Our objective was to invent a method for keeping an egg from breaking while it is dropped from a specified height. At first, we calculated the amount of time we were given to think about an idea, and resources we were to use. Specifically, 8 straws, a raw egg, and a 2 feet long paper tape. Also, our time to plan was limited to 25 minutes. Secondly, we all offered a viewpoint on how to approach this situation. Each one of us came up with his/her idea of creating something that would keep an egg from cracking. One of us offered to half wrap the egg with the straws, so that it can produce some air suspension effect and 50 percent is visible. Another one of our group members offered a similar technique but argued on whether the egg should be wrapped stand up or laid down. Our third group member offered to use straws in a way that egg never hits the floor while straws do. Our fourth group member offered to use a string that would lower the elevation the egg is dropped from. And finally our last group member presented a view of using straws to be cut into several pieces and cut in a way that they produce a flowering edges, and wrapped around the egg.We tried to put it all together into one unique design that would be the actual design of our product. What we did was used the flowering idea and placed them on the egg in a manner that it creates pointer at different location on the egg that would lead to create a air suspension effect and keep the egg floating all the time. And then we incorporated the idea of string from one of our group members and attached the string at one of the points on the egg, so we decrease the elevation from where egg is dropped. This ended our ideas planning session. This session took about 15 minutes of our time.
Then our focus moved upon to what and how would we need to use our resouces that this idea can be put into practical use. We decided upon using six of our straws that we would cut into several pieces with flowering edges. One edge would attached to the egg and the other would support as a method to reduce the pressure as it hits floor. Then we had to decide on how to make these small pieces with flowering tops because of our limited use of scissors. Then we came up with idea of using a lock key to cut the straws into pieces, and then using pencil pointer to make the flowering tops. And we planned to use the other two straws to create a string that the egg would be attached to. We planned on cutting each one of our straws in a way that it would provide us with several layers taht we could use as a string. And finally, we decided to use half of our paper tape to attach our flowering topped pieces of straws to the egg, and the other haof to lengthen our string.
And final step was to create our planned or designed egg proctector in ten minutes. We decided to put two of our members to create flowering topped pieces of straws,and one to cut the needed tape, fouth to attached the straws to the egg,and the last member to find access to scissor so that we can cut the remaining to straws into several layers so that it can be used as a long string. We used 9 minutes to implement our plan and the final minute to test our creation for success.
For record, we did went through majority of our planning process that one is to go through before implenting one's plan. Our failure was that were so sure that it would work without actually finding fatal flaws our plan before we implemented it. We incorporated all teh suggestions into one, but failed to figure out whether what we had planned would actually work.
We were very sure that our invention would be a success but our creation failed to meet our expection by allowing the egg to break. So much for a failure... We tried...
Monday, February 25, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Business Plan and its importance
What is a business plan?
Simply defined, a business plan is a document that tells an individual or company where it is today, where it want to go tomorrow, and how you plan to get there.
In today's business world, a need of a business plan has increased dramatically. Even if it is not required, it expresses an important need. There are alot of benefits of a business plan. One, it allows one to look into one's idea and criticize it for fatal flaws that can ruin one's investment in future. Second, it forces one to think about one's beliefs and insight of a certain idea and look to see if it is worth investing one's time and efforts into it. It also helps to raise one's confidence by allowing him/her to clarify and eliminate errors in one's understanding. A business plan also shows one's ability to communicate effectively with other individuals in the industry, like investors, customers, and suppliers. Most importantly, investors want to see how capable an individual they are betting their savings on is? Thats why the first question one is asked, when they go to bank or an investor for money is "Where is your business plan?" Simply, it is a company gameplan.
On the other hand, a business plan also has some negatives. The most important of them is time, it is very time consuming. Companies today don't want to spend there precious time planning while they can be engaged in other important activities. This is so important for a business owner to decide how much time they want to spend planning. Because by spending too much time planning one can miss the window of opportunity that was open for them, while they were planning. If they plan too little, they can end up creating a mess for themselves very early moment of their operations. Secondly, a business plan can limit a company from expanding or moving away in a better direction because of the pressure from investors and industry environment.
So, the question remains, Is business plan relevant?
There just don't seem to be any correct answer to this. It all depends on the situation in the market. Even if you had the best plan of all, you may still fail to succeed.
Simply defined, a business plan is a document that tells an individual or company where it is today, where it want to go tomorrow, and how you plan to get there.
In today's business world, a need of a business plan has increased dramatically. Even if it is not required, it expresses an important need. There are alot of benefits of a business plan. One, it allows one to look into one's idea and criticize it for fatal flaws that can ruin one's investment in future. Second, it forces one to think about one's beliefs and insight of a certain idea and look to see if it is worth investing one's time and efforts into it. It also helps to raise one's confidence by allowing him/her to clarify and eliminate errors in one's understanding. A business plan also shows one's ability to communicate effectively with other individuals in the industry, like investors, customers, and suppliers. Most importantly, investors want to see how capable an individual they are betting their savings on is? Thats why the first question one is asked, when they go to bank or an investor for money is "Where is your business plan?" Simply, it is a company gameplan.
On the other hand, a business plan also has some negatives. The most important of them is time, it is very time consuming. Companies today don't want to spend there precious time planning while they can be engaged in other important activities. This is so important for a business owner to decide how much time they want to spend planning. Because by spending too much time planning one can miss the window of opportunity that was open for them, while they were planning. If they plan too little, they can end up creating a mess for themselves very early moment of their operations. Secondly, a business plan can limit a company from expanding or moving away in a better direction because of the pressure from investors and industry environment.
So, the question remains, Is business plan relevant?
There just don't seem to be any correct answer to this. It all depends on the situation in the market. Even if you had the best plan of all, you may still fail to succeed.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
What is CULTURE?
Culture can means different things to different people. It can a belief, set of rules, environment, set of behaviors, etc. I believe that culture is something that attaches value to what we do. For example, a certain action that I perform has no value to anyone, until someone tells you that you have done it good. This someone who tells you that you did fine is the culture in my viewpoint. It is what tells you to do something in a certain manner, live in a certain manner, and understand things in a certain manner. So my culture is all that tells me that I'm doing things good and right in my everyday life.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Management Dilemmas and me!!!
Of all the different things, I have to manage in my everyday life, the most important thing that I have trouble with is to decide whether I want to spend my time in school or at work. Because I believe that once you start to earn money, you keep looking for different ways to earn more, and eventually you start spending more time on work than at school and your studies kind of hang in the middle. I always have an incentive to work but I limit my work hours to the point that they donot interfere my school life. The reason being that I value studies over work. Because you work all your life, but once you stop studing, it becomes hard to return to school and continue studies. So the way I deal with this is by only working on weekends, and try not to even think about money during the week days.
Another thing that consistently puts me on the hotseat is that whether I want to engage in extracurricular activities or concentrate on keeping my grade point average high by putting that extra time studying. What troubles me with this is the question how can I balance each of them out. By just studying I don't thik I am doing justice to the college life, and by just engaging in extracurricular activities I will be risking a drop in my grade point average. So what I do is limit the number of activities I engage in, so that I donot fall behind in any of them. I never actually managed to satisfy myself with this question, because even though I think I'm doing good enough, I feel I'm lacking something.
Another thing that consistently puts me on the hotseat is that whether I want to engage in extracurricular activities or concentrate on keeping my grade point average high by putting that extra time studying. What troubles me with this is the question how can I balance each of them out. By just studying I don't thik I am doing justice to the college life, and by just engaging in extracurricular activities I will be risking a drop in my grade point average. So what I do is limit the number of activities I engage in, so that I donot fall behind in any of them. I never actually managed to satisfy myself with this question, because even though I think I'm doing good enough, I feel I'm lacking something.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Giants stun Patriots with an amazing victory!!
It all seemed impossible upto the last minute in the ballgame, when Plaxico Burress caught a match winning TD pass from Eli Manning. But finally they were successful in bring one home. While all the odds were against them and previous records supported the odds, Giants didnot let themselves down and kept themselves into the game. And they won!!!
Friday, February 1, 2008
Different technique of enhancing business management processes!
Due to everyday increasing demands of doing businesses nowadays has led people to look for cheaper, time saving methods of optimizing business processes. Here's one look at a developing plan of some companies to deal with such dilemmas,
"In the home care business, 53% of the expenses incurred are directly related to tasks that employees perform. Because of declining reimbursement rates, it is imperative that businesses find ways to reduce the time it takes to perform each business process and optimize this part of the business.
It is common for home care companies to have 10 to 15 processes that must be performed, like intake, billing and collecting, purchasing, etc. The first step toward optimizing processes is to have a written policy and procedures manual. A detailed description of how procedures are performed is the first step in improving them.
The act of improving processes is often called “business process reengineering.” BPR is artful management. In order to practice BPR, an organization must have a detailed knowledge of the process, a collaborative effort for identifying problems, creative solutions for eliminating problems and a system of accountability for change.
The best people to collaborate with on process changes are those that are on the front lines, actually doing the work. These are the people that can tell you what will make their job more efficient.
There are two types of metrics that should be used to measure each business process: throughput and quality. “Throughput” describes output per time: for example orders filled per day. Quality describes the portion of the work that meets the internal or external customer’s expectations.
Eliminating redundancy is one important way to improve processes. Reducing footsteps can save time. For example, desktop fax solutions eliminate the need to get up and walk to a fax machine. There are few industry norms related to processes such as these but the performance of a person or team can be benchmarked to previous throughput and quality. Benchmarking outside the industry can also provide some good ideas."
“Improving All Processes,” Home Care Magazine
The point to be made from the quote above is that management business is changing continuously and each one of has to upgrade ourselves with these continuous improvements in the processes to better handle the problems that we are to confront in our careers. One can also say, that management is taking a turn towards an innovative form of business. You have to look for ways to accelerate these processes to gain a better understanding and advantages in the competitive world of business today.
"In the home care business, 53% of the expenses incurred are directly related to tasks that employees perform. Because of declining reimbursement rates, it is imperative that businesses find ways to reduce the time it takes to perform each business process and optimize this part of the business.
It is common for home care companies to have 10 to 15 processes that must be performed, like intake, billing and collecting, purchasing, etc. The first step toward optimizing processes is to have a written policy and procedures manual. A detailed description of how procedures are performed is the first step in improving them.
The act of improving processes is often called “business process reengineering.” BPR is artful management. In order to practice BPR, an organization must have a detailed knowledge of the process, a collaborative effort for identifying problems, creative solutions for eliminating problems and a system of accountability for change.
The best people to collaborate with on process changes are those that are on the front lines, actually doing the work. These are the people that can tell you what will make their job more efficient.
There are two types of metrics that should be used to measure each business process: throughput and quality. “Throughput” describes output per time: for example orders filled per day. Quality describes the portion of the work that meets the internal or external customer’s expectations.
Eliminating redundancy is one important way to improve processes. Reducing footsteps can save time. For example, desktop fax solutions eliminate the need to get up and walk to a fax machine. There are few industry norms related to processes such as these but the performance of a person or team can be benchmarked to previous throughput and quality. Benchmarking outside the industry can also provide some good ideas."
“Improving All Processes,” Home Care Magazine
The point to be made from the quote above is that management business is changing continuously and each one of has to upgrade ourselves with these continuous improvements in the processes to better handle the problems that we are to confront in our careers. One can also say, that management is taking a turn towards an innovative form of business. You have to look for ways to accelerate these processes to gain a better understanding and advantages in the competitive world of business today.
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