jueves, 4 de noviembre de 2010

“ISO-9000 ISO 9001 – ISO 14000”

  ISO 1400 and ISO 9000 and their importance to a Company

 
ISO 14000 and ISO 9000 is the standard, and ISO 14001 and 9001 is the document containing the requirements

There are many standards that an organization must meet in order to make sure that their products are in the best quality as possible before introducing them to the public. Society and people in general are increasing their expectations of the quality that the products must meet in order to become popular. The standards set out for the products not only include the satisfaction for the buyer, but also the satisfaction to the entire world in the methods employed for the manufacture of the product. Two of these standards that I have mentioned previously include the ISO 9000 and the ISO 14000, standards established worldwide for the production and satisfaction of the public. The ISO stands for the International Organization for Standardization, whose mission is to be the leading platform for the production of the global and market International standards.

Starting with the ISO 9000 which is a standard used in over 161 countries around the globe that helps all kinds of organizations succeed through improved customer satisfaction, staff motivation and a continuous product improvement. The ISO 9000 consists of two different values that add up to the importance of this standard. These standards are the IS0 01, 04 whose main focus is the requirements necessary to meet certification, and the guidelines for performance improvement accordingly; they are main factors affecting the introduction of the standard ISO 900. We can say that the ISO 9000 is employed for the improvement in the management quality as well as the actual quality of the product. The quality management does of course include the fulfillment of the organization to comply with the regulations established for those products or services.

On the other hand, the ISO 1400 takes into consideration a broader aspect of the completion of a product. The ISO 14000 specializes in the control of the environment. What this means is that the organization is able to minimize the harmful effects of the fabrication of the product to the environment. The ISO standard implements a list of steps that the organization must follow in order to fulfill its goal. Some of these steps previously mention include, education on the content of the standards, the analyzing of shortcomings gaps, a timeline of the implementations steps on the gap analysis, determination of the position of the company towards the environment and the requirements of the ISO 14001,but overall, the time to run the environmental management system.
Even though the standards ISO 14000 and 9000 at first seem as two very distinct values for a company to keep in mind, they are in fact not to different from each other. We can begin by looking at both companies in a macro scale. The two standards conclude in the observation and prevention of unsatisfactory effects to their clients, either the environment or a specific person. Both standards are generic standards applicable to any organization not matter its size, whatever their product or service might be, and of course not dependant on their location around the world. In a micro scale both standards are concern in the way in which an organization goes about the completing o their work. One important factor that we have to keep in mind when we are exposed to the ISO standards 14000 and 9000 is that they are not, product or service standards they are process standards necessary for the fabrication of a product.

In conclusion even though both ISO standards 14000 and 9000 are considered two distinct process standards required for the product of a company, they are in fact dependant on each other for the completion of the best product possible. Both standards look at different aspect necessary for the manufacture of a product, which must be kept in mind if the organization wants to be a leader company in its field.
















jueves, 16 de septiembre de 2010

Worksheet No.6 Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning
The strategic Planning is a process taken by some business to better approach their directions or where they want to be in the future including capital ideologies. The strategic planning process is a multi-step process in which meeting each and every one of the requirements is crucial to the overall success of the plan. Some of these major points that the process includes the following:


 Vision
The vision statement in the strategic planning process is the first step that the business, organization or, major corporation should take. The vision as suggested by Erica Olsen (vision), should ask questions like where the business is headed. Sometimes the vision, could be considered as the main gear moving the company forward not only to the owner’s but to the workers that are involved directly to the company as much as its owner. Taking into consideration the vision of the workers is as important as to asking the main owner what their vision should be, because by doing so they will be motivated enough to achieve those long term goals in their jobs.  The vision statement step could be divided into three main types of visions, and they are:


  • Quantitative- this includes to whom the vision statement is directed to or the fixed amount of people that the vision is looking towards.    

  • Competitive- this includes, the vision of competing against a major organization or business in order to become a stronger one

  • Superlative- is a vision of becoming the number one in the field.
These of course are the main visions statements types, but not necessarily the only ones in the topic for what we have knowledge of there could be a thousand more vision statements, but these are the main ones we are more familiarized with.



Mission
               The mission of an organization is the second step in the process of strategic planning. The mission is basically, the reasons to WHY? Certain decisions are taking in the organization. The Mission of the organizations could be also considered the core main structural element in the company or business. The mission statement within its structure should follow a set of steps, which allows to achieve the intended mission, as suggested by Erica Olsen (Mission). The mission statement should be carefully thought out with the input of the staff in order to become stronger and also more prepared organization.

Values
                The values statement is a process within the process of the strategic planning because it focuses in personal interpretations of what real values are. The values statement explains to the costumers and to the outside world what the company believes in. The values statement similar to the mission statement should take into consideration the input of the employees reason being, because in certain cases they are indeed personal believes that not everyone might agree with. The values statement is a very complicated topic because of the difference in ideologies, but overall if discussed by the co-workers the solutions could be achieved.

Objectives
                Like the booklet suggests the objective statement is the third step in the overall strategic planning process. The objective statement is the decision for a 3 to 5 year long broad reaching statements, as suggested by Erica Olsen (objectives). The objective statements, one way in which the business could digest the objective statement easily could be the use of a strategy map, in order to see the entire organization as a whole.
SWOT
                Last but must definitely not least the use of the SWOT strategy is used by an organization to identify four major categories affecting their business. The four categories that the SWOT refers to would be strategies, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the business. These four categories are very crucial to the overall composition of a strategic plan within a business because it helps the organization, company or organizations identify the areas that they should focus on in order to achieve that main desired outcome, for the future good of the business.   


Sources:
Erica Olsen. “How to Write a Vision Statement that Inspires” virtualstrategist. M3 Planning.
Erica Olsen. “How to Write a Mission Statement” virtualstrategist. M3 Planning.
Erica Olsen. “Strategic Objectives” virtualstrategist. M3 Planning.

 





viernes, 10 de septiembre de 2010

WORKSHEET NO. 5

Benchmarking


Benchmarking is like many others strategies followed by an organization in order to improve or in some cases change completely, specific aspects that are not working for the organization. Benchmarking is basically learning from other organizations by the means of comparing each other, and after that applying those results to the organization that is testing for the results.

There are six main types of benchmarking including generic and global comparisons. Some of the things that organizations tend to compare against the most competitive organizations would be the product and the service that they provide.

In conclusion benchmarking is used by organizations to become more aware of what things they should change in order to become more productive, and of course giving them a better position in the field.




Outsourcing


There are many ways in which a company or an organization could become more efficient and one of these skills could definitely be outsourcing. Outsourcing is mainly the action of obtaining goods and services from an outside source. (Dictionary)

The consequences of outsourcing could be either good or bad for the company. The good outcome could include better profit for the product and in some cases even a better product. But like I mentioned before there are also bad consequences and the main one is the risk that you will be taking by doing so.

In conclusion outsourcing could lead a company to either great things or in the worst of the cases it could lead them to a bad ending. Whatever the case is it is up to the company to cope with their results in the best way possible.

"outsourcing." Dictionary.com's 21st Century Lexicon. Dictionary.com, LLC. 10 Sep. 2010. .



Alliance Strategic

The business world that we live in today has become very competitive; most of the time companies unite with common goals in order to achieve their goals with more ease, and to have a better understanding and plan to achieve their goal.

Companies As a result, many companies are following a new strategy that is called alliance strategic, which is when two companies form a team in order to achieve something greater than what they would achieve individually.

There are different types of alliances and different steps in the formation process that all lead to the greatness of the company. In conclusion if the alliance strategy if taken seriously could lead the companies involved to an era of prosperity to both.



Sigma Six


Electronic companies have many defects; some defects are due to the lack of design and engineering on the merchandise that they offer. Nevertheless, a new strategy designed by Motorola, which is called sigma six, is used to improve the way technology is created.

The strategy calls for the analysis, measurement and improved control on their merchandise. When success is reached they gain quality improvement. This ends up being a good thing since their products are quality and satisfy the crowd.

In conclusion the sigma six gives Motorola popularity among the consumers, giving them bigger profit to their company.







miércoles, 8 de septiembre de 2010

Types of Leadership, (Activity 3)

1. On one of the scheduled flights from Moscow to the Soviet Far East only half the seats had been taken up so Aeroflot cancelled the flight and told the passengers to wait. They waited in the packed terminal all that night and indeed all the next day when they were told that their flight would now be leaving. Trying to join their flight they found that they had to pay an extra 25% of their fare as a fine for missing the first flight.


Aeroflot- Transformation Leader
Reasons for the conflict: Management

The type of problem in this scenario is that the airline is charging people an extra amount of money for the reschedule of their flight even though the problem was caused originally from them. The reason for why I say that the type of leader is a transformation leader it’s because the airline just paid attention to the “big” picture and overall goals of the company which is saving money, instead of thinking about their clients and their comfort.

The solution for this problem would be that the airline doesn’t charge that extra 25% of money to each of its clients.


2. Nigeria ordered 20 million tons of cement worth £650 million to be delivered during 1975. By the middle of October there were already 250 ships queuing to discharge their cement cargoes. A further 100 cement-laden ships were due the following week. Some of these would have to wait for more than two years to dock.

Only 4 million tons of the 20 million tons ordered had been delivered and in addition there were 150 general cargo ships queuing to discharge their cargoes.

By the end of December, 2,500 Greek seamen aboard 150 freighters had been "trapped" for more than seven months while waiting for permission to dock and unload. All seamen who had been stuck for more than four months were being flown home for Christmas by their employers.

The Nigerian government then announced a draft decree enabling them to charge owners £7,000 for every day an unauthorized vessel spent in Nigerian waters.

Normally the docks could handle less than one and a half million tons of cement per year and a basic cause of the congestion would appear to be lack of co-operation, contact and teamwork between different ministries and departments

Nigeria Government- laissez-fair
Reasons for the conflict- Communication

The conflict presented in this scenario is that the Nigerian Government had a lack of communication when ordering the cement. The conflict started the moment the Nigerian Government order the huge amount of cement without asking the people in charge of the docks how much cement they could handle at one specific moment.
Solution to the problem in this case would be to get more working force to undock the cement from the Ships and therefore speeding up the process.


3. Gerald Smith when leader of the American delegation to the SALT negotiations in Vienna which aimed to limit nuclear weapons, submitted remarkable Russian tables and drawings which compared the number and size of American and Russian inter-continental rockets and shelters for housing them. He was apparently submitting information prepared by Russian military intelligence themselves.

In a counter-statement the leader of the Soviet delegation, Vladimir Seminiov, made a new evaluation but was openly corrected by his military deputy, Colonel General Ogarkov.

After this meeting, Ogarkov took one of the American delegates to the side and whispered to him. He said there was no occasion whatsoever for the Americans to divulge their knowledge of Soviet military data in front of civilians of the Soviet delegation as these matters is exclusively the concern of Soviet military officials.

A fine picture of conflict instead of co-operation between Russian military and civilian officials, that is departments.

Vladimir Seminiov- Democratic Leader,
Gerald Smith – autocratic leader.
Reasons for conflict: Leadership

The conflict in this scenario was caused by the way each of the persons involved had a different point of views and therefore some of them doing things behind peoples back.


The solution to this problem would be to further investigate the person lying and

4. Israel earns much foreign currency from tourist traffic, but it was reported that the Ministry of Tourism continued to receive complaints from Israelis and foreign tourists regarding the inadequacy of sanitary conditions and other facilities at Ben-Gurion airport.

The Ministry spokesman also pointed out that the airport was under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transport, to which all complaints should be referred.

A clear case of passing the buck which appears to disregard the interests of those using the airport. Just what is the job of a Ministry of Tourism?

Ministry of tourism- laissez faire
Reasons for conflict: Management/communication

The problem in this last scenario could be considered to be caused mainly by a lack of management and at the same time a lack of communication. The problem to why the travelers are constantly complaining about the conditions of the airport is a definitely the lack of the management of either company in charge. The lack of communication is also a main problem in this scenario because the travelers are not even aware of who is the person that they have to report their complains to.


The solution in this problem would be for either of the Ministries to take responsibility of their actions and making it clear to the people who to complain, if they have any issues that need to be resolved. But most important of the entire main problem which is to take care of the complaints of the travelers and clean the facilities at the airport in order to give comfort and provide a better service to the clients.

viernes, 27 de agosto de 2010

My Leadership Potential



After finishing the test “Do you have leadership potential” I learned to recognize the type of leader that I could become in the future. According to the test I am the type of leader with a communicating vision. The communication leaders tend to keep in mind that talking to the rest of the group is as important as being the head of the crowd. Some of the strengths that I noticed in being such a leader would be helping the working area to be more accessible to all the group members, because sharing one goal would make them more excited about their work.



Even though being able to easily convince others about my ideals is a great skill, it could also be consider in my opinion a weakness. Convincing others might not always work, especially around people that have stronger personalities that are very independent of their own ideas. In such cases when convincing others about the specific goals doesn’t work, I will tend to feel down and start blaming myself when things do not go the way I plan them to be.


One aspect that I think I could learn how to improve would be the way that I interact within a group. Even though I am the type of leader with a communicating vision I think that I could learn how to take other ideas into account to improve my own ideas. Most of the time I do not work very good within a group because in my way of seeing things and I tend to convince people right away instead of, talking to them and taking their ideas.

The Leadership Motivation Assessment

How motivated am I to lead?



According to the test to check how much motivation I have to lead, I realized that indeed I do have a very strong one. Most of the questions asked in this test were very personal questions and what I can get out of it is that this questioner could be applied to a daily use. This test taught me that a leader could be found within each of us, by the actions that we take and the reasoning behind our decisions.


Some of the questions that I found to be the strongest ones to prove that I have a strong motivation to lead would be question number 13 when involved in group projects; I am inclined to let my ideas be known. I found this question to be very strong because it is asking about my personality and how I would react to certain problems that I have faced or will face in the future. Another question that I found to be very strong would be, when they asked stated that people take my ideas, and run with them. This question was in indeed a strong question because it applies very much with what happens within my life. However, one question that I found to be very weak would be question number 5. Team accomplishment is more important to me than my own personal accomplishments. I found question 5 to be very weak, because it could be taken either way or could be applied to many different situations.

Things that I could improve in my way of leading would be, the way in which I react to when I am working within a group. I think that many of this questions asked in this test leads me to think that working within a group could be improved, because many of my questions where negative ones, and improving this would be one aspect that could lead me to be a better leader, in many more aspects.