Nonviolence and South Africa Gandhi Essay Example for Free

Nonviolence and South Africa Gandhi Essay War is defined a state of hostility conflict or antagonism. But this definition would be thrown aside by a man named Mohandas Gandhi a man who would soon come to revolutionize India through the power of peace. Gandhi’s protests and civil disobedience would soon help create the India we see today. Gandhi did take India back from the British but not violently as one might expect, but peacefully through civil disobedience. This means that laws that Gandhi and his followers would refuse to obey any laws that they viewed to be unjust, not by striking blows but by carrying on with there daily activities while refusing to follow certain laws that they feel practice a system of apartheid. But keeping in mind never to strike back but to always keep your head up and never give up. Gandhi developed this idea of civil disobedience after his experience of apartheid while in South Africa. Gandhi while in South Africa Gandhi witnessed first hand the great injustices people of color faced simply while walking down the street. For example the need for a pass book by those of color. Gandhi saw this injustice and interjected, holding a public protest burning passbooks and symbolically burning the separation between people of color in South Africa and the British. But Gandhi did not stop there he went on to take this system of civil disobedience to India. In India he continued to gain followers and slowly take back India through his peaceful movements such as his salt march and cloth burning. Finally over the course of his adult life Gandhi had taken back India from the British all without India striking a blow. Gandhi clearly revolutionized India into its current state through peace. Gandhi, through peace, has helped change the way we see war.

Adaptation to Climate Change

Adaptation to Climate Change ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE CHANGE; AN ISSUE THAT MUST NOT BE OVERLOOKED There are many compelling questions one can ask about how climate science experts and economic experts interpret the change in climate and man’s contribution to it. To argue that our earth is not warming is futile; nonetheless, the risk of trying to prevent it is very high. It is only useful if we try to adapt. In the field of climate change, scientists denounce non-science experts claiming that these are technical questions for those who understand the theories and concepts. The controversy over whether global warming exists or not, is undoubtedly, a scientific question. However, deciding whether we should intervene, and if so, what actions to embrace is clearly not a scientific question. It is an economic question, which puts us firmly in the realm of economic experts. For any continuing event, there are five theory responses: maximizing, inverting, preventing, adapting and ignoring. Supposing we do not want to maximize or ignore global warming, the three applicable options are reversing, prevention (known as â€Å"mitigation† in the climate change idiom) or adaptation. Right up until the present day, the favoured option has been prevention. For a period of twenty-five years, public servants have debated only this response. Margaret Thatchers speech to the UN assembly (in 1989) throws light on the beginning of this approach. Later came Al Gore and Kyoto with the Stern Review adding to the list. Currently, David Cameron and Edward Miliband debate about whether or not climate change is a national security threat and which party is best placed to prevent this threat. There are good scientific reasons to believe that prevention (or even inverting) is a realistic option. Since the `90s there have been tremendous breakthroughs with our ability to reduce chlorofluorocarbons. Despite this, there are those who believe that the past twenty-five years have brainwashed us into believing that our potential and ability to prevent global warming by reducing Carbon emissions is much less compared to some Sulphur emissions and other pollutants. These years of framing tremendous exorbitant prevention schemes only took some few degrees centigrade off global warming, in comparison with the rise of three to four degrees. This puts the minimum price of such vanity at 5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product each year, with some models recommending that the definite cost is realistically more than 20 per cent. Scientific inclined people reply by saying we must increase our attempt to prevent global warming from advancing. However, China and India and America will disagree and in economically desolate Britain there are no chances requesting for more. Considering prevention were realistic, policy analysis recommends it would be dreadful an idea to consider. At the moment, according to government criteria in the UK, there is difficulty in trying to get access to a global warming mitigation scheme that matches cost with benefits. As an example, the rediscovery of the strategy for the renewal of energy having a twenty-year cost of fifty-seven billion pounds to seventy billion pounds but only benefits around four billion pounds to five billion pounds. The problem is so worse that couple of years back the guidance for the ministerial sign-off of policy impact assessments amended the strategy so that ministers no longer proclaim that their assertion that benefits will exceed costs. At the present moment, they sign to acknowledge they solely assume that benefits â€Å"justify† costs. The few analysis that found more positive net profits, such as the Climate Change Act of 2008, reckoned a global consensus that has not been implemented. On that note, it is absurd to recommend that the UK’s doing ten times more to prevent warming proceedings could perhaps be an outstanding scheme, even though it will be possible to work. The economics of preventing global warming has simply not been up to the task. Prior to the famous Stern Review, economic experts observing the sector thought that adapting to the change in climate patterns should be the pivotal strategy. What â€Å"adaptation† will suggest in a practical way is that we cut the risk of spending too much money, and the program will be less complicated. There are some UK Green schemes that influence the public to use extravagant energy and make them pay out incompetent immense sum of capital to cater for insulation. These Green systems also tax their traveling in ways that force them to execute reduced trade and craft which does not only hamper the growth, but also make adaptation very hard and unyielding. In the year 2012 the UK authority acquired forty-five billion pounds from fuel taxes, which corresponds to 2.9% GDP. While UK authorities evaluate green schemes will increase medium-scaled vocation invoice by thirty-eight per cent over the next sixteen years. On the contrary, the most outstanding project is by instigatin g GDP to allow the folks to be more prone to behaving in ways that are friendly to their habitat Moreover, the public should not misuse their wealth, on mitigation attempts while fragmenting capital for adaptation. If the UK authorities do not have enough funds and they should opt between money for energy and money for flooding protection, it must be considered a walkover. There is the need to investigate several ways to adapt to the warming of our globe with likely brutal climate. These strategies should change the methods of supporting our rivers by building flood defence systems, developing of crops that can be tolerant to drought and using water sources that are scarce in a more efficient manner. Adaptation would not be inexpensive or straightforward. However, it will be more attainable than prevention and will cost so much less. Additionally, adaptation is highly safer than prevention on two significant techniques. Firstly, we do expect that global warming will not occur as we presume. Ten years earlier, scientists studying climate patterns have scuffled to explain that the temperature has not sprung in view of the late 80s. They persist it does not make any discrepancy to their indelible tale about whether warming advancement exists, and what their consequential effects are. Moreover, perchance, it could be right. Nevertheless it makes a change to policy assessment.   If, in 1997, it was clear that abstaining from mitigation of climate patterns could not cause any rise in temperatures, there should have been a concern to adjust the way we assess our schemes. Virtually no scheme which has no effect within three to five years is a good one to start, by virtue of how we discount our future. Secondly, adaptation is much safer considering we only know nearly insufficient facts about prevention strategies and may suffer a great loss if they do not function, or they might develop delinquent long duration response. When we adapt only when there is a need, there is a reduction in waste of time and capital that is crucial to sustainable development.   At the point of finality, adaptations make us prosperous and have richer tastes. It seems plausible that we can devise means that can stop global warming from getting out of hand. However, we have wasted twenty-five years in trying to prevent warming of our globe, and have merely scraped the plain. In that initiative, we have lost untold large sums of money and are planning to waste even more. We do not have to disbelief the real existence of climate change to reject the notion that adaptation is a not a good tactic. Our method of prevention has perished, adaptation is the key. WORD COUNT: 1235 BISMARK NTIM-PEASAH KOFI BIBLIOGRAPHY: . Australian Broadcasting Corporation, viewed 28 November 2014, .GOV.UK, viewed November 2014, viewed 28 November 2014, .The Guardian, viewed 2 December 2014, .Scientific American, viewed 4th December 2014, .European Commision, viewed 7 December 2014, .The Telegraph, viewed 7 December 2014, . The Telegraph, viewed 7 December 2014, .Wikipedia, viewed 11 January 2014,

Web-base Quality Management Systems

Web-base Quality Management Systems Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Defining Quality, History and Achieving International Quality Standards Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people in different spheres of life. It is a degree or grade of excellence or worth, a characteristic property that defines the apparent individual nature of something or totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. In recent years, many organisations have adopted quality management systems to improve the quality of both goods and services through the application of efficient quality management methods and principles (Feigenbaum, 2000). The reason why so many organisations have started on the journey is either because of customer pressure for ISO 9000 certification or because the firms themselves have realised the strategic advantage of having this certificate, i.e. it would give them an edge over their competitors. Most of the firms which started out on the journey to ISO 9000 still may not have completed that journey. In general, it takes 2 years, and obtaining this coveted certificate is only a first step towards the ultimate goal: total quality management (TQM). Reaching this goal may take at least 5 years. In the next sections of the dissertation we will take a closer look at the characteristics of the different quality management systems. In this section, we concentrate on the concept of quality itself. We start with the two types of quality, namely: Objective quality, which is simply the products total number of quality attributes. Subjective quality, which is a result of the consumers experience of the products objective attributes. Subjective quality is thus defined as the degree of fulfillment of consumers expectations (Feigenbaum, 2000). Beyond the customers desirable expectations, there are always the customers latent expectations. Manufacturers and the service providers must therefore find the hidden expectations in order to keep the customer satisfied. It is subjective quality which matters to the company, and it is this definition which Deming used in his renowned eight-day quality seminars for Japanese top managers in 1950. Demings message to them was simple but powerful: The consumer is the most important part of the production line. The idea that customers should be seen as a part of the production line was in itself a revolutionary one at that time. A logical conclusion is that quality production is only possible if it is systematically and continuously based on customer desires and needs. It is simple in theory but difficult in practice because there are many obstacles to overcome along the way. Demings 14 points, which we have taken the liberty of calling stations along the way, are among the most important means of overcoming these obstacles. You may ask this important question: Why have the Japanese been better at understanding Demings message than the Western world? There are many reasons for this, but one of the most intriguing reasons may be found in the Japanese language, and thus in Japanese culture. In the Japanese language, quality management can be translated as quality is equal to the attributes of the things (i.e. what peoples talk about). This interpretation results in the following definition of quality management: Control of the attributes of a product which consumers talk about. To understand why consumers talk about a products attributes, we will delve into motivation theory. Herzberg has divided motivation into two factors: Factors which create satisfaction (satisfiers). Factors which create dissatisfaction (dissatisfiers). Similarly, many objective attributes of a product or service can be categorised. We may talk about the basic attributes that the consumer expects when he/she buys the product. If these are not present in sufficient quantities, the consumer experiences dissatisfaction. If the expected attributes are present, naturally the consumer is satisfied, but the interesting and crucial thing is that the degree of satisfaction will not necessarily be particularly high. The experience will be more or less neutral. Apart from the attributes which the customer expects to find, it is always possible to build attributes into the product or service which the customer does not expect to find, i.e. attributes which will delight or satisfy him/her. The more of these attributes that are present in the product or services, the greater the satisfaction, and this satisfaction will, in many cases, increase significantly. We call these attributes value-added quality. However, in Japan they use the term charming quality, whereas in the US they interpret this as exciting quality. We believe that value-added quality covers both. One example of expected quality in air travel is safety. Korean Air lost its reputation as a quality airline in the wake of the tragic incident of a passenger airline being shot down over Soviet territory. Prior to this incident, Korean Air was rated as one of the top quality airlines in the world. Afterwards, Korean Airs quality ratings dropped significantly. In our view, the only thing which can adequately explain this is that Korean Air had failed to deliver the customers expected quality. As an example of value-added quality, let us consider the added service offered by ISS Laundry Service, a subsidiary of International Service Systems (ISS). This company which, among other activities, changes bed-linen in hotel rooms, suddenly had an idea. As they were there to change the sheets, they might as well see if anything else needed doing, e.g. small repairs, changing light-bulbs, etc., and report this to the hotel management. This unexpected service, which hardly costs ISS anything, created an enormous amount of goodwill for the company among its customers. The understanding behind Demings assertion, that the consumer is the most important aspect of the production line, lies precisely in the subjective definition of quality, which we will be discussing in this dissertation. The introduction of quality management theory towards the end of the 1980s led to the development of a new concept called total quality. This concept was defined as follows (Kanji, 2002): Qualityis to satisfy customers requirements continuously. Total qualityis to achieve quality at low cost. Total quality managementis to obtain total quality by involving everyones daily commitment. These definitions will become clearer as we proceed through the dissertation. The objective of TQM is to improve continuously each and every activity in the company focusing on the customer. Every product has some deficiency, i.e. risks for making customers dissatisfied. These deficiencies must be continually eliminated and, at the same time, the firm must ensure that its product or service always incorporate the quality attributes which satisfy its customers. 1.2 Total quality management The concept of TQM is a logical development of total quality control (TQC), a concept first introduced by A. V. Feigenbaum in 2000 in a book of the same name. Though Feigenbaum had other things in mind with TQC, it only really caught on in engineering circles, and thus never achieved the total acceptance in British companies that was intended. TQC was a hit in Japan, on the other hand, where the first quality circles were set up in 1962, which later developed into what the Japanese themselves call company-wide quality control (CWQC). this is identical to what people in the West today call TQM. One of the main reasons for the failure of TQC in British companies was a management misconception that responsibility for implementing TQC could be delegated to a central quality department. In doing so, management overlooked one of the most important points in TQC, namely managements wholehearted commitment to quality improvements. The aim of the new concept, TQM, is to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Thus, management have been directly included in the definition of the concept, making it impossible for them to avoid their responsibility. To include the word management here sends an unmistakable signal straight into executive offices that this is a job for top management, including the board of directors. TQM will be further discussed in following chapters. Chapter 2 Quality Perspectives The inadequacy of traditional management in UK Japan Traditional British forms of management are based on a philosophy which divides responsibility for decisions into strategic, tactical and operational levels, i.e. the so-called management pyramid. We now know that this management conception is totally inadequate for modern, complex companies, since it does not give the connection between top management and the main processes at the bottom responsible for customer satisfaction. As a result, the management is ignorant of the real problems on the operational level, and do not provide the support and backing that the operation level needs for the creation of customer satisfaction (Feigenbaum, 2000). The decisions which cascade down from top management are often exclusively budgetary in nature, containing instructions which are forced on lower levels without due consideration of their problems. Many local branches of a bank have similar experiences. A typical example of this was noted after some Danish bank mergers took place at the, end of the 1980s. Branch managers of these banks received orders by internal post to cut staff numbers by a certain figure with no indication of how this could be achieved without drastically reducing the quality of products and services offered to their customers. Hiromoto (2002) describes this as management by terrorism. In discussing British and Japanese management philosophy, Konosuke Matsushita, founder of one of the worlds biggest companies, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic, National, Technics, etc.), said: We are going to win and the industrial West is going to lose out: theres nothing much you can do about it, because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, youre convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business. For you, the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses into the hands of labour. (p). Hoinville (2002) feels that the emphasis of managements commitment has its origin in the system, the reason for quality defects. It has been estimated that 85% of all defects are caused by system errors, i.e. errors which only management has the authority to change. Management must show by its actions that it has understood the message. It must constantly strive to reduce system errors by setting up quality goals, drawing up quality policies and quality plans, and participating actively in the follow-up auditing phase. Finally, management must concede its own lack of knowledge in the quality field and take the lead in acquiring new knowledge. If management does all this, it will have created a firm foundation on which future quality can be built. Conversely, there would be little point in building quality on a shaky foundation. We have already pointed out that the customer is the most important part of the production line. Deming (2002) introduced this idea to top Japanese managers in 1950 by means of a basic outline of an arbitrary production system, or part of a production system. This outline, which must today be considered traditional, shows that both customer and supplier are part of the production system, and that information for improving this comes from two sources: consumer research and process tests. Since this outline also applies to an arbitrary sub-system, it shows that customer and supplier concepts embrace much more than just external customers and suppliers. Internal customers and suppliers, i.e. employees, are at least as important as the external ones. Any person, or process, which forms part of the production system must recognise that it serves a number of internal customers, and the quality of the output delivered to these customers is crucial to the end result, i.e. the quality of the output delivered to the external customer. Deming (2002) himself concedes that, in 1950, this was a formidable challenge for the Japanese top managers, but they accepted the challenge, and the result is there for us all to see today. In Demings words: A new economic age had begun. Today it is difficult to understand that such a simple message presented the Japanese with such a difficult challenge. Our experience of top managers is that they accept the message without question. However, this does not lessen the difficulty of the challenge, because it implies that firms traditional information systems are totally inadequate. A culture must be established to ensure that internal customer research functions just as well as external. Here, it is important to point out that internal analysis is based on entirely different principles from external analysis. Communication and team-building are the key words here. Obviously, the participation of top management is necessary in building up this culture. It can be seen that the Focus on the customer and the employee is much more comprehensive than just the focus on the customer, which is the norm in service management. The latter refers solely to external customers. The former, while including these, also stresses the internal customer/supplier relationship. This relationship is one of the most important innovations which TQM has introduced. Quality Management In Todays Era As we have discussed above that how the management of quality is vital to the output product of any organization it has made clear that without an excellent quality management system an organization can not implement total quality management. In todays era new ways of quality management have been introduced that can make quality management a much easier and effective job for the management body. Technology has been quiet advance in todays world and every organization is trying to get its hand on the most advance technology that can take it to a much higher level from its competitiors. A new emerging technology for managing quality in well established organizations is the use of Web-Based Quality Management Systems. Why this technology is vital today is beacuse of organizations expanding their businesses worldwide or operating at different geoghraphical locations. It is much easier to manage the quality in an organization that is operating at one location but if it has its operations going on at different locations it is much harder to implement and manage total quality management. But these new systems have overcome this gap by providing a centralized hub to manage the quality. No matter how scattered the operations of the organizations are and how many stake holders are involved, by implementing these systems organizations need not to worry about the distance and communication gap. Competition and cost consciousness on the one side an increasing demand for quality and reliability on the other side are contrary requirements in present production engineering. This must be considered also from the point of view of the international standards about quality management and quality assurance. The origins of quality management and quality assurance in a modern sense began in manufacturing organizations at about the beginning of the twentieth century [1], and many of the tools for quality analysis and improvement were developed for manufacturing problems. Through the 1980s, this manufacturing emphasis dominated the profession. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, business began to recognise the importance of quality service in achieving customer satisfaction and competing in the global marketplace. In the late 1990s also the public domain and governmental departments became aware of the general importance of quality issues. In a very important sense, this recognition has expanded the definition and  concept of quality to include nearly any organisational improvement such as the reduction of manufacturing cycle time and improved worker skills. And also the public sector is now starting to take care of quality management within its structures. In addition to industrial organisations and the manufacturing industry also service organisations build up quality systems. Ancillary services in manufacturing companies as well as stand-alone service organisations such as hospitals and banks are beginning to realise the benefits of a focus on quality. A number of different industries are successively doing business around the globe and the quality systems that are availaible in the market does not mostly cater a specific industry and all of them provide different features, tools and options, so it is a complex decision to choose the best availaible solution from a wide range of variety. In this dissertation different availaible web-based quality management systems are reviewed and their shortnesses are pointed out and a model is proposed in the end that covers all gaps in the currently availaible systems. Chapter 2: Literature Review In this chapter literature review is carried out and analyzed that which tools and schemes are imperative for the management of quality and how they cooperate in the quality management. This will enable to know how different branches of an organization can be indulged with quality by using what sort of tools and how these tools can benifit any organization. â€Å"The approach to quality most extensively adopted by Western companies in recent years has been the application of national and international (ISO 9000 or equivalent) quality management standards. This approach is following firmly along the quality assurance path. It is more proactive than reliance on detection/inspection and allows for the use of quality tools primarily to stop non-conforming products being produced or non-conforming services being delivered in the first place. Hence there is a switch implied from detection to prevention via quality systems, procedures and a quality manual.† [18] 2.1 Quality Management Tools Techniques Numerous definitions and methodologies have been created to assist in managing the quality-affecting aspects of business operations. Many different techniques and concepts have evolved to improve product or service quality. Tools and techniques like charts, graphs, histograms and complex tools like Statistical Process Control, Quality Function Deployment, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Design of Experiments have been used for quality management for a number of years. All of these tools are very effective for quality evaluation and implementation when applied rightly and at correct situation. Juan Jose Tari and Vicente Sabater {Quality management tools} in their research on â€Å"Quality tools and Techniques† has outlined few important tools and techniques that can be luminously helping in managing and increasing organizations quality standards. The very basic tools, the management tools for quality and techniques for quality management are outlined in the table below: Basic Quality Management Tools Management Tools Techniques Cause Effect Diagram Affinity Diagram Benchmarking Check Sheet Arrow Diagram Design of Experiments Control chart Matrix Diagram FMEA Graphs Matrix Data Analysis Fault Tree Analysis Histoghram Process Decision Poka Yoke Pareto Diagram Program Chart Quality Costing Scatter Diagram Relations Diagram QFD Statistical Process Control Table 1 Quality Management Tools and Techniques Each indivisual tool has its own speciality and benifits the organization in its own manner. The implementation and benifits of few of these tools are discussed in the next section. 2.2 Quality Control, Assurance and Improvement The scholars of quality assume that the computer is only the linking force and they put less emphasis on it, and frequently do not consider at all, the modern practices linked to quality management such as employee involvement or continuous quality improvement. Indeed, they concentrate their attention on the computer integration/automation model.† But for quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement insists on involving all these aspects. {Good one} Quality control is defined as operational with activities aimed both at monitoring a process and eliminating causes of unsatisfactory performance for relevant stages of the quality loop to achieve economic effectiveness. Quality control is a technique to achieve, maintain and improve the quality standard of products and service. Defects or failures in constructed facilities or products can result in very large costs. {500} the emphasis on quality control is clear to achieve complete quality management and for this quality control tools are vital to be implemented. Quality improvement requires improvement of processes in process based quality improvement approach. To improve the quality hence several inspection tools can be applied to access the processes and find the ways to improve it to get better and better results. Also the basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization. {800} has suggested following significant tools for the quality management in respect of each quality component: Quality Control Quality Assurance Quality Improvement Statistical process control Regression Process capability analysis, Rule-based reasoning (Expert Systems) Factor analysis Pareto analysis Model-based reasoning and case-based reasoning Cause and effect diagram Process mapping, design of experiments Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Quality function deployment Design of Experiments Design of experiments Analysis of variance Table 1 Above mentioned tools when used in combinations as best suitable for the processes and enterprise could produce massive increase in overall performance of the organization. Few of these tools and their significance in quality managemet is illustrated below: 2.3 Statistical Process Control The appearance of computers on the shop floor has enhanced the increased adoption of SPC. Computers have greatly reduced the efforts required by production personnel to collect and analyze data.{very good journal} â€Å"High quality products and services, far from being random or probabilistic events, are actually anticipated and managed outcomes that can contribute to organizational survival in the marketplace. This realization has encouraged organizations to embrace and implement numerous approaches, some novel and some re-discovered, aimed at achieving the objective of continuous quality improvement. One popular and widespread implementation in the name of quality management is that of statistical process control, or SPC. [19] Statistical Process Control or SPC can be used in a organization for the quality control purpose. It when applied to a process gives the stability of that process which can eventually help in identifing the root causes and take corrective actions.â€Å"The basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization.†[20] SPC is an effective tool for controlling quality of a manufacturing process rather it can be applied to most of the processes in any organization and can aid in controlling the quality as per requirements. It identifies the sources that affects the quality of the process outputs and hence can be eradicated as identified. But there lies a problem with the use of it that is interpreting the results of SPC which can be only well understood by quality control specialists. This can create communication gaps and a lot of other misconceptions about its use. But still SPC is being used to control quality from a number of years and it has proved itself to be giving enormously positive results to the organizations. â€Å"The popularity of SPC as a quality management practice has been fostered, in part, by a wealth of publications ascribing quality and cost benefits to it. The literature is dominated by anecdotal â€Å"success† stories, attributing higher market share, lower failure costs, higher product quality, and higher productivity to the implementation and practice of SPC (Dondero, 1991). Reports of SPC failures, on the contrary, have been few and, again, case-oriented (Dale Shaw, 1991; Lightburn Dale, 1992).†[22] Evans and Lindsay (1989, pp. 313-3 14), define SPC to be a methodology using control charts for assisting operators, supervisors, and managers to monitor quality of conformance and to eliminate special causes of variability of a process a technique to control quality using probability and statistics to determine and maintain the state of statistical control.[23 Hence the advantages and effectiveness can well be understood from the above discussion and its can be c oncluded that SPC can play a major role in controling any process and eliminating any cause that disturbs the process as its main idea is to enable the quality of conformance to be monitored and special causes of process variability to be eliminated. 2.4 Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is tool that can be used to analyse the failures that can occur in the near future or after the implementation of the system and identify the effects that it would cause to the system. â€Å"Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is known to be a systematic procedure for the analysis of a system to identify the potential failure modes, their causes and effects on system performance. The analysis is successfully performed preferably early in the development cycle so that removal or mitigation of the failure mode is most cost effective. This analysis can be initiated as soon as the system is defined: FMEA timing is essential.† [24] 1 below shows some random forms as an example of FMEA version 1, 2 3 charts. For FMEA to be effective its is very important to use this tool in the early development phase as catching errors and fixing them in earlier stages is more effectual and less costly. FMEA can be implemented to the highest level of block diagram to the functions of the of the discrete components. Also FMEA can be used again and again as the design is developed. â€Å"The FMEA is an iterative process that is updated as the design develops. Design changes will require that relevant parts of the FMEA be reviewed and updated.† [24] Hence FMEA could play an imperative role in going for the process changing for improvement. The change planned for the process for improving it can be verified by the application of this technique. 2.5 Quality Function Deployment (QFD) QFD has been used along with the integration of other effective tools to achieve quality in processes and products, reducing cycle times and improving performance. {600} found out that in the span of the first seven years, between 1977 and 1984, the Toyota Auto body plant employed QFD and claimed that with its use: Manufacturing startup and pre-production costs were reduced by 60%. The product development cycle (that is, time to market) was reduced by 33% with a corresponding improvement in quality because of the reduction in the number of engineering changes. Quality function deployment QFD is based on the concept of companywide quality control. The company wide quality control philosophy is characterised by customer orientation, cross functional management and process rather than product orientation. Also the roots of Japanese companywide quality control are the same concepts of statistical quality control and total quality control as originated in the USA. 2.6 Quality Improvement A Need or A Neccessity In the technological advanced manufacturing industry today, organziations are trying their level best to imorove their quality standards yet reducing their cycle times and time to reach the market. This pushes them to adopt the latest availaible technologies to manage and inject quality into their products and processes, so that the production time is not effected by increasing concern of quality management. Nowadays there is a tough competition in every . Aberdeen Group has done an extensive research on Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence and it says that the best in class organzaitions are â€Å"ensuring that continuois improvement programs yeild the expected results help to unlock hidden capabilities as well as allows for greater flexibility in altering schedule to meet shifting demands. It is essential that executives are provided visibility across plants, product lines and demand when making decisions on delivery, discounts and staffing. Many companies can manufacture the sam e product in mutiple facilities and are continually evaluating the most cost effective loaction to manufacture based on a mutitude of factors. Finally, establishing key performance indicators mapped to corporate goals allows shop floor process across different plants to be standardized and alligned to the goals of senior management.† [27] The focus is on ensuring continuous improvement programs and establishing key performance indicating targets that eventually supports corporate goals. Also what is part of best in class manufaturers strategic goals is to provide visibility across the plants, production lines and demands, This would help the exectives of the organzaition to understand monitor the performanc of ongoing processes. In the survey carried out by aberdeen group following percentage was calculated of the best in class organizations of the top three strategic actions taken by them: The above research indication shows the top three strategic actions of the Best-In-Class organizations and all of these actions are quality related. This very well proves that for the organizations that wants to be included in the best in class list or that wants to stay in best in class list must improve their quality standards as per the market and industries requirements. Hence quality improvement could be termed as the necessity of todays era and to survive in todays market an organization needs to update it quality management systems. All the indicators from research above points towards the advancements in quality management and that lead us to the topic of quality management systems of today that is Web-based quality management. CHAPTER 3 Quality Management Systems From time to time quality gurus and scholars have only been focusing and trying to develope appropriate control charts for processes, but now due to the advancements in technology and shifting towards real time quality management Web-base Quality Management Systems Web-base Quality Management Systems Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Defining Quality, History and Achieving International Quality Standards Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people in different spheres of life. It is a degree or grade of excellence or worth, a characteristic property that defines the apparent individual nature of something or totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. In recent years, many organisations have adopted quality management systems to improve the quality of both goods and services through the application of efficient quality management methods and principles (Feigenbaum, 2000). The reason why so many organisations have started on the journey is either because of customer pressure for ISO 9000 certification or because the firms themselves have realised the strategic advantage of having this certificate, i.e. it would give them an edge over their competitors. Most of the firms which started out on the journey to ISO 9000 still may not have completed that journey. In general, it takes 2 years, and obtaining this coveted certificate is only a first step towards the ultimate goal: total quality management (TQM). Reaching this goal may take at least 5 years. In the next sections of the dissertation we will take a closer look at the characteristics of the different quality management systems. In this section, we concentrate on the concept of quality itself. We start with the two types of quality, namely: Objective quality, which is simply the products total number of quality attributes. Subjective quality, which is a result of the consumers experience of the products objective attributes. Subjective quality is thus defined as the degree of fulfillment of consumers expectations (Feigenbaum, 2000). Beyond the customers desirable expectations, there are always the customers latent expectations. Manufacturers and the service providers must therefore find the hidden expectations in order to keep the customer satisfied. It is subjective quality which matters to the company, and it is this definition which Deming used in his renowned eight-day quality seminars for Japanese top managers in 1950. Demings message to them was simple but powerful: The consumer is the most important part of the production line. The idea that customers should be seen as a part of the production line was in itself a revolutionary one at that time. A logical conclusion is that quality production is only possible if it is systematically and continuously based on customer desires and needs. It is simple in theory but difficult in practice because there are many obstacles to overcome along the way. Demings 14 points, which we have taken the liberty of calling stations along the way, are among the most important means of overcoming these obstacles. You may ask this important question: Why have the Japanese been better at understanding Demings message than the Western world? There are many reasons for this, but one of the most intriguing reasons may be found in the Japanese language, and thus in Japanese culture. In the Japanese language, quality management can be translated as quality is equal to the attributes of the things (i.e. what peoples talk about). This interpretation results in the following definition of quality management: Control of the attributes of a product which consumers talk about. To understand why consumers talk about a products attributes, we will delve into motivation theory. Herzberg has divided motivation into two factors: Factors which create satisfaction (satisfiers). Factors which create dissatisfaction (dissatisfiers). Similarly, many objective attributes of a product or service can be categorised. We may talk about the basic attributes that the consumer expects when he/she buys the product. If these are not present in sufficient quantities, the consumer experiences dissatisfaction. If the expected attributes are present, naturally the consumer is satisfied, but the interesting and crucial thing is that the degree of satisfaction will not necessarily be particularly high. The experience will be more or less neutral. Apart from the attributes which the customer expects to find, it is always possible to build attributes into the product or service which the customer does not expect to find, i.e. attributes which will delight or satisfy him/her. The more of these attributes that are present in the product or services, the greater the satisfaction, and this satisfaction will, in many cases, increase significantly. We call these attributes value-added quality. However, in Japan they use the term charming quality, whereas in the US they interpret this as exciting quality. We believe that value-added quality covers both. One example of expected quality in air travel is safety. Korean Air lost its reputation as a quality airline in the wake of the tragic incident of a passenger airline being shot down over Soviet territory. Prior to this incident, Korean Air was rated as one of the top quality airlines in the world. Afterwards, Korean Airs quality ratings dropped significantly. In our view, the only thing which can adequately explain this is that Korean Air had failed to deliver the customers expected quality. As an example of value-added quality, let us consider the added service offered by ISS Laundry Service, a subsidiary of International Service Systems (ISS). This company which, among other activities, changes bed-linen in hotel rooms, suddenly had an idea. As they were there to change the sheets, they might as well see if anything else needed doing, e.g. small repairs, changing light-bulbs, etc., and report this to the hotel management. This unexpected service, which hardly costs ISS anything, created an enormous amount of goodwill for the company among its customers. The understanding behind Demings assertion, that the consumer is the most important aspect of the production line, lies precisely in the subjective definition of quality, which we will be discussing in this dissertation. The introduction of quality management theory towards the end of the 1980s led to the development of a new concept called total quality. This concept was defined as follows (Kanji, 2002): Qualityis to satisfy customers requirements continuously. Total qualityis to achieve quality at low cost. Total quality managementis to obtain total quality by involving everyones daily commitment. These definitions will become clearer as we proceed through the dissertation. The objective of TQM is to improve continuously each and every activity in the company focusing on the customer. Every product has some deficiency, i.e. risks for making customers dissatisfied. These deficiencies must be continually eliminated and, at the same time, the firm must ensure that its product or service always incorporate the quality attributes which satisfy its customers. 1.2 Total quality management The concept of TQM is a logical development of total quality control (TQC), a concept first introduced by A. V. Feigenbaum in 2000 in a book of the same name. Though Feigenbaum had other things in mind with TQC, it only really caught on in engineering circles, and thus never achieved the total acceptance in British companies that was intended. TQC was a hit in Japan, on the other hand, where the first quality circles were set up in 1962, which later developed into what the Japanese themselves call company-wide quality control (CWQC). this is identical to what people in the West today call TQM. One of the main reasons for the failure of TQC in British companies was a management misconception that responsibility for implementing TQC could be delegated to a central quality department. In doing so, management overlooked one of the most important points in TQC, namely managements wholehearted commitment to quality improvements. The aim of the new concept, TQM, is to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Thus, management have been directly included in the definition of the concept, making it impossible for them to avoid their responsibility. To include the word management here sends an unmistakable signal straight into executive offices that this is a job for top management, including the board of directors. TQM will be further discussed in following chapters. Chapter 2 Quality Perspectives The inadequacy of traditional management in UK Japan Traditional British forms of management are based on a philosophy which divides responsibility for decisions into strategic, tactical and operational levels, i.e. the so-called management pyramid. We now know that this management conception is totally inadequate for modern, complex companies, since it does not give the connection between top management and the main processes at the bottom responsible for customer satisfaction. As a result, the management is ignorant of the real problems on the operational level, and do not provide the support and backing that the operation level needs for the creation of customer satisfaction (Feigenbaum, 2000). The decisions which cascade down from top management are often exclusively budgetary in nature, containing instructions which are forced on lower levels without due consideration of their problems. Many local branches of a bank have similar experiences. A typical example of this was noted after some Danish bank mergers took place at the, end of the 1980s. Branch managers of these banks received orders by internal post to cut staff numbers by a certain figure with no indication of how this could be achieved without drastically reducing the quality of products and services offered to their customers. Hiromoto (2002) describes this as management by terrorism. In discussing British and Japanese management philosophy, Konosuke Matsushita, founder of one of the worlds biggest companies, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic, National, Technics, etc.), said: We are going to win and the industrial West is going to lose out: theres nothing much you can do about it, because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, youre convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business. For you, the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses into the hands of labour. (p). Hoinville (2002) feels that the emphasis of managements commitment has its origin in the system, the reason for quality defects. It has been estimated that 85% of all defects are caused by system errors, i.e. errors which only management has the authority to change. Management must show by its actions that it has understood the message. It must constantly strive to reduce system errors by setting up quality goals, drawing up quality policies and quality plans, and participating actively in the follow-up auditing phase. Finally, management must concede its own lack of knowledge in the quality field and take the lead in acquiring new knowledge. If management does all this, it will have created a firm foundation on which future quality can be built. Conversely, there would be little point in building quality on a shaky foundation. We have already pointed out that the customer is the most important part of the production line. Deming (2002) introduced this idea to top Japanese managers in 1950 by means of a basic outline of an arbitrary production system, or part of a production system. This outline, which must today be considered traditional, shows that both customer and supplier are part of the production system, and that information for improving this comes from two sources: consumer research and process tests. Since this outline also applies to an arbitrary sub-system, it shows that customer and supplier concepts embrace much more than just external customers and suppliers. Internal customers and suppliers, i.e. employees, are at least as important as the external ones. Any person, or process, which forms part of the production system must recognise that it serves a number of internal customers, and the quality of the output delivered to these customers is crucial to the end result, i.e. the quality of the output delivered to the external customer. Deming (2002) himself concedes that, in 1950, this was a formidable challenge for the Japanese top managers, but they accepted the challenge, and the result is there for us all to see today. In Demings words: A new economic age had begun. Today it is difficult to understand that such a simple message presented the Japanese with such a difficult challenge. Our experience of top managers is that they accept the message without question. However, this does not lessen the difficulty of the challenge, because it implies that firms traditional information systems are totally inadequate. A culture must be established to ensure that internal customer research functions just as well as external. Here, it is important to point out that internal analysis is based on entirely different principles from external analysis. Communication and team-building are the key words here. Obviously, the participation of top management is necessary in building up this culture. It can be seen that the Focus on the customer and the employee is much more comprehensive than just the focus on the customer, which is the norm in service management. The latter refers solely to external customers. The former, while including these, also stresses the internal customer/supplier relationship. This relationship is one of the most important innovations which TQM has introduced. Quality Management In Todays Era As we have discussed above that how the management of quality is vital to the output product of any organization it has made clear that without an excellent quality management system an organization can not implement total quality management. In todays era new ways of quality management have been introduced that can make quality management a much easier and effective job for the management body. Technology has been quiet advance in todays world and every organization is trying to get its hand on the most advance technology that can take it to a much higher level from its competitiors. A new emerging technology for managing quality in well established organizations is the use of Web-Based Quality Management Systems. Why this technology is vital today is beacuse of organizations expanding their businesses worldwide or operating at different geoghraphical locations. It is much easier to manage the quality in an organization that is operating at one location but if it has its operations going on at different locations it is much harder to implement and manage total quality management. But these new systems have overcome this gap by providing a centralized hub to manage the quality. No matter how scattered the operations of the organizations are and how many stake holders are involved, by implementing these systems organizations need not to worry about the distance and communication gap. Competition and cost consciousness on the one side an increasing demand for quality and reliability on the other side are contrary requirements in present production engineering. This must be considered also from the point of view of the international standards about quality management and quality assurance. The origins of quality management and quality assurance in a modern sense began in manufacturing organizations at about the beginning of the twentieth century [1], and many of the tools for quality analysis and improvement were developed for manufacturing problems. Through the 1980s, this manufacturing emphasis dominated the profession. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, business began to recognise the importance of quality service in achieving customer satisfaction and competing in the global marketplace. In the late 1990s also the public domain and governmental departments became aware of the general importance of quality issues. In a very important sense, this recognition has expanded the definition and  concept of quality to include nearly any organisational improvement such as the reduction of manufacturing cycle time and improved worker skills. And also the public sector is now starting to take care of quality management within its structures. In addition to industrial organisations and the manufacturing industry also service organisations build up quality systems. Ancillary services in manufacturing companies as well as stand-alone service organisations such as hospitals and banks are beginning to realise the benefits of a focus on quality. A number of different industries are successively doing business around the globe and the quality systems that are availaible in the market does not mostly cater a specific industry and all of them provide different features, tools and options, so it is a complex decision to choose the best availaible solution from a wide range of variety. In this dissertation different availaible web-based quality management systems are reviewed and their shortnesses are pointed out and a model is proposed in the end that covers all gaps in the currently availaible systems. Chapter 2: Literature Review In this chapter literature review is carried out and analyzed that which tools and schemes are imperative for the management of quality and how they cooperate in the quality management. This will enable to know how different branches of an organization can be indulged with quality by using what sort of tools and how these tools can benifit any organization. â€Å"The approach to quality most extensively adopted by Western companies in recent years has been the application of national and international (ISO 9000 or equivalent) quality management standards. This approach is following firmly along the quality assurance path. It is more proactive than reliance on detection/inspection and allows for the use of quality tools primarily to stop non-conforming products being produced or non-conforming services being delivered in the first place. Hence there is a switch implied from detection to prevention via quality systems, procedures and a quality manual.† [18] 2.1 Quality Management Tools Techniques Numerous definitions and methodologies have been created to assist in managing the quality-affecting aspects of business operations. Many different techniques and concepts have evolved to improve product or service quality. Tools and techniques like charts, graphs, histograms and complex tools like Statistical Process Control, Quality Function Deployment, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Design of Experiments have been used for quality management for a number of years. All of these tools are very effective for quality evaluation and implementation when applied rightly and at correct situation. Juan Jose Tari and Vicente Sabater {Quality management tools} in their research on â€Å"Quality tools and Techniques† has outlined few important tools and techniques that can be luminously helping in managing and increasing organizations quality standards. The very basic tools, the management tools for quality and techniques for quality management are outlined in the table below: Basic Quality Management Tools Management Tools Techniques Cause Effect Diagram Affinity Diagram Benchmarking Check Sheet Arrow Diagram Design of Experiments Control chart Matrix Diagram FMEA Graphs Matrix Data Analysis Fault Tree Analysis Histoghram Process Decision Poka Yoke Pareto Diagram Program Chart Quality Costing Scatter Diagram Relations Diagram QFD Statistical Process Control Table 1 Quality Management Tools and Techniques Each indivisual tool has its own speciality and benifits the organization in its own manner. The implementation and benifits of few of these tools are discussed in the next section. 2.2 Quality Control, Assurance and Improvement The scholars of quality assume that the computer is only the linking force and they put less emphasis on it, and frequently do not consider at all, the modern practices linked to quality management such as employee involvement or continuous quality improvement. Indeed, they concentrate their attention on the computer integration/automation model.† But for quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement insists on involving all these aspects. {Good one} Quality control is defined as operational with activities aimed both at monitoring a process and eliminating causes of unsatisfactory performance for relevant stages of the quality loop to achieve economic effectiveness. Quality control is a technique to achieve, maintain and improve the quality standard of products and service. Defects or failures in constructed facilities or products can result in very large costs. {500} the emphasis on quality control is clear to achieve complete quality management and for this quality control tools are vital to be implemented. Quality improvement requires improvement of processes in process based quality improvement approach. To improve the quality hence several inspection tools can be applied to access the processes and find the ways to improve it to get better and better results. Also the basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization. {800} has suggested following significant tools for the quality management in respect of each quality component: Quality Control Quality Assurance Quality Improvement Statistical process control Regression Process capability analysis, Rule-based reasoning (Expert Systems) Factor analysis Pareto analysis Model-based reasoning and case-based reasoning Cause and effect diagram Process mapping, design of experiments Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Quality function deployment Design of Experiments Design of experiments Analysis of variance Table 1 Above mentioned tools when used in combinations as best suitable for the processes and enterprise could produce massive increase in overall performance of the organization. Few of these tools and their significance in quality managemet is illustrated below: 2.3 Statistical Process Control The appearance of computers on the shop floor has enhanced the increased adoption of SPC. Computers have greatly reduced the efforts required by production personnel to collect and analyze data.{very good journal} â€Å"High quality products and services, far from being random or probabilistic events, are actually anticipated and managed outcomes that can contribute to organizational survival in the marketplace. This realization has encouraged organizations to embrace and implement numerous approaches, some novel and some re-discovered, aimed at achieving the objective of continuous quality improvement. One popular and widespread implementation in the name of quality management is that of statistical process control, or SPC. [19] Statistical Process Control or SPC can be used in a organization for the quality control purpose. It when applied to a process gives the stability of that process which can eventually help in identifing the root causes and take corrective actions.â€Å"The basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization.†[20] SPC is an effective tool for controlling quality of a manufacturing process rather it can be applied to most of the processes in any organization and can aid in controlling the quality as per requirements. It identifies the sources that affects the quality of the process outputs and hence can be eradicated as identified. But there lies a problem with the use of it that is interpreting the results of SPC which can be only well understood by quality control specialists. This can create communication gaps and a lot of other misconceptions about its use. But still SPC is being used to control quality from a number of years and it has proved itself to be giving enormously positive results to the organizations. â€Å"The popularity of SPC as a quality management practice has been fostered, in part, by a wealth of publications ascribing quality and cost benefits to it. The literature is dominated by anecdotal â€Å"success† stories, attributing higher market share, lower failure costs, higher product quality, and higher productivity to the implementation and practice of SPC (Dondero, 1991). Reports of SPC failures, on the contrary, have been few and, again, case-oriented (Dale Shaw, 1991; Lightburn Dale, 1992).†[22] Evans and Lindsay (1989, pp. 313-3 14), define SPC to be a methodology using control charts for assisting operators, supervisors, and managers to monitor quality of conformance and to eliminate special causes of variability of a process a technique to control quality using probability and statistics to determine and maintain the state of statistical control.[23 Hence the advantages and effectiveness can well be understood from the above discussion and its can be c oncluded that SPC can play a major role in controling any process and eliminating any cause that disturbs the process as its main idea is to enable the quality of conformance to be monitored and special causes of process variability to be eliminated. 2.4 Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is tool that can be used to analyse the failures that can occur in the near future or after the implementation of the system and identify the effects that it would cause to the system. â€Å"Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is known to be a systematic procedure for the analysis of a system to identify the potential failure modes, their causes and effects on system performance. The analysis is successfully performed preferably early in the development cycle so that removal or mitigation of the failure mode is most cost effective. This analysis can be initiated as soon as the system is defined: FMEA timing is essential.† [24] 1 below shows some random forms as an example of FMEA version 1, 2 3 charts. For FMEA to be effective its is very important to use this tool in the early development phase as catching errors and fixing them in earlier stages is more effectual and less costly. FMEA can be implemented to the highest level of block diagram to the functions of the of the discrete components. Also FMEA can be used again and again as the design is developed. â€Å"The FMEA is an iterative process that is updated as the design develops. Design changes will require that relevant parts of the FMEA be reviewed and updated.† [24] Hence FMEA could play an imperative role in going for the process changing for improvement. The change planned for the process for improving it can be verified by the application of this technique. 2.5 Quality Function Deployment (QFD) QFD has been used along with the integration of other effective tools to achieve quality in processes and products, reducing cycle times and improving performance. {600} found out that in the span of the first seven years, between 1977 and 1984, the Toyota Auto body plant employed QFD and claimed that with its use: Manufacturing startup and pre-production costs were reduced by 60%. The product development cycle (that is, time to market) was reduced by 33% with a corresponding improvement in quality because of the reduction in the number of engineering changes. Quality function deployment QFD is based on the concept of companywide quality control. The company wide quality control philosophy is characterised by customer orientation, cross functional management and process rather than product orientation. Also the roots of Japanese companywide quality control are the same concepts of statistical quality control and total quality control as originated in the USA. 2.6 Quality Improvement A Need or A Neccessity In the technological advanced manufacturing industry today, organziations are trying their level best to imorove their quality standards yet reducing their cycle times and time to reach the market. This pushes them to adopt the latest availaible technologies to manage and inject quality into their products and processes, so that the production time is not effected by increasing concern of quality management. Nowadays there is a tough competition in every . Aberdeen Group has done an extensive research on Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence and it says that the best in class organzaitions are â€Å"ensuring that continuois improvement programs yeild the expected results help to unlock hidden capabilities as well as allows for greater flexibility in altering schedule to meet shifting demands. It is essential that executives are provided visibility across plants, product lines and demand when making decisions on delivery, discounts and staffing. Many companies can manufacture the sam e product in mutiple facilities and are continually evaluating the most cost effective loaction to manufacture based on a mutitude of factors. Finally, establishing key performance indicators mapped to corporate goals allows shop floor process across different plants to be standardized and alligned to the goals of senior management.† [27] The focus is on ensuring continuous improvement programs and establishing key performance indicating targets that eventually supports corporate goals. Also what is part of best in class manufaturers strategic goals is to provide visibility across the plants, production lines and demands, This would help the exectives of the organzaition to understand monitor the performanc of ongoing processes. In the survey carried out by aberdeen group following percentage was calculated of the best in class organizations of the top three strategic actions taken by them: The above research indication shows the top three strategic actions of the Best-In-Class organizations and all of these actions are quality related. This very well proves that for the organizations that wants to be included in the best in class list or that wants to stay in best in class list must improve their quality standards as per the market and industries requirements. Hence quality improvement could be termed as the necessity of todays era and to survive in todays market an organization needs to update it quality management systems. All the indicators from research above points towards the advancements in quality management and that lead us to the topic of quality management systems of today that is Web-based quality management. CHAPTER 3 Quality Management Systems From time to time quality gurus and scholars have only been focusing and trying to develope appropriate control charts for processes, but now due to the advancements in technology and shifting towards real time quality management

Winston Churchill Essay -- History

Winston Churchill Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, his family's ancestral seat in Oxfordshire, on November 30, 1874. He was the older son of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, a British statesman who rose to be chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. His mother was an American, Jennie Jerome, the daughter of a New York financier. Churchill inherited a family tradition of statesmanship that went back to the great English general John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, in the 17th century. Winston as a youngster attended Harrow School, in the ghetto (outskirts) of London, where he was schooled in the classics. He was a diligent student and, like his father, had a remarkable memory, but he was also stubborn. Churchill had little interest in learning Latin, Greek, or mathematics. By his own account, he considered himself such a dumb ass that he "could learn only English." However, he said, "I learned it thoroughly." Since he was but a wee lad Churchill was way into soldiers and warfare, and he often played with the large collection of lead soldiers in his nursery. His later years at Harrow were spent preparing to enter the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, from which he graduated with honors. Early in 1895 his father croaked; Churchill was only 20 years old. A few weeks later Churchill was promoted as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, a regiment of the British army. Hamilton's March (1900). In November 1895 Churchill spent his first military leave on assignment for a London newspaper. He traveled to Cuba in order to accompany the Spanish army, which was trying to stop a rebellion. On his 21st birthday, which was spent in the Cuban jungle, and for the first time he encountered a live battle . Later, after his regiment was sent to India in 1896, he secured a temporary transfer to the rugid North-West Frontier, where a tribal rebellion was under way. Churchill's dispatches to the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 1897 formed the basis for his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (1898). In 1898 Churchill went to Egypt attached to the 21st Lancers and took part in the reconquest of the Sudan. This area south of Egypt had been controlled by Egypt prior to 1885, when it fell to a rebel Muslim group. As Britain gained control of Egypt in t... ...nly seeking a summit conference between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. In 1953 Queen Elizabeth II conferred on him the Knighthood of the Garter, and he became Sir Winston Churchill. In the same year he won the Nobel Prize for literature for his historical and biographical works and for his oratory. In November 1954, on Churchill's 80th birthday, the House of Commons honored him on the eve of his retirement. In April 1955 he resigned as prime minister but remained a member of the House of Commons. In his retirement, Churchill worked on completing A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956-1958), a four-volume work begun in the late 1930s but postponed during World War II. He devoted much of his leisure in his later years to his favorite pastime of painting, ultimately producing more than 500 canvases. The Royal Academy of Arts featured his works in 1959. In 1963 the U.S. Congress made Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. Churchill died peacefully at his town house in London, two months after his 90th birthday. Following a state funeral service that was attended by dozens of world leaders at Saint Paul's Cathedral, he was buried near Blenheim Palace.

James Cameron Essay -- essays research papers

James Cameron was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario in Canada August 14 (16) 1954. His family later moved to Chippewa Falls near Niagra Falls. James Cameron was during his youth years always very fascinated with movies. He was mezmerized when he saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and he drew himself crazy trying to figure out how they had shot that film. Cameron also wrote sci-fi stories and fantasized a lot instead of doing his school work. It was actually during one boring biology class that Cameron wrote a short story which would later become the movie The Abyss. When Cameron was 17, his family moved to Orange County, California because of his fathers job. When Cameron moved to Orange County he learned that getting a career in movies might not be the easiest job to obtain. He let the hope of becomming someone in the movie business fade and he started studying physics and english at a local university. He later dropped out of both studies because the math in the physics course had been to hard for Cameron to deal with. James Cameron got a job as a miniature model maker at the Roger Corman Studios. The Roger Corman Studios were studios that made B-movies. They were fast and cheap productions, and none of the people working there were professionals so Cameron fit right in. He quickly moved up the ranks in the studio, jumping from one movie to another. Cameron worked as art director on the sci-fi movie Battle Beyond the Stars, he did special effects work and direction on John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. It wasn't until 1981 when Cameron got his first shot at directing. It was an Italian producer named Assonitis who was to make a sequel to the movie Pirahna. It was going to be called Piranha 2: The Spawning. Assonitis wanted a debut director because it would be the cheapest, and the director would not question Assonitis cutting in the film. The movie was terrible of course, it had a bad cast, lousy effects and Assonitis was always on Cameron’s back. Assonitis kept telling Cameron that the shots looked like shit (crap), and when the main shooting ended he would not allow Cameron to edit the movie. This made Cameron mad, he knew that the movie was bad, but it was his movie, and he wanted to edit it himself. So Cameron broke into the editing room with a plastic card. The movie was shot in Italy and Cameron could not speak Italian, so he did not... ... was not until the production of Terminator 2: Judgment Day that the effects were shown in their true colours. Another great thing is that James Cameron writes very entertaining stories that are particuarly good for movies. With great action and great characters that are unique. Cameron's movies are action movies, but they have other qualities too. For example Cameron uses a lot of messages in his movies. In the Abyss there is a message from an alien saying that all people should live in harmony, and in Terminator 2 - Judgment Day Linda Hamilton is ending the movie with this clever sentence, "If a machine can learn to respect a human life maybe we can too". These are the kind of messages which make Cameron's movies just a little bit better. James Cameron is not afraid to reject his feminin side. In the movies there are always strong, independent women who guide the male hero (if there is one) through the movie. In Cameron's movies the women are essential, and they always steal part of the picture, if not all of it. Examples are, Linda Hamiton in Terminator 2 - Judgment Day, Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies and of course Kate Winslet in Titanic.

Assigment Manufacturing Process

FACULTI OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA PAHANG BMM3643 (Sem II 2012/13) Assignment #4 1. a) What distinguishes machining from other manufacturing processes? b) What is a machining center? c) How important is the control of cutting-fluid temperature in operations performed in machining centers? Explain. (8 marks) 2. a) What are the primary considerations in tool selection? b) What is the advantage of a helical-tooth cutter over a straighttooth cutter for slab milling? c) What are the consequences if a cutting tool chips? (8 marks) 3. ) Why might it be desirable to use a heavy depth of cut and a light feed at a given speed in turning? b) Explain the reasoning behind the various design guidelines for turning. c) In drilling, the deeper the hole, the greater the torque. Why? (8 marks) 4. a) For producing flat surfaces in mass production machining,how does face milling differ basically from peripheral milling? b) Why is end milling such an important versatile process? c) Why is grain spacing important in grinding wheels? Explain the relationship between grit size and surface finish. (8 marks) 5. ) Why has the wire-EDM process become so widely used in industry, especially in tool and die manufacturing? Explain. e) What is meant by the term overcut in electric discharge machining? f) What is the nature of the surface obtained by electro discharge machining? (8 marks) 6. g) Estimate the time required for face milling an 20. 32 cm-long, 7. 62 cm-wide brass block using a 2032 cm-diameter cutter with 12 HSS teeth. (Given: Using the high-speed-steel tool, let’s take a recommended cutting speed for brass (a copper alloy) at 90 m/min = 1. 5 m/sand the maximum feed per tooth as 0. mm) h) In a surface grinding operation performed on hardened plain carbon steel, the grinding wheel has a diameter = 200 mm and width = 25 mm. The wheel rotates at 2400 rev/min, with a depth of cut (infeed) = 0. 05 mm/pass and a crossfeed = 3. 50 mm. The reciprocating speed of t he work is 6 m/min, and the operation is performed dry. Determine ; i) the length of contact between the wheel and the work, ii) the volume rate of metal removed. iii) If there are 64 active grits/cm2 of wheel surface, estimate the number of chips formed per unit time. (10 marks)

Selena Quintanilla a Gifted Icon

When I was a little girl, I was a big fan of Selena Quintanilla. I had all her music, disks and posters all over my room. My dream was to meet her in person and it came true when I assisted one of her concerts. I knew everything about her even though I was 4 years old. She was a role model for me, she was family oriented and she is still today living in my memory. I memorized every song of hers word by word, and I would imitate her dancing all day long. As a little girl I could not understand why someone would have wanted to take her life away when she was a good person. Selena Quintanilla is considered to be one of the most popular and influential Hispanic music icons of all times because of her history, culture, and all the people she influenced with her charisma. Selena Quintanilla in her early years was a girl who had the spirit to believe in a dream, blessed by being born in a musical family. Quintanilla was a Mexican-American singer born in Lake Jackson, Texas, where her musical career began. Her father Abraham Quintanilla was the greatest influence and inspiration in her music career (). Mr. Quintanilla stimulated the musical talents in all his children, teaching them to play instruments and sing in Spanish. Selena Quintanilla made her first performance at the age of 8 in the year of 1980 at her father’s Mexican restaurant (PapaGayo), and recorded her first record at 9(). Through her adolescence years she was mostly on the tour bus â€Å"Big Bertha†. Everything was not a bed of roses, her education was probably the hardest she ha d to accomplished. Her father made her dropped from regular school education permanently when she was in 8th grade. His major concern was to give her the opportunity to concentrate and devote more time to music. Selena Quintanilla in order to perform the music with her family on long trips crossing the states was forced by the nature of the music venture to complete her high school diploma through the American School in Chicago, Illinois by mail(encyclopedia supplement/library vcc)and this was the way she earned her general education diploma(GED) in 1989. She enrolled at Pacific Western University as a correspondence student taking business classes(contemporary/vcc library). Quintanilla had a love life like any other girl. The singer fell deeply in love with guitarist Chris Perez. This relationship led the singer to a very troubled life and finally her family accepted him because they realized he made her happy. The Queen of Tejano music, Selena Quintanilla had multiple talents. Since the age of 8 she was a vivacious entertainer. Her passion for music took her to the stage of being one of the most recognized Latino singers in the United States. Her ability to sing in a sexy and charismatic way made her an idol of the American and Latin markets. Throughout her short life filled with success Quintanilla was a singer, song writer, record producer, and to add to those multiple talents she also dabbled in acting, making a cameo in a romantic comedy in the Johnny Deep Film ‘Don Juan de Marco’. She also danced at the stage making her performance more appealing to the audience. Included among other qualities she enjoyed to design her own clothes. Her unique way of designing her own bustier earned her the nickname of â€Å"The Mexican Madonna†(BD). Among her career successes as a singer vocalist it is obvious why she got so famous, she was hooked on music and her passion for it brought her success, music was in her heart. In 1982 the family band moves to Corpus Christi, Texas and the Tejano music flourishes making Quintanilla a Tejano music star. Her first album was â€Å"Ya Se Va†; the second album was â€Å"The New Girl in Town† in 1985; â€Å"Alpha† and â€Å"Munequito Ea Trapo† in 1986. Also in 1986 Quintanilla was discovered by two huge names in the tejano music industry, Rick Trevi, founder of The Tejano Music Award, and Johnny Canales, the host of one of the top Spanish television shows. She won the tejano music award for â€Å"female entertainer of the year† in year of 1987, and in the same year the â€Å"female vocalist of the year† and â€Å"performer of the year† honors at the annual Tejano music awards. Other awards follow, in the late 1980’s Quintanilla’s was known as â€Å"La Reina de la Honda Tejana† (â€Å"The Queen of Tejano Music†). Her popularity attracted her with annual awards and a contract EME Latin Records in 1989. The band attracted 11,041 people, more than Clint Black, George Straight, Vince Gil and Reba McIntyre. All of Quintanilla’s efforts pay of quickly. Her band reaches their popularity to the highest peak in 1993 with â€Å"Entre a mi Mundo† making Quintanilla the first tejana to sell more than 300,000 albums. In 1993 she signed with SBK Records to produce an all-English album, and eventually replaced with the bilingual â€Å"Dreaming of You†. The record â€Å"Dreaming of You† sold 175,000 copies on its first day of release, making its debut number one on billboard magazine pop chart. Also in 1993 Selena Live received a Grammy Award for best Mexican album (notable Hispanic American women). The song â€Å"Fotos y Recuerdos† reached the top ten on Billboard magazine’s Latino charts. By 1995, â€Å"Bidi Bidi Bon Bon† won the singer a song of the year award at The Tejano Music Award, making her the winner of an additional 5 more awards, including â€Å"Female Entertainer†, â€Å"best female vocalist†, album of the year, record of the year, and tejano crossover song. Quintanilla quoted, â€Å"Never in my dreams would I have thought I would become this big. I am still freaking out. †(notable Hispanic, 5) She was recipient for ten consecutive years of the â€Å"Best Vocalist† award. Quintanilla becomes a millionaire By the year of 1995 Selena Quintanilla had become an icon in the Hispanic community, a beloved figure to whom Mexican-Americans attached their aspirations and their feelings about their cultural identities. Her music crossed cultural boundaries touching the lives of young and old. She will be remembered in the years to come by her fans for her kindness, her positive attitude and the wonderful music she made. The American and Spanish speaking Western Hemisphere markets had been influenced by Quintanilla’s music were she took the Tejano music into new stylistic realms. Her death has perpetuated and immortalized her image for future generations. The queen of tejano will live forever in the people’s heart(SME). Quintanilla’s death shocked Latinos and non-Latin across the United States. She was cried by thousands of fans who rendered the ‘Queen of Tejano music’ the last goodbye in the Friday she died; this day will always be known as black Friday, March 31, 1995 (IP). Her body was displayed at the Bayfront Plaza in Corpus Christi. Two weeks after her death Governor George W. Bush declared Selena’s Day in Texas(biography based ). The violent death of Selena by Yolanda Saldivar, her fan club president, compares to the grief to the one experience by American people after the death of such major cultural figure as President John F. Kennedy. Quintanilla became immortalized after her death. In conclusion, Quintanilla influenced millions of people around her from young to old, including g me. Everyone has been able to know Quintanilla’s history and appreciate what she was as a person to her people. I understand what her family went through at the time of losing their Selena. I also recognize that as a human being she was like any other person with troubles and economic problems. I can related to her as a person now that I have learned as about her as a cultural icon. Sometimes we just have to go with the short but successful happy life.