Information Systems and Operations Management Essay Example

Information Systems and Operations Management Essay Please read the article: Zara: Fast fashion from savvy systems available for free at http://www. flatworldknowledge. com/pub/gallaugher/41128#pdf-7 This article makes up Chapter 1 of the free, open access book titled, Information Systems: A Managers Guide to Harnessing Technology, by John Gallaugher. Please ensure that you read the entire Chapter 1 of the book consisting of 3 parts (Part 1 Introduction; Part 2 Don’t Guess, Gather Data; and Part 3 Moving Forward). Now answer the questions below: Question 1: The Zara case shows how information systems can impact every single management discipline. Which management disciplines were mentioned in this case and how does technology impact each? (50% of the total mark) The case study mentioned management disciplines including information gathering, processing, storing, distributing and use of information. Gather market information One of the successful factors in Zara is they know the market trends. Zara deploys the latest information technology tools to facilitate the information exchange and collect market data through both formal and informal channels – the PDA and POS systems. The Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) system Zara’s store managers were given personal digital assistants (PDAs) so they could gather customer input outside an office setting. The staff in Zara would regularly gather information from customers, such as the trend of fashion customers preferred and feedbacks of garment that they would like to see more in the shop. The range of information collected included colours, length and even small detail of the clothes were collected from customers through front line shop staff. We will write a custom essay sample on Information Systems and Operations Management specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Information Systems and Operations Management specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Information Systems and Operations Management specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Besides getting information directly from customers, they staff have another channel to gather customers’ preferences. The staff will investigate the unsold items that customers tried on but didn’t buy, to find out their preferences in cloth, color, or styles offered among the products in stock. The Point-of-sale (POS) system Besides the informal channel to gather customers needs (through conversations), the head office will collect information through a formal channel, the store’s point-of-sale (POS) system. This system is a transaction process that captures customer purchase information, in order to show how garments rank by sales. Since the POS system is linked with the PDA system, in less than an hour, managers can send updates that combine the hard data captured at the cash register with insights on what customers would like to see. Information on customer needs and trend information collected daily are fed into a database at head office regularly. The PDAs support the connection between the retail stores and head office. Each store managers are assigned with market specialists, they will communicate regularly through PDAs to transmit all kinds of information to head office. [1] Zara store management and staff use PDAs and POS systems to gather and analyze customer preference data to plan future designs based on feedback, rather than prediction. Data driven product development The data collected from PDA as well as POS system formed a valuable marketing database and provided data allows the design teams to plan styles and issue re-buy orders based on feedback rather than hunches and guesswork. The goal is to improve the frequency and quality of decisions made by the design and planning teams. The designers from â€Å"The Cube† follow evidence of customer demand. When they deign new garments or decide which kind of fabric, cut and price points to be used or modify existing designs, they will base on information from PDAs and POS rather than create trends by pushing new lines via advertisements or catwalk fashion shows. Vertically integrated value chain Inditex is a vertically integrated group, it owns several layers in its value chain. The distribution center in La Coruna equipped with up-to-date equipment for fabric dyeing and processing, cutting and garment finishing. The vertically integrated ability allows the group to response faster against the latest fashion trend including provide the appropriate for new lines. Zara’s IT expenditures are low by fashion industry standards. The spectacular benefits reaped by Zara from the deployment of technology have resulted from targeting technology investment at the points in the value chain where it has the greatest impact, and not from the sheer magnitude of the investment. This is in stark contrast to Prada’s experience with in-store technology deployment. Inventory control Zara uses Toyota-designed logistics system and overnight parcel services to manipulate items stocked in the five-million-square-foot distribution center in La Coruna, or a similar facility in Zaragoza in the northeast of Spain. About two and a half million items were handled every week and none of them stayed in the warehouses more than 3 days. Before sending to each store, clothes are ironed in advance and packed on hangers, with security and price tags fixed beforehand. This system helps staff in Zara utilize their time efficiently with the inventory during busy periods. Just-in-time manufacturing (JIT) The JIT approach to manufacturing involves timing the delivery of resources so that they arrive just when needed. Inventory optimization models help the firm determine how many of which items in which sizes should be delivered to each specific store during twice-weekly shipments, ensuring that each store is stocked with just what it needs. Trucks serve destinations that can be reached overnight, while chartered cargo flights serve farther destinations within forty-eight hours. And the firm can coordinate outbound shipment of all Inditex brands with return legs loaded with raw materials and half-finished clothes items from locations out-side of Spain thanks to the revised shipping models through Air France–KLM Cargo and Emirates Air. Zara’s products are manufactured for a limited production run. This approach encourages customers to buy right away and at full price. The constant parade of new, limited-run items also encourages customers to visit often. Staff allocation Headquarter of Zara uses software to arrange staff’s roster. The manpower is allocated based on each store’s forecasted sales volume, with locations staffing up at peak times such as lunch or early evening. The firm claims these more flexible schedules have shaved staff work hours by 2 percent. This constant refinement of operations throughout the firm’s value chain has helped reverse a prior trend of costs rising faster than sales. Zara’s combination of vertical integration and technology-orchestrated supplier coordination, just-in-time manufacturing, and logistics allows it to go from design to shelf in days instead of months. [pic] Question 2: Do you think information systems are a strategic liability for Zara? Give reasons. (50% of the total mark) Porter’s five forces analysis To understand the business condition of fashion industry, we need to use Porter’s five forces model. It is shown how the market behaved at the very beginning of the company according to the Porter’s 5 forces analysis. Bargaining Power of Suppliers This is how much pressure suppliers can place on a business. If one supplier has a large enough impact to affect a company’s margins and volumes, then they hold substantial power. †¢ There are many suppliers for raw material †¢ There are many substitutes †¢ Presence of substitute inputs †¢ The nature of the products allow to storage them long time, unless the trends conditions. Bargaining Power of customers This is how much pressure customers can place on a business. †¢ Switching to another (competitive) product is simple The product is not extremely important to the buyer; they can do without it for a period of time. †¢ Customers are price sensitive †¢ Buyer do not have switching costs †¢ Many availabilities of existing substitute products †¢ Buyer is price and style sensitive †¢ Low purchase volume per customer. †¢ Highly dynamic, customers preference changes frequently in short time Competi tive rivalry within an industry This describes the intensity of competition between existing firms in an industry. Garment industry is highly competitive generally earn low returns. For many industries, this is the major determinant of the competitiveness of the industry. Sometimes rivals compete aggressively and sometimes rivals compete in non-price dimensions such as innovation, marketing, etc. †¢ It is a mature industry with very little growth. Companies can only grow by stealing customers away from competitors. †¢ It has a lot competitors in the industry about the same size †¢ Little differentiation between competitors’ products and services. Key competitors include Gap,, Benetton, H, Forever 21 , etc. Pfeifer, (2008); Rohwedder and Johnson, (2008) H has increased the frequency of new items in stores, Forever 21 and Uniqlo get new looks within 6 weeks and Benetton, a firm that previously closed some 90 percent of US stores, now replenishes stores as fast as once a week †¢ The barriers to get out of the industry are low in distribution and high in manufacture †¢ Since the chances of clothes getting damaged before sold is very little, the storage costs would be low †¢ High manufacture costs because of high raw material cost and manpower cost Threat of new Entrants No distribution barriers to entrance because it only consists on low costs of renting a shop, no administrative restrictions, low initial capital to start †¢ Reduced reaction possibilities in front of new entrants †¢ In production, there are barriers for the existence of economies of scale. †¢ The start up capital needed is high †¢ Need time to build up relationship with supply chain and s uppliers Threat of substitute products What is the likelihood that someone will switch to a competitive product or service? If the cost of switching is low, then this poses to be a serious threat. Buyer can easily found substitute †¢ Relative price performance of substitutes †¢ Buyer switching costs is low †¢ Perceived level of product differentiation †¢ Fad and fashion †¢ Technology change and product innovation The main issue is the similarity of substitutes. For example, if the price of coffee rises substantially, a coffee drinker is likely to switch over to a beverage like tea because the products are so similar. If substitutes are similar, then it can be viewed in the same light as a new entrant. Zara’s success factors The success factors/ competitive advantages include always producing the style that customers are looking for, short production time from design stage and limited quantities. Information system plays strategic liability in the following: Collecting Market Data customer’s needs Product development JIT production Considering the information technology investment helping Zara to maintain it’s competitive advantages, it is strategic liability for the firm. [1] Zaras Secret for Fast Fashion, Kasra Ferdows, Michael A. Lewis and Jose A. D. Machuca (http://hbswk. hbs. edu/archive/4652. html)

Interesting Metal Facts and Properties

Interesting Metal Facts and Properties Most of the elements in the periodic table are metals, plus there are numerous alloys made from mixtures of metals. So, its a good idea to know what metals are and a few things about them. Here are several  interesting and useful facts about these important materials: The word metal  comes from the Greek word metallon, which means quarry or to mine or excavate.The most abundant metal in the universe is iron, followed by magnesium.The composition of the Earth is not entirely known, but the most abundant metal in the Earths crust is aluminum. However, the Earths core likely consists mainly of iron.Metals are primarily shiny, hard solids that are good conductors of heat and electricity.About 75% of the chemical elements are metals. Of the 118 known elements, 91 are metals. Many of the others possess some of the characteristics of metals and are known as semimetals or metalloids.Metals form positively charged ions called cations through loss of electrons. They react with most other elements, but especially nonmetals, such as oxygen and nitrogen.The most commonly used metals are iron, aluminum, copper, zinc, and lead. Metals are used for an enormous number of products and purposes. They are valued for their ability to strength, electrical and thermal properties, ease of bending and drawing into wire, wide availability, and participation in chemical reactions. Although new metals are being produced and some metals were difficult to isolate in pure form, there were seven metals known to ancient man. These were gold, copper, silver, mercury, lead, tin, and iron.The tallest free-standing structures in the world are made of metals, primarily the alloy steel. They include the Dubai skyscraper Burj Kalifa, the Tokyo television tower Skytree, and the Shanghai Tower skyscraper.The only metal that is a liquid at ordinary room temperature and pressure is mercury. However, other metals melt close to room temperature. For example, you can melt the metal gallium in the palm of your hand,

Definition and Examples of Linguistic Purism

Definition and Examples of Linguistic Purism Purism is a  pejorative term in linguistics for a zealous conservatism in regard to the use and development of a language. Also known as  language purism, linguistic purism, and discourse purism. A purist (or grammaticaster)  is someone who expresses a desire to eliminate certain undesirable features from a language, including grammatical errors, jargon, neologisms, colloquialisms, and words of foreign origin. The problem with defending the purity of the English language, says James Nicoll, is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We dont just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary (quoted by Elizabeth Winkler in Understanding Language, 2015). Examples and Observations Like other tabooing practices, language purism seeks to constrain the linguistic behavior of individuals by identifying certain elements in a language as bad. Typically, these are words and word usage that are believed to threaten the identity of the culture in questionwhat 18th-century grammarians referred to as the genius of the language. Authenticity has two faces: one is the struggle to arrest linguistic change and to protect it from foreign influences. But, as Deborah Cameron claims, the prescriptive endeavors of speakers are more complex and diverse than this. She prefers the expression verbal hygiene over prescription or purism for exactly this reason. According to Cameron, a sense of linguistic values makes verbal hygiene part of every speakers linguistic competence, as basic to language as vowels and consonants. (Keith Allan and Kate Burridge, Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge University Press, 2006) Purism in the 16th Century I am of this opinion that our own tung shold be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges, wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. (John Cheke, Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University ­, in a letter to Thomas Hoby, 1561)- Sir John Cheke (1514-1557) was so determined that the English tongue should be preserved pure, unmixt and unmangeled . . . that he produced a translation of the gospel of St. Matthew using only native words, forcing him to coin neologisms (new words) such as mooned lunatic, hundreder centurion, and crossed crucified. This policy recalls an Old English practice in which Latin words like discipulus were rendered using native formations like leorningcniht, or learning follower, rather than by borrowing the Latin word, as Modern English does with disciple. (Simon Horobin, How English Became English. Oxford University Press, 2016) Purism in the 19th Century A certain Captain Hamilton in 1833 demonstrates the invective the British directed at the language used in America. He claims that his denunciation is the natural feeling of an Englishman at finding the language of Shakespeare and Milton thus gratuitously degraded. Unless the present progress of change be arrested by an increase of taste and judgment in the more educated classes, there can be no doubt that, in another century, the dialect of the Americans will become utterly unintelligible to an English man . . .. Hamiltons vituperation exemplifies a purist view of language, which allows only one fixed, immutable, correct version [and] which sees difference and change as degradation.(Heidi Preschler, Language and Dialect, in Encyclopedia of American Literature, ed. by Steven Serafin. Continuum, 1999) Brander Matthews on Lost Causes in the Early 20th Century The purist used to insist that we should not say the house is being built, but rather the house is building. So far as one can judge from a survey of recent writing the purist has abandoned this combat; and nobody nowadays hesitates to ask, What is being done? The purist still objects to what he calls the Retained Object in such a sentence as he was given a new suit of clothes. Here again, the struggle is vain, for this usage is very old; it is well established in English; and whatever may be urged against it theoretically, it has the final advantage of convenience. The purist also tells us that we should say come to see me and try to do it, and not come and see me and try and do it. Here once more the purist is setting up a personal standard without any warrant. He may use whichever of these forms he likes best, and we on our part have the same permission, with a strong preference for the older and more idiomatic of them. (Brander Matthews, Parts of Speech: Essays on English, 1901)D espite the exacerbated protests of the upholders of authority and tradition, a living language makes new words as these may be needed; it bestows novel meanings upon old words; it borrows words from foreign tongues; it modifies its usages to gain directness and to achieve speed. Often these novelties are abhorrent; yet they may win acceptance if they approve themselves to the majority. . . .To fix a living language finally is an idle dream, and if it could be brought about it would be a dire calamity.(Brander Matthews, What Is Pure English? 1921) Todays Peevers Language peevers write for one another. They are not really writing for the larger public; they do not expect to be heeded by the larger public, and it would not be desirable if they were. Their identities are predicated on the belief that they are an elect, purists holding up the flickering candle of civilization amid the rabble. They write for one another to reinforce this status. If everyone wrote as they prescribe, their distinction would vanish.Actually, there is a small additional audience of aspirants to the club: English majors, journalists, teachers pets in whose minds a handful of shibboleths lodge, to be applied mechanically and unintelligently thereafter. But the great unwashed public pays no attention and does not care, except to the extent that they have been schooled to feel vaguely uneasy about the way they speak and write.(John E. McIntyre, Secrets of the Peevers. The Baltimore Sun, May 14, 2014) The Grammaticaster Tradition Grammaticaster is a  pejorative  term for a  grammarian, especially one whos concerned with petty matters of  usage. - Ð Ã µ tells thee true, my noble neophyte; my little  grammaticaster, he does: it shall never put thee to thy mathematics, metaphysics, philosophy, and I know not what supposed sufficiencies; if thou canst but have the patience to plod enough, talk, and make a noise enough, be impudent enough, and tis enough.(Captain Pantilius Tucca in  The Poetaster, by Ben Jonson, 1601)- Nor have I much troubled their phrase and expression. I have not vexed their language with the doubts, the remarks, and eternal triflings of the French  grammaticasters.(Thomas Rhymer,  The Tragedies of the Last Age, 1677)- Such idiots, despite the rise of scientific pedagogy, have not died out in the world. I believe that our schools are full of them, both in pantaloons and in skirts. There are fanatics who love and venerate  spelling  as a tom-cat loves and venerates catnip. There are  grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather  parse  than eat; specialists in an  objective case  that doesnt exist in English; strange beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, who suffer under a  split infinitive  as you or I would suffer under gastro-enteritis.(H.L. Mencken, The Educational Process.  The Smart Set, 1922)  - Purist  is the most persistent of the many terms used to describe those people who concern themselves with correct English or correct grammar. Among other  epithets,  we find   tidier-up, precisian, schoolmarm,  grammaticaster, word-worrier, prescriptivist, purifier, logic-chopper  (H.W. Fowlers word),  grammatical moralizer  (Otto Jespersens term for H.W. Fowler),  usageaster, usagist, usager,  and  linguistic Emily Post. All of these seem at least faintly pejorative, some more than faintly so. The concern with the improvement, correction, and perfection of the existing language goes back to the 18th century, when the first influential grammars of English were written. There was current at that time a notion that a perfect language existed, at least in theory, and that reformation of the imperfect way existing language was used would lead to that perfection. (Merriam-Websters Dictionary of English Usage, 1994)

Water Resources Supply and Pollution Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Water Resources Supply and Pollution - Assignment Example Topology is the study of the earth’s shape of the surface and features or those of moons, planets, and asteroids, as well as the description of such surface features and shapes. Topology is concerned with local detail in general, including human-made features and vegetation, and even, besides relief, culture and local history. The topography of Hawaii islands does a vast job affecting the weather that synoptic level models are sometimes insignificant. Most of the examples in this paper are taken from the Island of Oahu. This island is the most inhabited of the eight most important islands that consist of Hawaii, and since it houses Honolulu there is extensive date available on it. The Mauka and windward showers hit sections of the islands. This is caused by the pacific High which is the main influence on the climate for 50-80 percent of the year. It fuels the trade winds which fade away moisture off of the ocean as they head towards Hawaii. Wailuku River is the main source of water in Hawaii. Chemical and biological data indicate relatively clean water compared to similar streams in the conterminous United States. Due to the channel gradient, the number and types of benthic organisms are low in Wailuku River. The stream-bed is formed of lava flows from Mauna Loa Volcano, and the stream channel is characterized by a series of waterfalls and plunge pools. Headwaters of the Wailuku River flow intermittently from about 11,000 feet on the east-southwest side. In Hawaii, most of the drinking water comes from rivers and lakes. Water in Hawaii is pumped up from subversive aquifers or harvested from mountain streams. Fresh water is abundant in Hawaii; this is because the convergence winds upon the Islands forested mountains (Case 45). In Hawaii, water refuse has been fundamentally relegated to agricultural irrigation and large industries. The continuing effort

A proposal to Rutgers University about the increasing problem of Research

A to Rutgers University about the increasing problem of mixing energy drinks with alcohol on college campuses - Research Proposal Example On college campuses, a high concentration of the age group likely to use these beverages is found, putting universities in a unique position to provide educational and preventative interventions. On November 17, 2010, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued written warnings to manufacturers of alcoholic beverages with added caffeine (FDA, 2010). The FDA had both reviewed existing medical literature and conducted independent lab tests on the beverages, and in the process found them to be representative of a significant public health concern (FDA, 2010). As more data surface suggesting the health risks associated with these beverages, it is necessary to evaluate how their use and availability on college campuses could impact students’ health and well-being. Based on an analysis of recent peer-reviewed studies, this literature review will: provide a background context from which to view the issue; contribute to the identification of methods and interventions that will raise awareness on the Rutgers campus; contribute suggestions for reducing the harm that results from the use of alcoholic caffeinated beverages. Alcoholic beverages with added caffeine are relatively new products. In 1997, the first energy drink to achieve mainstream popularity was introduced (â€Å"Red Bull†) (Malinauskas et al., 2007). The first Caffeinated Alcoholic Beverages (CABs) entered the market about five years later in 2002 (CDC, 2010). The beverages saw a very rapid and sharp increase in popularity, with 337,500 gallons sold in their first year and 22,905,000 gallons sold in 2008 (CDC, 2010). What was at one time a niche product is now available in retail outlets and convenience stores, and by 2008 there were 25 brands selling the beverages (CDC, 2010). The advertising industry has capitalized on the drinks’ attractiveness to young people by creating ad campaigns that are similarly attractive to that age group (CDC, 2010). With names like â€Å"Sparks,†

European Union Environmental Business Law Essay Example for Free

European Union Environmental Business Law Essay The Treaty of Rome which established the European Economic Community in 1958, did not originally included any provisions for the safeguard of the environment It was not until 1985 that the Single European Act inserted Title VII containing articles 130r to 130t in the Treaty of Rome that made environmental protection a lawful objective of the Commission and laid down the core principles upon which the environmental policy was based (Poostchi 83). The core principles as stated by Poostchi are â€Å"the principles that preventative action should be taken, that the polluter should pay and that environmental damage should be rectified at source. These legal principles as given by the Single European Act were further refined by The Maastricht Treaty which enhanced the scope of the environmental policy of the European Union. Today the European Union has over 200 directives (legal texts) with environmental policies under the broad classifications of Air, Biotechnology, Chemicals, Civil Protections and Environmental Accidents, Climate Change, Land Use, Noise, Ozone Layer Protection, Soil, Waste and Water as well as issues like public participation in environmental decision making and public access to environmental information. Development and Implementation of Environmental Law The EU has the option of adopting environmental legislation by way of three primary legal instruments: (i) directives, (ii) regulations, and (iii) decisions. Regulations and decisions are binding in their entirety and are directly applicable within Member States; directives, are binding as to the result to be achieved, but leave to the Member States the choice of form and method, which means that member states have the power to enact local legislation based on a directive to further the cause of initiating it in the first place (Goodrich). The branch of law dealing with the environment has the same system of development and enforcement as other laws developed by the commission. The primary responsibility of EU is to develop environmental laws, while the duty of implementation and enforcement rests in the hands of the 25 member states. Herein lays the strength and weakness of the system. The strength lays in the fact that member states have greater power of enforcement than a council of 25 states, but at the same time member states enjoy considerable flexibility in enforcement which often leads to delays or avoidance of implementation, thereby frustrating the purpose of the law itself. The Legislative Process The Commission is responsible for ensuring compliance with environmental laws. By undertaking its own assessments, through complaints by EU parliament and petitions by EU citizens, the commission monitors the degree of compliance. If after review there is evidence of a breach of law, the EU initiates the infringement proceedings against the violating state. There are three categories of breaches 1) Non-communication cases, in which a member state fails to, inform EU about the adoption of national legislation implementing a directive after the deadline for implementation has passed. 2) Non-conformity cases, in which a member state implements a directive incorrectly. 3) Bad-application cases, in which a member state has failing to correctly apply community law in a particular case. The infringement procedure contains several steps which are outlined in Article 226 of the Treaty. The Commission usually upon receiving a case, issues a formal notice to the government, after which it can issue a reasoned opinion. If the member state still refuses to comply the commission refers the case to the European Court of Justice, for a ruling. Non-compliance with a ruling can lead to the imposition of a fine or lump-sump penalty on the member state. In April 2004 environmental liability directive was issued by the EC with the aim of preventing and remedying environmental damage. According to the directive (which is to be adopted by member states over a period of 3 years) Environmental damage can be remedied in several ways depending on the type of damage: For damage affecting the land, the Directive requires that the land concerned be decontaminated until there is no longer any serious risk of negative impact on human health; For damage affecting water or protected species and natural habitats, the Directive is aimed at restoring the environment to how it was before it was damaged. Another development in the environmental law front is the possibility (proposal for a directive) of criminal action against serious negligence and intentional damage. According to a press release by the EC (Brussels, February 2007) the law would apply to both natural and legal persons. The proposal lays down the maximum penalty, and allows member states to impose more stringent measures. The motivation to introduce criminal action is because although EC Environmental law has existed for 30 years, there are still many cases of severe non- observance of Community environmental law. According the Seventh Annual Survey on the implementation and enforcement of Community environmental law 2005 (Commission Staff working paper Brussels, 2006) there has been a significant reduction in the number of open cases at the end of the year 2005 (798 cases) as opposed to 2004 (1220 cases). However the Environment sector, still accounts for one-fourth of all open cases concerning non-compliance with Community Law under investigation by the Commission. EU Environmental Law and International environmental law Over the past 30 years EU had made tremendous impact on environmental law legislation by enforcing very stringent environmental standards across its member nations. Environmental laws are discriminatory by nature, as they favor countries with developed infrastructures, wealthy industries and higher per capita incomes. For EU to expect all its trading partners (irrespective of their national income and stage of development) to comply with its strict Environmental laws, means that it will seek to eliminate any advantage that they might have in terms of lower prices. Environmental laws can serve as a form of non-tariff trade barrier. As in the case if Shrimp-Turtle case (USA banned the import of shrimp from countries which in the process of shrimp trawling accidentally caused the death of sea turtles. These countries were expected to install US made Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs), so that the shrimp trawling would become environmentally friendly again) (Schaffer et al. 628). The net effect was to increase the sales of a US industry (the industry making TEDs), and possibly raise the price of imported shrimp products. (Schaffer et al. 623) United States ran into trouble with the WTO on the ban on shrimp products, because it was declared uncompetitive and unfair. Subsequently USA had to redefine its guidelines, so that exporting countries which employed a programme similar to that of the USA for turtle protection were given a certification to export again. Impact on FDI and International Businesses EU’s has emerged as the leading incubator for environmental rules and regulations, and this has major implications for all businesses hoping to work with the European market. This includes businesses within and outside the European Union. This is mainly because of two reasons. Businesses must comply with EU regulations if they wish to continue supply and demand to the region. Secondly like all highest forms of legislation (and constructive action in general) the EU legislation set the benchmark for environmental regulation and there may come a time when they will be followed and implemented across the globe. Recently the Commission enacted 3 new laws, which will have a significant effect on businesses trading in EU. The three regulations are REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Assessment of Chemical Hazards); RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances); and WEEE (the directive on Waste Electronic and Electric Equipment). All three are complex pieces of legislation that will affect a vast range of products, chiefly electronics that are made, sold, used, and disposed of across 25 EU member countries. (Elkington) The first legislation will make mandatory testing of over 30,000 chemical substances for human safety. This will put the fate of several chemical companies in jeopardy. RoHS seeks to ban six substances out of the E. U. economy: lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). This will make it nearly impossible to manufacture semiconductors for electronic items. The third legislation (WEEE) will affect manufacturers of products like TVs, refrigerators, or cars. This take-back legislation will force companies to take the responsibility of recycling packaging material of their product and also ensure recycling of discarded products (end of life accountability). This legislation takes root from the concept of recycling all waste material so that some of it can be re-absorbed (re-claimed) in the productive process, instead of going unutilized into landfills. These legislations will have a number of implications for local and foreign countries in Europe. Firstly they will have to invest in take-back and recycling infrastructure. It is generally observed that big companies adopt the law, in fear of retaliation from NGO’s, and because they refused to be driven out of markets because of these de-facto trade barriers. Korean and Japanese countries demonstrated this when they took a lead in adopting the ISO 14000 standards, so that they cannot be discriminated in the European Market. The rate of adoption of companies from these countries was faster than that of EU companies themselves. The possible impact of stringent environmental laws is felt on domestic companies as well. During a period of economic downturn and business slowdown, most businesses are reluctant to enforce environmental legislation. Also the cost of monitoring the legal environment for businesses increases. EU is actively taking notice of breach in compliance with environmental laws and the process of pursuing legislative action at the European court is a time wasting and expensive affair. According to the OECD report on FDI, the 2003 FDI inflows to European countries were 23 per cent lower than in 2002. But according to data available with UNCTAD, for the period 2004-2006 FDI picked up again and the EU countries recorded a growth of 30% . Thus it cannot be determined to a conclusive level whether the changes in FDI have resulted because of the enactment and enforcement of environmental laws. It may be noted that European Union’s proactive behavior in enacting environmental legislation could be because they had a smaller land mass and learned the importance of conservation before other bigger countries like US. Whatever the case maybe, it remains to be seen whether the extensive array of laws will improve the environment to any noticeable degree. Given the number of years it takes for degradation to become noticeable any fruits of improvement will take time to manifest themselves. Till then both foreign and domestic businesses will find themselves facing a host of challenges, ranging from legislative action, forced compliance, rising environmental compliance cost and the like. However it will also open opportunities for businesses to develop eco-friendly products, and maintain a positive image in the minds of consumers.

Longing to Escape Essays -- Essays Papers

Longing to Escape When adversity stares people in the face, do they run away from it, or do they have the willpower to fight it head on? James Joyce, the author of Dubliners, at the young age of twenty-three, was able to take note of the struggles and hardships of the Irish people at a time when their once prosperous Dublin city was in retrograde. He took all the emotions and angers that his people had during this period in time, and summed it up into fifteen short stories. Throughout these stories Joyce places his characters into situations that leave them in constant states of dishevelment and agony. Some characters run away from and are left defeated by these situations and responsibilities, while other characters are depicted as being strong and confront and handle their crises. â€Å"The Boarding House† and â€Å"The Dead† are two stories in particular, where the characters find themselves longing to escape not only from Dublin society, but also from the obligations that they have in Dublin. Joyce uses the idea of marriage as a tug-of-war between escape and responsibility. In â€Å"The Boarding House,† Mr. Doran, a man of around thirty-five years old finds himself in a conflict over deciding what he should do about the ultimatum from Mrs. Mooney about the affair he has with Polly. He knew â€Å"the harm was done,† but â€Å"what could he do now but marry her or run away?† (61) Mr. Doran’s wild, irresponsible ways with women, that he tries to escape as a youth is resurfacing in his older days. Joyce uses this irresponsible act of Mr. Doran to help Mrs. Mooney lure him into her daughter’s marriage trap. He knows he is only part of the blame for this occurrence and â€Å"had a notion he was being had† (6... ...ng house to end the obligation he has of marrying Polly. No matter where a person lives or who that person may be; whether certain fictional characters of â€Å"The Dead,† and â€Å"The Boarding House,† or real life people, everybody at some point in their lives want to break loose from the duties that are holding them down. Works Cited Joyce, James. â€Å"The Boarding House.† Dubliners. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. 56-64. Kelly, Joseph. â€Å"Joyce’s Marriage Cycle.† Studies in Short Fiction 32.3 (1995): 374. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. University of Dayton. Roesch Library. 24 Feb. 2004. http://www.epnet.com Paige, Linda Rohrer. â€Å"James Joyce’s Colored Portraits of a ‘Mother’ in Dubliners.† Studies in Short Fiction 32.3 (1995): 335. Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. University of Dayton. Roesch Library. 24 Feb. 2004. http://www.epnet.com.

Sepsis

Four days later on February 29th, she as moved into ICC because she continued to have the same symptoms and appeared to be getting worse. After doing my own research on her symptoms, I asked the ICC nurse if they tested her for sepsis. She confirmed that she did have sepsis and they were now treating that along with a laundry list of other things. Eight days later, my mother passed away from complications of: Sepsis, COOP, Pneumonia, Hypoxia, Kielbasa, and Hyperplasia (carbon-dioxide poisoning). Sepsis is a condition that can be a cause or result of other diseases and infections. WayneRobinson and Ron Daniels (2013) quote the definition as: Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to an infection injures its own tissue and organs. Sepsis can lead to shock, multiple organ failure and death especially if not recognized early and treated promptly. Sepsis remains the primary cause of death from infection despite advances in modern medicine, including va ccines, antibiotics and acute care. Millions of people worldwide die of sepsis every year (l 2). Sepsis can be difficult to diagnose quickly because of the underlying infection(s) hat may be causing the sepsis.There is a very small window of opportunity in which treatment can dramatically improve survival. A patient that is admitted with severe sepsis is at a level of risk many times greater than if he or she were admitted with a stroke or heart attack. The two most common infections associated with sepsis are It's and pneumonia. In my mother's case, she had a OUT and was unaware that she had one. In fact, she probably had it for a couple of weeks prior to going to the hospital. There are three diagnosed levels of sepsis; sepsis, severe sepsis, and septic shock.Sepsis is a systematic inflammatory response to an infection defined by two or more inflammatory response syndrome criteria. Those criteria are based on observations such as fever, slow respirations (breathing), rapid heart r ate, and an altered mental state. Some blood test results can assist in determining this as well. Severe sepsis is present when one or more organs begin to fail as a result of sepsis. Acute respiratory distress can accompany severe sepsis as well as a disease called Disseminated Intramuscular Coagulation (DICE), which has to do with the blood not clotting normally.DICE is highly relevant to outcome in patients with sepsis. The final level of diagnosis is septic shock. Septic shock is present when there is evidence that the tissues and organs are receiving insufficient amounts of oxygen and nutrients, low blood pressure, a rapid heart rate and breathing, and can be considered the most severe end of the spectrum of this disease. As stated earlier, my mother had a laundry list of things wrong with her, all contributing to her death. Some of the infections she had developed from the sepsis infection, and some of them caused the sepsis infection.Her UT', for example, was ere initial diag nosis when she came into the ERE. People with limited or no sensation below the waist may not know they have a UT'. â€Å"An untreated OUT may spread to the kidney, causing more pain and illness. It can also cause sepsis. The term resources is usually used to describe sepsis caused by a UT'† (Sepsis Alliance, n. D. , ‘1 2). More than one half of reported cases of older adults with resources are caused by a UT'. Another interesting fact is that one-third of people who develop sepsis, die from it.Those that do survive it are usually left with some type of organ dysfunction and/or amputation. While in the ICC, my mother developed hyperplasia (carbon-dioxide poisoning). This infection was a result of the sepsis. I had never heard of hyperplasia before so I started to ask questions. Because of the sepsis infection, my mother's respirations were very weak. She wasn't breathing hard enough to release the carbon-dioxide from her body when she exhaled. To assist her with breathi ng, she was put on a APIPA machine that forced the oxygen into her system so she could breathe easier.The hope was that this machine would help her breathe until she was well enough to earth properly on her own. The nurses tried small intervals of removing the machine to see how she would do, but her gas levels would go back up if off of the machine too long. The highest gas rate at one time was 86, which is almost quadruple what a normal level should be. Another infection that my mother developed while in the hospital was Kielbasa. Kielbasa is a type of bacteria that causes other infections. â€Å"Kielbasa infections commonly occur among sick patients who are receiving treatment for other conditions.Patients who require devices like ventilators (breathing machines) or intravenous catheters are more at risk for Kielbasa infections† (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2012, ‘1 1). A person has to be exposed to the bacteria to get the infection. Unfortunate ly, medical tools such as ventilators and intravenous catheters allow Kielbasa to enter the body off patient and cause infection. It is very rare for Kielbasa to spread to family members of patient's. Healthy people are at a very low risk of acquiring this infection.My mother most likely developed Kielbasa from the Bi-PAP machine she needed to use to breathe, as well as a compromised immune system. Another condition my mother developed as a result of the sepsis was hypoxia. In her case, she had metabolic hypoxia. This developed because of the high demand of oxygen required from her tissues. Even though the oxygen can be transported and absorbed properly, it is not enough when it comes to sepsis. Some organs that can be affected by hypoxia are the heart, liver and the brain. There is a correlation between edema and hypoxia as well.Edema is the swelling of tissues (usually due to heart failure) and can limit the ability of oxygen to reach tissues. Since my mother also had edema, her h ypoxia very well could have developed from both the sepsis and edema. One of the last infections my mother developed was pneumonia. Pneumonia is commonly associated with sepsis as either a result or a cause. Pneumonia is an infection in the lungs and can be in Just one or both lungs. If pneumonia alone is left untreated it can be deadly. In the days prior to antibiotics, about one third of people who developed bacteria pneumonia died.Once my mother developed pneumonia, we knew that she was never going to recover from all of the infections she was developing. She came into the hospital with COOP that she had for several years prior and a number of other issues that only contributed to her development of sepsis and these other infections. Out of the millions worldwide that die every year from sepsis, more than 750,000 of them are in the U. S. One article I read said that sepsis â€Å"triggers a cascading, whole-body inflammatory response† (McKinney, 2014, ‘1 3).According to federal data, it is the leading cause of hospital deaths in ICC and the 10th leading cause of death in the United States overall. Hospitals continue to struggle when it comes to early detection of sepsis. Another interesting fact I found was that researchers noted high rates of sepsis mortality in the Midwest, mid-Atlantic and Southern States; even as much as four times the national average. These areas are called â€Å"hot spots†. Researchers continue to research the reasons behind this. â€Å"Is it a result of patient level differences: commodities, age, race, smoking, alcohol, etc.? Is it a result of MS care?DEED care? In-patient care? This needs to be sorted out† (Struck, 2013, ‘1 6). The following graph from 2010 illustrates the death rate in these hot spots as well as there areas of the United States: (McKinney, 2014) There really is no single test for sepsis. It is at the discretion of the DEED and physicians to carefully screen patients who might have it in order to rule it out or identify who actually has it. Unfortunately, there is not one single treatment that targets sepsis. Instead, physicians and nurses follow a number of treatments including antibiotics, intravenous fluids, oxygen, and in some cases, surgery.Sometimes it is hard to get physicians to think about sepsis as a disease that is time- sensitive like a heart-attack. Continuous efforts and resources will hopefully lead too reduction in mortality rates. In conclusion, not enough is known about sepsis, yet it is one of the most deadly diseases someone can get. My father had never heard of sepsis until mom was diagnosed with it. After learning more about sepsis, I am not surprised she developed it. She was sick for years starting back in 2007 when she had a triple- bypass, Cybernetic surgery for cancer on her lung, and a kidney removed for cancer as well.She never fully recovered from all of that and I think it Just made her alienable to other infections and diseases. Watching the disease progress firsthand made me see that it is almost impossible for anyone to recover from it. As stated earlier, it cascades into other diseases so rapidly that hospital staff cannot stop it. We were told that there was no way my mother was ever going to recover from the disease and to keep her alive she would need to be on a machine for the rest of her shortened life. No one deserves to live like that. Sepsis will leave a patient with no quality of life and a poisoning of the whole body.I want to help create more wariness about the disease and will continue to do research on the disease and other diseases that cause and result from it. I am also going to seek out organizations in our area to see how I can be an advocate for this awful disease. I would love to be able to educate families that may be going through what my family had to go through. This evil may have taken my mother from me, but it has only made me stronger and more determined than ever to do someth ing positive and help others. Reference Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2012). Kielbasa pneumonia in Healthcare Settings.

Revolutionizing the World’s Top Corporations “SIX SIGMA” Essay

OBJECTIVE This term paper is designed as a part of the curriculum. It helped me to tap into the power of the Six Sigma movement that’s transforming some of the  world’s most successful companies. Six Sigma initiatives have tallied billions of dollars in savings, dramatic increases in speed, strong new customer relationships—in short, remarkable results and rave reviews. SIX SIGMA Six Sigma is now according to many business development and quality improvement experts, the most popular management methodology in history. Six Sigma is certainly a very big industry in its own right, and Six Sigma is now an enormous ‘brand’ in the world of corporate development. Six Sigma began in 1986 as a statistically-based method to reduce variation in electronic manufacturing processes in Motorola Inc in the USA. Today, around twenty years on, Six Sigma is used as an all-encompassing business performance methodology, all over the world, in organizations as diverse as local government departments, prisons, hospitals, the armed forces, banks, and multi-nationals corporations. While Six Sigma implementation continues apace in many of the world’s largest corporations, many organizations and suppliers in the consulting and training communities have also seized on the Six Sigma concept, to package and provide all sorts of Six Sigma ‘branded’ training products and consultancy and services. Six Sigma has also spawned many and various business books on the subject. Six Sigma, it might seem, is taking over the world. Interestingly while Six Sigma has become a very widely used ‘generic’ term, the name Six Sigma is actually a registered trademark of Motorola Inc., in the USA, who first pioneered Six Sigma methods in the 1980’s. The original and technically correct spelling seems to be Six Sigma, rather than 6 Sigma, although in recent years Motorola and GE have each since developed their own sexy Six Sigma logos using the number six and the Greek sigma character. Six Sigma is now a global brand and something of a revolution. But what is Six Sigma? Sigma is a measurement that indicates how a process is performing. Six Sigma stands for Six Standard Deviations (Sigma is the Greek letter used to represent standard deviation in statistics) from mean. Six Sigma methodologies provide the techniques and tools to improve the capability and reduce the defects in any process. Six Sigma is a fact-based, data-driven philosophy of improvement that values defect prevention over defect detectio n. Philosophy: The philosophical perspective views all works as a process that can be defined,  measured, analyzed, improved & controlled (DMAIC). Processes require inputs & produce outputs. If you control the inputs, you will control the outputs. This is generally expressed as the y= f (x) concept. Set of Tools: Six Sigma as a set of tools includes all the qualitative and quantitative techniques used by the six sigma experts to drive process improvement. A few such tools include statistical process control (SPC), Control charts, failure mode & effects analysis, process mapping etc. Methodology: This view of Six Sigma recognizes the underlying and rigorous approach known as DMAIC. DMAIC defines the steps a Six Sigma practitioner is expected to follow, starting with identifying the problem and ending with the implementation of long-lasting solutions While DMAIC is not only Six Sigma Methodology in use, it is certainly the most widely adopted and recognized. Metrics: In simple terms, Six Sigma quality performance means 3.4 defects per million opportunities HISTORY Since the 1920’s the word ‘sigma’ has been used by mathematicians and engineers as a symbol for a unit of measurement in product quality variation. (Note it’s sigma with a small ‘s’ because in this context sigma is a generic unit of measurement.) In the mid-1980’s engineers in Motorola Inc in the USA used ‘Six Sigma’ an an informal name for an in-house initiative for reducing defects in production processes, because it represented a suitably high level of quality. (Note here its Sigma with a big ‘S’ because in this context Six Sigma is a ‘branded’ name for Motorola’s initiative.) (Certain engineers had varying opinions as to whether the very first was Mikal Harry – felt that measuring defects in terms of thousands was an insufficiently rigorous standard. Hence they increased the measurement scale to parts per million, described as ‘defects per million’, which prompted the use of the ‘six sigma’ terminology and adoption of the capitalised ‘Six Sigma’ branded name, given that six sigma was deemed to equate to 3.4 parts – or defects – per million.) In the late-1980’s following the success of the above initiative, Motorola extended the Six Sigma methods to its critical business processes, and significantly Six Sigma became a formalised in-house ‘branded’ name for a performance improvement methodology, i.e., beyond purely ‘defect  reduction’, in Motorola Inc. In 1991 Motorola certified its first ‘Black Belt’ Six Sigma experts, which indicates the beginnings of the formalisation of the accredited training of Six Sigma methods. In 1991 also, Allied Signal, (a large avionics company which merged with Honeywell in 1999), adopted the Six Sigma methods, and claimed significant improvements and cost savings within six months. It seems that Allied Signal’s new CEO Lawrence Bossidy learned of Motorola’s work with Six Sigma and so approached Motorola’s CEO Bob Galvin to learn how it could be used in Allied Signal. In 1995, General Electric’s CEO Jack Welch (Welch knew Bossidy since Bossidy once worked for Welch at GE, and Welch was impressed by Bossidy’s achievements using Six Sigma) decided to implement Six Sigma in GE, and by 1998 GE claimed that Six Sigma had generated over three-quarters of a billion dollars of cost savings. By the mid-1990’s Six Sigma had developed into a transferable â₠¬Ëœbranded’ corporate management initiative and methodology, notably in General Electric and other large manufacturing corporations, but also in organizations outside the manufacturing sector. By the year 2000, Six Sigma was effectively established as an industry in its own right, involving the training, consultancy and implementation of Six Sigma methodology in all sorts of organisations around the world. That is to say, in a little over ten years, Six Sigma quickly became not only a hugely popular methodology used by many corporations for quality and process improvement, Six Sigma also became the subject of many and various training and consultancy products and services around which developed very many Six Sigma support organizations CENTRAL CONCEPTS We can clearly observe from the definitions and history of Six Sigma that many people consider the model to be capable of leveraging huge performance improvements and cost savings. None of this of course happens on its own. Teams and team leaders are an essential part of the Six Sigma methodology. Six Sigma is therefore a methodology which requires and encourages team leaders and teams to take responsibility for implementing the Six Sigma processes. Significantly these people need to be trained in Six Sigma’s methods – especially the use of the measurement and improvement tools, and in communications and relationship skills, necessary to involve and serve the needs of the internal and external customers and  suppliers that form the critical processes of the organization’s delivery chains. Training is therefore also an essential element of the Six Sigma methodology, and lots of it. Six Sigma teams and notably Six Sigma team leaders (‘Black Belts’) u se a vast array of tools at each stage of Six Sigma implementation to define measure, analyse and control variation in process quality, and to manage people, teams and communications. When an organization decides to implement Six Sigma, first the executive team has to decide the strategy – which might typically be termed an improvement initiative, and this base strategy should focus on the essential processes necessary to meet customer expectations. This could amount to twenty or thirty business process. At the top level these are the main processes that enable the organization to add value to goods and services and supply them to customers. Implicit within this is an understanding of what the customers – internal and external – actually want and need. A team of managers (‘Black Belts’ normally) who ‘own’ this processes is responsible for: identifying and understanding these processes in detail, and also understanding the levels of quality (especially tolerance of variation) that customers (internal and external) expect, and then Measuring the effectiveness and efficiency of each process performance – notably t he ‘sigma’ performance – ie., is the number of defects per million operations (pro-rate if appropriate of course). The theory is entirely logical: understanding and then improving the most important ‘delivery-chain’ processes will naturally increase efficiency, customer satisfaction, competitive advantage, and profitability. Easily said – tricky to achieve – which is what the Six Sigma methodology is for. SIX SIGMA PROCESS The term â€Å"six sigma process† comes from the notion that if one has six standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit, as shown in the graph, practically no items will fail to meet specifications. This is based on the calculation method employed in process capability studies. Capability studies measure the number of standard deviations between the process mean and the nearest specification limit in sigma units. As process standard deviation goes up, or the mean of the process moves away from the centre of the tolerance, fewer standard deviations will fit between the mean and the nearest specification limit,  decreasing the sigma number and increasing the likelihood of items outside specification SCALE OF MEASUREMENT The table below gives long-term DPMO values corresponding to various short-term sigma levels. It must be understood that these figures assume that the process mean will shift by 1.5 sigma toward the side with the critical specification limit. In other words, they assume that after the initial study determining the short-term sigma level, the long-termCpk value will turn out to be 0.5 less than the short-term Cpk value. So, for example, the Defective parts per million opportunities (DPMO) figure given for 1 sigma assumes that the long-term process mean will be 0.5 sigma beyond the specification limit (Cpk = –0.17), rather than 1 sigma within it, as it was in the short-term study (Cpk = 0.33). Note that the defect percentages indicate only defects exceeding the specification limit to which the process mean is nearest. Defects beyond the far specification limit are not included in the percentages. Sigma level DPMO Percent defective Percentage yield Short-term Cpk Long-term Cpk 1 691,462 69% 31% 0.33 –0.17 2 308,538 31% 69% 0.67 0.17 3 66,807 6.7% 93.3% 1.00 0.5 4 6,210 0.62% 99.38% 1.33 0.83 5 233 0.023% 99.977% 1.67 1.17 6 3.4 0.00034% 99.99966% 2.00 1.5 METHODOLOGY Six Sigma projects follow two project methodologies inspired by Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle. These methodologies, composed of five phases each, bear the acronyms DMAIC and DMADV. DMAIC is used for projects aimed at improving an existing business process. DMADV is used for projects aimed at creating a new product or process design. The DMAIC project methodology has five phases: Define the problem, the voice of the customer,  and the project goals, specifically. Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data. Analyze the data to investigate and verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered. Seek out root cause of the defect under investigation. Improve or optimize the current process based upon data analysis using techniques such as design of experiments, poka yoke or mistake proofing, and standard work to create a new, future state process. Set up pilot runs t o establish process capability. Control the future state process to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects. Implement control systems such as statistical process control, production boards, visual workplaces, and continuously monitor the process. Some organizations add a Recognize step at the beginning, which is to recognize the right problem to work on, thus yielding an RDMAIC methodology. DMADV or DFSS The DMADV project methodology, known as DFSS (â€Å"Design For Six Sigma†),[features five phases: Define design goals that are consistent with customer demands and the enterprise strategy. Measure and identify CTQs (characteristics that are Critical To Quality), product capabilities, production process capability, and risks. Analyze to develop and design alternatives, create a high-level design and evaluate design capability to select the best design. Design details, optimize the design, and plan for design verification. This phase may require simulations. Verify the design, set up pilot runs, implement the production process and hand it over to the process owner(s). THE TOOLS AND THEMES Like most great inventions, Six Sigma is not â€Å"all new.† While some themes of Six Sigma arise out of fairly recent breakthroughs in management thinking, others have their foundation in common sense. Before you dismiss that origin as no big deal, we’d remind you of a saying: â€Å"Common sense is the least common of the senses.† From a â€Å"tools†Ã‚  perspective, Six Sigma is a pretty vast universe. The more we have learned over the years about the Six Sigma system, the more we have come to see it as a way to link together—and even to implement—many otherwise disconnected ideas, trends, and tools in business today. Some of the â€Å"hot topics† that have direct application or can complement a Six Sigma initiative include: e-Commerce and Services Enterprise Resource Planning Lean manufacturing Customer Relationship Management systems Strategic business partnerships Knowledge management Activity-based management The â€Å"process-centred organization† Globalization Just-in-time inventory/production Six Themes of Six Sigma We’ll close out this introductory look at Six Sigma by distilling the critical elements of this leadership system into six â€Å"themes.† These principles—supported by the many Six Sigma tools and methods we’ll be presenting throughout this book—will give you a preview of how we’ll help you make Six Sigma work for your business. Theme One: Genuine Focus on the Customer During the big Total Quality push of the 1980s and 1990s, dozens of companies wrote policies and mission statements vowing to â€Å"meet or exceed customer expectations and requirements.† Unfortunately, however, few businesses tried very hard to improve their understanding of customers’ requirements or expectations. Even when they did, customer data-gathering typically was a one-time or short-lived initiative that ignored the dynamic nature of customer needs. In Six Sigma, customer focus becomes the top priority. For example, the measures of Six Sigma performance begin with the customer. Six Sigma improvements are defined by their impact on customer satisfaction and  value. We’ll look at why and how your business can define customer requirements, measure performance against them, and stay on top of new developments and unmet needs. Theme Two: Data- and Fact-Driven Management Six Sigma takes the concept of â€Å"management by fact† to a new, more powerful level. Despite the attention paid in recent years to measures, improved information systems, knowledge management, etc., it should come as no shock to you to hear that many business decisions are still being based on opinions and assumptions. Six Sigma discipline begins by clarifying what measures are key to gauging business performance; then it applies data and analysis so as to build an understanding of key variables and optimize results. At a more down-to-earth level, Six Sigma helps managers answer two essential questions to support fact-driven decisions and solutions: 1. What data/information do I really need? 2. How do we use that data/information to maximum benefit? Theme Three: Process Focus, Management, and Improvement In Six Sigma, processes are where the action is. Whether designing products and services, measuring performance, improving efficiency and customer satisfaction—or even running the business—Six Sigma positions the process as the key vehicle of success. One of the most remarkable breakthroughs in Six Sigma efforts to date has been convincing leaders and managers—particularly in the service-based functions and industries—that mastering processes is not just a necessary evil but actually a way to build competitive advantage in delivering value to customers. There are many more people to convince— with huge dollar opportunities tied up in those activities. Theme Four: Proactive Management Most simply, being â€Å"proactive† signifies acting in advance of events— the opposite of being â€Å"reactive.† In the real world, though, proactive management means making habits out of what are, too often, neglected business practices: defining ambitious goals and reviewing them frequently; setting clear priorities; focusing on problem prevention versus fire  fighting; questioning why we do things instead of blindly defending them as â€Å"how we do things here.† Being truly proactive, far from being boring or overly analytical, is actually a starting point for creativity and effective change. Reactively bouncing from crisis to crisis makes you very busy—giving a false impression that you’re on top of things. In reality, it’s a sign of a manager or an organization that’s lost control. Six Sigma, as we’ll see, encompasses tools and practices that replace reactive habits with a dynamic, responsive, proactive style of management. Considering today’s slim-margin-for-error competitive environment, being proactive is (as the airline commercial said) â€Å"the only way to fly.† Theme Five: Boundary less Collaboration â€Å"Boundary less† is one of Jack Welch’s mantras for business success. Years before launching Six Sigma, GE’s chairman was working to break down barriers and improve teamwork, up, down, and across organizational lines. The opportunities available through improved collaboration with in companies and with their vendors and customers are huge. Billions of dollars are left on the table (or on the floor) every day, because of disconnects and outright competition between groups that should be working for a common cause: providing value to customers. As noted above, Six Sigma expands opportunities for collaboration as people learn how their roles fit into the â€Å"big picture† and can recognize and measure the interdependence of activities in all parts of Process. Boundary less collaboration in Six Sigma does not mean selfless sacrifice, but it does require an understanding of both the real needs of end users and of the flow of work through a process or a sup ply chain. Moreover, it demands an attitude that is committed to using customer and process knowledge to benefit all parties. Thus, the Six Sigma system can create an environment and management structures that support true teamwork. Theme Six: Drive for Perfection; Tolerance This last theme may seem contradictory. How can you be driven to achieve perfection and yet also tolerate failure? In essence, though, the two ideas are complementary. No company will get anywhere close to Six Sigma without launching new ideas and approaches—which always involve some risk. If people  who see a possible path to better service, lower costs, new capabilities, etc. (i.e. ways to be closer-to-perfect) are too afraid of the consequences of mistakes, they’ll never try. The result: stagnation, putrefaction, death. Fortunately, the techniques we’ll review for improving performance include a significant dose of risk management (if you’re going to fail, make it a safe failure). The bottom line, though, is that any company that makes Six Sigma its goal will have to constantly push to be evermore- perfect (since the customer’s definition of â€Å"perfect† will always be changing) while being willing to accept—and manage—oc casional setbacks. SOME SUCCESS STORIES Seeing the impact that Six Sigma is having on some leading companies sets the stage for understanding how it can impact your business. As we relate some of these results, we’ll also be reviewing the history that has brought Six Sigma to the forefront General Electric Six Sigma has forever changed GE. Everyone—from the Six Sigma zealots emerging from their Black Belt tours, to the engineers, the auditors, and the scientists, to the senior leadership that will take this Company into the new millennium—is a true believer in Six Sigma, the way this Company now works.† —GE Chairman John F. Welch1 When a high-profile corporate leader* starts using words like â€Å"unbalanced† or â€Å"lunatics† in connection with the future of the company—you might expect a plunge in the company’s share price. At General Electric, however, that passion and drive behind Six Sigma have produced some very positive results. The hard numbers behind GE’s Six Sigma initiative tell just part of the story. From an initial year or so of break-even efforts, the payoff has accelerated: $750 million by the end of 1998, a forecasted $1.5 billion by the end of 1999, and expectations of more billions down the road. Some Wal l Street analysts have predicted $5 billion in gains from the effort, early in the decade. GE’s operating margins—for decades in the 10 percent range—continue to hit new records quarter after quarter. The numbers are now consistently above 15 percent, and even higher in some periods. GE leaders cite this margin expansion as the most visible  evidence of the financial contribution made by Six Sigma. Improvements from Services to Manufacturing The financial â€Å"big picture,† though, is just a reflection of the many individual successes GE has achieved through its Six Sigma initiative. For example: âÅ" ¦ A Six Sigma team at GE’s Lighting unit repaired problems in its billing to one of its top customers—Wal-Mart—cutting invoice defects and disputes by 98 percent, speeding payment, and creating better productivity for both companies. âÅ" ¦ A group led by a staff attorney—a Six Sigma team leader—at one of GE Capital’s service businesses streamlined the contract review process, leading to faster completion of deals—in other words, more responsive service to customers—and annual savings of $1 million. âÅ" ¦ GE’s Power Systems group addressed a major irritant with its utility company customers, simply by developing a better understanding of their requirements and improving the documentation provided along with new power equipment. The result: Utilities can respond more effectively to their regulatory agencies, and both the utilities and GE have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. âÅ" ¦ The Medical Systems business—GEMS—used Six Sigma design techniques to create a breakthrough in medical scanning technology. Patients can now get a full-body scan in half a minute, versus three minutes or more with previous technology. Hospitals can increase their usage of the equipment and achieve a lower cost per scan, as well. âÅ" ¦ GE Capital Mortgage analyzed the processes at one of its top performing branches and—expanding these â€Å"best practices† across its other 42 branches—improved the rate of a caller reaching a â€Å"live† GE person from 76 to 99 percent. Beyond the much greater convenience and responsiveness to customers, the improved process is translating into millions of dollars in new business. The Actions behind the Results GE’s successes are the result of a â€Å"passionate† commitment and effort. Notes Welch: â€Å"In nearly four decades with GE I have never seen any Company initiative move so willingly and so rapidly in pursuit of a big idea.†2 Tens of thousands of GE managers and associates have been trained in Six Sigma methods—a hefty investment in time and money (which is appropriately deducted from the gains cited earlier). The training has gone well beyond  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Black Belts† and teams to include every manager and professional at GE—and many front-line people as well. They’ve instilled a new vocabulary revolving around customers, processes, and measurement. While dollars and statistical tools seem to get the most publicity, the emphasis on customers is probably the most remarkable element of Six Sigma at GE. As Jack Welch explains it: The best Six Sigma projects begin not inside the business but outside it, focused on answering the questionâ₠¬â€how can we make the customer more competitive? What is critical to the customer’s success? . . . One thing we have discovered with certainty is that anything we do that makes the customer more successful inevitably results in a financial return for us. AlliedSignal/Honeywell AlliedSignal—with the new name of â€Å"Honeywell† following its 1999merger—is a Six Sigma success story that connects Motorola and GE. It was CEO Larry Bossidy—a long time GE executive, who took the helm at Allied in 1991—who convinced Jack Welch that Six Sigma was an approach worth considering. (Welch had been one of the few top managers not to become enamoured of the TQM movement in the 1980s and early 1990s). Allied began its own quality improvement activities in the early 1990s, and by 1999 was saving more than $600 million a year, thanks to the widespread employee training in and application of Six Sigma principles.5 Not only were Allied’s Six Sigma teams reducing the costs of reworking defects, they were applying the same principles to the design of new products like aircraft engines, reducing the time from design to certification from 42 to 33 months. The company credits Six Sigma with a 6 percent productivity increase in 1998 and wit h its record profit margins of 13 percent. Since the Six Sigma effort began, the firm’s market value had—through fiscal year 1998—climbed to a compounded 27 percent per year. Allied’s leaders view Six Sigma as â€Å"more than just numbers—it’s a statement of our determination to pursue a standard of excellence using every tool at our disposal and never hesitating to reinvent the way we do things.† As one of Allied’s Six Sigma directors puts it: â€Å"It’s changed the way we think and the way we communicate. We never used to talk about the process or the customer; now they’re part of our everyday conversation.† AlliedSignal’s Six Sigma leadership has helped it earn recognition as the  world’s best-diversified company and the most admired global aerospace company . IMPACT There are many well known companies that have implemented Six Sigma programs and reached astounding results. Companies like General Electric, Motorola, Ford, Honeywell and American standard have all reaped the benefits of successful Six Sigma quality programs. Motorola claims to have saved $17 billion from 1986 to 2004 by successfully implementing their strategies throughout all departments of the company. The other companies have achieved staggering results such as cutting invoice defects and disputes, streamlined contract processes, reduction in project duration, waste elimination, reduced energy costs and increased production capacity. By understanding the philosophy and deploying the program, these companies have succeeded in making themselves more efficient and more profitable for their stakeholders. Companies wishing to make changes to their quality system should research this and consider Six Sigma as an option. BENEFITS It is clear that many companies have capitalized on the application of Six Sigma to their business model. If we look deeper into the appeal of Six Sigma, past the historical quantitative gains, we will find several benefits that companies find attractive. 1. â€Å"Generates sustained success† – The only way to sustain a high level of growth is to continually innovate and remake the organization. A Six Sigma process creates the skills and culture to achieve this continuous process improvement cycle. 2. â€Å"Sets a performance goal for everyone† – a company is made up of multiple departments with different tasks and objectives. Six Sigma provides a common objective for all departments to be as close to perfect as possible. The idea is that if you understand the customer’s requirements, then you can measure for defects. 3. â€Å"Enhances Customer Value† – The focus of Six Sigma is understanding what the customer requirements are and deli vering a product or service within those requirements. 4. â€Å"Increases the rate of improvement† – Six Sigma helps a company stay on top of it’s improvement efforts by constantly updating requirements and identifying defects before they happen. 5. â€Å"Promotes Learning† – Six sigma brings experts together with novices to manage the process and teach the Six Sigma way of business. Companies that use Six Sigma view it as learning tool that is critical to their success. 6. â€Å"Executes strategic change† – Six Sigma gives you a better understanding of your company processes. The philosophy is tied back to the company goals so when it’s time for change there is a higher probability of success.† NEGATIVES Just like any other quality improvement initiatives we have seen in the past, Six Sigma has its own limitations. The following are some of the limitations of Six Sigma which create opportunities for future research : 1. â€Å"Kills Creativity† – Six Sigma gives emphasis on the rigidity of the process which basically contradicts the innovation and kills the creativity. The innovative approach implies deviations in production, the redundancy, the unusual solutions, insufficient study which are opposite to Six Sigma principles. 2. â€Å"Role of consultants† – The use of â€Å"Black Belts† as itinerant change agents has (controversially) fostered an industry of training and certification. Critics argue there is overselling of Six Sigma by too great a number of consulting firms, many of which claim expertise in Six Sigma when they have only a rudimentary understanding of the tools and techniques involved. 3. â€Å"Rigid† – A more direct criticism is the â€Å"rigid† nature of Six Sigma with its over-reliance on methods and tools. In most cases, more attention is paid to reducing variation and searching for any significant factors and less attention is paid to developing robustness in the first place (which can altogether eliminate the need for reducing variation.) 4. â€Å"Criticism of the 1.5 sigma shift† – The 1.5 sigma shift has also become contentious because it results in stated â€Å"sigma levels† that reflect short-term rather than long-term performance: a process that has long-term defect levels corresponding to 4. 5 sigma performance is, by Six Sigma convention, described as a â€Å"six sigma process.†. The accepted Six Sigma scoring system thus cannot be equated to actual normal distribution probabilities for the stated number of standard deviations, and this has been a key bone of contention over how Six Sigma measures are defined. APPLICATIONS In pharmaceutical industry, adoption of the Six Sigma technique helped the industry reduce wastage and rework involved in the production. It was said that 5-10% of medicines produced during a period were to be discarded or modified due to the defects. The adoption of Six Sigma helped the pharmaceutical companies to reduce the errors in the production. Airline industry had to adopt the Six Sigma metrics for its survival. The increased cost of fuel, the competition driven by low budget airlines, etc has made the need for lower cost without a hit to quality the need of the hour. The number of errors in handling the calls from customers, and ticketing is to be minimised drastically. It was with this intention that the airline industry adopted Six Sigma into the organisation. Indian companies like Kingfisher, Jet Airways, and Indian Airlines, all have adopted Six Sigma technique into its process. Hospitality services are another industry which benefited by the adoption of Six Sigma techniques. Providing personalised service to each and every customer by bending to their demands within a limited time without comprising the quality was aided by the Six Sigma matrices. The Six Sigma technique is adopted in every field from maintaining full occupancy to efficient housekeeping, ensuring a balanced inventory supply, and to minimise wastage in the inventory. Starwood hotels and resorts Inc was the first company to adopt Six Sigma in the hospitality sector. Steel industries like TISCO use this technique to minimise the inadequacies in the design, imperfect products, etc. I. Logistics, insurance, call centres, all embrace the Six Sigma techniques for improving the quality of service provided by them. Six Sigma goes in to the details of improving customer service, generating business expansion and gaining knowledge about the service sectors business processes. Most service industries revolve around areas of finance, human resources and sales and marketing. Hence, Six Sigma delves deeply into the subject of soft skill. Irrespective of the type of industry, all companies have to adopt Six Sigma techniques as quality and timely delivery are crucial for their survival. SOME COMMON CONFUSUIONS KAIZEN – â€Å"Kaizen†, is a Japanese word, meaning â€Å"improvement†, or â€Å"change for the better† refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, and business management. When used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, kaizen refers to activities that continually improve all functions, and involves all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. It also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. By improving standardized activities and processes, kaizen aims to eliminate waste (see lean manufacturing). Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses after the Second World War, influenced in part by American business and quality management teachers who visited the country. It has since spread throughout the world] and is now being implemented in many other venues besides just bu siness and productivity. Six Sigma process involves employees at every level to improve a process. The theory is that a machine operator is best suited to identify the waste surrounding that machine. Employees participate in KAIZENS (a sort of quality circle) to eliminate all the waste along the process of delivering to customers. Everything left over is meaningful and profitable work. Generally, the employees themselves are empowered to recognize the need for an improvement, and to make that change immediately. LEAN SIX SIGMA – â€Å"Lean Six Sigma† is a synergized managerial concept of Lean and Six Sigma that results in the elimination of the seven kinds of wastes (classified as Defects, Overproduction, Transportation, Waiting, Inventory, Motion and Over-Processing) and provision of goods and service at a rate of 3.4 defects per million opportunities Six Sigma as well is far more data-driven than Lean Six Sigma (and Lean). A Six Sigma level is, again, 3.4 defects per million; a Five Sigma level is 233 defects per million, and so on. As Michael L. George describes, every Six Sigma improvement requires â€Å"a measure to define the capability of any process.† This reliance upon precise measurement is what makes the DMAIC processlengthy; a DMAIC project may require thousands of measurements before project leaders can analyze the results. Lean Six Sigma does not ignore measurement where it is required, but does not rely upon it absolutely. TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT – â€Å"Total Quality Management† or TQM is an integrative philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes. TQM functions on the premise that the quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone who is involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by an organization. In other words, TQM requires the involvement of management, workforce, suppliers, and customers, in order to meet or exceed customer expectations. TQM, as its name suggests, concerns itself entirely with quality. All efforts, finances and techniques are directed at improving quality as much as possible. While Six Sigma is certainly concerned with quality as well, it extends its focus to other issues such as product cycle time and cost. Because of this difference, Six Sigma can be much more complex to implement but also can create farther-reaching benefits. The goals of TQM and Six Sigma differ in significant ways. Total Quality Management has no specific goals or endpoints at which management can aim. Basically, the goal of TQM is to always become â€Å"better,† an objective that can become both a blessing and a curse as it continually inspires both motivation and frustration. Six Sigma, on the other hand, has the very tangible goal of 3.4 defects per million. This target gives the philosophy its name, as the amount is six standard deviations (represented by the Greek letter sigma) from the centre of a bell curve Accordi ng to Six Sigma specialist Thomas Pryzdek, TQM originally featured vague and abstract guidelines that were difficult, if not impossible, for most managers to turn into tangible and implementable strategies. Six Sigma attempts to fix this problem by creating specific areas to target for improvement. In lieu of general statements about quality improvement, the Six Sigma philosophy pinpoints sectors of specialized focus. IMPLEMENTATION †¢ Analyze – Is the discovery of variations Six Sigma programs are deployed  from the Top down and implemented from the bottom up. (Cariera and Trudell, 2006) You must have upper managements buy-in and full support. This support must be communicated effectively through the organization. Upper management must be willing to invest in training for their employees and willing to embrace the changes that will come out of the initiative. Although Six Sigma can involve some complex statistical theories and measurement tools, the barriers to successful implementations usually come from â€Å"behavioural† resistance rather than â€Å"technical† issues. (Kumar, 2006) The following are what Kumar considers â€Å"Fundamental rules for significant change†: †¢ Always include affected individuals in both planning and implementing improvements. †¢ Provide sufficient time for employees to change. †¢ Confine improvements to only those changes essential to remove the identified root cause(s). †¢ Respect an individual’s perceptions by listening and responding to his/her concerns. †¢ Ensure leadership participation in the program. †¢ Provide timely feedback to affected individuals. These are all key points to implementing Six Sigma, however to a Six Sigma critic’s point, there is nothing really new here. This is very similar to many other management and quality philosophies. Regardless of what name you give it, these fundamentals are imperative for instituting positive change in an organization. Perhaps by applying these fundamentals under a recognized program such as Six Sigma, there will be a better chance for success. Each phase is important in its own right; however the key thing for long lasting results in understanding the Control phase. The control phase must include a plan for continuous review and improvement. The DMAIC roadmap should be looked at as a circular process rather than linear. During the control phase companies must continually look for new opportunities then restart the process at Design. CASE STUDY Mumbai Dabbawalas, a perfect example of SIX SIGMA. -Dr. Pawan Agrawal The food is cooked at home. Tiffin is yours. They [dabbawalas] will simply deliver it from your home to your workplace before lunch time and deliver the empty tiffin box back in the evening at your home as well. Why would you want dabbawala to carry your tiffin? There are two reasons. One is that the Mumbai local trains have lines extending 60-70 km and two, they are crowded. If you have to reach office at 9, you must start at 6. But you wouldn’t want to wake your loved ones at 5 and have them prepare the tiffin for you; that’s where Dabbawala can help you. Another reason is that even if you start at 8, you won’t be able to carry your own tiffin because of how crowded the trains are. So, for these two reasons, Dabbawala has been in the business [of carrying your home food to your office] for the last 120 years. There’s a group of people called Varkari Sampradaya in Maharashtra; they are the devotees of Lord Vitthala and there’s a place called Pandha rpur, the town of the temple of Vitthala. When they go to that place, they wear a ‘tulasi mala’. And when a person wears this mala, he will never drink or smoke because Lord Vitthala doesn’t like it and the same principle is brought into practice here. Dabbawalas feel that their customer is their Lord Vitthala. These people are poor, they are working in difficult situations, they are not qualified and they don’t use technology, and yet, they possess all these qualities and work with passion and commitment. Dabbawala was started in 1890 by Mr. Mahadeo Havaji Bachche. He was once asked by a Parsi working in the Britisher’s rank, â€Å"Will you bring my tiffin from my home?† He simply answered â€Å"Yes, I will, no problem.† From that day onwards, he started to collect tiffins from homes and delivering them to the respective workplaces. In 1890, there was one dabbawala and one customer, and now, there are 5000 dabbawalas and 200,000 customers, which means, one dabbawala carries approximately 40 tiffins. The maximum weight comes to 65-70kg; carrying that much weight in the crowded local trains is a lot of hard work. Why do they do it then? Work is worship. And, as far as qualification is concerned, you will see that the average literacy rate is 8th grade schooling; which means the dabbawalas are illiterate and yet they have managed to achieve a Six Sigma quality rating, which means only one wrong service in a 6 million deliveries. Ownership is a feeling that an  empl oyee has to instil in oneself, and unless you get that feeling of ownership you cannot work excellently. In 120 years, it has never happened that a dabbawala has failed to deliver. It’s impossible. They will never tell you that â€Å"the trains are late today,† and even if Mumbai trains are late, the tiffins can’t be late. The dabbawala knows that if he’s not going in time, his customer will eat outside food, pay money for it and waste time. The dabbawala knows the consequences of going late. So he always goes on time. The people of Mumbai say with confidence that â€Å"our lunch can go wrong but not the Mumbai dabbawalas.† So nobody can stop you from being punctual.. Let me speak about (mukadal) group leaders. A group has 10, 20, or 25 dabbawalas, depending on the density of customers in your area, and their in-charge is the group leader. The responsibility to keep the dabbawalas and the customers happy is on the group leader. Despite the fact that he doesn’t get even a rupee extra for the extra10% that he works, he feels proud to be a group leader. For example, the group leader also takes care of the train passes of the dabbawalas, to check whether they have expired or not; he reminds the dabbawalas in case their passes are about to expire in the next 2-3 days and also buys the pass for the dabbawala if he fails to do so himself in order to ensure that timely delivery doesn’t suffer. I will tell you an instance of how one dabbawala performs duty in one day. He collects 40tiff in’s from a particular area and drops them in the Vile Parle railway station because his customer is from Vile Parle. He can’t deliver all of them because he would have to go all over Mumbai, so he leaves these 40 there. That’s his first job. His second job is to collect 35-40 tiffins from his group leader and deliver them to Dadar. His third job is to deliver 30 tiffins to Chavani Road, and in the fourth job from Chavani Road, he delivers 30 Tiffin’s to Churchgate. His fifth job is to go from Church Gate to deliver 30 tiffins to NarimanPoint. Finally, in his sixth job, he delivers 30 tiffins to Express Tower to the customers before lunch time and after lunch, he will reroute back to his original area and deliver the same tiffins from where he had  collected them. After all this, Forbes has found 1 erroneous delivery out of 6 million deliveries, but they don’t accept that either. They are unhappy that that  one error has occurred. Twelve years ago, some people from Delhi came to Dabbawala and said they want to do research on Dabbawala; they prepared a project and went back to Delhi. They called after 3 months and informed Dabbawala about Six Sigma. Dabbawalas didn’t know what it meant. They told Dabbawala it was a big honour so Dabbawala asked them to send it across. They were told to go to Delhi and collect it. Sixteen dabbawalas went to Delhi to collect the Six Sigma certification. People work so hard for three and Four Sigma but dabbawalas got Six Sigma because they didn’t care about the certifi cation and cared only about customer satisfaction. It is a big achievement especially without the use of technology. Even if the dabbawalas use technology in the form of mobile phones, they can’t because both their hands are used in delivering tiffins. Technology is useless for them for delivery. And after all this, they charge only 400 rupees per month for delivery. So, the question arises is that, why do they charge so less. They say customers are poor. If they want more income, they work extra. Dabbawala then gave me an example of a teacher, who earns only Rs 5000 per month as a government rule. He said, â€Å"Despite the teacher’s double graduation, I earn more than him, so I’m happy.† For example, some customers refuse to pay bonus, but the dabbawalas don’t disrupt their services. So I asked one of them why, he said, â€Å"the customer is my God, he has paid me 12 months’ of salary so it’s ok if he doesn’t pay me one month’s bonus.† Despite the disputes there has never been a police or a court case. Every 15 days they have a meeting. The disputing dabbawalas resolve their disputes and if they can’t, the president takes a call and they follow his judgment without questioning. Dabbawalas feel satisfied. I asked one customer, what he thinks about the dabbawalas. He said, â₠¬Å"Excellent. When I get my salary I am afraid of carrying it in the local train because it’s so crowded and I can get robbed so instead, after I have lunch, I put the money in the empty dabba and send to my wife.† Dabbawalas are very honest. If you do services consistently and with discipline, then the customer, at some point of time, will believe that you are God. In one day, one dabbawala handles 500 tiffins. There is a 79-year-old man who is a dabbawala, nobody’s forcing him, but he still works because he thinks he can still provide service to his customers. The dabbawalas use bicycles. Another thing is the coding system; about 100 years ago, they were using colour codes. Then when Mumbai  grew and the number of customers increased, they started using alphabets; A for Andheri, B for Bandra, etc. And today, they write a proper code with details of the source, destination and all the dabbawalas involved in that particular delivery. When this tiffin is coded and then washed, sometimes the coding becomes unclear, so the dabbawala takes colour out of his pocket and overwrites the code. He doesn’t complain about it, he just finishes the job. Due to the overcrowded Mumbai local trains, some people enter the l uggage department, and when they do, the tiffins stick to their heads. So they start fighting with the dabbawalas and the dabbawalas also fight with them but only till the station arrives, because after that they’re more interested in the delivery. They use carts for longer distances. In running local trains, they sort the tiffins to save time. Risk is there, but it’s there everywhere. You must work with the situation. For example, they lost some income and customers because of some instances. In 1969, customers stopped taking food. In 1975, there was a railway strike; the dabbawalas lost one month’s income. In 1982, 40,000 meal workers went on strike. Till today they’re on strike. A lot of people lost their lives. Dabbawalas have gone through all this and come out shining. They have been featured on multiple channels and have been awarded multiple awards. These 50 Indians have influenced Mumbai: Tata, Birla, Ambani, Thakarey, Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachhan and Mumbai Dabbawala. Somebody took a survey in Mumbai about the likes of people, and Dabbawala was one of them. I am not a Dabbawala. I’m not involved in any of the operations at all. I have done a Ph.D. on this subject and my topic was ‘A study of logistics in supply chain management of Dabbawala in Mumbai.’ It took a lot of years to complete my Ph.D. But, two days into the research, I was taken aback by the p assion of these people. I decided to do the research whether or not I complete my Ph.D. Prince Charles came to Mumbai in 2003. Six months before his visit, Mr. Jeetendra Jain, in the British Council of India, contacted dabbawala to arrange a visit. Dabbawala first refused and then, after realizing that Prince Charles is Britain’s royalty in the manner of a king, he agreed, but, with two conditions. First one was that Prince Charles should come at the Dabbawala’s convenience — between 11 and 11.40 because that’s when they’re free. Second, Prince Charles must go to Dabbawala himself. Where to? The footpath. Prince Charles accepted these conditions. Richard Branson came to  Mumbai. He wanted a photo with Dabbawala to put it up in his office in London to send a message to his employees to work like Dabbawalas. That’s the impact of Mumbai Dabbawala. There was an inauguration of a book written by Shobha Bondre. This was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh. The chief minister said that for every program he goes an hour late but for a dabbawala program he came 5 minutes early because he was scared that if he came late the Dabbawalas will go away. ANALYSIS How the Dabbawalas works? 1. Collecting food dabbas 2. Sorting +Grouping 3. Transporting 4. Receiving 5. Delivering 6. Collecting empty dabbas 1. Collecting A collecting dabbawala, usually on bicycle, collects dabbas either from a worker’s home or from the dabba makers. The dabbas have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a colour or symbol. 2. Sorting + Grouping The dabbawala then takes them to a designated sorting place, where he and other collecting dabbawalas sort (and sometimes bundle) the lunch boxes into groups. 3. Transporting The grouped boxes are put in the coaches of trains, with markings to identify the destination of the box (usually there is a designated car for the boxes). 4. Receiving The markings include the railway station to unload the boxes and the building address where the box has to be delivered. At each station, boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala. 5. Delivering: The local dabbawala delivers the dabbas to the respective places. 6. Collecting empty dabbas The empty boxes, after lunch, are again collected and sent back to the respective houses or dabba makers Factors contributing to their success 1. Cost efficient and faster delivery : The dabbawalas charge a nominal monthly fee which is affordable and they have an efficient delivery network which makes them deliver on time. 2. Highly reliable: On time delivery for all the â€Å"dabbas† and hardly any errors. All deliveries have ensured 100% customer satisfaction. There are cost best in time management and have been awarded six sigma rating. 3. Using Mumbai’s railway network : Using the Mumbai sub urban railways for their daily transportation from homes to the offices. Thus making it a cheaper and more efficient system. 4. Structure: They have a flat hierarchical in the organisation. Just 3 levels of organisation: carriers, supervisors and committee members. This flat structureimplies a wide span of control. Every supervisor has about 4-5 carriers under him. CONCLUSION Six Sigma looks at all work as a series of processes with inherent variations, which can cause waste or inefficiency. Focusing on those  processes with greatest impact on business performance, as defined by leadership teams, the methodology involves statistical analysis to quantify repeated common cause variations – which can then be reduced by the Six Sigma team. Six Sigma becomes a continuous process for quality improvement and cost reduction flowing throughout the company. Originally developed from a Japanese quality control process for manufacturing electronic semi-conductors, Six Sigma developed the capability of reducing problems or issues effecting customer expectations on key business processes. Six Sigma has provided the opportunity to drive forward important customer focused initiatives across the Cummins global organisation. As an improvement and cost reduction process, Six Sigma is equally valid for marketing and product development as well as manufacturing and c ustomer services. Six Sigma improvement projects and techniques are now the cornerstone of Cummins continued success in cost reduction and quality improvement. REFERENCES LINKS http://www.experts123.com/q/who-invented-six-sigma.html as on 11/10/2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_sigma as on 11/10/2012 http://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/ on 12/10/2012 http://www.6sigma.us/six-sigma.php as on 13/10/2012 http://www.businessballs.com/sixsigma.html as on 13/10/2012 http://www.benchmarksixsigma.com/ as on 13/10/2012 BOOKS Pede, Peter.S (2002), Mc-Graw Hill, The Six Sigma Way (from 029-72) De Feo, Joseph A.; Barnard, William (2005). JURAN Institute’s Six Sigma Breakthrough and Beyond – Quality Performance Breakthrough Methods. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN 0-07-142227-7 (from p235- 245). Ramias, Alan, The Mists of Six Sigma, (2005), BP Trends (from p5-9) Eckes, George, Six Sigma for Everyone, 2003, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ. (p 155-169)