new private equity environment demands more accurate and insightful solutions to support your investments. Quality of Sales delivers empirical, predictively accurate insights.

About Ed Marsh: Ed is the founder of Ed Marsh Consulting, a firm that works with privately held middle-market firms on revenue growth. Ed’s a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and a former Ranger Qualified Airborne Infantry officer. He has extensive international experience and was the Export Advisor to American Express. He holds a Private Directors Association certificate in Private Equity Portfolio Company Governance and is Directorship® Certified by the National Association of Corporate Directors.

About Ben Tagoe: Benjamin Tagoe is the CEO of Objective Management Group, the pioneer and industry leader in sales team evaluations and sales candidate assessments. He’s a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar. Ben’s finance and investing career has focused on strategy and the use of data to drive better decisions. From Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, through his time as SVP at VantageScore Solutions, and Fairfield Enterprises (a single company fund), using data to drive better decision-making has been Ben’s passion – a passion that he brings to OMG and helping companies improve sales.

Media Contact

Ed Marsh, Ed Marsh Consulting, 9788100351, em@cgbadv.com, www.EdMarshConsulting.com 

View original content:https://www.prweb.com/releases/improving-private-equity-due-diligence-and-growth—ed-marsh-announces-quality-of-sales-event-302164421.html

SOURCE Ed Marsh Consulting

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Chef Robotics Physical AI Models Can Now Automate Baked Goods Packing

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Chef Robotics, a leader in physical AI for the food industry, today announced that Chef robots can now automate tray assembly for baked goods packing. The application places baked products, such as burger buns, chocolate chip cookies, biscotti, butter cookies, biscuits, fortune cookies, granola bars, rusks, and shortbreads into trays and packaging containers before sealing.

Watch Chef robots in action.

Baked goods packing has historically been difficult to automate for high-mix production. Each item behaves differently on the production line—a granola bar compresses under the wrong grip, while a biscotti or rusk can crack if placed at the wrong angle. Surface textures range from glazed and smooth to crumbly and irregular, and strict presentation requirements leave little room for error. This variability has made it challenging for automation systems to reliably handle baked goods at production speeds, leaving food manufacturers dependent on manual labor and traditional bakery equipment.

To address this, Chef built its baked goods packing application on its existing piece-picking capability, which uses Chef’s AI-powered computer vision and physical AI models trained across diverse real-world production environments. This allows Chef robots to assess each item’s position, shape, and orientation in real time and determine how to pick the items from the pan and place them quickly and precisely without damaging them.

The baked goods packing application supports four distinct placement capabilities.

First, Chef’s vision system detects the angle at which each item sits in the pan and reorients it after picking, placing it on the tray at the exact angle required, regardless of its original position, enabling retail-ready presentation for SKUs that require precise angular placement.

Second, Chef robots can place multiple baked goods into the same packaging container in a single automated pass, completing full tray assembly without manual intervention.

Third, for packaging containers with multiple small compartments, Chef robots can precisely place items into each designated section, including multiple items in the same compartment, using Chef’s AI vision model to detect compartment positions and orientations in real time.

Fourth, Chef’s vision system identifies the exact center of each tray and places every item at a predefined offset from that center, ensuring a uniform, consistent arrangement across every pack regardless of how trays arrive on the conveyor.

For food manufacturers evaluating bakery systems and baked goods packaging automation, the application offers higher throughput, reduced labor dependency, and consistent presentation across shifts. The capability runs on Chef’s existing robotic hardware and software, allowing manufacturers to deploy it without requiring any changes to their production lines.

Chef’s baked goods packing application is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, and the UK and is included as part of Chef’s robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing model.

About Chef Robotics
Chef is the first company to have commercialized a scalable AI-driven food robotics solution. With over 104 million servings made in production, Chef leverages ChefOS, an AI platform for food manipulation, to offer a Robotics-as-a-Service solution that helps industry-leading food companies increase production volume and meet demand. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, Chef aims to empower humans to do what humans do best by accelerating the advent of intelligent machines. Visit https://chefrobotics.ai to learn more.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chef-robotics-physical-ai-models-can-now-automate-baked-goods-packing-302756923.html

SOURCE Chef Robotics

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Air Products to Expand Industrial Gas Supply for Samsung Electronics’ Next-Generation Semiconductor Fab in South Korea

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New investment underscores the company’s long-term commitment to Korea and its leading role in the global semiconductor industry 

LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., April 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Air Products (NYSE:APD), a world-leading industrial gases company and serving Samsung globally, today announced it has been selected by Samsung to supply industrial gases for its new advanced semiconductor fab in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

Under the agreement, Air Products will build, own and operate multiple state-of-the-art production facilities and a bulk specialty gas supply system to supply nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and hydrogen for Samsung’s new semiconductor fab. The new facilities are expected to come onstream in multiple phases from 2028 through 2030.

Air Products has a long track record of executing multiple phase expansions in Pyeongtaek to support Samsung’s growing manufacturing needs. This latest project represents Air Products’ largest investment to date in the semiconductor industry and will establish Pyeongtaek as the company’s single largest operations site globally supporting the electronics industry. 

“Air Products is honored to be selected once again by Samsung and to have their continued confidence as a trusted partner supporting their strategic growth plans,” said SR Kim, President, Air Products Korea. “This significant investment reinforces Air Products’ role as a leading global supplier to the semiconductor industry and underscores our long-standing commitment to supporting our strategic customers with safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products has served the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to many of the world’s leading technology companies. The company has operated in Korea for more than 50 years and has established a strong position in electronics and manufacturing sectors.

About Air Products

Air Products (NYSE: APD) is a world-leading industrial gases company in operation for over 85 years focused on serving energy, environmental, and emerging markets and generating a cleaner future. The Company supplies essential industrial gases, related equipment and applications expertise to customers in dozens of industries, including refining, chemicals, metals, electronics, manufacturing, medical and food. As the leading global supplier of hydrogen, Air Products also develops, engineers, builds, owns and operates some of the world’s largest clean hydrogen projects, supporting the transition to low- and zero-carbon energy in the industrial and heavy-duty transportation sectors. Through its sale of equipment businesses, the Company also provides turbomachinery, membrane systems and cryogenic containers globally.

Air Products had fiscal 2025 sales of $12 billion from operations in approximately 50 countries. For more information, visit airproducts.com or follow us on LinkedInXFacebook or Instagram.

This release contains “forward-looking statements” within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s expectations and assumptions as of the date of this release and are not guarantees of future performance. While forward-looking statements are made in good faith and based on assumptions, expectations and projections that management believes are reasonable based on currently available information, actual performance and financial results may differ materially from projections and estimates expressed in the forward-looking statements because of many factors, including the risk factors described in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2025 and other factors disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in the assumptions, beliefs or expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances upon which any such forward-looking statements are based.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/air-products-to-expand-industrial-gas-supply-for-samsung-electronics-next-generation-semiconductor-fab-in-south-korea-302757497.html

SOURCE Air Products

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