Logistics and Supply Chain Essay Example for Free

Logistics and Supply Chain Essay Supply Chain Management Review introduces a new series called â€Å"Back to Basics. † It’s a look into how excellence in the core logistics and supply chain activities leads to overall business success. The articles in this seven-part series are written by educators from the University of Tennessee. Pictured: Wendy L. Tate, Assistant Professor of Logistics, Department of Marketing and Logistics, University of Tennessee. By Wendy L. Tate, Assistant Professor of Logistics, Department of Marketing and Logistics, University of Tennessee October 21, 2010  Globalization, increased competition, fluctuating availability of raw materials and pricing conditions have increased the need for better management of the suppliers who provide goods and services to the organization. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the cost of purchased materials is approximately 54% of the value of shipments for manufacturers. Also, the cost of services that organizations purchase is continuing to increase as firms try to focus on what they do best. More emphasis is being placed on spend management and on those that are responsible for locating and managing the suppliers that provide the materials and services needed to meet customer expectations. Sourcing and procurement are generally responsible for this task. A focus on spend management is not new to the purchasing area. But the increasing magnitude of requested reductions is driving purchasing departments to think creatively about ways to more strategically manage the supply base and continue to drive unnecessary costs from everyday purchases. The task of sourcing and procurement professionals is to find an effective means to balance the demands of both internal and external customers with economic considerations while taking into account the potential for supply disruption and technological change. The challenge is to establish both the philosophy and practice of an integrated supply system as part of the firm’s strategic positioning. Strategic purchasing involves finding ways to use supplier capabilities to drive sales, leverage the purchasing spend to achieve and/or maintain competitive advantage, and use the supply market to strengthen the company’s strategic position. Historically, purchasing has been overlooked as a strategic contributor and instead viewed as more of a tactical function with a largely internal focus. The tendency of even the most seasoned buyers has been to react to problems rather than proactively incorporate the strategic focus needed to support the current operating environment. The primary focus of procurement is to support the firm’s operational requirements by ensuring uninterrupted flow of the appropriate quality materials, products, and services. However, purchasers must do so in the most efficient and effective manner, in light of limited resources. The key for sourcing managers is to minimize risk to the organization. To minimize vulnerabilities in supply and make the most of the organization’s buying power, purchasers should assess and segment purchased materials, services, and components in terms of importance to the organization and difficulty in accessing the materials. This segmentation process allows purchasers to take a more strategic perspective on the management of the supplies and the supply base while applying more appropriate cost management tools and negotiation strategies. Using the segmentation system developed by Kraljic (1983) as a foundation, four major categories emerge (see Figure 1). Noncritical (low importance, low supply risk), leverage (high importance, low supply risk), strategic (high importance, high supply risk), and bottleneck (low importance, high supply risk). Each of the categories requires a distinctive and strategic purchasing approach. Each of these classifications will be described in the paragraphs below. In the case of non-critical, or generic purchases, the focus is on finding the lowest possible purchase price from a field of many suppliers. For these types of items, there are low switching costs allowing for easy â€Å"supplier hopping†. Typical procurement approaches to these types of purchases include the use of purchasing cards (p-cards) and short-term contracts. Relationships with the suppliers of these types of products are often arms-length and transactional. Office supplies and paper purchases typically fall into this category. Buyers use competitive bidding, price indices, price lists and catalogs to facilitate the buying process. The suppliers of these types of materials and services understand that low price and ease of purchase are key to retaining buyers. Staples, for example, introduced the â€Å"Easy Button†. Buyers that are in the market for office supplies can download software directly to their computer, shop from on-line catalogs, and use their p-cards to streamline the purchases of these generic items. Many suppliers are capable of providing the products and services that fall into the leverage category; these are the more â€Å"commodity-type† items. These types of products and services have a great importance to the organization in terms of volume purchased, percentage of total purchase cost, or impact on product quality or business growth. The purchasing decision for these items is generally based on consolidation, leveraging volumes is key to success. Some approaches used to leverage volume include supply base reduction and reverse auctions. The idea is to combine the requirements of different operating units and capitalize on supplier fixed cost allocation and improved productivity. The following example makes the point. A technology company had multiple business units all with individuals responsible for the purchase of customer contact center services. Through informal discussions about the performance of the suppliers of these services, the heads of the business units discovered that some were using the same suppliers, but being charged different rates and there were multiple suppliers providing almost identical services across the organization. The purchasing area was called in to help better manage the purchase of these services. They followed a typical sourcing process (see Figure 2) and put these services out for bid to both existing and new suppliers. The final pool of suppliers included fewer suppliers, volumes were leveraged, the price that was being paid ultimately fell, and the relationship with the suppliers improved. The company instituted a single point of contact for the suppliers and an end-to-end procure to pay management process (Ellram and Tate, 2004). The strategic items have more complexity and risk involved in the purchase often because of limited availability or fewer suppliers with the technical capabilities to provide the goods or services. These are the items that are the most critical for the organization to obtain to ensure success and meet the demand for products. There is much more collaboration and integration between the buying and supplying firm with a focus on continuous improvement. Buying firms often enter into long term, cost-based contracts with the suppliers of these items and may in fact engage the suppliers early in the process of new product development. Buyers look to these suppliers for innovation and cost reduction ideas. Ford and Mobil for example entered into a broad based trategic alliance to speed the development and integration of break-through fuel and vehicle technologies (Dieselnet, 1998). The intent of these strategic alliances is to help strengthen collaboration, and develop a sustainable business model. Bottleneck items, or items that are more project oriented or unique, have a high level of supply market complexity. These types of purchases often consume a disproportionate amount of time, relative to the item’s value. The focus for purchasing is to simplify the procurement of these items, or if possible get it out of this quadrant and into the leverage or strategic quadrants. Companies buying products or services that fall in the category could participate in buying consortiums to better leverage the spend and minimize the associated risk. For example, a utility company was paying a significant amount of money to audit their suppliers. A number of their competitors were using the same suppliers and spending the same money for the audits. These companies agreed to hire a third party to perform the audits, thus consolidating the spend and simplifying the purchase. Another company was procuring project-based environmental services. Each project required the buyer to closely manage the supplier to ensure that each step in the process was completed in a timely and accurate fashion and that payments were made as promised. There were many of these projects occurring simultaneously with different suppliers. One supplier became an â€Å"expert† in this area allowing the buying firm to assign the supplier more projects, thus increasing the level of importance and moving it to the strategic category. Successful managers today require a broad view of the procurement and sourcing areas and the strategic role that this function can play in an integrated supply chain. Organizations need to take a long-term perspective, avoiding the low price sourcing temptation without considering the total cost and the total value provided by the function and its relationship to the supply base. Purchasing needs to strategically manage its supplies and its supply base. The first step in doing this is to understand what is being purchased, the importance of the purchase to the organization, and the complexity of the supply market. The goal is to ensure that the supplies that are purchased add value to the customer’s that ultimately buy our goods and services.

Physics of Fencing :: sport physics fencing sword fighting

Before I begin my discussion about how physics effects fencing and how fencers use physics for more effective fencing, I will briefly discuss the origins of the sport of fencing. The first two fencing manuals were created and published in 1471and 1474. These emerged from an attempt at developing a system to teach people how to weild a light sword more effectively inbattle and duels in Frankfurt, Germany. Over the years, two distinct styles emerge. They were French and Italian. The french style relied mostly on strategy while Itialian used mostly physical strenght(Roswell). The first foils emerged during the seventeenth century for a more effective way of teaching students the "art" of dueling. In the eighteenth century, the rules were created for fencing as a sport. It is from these rules that today's rules for fencing were created(Roswell) In fencing there are three types of weapons that are taught. They are the epee, foil, and sabre. For the sake of this paper, the weapon being demonstrated is foil and the style is modern Italian. So without further ado.... Let us begin our discussion of physics with basic moves, and then move on to more advanced moves in fencing. Basic Fencing To begin with, we will discuss the effects of gravity on the body in the regular or "on garde" stance., and what forces are used during the "thrust" and the "lunge". On Garde Look at a picture of what a fencer looks like in the "on garde" position. As you can see, the larger arrow shows the pull of gravity. The smaller arrows show where gravity is pulling the limbs. Red being for the legs and yellow for the arms. Lunge Next, we will discuss the lunge. Below you will see two more images. First it is from the thrust position. Then the next image shows the lunge position. The lunge picture shows the forward momentum in the blue arrow. As in the previous pictures, the same colors are used for the same gravity applications, but the major difference is the effects of gravity on the legs. In this position, the effects of gravity are more severe because the legs are again further from the center mass of the body and therefore, more of the force of gravity is "pushing down" on the legs. So that will conclude the discussion of basic stances and physics of them. Next, we will discuss the more advanced moves and how fencers use physics to their advantage with them.

Impact of Applied Agro-Cooperative Credit and Banking on Farmers and Farming

People depend for good introduction in Agro-Farming not only on good seeds, good fertilizers, good irrigation and good Agro-technology; but they need also short-term, medium and long term loans to meet their other demands at farm level in farming. This genuine situational scene has a power to present an impact of applied cooperative credit and banking on farmers in farming from the point of origin of the Indian Cooperative Credit (a facile credit) movement from the period of working of NIDISH in Madras Province in 1882 to 1904 till date. This is a good Genesis of this issue with a scientific periodicity which may be perused in following section. An Iota in the facile cooperative credit scene of madras province Nidish a socio-economic social group were working in very active form like the primary cooperative credit societies at farm level in rural Madras province in 1882-1884. Madras Provinces 1882-1884 :- Fedaric Nicholson’s visit from India to Germany to study the working of The Raiffieson Model Rural Cooperative Credit societies and came back with a finding â€Å"Find Raiffieson† because he found 100% similarities in need of Agro – financing for Rural India, with cultural similarities at great scale in rural India and Rural Germany. In India also there was great exploitation done by private moneylenders by charging 75% rate of interest and in Germany also such high interest was taken by Jews/Nazis from Rural Germany Farmers. The profit motive and usurious practices were similar in India and Germany. In 1882 to 1884 Fedaric Nicholson came back from Germany in Madras Province and recommended to the government to start primary Agro-Cooperative credit and Banking instead of Nidish to protect rural people from great exploitation and usurious practices of private money lender. His report and recommendations were accepted by the Madras provincial government under the control of British government. This was also studied and accepted by the government of Bombay province Maharashtra due to great vitality in his recommendations in public interest. In 1896, the British government appointed Edward committee (sir Edward as chairman) to study the Indian Rural conditions, needs and scope of working of the primary Agricultural Cooperative Credit societies under the control of British government for the people to work with cooperation of the people for the people with democratic management at grass root level. The Edward Committee 1896-1904 surveyed the Indian Rural agro-banking system and passed first cooperative Societies Act 1904 which was accepted and made applicable for greater India (from Kabul to Burma) with democratic centralised cooperative credit banking; viz; from Kabul to Burma, if any primary Agricultural cooperative society was organised, then it was bound to get registration from Delhi only. This was a real scene from 1904-1908. The distance factor was main problem for for mation and registration of Agro-primary Cooperative Credit Societies. In this era cooperative credit was considered as a facile credit and cooperative banking was accepted a means to achieve the desired goal in a desired time. In 1908, Lawd recommended to add cooperative Audit, with cooperative credit and banking by increasing two sections in the cooperative Act of 1904. Thus total sections from 48 to 50 were made in the first cooperative society’s act of 1904 in 1908-1912. This added great strength to Agro-cooperative credit and banking system for Rural India. In 1912, the cooperative society Act was again examined by Sir Malcolm I. C. S and others. They suggested to add three sections more for facilitating cooperative credit, Consumption, and Marketing to the people of Rural India to protect them from exploitation of private traders and took them away from cruel clutches of exploiters by using cooperative organisation of the people for the people. It was accepted by the government in public interest. In 1914-1915, the cooperation was made state sponsored subject to give chance to the state (provincial governments) to frame their own cooperative society Acts on the basis of this model Act of 1904 with due consideration of the interpersonal situations of the concern state in preparation of their own cooperative societies act. It gave good chance to states from Kabul to Burma to register primary Agro-cooperative credit societies for credit and banking activities according to their interpersonal conditions to work and upgrade socio-economic life of rural people by effective working of primary Agro-cooperative credit and banking business. There was a rapid growth of members of primary Agro-cooperative credit and banking business and growth also found in qualities of services from 1912-1915 in cooperative credit movement in India. The first world war of 1915 gave great shock for the growth of Rural Agro-Cooperative banking due to more involvement of rural people in Indian Army. Therefore there was stunted growth of working of Agro-cooperative credit and banking from 1915 to 1925. There was Second World War in 1930-1935. The Burma separated from India in 1920 and Shyam, Rangun and Kabul were also separated in 1937-38 and became independent countries. These newly made countries accepted and used Indian model cooperative society Act of 1912-15 to make their own cooperative acts. In 1939-40 in India, the Vijayraghavacharya committee recommended to start linking of cooperative credit with Agro-production and marketing in Madras provinces in Salem district. It was applied in Salem district only for testing. India became independent country in 1947 from the clutches of britishood separate it. The public finance sub-committee (headed by Dr. D. R. Godgil) in 1946 submitted its report and recommended to allow crop loan systems to Rural people (farmers) to bring new change in farm financing by deciding Maximum Cooperative Credit Limit (M. C. L. ) per farmer, per acre per crop per season to upgrade economic strength of rural borrowers on the one hand by weathering the deep rooted exploitation of private moneylenders which gave a good chance for effective working of rural Agro-cooperative credit and banking on the other. It was again reviewed by Thakurdas Mehta committee in 1948. This committee recommended starting its application from April 1950 in First Five Year Plan. At this time Ready Recknor was not made crop-wise for farmers but Rs. 500 M. C. L. (Maximum Credit Limit) per acre per crop was approved to apply from 1951 to 1954 in the first five year plan for good financing to farmers through primary Agro-Cooperative credit societies. It was brought in real practices. In 1950-54, A. G. Gorwala I. C. S was appointed to do All India Rural Credit Survey to judge the extent of credit distribution by the cooperative credit societies in presence of several moneylenders. He did survey in 75 districts of India, in 400 villages and 127475 farmers families who found 3. 5% farm financing and banking was done since 1904 to 1954 by cooperative credit societies and 96. 5% was done by non-cooperative agencies. The extent of linking of cooperative credit with farm production and cooperative marketing was found 1 % only. There was major failure of cooperative credit and banking role in rural India in socio-economic upgradation process for farming community. The AIRCS committee 1954 gave remark, â€Å"Cooperative have failed but must succeed. † The AIRCS committee recommended starting CCR (controlled credit recovery) scheme under integrated Approach, viz: linking of cooperative credit with farm production and cooperative marketing to upgrade socio-economic life of farmers on the one hand and quality of services of cooperative credit and banking on the other. This recommendation was applied in second five year plan from 1955 to 1960. It was found that linking of cooperative credit and marketing increased from 1% to 11% and extent of cooperative credit distribution was increased from 3. 5% to 30% and maximum credit limit (MCL) increased from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1200 per crop per acre per year. This gradual growth gave great encouragement to cooperative credit and banking system in farm financing at a great length. This had motivated for a reliable and very valid effective approach through cooperative credit and banking for rural reorientation as well as upgradation of socio-economic change of rural people in rural India. This indicated a good desired shifting of cooperative credit business and gave a motivation to cooperative sector to face challenge for a desired change at farm level in the system of farming with Agro-technology. If we examine socio-economic changes from 1950 to 2012 or from first five year plan to 11th five year plan through applied cooperative credit and banking, the desired changes are found based on multiple variables with varieties of risks (challenges for changes). This scene is inviting attention of planners, surveyors, researchers and the governments to identify factors or obstacles affecting in achieving the desired results. Nobody has made any attempt on this issue at a great length till date to identify the factors affecting the quality of socio-economic change operation of cooperative credit and rural banking practices. There is urgent need and demand of the rural people, primary Agro-cooperative credit societies and applied cooperative banking to identify the problem raising factors and discover reliable and valid solutions to achieve the desired goal in the desired time. Therefore, an attempt is needed to make on this issue. The present study aims to work on this issue at a great length. Objectives of the study Broadly speaking, this study has main following objectives:- 1. To identify/ analyse the reliable and valid factors affecting the working of applied cooperative credit and banking at grassroots level and also to identify socio-economic changes at farm level and; 2. To explore practical possible solutions as remedial measures to solve the problems at grass root levels, to do socio-economic upgradation of farmers and their farming with help of modern Agro-technology and rational farm financing. Research Design The present study is going to do Exploratory-cum-Descriptive research work. It is a systematic and purposeful empirical enquiry; it includes surveys and fact-findings enquiries of different kinds. The main characteristics of this method are that the researcher has no control over the variables. It only reports what has happened or what is happening. In which the researcher does not have direct control over independent variables either what has happened or what is happening. But in this solution by the research an attempt has to make to search reliable and valid factors to discover a good solution for solving the problems. Location of the Universe/ Population B. R. College Agra of the Agra University as centre for the study and district Mewat Haryana has been selected by the purposive sampling method as definite universe of the study. Sampling design:- Sample selected by multistage stratified disproportionate random sampling. Total number of farmers members involved in CCR scheme in Agro-cooperative credit and banking are 380. Their size group and covered credit operation is given as under:- Size groupSize group of farmersTotal Farmers membersTotal Land covered by members in acresSample fractionTotal farmers A0-2. acres14028020%700 B2. 5-5. 0 acres12036020%600 C5. 0-7. 5 acres10060020%500 D7. 5-above acres2012020%100 Total members380126020%1900 Data Collection: – Research instruments:- Schedule-cum-questionnaire has been used for data collection. The Complete participant observation method and interview technique has been used for data collection. We have done pretesting at small scale to judge the effectiveness of the research ins truments. It has been found very correct and useful for the work.

The Rosetta Stone Essay - 1011 Words

The Rosetta Stone In 1799, when Napoleon’s army was dismantling a wall in Rashid, Egypt, they discovered the Rosetta Stone. Little did they know that this 11-inch thick piece of rock would be one of the greatest discoveries in history! It contained Egyptian scripture, with Greek also on the stone. This was used to decode the once lost Egyptian writing system. Before the 1800’s, attempts at trying to uncover the secrets held by the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics found on walls inside numerous tombs were useless. The pictures were falsely believed to be symbolic, representing some sort of object or idea. Something soon changed all of this misconception. 1799 was the year of a great breakthrough in Egyptology. French troops, under†¦show more content†¦Another man who devoted many years of his life to studying the stone was Jean-Francois Champollion. After many years of perseverance, Champollion finally translated the stone in 1822. He accomplished this feat by first recognizing th at hieroglyphs were not symbols, but instead were associated with phonetics, as Thomas Young had proved. (Andrews 166) His first major breakthrough in his studies was in 1808, when he resolved those fifteen signs of the demotic script related with alphabetic letters from the Coptic language. From this he concluded that Coptic language must be based on the remnants of the last of the ancient Egyptian language, and written with the Greek alphabet, which is why it was readable to Champollion and other scholars researching the stone. Also, that the hieroglyphic text was a translation of the Greek, not the reverse, as had been previously believed. By 1818, Champollion had successfully concluded that though some signs were basically ideograms, many of the glyphs had phonetic value, meaning the ancient Egyptian script was at least partially alphabetic. (Giblin 83) He came to this conclusion after referring back to three other different forms of Egyptian writing and also using Coptic as a r eference. Recognizing the name Ptolemy and Cleopatra in the Greek and demotic sections of the stone allowed him to identify those same names in hieroglyphics. Still wondering, he didnt think that hieroglyphs wereShow MoreRelatedRosetta Stones884 Words   |  4 PagesRosetta Stone can be qualified as a Hidden Champion according to criteria presented in A â€Å" Hidden Champions of the 21 Century†, even though the level of public awareness about the company was approximately 74-79%, based on general population surveys. Even though the company is not â€Å"hidden†, but it is a â€Å" champion† on the market of language- learning programs, and their success can be easily attributed to fulfillment of Hidden Champions characteristics. Lesson 1- Ambitious goals. The generalRead MoreRosetta Stone8094 Words   |  33 PagesUV3930 Rev. 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