LOGISTICS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

LOGISTICS - Essay Example In addition to the basic forwarding operations, BLC is specialized in customs clearance, packing, warehousing, and transportation of all incoming and outgoing, air and sea shipments, as well as household goods and personal effects. The company’s objective has always been to satisfy the needs of all customers by offering a personalized transport service for any volume of goods and any destination. BLC has a Quality Policy as well a well publicized Mission Statement. For developing and delivering business excellence the company has obtained ISO 9001:2000 certifications in pursuance of providing "best-in-class" service via a quality management system. The company was awarded ISO 9001:2000 certification in 2004. As part of the Quality Policy, BLC regularly monitors customer satisfaction as one of the measurements of performance. It also monitors information relating to customer perception as to whether we met their expectations. BLC business has much to do with organizing and synergizing transportation and warehousing, so its supply chain structure is similar to its competitors with concentration on physical distribution. The red line represents material flow; the blue line represents information flow. While apparently the business model of BCL is sound and it appears to be well managed, its performance lacks behind its competition and certainly does not achieve its goals for it was for which it was founded over a decade ago. It is just another mediocre company, despite its obtaining the ISO 9001:2000 certification. It has high aims but has fallen short in results. To date its annualized growth is just 10% while the industry average is about 13%. The best in class companies are however achieving an annualized growth rate of 25%. The problem areas of BLC can be enumerated as under. 1. BLC lacks in warehousing. Its current warehouses are small and not well organized. It moves the frozen cargo

Euro Disney Essay Example for Free

Euro Disney Essay Despite a long story of success in the past, Euro Disney failed to anticipate demand accurately for their services. The company failed to recognize the frugality and price consciousness of the European customers which had a direct impact on the spending Patterns of the consumers. They assumed Europeans to follow the same pattern as the Americans however this was not the case hence it suffered huge losses. Cultural differences can lower the impact of a certain service and will lead to lower projected revenues. Euro Disney had visitors from all over Europe which spoke different languages, they shared different culture and history compared to American. It was important to integrate it into the theme park before hand. These differences adversely affected the company; alcohol wasn’t served in the park in a country where wine was a norm with food, inability to realize Europeans peak leisure days and serving them breakfast. A better analysis before hand and a president from the local environment initially would have been more familiar with the local environment would have led to increase in revenue. It was very important to be familiar with the mindset of the people while working with those belonging to different culture in order to maintain smooth working environment. The French unlike the Americans were sensitive and touchy people. To foster good will with them one has to incorporate them in one’s decisions and discussions and not just dominate them because this will infuriate them and alienate them and their support and cooperation. The French don’t like bossy attitude coming towards them hence one should be modest in dealing with them. The Tokyo Disney turned out to be a great success, way more than the expectations. The number of visitors was high with large revues and profits. Japanese were adaptable and flexible lot they welcomed American culture in the theme park from food to entertainment whereas the Europeans were reluctant to adopt the American style initially due to which Disney had to face many problems of cultural diversity in Euro Disney. Euro Disney was located at an ideal place as it was close to Paris, Paris being Europe’s largest tourist destination. The problem was not with the location but with other factors such as skimming pricing strategy for the price sensitive Europeans proved to be a failure, recession in the economy, failure to anticipate demand and cultural differences and apart from these operational inefficiencies and mismanagement. Location would not have made these factors better hence it would not have done better if located anywhere outside Paris too. Mickey Mouse is one of the greatest characters of Walt Disney and has a long history of success with the company. It is an icon of American culture; Mickey Mouse has always been one of the attractions at the Disney theme park. Unlike other American theme parks Euro Disney was criticized among the French for being too American and caused a clash, resentment and low turnover from them as they believed keeping French culture aside American culture was being imposed on them. Hence in order to counter the ethnocentric views Disney had to incorporate the French culture into the American Disney image for the liking of the Europeans. In order to make an impact on the Europeans, Disney was required to make a campaign that would have focused on French names and terminology, such as names of the rides and the restaurant menus, the French wanted their culture opposed to the American as it did not   tune in   with their own. Similarly the European Walt Disney studios should focus on French movies and people as a means of entertainment. It should be positioned as a theme park that as a perfect vacation resort and not the American resort in particular. This positioning can be done by engaging tourist guides, bus drivers and travel agents into the marketing campaign and providing them incentives to promote the promotional campaign of the company. Though Disney entered Europe with high hopes and confidence however it had to face losses due to the many mistakes it made in planning and launching the theme park. One such mistake was the price skimming strategy, Disney expected the demand for its park to be inelastic and hence it could have gained high revenues. However, raising admission prices would have added fuel to the situation because the turnover from the French people was already low, their low spending patterns, frugality, and economic recession would have discouraged people from visiting the park as prices were already considered to be very high and would have lead to further losses for Euro Disney. References Jiffy Notes. (n.d.). EURO DISNEY S.C.A. Retrieved May 21, 2010, from JiffyNotes.com: http://www.jiffynotes.com/a_study_guides/book_notes_add/emmc_0001_0001_0/emmc_0001_0001_0_00102.html

Thomas P. Oneill :: essays research papers fc

Thomas P. O'Neill Tip was a man who was not bashful to call himself "a man of the house." Thomas P. O'Neill was a person whose greatest charm was that he seemed "completely out-of-date as a politician." (Clift) He was a gruff, drinking, card playing, backroom kind of guy. He had an image that political candidates pay consultants to make over. He knew these qualities gave him his power because they "made him real." (Sennot 17) His gigantic figure and weather beaten face symbolizes a political force of five decades, from Roosevelt's new deal to the Reagan retrenchment. He was the last democratic leader of the old school and "the longest-serving speaker of the house (1977-1986) and easily the most loved." (Clift) Thomas P. O'Neill (1912-1994) always knew why he was in Washington, and what he stood for. He was a native of Boston and always prided himself on his theory that "all politics is local." (O'Neill 1) Tip was a friend of everyone. When ordinary people wanted something of O'Neill he gave it to them. When anyone asked him a favor, he would do it. O'Neill served fifty years in public life and retired with only fifteen thousand dollars to his name. He devoted his life and his money to the people of Boston. Tip came of age in the Great Depression, arrived in congress from Massachusetts in 1952 and "came to power amid the plenty of the '60s and '70s." (Woodlief 4) He was a rampant liberal who "would usually vote yes on any bill that helped people (he once voted to put money into an appropriations bill to study knock knees)." (Gelzinas 6) When Reagan came into office in 1980 big government began to feel the pinch and O'Neill's big hearted liberalism was on the way out. In 1980, O'Neill was a target of a clever Republican ad campaign that pictured him in a limo as a symbol of a bloated out of control congress. The advertisement backfired and it sent O'Neill into folk hero status. Tip even "made an appearance on "Cheers" as an effect of the advertisement." (Time 18) Tip said that he "only made one vote that he regretted." (O'Neill 218) It was a yes vote on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that gave Lyndon Johnson full control over all military intervention in Vietnam. He did this because it was a time when Congress did what leadership asked, in fact there was not one descending vote in the house on this issue (414-0). Right away he had speculation that the White House might use this as a device to open up full

Political and Social Development in Malaysia Essay

It is difficult to picture, whilst analyzing the political and social development of Southeast Asian countries, how this region was completely dominated by European colonialist powers, even six decades ago. Southeast Asia was among the 84 % of the surface area of the earth that stood colonized at the beginning of the Second World War, a process that began in the 16th century and carried on steadily during the next three centuries (Chadda and Others, 1971). European colonialism in the region ended mainly in the decade after World War II, its greatest result being the birth of nine new nations, including Malaysia (Chadda and Others, 1971). Political and social developments in the region, from the mid 1950s, when independent sovereign states emerged after the withdrawal of colonial powers, to the current day, have to essentially be viewed through the prism of colonialism to understand the broader issues that face the countries of the region, and the internal ethnic, social, religious, and political forces that play important roles in the shaping of their social and political progress, and in the choice of their structures of governance. For more than a thousand years before the arrival of the armies from Europe, from A. D. 200 AD to 1500 AD, the complexity and thoughtfulness of Hindu and Buddhist influences from the Indian subcontinent provided the people of Southeast Asia with some commonality and cohesion in areas of politics, governance, religion, arts, and literature (Cunningham, 1990). Numerous developments in the region, like alliances, royal marriages, wars, trade, and population movements brought the people of this region, including the Burmese, the Thai, the Vietnamese, the Khmer, and the Malays into multifarious relationships. Such harmony, commonality, and communication was disrupted and eventually lost after the establishment of colonial hegemony by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, French, and Americans was established in separate parts of the region (Cunningham, 1990). Colonies became connected to their American or European rulers, which competed with each other, economically, culturally and politically, and became distant from each other. Despite their forced oneness with their colonial conquerors, the countries of Southeast Asia retained their unique ecological, cultural, and ethnic diversity (Cunningham, 1990). Whilst the region’s geographical dimensions and population are similar to that of West Europe, it is far more diverse in culture and traditions. â€Å"Southeast Asia’s population and land area are similar to those of Western Europe, but the region has far greater cultural variety. Hundreds of different societies speak mutually unintelligible languages. Many have proud civilizations stretching back over a thousand years. The people grew irrigated rice, traded overseas between and with India and China, and developed many small states and larger empires that allied and warred. From about A. D. 200 to A. D. 400, these societies reshaped Hindu-Buddhist cultural influence from India in statecraft, law, religion, art, architecture, and literature. † (Cunningham, 1990) Malaysia Malaysia, the subject of this essay, is an integral part of Southeast Asia and is a striking representation of the region’s ethnic and religious diversity. A narrow peninsular land mass, Malaysia as it is now known, was ruled from the 9th to the 13th century AD by the Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya. Control of the kingdom passed to the Javanese Hindu kingdom of Majapahit in the 14th century and thence to a local Muslim prince in the 15th century (Gomez, 2004). The peninsula attracted the attention of the Portuguese in the 15th century, who conquered Malacca in 1511, an event that marked the beginning of four centuries of European rule (Gomez, 2004). With control of the area passing from Portuguese and Dutch hands to those of the British in the early years of the 19th century, its first consolidation took place in 1826, when the British settlements of Malacca, Penang, and Singapore were combined to form the Colony of the Straits Settlements (Gomez, 2004). Occupied by the Japanese from 1941 to 1945, the territories of peninsular Malaysia came together to form the Federation of Malaya in 1948 and obtained freedom from the British in 1957 (Gomez, 2004). The present-day Federation of Malaysia came into existence only in 1965, when Sarawak and Sabah joined the Federation of Malaya (Gomez, 2004). Evolution of Regional Democracy in Southeast Asia The beginning of post colonialism in Asia witnessed a significant social, intellectual and political endeavour to establish democracy and make it function in line with Anglo-American thought. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in India, U Nu in Burma and Ramon Magsaysay in the Philippines, who had receive much of their formative and political education in the west, sought to draft constitutions, form political parties and hold elections (Crouch, 1996). Democratic processes were, during this time, under attack in all of Asia and it is not difficult to imagine the tremendous obstacles that confronted them year after year. Societies were being reconstructed after the devastation left by European and American colonialism, and a devastating war that had nothing to do with the people of Southeast Asia; the leadership was in the hands of inexperienced and untested administrators, there were a myriad social problems like poverty, illiteracy, and disease to tackle, and nations needed to be moulded from confusing and disparate ethnic puzzles (Crouch, 1996). The ideological confusion was even greater. Political leaders in Malaysia and other countries of Southeast Asia needed to choose from the democratic processes that were alive and thriving in the countries of North America and West Europe, and in countries like the UK, the state run communism that controlled the Soviet Union and East Europe, the banana republics of South America, paternal leftist dictatorships like those in Castro’s Cuba and Tito’s Yugoslavia, and the monarchical kingdoms and emirates of the Middle East (Crouch, 1996). The pressures of social reconstruction, nation building and ideological confusion in the region had joined hands, by the 1970s, to remove the essence of democracy from most of Southeast Asia with strongmen like Suharto in Indonesia, and Marcos in the Philippines disregarding democratic norms and consolidating personal power bases (Hill, 2002). The relegation or subversion of democracy in Southeast Asia was however accompanied by the rise of the Asian Tigers, with countries like South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan growing faster than all other countries in the world for over a decade (Hill, 2002). Such astonishing growth was also accompanied by the need for strong governments, which incidentally were headed by small groups of predominantly male leaders, who took decisions in all areas of public life, on issues as diverse economic subsidies, university admissions, foreign worker entry, working conditions and liberation of women (Hill, 2002). Democracy came back strongly into the political picture only in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, the deconstruction of the Soviet Union, and the economic crisis in Asia (Hill, 2002). The fall of â€Å"democratic† regimes in East Europe along with the acceptance of the superiority of the market system within a liberal democracy brought home the message to the people of Southeast Asia that economic growth built on political repression was ultimately unsustainable (Hill, 2002). Objective Malaysia has by and large experienced a stable political atmosphere, riding on the back of coalition one party rule and the political dominance of Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad for more than 20 years (Johnson, 2003). Malaysia’s society is multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-religious. The Malays, who comprise a just over 50% of the population form the majority community, all of them, by constitutional definition being Muslim. About 25 % of the population (down from 31 % at independence) is ethnic Chinese, a group which historically played an important role in trade and business. Malaysians of Indian descent comprise about 7% (again down from 11 % at independence) of the population and include Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians. Non-Malay indigenous groups combine to make up approximately 11% of the population. While national unity as continued to elude the country, its extremely successful industrialisation drive, (since the mid-1980s), has made it into one of the world’s important trading nations. Malaysia has experienced astonishing economic growth in the last two decades. The national poverty rate has fallen from 49. 3% in 1970 to 5. 1 % in 2004, with corresponding improvements in education, literacy, child mortality and disease control (Kershaw, 2004). The country’s political progress has to be viewed in light of the phenomenal economic growth achieved by it as well as the social and political processes of the region. This study aims to study the political and social development of the country, including issues like the process of holding elections, the level and genuineness of political competition, freedom of speech and media, official and unofficial abuse of human rights, punishment regime, the strength of the judiciary and other institutions, the relationship between economic and political development, and the capacity of the state to politically administer its sovereign territory.

Movie review of Los Mineros

Discuss some of the labor and living condition issue in this film In the film, Mexican miners were living under terrible situation. They had been treated inhumanly. Their living environments were extremely unhygienic, there was no fresh running water or appropriate place to dispose garbage. Because of the unfair treatment between Anglo miners and Mexican miners, most miners and their families were suffering from starvation. Moreover, Mexican miners ‘ working conditions were inconceivable.They were working for 12 hours a day, averagely. Due to â€Å"Duel – wage system†, Mexican miner ‘s pay rate was deducted by half of what an Anglo miner would be paid. 2. What events affected the miners (Mexican Revolution, WWI, Depression, WWII) Mexican Revolution was a changing point for the miners. Some labor organizations began collecting labor forces long before the revolution stared, such as the Obreros Libres (Free Workers), leaded by Praxedis Guerrero. The Obreros Li bres was a major labor union in southeastern Arizona (P. 106).After the revolution, in order o protect the rights of Mexican labors, Mexican government passed the constitution of 1917. Meanwhile, WW I offered another chance for the Mexican labors. Because of most American labors were fighting the war, the whole country was experiencing a productivity impairment. It provided a lot of employment opportunities for Mexicans, such as in mining and agriculture industries. They became an important labor force in the U. S. 3. What were the relationships like between the Anglo miners and Mexican miners? Mexican miners and the company 00b, segregation, ) ?Back then, Anglo communities had some serious racial discriminations on Mexicans. Compare to Mexican miners' living conditions, Anglo miners were living in â€Å"pleasant surroundings†. They received twice as much money as Mexicans. However, as Anglo miners, they did not have to work for 12 hours a day and their Jobs were less dangero us than Mexicans In addition, they had their own â€Å"county club†, where they can relax and socialize. The quality of a Mexican miner ‘s life was far below an Anglo miner's. How did WWII affect the Mexican American miners? Community?