Business plan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words - 1

Business plan - Essay Example The Encore Specialty Coffee shop is a substitute to other coffee shops because it offers its customers a refined and calmer environment. The cafà © does not have televisions or radios. There is subtle music that plays in the background. Also, the pictures of local musicians are displayed on the walls. The cafà © has overstuffed leather seats and sofas that are like a library. While it pays homage to past times, the cafà © is at the technological cutting edge because it has Wi-Fi and the most modern espresso machines. The Encore Specialty Coffee Shop measures its success based on whether its market share increases, leading to a rise in earnings. Currently, it has a local market share valued at  £40 million. Its success arises from the fact that it offers quality coffee and leverages on its small workforce. The cafà © selects the best coffee beans from the distributors in Middlesex. Encore enjoys larger profits because of its small size and, thus, lower overhead. Its management handpicks the baristas and offers them salaries that equal other chains. The research was aimed at determining the market size, competition, business opportunity and market analysis of the coffee industry in the UK. Several research tools were used. First, all the coffee cafes in Liverpool were profiled. Particulars that were studied included their size, the number of employees, and the array of products they offer. Other information that was collected included their annual revenue, business philosophy and anticipation for the future. A lot of traveling was done to different parts of the city. Questionnaires and interviews were created to get the most relevant information on the interviewees. They included the customers that frequented this coffee house, the employees, and the management. Questions regarding the products that were stocked other than coffee to carry out co-marketing were asked. The internet was used to

Industry Analysis Paper (on Resturant business) Essay - 1

Industry Analysis Paper (on Resturant business) - Essay Example ides employments and career opportunities for thousands of people (Urban Justice Center, â€Å"Behind the Kitchen Door: Pervasive Inequality in New York City’s Thriving Restaurant Industry†). New York is regarded as the ‘restaurant capital of the world’. Restaurants are located in almost everywhere in the New York City. There were almost 15,000 food service places as of the year 2002 and the number is growing extensively. According to industry report, in 2002, among top 100 highest revenue earning restaurants in the United States, 24 were situated in New York City (Urban Justice Center, â€Å"Behind the Kitchen Door: Pervasive Inequality in New York City’s Thriving Restaurant Industry†). In the year 2008, New York had almost 13,249 restaurants which signify 25% increase compared to the year 2000, in which there were only 10,363 restaurants. The significant growth of restaurants in New York was characterized by Manhattan City. The majority of restaurants in New York are based on Manhattan City. Yet, Queens and Brooklyn had also experienced tremendous growths in restaurant business since 2000. The percentage of increases in restaurants in Queens and Brooklyn were 34 and 37 respectively from 2000–2008. The following table describes the concentration of restaurants throughout New York City from 2000–2008: In addition to food services, the restaurants also provide alcoholic drinks, nontheatrical entertainments, fast food services, snack bars, nonalcoholic brews, canteens and buffets (Center for Urban Research, â€Å"Employment in New York City Restaurants†). The economic structure of any industry determines the success or failure of any business. The Porter’s Five Forces model is a basis for examining industry and developing business strategy accordingly. Porter’s model is based on the forces of micro-environment which impact on organizations’ businesses. According to Michael Porter, there are five micro-environmental forces which are extensively used

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Introduction: The research is result of study project designed to examine few important parts of human resource management, which are hiring and selection process, sometimes suffering with under staffing and sometimes firing due to over staffing. This essay is also includes some of the recent theories about recruitment and staffing with reference to human resource management. Theories will be followed by literature review emphasising on concepts of staffing, managing people, recruitment and selection, practical and challenging problems. These theories will be followed by the research methodology of the case study research. This part is an overview of the research. It begins by background study to the research, followed by the research aim for this study. This part will conclude with a theoretical framework. Background Study Business process outsourcing sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in India. There have been a lot many companies entering the market which includes multinational companies coming to India and new organisations in India starting their business for these companies. Business process outsourcing (BPO) in India offers customer services; IT support, financial services and many back end services to many MNCs. The projections for theBusiness process outsourcing (BPO)) sectorare huge: almost five-fold increase in size from $11 billion to $50 billion by 2012 and a 50 % growth rate over the next five years as compared to 35% in the past five years. Two million jobs across the country in four years the BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO) sectorsure has enormous untapped potential but mere potential does not amount to performance (Nexis, Financial Express, June 5, 2008 Thursday). BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO) sector does not only cover international market but it also has a strong domestic market. Many big organisations outsource their customer services and other back office works to service offering firms. Indias domestic Business process outsourcing (BPO)) market, with nearly 500 players, is set to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 33.3% to touch revenues of $6.82 billion by 2013. The industry recorded a turnover of $1.62 billion in 2008. Voice processes in the Indian domestic BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO) market contribute 55% to the overall domestic revenues while non-voice market such as offering solutions, back office works, makes up the rest. The domesticBUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO)market shows promise of growth, especially insectorslike banking and finance as well as the telecomsectorin the short term. The industry currently offers a range of services from customer care to research and analytics. Of this, the banking financial services and insurance segment contributes the lions share of 37% to revenues (Nexis, Financial Express, November 14, 2009 Saturday) HRM plays a very important role in an organisations success or failure. As the BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO) sector was growing the requirement for strategic human resource management was increasing. According to Storey (1995), Human resource management is a distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce using and array of cultural, structure and personnel techniques. As the competition was growing every organisation in this sector wanted to hire the best ones. Business process outsourcing (BPO)industry inIndiais witnessing a decline in attrition rates due to therecession. BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO)companies are hiring in smaller numbers and prefer to work with on-board employees to reduce costs. Genpact has recorded a decline of five percent in attrition to 21 percent in Jan-Mar 2009. EXL has recorded a decline of 12.8 percent in attrition to 21 percent. WNS (part of one of the top 10 BPO firms as per Business Today) has reported a decline of seven percent in attrition to 22 percent. Wipro (one of the top five firms as per Business Today)BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO)has reported a decline of five percent in attrition to 13 percent (Nexis, IndiaBusiness Insight, May 12, 2009 Tuesday). This research is going to be conducted in Adventity in order to understand what were the Human Resource strategies adopted by them, what went wrong and what should have been done. Adventity is a part of both domestic and international BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO) sector. Its a full service KPO/BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO) organisation for the Banking and Financial Services and the Airlines and Travel industry, offering solutions to clients across the globe. Adventity is a financial organisation working in Mortgage sector in US. In 2008 when mortgage market was suffering and all financial institutions were filing for bankruptcy, Adventity decided to increase its employee strength. With the help of its HR team Adventity started hiring on a large scale. Adventity is competing in the BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING (BPO) market, where the competition is much ferocious than any other market in India. Every organisation in this sector wanted the best of employees in order to compe te. Thus it was very essential for Adventity to evaluate and manage its employment strength by adapting some of the key HR process. Thus Human resource management is one of the focused strategies of Adventity growth policy. Thus as discussed above, after knowing the importance and very essential role of recruitment and selection to human resource, this research emphasises on the human resources management which includes hiring and selection and removal process that affects Adventity. Research Objective: The major objectives of this research is to understand the effect of human resources management which includes hiring and selection and removal process that affects Adventity . The objectives are stated below: Hiring and selection process conducted by the human resource team in Adventity. Literature review assessment on hiring and selection and removal process. Evaluate the outcome of hiring and selection and removal process. Evaluate the affects of the same process on Adventity. Literature Review Business Process Outsourcing: In September 1989, Jack Welch, then General Electric Co.s chairman, flew to India hoping to sell products like airplane engines and plastics to the Indian government. During a meeting with top government advisers, Sam Pitroda, chief technology adviser of the late Premiere Rajiv Gandhi, surprised Mr. Welch by saying We want to sell you software. Mr Welch, by agreeing to start this business relationship, became the motion that started India on its way to becoming one of the strongholds of outsourcing and sparked the global outsourcing revolution (Solomon and Kranhold, 2005) Business Process Outsourcing, which began as an arrangement for necessity and later a major cost cutting move, has now evolved to become a mainstream management practice in number of industries. The increased uptake of outsourcing, particularly in the form of global-sourcing, raises a number of critical and crucial issues for corporate management (Currie, 1995). Recent years have seen dramatic growth in its use statistics indicates that business process outsourcing now an $180 billion industry (Anderson, 2004) and information technology outsourcing now accounts for over 35% of global information technology spending (Cap Gemini Ernst Young, 2003). Like any other move, there is a degree of risk involved with outsourcing (Aubert, Patry Rivard, 1998; Earl, 1996). Approximately 75% of outsourcing deals are unsuccessful and that American businesses wasted a lot of billion dollars on poorly managed contracts. Advances in transmission technology and deregulation of telecommunication facilities have resulted in the ability for cheaper global communication via voice and data networks (Namasivayam, 2004; Weinstein, 2004). The prevalent locations choices for this offshore outsourcing trend are India and china, primarily due to the potential of cheap labour cost arbitrage to achieve an overall reduction in operations costs. Recruitment: Recruit process refers to the process of attracting, evaluating and selecting the qualified and the eligible candidates for any position in the organisation. Human resource management is acknowledged to play an important role in todays dynamic business environment (Schuler and Jackson, 2007). Business process outsourcing firms, in particular, need to pay special attention to the management of their human resources due to the unique nature of their work where worker becomes the central figure. It is therefore important to attract, retain and keep employees motivated and efficient (Derry and Kinnie, 2004). The analysis reveals that the activities relating to recruitment are formal and structured across all the BPOs and the responsibility for the recruitment process is shared by both HR department and the operations department of the organisation (Pawan, Budhwar and Bhatnagar, 2009). The importance of recruiting is pointed out by Luftman et al. who named recruiting as a top issue for executives (Luftman et al., 2006). Moreover, the renewed increasing demand for BPO workers turns out to be a local phenomenon, but global in its scope and implications (Riemenschneider et al., 2008). The rising importance of the recruiting process is also recognised in practice, since more global operating companies started to standardise their worldwide staffing process recently (Eckhardt et al., 2008). According to Kim and Won, the recruiting process is the most time and cost consuming process among all the other human resource processes. Organisation are increasingly recognising the importance of coordination among the numerous different in staff recruitment (Kim and Won, 2007) as recruitment process in a BPO takes approximately one entire day as it includes many stages of different types of evaluations. Keim and Weitzel showed that applicants from highly values, with high expecta tions who contact the hiring agencies or companies via different modes of communications and media and apply for jobs using different forms of application (Keim and Weitzel, 2006). The candidates from diverse preferences for particular application forms split the applicants in different in different groups (Eckhart et al., 2007). In order to response to these different applications many organisations change their recruiting process. The forecast is that more organisations would outsource their knowledge-intensive business to India given the shortage of skilled labour in the US/UK and other markets, and indeed the potential cost savings involved (Evalueserve, 2004; Sen and Shiel, 2006). It is estimated that more than 250,000 people are to be employed in this sector by 2010 (The Hindu, 2006). Thus considering the speedy growth and the people-driven nature of this sector, competent human resource management has a very crucial role to play. Some of the reports suggest that one of the foremost challenges for these BPOs and KPOs would be related to recruitment, retention and nurturing i.e. training of appropriate talent (Evalueserve, 2004; RocSearch, 2006). Selection Process: The selection process can be defined as process of interviewing and assessing the candidates for a specific job profile in an organisation based on the criteria set by the organisation. The selection process is developed to determine the final choice, including an interview and how it will be conducted, the approach that will be used to sell the company, the methods that will be used to evaluate the candidates, tests that may be used and reference and credential checks. The process can be very simple or very complicated or intensive depending upon the job profile and the organisation. The main objective when hiring is to select the appropriate candidate for the appropriate job. In order to select the appropriate candidate an interview is conducted. Interviewing is still the most commonly used method of selection in Employment and the most popular selection technique in use in public and private sectors (Robertson and Makin, 1986; Shackleton and Newell, 1991; Williams 1992). The selection process is designed to decide the final choice, which includes an interview and how that interview will be conducted, the approach the organisation will use to hire the candidate, the evaluation method, the tests that may be used and reference and background check. Of all the selecting methods available, interviewing is the most heavily relied upon and the most difficult to master. The key to an effective interview is to remain focused on the objectives of the interview (Rice, 1984). Retention: Because of downsizing due to recession (Hirsch, 1987; Cameron et al., 1993) and hiring contingent employees (Pfeffer and Baron, 1988; Pfeffer, 1994), long-term organizational commitments are largely disappearing (Rousseau, 1996; Rousseau and Libuser, 1997) and high employee turnover has become common (Cohen, 1993; Hunt and Morgan, 1994). Under these circumstances, employees mobility decisions become a critical issue. Employee mobility represents the flow and exchange of workforces (Ehrenberg and Smith, 1994). For an employee, its his decision of to stay or to go, or retention or turnover. Employee mobility plays an important role in improving the match between a worker and a given employer over time (Ehrenberg and Smith, 1994). It also forces both employee and employer to remain alert of the big marketplace and to continuously study one anothers requirements. In this way, mobility actually performs a socially useful role by matching workers with those employers who will most value th eir skills (Ehrenberg and Smith, 1994). Attrition costs time and money to employee and employer both. Employers find replacement cost and hidden organisational cost high (Mitchell et al., 2001); employees find monetary and psychological costs taxing (Ehrenberg and Smith, 1994; Mitchell et al., 2001). Human capital theory (Mincer, 1962; Becker, 1962) considers voluntary retirement service as an investment in which the cost incurs well before in time and the organisation can earn return over a long period of time. If the current value of returns which is directly related with the attrition exceeds both monetary and psychological costs of leaving, then the employee will be motivated to switch jobs. If the discounted stream of benefits is not as large as the costs, the employee will refrain from switching jobs (Ehrenberg and Smith, 1994). HR Challenges in BPO/KPO Organisations: In India, the literature on human resource management in general grabbed attention after the liberalization of the economy in 1991. Few learnings have highlighted that the human resource task in Indian firms is beginning to adopt a more strategic approach in the management of this critical resource (Budhwar and Sparrow, 1997). However, it has also been pointed out that these practices vary across sectors with marked differences between private and public sector organizations (Budhwar and Boyne, 2004; Amba Rao et al., 2000; Bordia and Blau, 1998). However, there is a prominent lack in researches on business processing outsourcing organizations (especially on KPOs). An analysis of secondary sources which are mainly articles from the press and business magazines and the some of the very rare available research papers on Indian BPOs, reveal that the basic cost-effective model of Indian business process outsourcing sector has started to weakening as income continues to rise on an per annu m basis at 10-20 percent, and in some of the scenarios the average revenue is declining. Few analysts are questioning the sustainability of the rapid growth of the Indian business process outsourcing sector and are worried that the industry after a while might burst like the dot.com bubble. Many HR-related issues are becoming obvious. For an example it was predicted that, by 2008 the outsourcing sector might face shortage of approximately 262,000 employees (Budhwar et al., 2006a). To add more, the sector has a very high attrition rate and many outsourcing firms find it difficult to retain their tenure and the best employees. Despite the fact that there is a huge number of students graduating every year, but the education system of many institute in India does not meet the quality required by this sector, thus the scarcity of new joiners is increasing. Due to the shortage, the hiring of new talent has become more expensive. Due to high attrition rates in the sector, every employee who quits the job costs the company another Rs40,000 to 50,000 (Â £1 Â ¼ 84 Indian rupees approximately) to recruit and train a replacement. At present, the quality of the sector has increased so high that for every 20 applicants in Mumbai, just one or two make the cut. Apart from this, emplo yees in the sector are experiencing problems related to stress, careers, and dissatisfaction at work (Budhwar et al., 2006a, b). References: Storey J. (1995), Human Resource Management: Still marching on or marching out?; in J. Storey Human resource Management A critical text, London, Routledge Nexis, India Business Insight, May 12, 2009 Tuesday Anderson D. (2004). Proactive Planning: A prerequisite for successful sourcing. November 19, 2004. Aubert A. B., Patry. M, Rivard. S. (1998). Assessing the risk of IT outsourcing. In proceedings of the 31st Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. Cap Gemini Ernst Young, (2003). The Outsourcing report: Making choices Insight into successful outsourcing. Currie, W. L. (1995). Management strategy for IT: An international perspective, Great Britain:Pitman Publishing. Earl M. J. (1996). The risks of outsourcing IT. Sloan Management Review, 37(3), 26-32. Solomon, J., and Kranhold, K (2005). In Indias Outsourcing boom, GE played a starring role, Wall Street Journal, A1. Derry, S. And Kinnie, N. (2004). Introduction: The nature and management of call centre work, in Derry and Kinnie (eds), Call Centres and Human Resources Management: A Cross National Perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp 1-22. Pawan, S., Budhwar and Bhatnagar, J., 2009. The Changing face of People Management in India. Routledge, New York. Luftman, J., Kempaiah, R., and Nash, E. (2006). Key Issues for IT Executives 2005. MIS Quarterly Executive, 5(2):81-99. Riemenschneider, C. K., Moore, J. E., and Armstrong, D. (2008). Call for papers Special issue on meeting the renewed demand for IT workers, European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS). http://www.palgravejournals. com/ejis/CFP-EJIS-ITWorkers.pdf (visited 06/05/2008). Eckhardt, A., Weitzel, T., Koenig, W., and Buschbacher, J. (2007). How to convince people who dont like IT to use IT A case study on eRecruiting. In Proceedings of the 13th Americas Conference on Information Systems. AMCIS 2007. Kim, G.-M. and Won, H. J. (2007). HR BPO service models for small and medium enterprises. Business Process Management Journal, 13(5):694-706. Keim, T. and Weitzel, T. (2006). Strategies for hiring IT professionals: An empirical analysis of employer and job seeker behavior on the IT labor market. In Proceedings of the 2006 Americas Conference on Information Systems. AMCIS 2006. Evalueserve (2004), The next big opportunity moving up the value chain from BPO to KPO, Evalueserve, available at: www.evalueserve.com/Media-And-Reports/WhitePapers/NextBigOpportunityMovinguptheValueChainFromBPOtoKPO.pdf Sen, F., Shiel, M. (2006), From business process outsourcing (BPO) to knowledge process outsourcing (KPO): some issues, Human Systems Management, Vol. 25 pp.145-55. The Hindu (2006), India preferred destination for KPO, The Hindu, Vol. 21 August. RocSearch (2006), Knowledge services market beyond the hype: will India deliver?, Rocsearch Limited, available at: www.rocsearch.com/Media/KnowledgeServicesMarket.pdf, Robertson, I.T., Makin, P.J. (1986), Management selection in Britain: a survey and critique, Journal of Occupational Psychology, Vol. 59 No.1, Shackleton, V.J., Newell, S. (1991), Management selection: a comparative survey of methods used in top British and French Companies, Journal of Occupational Psychology, Vol. 64 pp.13-36. Rice, C. (1984). Getting Good People and Keeping Them.American Management Association, Publications Group: New York. Hirsch, P. (1987), Pack Your Own Parachute: How to Survive Mergers, Takeovers, and Other Corporate Disasters, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Cameron, K.S., Freeman, S.J. and Mishra, A.K. (1993), Downsizing and redesigning organizations, in Huber, G.P. and Gluck, W.H. (Eds), Organizational Change and Redesign, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pfeffer, J. and Baron, J. (1988), Taking the workers back out, Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 10, pp. 257-303. Pfeffer, J. (1994), Competitive Advantage through People, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Rousseau, D. (1996), Changing the deal while keeping the people, Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 50-61. Rousseau, D. and Libuser, C. (1997), Contingent workers in high risk environments, California Management Review, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 103-23. Cohen, A. (1993), Organizational commitment and turnover: a meta-analysis, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 36 No. 5, pp. 1140-57. Hunt, S.D. and Morgan, R.M. (1994), Organizational commitment: one of many commitments or key mediating construct?, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 37 No. 6, pp. 1568-87. Ehrenberg, R. and Smith, R. (1994), Modern Labor Economics, Addison-Wesley, Wokingham. Mitchell, T.R., Holtom, B.C., Lee, T.W., Sablynski, C.J. and Erez, M. (2001), Why people stay: using job embeddedness to predict voluntary turnover, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 44 No. 6, pp. 1102-21. Mincer, J. (1962), On-the-job training: costs, returns, and some implications, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 70, pp. S50-S79. Becker, G.S. (1962), Investment in human capital: a theoretical analysis, Journal of Political Economics, Vol. 70, pp. 9-49. Budhwar, P., Sparrow, P. (1997), Evaluating levels of strategic integration and devolvement of human resource management in India, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 8 pp.476-94. Budhwar, P., Boyne, G. (2004), Human resource management in the Indian public and private sectors: an empirical comparison, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 15 No.2, pp.346-70. Amba-Rao, S.C., Petrick, J.A., Gupta, J.N.D., Von der Embse, T.J. (2000), Comparative performance appraisal practices and management values among foreign and domestic firms in India, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 11 No.1, pp.60-89. Bordia, P., Blau, G. (1998), Pay referent comparison and pay level satisfaction in private versus public sector organizations in India, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 9 No.1, pp.155-67. Budhwar, P.S., Luthar, H.K., Bhatnagar, J. (2006a), The dynamics of HRM systems in Indian BPO firms, Journal of Labour Research, Vol. 27 No.3, pp.339-60. Budhwar, P., Varma, A., Singh, V., Dhar, R. (2006b), HRM systems of Indian call centres: an exploratory study, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 17 No.5, pp.881-97.

Hulk Smash Essay -- Art

Throughout history, the graphic form has been used as a means of conveying information of many forms such as story, words of warning, or even propaganda (Van Meter). In its more recent shape, the modern comic, the graphic work was often treated as a lowly form of art suitable primarily for adolescents and children seeking entertainment (Cengage). This mindset about comics continued until the mid 1980’s, at which point it was shattered by the arrival of â€Å"Maus†; a graphic novel that documented the experiences of a Holocaust survivor (Spiegelman). After winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, Spiegelman’s work opened the door to a whole world of possibilities for the graphic form in scholarly pursuits. Though this event brought about the birth of countless graphic narratives, each responsible for shedding light on modern historical travesties, it is my conviction that prior to the onset of â€Å"graphic reportage† comics held a more important socio-polit ical relevance. While less explicit with their messages, early comics such as â€Å"The Hulk† gave valuable insight into society by giving a direct look into pop-culture of the time, utilizing symbolism to convey public opinion, and spreading propaganda. When a work is created with the intent of being graphic reportage the author becomes painfully aware of the fact that they will be observed and scrutinized under this context, however when an entirely fictitious comic book is created its author is relieved from the constraints of this awareness of observation. Put more eloquently, comic book authors that create works of graphic reportage are vulnerable to a psychological phenomenon known as the Hawthorne Effect, which states that individuals that are aware that they are being observed will b... ... Works Cited Cengage, Gale. eNotes.com. 2004. 22 April 2012 . Conroy, Mike. "The True Origin of The Incredible Hulk." N/A: Marvel Comics, 2008. Gale, E.A.M. "The Hawthorne studies—a fable for our times? ." QJM (2004): 439-449. Lee, Stan-Writer Kirby, Jack -Penciller Reinman, Paul-Inker Simek,Art-Letters. "The Incredible Hulk." The Incredible Hulk #1. Marvel Comics, May 1962. Rocchi, James. X-Meta : An Outsider’s Guide to Symbolism in Superhero Cinema (wonder woman mention). May 2006. 22 April 2012 . Spiegelman, Art. " Maus: A Survivor's Tale." New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. Van Meter, Justine. "History Of Graphic Novels." Orange, CA, February 2012.

Broadening Your Perspective Essay

The idea for this example is to further explain Activity Based Costing and how it can help the Ideal Manufacturing Company keep its costs at the correct level. Activity based costing is defined as â€Å"An activity based costing (ABC) system recognizes the relationship between costs, activities and products, and through this relationship assigns indirect costs to products less arbitrarily than traditional methods..† (Investopedia, 2014) A.) 17-2 broadening your perspective asks that we compute the activity-based overhead rate for each activity cost. To calculate the activity-based overhead rate for each activity cost we use the formula: The following chart are the results of that formula for each activity cost related to is driver. For market analysis we take the market analysis amount/hours of analysis. This is 1,050,000/15,000=$70.00. For the Product design we take the product design of 2,350,000 divided by the number of designs 2,500. This is calculation is 2,350,000/2,500=940. For the Product Development we calculate the Product Development/Number of Products. 3,600,000/90=40. Lastly the Prototype testing/Number of Tests or 1,400,000/500= 2,800. B) The next section that we are looking at is â€Å"How much cost would be charged to an in-house manufacturing department that consumed 1,800 hours of market analysis time, was provided 280 designs relating to 10 products, and request 92 engineering tests. The following chart is based on these calculations. The market analysis is calculated by taking the calculated rate of 70*1,800  hours. This calculation comes to a $126,000 cost. The product design is calculated by multiplying the previous calculations of 940*280. This calculation comes to $263,200 in costs. The Product Development is calculated by 10 products* recalculated 40,000. This calculation is equal to $400,000in costs. We then take the Prototype testing pre-calculated 2800*92 engineering tests. This calculation is equal to $257,600 in costs. The total costs after the sum is $1,046,800. C.) These calculations are taken based on the question asked of â€Å"How much cost would serve as the basis for pricing an R&D bid with an outside company on a contract that would consume 800 hours of analysis time, require 178 designs relating to 3 products, and result in 70 engineering tests?† The following chart is the above calculations: For this set of calculations we take the 800 hours of analysis time and multiply it by 70 which calculates to the $56,000 in costs. Product design is calculated by taking 178 designs multiplied by 940= $167,320 in costs. Product development is calculated by 3*40,000= 120,000 on costs and prototype testing is equal to 70*2800=196,000 in costs for a total of $539,320. D.) The benefit to Ideal Manufacturing of applying activity for both in house and outside charging purposes is that the use of activity based costing will show a more accurate selling proce of the product and the loss that is taken. Without activity based costing being used Ideal Manufacturing could be charged a higher selling price. This would not be ideal for Ideal Manufacturing as their competitors could get smaller selling prices. In all activity based costing helps the company to make sure that they are using the correct cost for each of their products and provides the company with a more accurate selling price. Reference Investopedia. (2014). Activity Based Costing. Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/abc.asp

MLE Assignment Essay

1. Ethically, is brain death not as final as cardiac death? Why or why not? Brain death is final. There is no coming back from it, ever. Neurons die, and the brain ceases to function. Permanently. With cardiac death, we can sometimes use medication or electricity to resume heart function. A systole (no electrical activity in the heart) can sometimes be reversed if the underlying cause of the problem can be treated (such as severe electrolyte abnormalities, or severe hypothermia). 2. How does the Prudent Person Rule apply in this case? The prudent rule or â€Å"reasonable man† law dictates that a person act in a manner that is consistent with the skills, logic, resources, and knowledge that an average lay-person may have. In medicine, it would apply to a patient in that they are required to take all steps that are reasonable and prudent to affect a positive outcome in their treatment. In other words, you would be expected to follow doctor’s orders, do all routine follow up and home therapy, use reasonable judgments and so on. So the answer here is, yes – this does apply to the case because this young girl came into the hospital for a simple surgery removing her tonsils, adenoids, and extra sinus tissues. And was shortly determined brain dead after beginning to bleed profusely, and went through cardiac arrest, meaning the serious dysfunction of an organ. 3. In your opinion, could this tragedy have been prevented? If so, how? In this case I really don’t know the specifics of this particular case, because there are so many missing pieces between the pre-op and post-op that I’m unsure of how this actually happened to determine if this tragedy could have been prevented. In some cases the parents have to be completely informed as to the ramifications of a situation before making a final decision.