An Reflection Of My Life - 1660 Words

Not far from Braintree, on the island of Nantucket, is where I grew up. Being a resident of a small island, there was only so much to do and see. Consequently, numbers of things like music, books, films, and television fostered a tremendous impact on my interests and activities. When it came time to begin our twelve year long journey through an educational system, my parents decided to move. We found ourselves in Braintree, a town much different from what my brother Jake and I had known all of our lives. Each and every afternoon, my brother and I tuned in to Disney Channel at four o’clock to watch our favorite show, the Wiggles. The show featured four guitar playing hosts, each in a different colored t-shirt. The show always†¦show more content†¦As island kids, we all grew up around the â€Å"earthy-crunchy† vibe that you would expect. My friends and I loved to ride our bikes to the beach, eat granola filled snacks, and bring our dogs on walks through the land reserves. As a result, I was never much of a girly-girl. There was a popular cartoon strip that all us kids would read, featuring a man and his dog who ventured through a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Each week we would talk about it during playdates, and reenact the hunter’s adventures. Our love and enjoyment of the outdoors sprouted further as a result of this form of media which we all enjoyed. It developed into a social norm, one that would cause a child to feel left out if they had not yet read this week’s strip. Another television show popular among children of my generation was Barney. The childish sing-along show featured a large purple and green dinosaur, often singing catchy songs which had educational message entailed. A particularly memorable song essentially advised children to shut the running water off while they brush their teeth, to conserve water. I did just that. Each morning and night I would hum to the tune of Barney’s advice, while brushing my teeth with the water off (my parents’ wallet really appreciated this). Since being taught by Barney’s television show to conserve water while scrubbing my teeth clean, I have always done so

The reduction of lead-time - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 21 Words: 6350 Downloads: 9 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Statistics Essay Did you like this example? Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) is a strategy which needs to applied throughout the company and whose primary goal is the reduction of lead-time in each and every operation of the company while simultaneously reducing costs and improving quality. QRM can be defined in two contexts: Externally (Customers point of view): QRM means quickly responding to customer needs by designing and producing goods customized to cater those needs. Internally, QRM stresses on reducing the lead times throughout the organization, leading to lower inventory, better quality, reduced cost, and greater responsiveness. QRM uses Manufacturing Critical-path Time (MCT) as the metric for measuring the success of QRM processes. MCT is an extension of the concept of lead-time, which is the time from the receipt of order from the customer till the product is delivered to the customer. There are 2 ways of implementing QRM: one is using large breakthrough improvements and the other is through continuous improvements. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The reduction of lead-time" essay for you Create order QRM was developed by Rajan Suri, a Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is famous for his works on continuous improvement programs. He not only gave the theory but also the practical ways by which QRM could be successfully applied and integrated in the operations of the company. QRM is basically an extension of Time based Competition (TBC), which was a strategy used by Japanese firms in the 1980s. TBCs philosophy is to use speed to gain competitive advantage. QRM is more particular as it is restricted to manufacturing firms only. QRM finds its first foray in history in 1993 with the foundation of the Center for Quick Response Manufacturing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.[2] In 1995, Rajan Suri published the article Slaying the Beast which put forth some bad policies which were prevalent in manufacturing companies and also offered explanations for the same. This helped QRM gain a lot of recognition and importance.1 The positive response spurred Dr. Suri to con tinue working on this subject and this further led to his consulting businesses in implementing QRM and successfully applying the same in many companies. Since then, the Center for QRM has helped in applying QRM in nearly 180 companies resulting in reduced lead times and increased market shares.2 QRM Principles: Traditional View: Everyone will have to work faster, harder and longer hours, in order to get jobs done in less time. QRM Principle #1: Find whole new ways of completing a job, with the focus on lead-time minimization Its not necessary to work harder, faster and longer hours to complete job earlier. One can focus on finding new ways to complete a job that takes lower time. Most of the time a job spends in a queue instead of in process and traditional approach only look to reduce processing time (touch time) and in QRM focus is on lead-time (total elapsed time) and not just processing time. Out of total lead-time 34 days only 19.5 hours is a touch time so it makes sense that we should focus on whole 34 days. But generally organizations are not designed to focus on lead-time. Mainly because organizations dont recognize the cost of waiting they mainly focus on processing time like one need to reduce batch sizes to reduce waiting time but it will increase number of setups that will increase their processing time which is mostly opposing to company goals. So, Companies need to change their accounting systems and reward systems so that benefits of reduction in lead-time can be measured and rewarded appropriately. Examples of Organizational Waste Due to Long Lead Times: Expediting of hot jobs or late orders: Requires Systems, Air Freight, People, even Top Management time. Production Meetings required to change and update priorities. Overtime costs for trying to speed up late jobs. Time spent by Sales, Planning, and other Departments to develop and update forecasts. WIP and Finished Goods holding costs, including space. Obsolescence of parts made to forecast but not used. Quality problems not detected till much later; lots of rework or scrap. Opportunity for: Order changes or even cancellations. Feature and scope creep. Loss of sales to competition. Sales time devoted to expediting and explaining delays to customer. Complex systems required to manage the dynamic environment. There is one major problem with cost based systems that hinders QRM implementation that is functional structure of an organization. Looking the figure one can see how organizations fell into vicious circle by delaying regular jobs because of hot jobs and then again increase in hot jobs due to insertion of safety time due to delay in regular jobs. This is also called response time spiral. And so the spiral grows. QRM focus on reducing system in time like we do in service industry but this will require substantial reorganization of most of the processes. Basically, we will end up with cellular organizations in shop floor and also in offices and each cell will focus on its customers. The POLCA material control system helps coordinate production across multiple cells. Also, new operating methods such as time slicing are described, to help cells share non-cell resources. Traditional Belief: To get jobs out fast, we must keep our machines and people busy all the time. QRM Principle #2: Strategically plan for spare capacity plan to operate at 80% or even 70% capacity on critical resources. This principle is hard to digest as we believe that we should utilize capacity to its maximum possible value. Any reduction in the same would mean losing out on productive opportunities, resulting in increasing costs. However, by keeping all the machines busy at tall times does not necessarily transform into higher output or higher productivity. We frequently encounter the problems of growing queues due to the presence of a few bottleneck machines and jobs spending a lot of time waiting for resources due to mismanagement. All this ultimately results in increasing the lead time of the jobs which culminates in the increase of the organizational costs, which have been enlisted in the previous table. In the long run, these costs actually prove to be greater than the opportunity costs of not utilizing the spare capacity. Hence, the spare capacity should be considered as a strategic investment that will pay for itself many times over in increased sales, higher quality, and lower total cost s. Traditional Belief: In order to reduce our lead times, we have to improve our efficiencies. QRM Principle #3: Measure the reduction of lead times and make this the main performance measure. Eliminate traditional measures of utilization and efficiency. This is again a measure which is very hard to digest. We always measure the usefulness of any process through its efficiency and utilization. However, the problem with the traditional belief is not that efficiency is not an important measure, but that most measures of efficiency result in increased lead time which ultimately harms the organization. Large batches are used in a lot of companies in a bid to reduce the setup costs. However this very measure results in increasing the lead time which can culminate in the same problems as enlisted in the previous principle. There are numerous examples to show the scope of reduction of lead time in organizations, a prominent one being the case study in Becker (2001) which showed how lead time for a line of spare parts for the oil drilling industry dropped from 40 days to 5 days using reduction of lead time as the main performance measure in a manufacturing cell. QRM says that the quantities as calculated by EOQ are not appropriate and consistent with the goal of reducing lead time as EOQ doesnt consider many costs of large lots like expediting of late orders, overtime cost for trying to speed up late jobs, WIP holding costs including space. Also quality problems are detected much later than with small lots and the amount of rework and scrap generated is also much larger. At the same time, another important point which is missed in EOQ is the lack of responsiveness which occurs when the process is carried out with large lots. Large lots and planning for the same makes it difficult for the organization to respond quickly to change in customer needs. Nor can good lot sizes for QRM be predicted by the MRP system, since it assumes fixed queue times regardless of workload. Hence, in order to reduce the lead times throughout the organization, it is important for everyone in a manufacturing firm, and especially for senior managers, to understand the dynamics of factory operations. The senior managers need to have a broad outlook and decide on the policies of manufacturing and performance measures only after fully understanding the effects of capacity utilization, efficiency measures, and lot sizing policies on lead time. Traditional Versus QRM Views of Capacity and Lot Sizing. Source: QRM and POLCA:A Winning Combination forManufacturing Enterprises in the 21st Century Rajan Suri. The differences between the traditional and QRM views can be observed from the figure given above. Traditional performance measures of utilization and efficiency encourage managers to exploit their resources to the maximum possible value. Production is considered infeasible only when the capacity utilization exceeds their maximize resource utilization, and only think about their capacity limit as a boundary between feasible and infeasible production targets. Also the perception is that larger lot sizes lead to increase in efficiency. However, QRMs focus is solely on reducing lead time, and hence the impact of utilization and lot size on the same is studied. Higher utilization leads to increase in lead time, whereas lead time first decreases and then increases with increase in lot size. It is essential to consider all such manufacturing dynamics in order to come up with a process that minimizes the lead time and thereby costs. Traditional Belief: We must place great importance on on-time delivery performance by each of our departments and our suppliers. QRM Principle #4: Stick to measuring and rewarding reduction of lead times. According to QRM on-time performance is an outcome not a performance measure. Because if on time is considered as performance measure departments will quote longer lead-time to match up with on-time delivery. Again this will result in Response time spiral and results in poor performance of organization. But with QRM, organization will focus on shortening lead-time as a performance measure. In QRM its called QRM Number (measure of lead time reduction). This will eliminates Response Time Spiral and performance of organization will improve. Traditional Belief: Installing a material requirements planning (MRP) systemwill help in reducing lead times. QRM Principle #5: Use MRP for high level planning and coordination of materials. Restructure the manufacturing organization into simpler product- oriented cells. Complement this with POLCA, a new material control method that combines the best of push and pull strategies. MRP systems are of great help in managing material supply and ordering but lead-time cannot be reduced using MRP. MRP should be used on high level planning and coordination not on cell level in a cellular structure implemented by QRM, whereas POLCO can be used to manage material between cells and inside cells. POLCO basically a hybrid of push and pull systems using benefits of both. Traditional Belief: Since long lead-time items need to be ordered in large quantities, we should negotiate quantity discounts with suppliers. QRM Principle #6: Motivate suppliers to implement QRM, resulting in small lot deliveries at lower cost, better quality, and short lead times. This phenomena can be again seen as entering in Response Time Spiral in which if company buys in large batches this makes supplier to have longer lead time and company to order even larger batches. Internal and external incentives like discounts motivate ordering in large batches. The results this can be verified in John Deere where implementation of QRM with suppliers reduced cost and also improved quality with shorter lead-time and batches. Traditional Belief: We should encourage our customers to buy our products in large quantities by offering price breaks and quantity discounts. QRM Principle #7: Educate customers on your QRM program, and negotiate a schedule of moving to smaller lot deliveries at reasonable prices. Not only at the supply side, the small lot concept needs to be applied at the distribution end too. Normally it is the tendency of the sales force to get higher orders by offering quantity discounts. This will again lead to the spiral of increasing lot sizes, both during the process as well as on the procurement side, ultimately leading to lowering of delivery performance. By implementing QRM, a company can reduce its costs manifold which can then be passed on to the customers. There is a need to demonstrate to the customer that the company can deliver high quality at low prices even for small lots, which would be more beneficial both to the company as well as the customer. Thus, the idea of small lots percolates throughout the organization, from top to bottom, as well as throughout the supply chain, from supplier to customer. Traditional Belief: We can implement QRM by forming teams in each department. QRM principle #8: Cut through functional boundaries by forming a Quick Response Office Cell (Q-ROC), which is a closed-loop, collocated, multifunctional, cross-trained team responsible for a family of products aimed at a focused target market segment, and empower the Q-ROC to make necessary decisions. The traditional approach might result in local quality improvements in the respective departments. However, QRM is more concerned with the overall organization than just one department. The requirement is to cut the overall lead time for manufacturing as well as office operations for which Q-ROCs are more appropriate. Such Q-ROCs result in significant reduction of lead times for jobs such as cost estimating, quoting, and order processing. Closed-loop implies that the team would be self-sufficient in dealing with all the problems related to reducing lead time. This implies cutting across functional boundaries and changing the reporting structures to ensure the success of the process. Needless to say, this team needs to be given power in order to make the decisions as reducing lead time is the primary goal of the organization. The best example would be that of Ingersoll Cutting Tool Company, in Rockford, which reduced its engineering and order processing time for customized cutters fro m 10 days to half a day after implementing QRM principles. However, QRM should not be considered as an application of Reengineering as by using principles of system dynamics in the design of Q-ROCs, providing specific engineering and management principles for manufacturing organizations, plus by changing management principles and performance measures and adopting a company-wide approach, QRM goes much deeper than Reengineering. Traditional Belief: The reason for implementing QRM is so that we can charge our customers more for rush jobs. QRM Principle #9: The reason for embarking on the QRM journey is that it leads to a truly productive company with a more secure future. Also, lower cost/price, higher quality and shorter lead times result in highly satisfied customers. Charging more for speedy response is sustainable only in the short-term. In the long run, it is quality which differentiates a product from its competitors, and the same purpose is served by QRM. Searching for ways of squeezing time out uncovers quality problems and wasted efforts. Changing policies and adopting measures to rectify the same results in higher quality, lower WIP, less overhead, lower operating costs, and greater sales. The QRM Approach yields even better results than Lean Manufacturing as it ignores the wastes caused by long lead times. QRM takes the goal of waste reduction to the next level, creating an even leaner enterprise that will remain a formidable competitor for years to come. Traditional Belief: Implementing QRM will require large investments in technology. QRM Principle #10: The biggest obstacle to QRM is not technology, but mindset. Management must recognize this and combat it through training. Next, companies should engage in low-cost or no-cost lead time reductions, leaving expensive technological solutions for a later stage. As we have seen in many quality improving methodologies like Six Sigma, House of Quality the most important factor in the success of these initiatives is their acceptance by all the members of the organization; and QRM is no different. Realigning of all employees, from the shop floor to the boardroom, from desk workers to senior managers, to the QRM principles is a pre-requisite for the success of QRM, and hence training gains significance. Normally, performance measurement is tied to the cost accounting system which is an impediment to the successful implementation of QRM. Performance measurement must be aligned with the principles of QRM if the company has to benefit from the same. In a nutshell, the following points can be summarized about Quick Response Manufacturing: It requires measurement and efforts to minimize the metric, Manufacturing Critical-path Time (MCT), which is defined as the typical amount of calendar time from when a customer creates an order, through the critical-path, until the first piece of that order is delivered to the customer. This can be measured using the QRM number. Some changes in the structure of the organization are necessary to ensure the success of QRM. It basically requires the strategy of the organization to change from cost-based to entirely time-based with full emphasis on lead time minimization. Functional to Cellular:Cellular manufacturing is a pre-requisite of QRM as the cells yield greater flexibility in manufacturing. Top-down Control to Team Ownership:QRM requires the formation of closed-loop, cross-functional teams which need to be given complete power for monitoring the processes. Specialized Workers to a Cross-trained Workforce:Since the success of the process requires reduction in lead times across all the departments, there is a need to provide proper training to the workers so that they can perform multiple tasks and have a broader outlook. Efficiency/Utilization Goals to Lead Time Reduction:The evaluation parameters, performance measures have to shift from the traditional accounting measures to the goal of lead time reduction. The following steps need to be implemented in the organization so that QRM is a success: Creating a QRM mindset: The most important part is to make people realise the advantages of QRM over the previous measures i.e. the wastes created due to long lead time which are even ignored in Lean Manufacturing. Thereafter, a high-level QRM Steering Committee needs to be formed to oversee the QRM efforts. Also, like Six Sigma,by providing QRM training, some employees can be made QRM champions who can then be entrusted with the responsibility of the projects on a daily basis. Changing of organizational structure: Cross-functional planning team are formed to study feasible projects to which QRM can be applied. This would require the management to indulge in a detailed analysis of various consideration like Manufacturing Critical PathTime, product volumes, needs relating to strategy and other factors. Thereafter, QRM cells are formed and training and cross-training is provided to the operators in these cells by an implementation team which consists of members in the new cell as well as planning team members. Measurement of MCT is done to monitor lead time. Including of system dynamics: QRM requires going through the policies on utilization and efficiency in order to determine the proper loading of the cells. It also calls for making provisions for spare capacities and reduction in the batch sizes in order to reduce the lead time. Enterprisewide expansion of QRM: The process would typically begin with a single project. If the project is a success, its results need to be conveyed to all the members of the organization and more projects need to be undertaken based on QRM principles. QRM should not be restricted to the organization alone but should be extended through the entire supply chain. E.g. the suppliers should also be motivated to inculcate and apply the principles of QRM which would have mutual benefits for both parties. POLCA: The Material Control System for QRM: POLCO is Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards. To implement this system the company need to create cells of the production process focusing on subsets for similar parts and then it processes a given customer order through differing cells depending on the needs of that order. High Level MRP is used to provide high level planning and coordination of materials from external suppliers and across these internal cells. But cells are managed individually. To explain POLCO we can take an example of a shop floor. Assume P1 focuses on color printing and P2 on black white printing after which we have three Formatting Cells, F1, F2 and F3, which convert the printed sheets into reports with the desired pages. After formatting comes binding operation, which include punching holes and notches, cutting the sheets, and bending, A1 to A4. Finally, all orders go to the Shipping Cell S1, where the packaged plates are placed in shipping containers and then loaded onto carts. The material control system used is POLCA where High Level MRP and a cellular organization is a prerequisite. In this case all Release times are created with the help of High Level MRP. But even after authorization of POLCO work will not begin until all conditions are met. POLCO cards are used to communicate and control the material movement between cells. As Figure shows the POLCA card flows for a particular order at any organization based on initial design. This orders routing takes it from P1 to F2, then to A4 for binding, and finally to S1 to be shipped. This order will therefore proceed through the POLCA card loops with the pairs P1/F2, F2/A4 and A4/S1. If cell P1 has a job authorized that is going to F3 next, then a P1/F3 card must be available at P1 in order for it to begin that job. If a P1/F3 card is not available, that means that there is a bottleneck at F3 and working on that job will only add to the work-in-process at F3. Instead, it would be better for P1 to put its resources into a job that is needed by another cell that is not backlogged. So the cell team at P1 skips the P1/F3 job for now, and looks at the next authorized job to see if a card is available for that job, and so on. Differences from KANBAN: POLCO cards only control flow between cells not within. POLCA cards are not product specific but they are specific to particular pair of cells. POLCO cards are used as capacity signal whereas Kanban is used as inventory signal. As return of POLCA card from a downstream cell signals that the cell has available capacity. Benefits yielded by POLCA: POLCA helps in managing short-term fluctuations in capacity and also assists in reducing congestion on the shop floor. If a POLCA card from a downstream cell is not available, it means that that cell or some other cell further downstream is backlogged with work. Hence it does not make sense allocating further work to that particular job, without replanning of resources, as this will only increase inventory in the system since somewhere downstream there is a lack of capacity to work on this job. A better alternative would be to use this cell for some other job during the time being. POLCA cards flow in longer loops which allows the production to respond to changes in demand or differences in the complexities of jobs. The additional jobs in the loop can act as a buffer to absorb variations in demand and product mix which makes it highly suitable to meet the needs of responsiveness. On the contrary, the pull system stresses on achieving constant takt times throughout the organization, ignoring the fact that a variety of products will require different manufacturing times. Benefits of Quick Response Manufacturing: Product Leadership: The main objective of QRM is to minimize lead times. By implementing QRM, a company attains many beneficial and competitive advantages. Benefits of Quick Response Manufacturing: Product Leadership: QRM enables a firm to have shorter time to market. Thus a firm can reach out to customers with the latest technology while competitors play catch-up. There are two ways of looking at it. The first is that a given point of time a firms product would be superior to that of its competitor. Another point of view is that since a firm has shorter lead time it can deliver technology that is openly available to the market much earlier. Thus, the firm can skim the market due to its superior product. This can be depicted on a time line . Lower working capital: Lower lead times permit companies to have lower raw material and finished goods inventory. As a result the working capital requirement is decreased. This places the firm in a better strategic position to utilise their resources and capital. Better position to increase market share: The lower lead times increase the firms responsiveness to opportunities in the environment. This increased responsiveness helps the firm attract customers and increase its market share. Increased inventory turns: Since the production system is triggered by demand, smaller batches are produced, inventory decreases, and the number of inventory turns increases. Many inefficient producers have substantial amounts of capital tied up in inventory; therefore, their inventory turns are low. Reducing the cost of quality by minimising rework: Cellular manufacturing places more responsibility and accountability on specific production teams. This results in specialization which inherently increases the quality of the product. It is much easier to pinpoint defects since the problems are directly traceable to certain teams or members. This has a positive impact on the quality of products. Cost Reduction: QRM aims at finding opportunities to improve the existing process. This results in lower operating costs. Using QRM, companies are able to save, in some cases, up to 25% of total operating costs by solving problems before they happen. Increasing Long Term competitiveness: QRM ultimately aims at enhancing the long term competitiveness of the team. The above mentioned benefits are only the stepping stones in the right direction. The enhanced competitiveness of the firm ensures that is objective of enhancing shareholder value is fulfilled. Issues of Quick Response Manufacturing: Increased reliance on suppliers: QRM requires a strong relationship with ones raw material suppliers and partners. To react to demand, a manufacturing firm must closely partner with suppliers that will quickly accommodate the firms production schedule. However, if the supplier cannot provide raw materials due to problems such as quality assurance/control, equipment repair or union labour, the manufacturing firm may not be able to meet customer requirements. This could result in stock outs and backorders. Change Management: It can be very difficult to implement QRM in a manufacturing environment. QRM is a business enabling philosophy that works top-down and therefore, changes the roles and responsibilities of the employees. Traditional roles, from lower levels through upper management, are drastically modified and the corporate infrastructure is typically altered. Employees can be extremely apathetic to these changes, which is a barrier that could significantly hinder the implementation process and the success of QRM. To implement QRM, companies must have representation from all functions i.e line and support functions (production, planning, purchasing, engineering, manufacturing, quality, finance and human resources) to facilitate the implementation. All functional areas need to buy-in to QRM philosophy to successfully implement such a major change in the way the firm does business. What Differentiates QRM from Lean? First and foremost is the QRM mindset: the driver for all the principles and strategies in QRM is reduction of lead time. This time-based mindset results in many operating policies that are different from traditional ones. In contrast the driver in JIT/Lean is waste reduction. Although the business press has been talking about the importance of lead time reduction, or speed, for over a decade, we find that most companies still lack the knowledge and the tools to effectively reduce their lead times. Worse still, policies are in place that are lengthening, rather than shortening, lead times. QRM devotes a substantial amount of effort in educating management and workers on why these traditional policies result in long lead times, and in showing them the QRM principles that must be put in place instead. QRM is a companywide strategy. While the original implementation of JIT/Lean at Toyota may well have encompassed the whole company, most Western implementations of JIT/Lean have focused on manufacturing and materials management. In many cases, JIT/Lean has been interpreted even more narrowly as merely implementing a pull system with kanban cards. In contrast, QRM clarifies at the outset that it is a companywide strategy with implications far beyond the shop floor, and principles for other company areas, such as, office operations, are clearly presented as part of the QRM philosophy. QRM provides rational principles and tools for lead time reduction. QRM uses an understanding of system dynamics, and exploits this understanding to define the best structures and policies that will reduce lead times. QRM begins by educating employees and giving them insight into these system dynamics. This then helps justify, to management and workers, the need for changes in policies. State-of-the-art analysis tools such as the MPX software package incorporate this analysis of system dynamics and help to derive the specific changes needed and to quantify the benefits that would be achieved. For companies making a large variety of products with variable demand, as well as for companies making highly engineered products, the JIT/Lean strategy of pull is either wasteful or breaks down altogether. For such companies, QRM provides an alternative strategy called POLCA which combines the best features of push and pull without their drawbacks. While the JIT/Lean approach tries to eliminate variability, QRM recognizes that in certain markets responding to this variability may provide competitive advantage. Instead of eliminating variability, QRM creates an effective organization structure to cope with it and serve the market. QRM does this by exploiting its understanding of system dynamics. A specific example of the difference between JIT/Lean and QRM is the issue of delivery of material or components. On-time delivery is a cornerstone of JIT/Lean is implementation. And yet QRM understands of organizational dynamics shows that promoting on-time delivery results in dysfunctional dynamics with longer lead times and higher costs. QRM provides alternative metrics based on lead time reduction that promise greater improvement in the long run. The QRM approach extends to supply management as well, and is called time-based supply management (Ericksen, 2000). Companies such as John Deere are finding that, particularly for smaller suppliers, the time based mindset and QRM principles offer an effective approach to target improvements at the suppliers operation. In addition, rapid results can be achieved, with significant improvements in supplier deliveries and quality, and reduction in supplier cost and lead time (Golden, 1999; Ericksen, 2000; Nelson, 2000). To summarize, QRM pursues the relentless reduction of lead time all QRM principles stem from this singular driving concern. Instead of management announcing dozens of programs and acronyms, QRM enables management to present one unified message to the organization, and all policies follow from this one driving strategy. Examples of implementation of Quick Response Manufacturing: Trans-Coil Inc. The Milwaukee Company is a manufacturer of equipment that supports variable-speed electric drives. Problem: Trans-Coil Inc.s process sometimes dragged longer than couple of weeks they promised to the customers. Improving its record for production time and meeting deadlines was the only way not to risk losing business. Had Trans-Coil built large numbers of components in advance, ready for shipping, it would mean spending loads of money on raw materials, production and handling, without assurances of turnover of the warehoused products. The company would be stuck then with unused, obsolete components in situations when customers made even minor changes to their specifications. Solution: Having quick-response manufacturing, companies can minimize the time it takes for products to flow via their operations. It makes companies nimble, responsive, and lower costs. For changing operations, Trans-Coil commenced with its factory. Production workers were cross-trained to learn all jobs in the plant. That was a huge change from days when employees occasionally stepped out of their work areas. Trans-Coil employees are now separated into work cells which focus on smaller order sizes which includes custom work, with teams responsible for getting products out of the door as fast as possible. The companys customers have been requested to alter ordering habits. Previously, some customers ordered in large quantities with longer lead times, so that they are not caught with empty shelves. Now they order what need is, with negligible lead times, lowering their inventory costs. Result: The production workers now are capable of switching jobs on a short notice depending on the need. Under the new methods, employees are highly involved with entire manufacturing process. Customer service representatives now schedule work orders as they talk with the customers and suppliers. In cases, suppliers are also involved with changes in product design. As a result of the changes in business strategy, Trans-Coil has been able to reduce product lead times by ninety percent. The company has lowered operating and inventory costs, while at the same time taking more orders and increasing productivity and profits. TCIs resorting to QRM has resulted in reduced lead time down from weeks to days (even 24 hours in some cases). By Shorter lead time means advantage lies in the fact TCI customers only order what the need is which reduces their inventory costs. Changing the Clumsy process of making bicycles at Trek Bicycle: The Company is amongst the best bicycle manufacturers in the world. Problem: In June 1997, the company was suffered from high manufacturing costs, longer lead times and a complete failure to build to schedule. The seasonality factor that is involved in this business adds to woes of the company. Again because the manufacturing department people have been working in a working environment like this for quite some time, possibility of real drastic change being accepted in the organisation appeared to be very difficult. The President of the company was totally of the opinion that if this problem was not addressed quickly the business would enter into serious trouble. Solution: The Company had appointed Rajan Suri to consult the company for the possible implementation of QRM system. The goal was fixed to reduce the corporate lead time from 128 days to 30 days in a span of one year. The priority was set straight as that either the employees work towards it or they work somewhere else. They first conducted QRM training sessions after which they were able to task each manufacturing team with plans to reduce lead time. They also developed a goal for the same at the corporate level. Result: Contrary to what they expected the employees accepted the change readily and most of the manufacturing teams were able to beat their goals by a huge margin. Because of this the company was able to do a much better job with regards to customer service, product development and back office operations. To define a measure that the changes resulted in: Higher Gross Margins. Less Inventory. Higher sales due to higher fill rates. Low manufacturing costs. The overall lead time was reduced by 50% and they expect to reduce it further by 25% in the coming year. Not only this but there has been a drive to reduce the time it takes for development of new products, processing of credit applications and performing of other tasks such as process orders and credit. A kind of QRM culture was successfully developed throughout the organisation in this regards. Examples of POLCA implementation in companies: The Center for Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) has implemented POLCA at several factories in collaboration with its member companies. For example, Rockwell Automation has implemented POLCA in the US and Canada at motor control centers (Honerlaw and Cronce, 2001; Gilson, 2002). These factories had cells in place and had already obtained substantial lead time reductions before they implemented POLCA. The authors report POLCA leading to additional 15-30% reductions in lead time and WIP. At one factory, on-time deliveries increased from under 40 percent to over 90 percent, verifying the fact that POLCA truly helps the coordination of material flow across the cells. At another factory, POLCA has helped to increase output by around 18%. It has also eliminated the time spent by team leaders and schedulers on expediting workflows. The system has been accepted and even praised by shop floor employees and schedulers. A second example can be provided of Olsen Engineering, a contract manufact urer that supplied a host of hardened and precision ground steel pins, bushings, miscellaneous CNC parts, and tube bending parts. The manufacturing facility used to produce over 5000 different part numbers with intensely variable demand, so pull did not seem to be appropriate, and thus the management team decided on the implementation of POLCA (Dawson, Hansel, and Miller, 2002). The authors report that POLCA resulted in lead time reductions in the order of 22% to 68%. Work in process and stock inventories were reduced significantly by as much as 90% in some cases! The POLCA system, also, significantly improved the morale of the operator and instilled a culture of continuous improvement. The experiences with these implementations have led us to develop a step-wise procedure for implementing POLCA in a factory. These steps address several practical issues such as establishing the prerequisites for POLCA, determining the POLCA loops, computing the number of POLCA cards, determining the quantum of work a POLCA card represents, and addressing part shortages. Details of this step-wise approach can be found in Krishnamurthy (2002) and Suri and Krishnamurthy (2003). References: Suri, R. (1998). Quick Response Manufacturing: A Companywide Approach to Reducing Lead Times, Portland: Productivity Press. Center for Quick Response Manufacturing Homepage. (2009). The University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering Website, https://www.engr.wisc.edu/centers/cqrm. https://www.automation.com/content/tci-moves-to-quick-response-manufacturing-of-supporting-equipment-for-variable-speed-electric-drives?x=1pagePath=00000000,00000307,00000327,00001941. https://www.engr.wisc.edu/centers/cqrm/files/publications/qrm21st.pdf Quick Response Manufacturing: A Competitive Strategy for the 21st Century, Rajan Suri Manufacturing Critical-path Time (MCT): The QRM Metric for Lead Time, Paul D. Ericksen, , Nathan J. Stoflet, and Rajan Suri. Suri, R. (1998). Quick Response Manufacturing: A Companywide Approach to Reducing Lead Times, Portland: Productivity Press. Center for Quick Response Manufacturing Homepage. (2009). The University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering Website, https://www.engr.wisc.edu/centers/cqrm.

Colonial Language, Behavior and Identity Formation in Two Tempests Free Essays

Colonial language, behavior and identity formation in Two Tempests Shakespeare in his last work, The Tempest tells the story of Proespero, the duke of Milan who is exiled to an island. The conflicts throughout the play arise from the desire of power over nature and people. Prospero overtakes the power from the native people on the land and is fighting for his title; that has been stolen by his brother. We will write a custom essay sample on Colonial Language, Behavior and Identity Formation in Two Tempests or any similar topic only for you Order Now The influence of colonization is present in The Tempest, and is demonstrated in the characters Caliban and Ariel; who become Prospero’s servers in order to get free. Cesaire writes A Tempest, based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, to help the reader understand its message better. The theme remains the same, but Cesaire emphasizes more deeply on the characters Caliban and Ariel. Cesaire presents them as people of the new world, who are under the influence of a foreign power, Prospero. Cesaire presents Caliban and Ariel with slightly different characteristics as Shakespeare, showing the important role of their language, behavior and actions. The very first change that Cesaire made in A Tempest we can see at the beginning of the play where the author mentions Ariel as a mulatto slave and Caliban as a black slave. Their change in color is significant because Cesaire expresses the post-colonial influence on the characters. The example of colonization is presented by a white conqueror, Prospero, who takes over the native people on the island, Caliban and Ariel. The two Characters, Caliban and Ariel are described differently in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Cesaire’s A Tempest. A Tempest is a post-colonial writing, and Cesaire forms his characters with stronger and more significant characteristics. Caliban’s personality becomes more important than in Shakespeare’s play. In The Tempest, Caliban is an insolent, uneducated slave who is controlled through magic by Prospero, while in A Tempest; he becomes an aggressive and defined black man. In The Tempest, we can see Caliban as a child of a witch, Sycorax, who is a poor judge of character, acting like an animal and willing to get free. In Cesaire’s play the way he enters the scene is already telling us that he becomes a strong and brave character with a personality. Caliban’s word to Prospero, â€Å"Uhuru† (Cesaire 1. 2. 10-11), shows his rebellious attitude towards his master, letting him know about his eagerness to become free and independent on his island again. â€Å"Uhuru† in Swahili means freedom and for Caliban means his life. With this word, Caliban is showing to Prospero his defiance towards the situation, in which he becomes a slave of his own land. Caliban is the one who introduced the island to Prospero, and he expects to be treated with respect. Caliban is a fighter who is ready to choose death over humiliation: â€Å"Call me X. That would be best. Like a man without a name. Or, to be more precise, a man whose name has been stolen. You talk about history and everyone knows it. † (Cesaire 18) With Prosepero’s arrival to the island, Caliban becomes a slave of its own land. In spite of difficulties and his situation, Caliban does not easily admit defeat. The fact that he wants to be called X rather than Caliban, shows his fight for his free will that he has as a person. In Cesaire’s play Caliban becomes aware of his situation and he knows that a person can be considered a person, if that has the right to take decisions over himself. Prospero has power over Caliban, gives him a new name, and with that Prospero steals his identity and his whole being as a human. This contrasts with Shakespeare’s play where Caliban’s fight for his personality is less important; he just exists and obeys as a slave. Caliban represents the suppressed category of people who are under foreign intruders’ power and forced to obey their commands. The language that Cesaire uses for his characters is more aggressive and eloquent than in Shakespeare’s play. Caliban is arguing furiously with Prospero, showing the injustice of Prospero’s power over him: â€Å"You lied to me so much, about the world, about myself, that you ended up by imposing on me an image of myself. † (Cesaire 3. 5. 22-24) The way Caliban talks to his master shows the tormented relationship that they have. Caliban uses the language that Prospero taught him in a way that expresses his anger and his suffering as a slave of his land. The way Prospero treats Caliban is an example of the colonized lands where the new rulers used the native people for their advantage. The colonizer’s influence on native people is presented by Shakespeare and Cesaire too, just in different languages. For Caliban, there is no importance in speaking Prospero’s language: â€Å"You taught me language, and /my profit on’t/Is, I know how to curse. † (Shakespeare 1. 2. -4); he is forced to do that in order to obey his commands. The colonization of the island took away Caliban’s own language, his name and his home that now he calls â€Å"ghetto†. (Cesaire 13) Shakespeare doesn’t focus as much as Cesaire on Caliban’s character. The language what he uses is from 1400s, and the characters are used mostly for their role in the play and not as a symbol of the coloniz ed lands as in Cesaire’s play. Changing the character’s color and language, Cesaire shows the essence of the diversity in people and their important role in life according to their skin and language. Ariel’s change is substantial, too. He is presented as a mulatto slave, which is another character of colonized lands. His identity is totally different from Caliban’s; he is the naive and obedient slave and not the fighter like Caliban. Ariel is representing the category of people who are ready to obey the master’s command and waiting for changes to happen. Ariel knows that Prospero uses him for his own purpose, and despite of all that, he approaches his tasks with enthusiasm, reporting any activities that he observes. Even though Shakespeare describes Ariel as a sprite, he has human qualities; he is longing for his liberty. He is invisible, but his actions are important, and he reflects human emotions: â€Å"ARIEL. If you now behold them, your affections / would become tender. / PROSPERO. Dost thou think so, spirit? / ARIEL. Mine would, sir, were I human. † (Shakespeare 5. 1. 35-39) Throughout the play, Ariel, the mulatto slave, is described as a compliant server and is treated in a nice way comparative to Caliban, who is treated horribly and threatened. The different treatment of slaves shows us that even between slaves are classifications, and they all have their place in world according to their skin color. In contrast with Shakespeare, Cesaire represents the two characters on a deeper level and focuses more on their personalities. Throughout the play, Cesaire describes Caliban and Ariel as two servants with different desires and places in the colonized land. Caliban is ready to fight for what belongs to him, including his identity, in contrast with Ariel, who accommodates to the situation and waits for a better future. How to cite Colonial Language, Behavior and Identity Formation in Two Tempests, Essay examples

Epidemiology HIV free essay sample

Describe the determinants of health and explain how those factors contribute to the development of this disease. 3. Discuss the epidemiologic triangle as it relates to the communicable disease you have selected. Include the host factors, agent factors (presence or absence), and environmental factors. (The textbook describes each element of the epidemiologic triangle). 4. Explain the role of the community health nurse (case finding, reporting, data collecting, data analysis, and follow-up). Identify at least one national agency or organization that addresses the communicable disease chosen and describe how the organization(s) contributes to resolving or reducing the impact of disease. The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that attacks the body by weakening the immune system. Once people get infected by the virus it remains in the body for life; some of the symptoms that can be expected are diarrhea, fever, headache, mouth soar, night sweat, and swollen lymph nodes, followed more serious illness with progression of the virus. However, many people reported having no symptoms and don’t even know they have the virus until they are diagnosed. After the patient is diagnose the patient can lived for a number of years before experiencing severe health issues, during this period the person with the disease could transfer the virus from one person to another. The virus is transfer from one person to the other by certain body fluid which includes blood, semen, rectal/vaginal fluid and breast milk, and unprotected sex as the major route of transmission. The routes of transport are through mucous membrane, damage tissue or directly injected in the blood stream from needle or syringe (cdc. gov. 2014). This begins when the agent which is the virus believed to have started in Africa and transfer for animal to human, the agent past from one host to another, then you have the environment that support the disease and allow it to thrive in this case the blood. It affect people in different ways, some people may get sick shortly after infected while others can live for a long period with no signs of the illness. There are many complications that are associated with HIV; majority of these complications are cause by weaken immune system cause by the destruction of cd4 t cell. Once the body loses the function of this cell it becomes susceptible to infection. The severity of the illness is depended on the number of cd4 cell in the blood stream. If the cd4 t cell dropped below 200 it put the patient at greater risk for infection and the morbidity becomes more significant. The patient can pronounce with severe fungal infection, pneumonia, Kaposi and many more opportunist infection. Treatment is also determined by cd4 t cell count and plasma viral load, this information provides knowledge about extent of immune suppression of the patient and the level of the damage of the immune system. (Weinberg, J. , Kovarik, C. , MD. 2010). This is called staging and the stages of the disease which decide the appropriate treatment recommended for that stage of the patient’s condition. Available treatment for HIV infected individuals currently includes HAART (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy). This treatment has proven to be effective by extending life of individuals affected by HIV, doing so by decreasing viral load, HIV transmission, disease progression, reducing severity of symptoms and preserved the immune system. Therefore, it is important for the patient to get tested to ensure treatment is no delayed and risk further complication. As the virus progress the illness associated with it becomes more complicated and difficult to treat because without treatment the immunodeficiency rises. â€Å"The majority of disease occurs in the advanced stages of HIV infection where  immunosuppression is the predominant influence Hogan, C. , Wilkins, E. , (2011). † Therefore for patient should seek early treatment and adhere to medication regimen to decrease progression of the infection and prevent further complication. Other issues that need to be address is measures need to be taken for early testing, without being tested many patient are able to transfer the virus from on e person to another without even knowing. Early diagnose of the disease will give patient the opportunity to seek medical care and become knowledgeable of the step needed to take to prevent them from infecting other individual. Several states have now implement policies to test newborn babies for the HIV virus without permission of the parents. -cite. HIV affect people from all different background, however group on minority continue to be disproportionately impacted. This can be seen with majority of the reported case in the United State are of racial and ethnic minority population. A contributing factor to this problem, are lack of resources, high risk behavior and unequal access to health care people for minority population.