The Process Of An Organization - 1702 Words

BENCHMARK There is a common method for both public and private companies, allowing them to improve efficiency in their processes and activities. This method is known as Organizational Benchmarking, which is defined as the process of identifying, learning and applying best practices of other successful companies in the market (Gibson, L and Glenn, E., 2000). In other words, this process is based on the analysis of how other companies conduct their business and adapt to another company to improve efficiency. Before starting the process of benchmarking, it is necessary to evaluate and establish the starting point of the organization. That is, knowing where the company is, what it is doing well and what their weaknesses are. Then, a†¦show more content†¦As a result of this research there were obtained two important conclusions. The first conclusion is that US and Europe could improve production processes of vehicles to overcome the energy use and environmental effects issues. The second conclusion is that it was difficult to compete with Japanese companies, because they, especially Toyota, had developed a different method from the others enterprises and consisted of a more developed system than a simple mass production (Graves A. and Madigan, D., 2012) Having analyzed more than 90 companies, it was possible to observe that Toyota created something that was later called Lean Production. In the first stage two indicators were used to measure the efficiency of the company: the first refers to the total hours worked by all employees divided by the number of vehicles produced; and the second indicator was the number of defects per vehicle. At the end of this analysis it was concluded that Japanese companies had a lower rate of defects per vehicle, they were twice as productive and used 40 % less space in production plants, which meant a significant reduction in costs Later, a more detailed analysis was performed according to the activities type, separating the standard tasks of non - standard and taking into account the time it took each employee to perform them. Having completed the entire analysis process, it was possible to identify how Toyota, having created the

What We Don t Talk About Service - 1324 Words

As one of the fundamental texts in the discussion of ethics, Nicomachean Ethics outlines Aristotle’s idea of eudaimonia, as the ultimate goal of a good and successful human life, achieved through habitual practices of moral virtues. Unlike a contemporary understanding of happiness (a type of feeling), happiness to the Greeks was an â€Å"activity of soul† - a reflection of a person’s position in the community and mindfully acting to live in a good way (happiness as an action). In â€Å"What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service,† Adam Davis discusses a modern application of these â€Å"good† actions using the topic of service. Similar to Aristotle’s concern of the motivations behind human happiness and striving to reach a state of†¦show more content†¦Aristotle argues, however, that to reach this final state of happiness, a person must live in accordance with appropriate virtues, so happiness cannot be fo und in vulgar and political lives but only in a contemplative life. He explains this idea by isolating humans to their special roles. Just like objects have specific functions (i.e. knives are used to cut things), â€Å"for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the â€Å"well† is thought to reside in the function, so would it seem to be for man, if he has a function.† Aristotle claims that humans, too, have a specific function: to exercise rational thought, which is a uniquely human quality. Thus, people are only able to achieve their final state of happiness through a habitual practice of aretà © or virtue, which is a person’s ability to actively contribute to society by using his or her individual capacity for reasoning. Only through this practice of excellence, then, can humans flourish to eudaimonia. In modern society, acts of service can be considered an example of a â€Å"good† that Aristotle describes - one that fulfills a pers on’s role in the society and contributes to the thriving of the community. People usually say

What Makes You Who You Are Free Essays

The perennial debate about nature and nurture–which is the more potent shaper of the human essence? –is perennially rekindled. It flared up again in the London Observer of Feb. 11, 2001. We will write a custom essay sample on What Makes You Who You Are or any similar topic only for you Order Now REVEALED: THE SECRET OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR, read the banner headline. ENVIRONMENT, NOT GENES, KEY TO OUR ACTS. The source of the story was Craig Venter, the self-made man of genes who had built a private company to read the full sequence of the human genome in competition with an international consortium funded by taxes and charities. That sequence–a string of 3 billion letters, composed in a four-letter alphabet, containing the complete recipe for building and running a human body–was to be published the very next day (the competition ended in an arranged tie). The first analysis of it had revealed that there were just 30,000 genes in it, not the 100,000 that many had been estimating until a few months before. Details had already been circulated to journalists under embargo. But Venter, by speaking to a reporter at a biotechnology conference in France on Feb. , had effectively broken the embargo. Not for the first time in the increasingly bitter rivalry over the genome project, Venter’s version of the story would hit the headlines before his rivals’. â€Å"We simply do not have enough genes for this idea of biological determinism to be right,† Venter told the Observer. â€Å"The wonderful diversity of the human species is not hard-wired in our genetic code. Our environments are critical. † In truth, the number of human genes changed nothing. Venter’s remarks concealed two whopping nonsequiturs: that fewer genes implied more environmental influences and that 30,000 genes were too few to explain human nature, whereas 100,000 would have been enough. As one scientist put it to me a few weeks later, just 33 genes, each coming in two varieties (on or off), would be enough to make every human being in the world unique. There are more than 10 billion combinations that could come from flipping a coin 33 times, so 30,000 does not seem such a small number after all. Besides, if fewer genes meant more free will, fruit flies would be freer than we are, bacteria freer still and viruses the John Stuart Mill of biology. Fortunately, there was no need to reassure the population with such sophisticated calculations. People did not weep at the humiliating news that our genome has only about twice as many genes as a worm’s. Nothing had been hung on the number 100,000, which was just a bad guess. But the human genome project–and the decades of research that preceded it–did force a much more nuanced understanding of how genes work. In the early days, scientists detailed how genes encode the various proteins that make up the cells in our bodies. Their more sophisticated and ultimately more satisfying discovery–that gene expression can be modified by experience–has been gradually emerging since the 1980s. Only now is it dawning on scientists what a big and general idea it implies: that learning itself consists of nothing more than switching genes on and off. The more we lift the lid on the genome, the more vulnerable to experience genes appear to be. How to cite What Makes You Who You Are, Papers