Thursday, January 30, 2020
Comparison of Toc vs Lean Essay Example for Free
Comparison of Toc vs Lean Essay Even though each improvement methodology contributes valuable concepts, ideas and techniques to every organization not all of them serve to the needs of organization if leadership doesn’t actively involve to the efforts of the improvement teams. Theory of Constraints (TOC) At his book Goldratt (2004) defines the primary goal as to make money. This can be achieved by simply identifying and eliminating the constraints that limits the output of the entire system. As a result of the organizational change, he aims to see an increase on throughput and decrease on operational expense and inventory. Theory of constraints (TOC) is based on the premise that the rate of goal achievement is limited by at least one constraining process. Only by increasing flow through the constraint can overall throughput be increased where throughput is the rate at which the system generates money through sales. Inventory is all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell. Operational expense is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput. He recommends a five step process: 1. Identify the constraint. 2. Exploit the constraint. 3. Subordinate other processes to the constraint. . Elevate the constraint. 5. Repeat the cycle. Line Manufacturing (Thinking) Lean is a total operating system for manufacturing plants and has broad application in product or service businesses. On the contrary to TOC, Lean focuses to create a value to customer by the removal of waste, which is defined as anything not necessary to produce the product or se rvice. Lean manufacturing measure the performance of the company by using three dimensions, cost, lead time and value-added percentage. As Reid (2007) says, Lean initiates metric improvement by assessing the system using Value Stream Mapping (VSM). VSM has a standard set of icons and instructions for documenting material and information flows based on actual shop floor observation. Value stream observation starts at the process closest to the customer and follows upstream step-by-step to raw material receiving. Similar to TOC, there are five essential steps in lean: 1. Identify which features create value. 2. Identify the sequence of activities called the value stream. 3. Make the activities flow. 4. Let the customer pull product or service through the process. 5. Perfect the process. Lean involves many people in the value stream. Lean sees an organization as a collection of parts and aims a local optimization system where TOC focuses on a local action with holistic optimization for the organization. The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a relatively new managerial philosophy that has been steadily evolving since the early 1980s. TOC does advocate buffers at inventory at selected points to ensure that neither the constraint nor the customer is left waiting. Lean aims to reduce lead time and inventory and thus costs by eliminating waste; TOC aims to reduce lead time and inventory in order to gain capacity, increase Throughput (i. . the rate at which money is generated through the sale of products) and provide a competitive edge – thus enabling the business to grow. Thus it is evident that TOC methodology can provide Lean techniques with a high degree of focus which is both in tune with reality and achievable on a practical level, effectively bridging the knowledge gap that can exist between Lean in theory and Lean in practice. Because the bottom line benefits to be gained from increasing Throughput are greater than those likely to be realised via Lean waste/cost reduction alone, TOC provides Lean Manufacturing with a forward-thinking framework which not only directs improvement efforts where they will be most beneficial, but which is also an excellent platform for future growth.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Hardys Tess of the dUrbervilles - Existentialist Failure to Create an
Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Existentialist Failure to Create and Preserve Meaning     When wilt thou awake, O Mother, wake and see†¹ As one who, held in trance, has laboured long By vacant rote and prepossession strong†¹ The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly; Wherein have place, unrealized by thee, Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong, Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song, And curious blends of ache and ecstasy?†¹ (Hardy, "The Sleep-Worker")  Inherent in the ruthless progress of society, there paradoxically lies a growing moral deterioration. In Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy "faithfully present[s]" Tess as a paragon of virtue, utilizing her as an instrument of criticism against a society too debauched to sustain the existence "of its finest individuals" (Wickens 104). Unwilling to compromise her strict adherence to personal morals, Tess suffers immensely; her ultimate inability to exist on this "blighted" (21) star exposes the regression of a hypocritically sanctimonious society, whose degraded values catalyze her destruction.  Innocently unaware of "cruel Nature's law[,]" (115) Tess is violated by the response which her sexuality arouses in Alec. Yet, although it is nature which induces Tess to lose her virginity, it is society which renders this loss a sin. Tess's change from "a mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience" (8) to one stained by a "corporeal blight" (98) elicits a severe social condemnation. Ironically, in its attempt to deny the natural instincts of mankind, social selection takes on the characteristic ethical absence of natural selection, "ensuring that the social relations among people will... ...Hardy, "The Darkling Thrush")  Works Cited Beer, Gillian. "Finding a Scale for the Human." Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1991. Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1991. Hardy, Thomas. "The Sleep-Worker." Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1991. Hazen, James. "The Tragedy of Tess Durbeyfield." Howe, Irving. "At the Center of Hardy's Achievement." Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1991. Hyman, Virginia R. "The Evolution of Tess." Ethical Perspectives in the Novels of Thomas Hardy. Wickens, G. Glen. "Hardy and the Mythographers: The Myth of Demeter and Persephone in Tess of the d'Urbervilles." Â
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Planning Functions of Management Essay
WorldCom was a large telecom company that rose during 1990s up to early 2000s when the company encountered some shortcomings which finally led to its collapse.            The collapse arouses questions on the planning role of its management. The Management function basically plans for the company’s future based on the expectations of stakeholders. They expect to make high profits.            This critical role may have been avoided by the management in favour of taking out excessive salaries and other benefits for themselves leading to company collapse.            Legal issues, ethics and corporate social responsibility have an impact on management planning. Management planning ought to take a legal perspective. For example when the organization collapses, it takes a legal dimension to determine the failure of management planning. This can lead to long legal battles.            Ethically, management planning operates within ethical frameworks. For example it was unethical for WorldCom to loan executive’s money to purchase shares of the company stock. These could have contributed to the company’s collapse. The failure of corporate social responsibility impacts on the functioning of management planning negatively because it shifts the focus away.            Various factors influence the company’s strategic, tactical operational and contingency planning. They include legal, ethical and business responsibilities, government law, the desire for more profit, nature and size of the business, the workforce and size of customers, among others.            For example if the target of the profit is high then the planning ought to be more involving. There is also a variation in planning in connection with the nature of market and the size of the esteemed customers. Also the higher the workforce the more intense is the planning. References Carol, A., (1993) Three Types of Management Planning Making Organizations Work. Management quarterly, 34 Ewing, D. (1969). The Human side of Planning Tool or Tyrant? London: Macmillan Foley, P., Howes, p. (1993) Strategic Human resource Management: An Australian case study. Human Resource Planning, 16.
Monday, January 6, 2020
How Opportunity Structures Affect Your Life
The term opportunity structure refers to the fact that the opportunities available to people in any given society or institution are shaped by the social organization and structure of that entity. Typically within a society or institution, there are certain opportunity structures that are considered traditional and legitimate, like achieving economic success by pursuing education in order to get a good job, or dedicating oneself to a form of art, craft, or performance in order to make a living in that field. These opportunity structures, and untraditional and illegitimate ones too, provide sets of rules that one is supposed to follow in order to achieve cultural expectations of success. When traditional and legitimate opportunity structures fail to allow for success, people may pursue success via untraditional and illegitimate ones. Overview Opportunity structure is a term and theoretical concept developed by American sociologists Richard A. Cloward and Lloyd B. Ohlin, and presented in their book Delinquency and Opportunity, published in 1960. Their work was inspired by and built upon sociologist Robert Mertons theory of deviance, and in particular, his structural strain theory. With this theory Merton suggested that a person experiences strain when the conditions of society do not allow one to attain the goals that the society socializes us to desire and work toward. For example, the goal of economic success is a common one in U.S. society, and the cultural expectation is that one would work hard to pursue education, and then work hard in a job or career in order to attain this. However, with an underfunded public education system, high cost of higher education and burdens of student loans, and an economy dominated by service sector jobs, U.S. society today fails to provide the majority of the population with adequat e, legitimate means to attain this kind of success. Cloward and Ohlin build on this theory with the concept of opportunity structures by pointing out there are a variety of pathways to success available in society. Some are traditional and legitimate, like education and career, but when those fail, a person is likely to pursue pathways provided by other kinds of opportunity structures. The conditions described above, of inadequate education and job availability, are elements that can serve to block a particular opportunity structure for certain segments of the population, like kids to attend underfunded and segregated public schools in poor districts, or young adults who have to work to support their families and thus do not have the time or money to attend college. Other social phenomena, like racism, classism, and sexism, among others, can block a structure for certain individuals, while still enabling others to find success through it. For example, white students might thrive in a particular classroom while black students do not, because teachers tend to underestimate the intelligence of black kids, and to punish them more harshly, both of which hinder their ability to succeed in the classroom. Relevance in Society Cloward and Ohlin use this theory to explain deviance by suggesting that when traditional and legitimate opportunity structures are blocked, people sometimes pursue success through others that are considered nontraditional and illegitimate, like getting involved in a network of petty or major criminals in order to make money, or by pursuing grey and black market occupations like sex worker or drug dealer, among others.
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