Systems and operations Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Systems and operations Management - Essay Example While a substantial part of the reporting and operational requirements of Atokowa is currently being addressed by the system, the strain of expansion would only exacerbate the situation. If the expansion initiative of Custom Print and the Online Ordering strategy is suspended the growth of Atokowa will be stunted and its spiral decline will commence because the current difficulties in the system will only feed on itself. The initiatives of George Hargreaves and Hayley Atokowa will diversify the revenue stream of Atokowa and at the same time expand the market while widening the client demography of Atokowa. However, implementing it at this time will only triple if not double the operational problems of Atokowa implementing it after the completion of an Enterprise Resource Planning Solution roll-out would be ideal if not the best. ... tokowa brands and Customer Survey 17 References/Bibliography 17 Introduction Atokawa Advantage was founded in 1964 by the father of Jonathan Atokowa from whom he took over the reign of the company. Under the leadership of Jonathan, Atokowa has expanded to several stores all around Australia catering mostly to individual and business customers in and around the locality where Atokowa stores is at. This paper would present the analysis of the operation of Atokowa to determine challenge areas, improvement areas and growth areas. The purpose of the analysis is to recommend solutions that will enable Atokowa to resolve its current issues if there are any and respond to the demands of the ever changing market landscape in the stationary and office supply retail industry. This report shall first present the result of the analysis conducted on the operation of Atokowa that will define in detail the analysis of focus areas. After the analysis of the focus areas an assessment of the focus area shall be concluded for purposes of recommending possible solutions to the challenges posed in the focus area. Due to constraints this paper shall only present the observations in the analysis and not the process in which the analysis was conducted and the observation was arrived at. In summary the analysis in the operation of the focus areas shall be provided in seriatim as it was presented in the report. The conclusion or assessment shall follow afterwards then the recommendations that should be undertaken by the management of Atokowa to resolve its current challenges. Please note that this paper shall only focus on the technological solutions to resolve the operational and management challenges of Atokowa. Analysis of Current Systems and Operations The following focus areas were

Business Law Case Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Business Law Case - Essay Example odgers for causing her, intentionally, emotional distress and anguish but the defendants claim that no damage is recoverable unless distress result in physical injury. Infliction of emotional distress exists if an â€Å"extreme and outrageous conduct intentionally or recklessly† results in severe emotional instability in another party (Mann and Rogers 120). A person that causes such a distress assumes liability for the distress and possible consequences of the distress. An act is further said to be reckless if it disregards possible consequences or fails. According to the third restatement, knowledge of possible severe emotional instability and failure to take measures for mitigating effects of the instability and indifference over the possible consequences define recklessness. A person is entitled to damages for severe emotional distress is suffered emotional instability is severe and if an ordinary person would suffer the consequences under normal circumstances. There is no need for proof of physical harm in order to recover damages for emotional distress (Mann and Rogers 120). The case of Ferrell v. Mikula 627 SE2d7 illustrates the rule. In the case, a manager at Ruby Tuesday restaurant ordered a security offers to follow customers who were believed suspected to have left without paying for their orders. This was however a mistake because the target had paid their bills and were confused with two parties who had been excused from making payments. The target were then stopped, handcuffed and placed in police patrol car but later released after confirmation that they had actually paid their bills. The target sued for infliction of emotional distress that was dismissed at the original and appellate court. The court of appeal of Georgia argued that a case for infliction of emotional distress must meet four elements. There must have been intentional of reckless behavior that must further be â€Å"extreme or outrageous† (Mann and Rogers 121). The act must have further

Mid-Term Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Mid-Term - Essay Example this title, I will use the term children under concern to refer to children in the United States who include abandoned, orphaned or children separated from one or all of their parents. Before the Civil War, these children were used as servants. Many were traded and shipped to colonial America from England. Most of them provided labor in the farms in exchange for boarding and food. There was little government involvement in their welfare. Mostly they were held under the indenture system. A movement, congregate living movement, just before mid-eighteenth century, fought against the indenture system. The movement held that these children under concern be rehabilitated and mass housed in orphanages like charity-supported almshouse. The first of these facilities in North America got opened in Georgia and was termed â€Å"private orphan asylum†. Most of them were mostly funded by religious charities and mostly white children under age ten were taken in. When the American Revolutionary War ended, seven years in South Carolina there was established the first public orphanage. By this time private ones were being opened up in many places in the United States. In 1838 the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in EX PARTE CROUSE, held that children have needs, not rights, and that the government has to ensure provision of education, protection and care needed by children including those under concern herein. Charles Loring Brace, considered the father of modern foster care, in 1953 founded the New York Children’s Aid Society (NYCAS). This was partly motivated by the fact that orphanages were getting overwhelmed. He oversaw transportation of the children under concern from highly populated to less populated regions of the country. This ran for seventy five years till before start of the Great Depression. Around 1875, states started passing child labor laws in their legislature and got more active in foster care. 1909 then saw the first national conference for children under

Christians Should Not Take Part In Sport Or Shopping Essay Example for Free

Christians Should Not Take Part In Sport Or Shopping Essay The important thing about this statement is that it can be argued two ways. Many people would see sport or shopping as a chore therefore related to work. Others would argue that it is a leisure activity and it is not work. With this in mind the church instated a law saying that all Catholics must attend mass on a Sunday. The Catholic Church itself has no laws or restrictions about shopping or playing sport on a Sunday. By tradition Sunday was the holy day separated and set aside by the fact the mass going was essential to the days activities. In The Old testament there is a saying in the book of Ecclesiastes saying there is a set and provide time for everything which basically means people should balance out there time between things. In todays society were everything is on the move and rushed priorities should be examined and people should use the gift of time wisely. God himself as many believed set down the day of worship. Sunday has three main important events, which coincide with this day. One: Jesus rose from the dead on this day.  Two: Sunday was the first Day of the week and the first day of creation.  Three: Jesus sent down the Holy Spirit On The Pentecost.  Sunday is also a day of celebration when Catholics come together to give praise to God and to thank God for what he has given all of them.  Sport nowadays has become big business for all involved. Among all the big names in sport no one objects to playing on Sundays because of all of the money involved. This is just a small list of all the sports that are being played on Sundays Although sport is played on money for reasons other the money many include because of TV rights and because of sponsors. Christians should not take part on sport on Sunday because sport is seen as work in the churchs eyes. Many values are expressed in sport such as sportsmanship, fairplay etc.  Shopping is the second of the changing faces of Sunday is becoming the most popular one. Many family lifestyles revolve around the parents work and therefore many parents only get to see their children at the weekends. The weekend is often regarded as the days to get the shopping done and many rely on Sunday heavily. Since seven day shopping was legalised in 1977, many have taken advantage over the law. Teresa Murray head of the N. Ireland Region Of Shopping Centres said Sunday Shopping has become like a leisure pursuit for families and has become an important trading day for people in business. Business provides a service and depending on the demand it either succeeds or fails and on Sunday nowadays shopping has become a demand so in order to make money business open for the maximum hours allowed which is six. Many working families dont have much time to spend so end up using Sunday to spend time with there children or getting tings that they could get during the week such as grocery shopping. All the added time spend on Sundays has increased the employment needed for Sundays. Bob Gourley head of N. Ireland Shop Workers Union said they had been opposed to the Sunday trading laws and had in fact boycotted them for many years but however hard they try Sunday trading has become a reality. Our workers only work on Sunday where it is done by agreement

Effects of multitasking on human physiological

Effects of multitasking on human physiological It is believed by scientists that rather than simultaneous attending to all tasks at once, what really happens during multitasking is a rapid change of focus between tasks. While research supports the fact that highly practiced skills can be easily performed while one is thinking about something else, but the addition of a task that requires decision making switches ones attention to that task. When people perform higher level tasks, they are using the cognitive function called executive control This function is housed in prefrontal cortex. The part of the brain associated with perception and thinking. Executive control is the brains supervisor for most cognitive functioning. It establishes priorities, decides what tasks are the most important, and assigns mental resources to completing the tasks. Executive control has 2 main activities: goal shifting and rule activation. Although these activities take only several tenths of a second, the repeated need to switch between tasks can add extra time for performing both tasks. Management of short term memory is another fundamental aspect of multitasking. C:UsersShreyaDesktopmultitasking flowchart_files2780600401001.png Factors affecting multitasking behaviours and information task switching. Brain: We are learning a lot more each day. Advance of brain imaging and functional brain imaging (what our brain does when we challenge it) has clarified us to what happens when we multitask. Our brains are not very adapted for multiple streams of information at the same time but rather focussing at a paticular direction. When we do things that require a great deal of attention as compared to walking while chewing gum what happens is we switch between two things. And with each switch there is cost of performance that occurs. A surprising discovery tells us that people who multitask most frequently think they are the best at it. But actually thay are the worst at any important task at multitasking. One might question then what are the so called multitaskers good at? A study revealed that when we talk on phone while driving we get better at it with time. What actually happens is that they filter out the road as they are involved in a conversation. As ironically high multitaskers are bad at filtering out the road actually see the road more and drive a little better. Swithching of attention occurs in a region right behind the forehead called Brodmanns Area 10 in the brains anterior prefrontal cortex as seen in MRI. Area 10 is part of the frontal lobes, which are important for maintaining long-term goals and achieving them . The most anterior part allows us to leave something when its incomplete and return to the same place and continue from there.This gives us a form of multitasking, which is actually sequential processing. Because the prefrontal cortex is one of the last regions of the brain to mature and one of the first to decline with aging, young children do not multitask well, and neither do most adults over 60. Addiction: Its our desire and need to be engaged to novelty, its well known that novel stimuli or enviorment arouse the reward system and this is part of what allowed us to be engaged by novelty. Multitasking has a higher novel load and to continiously switch to a new task feels exciting. This sort of interaction with multitasking leads to addictive levels in people. And people crave for this type of stimuli. Research reveals that most high multitaskers believe that new information is better than old information.Where as low multitaskers believe that the information they are working with is more valuable.It is seen that younger people look at information because they feel something thrilling is happening out there, for older people who check their e-mails dont want to get away. Stress and hormonal activity: Whenever demands exceed abilities, stress is bound to follow. Multitasking is espicially stressful when the tasks are important, as they often are on the job. Its said that brain responds to impossible demands by pumping out adrenaline and other stress hormones that put a person on edge. These hormoes provide a quick burst of energy wont make multitasking easier. Just like an old pickup cant go 150 miles per hour no matter how much fuel you put in he tank or how hard you step on the gas. Over time of stress of multitasking may even become dangerous. Results show that a steady flow stress hormones can strain the body and threaten the health. As recently reported by the American National Institute for Occupational Saftey and Health, numerous studies found out that on-the-job stress can cause headache, stomach problems and sleep disorders. Chronic work-related problems can lead to chronic problems includind back pain, hear disease and depression. Studies reveal that our bodies release hormone called cortisol during stress, caused due to multitasking. Cortisol is needed to carry out various functions in the body but incresed levels of cortisol results in high BP, sleep problems, weakness of immune system, imbalances in blood sugar levels etc. Thinking: Deep hard thinking, the type required when we write a paprer or read a complicated news story, has been tremendiously compromised . Multitasking either prevents you to do that or wonderfully allows us to avoid it. Hearing: Broadbents theory of selective attention, is based on his dichotic listening experiments that required his subjects to shadow speech messages in one ear while ignoring the messages in the other ear. Broadbent concluded that little if any content from the non attended ear is remembered. From these observations Broadbent proposed that there is limited porcessing channel that information is filtered through from a sensory porcessing stage on its way to a short-term memory store or buffer. From here information may be processed further before being transmitted into a long-term memory store. When this channel becomes over loaded, such as in dichotic listening experiments, some of the information is filtered out while other information is selected for further processing.The filtering mechanism selects inputs based on different physical cues from the stimulus input, such as location in space, and/or frequency. Vocal music can be distracting while instrumental music can aid in learning as it helps funnel out distractions in few people. Memory: Various experiments are conducted where participants are asked to learn a list of words presented visually while listening for the occurrence of certain digit strings presented through the adiutory channel. They are then tested for memory of the word list. Different variations have been investigated including different modalities, the same modalities, task difficulty, the effects of practice, the effects of eother primary or secondary task on performance, and testing during encoding and reterival. Almost without exception performance on one or both tasks suffers a decrement as a direct result of having to perform the two tasks simultaneously. Beeps in study disrupted declerative memory (eg. When we recall what we did last weekend).For tasks performed with distractions hippocampus of the barin was not involved (necessay for processing, storing and recalling information. But infact the straitum was involved. Straitum is a part of brain system that underlies our ability to mearn new skills. Multitasking makes it more likely to rely on striatum to learn. Thus multitasking changes the way people think. Vision: In an investigation performed by Australian College of Road Saftey interaction between visual impairment and multitasking was performed. It revealed that multitasking (like talking on the phone or using in-vehicle navigational devices) had a significant detrimental impact upon driving performances. Multi-tasking further exacerbated the effects of visual impairment, where the visual dual task had a greater detrimental effect on driving performance than the auditory dual task (p Motor activity: An experiment was performed to find out the effects of multitasking on muscle activity . Muscles of the upper extremity were examined.The thesis inspected concurrent grip and shoulder extensions with additional and simultaneous demands of task precision and mental processing. It concluded that incerased mental loads, when combined with physical work, have the potential to interfere with task performance and likely elicit elevated levels of muscle activity. Some research shows the relationship between stimulation and performance forms a bellcurve: a little stimulationwhether its coffee or a blaring soundtrackcan boostperformance, but too much is stressful and causes a fall-off.

The First Generation Of Computers :: essays research papers

The First Generation of Computers The first generation of computers, beginning around the end of World War 2, and continuing until around the year 1957, included computers that used vacuum tubes, drum memories, and programming in machine code. Computers at that time where mammoth machines that did not have the power our present day desktop microcomputers. In 1950, the first real-time, interactive computer was completed by a design team at MIT. The "Whirlwind Computer," as it was called, was a revamped U.S. Navy project for developing an aircraft simulator. The Whirlwind used a cathode ray tube and a light gun to provide interactively. The Whirlwind was linked to a series of radars and could identify unfriendly aircraft and direct interceptor fighters to their projected locations. It was to be the prototype for a network of computers and radar sites (SAGE) acting as an important element of U.S. air defense for a quarter-century after 1958. In 1951, the first commercially-available computer was delivered to the Bureau of the Census by the Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation. The UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was the first computer which was not a one-of-a- kind laboratory instrument. The UNIVAC became a household word in 1952 when it was used on a televised newscast to project the winner of the Eisenhower- Stevenson presidential race with stunning accuracy. That same year Maurice V. Wilkes (developer of EDSAC) laid the foundation for the concepts of microprogramming, which was to become the guide for computer design and construction. In 1954, the first general-purpose computer to be completely transistorized was built at Bell Laboratories. TRADIC (Transistorized Airborne

Society with Soul

A Society with Soul â€Å"As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit. † This quote by Seneca, a Roman philosopher, says that nothing good can ever come out of the absence of culture. Throughout history, many have argued that a society stripped of its culture is a society stripped of its soul. In the novel Things Fall Apart, the Ibo people are completely taken of their culture by the white colonialists.Despite a growing pattern of submission to new culture within the tribe, the people never truly lost their soul. The Ibo tribe was invaded by outsiders, their culture threatened with accusations on their way of life, worship, and customs, practically being forced into submission. The Ibo people may have been entirely stripped of their culture, but definitely not of their soul. Due to the colonialists attempting to assimilate the Ibo people, the tribe lost their culture but not the essence of who they are, allowing them to triumph against all odds.The white people pushed to assimilate the Africans, especially in their religion, ultimately tearing families apart and disconnecting the tribe. Obierika even says, â€Å"The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on things that held us together and we have fallen apart,† (Achebe 152). As the British colonized the Ibo tribes in Africa, they brought with them their new religion of Christianity.At first these new beliefs were not accepted by the Ibo people, but quickly became a major threat to their old way of life. The appeal of wealth and the flow of money into their village from British traders, in combination with support for the colonialists’ new government and judicial system, eventually attracted many Ibos to convert to Chri stianity. Ibo society was torn in half, with some being lured in by the British, and others staying faithful to traditional Ibo customs.In addition, by the white missionaries seeking to convert children into their religion, there was no one to carry on the tribe’s traditions, resulting in the falling apart of the tribal system. The attempts of the colonialists to assimilate the Africans in religion caused families and the tribe to be divided. Despite these challenges, the tribe did not lose the essence of who they are and stayed true to a lot of the beliefs of their culture. The Ibo people were stripped of their culture by the colonialists, but they never lost their soul.Amidst the invasion of the white people, the Africans still found ways to maintain their beliefs and the essence of who they were. When Okoli killed the sacred python, he clearly went against traditional Ibo customs, but at the same time, he inadvertently reinforced Ibo customs. The Ibo people always look bac k to their culture for guidance and believe in it regardless of outside threats. Because it is all they have ever known, the tribe maintains their peaceful ways by deciding not to drive the Christians out with acts of violence, but rather, by ostracizing them.Soon afterwards, Okoli dies of an illness, which reaffirms the tribe’s trust in their gods. â€Å"His death showed that the gods were still able to fight their own battles,† (Achebe 141) and would rightfully punish those who went against them. It made the tribe realize that the gods were still with them, causing them to repeal the new policy of ostracism towards the converts. Furthermore, n the end, the colonialists may have ultimately drove Okonkwo to kill himself, forcing him to go against his culture, but in doing so, Okonkwo also reminded the tribe of their culture.In taking his own life, he reasserted Ibo beliefs, one of the tribesman even saying, â€Å"It is against our custom,† (Achebe 178) when aske d by the District Commissioner why the tribe could not take Okonkwo down from the tree. The tribesman went on to say, â€Å"It is an abomination for a man to take his own life,† (Achebe 78). In spite of threats to their way of life and a growing disconnection of their tribe, the Ibos remained true to their culture no matter what. In conclusion, the Ibo people never lost what made them who they were despite challenges presented by the British colonialists.The white people’s attempt to assimilate Africans to the Christian faith resulted in the tearing apart of families, the disconnection of the tribe, and subsequently, the loss of the entire Ibo culture. Notwithstanding, the Ibo people did not lose their soul, or the essence of who they are. Regardless of accusations on their way of life and mounted submission to new culture, the Ibo people were undeterred by the threat of invaders. The Ibo tribe was a society entirely stripped of their culture that made it out on the ot her side not stripped of their soul.