Saturday, January 25, 2020

Essay --

7) Knowledge Management and Six Sigma: Exploring the Potential of Two Powerful Disciplines, Paige Leavitt 1) Six Sigma should not be viewed as a quality program that is commissioned to reduce defects but as a methodology that helps companies better meet the needs of their business. KM shares this goal. 2) Voice of the customer in the DFSS process is also a potential area for a collaboration of ideas. â€Å"In Design For Six Sigma, knowledge of the customer-centric requirements is a key input †¦ to the design process,† said O’Dell. â€Å"And if you could use knowledge management tools to better understand what the customer is saying to sales people and service people, that information comes back to the folks who can make a difference in the design process.† 3) APQC's Lessons Learned "The problems, issues, and opportunities in organizations are not about reducing defects; they are about responding to new opportunities, using the voice of the customer knowledge," said O'Dell. "With both Six Sigma and KM, I’m telling you that you’re going to get more of what you want - if you begin to open the conversation to a different way of thinking about solving some of these problems over the long term. Because both Six Sigma and KM have tremendous power, they also have some issues that they need help with." Professionals in both arenas can learn from each other. Six Sigma can learn from KM how to recognize knowledge, as well as processes. Joseph Hofer-Alfeis from Siemens said, "Six Sigma is oriented to the quality of products and processes. If you think of a knowledge-intensive business, 'Six Sigma for knowledge quality' -- the quality of the proficiency, the quality of knowledge flows, and the quality of description knowledge -- should also be a ... ...nage the targeted process (e.g., an insurance sales agent or supervisor), while otherswork to support the process (e.g., an information technology expertwho provides support to the insurance claimsprocess).Unique project teamsare put together for each of the projects, and disbanded after these projects are completed, handing off resulting improvement-actions to process owners—people who routinely operate the processes. 5) Although each project has different objectives and specific tools employed, overall these projects follow a standardized, structured five-phase project management approach known as ‘‘DMAIC’’ for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control phases (Schroeder et al., 2008). 6) Project leaders are trained in the use of practices for collecting, combining, and synthesizing the knowledge of team members for use in process improvements (Hoerl, 2001).

Friday, January 17, 2020

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Essay

   Frankenstein is a book about man’s thirst for knowledge, about the way he is not satisfied unless he knows all the wonders of the world. In many cases, this can lead to the destruction of a man’s soul, as it did to Victor Frankenstein. His quest to learn the secrets of heaven and earth ended in disaster. The monster was the embodiment of evil, bringing death and destruction wherever it laid foot. It brought death to Frankenstein’s family, in a pure quest for revenge. Symbolic of most evil, the monster was manmade. In many ways Mary Shelley’s life can be compared to that of Victor Frankenstein’s. Mary must have felt that wherever she went, evil followed, as those closest to her were snatched away. She portrayed this in Frankenstein as Victor’s family was destroyed by the monster, symbolic of the evil she felt followed her. Mary’s marriage is also represented in Frankenstein. Mary’s marriage to Percy Shelley was the happiest time of her life before he was killed. In the same way, Victor’s marriage to Elizabeth was the only joy he had felt in a long time, when just as suddenly she was murdered by the monster, again symbolising the evil that Mary felt killed her husband. Mary also describes very vividly the pain that Victor felt, leading us to believe that she must have felt the same pain and agony. She reveals this in many situations such as the quotes, ‘the overflowing misery I now felt, and the excess of agitation that I endured rendered me incapable of any exertion’ and, ‘a fiend had snatched from me every chance of future happiness; no creature had ever been so miserable as I was’. The ending of the story was that the death of Victor Frankenstein led the monster to believe that his work was done, and so the monster burned himself to death. The creation had ironically led to the death of the creator. Mary believed that in the event of a man’s demise, the evil inside him dies as well. Frankenstein contains a sad ending, with the destruction of a whole family due to a man’s insatiable quest for knowledge. Mary’s life also consisted of a sad ending, in which she was never as happy as she was when with her husband. She died a lonely death, without her loved ones surrounding her, the same fate shared by Victor Frankenstein. The monster in Frankenstein can be compared to the beast in Lord of the Flies. There are both similarities and differences. In both novels, the idea of a monster/beast represents the pure manifestation of evil. Mutually they lead to the destruction and death of those around them. They are equally spawned from the mind and hands of humans. They both originally spring from the minds of humans. To explain, in Lord of the Flies is the imagination of the boys representing evil, and in Frankenstein it is Victor’s wild imagination and thirst for intellect that leads to the creation of the monster. However, this can also be viewed as a particular dissimilarity. In Frankenstein, the monster is bodily real and physically inflicts harm on Victor’s family. However in Lord of the Flies the beast is just as deadly and evil, but is inside the children’s minds. William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. His family was progressive and it was the first source of influence for Golding’s talent. He studied physics and English literature at Marlboro and Oxford University of England. From the first years of his life, he faced the atrocities of war. Fuelled with stories his parents related to him about the first war, he took part in the second great war by joining the British Navy at 1940. After the war, William became a teacher at a boys school in Salisbury. Here, he started to act as a writer. He observed many children in their natural environment, and must have witnessed the negative side of a child’s nature countless number of times. This led him to write Lord Of The Flies which was his first published book. William Golding lived through the two biggest wars in history. During his time in the Navy, he had a constant reminder of the evil and brutality in the hearts of men. He saw countless lives lost around him, some belonging to his friends. It had been revealed to him that the pure evil inside a man can start world wars. This, along with his teaching experiences, was his incentive to write Lord Of The Flies. After surviving the war, he saw during his teaching that children were not bereft of evil either. Combining these two topics he wrote Lord Of The Flies, the conflict between humanity’s innate barbarism and the civilizing influence of reason. In the book, he portrays Jack as the embodiment of evil. It is Jack’s thirst for power that causes the breakdown of civilisation. In this way, Jack can be compared to Hitler. Jack did not want to stop murdering until the whole of Ralph’s group were killed. In the same way, Hitler did not want to stop until the world was rid of Jews. Jack’s tribe wore face paint whereas Hitler and the Nazis wore the sign of the Swastika on their arms. Jack is aided in his quest of destruction by Roger, who can be compared to the Nazis. Roger also represents pure evil and wrongness, moreso even than Jack. He derived sadistic pleasure from torturing pigs and the other boys on the island. Similarly, the Nazis tortured the Jews from which they obtained a sick sense of fulfilment. Roger is one of Jack’s most loyal helpers, and gladly carries out his orders, in the same manner the Nazis obeyed Hitler. The ending of the novel can be interpreted in two different ways. The first would be to interpret that William Golding does actually have a positive outlook on life and believes that the end of life will be a happy one. This can be portrayed as the naval officer who has come to end the evil and escape the boys from the clutches of death, and thus the arrival of authority seems like a happy and ironic ending. However if one digs deeper it is just a continuation from one war to another. Once all the boys get on the Navy cruiser, they’ll most likely just be subjected to more battle and fighting, this time on a worldwide level, due to the war taking place in the outside world. To conclude, the common theme in both novels was the evil in man. Both authors had their own experiences that led them to believe that evil resides amongst all of us. They both took their experiences and portrayed them in novels filled with symbolism. Mary Shelley believed that evil is constantly around us, and that no-one can escape. She believed that man has an evil inside of him so powerful that it can lead to the destruction of his own soul. William Golding’s understanding was that every man is born with evil inside him. He didn’t believe in man’s innocence after the second world war. He found that even children are not innocent, saying, ‘No one is innocent until the society and the way of his life make him to pretend that he’s innocent. But sometimes, when a man is facing a difficult situation then he will probably show his other nature, the dark and guilty nature. ‘ Shyam Kanabar Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Mary Shelley section.

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Analysis of M.I.A.s Paper Planes Music Video - 1505 Words

There is one universal language: the language of music. Music has a special quality and ability to bridge both social and cultural divides. A proposed theory by Dr. Gray, Founder and Director of National Musical Arts’ BioMusic Program; describes music has been around longer than human-beings have. Music is the one thing human beings from various backgrounds can relate to. Every living creature would agree. Music is heard everywhere not just among humans, but in nature as well, through the twitting of birds, winds blowing, the soft sound of raindrops against a windowpane, the ocean waves moving back and forth and the hum of the ocean rushing in a sea shell. There is no escaping it; music lives in and surrounds us steadily. While there are†¦show more content†¦1). According to Richard Harrington, â€Å"the Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS) was one of the first Tamil political organizations -- Tamil Hindus being the ethnic minority in Sinhalese Buddh ist dominated Sri Lanka†, their purpose was to form Tamil as an independent state (Ibid). As a result of M.I.A’s exposure to EROS most of her songs lyrics portray a mocking sarcastic depiction of goonish behavior and the mentalities of institutionalized organizations. For instance, â€Å"Paper Planes† offers subtle yet commanding and politically cynical hints of â€Å"dominance† and race to maintain commodities such as oil, no matter the consequences. In other words, if it takes sending soldiers to fight in a senseless war in order to maintain the power of producing oil then so be it. â€Å"Paper Planes† declares: â€Å"All I wanna do is (BANG BANG BANG BANG!) And (KKKAAAA CHING!) And take your money† (â€Å"Paper Planes†, M.I.A.). The BANG! BANG and gunshots heard on track are there to dismantle ‘capitalistic ideologies’ within countries like the U.S. Cherie Moraga writes â€Å"The United States is the only country in the world that feels entitled not to suffer the consequences of its actions† (WOC Reader, from Inside the First World, pg 46). Certainly, the non-industrial, unconventional and anti institution political perspective is