Baxter Manufacturing Essay Example for Free

Baxter Manufacturing Essay Baxter Manufacturing Company (BMC) is a metal stampings company. Its major customers include, Ford, General Motors, Honda of America, General Electric and Whirlpool. The company is made up of two divisions it makes brackets and other components that go into the finished product, they also make motor casings. BMC employees about 420 non-union employees and has been steadily growing for the last 6 years. They have been approached to build a factory in Mexico, and settled on building in Queretaro, which is about a 3-hour drive north of Mexico City. Don Collins, who is the MIS manager, felt that since a new plant was being built with top of the line equipment and computer systems that they might be able to implement a system upgrade for the entire company. One of the problems was that BMC wanted the new system implemented by the end of the year. Given the quick deadline they decided to focus on support for the Mexico plant, a felt that the following approaches: 1. Connect the Mexican plant to BMC’s existing systems through a high-speed communications line   2.  Contract through an application service provider (ASP) to provide systems support to the Mexican plant. 3. Employ a piecemeal solution where they would acquire a number of software packages that could run on the networked PC’s in Mexico that would serve the basic needs of the Mexican plant. (MIS) The task force team ran into difficulties with language and cultural differences, the mindset of the employees and Mexico and the long distances between them. They met with resistance and self pride from the Mexican employees and were unable to communicate effectively with them. Target As a result of the lack of communication and the language differences the task force decided to go with option 3. They were working on locating vendors to provide support and with basic language software to help the employees stateside. The main issues that they are having are support for the systems and training for the equipment. By outsourcing some or all of ts IT work to a company that is familiar with the language and culture it could help expedite the time of getting the plant operational. In addition developing a training program that could be taught companywide could help benefit the entire company. Proposal One of the main issues that BMC is looking for is international support. They are been unable to work directly with its own employees due to the language barrier that it faces. By using a company like Unisys, they could provide the infrastructure support, business service support and many other features. They offer support in English and Spanish and could help ease the burden of the local IT department. Unisys could also implement a Cloud, in which the entire company could use to help transfer information to and from different locations. â€Å"Business forces have caused IT to try to figure out how to provide flexible services faster, but, without large, up front investments. Unisys has a number of cloud solutions for providing the necessary flexibility and responsiveness needed to achieve significant business value. † (Unisys) A great deal of time has gone into the development of this plant, but an equal or greater part must be present in training of the employees. In order for the plant to be fully operational at the level that is required by MBC, a training program must be designed. They would benefit greatly by having management train with how BMC currently runs its operation. By also setting up a video conferencing line they could help problem solve over the computer and or phone lines helping eliminate the distance between the two plants.

Boots secures its Wellbeing Essay -- essays research papers

Boots secures its Wellbeing The Wellbeing Web site, launched by Boots and Granada, had to establish systems to identify and screen out online fraudsters without inconveniencing its genuine customers. Susan Amos reports When chemist Boots and leisure giant Granada launched Wellbeing.com, a Web site that sells goods ranging from toothbrushes to exercise bikes, they realised that like all major online shopping ventures it faced a significant threat from fraudsters. They wanted to make it easy for genuine consumers to buy, while keeping fraudsters at bay those who use computer-generated credit card numbers to buy goods, and do not pay for them. When an order is placed on Wellbeing.com, its bank, Barclays Merchant Services, checks that the credit card number is genuine, that the card is not stolen and that there are funds available. However, this system provides little safeguard against a number being used fraudulently if the card has not been stolen. To add further checks, Wellbeing turned to Texas-based ClearCommerce's Enterprise Merchant Engine an integrated fraud management system. Kevin Figgitt, third party operations manager at Wellbeing, says Enterprise Merchant Engine is very easy to use. 'You set up a number of rules. According to what the customer types in, it returns codes and you can decide what action to take for each response code,' he says. The software can refer a customer to a contact centre to complete a transaction or block purchases entirely. The eng...

Plato: Knowledge Essay

We all continue to learn new things in life day in by day out; incessantly increasing our knowledge is essential to sustain man’s life path on this earth. Knowledge can be sought in different ways but to truly seek knowledge, one has to read, understand through experience and believe what the word of God says about faith. Acquiring knowledge through our five senses and faith, both give us insight on competing ways of getting at the truth. A person who reads, write and believes in the word of God will become rich with knowledge but the latter will not. Moreover, in order to achieve knowledge, one has to be taught it or teach him or herself (because humans are not born with the ability of knowing; they must acquire it) through observation and reasoning through faith. Different views exhibit on how knowledge is achieved. One may say through common sense and observation, while another may say through teachers and peers. According to the philosopher Plato in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, â€Å"Certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blindness. The power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being. † In making this comment, this Greek philosopher argues that, everyone has the capacity to learn because knowledge is present in the soul thus we all can acquire knowledge and wisdom by recollecting and putting together what in fact the soul already knows. Plato is right that humans have the aptitude to gain knowledge, but he seems on more dubious ground when he claims that knowledge is already present in one’s soul. I find this to be unconvincing because humans seek education to learn something which they didn’t already know. For example an adolescent may ponder upon why the hairs on his arms and legs grow very short while the opposite occurs on his or her head. But through an education in biology in his or her later years, he or she will come to find out that each hair follicle on one’s body part will grow different depending on where it is located on the body part. The young adolescent never had this knowledge about hair follicles till he was taught it. So therefore, knowledge doesn’t already exist in the soul. One has to gain it in order to have it but we all have the ability to achieve it if we put in effort. In regards to observation, reasoning through faith must also be looked into to fully attain the knowledge that is essential to lead the best life and attain happiness. Observations only gives us half of the knowledge we need to acquire, faith gives us the rest. In Scully’s view from the X-Files, â€Å"As much as I have my faith, Father, I am a scientist, trained to weigh evidence. But science only teaches us how†¦ not why. † In other words, Scully is saying that, knowledge without faith leads us only half way†¦ we have to come full circle in order to completely gain absolute knowledge. I agree that this statement is true because without faith, one’s knowledge is worthless. For example, before Copernicus, most scientists believed that the earth was the center of the universe, thus the sun revolved around the earth. But through faith and reasoning, Copernicus came to conclude that it was rather the earth that revolved around the sun, making the universe we live in heliocentric; and his jurisdiction is held to be true till this day. The two concepts go hand in hand; one cannot achieve absolute knowledge without faith and reasoning/observation. In order to achieve knowledge through faith, we must walk through the ways of our spiritual leader. In The Francis Trilogy of Thomas of Celano, Thomas of Celano writes, â€Å"Ah! Inclined and strengthened by the Holy Spirit the blessed servant of the Most High, seeing that the appointed time was at hand, followed that blessed impulse of his soul. Thus, as he trampled upon worldly things, he made his way to the greatest good. † In other words, Thomas of Celano is saying that, St. Francis detached himself from matters of the world by following Christ, who fortified him with the Holy Cross and the Holy Spirit enabling him to transform his worldly ways to resemble the will of God, thus St. Francis gained his faith through the knowledge of the word of God. In order for St. Francis to have faith, he had to have knowledge of God, which he acquired through his experience; asking God for enlightenment and through the visions he had that directed his will to God’s. Reason and faith leads to wisdom and knowledge, without it, the knowledge that one acquires is corrupt and useless. Others may disagree saying that one can still have knowledge without faith, but knowledge without faith leads you nowhere because you still haven’t really gained full understanding of the subject matter.

Dominant Ideology Thesis

The dominant ideology of a society is the collection of values, attitudes, and beliefs that shape the way it views reality. However, sociologists argue that the dominant ideology is only one of a multitude of ideologies at play and that its preeminence is the only aspect that distinguishes it from other competing viewpoints. In Marxism Sociologists differ on how the dominant ideology manifests itself. Theorists influenced by the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels maintain that the dominant ideology always represents the interests of the ruling class over the workers. For example, the ideology of ancient Egypt that represented the pharaoh as a living god and therefore infallible clearly expressed the interests of the pharaoh, his dynasty, and his entourage. The dominant ideology of bourgeois capitalism functions the same way. There are two ways by which the dominant ideology is perpetuated, according to Marx. Intentional propagation is the work of cultural elites within the ruling class: its writers and intellectuals, who then use mass media to disseminate their ideas.Spontaneous propagations happen when the mass media environment is so total in its efficacy that its basic tenets are unquestioned. Self-censorship among knowledge workers, artists, and others ensures that the dominant ideology is unchallenged and the status quo remains Of course, Marx and Engels predicted that revolutionary consciousness would sweep away such ideologies that kept power from the masses. For example, unionizing and collective actions would upset the world views propagated by the dominant ideology, as these are representations of a working-class ideology.