Analisis of Te Flannery OConnorS Text a Good Man Is Hard to Find” free essay sample

Analisis of te Flannery O? Connor? s text: A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND† As the title says: a good man is hard to find. But it? s not easy to find a good woman either, even if she is an old and cristian lady. Perhaps the author chose this protagonist on purpose to show that the lack of humanity is found anywhere or anyone. In the beggining of the text, when the grandmother hear about the scaped prisioner she says: I wouldn? t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that allose in it. I couldn? t answer to my concience if I did. (page 166, line 11) Ironicaly, that was exactly what she did. Even worse, she took whole family to die. But she had to answer to her concience what she did, not only these time, but along her whole life. That? s also ironic that she had taken the cat with her, afraid of something bad would happens to it, but it? s the only one in the family that, apparently, stay alive. We will write a custom essay sample on Analisis of Te Flannery O?Connor?S Text: a Good Man Is Hard to Find† or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Since â€Å" we cannot face a short story as if it were a mathematical problem with one single result†(Bonnici, p. 140), we? ll analise each element of narrative and try to reach some possible interpretations. Theme Behind the label of being A Good Man, the grandmother hides many of the possible themes for the text in question. Perhaps selfishness, manipulation, poor judjement and blind fate are some of them. She calls Red Sammy a good man when in fact he was naive. She also call The Misfit good man with the aim of manipulate his intelligence using the power that language can offer with it? s multiples possibilities of influence and persuading: she tried to make him to consider that as a good man he would not kill an old christian lady. But she didn? t reach the inconcient of a serial killer. What she done was find herself and her owm bad concience. Narrator In the text A Good Man is Hard to Find we have an heterodiegetic narrator, which does not participates of the story. The most part of time it? s on a objective external focus, but sometimes the narrator knows about the characters thougths, as in: In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know that she was a lady (p. 168, line 4). In this case, the omniscience is parcial. Time Chronologically, all the story happens relactively fast: less than two days. The narrative starts in Bailey? house with a dialogue among the characters – perhaps by the evening. The next morning they left home on vacation and, just some ours after the protagonist, the last character to die, was already in the ground, with three bullets passed through her chest. Psicologically, from the moment The Misfit arrived at the accident scene ahead, time is differentily perceived by the victms. From Bailey? s mother perspec tive, for example, the time she passed with the man who was about to kill her seemed to be extremely extended. There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence. The old ladys head jerked around. She could hear the wind move through the tree tops like a long satisfied insuck of breath. Bailey Boy! she called. (p. 181, line 3) Characters We have Bailey? s mother and The Misfit as main characters. The first appears as protagonist and somewhat as focalizer. She is also manipulative, preconceituous and selfish. Maybe her family would not die if she hadn? t manipuleted the children to persuade Bailey on doing her wishes. Her desire to see a house from her childhood results in family death. However, the fact of recognizing the killer had not much influence on it. That? s becouse the bad men didn? t worried to hide their guns when they exited the car. She can be described as a caricature character. The Misfit, kind of serial killer, revolted with the injust treatment he had in jail, didn? t alter his viewpoint. It? s clear in his speech the kind of man he is. In fact, the only character who has the viewpoints changed is the old lady: at the end of narration she appears like a different person she was in the beggining. She perhaps realizes that she has not led a good life. When she sees the killer wearing her son? shirt, and considering the enormous possibility of dying without repentance, she has an epiphanie and, in a last act of charity, touchs him with a smile in her face: the same smile in the description, when: Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blody with her legs crossed under her like a child? s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky (page 185, line 1. emphasis mine). Reference: Short stories: An anthology for undergraduates/edited by Thomas Bonnici. Maringa:UEM,2004

Apollo 13 essays

Apollo 13 essays Can you remember back to the year 1970? This was the year the U.S. was supposed to make history by landing the first man on the moon. Two days after launch, while Apollo 13 was approaching the moon to begin lunar operations, something exploded on the ship. The crew had to overcome many life-threatening obstacles while on the trip back to earth. NASA discovered what caused the explosion on Apollo 13 after the crew was safe back on earth. The Apollo 13 capsule was launched atop a Saturn V rocket on April 11, 1970. During all spacecraft launches, launch controllers on the ground keep a close watch on the spacecrafts systems. The Apollo 13 astronauts faced a dangerous situation when an oxygen tank in the command and service module exploded two days after launch, but they were able to use oxygen reserves in the lunar module and returned safely to the earth. On April 11, 1970 the Apollo 13(piloted by A. Lovell Jr., John L. Swigert Jr., and Fred Wallace Haise Jr.) was launched into space on a trip to the moon. Two days after launch, while Apollo 13 was approaching the moon to begin lunar operations, something exploded on the ship that caused the service module of the CSM(control systems module) to lose its oxygen, electrical power, and other systems, including its ability to achieve an abort maneuver for a direct return to earth. The crew of three had to shut down the CSM and quickly moved to the LM. When they shut down the CSM the heaters were shut off, the capsule and the LM(lunar module) would get as cold as 32Â ° or below, the crew had to endure the cold temperatures for the next few days. During the trip around the moon and back to earth the crew had to overcome many life-threatening obstacles such as: near freezing temperatures, excess carbon dioxide in the LM, storing their urine, and re-entering earths atmosphere. The crew could not do anything about the near freezing temperatures. They overcame the lo ...

Traditional Views of Nature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

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Reserach Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

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The personal growth i hope to gain from a college education at Monroe Essay

The personal growth i hope to gain from a college education at Monroe College - Essay Example Currently, I am connected with Delta Airlines as part of the Aviation Operation Department. Although my education was delayed by my job, the working experience taught me discipline and commitment; besides, the jobs were only a means to a higher end- education. These two values are important to me since I can apply them also in my studies here in Monroe College when I get accepted. I learned about Monroe College when they came to the island where my job was located. The school had some seminar and I immediately got interested. Apparently, the school is welcoming even to non U.S. citizens like me which is very comfortable to know. The field of interest that I would like to pursue is Information Technology. I chose this field since I am really interested in how computers work as evident in my first job as a computer technician. Moreover, I believe that knowledge in Information Technology can bring an impact to humanity by discovering more systems that will enhance people’s work productivity. Aside from the interest and some set of skills that would help me in pursuing this field, I believe that Monroe Colleges 75 years of teaching excellence would give me the expertise that I am seeking. The certification examinations that the college of Information Technology can give me a head start once I pass them. Good education involves three players: my parents ( w ho are very supportive), myself ( well-motivated), and the school ( Monroe College). Given these three factors that will probably work together, I am sure that when I become a student of Monroe college, I will seek academic

Web-base Quality Management Systems

Web-base Quality Management Systems Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Defining Quality, History and Achieving International Quality Standards Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people in different spheres of life. It is a degree or grade of excellence or worth, a characteristic property that defines the apparent individual nature of something or totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. In recent years, many organisations have adopted quality management systems to improve the quality of both goods and services through the application of efficient quality management methods and principles (Feigenbaum, 2000). The reason why so many organisations have started on the journey is either because of customer pressure for ISO 9000 certification or because the firms themselves have realised the strategic advantage of having this certificate, i.e. it would give them an edge over their competitors. Most of the firms which started out on the journey to ISO 9000 still may not have completed that journey. In general, it takes 2 years, and obtaining this coveted certificate is only a first step towards the ultimate goal: total quality management (TQM). Reaching this goal may take at least 5 years. In the next sections of the dissertation we will take a closer look at the characteristics of the different quality management systems. In this section, we concentrate on the concept of quality itself. We start with the two types of quality, namely: Objective quality, which is simply the products total number of quality attributes. Subjective quality, which is a result of the consumers experience of the products objective attributes. Subjective quality is thus defined as the degree of fulfillment of consumers expectations (Feigenbaum, 2000). Beyond the customers desirable expectations, there are always the customers latent expectations. Manufacturers and the service providers must therefore find the hidden expectations in order to keep the customer satisfied. It is subjective quality which matters to the company, and it is this definition which Deming used in his renowned eight-day quality seminars for Japanese top managers in 1950. Demings message to them was simple but powerful: The consumer is the most important part of the production line. The idea that customers should be seen as a part of the production line was in itself a revolutionary one at that time. A logical conclusion is that quality production is only possible if it is systematically and continuously based on customer desires and needs. It is simple in theory but difficult in practice because there are many obstacles to overcome along the way. Demings 14 points, which we have taken the liberty of calling stations along the way, are among the most important means of overcoming these obstacles. You may ask this important question: Why have the Japanese been better at understanding Demings message than the Western world? There are many reasons for this, but one of the most intriguing reasons may be found in the Japanese language, and thus in Japanese culture. In the Japanese language, quality management can be translated as quality is equal to the attributes of the things (i.e. what peoples talk about). This interpretation results in the following definition of quality management: Control of the attributes of a product which consumers talk about. To understand why consumers talk about a products attributes, we will delve into motivation theory. Herzberg has divided motivation into two factors: Factors which create satisfaction (satisfiers). Factors which create dissatisfaction (dissatisfiers). Similarly, many objective attributes of a product or service can be categorised. We may talk about the basic attributes that the consumer expects when he/she buys the product. If these are not present in sufficient quantities, the consumer experiences dissatisfaction. If the expected attributes are present, naturally the consumer is satisfied, but the interesting and crucial thing is that the degree of satisfaction will not necessarily be particularly high. The experience will be more or less neutral. Apart from the attributes which the customer expects to find, it is always possible to build attributes into the product or service which the customer does not expect to find, i.e. attributes which will delight or satisfy him/her. The more of these attributes that are present in the product or services, the greater the satisfaction, and this satisfaction will, in many cases, increase significantly. We call these attributes value-added quality. However, in Japan they use the term charming quality, whereas in the US they interpret this as exciting quality. We believe that value-added quality covers both. One example of expected quality in air travel is safety. Korean Air lost its reputation as a quality airline in the wake of the tragic incident of a passenger airline being shot down over Soviet territory. Prior to this incident, Korean Air was rated as one of the top quality airlines in the world. Afterwards, Korean Airs quality ratings dropped significantly. In our view, the only thing which can adequately explain this is that Korean Air had failed to deliver the customers expected quality. As an example of value-added quality, let us consider the added service offered by ISS Laundry Service, a subsidiary of International Service Systems (ISS). This company which, among other activities, changes bed-linen in hotel rooms, suddenly had an idea. As they were there to change the sheets, they might as well see if anything else needed doing, e.g. small repairs, changing light-bulbs, etc., and report this to the hotel management. This unexpected service, which hardly costs ISS anything, created an enormous amount of goodwill for the company among its customers. The understanding behind Demings assertion, that the consumer is the most important aspect of the production line, lies precisely in the subjective definition of quality, which we will be discussing in this dissertation. The introduction of quality management theory towards the end of the 1980s led to the development of a new concept called total quality. This concept was defined as follows (Kanji, 2002): Qualityis to satisfy customers requirements continuously. Total qualityis to achieve quality at low cost. Total quality managementis to obtain total quality by involving everyones daily commitment. These definitions will become clearer as we proceed through the dissertation. The objective of TQM is to improve continuously each and every activity in the company focusing on the customer. Every product has some deficiency, i.e. risks for making customers dissatisfied. These deficiencies must be continually eliminated and, at the same time, the firm must ensure that its product or service always incorporate the quality attributes which satisfy its customers. 1.2 Total quality management The concept of TQM is a logical development of total quality control (TQC), a concept first introduced by A. V. Feigenbaum in 2000 in a book of the same name. Though Feigenbaum had other things in mind with TQC, it only really caught on in engineering circles, and thus never achieved the total acceptance in British companies that was intended. TQC was a hit in Japan, on the other hand, where the first quality circles were set up in 1962, which later developed into what the Japanese themselves call company-wide quality control (CWQC). this is identical to what people in the West today call TQM. One of the main reasons for the failure of TQC in British companies was a management misconception that responsibility for implementing TQC could be delegated to a central quality department. In doing so, management overlooked one of the most important points in TQC, namely managements wholehearted commitment to quality improvements. The aim of the new concept, TQM, is to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Thus, management have been directly included in the definition of the concept, making it impossible for them to avoid their responsibility. To include the word management here sends an unmistakable signal straight into executive offices that this is a job for top management, including the board of directors. TQM will be further discussed in following chapters. Chapter 2 Quality Perspectives The inadequacy of traditional management in UK Japan Traditional British forms of management are based on a philosophy which divides responsibility for decisions into strategic, tactical and operational levels, i.e. the so-called management pyramid. We now know that this management conception is totally inadequate for modern, complex companies, since it does not give the connection between top management and the main processes at the bottom responsible for customer satisfaction. As a result, the management is ignorant of the real problems on the operational level, and do not provide the support and backing that the operation level needs for the creation of customer satisfaction (Feigenbaum, 2000). The decisions which cascade down from top management are often exclusively budgetary in nature, containing instructions which are forced on lower levels without due consideration of their problems. Many local branches of a bank have similar experiences. A typical example of this was noted after some Danish bank mergers took place at the, end of the 1980s. Branch managers of these banks received orders by internal post to cut staff numbers by a certain figure with no indication of how this could be achieved without drastically reducing the quality of products and services offered to their customers. Hiromoto (2002) describes this as management by terrorism. In discussing British and Japanese management philosophy, Konosuke Matsushita, founder of one of the worlds biggest companies, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic, National, Technics, etc.), said: We are going to win and the industrial West is going to lose out: theres nothing much you can do about it, because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, youre convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business. For you, the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses into the hands of labour. (p). Hoinville (2002) feels that the emphasis of managements commitment has its origin in the system, the reason for quality defects. It has been estimated that 85% of all defects are caused by system errors, i.e. errors which only management has the authority to change. Management must show by its actions that it has understood the message. It must constantly strive to reduce system errors by setting up quality goals, drawing up quality policies and quality plans, and participating actively in the follow-up auditing phase. Finally, management must concede its own lack of knowledge in the quality field and take the lead in acquiring new knowledge. If management does all this, it will have created a firm foundation on which future quality can be built. Conversely, there would be little point in building quality on a shaky foundation. We have already pointed out that the customer is the most important part of the production line. Deming (2002) introduced this idea to top Japanese managers in 1950 by means of a basic outline of an arbitrary production system, or part of a production system. This outline, which must today be considered traditional, shows that both customer and supplier are part of the production system, and that information for improving this comes from two sources: consumer research and process tests. Since this outline also applies to an arbitrary sub-system, it shows that customer and supplier concepts embrace much more than just external customers and suppliers. Internal customers and suppliers, i.e. employees, are at least as important as the external ones. Any person, or process, which forms part of the production system must recognise that it serves a number of internal customers, and the quality of the output delivered to these customers is crucial to the end result, i.e. the quality of the output delivered to the external customer. Deming (2002) himself concedes that, in 1950, this was a formidable challenge for the Japanese top managers, but they accepted the challenge, and the result is there for us all to see today. In Demings words: A new economic age had begun. Today it is difficult to understand that such a simple message presented the Japanese with such a difficult challenge. Our experience of top managers is that they accept the message without question. However, this does not lessen the difficulty of the challenge, because it implies that firms traditional information systems are totally inadequate. A culture must be established to ensure that internal customer research functions just as well as external. Here, it is important to point out that internal analysis is based on entirely different principles from external analysis. Communication and team-building are the key words here. Obviously, the participation of top management is necessary in building up this culture. It can be seen that the Focus on the customer and the employee is much more comprehensive than just the focus on the customer, which is the norm in service management. The latter refers solely to external customers. The former, while including these, also stresses the internal customer/supplier relationship. This relationship is one of the most important innovations which TQM has introduced. Quality Management In Todays Era As we have discussed above that how the management of quality is vital to the output product of any organization it has made clear that without an excellent quality management system an organization can not implement total quality management. In todays era new ways of quality management have been introduced that can make quality management a much easier and effective job for the management body. Technology has been quiet advance in todays world and every organization is trying to get its hand on the most advance technology that can take it to a much higher level from its competitiors. A new emerging technology for managing quality in well established organizations is the use of Web-Based Quality Management Systems. Why this technology is vital today is beacuse of organizations expanding their businesses worldwide or operating at different geoghraphical locations. It is much easier to manage the quality in an organization that is operating at one location but if it has its operations going on at different locations it is much harder to implement and manage total quality management. But these new systems have overcome this gap by providing a centralized hub to manage the quality. No matter how scattered the operations of the organizations are and how many stake holders are involved, by implementing these systems organizations need not to worry about the distance and communication gap. Competition and cost consciousness on the one side an increasing demand for quality and reliability on the other side are contrary requirements in present production engineering. This must be considered also from the point of view of the international standards about quality management and quality assurance. The origins of quality management and quality assurance in a modern sense began in manufacturing organizations at about the beginning of the twentieth century [1], and many of the tools for quality analysis and improvement were developed for manufacturing problems. Through the 1980s, this manufacturing emphasis dominated the profession. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, business began to recognise the importance of quality service in achieving customer satisfaction and competing in the global marketplace. In the late 1990s also the public domain and governmental departments became aware of the general importance of quality issues. In a very important sense, this recognition has expanded the definition and  concept of quality to include nearly any organisational improvement such as the reduction of manufacturing cycle time and improved worker skills. And also the public sector is now starting to take care of quality management within its structures. In addition to industrial organisations and the manufacturing industry also service organisations build up quality systems. Ancillary services in manufacturing companies as well as stand-alone service organisations such as hospitals and banks are beginning to realise the benefits of a focus on quality. A number of different industries are successively doing business around the globe and the quality systems that are availaible in the market does not mostly cater a specific industry and all of them provide different features, tools and options, so it is a complex decision to choose the best availaible solution from a wide range of variety. In this dissertation different availaible web-based quality management systems are reviewed and their shortnesses are pointed out and a model is proposed in the end that covers all gaps in the currently availaible systems. Chapter 2: Literature Review In this chapter literature review is carried out and analyzed that which tools and schemes are imperative for the management of quality and how they cooperate in the quality management. This will enable to know how different branches of an organization can be indulged with quality by using what sort of tools and how these tools can benifit any organization. â€Å"The approach to quality most extensively adopted by Western companies in recent years has been the application of national and international (ISO 9000 or equivalent) quality management standards. This approach is following firmly along the quality assurance path. It is more proactive than reliance on detection/inspection and allows for the use of quality tools primarily to stop non-conforming products being produced or non-conforming services being delivered in the first place. Hence there is a switch implied from detection to prevention via quality systems, procedures and a quality manual.† [18] 2.1 Quality Management Tools Techniques Numerous definitions and methodologies have been created to assist in managing the quality-affecting aspects of business operations. Many different techniques and concepts have evolved to improve product or service quality. Tools and techniques like charts, graphs, histograms and complex tools like Statistical Process Control, Quality Function Deployment, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Design of Experiments have been used for quality management for a number of years. All of these tools are very effective for quality evaluation and implementation when applied rightly and at correct situation. Juan Jose Tari and Vicente Sabater {Quality management tools} in their research on â€Å"Quality tools and Techniques† has outlined few important tools and techniques that can be luminously helping in managing and increasing organizations quality standards. The very basic tools, the management tools for quality and techniques for quality management are outlined in the table below: Basic Quality Management Tools Management Tools Techniques Cause Effect Diagram Affinity Diagram Benchmarking Check Sheet Arrow Diagram Design of Experiments Control chart Matrix Diagram FMEA Graphs Matrix Data Analysis Fault Tree Analysis Histoghram Process Decision Poka Yoke Pareto Diagram Program Chart Quality Costing Scatter Diagram Relations Diagram QFD Statistical Process Control Table 1 Quality Management Tools and Techniques Each indivisual tool has its own speciality and benifits the organization in its own manner. The implementation and benifits of few of these tools are discussed in the next section. 2.2 Quality Control, Assurance and Improvement The scholars of quality assume that the computer is only the linking force and they put less emphasis on it, and frequently do not consider at all, the modern practices linked to quality management such as employee involvement or continuous quality improvement. Indeed, they concentrate their attention on the computer integration/automation model.† But for quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement insists on involving all these aspects. {Good one} Quality control is defined as operational with activities aimed both at monitoring a process and eliminating causes of unsatisfactory performance for relevant stages of the quality loop to achieve economic effectiveness. Quality control is a technique to achieve, maintain and improve the quality standard of products and service. Defects or failures in constructed facilities or products can result in very large costs. {500} the emphasis on quality control is clear to achieve complete quality management and for this quality control tools are vital to be implemented. Quality improvement requires improvement of processes in process based quality improvement approach. To improve the quality hence several inspection tools can be applied to access the processes and find the ways to improve it to get better and better results. Also the basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization. {800} has suggested following significant tools for the quality management in respect of each quality component: Quality Control Quality Assurance Quality Improvement Statistical process control Regression Process capability analysis, Rule-based reasoning (Expert Systems) Factor analysis Pareto analysis Model-based reasoning and case-based reasoning Cause and effect diagram Process mapping, design of experiments Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Quality function deployment Design of Experiments Design of experiments Analysis of variance Table 1 Above mentioned tools when used in combinations as best suitable for the processes and enterprise could produce massive increase in overall performance of the organization. Few of these tools and their significance in quality managemet is illustrated below: 2.3 Statistical Process Control The appearance of computers on the shop floor has enhanced the increased adoption of SPC. Computers have greatly reduced the efforts required by production personnel to collect and analyze data.{very good journal} â€Å"High quality products and services, far from being random or probabilistic events, are actually anticipated and managed outcomes that can contribute to organizational survival in the marketplace. This realization has encouraged organizations to embrace and implement numerous approaches, some novel and some re-discovered, aimed at achieving the objective of continuous quality improvement. One popular and widespread implementation in the name of quality management is that of statistical process control, or SPC. [19] Statistical Process Control or SPC can be used in a organization for the quality control purpose. It when applied to a process gives the stability of that process which can eventually help in identifing the root causes and take corrective actions.â€Å"The basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization.†[20] SPC is an effective tool for controlling quality of a manufacturing process rather it can be applied to most of the processes in any organization and can aid in controlling the quality as per requirements. It identifies the sources that affects the quality of the process outputs and hence can be eradicated as identified. But there lies a problem with the use of it that is interpreting the results of SPC which can be only well understood by quality control specialists. This can create communication gaps and a lot of other misconceptions about its use. But still SPC is being used to control quality from a number of years and it has proved itself to be giving enormously positive results to the organizations. â€Å"The popularity of SPC as a quality management practice has been fostered, in part, by a wealth of publications ascribing quality and cost benefits to it. The literature is dominated by anecdotal â€Å"success† stories, attributing higher market share, lower failure costs, higher product quality, and higher productivity to the implementation and practice of SPC (Dondero, 1991). Reports of SPC failures, on the contrary, have been few and, again, case-oriented (Dale Shaw, 1991; Lightburn Dale, 1992).†[22] Evans and Lindsay (1989, pp. 313-3 14), define SPC to be a methodology using control charts for assisting operators, supervisors, and managers to monitor quality of conformance and to eliminate special causes of variability of a process a technique to control quality using probability and statistics to determine and maintain the state of statistical control.[23 Hence the advantages and effectiveness can well be understood from the above discussion and its can be c oncluded that SPC can play a major role in controling any process and eliminating any cause that disturbs the process as its main idea is to enable the quality of conformance to be monitored and special causes of process variability to be eliminated. 2.4 Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is tool that can be used to analyse the failures that can occur in the near future or after the implementation of the system and identify the effects that it would cause to the system. â€Å"Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is known to be a systematic procedure for the analysis of a system to identify the potential failure modes, their causes and effects on system performance. The analysis is successfully performed preferably early in the development cycle so that removal or mitigation of the failure mode is most cost effective. This analysis can be initiated as soon as the system is defined: FMEA timing is essential.† [24] 1 below shows some random forms as an example of FMEA version 1, 2 3 charts. For FMEA to be effective its is very important to use this tool in the early development phase as catching errors and fixing them in earlier stages is more effectual and less costly. FMEA can be implemented to the highest level of block diagram to the functions of the of the discrete components. Also FMEA can be used again and again as the design is developed. â€Å"The FMEA is an iterative process that is updated as the design develops. Design changes will require that relevant parts of the FMEA be reviewed and updated.† [24] Hence FMEA could play an imperative role in going for the process changing for improvement. The change planned for the process for improving it can be verified by the application of this technique. 2.5 Quality Function Deployment (QFD) QFD has been used along with the integration of other effective tools to achieve quality in processes and products, reducing cycle times and improving performance. {600} found out that in the span of the first seven years, between 1977 and 1984, the Toyota Auto body plant employed QFD and claimed that with its use: Manufacturing startup and pre-production costs were reduced by 60%. The product development cycle (that is, time to market) was reduced by 33% with a corresponding improvement in quality because of the reduction in the number of engineering changes. Quality function deployment QFD is based on the concept of companywide quality control. The company wide quality control philosophy is characterised by customer orientation, cross functional management and process rather than product orientation. Also the roots of Japanese companywide quality control are the same concepts of statistical quality control and total quality control as originated in the USA. 2.6 Quality Improvement A Need or A Neccessity In the technological advanced manufacturing industry today, organziations are trying their level best to imorove their quality standards yet reducing their cycle times and time to reach the market. This pushes them to adopt the latest availaible technologies to manage and inject quality into their products and processes, so that the production time is not effected by increasing concern of quality management. Nowadays there is a tough competition in every . Aberdeen Group has done an extensive research on Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence and it says that the best in class organzaitions are â€Å"ensuring that continuois improvement programs yeild the expected results help to unlock hidden capabilities as well as allows for greater flexibility in altering schedule to meet shifting demands. It is essential that executives are provided visibility across plants, product lines and demand when making decisions on delivery, discounts and staffing. Many companies can manufacture the sam e product in mutiple facilities and are continually evaluating the most cost effective loaction to manufacture based on a mutitude of factors. Finally, establishing key performance indicators mapped to corporate goals allows shop floor process across different plants to be standardized and alligned to the goals of senior management.† [27] The focus is on ensuring continuous improvement programs and establishing key performance indicating targets that eventually supports corporate goals. Also what is part of best in class manufaturers strategic goals is to provide visibility across the plants, production lines and demands, This would help the exectives of the organzaition to understand monitor the performanc of ongoing processes. In the survey carried out by aberdeen group following percentage was calculated of the best in class organizations of the top three strategic actions taken by them: The above research indication shows the top three strategic actions of the Best-In-Class organizations and all of these actions are quality related. This very well proves that for the organizations that wants to be included in the best in class list or that wants to stay in best in class list must improve their quality standards as per the market and industries requirements. Hence quality improvement could be termed as the necessity of todays era and to survive in todays market an organization needs to update it quality management systems. All the indicators from research above points towards the advancements in quality management and that lead us to the topic of quality management systems of today that is Web-based quality management. CHAPTER 3 Quality Management Systems From time to time quality gurus and scholars have only been focusing and trying to develope appropriate control charts for processes, but now due to the advancements in technology and shifting towards real time quality management Web-base Quality Management Systems Web-base Quality Management Systems Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Defining Quality, History and Achieving International Quality Standards Quality is a perceptual, conditional and somewhat subjective attribute and may be understood differently by different people in different spheres of life. It is a degree or grade of excellence or worth, a characteristic property that defines the apparent individual nature of something or totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs. In recent years, many organisations have adopted quality management systems to improve the quality of both goods and services through the application of efficient quality management methods and principles (Feigenbaum, 2000). The reason why so many organisations have started on the journey is either because of customer pressure for ISO 9000 certification or because the firms themselves have realised the strategic advantage of having this certificate, i.e. it would give them an edge over their competitors. Most of the firms which started out on the journey to ISO 9000 still may not have completed that journey. In general, it takes 2 years, and obtaining this coveted certificate is only a first step towards the ultimate goal: total quality management (TQM). Reaching this goal may take at least 5 years. In the next sections of the dissertation we will take a closer look at the characteristics of the different quality management systems. In this section, we concentrate on the concept of quality itself. We start with the two types of quality, namely: Objective quality, which is simply the products total number of quality attributes. Subjective quality, which is a result of the consumers experience of the products objective attributes. Subjective quality is thus defined as the degree of fulfillment of consumers expectations (Feigenbaum, 2000). Beyond the customers desirable expectations, there are always the customers latent expectations. Manufacturers and the service providers must therefore find the hidden expectations in order to keep the customer satisfied. It is subjective quality which matters to the company, and it is this definition which Deming used in his renowned eight-day quality seminars for Japanese top managers in 1950. Demings message to them was simple but powerful: The consumer is the most important part of the production line. The idea that customers should be seen as a part of the production line was in itself a revolutionary one at that time. A logical conclusion is that quality production is only possible if it is systematically and continuously based on customer desires and needs. It is simple in theory but difficult in practice because there are many obstacles to overcome along the way. Demings 14 points, which we have taken the liberty of calling stations along the way, are among the most important means of overcoming these obstacles. You may ask this important question: Why have the Japanese been better at understanding Demings message than the Western world? There are many reasons for this, but one of the most intriguing reasons may be found in the Japanese language, and thus in Japanese culture. In the Japanese language, quality management can be translated as quality is equal to the attributes of the things (i.e. what peoples talk about). This interpretation results in the following definition of quality management: Control of the attributes of a product which consumers talk about. To understand why consumers talk about a products attributes, we will delve into motivation theory. Herzberg has divided motivation into two factors: Factors which create satisfaction (satisfiers). Factors which create dissatisfaction (dissatisfiers). Similarly, many objective attributes of a product or service can be categorised. We may talk about the basic attributes that the consumer expects when he/she buys the product. If these are not present in sufficient quantities, the consumer experiences dissatisfaction. If the expected attributes are present, naturally the consumer is satisfied, but the interesting and crucial thing is that the degree of satisfaction will not necessarily be particularly high. The experience will be more or less neutral. Apart from the attributes which the customer expects to find, it is always possible to build attributes into the product or service which the customer does not expect to find, i.e. attributes which will delight or satisfy him/her. The more of these attributes that are present in the product or services, the greater the satisfaction, and this satisfaction will, in many cases, increase significantly. We call these attributes value-added quality. However, in Japan they use the term charming quality, whereas in the US they interpret this as exciting quality. We believe that value-added quality covers both. One example of expected quality in air travel is safety. Korean Air lost its reputation as a quality airline in the wake of the tragic incident of a passenger airline being shot down over Soviet territory. Prior to this incident, Korean Air was rated as one of the top quality airlines in the world. Afterwards, Korean Airs quality ratings dropped significantly. In our view, the only thing which can adequately explain this is that Korean Air had failed to deliver the customers expected quality. As an example of value-added quality, let us consider the added service offered by ISS Laundry Service, a subsidiary of International Service Systems (ISS). This company which, among other activities, changes bed-linen in hotel rooms, suddenly had an idea. As they were there to change the sheets, they might as well see if anything else needed doing, e.g. small repairs, changing light-bulbs, etc., and report this to the hotel management. This unexpected service, which hardly costs ISS anything, created an enormous amount of goodwill for the company among its customers. The understanding behind Demings assertion, that the consumer is the most important aspect of the production line, lies precisely in the subjective definition of quality, which we will be discussing in this dissertation. The introduction of quality management theory towards the end of the 1980s led to the development of a new concept called total quality. This concept was defined as follows (Kanji, 2002): Qualityis to satisfy customers requirements continuously. Total qualityis to achieve quality at low cost. Total quality managementis to obtain total quality by involving everyones daily commitment. These definitions will become clearer as we proceed through the dissertation. The objective of TQM is to improve continuously each and every activity in the company focusing on the customer. Every product has some deficiency, i.e. risks for making customers dissatisfied. These deficiencies must be continually eliminated and, at the same time, the firm must ensure that its product or service always incorporate the quality attributes which satisfy its customers. 1.2 Total quality management The concept of TQM is a logical development of total quality control (TQC), a concept first introduced by A. V. Feigenbaum in 2000 in a book of the same name. Though Feigenbaum had other things in mind with TQC, it only really caught on in engineering circles, and thus never achieved the total acceptance in British companies that was intended. TQC was a hit in Japan, on the other hand, where the first quality circles were set up in 1962, which later developed into what the Japanese themselves call company-wide quality control (CWQC). this is identical to what people in the West today call TQM. One of the main reasons for the failure of TQC in British companies was a management misconception that responsibility for implementing TQC could be delegated to a central quality department. In doing so, management overlooked one of the most important points in TQC, namely managements wholehearted commitment to quality improvements. The aim of the new concept, TQM, is to ensure that history does not repeat itself. Thus, management have been directly included in the definition of the concept, making it impossible for them to avoid their responsibility. To include the word management here sends an unmistakable signal straight into executive offices that this is a job for top management, including the board of directors. TQM will be further discussed in following chapters. Chapter 2 Quality Perspectives The inadequacy of traditional management in UK Japan Traditional British forms of management are based on a philosophy which divides responsibility for decisions into strategic, tactical and operational levels, i.e. the so-called management pyramid. We now know that this management conception is totally inadequate for modern, complex companies, since it does not give the connection between top management and the main processes at the bottom responsible for customer satisfaction. As a result, the management is ignorant of the real problems on the operational level, and do not provide the support and backing that the operation level needs for the creation of customer satisfaction (Feigenbaum, 2000). The decisions which cascade down from top management are often exclusively budgetary in nature, containing instructions which are forced on lower levels without due consideration of their problems. Many local branches of a bank have similar experiences. A typical example of this was noted after some Danish bank mergers took place at the, end of the 1980s. Branch managers of these banks received orders by internal post to cut staff numbers by a certain figure with no indication of how this could be achieved without drastically reducing the quality of products and services offered to their customers. Hiromoto (2002) describes this as management by terrorism. In discussing British and Japanese management philosophy, Konosuke Matsushita, founder of one of the worlds biggest companies, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic, National, Technics, etc.), said: We are going to win and the industrial West is going to lose out: theres nothing much you can do about it, because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, youre convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business. For you, the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses into the hands of labour. (p). Hoinville (2002) feels that the emphasis of managements commitment has its origin in the system, the reason for quality defects. It has been estimated that 85% of all defects are caused by system errors, i.e. errors which only management has the authority to change. Management must show by its actions that it has understood the message. It must constantly strive to reduce system errors by setting up quality goals, drawing up quality policies and quality plans, and participating actively in the follow-up auditing phase. Finally, management must concede its own lack of knowledge in the quality field and take the lead in acquiring new knowledge. If management does all this, it will have created a firm foundation on which future quality can be built. Conversely, there would be little point in building quality on a shaky foundation. We have already pointed out that the customer is the most important part of the production line. Deming (2002) introduced this idea to top Japanese managers in 1950 by means of a basic outline of an arbitrary production system, or part of a production system. This outline, which must today be considered traditional, shows that both customer and supplier are part of the production system, and that information for improving this comes from two sources: consumer research and process tests. Since this outline also applies to an arbitrary sub-system, it shows that customer and supplier concepts embrace much more than just external customers and suppliers. Internal customers and suppliers, i.e. employees, are at least as important as the external ones. Any person, or process, which forms part of the production system must recognise that it serves a number of internal customers, and the quality of the output delivered to these customers is crucial to the end result, i.e. the quality of the output delivered to the external customer. Deming (2002) himself concedes that, in 1950, this was a formidable challenge for the Japanese top managers, but they accepted the challenge, and the result is there for us all to see today. In Demings words: A new economic age had begun. Today it is difficult to understand that such a simple message presented the Japanese with such a difficult challenge. Our experience of top managers is that they accept the message without question. However, this does not lessen the difficulty of the challenge, because it implies that firms traditional information systems are totally inadequate. A culture must be established to ensure that internal customer research functions just as well as external. Here, it is important to point out that internal analysis is based on entirely different principles from external analysis. Communication and team-building are the key words here. Obviously, the participation of top management is necessary in building up this culture. It can be seen that the Focus on the customer and the employee is much more comprehensive than just the focus on the customer, which is the norm in service management. The latter refers solely to external customers. The former, while including these, also stresses the internal customer/supplier relationship. This relationship is one of the most important innovations which TQM has introduced. Quality Management In Todays Era As we have discussed above that how the management of quality is vital to the output product of any organization it has made clear that without an excellent quality management system an organization can not implement total quality management. In todays era new ways of quality management have been introduced that can make quality management a much easier and effective job for the management body. Technology has been quiet advance in todays world and every organization is trying to get its hand on the most advance technology that can take it to a much higher level from its competitiors. A new emerging technology for managing quality in well established organizations is the use of Web-Based Quality Management Systems. Why this technology is vital today is beacuse of organizations expanding their businesses worldwide or operating at different geoghraphical locations. It is much easier to manage the quality in an organization that is operating at one location but if it has its operations going on at different locations it is much harder to implement and manage total quality management. But these new systems have overcome this gap by providing a centralized hub to manage the quality. No matter how scattered the operations of the organizations are and how many stake holders are involved, by implementing these systems organizations need not to worry about the distance and communication gap. Competition and cost consciousness on the one side an increasing demand for quality and reliability on the other side are contrary requirements in present production engineering. This must be considered also from the point of view of the international standards about quality management and quality assurance. The origins of quality management and quality assurance in a modern sense began in manufacturing organizations at about the beginning of the twentieth century [1], and many of the tools for quality analysis and improvement were developed for manufacturing problems. Through the 1980s, this manufacturing emphasis dominated the profession. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, business began to recognise the importance of quality service in achieving customer satisfaction and competing in the global marketplace. In the late 1990s also the public domain and governmental departments became aware of the general importance of quality issues. In a very important sense, this recognition has expanded the definition and  concept of quality to include nearly any organisational improvement such as the reduction of manufacturing cycle time and improved worker skills. And also the public sector is now starting to take care of quality management within its structures. In addition to industrial organisations and the manufacturing industry also service organisations build up quality systems. Ancillary services in manufacturing companies as well as stand-alone service organisations such as hospitals and banks are beginning to realise the benefits of a focus on quality. A number of different industries are successively doing business around the globe and the quality systems that are availaible in the market does not mostly cater a specific industry and all of them provide different features, tools and options, so it is a complex decision to choose the best availaible solution from a wide range of variety. In this dissertation different availaible web-based quality management systems are reviewed and their shortnesses are pointed out and a model is proposed in the end that covers all gaps in the currently availaible systems. Chapter 2: Literature Review In this chapter literature review is carried out and analyzed that which tools and schemes are imperative for the management of quality and how they cooperate in the quality management. This will enable to know how different branches of an organization can be indulged with quality by using what sort of tools and how these tools can benifit any organization. â€Å"The approach to quality most extensively adopted by Western companies in recent years has been the application of national and international (ISO 9000 or equivalent) quality management standards. This approach is following firmly along the quality assurance path. It is more proactive than reliance on detection/inspection and allows for the use of quality tools primarily to stop non-conforming products being produced or non-conforming services being delivered in the first place. Hence there is a switch implied from detection to prevention via quality systems, procedures and a quality manual.† [18] 2.1 Quality Management Tools Techniques Numerous definitions and methodologies have been created to assist in managing the quality-affecting aspects of business operations. Many different techniques and concepts have evolved to improve product or service quality. Tools and techniques like charts, graphs, histograms and complex tools like Statistical Process Control, Quality Function Deployment, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis and Design of Experiments have been used for quality management for a number of years. All of these tools are very effective for quality evaluation and implementation when applied rightly and at correct situation. Juan Jose Tari and Vicente Sabater {Quality management tools} in their research on â€Å"Quality tools and Techniques† has outlined few important tools and techniques that can be luminously helping in managing and increasing organizations quality standards. The very basic tools, the management tools for quality and techniques for quality management are outlined in the table below: Basic Quality Management Tools Management Tools Techniques Cause Effect Diagram Affinity Diagram Benchmarking Check Sheet Arrow Diagram Design of Experiments Control chart Matrix Diagram FMEA Graphs Matrix Data Analysis Fault Tree Analysis Histoghram Process Decision Poka Yoke Pareto Diagram Program Chart Quality Costing Scatter Diagram Relations Diagram QFD Statistical Process Control Table 1 Quality Management Tools and Techniques Each indivisual tool has its own speciality and benifits the organization in its own manner. The implementation and benifits of few of these tools are discussed in the next section. 2.2 Quality Control, Assurance and Improvement The scholars of quality assume that the computer is only the linking force and they put less emphasis on it, and frequently do not consider at all, the modern practices linked to quality management such as employee involvement or continuous quality improvement. Indeed, they concentrate their attention on the computer integration/automation model.† But for quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement insists on involving all these aspects. {Good one} Quality control is defined as operational with activities aimed both at monitoring a process and eliminating causes of unsatisfactory performance for relevant stages of the quality loop to achieve economic effectiveness. Quality control is a technique to achieve, maintain and improve the quality standard of products and service. Defects or failures in constructed facilities or products can result in very large costs. {500} the emphasis on quality control is clear to achieve complete quality management and for this quality control tools are vital to be implemented. Quality improvement requires improvement of processes in process based quality improvement approach. To improve the quality hence several inspection tools can be applied to access the processes and find the ways to improve it to get better and better results. Also the basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization. {800} has suggested following significant tools for the quality management in respect of each quality component: Quality Control Quality Assurance Quality Improvement Statistical process control Regression Process capability analysis, Rule-based reasoning (Expert Systems) Factor analysis Pareto analysis Model-based reasoning and case-based reasoning Cause and effect diagram Process mapping, design of experiments Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Quality function deployment Design of Experiments Design of experiments Analysis of variance Table 1 Above mentioned tools when used in combinations as best suitable for the processes and enterprise could produce massive increase in overall performance of the organization. Few of these tools and their significance in quality managemet is illustrated below: 2.3 Statistical Process Control The appearance of computers on the shop floor has enhanced the increased adoption of SPC. Computers have greatly reduced the efforts required by production personnel to collect and analyze data.{very good journal} â€Å"High quality products and services, far from being random or probabilistic events, are actually anticipated and managed outcomes that can contribute to organizational survival in the marketplace. This realization has encouraged organizations to embrace and implement numerous approaches, some novel and some re-discovered, aimed at achieving the objective of continuous quality improvement. One popular and widespread implementation in the name of quality management is that of statistical process control, or SPC. [19] Statistical Process Control or SPC can be used in a organization for the quality control purpose. It when applied to a process gives the stability of that process which can eventually help in identifing the root causes and take corrective actions.â€Å"The basic goal of using quality control techniques is to streamline the manufacturing system by minimizing the occurrence of quality related problems. Most of the time, problems related to quality of products have many controllable sources, be it the vendors of raw materials, equipment used to process such materials, methods used for processing, the personnel involved or any other specific source as identified by the organization.†[20] SPC is an effective tool for controlling quality of a manufacturing process rather it can be applied to most of the processes in any organization and can aid in controlling the quality as per requirements. It identifies the sources that affects the quality of the process outputs and hence can be eradicated as identified. But there lies a problem with the use of it that is interpreting the results of SPC which can be only well understood by quality control specialists. This can create communication gaps and a lot of other misconceptions about its use. But still SPC is being used to control quality from a number of years and it has proved itself to be giving enormously positive results to the organizations. â€Å"The popularity of SPC as a quality management practice has been fostered, in part, by a wealth of publications ascribing quality and cost benefits to it. The literature is dominated by anecdotal â€Å"success† stories, attributing higher market share, lower failure costs, higher product quality, and higher productivity to the implementation and practice of SPC (Dondero, 1991). Reports of SPC failures, on the contrary, have been few and, again, case-oriented (Dale Shaw, 1991; Lightburn Dale, 1992).†[22] Evans and Lindsay (1989, pp. 313-3 14), define SPC to be a methodology using control charts for assisting operators, supervisors, and managers to monitor quality of conformance and to eliminate special causes of variability of a process a technique to control quality using probability and statistics to determine and maintain the state of statistical control.[23 Hence the advantages and effectiveness can well be understood from the above discussion and its can be c oncluded that SPC can play a major role in controling any process and eliminating any cause that disturbs the process as its main idea is to enable the quality of conformance to be monitored and special causes of process variability to be eliminated. 2.4 Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is tool that can be used to analyse the failures that can occur in the near future or after the implementation of the system and identify the effects that it would cause to the system. â€Å"Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is known to be a systematic procedure for the analysis of a system to identify the potential failure modes, their causes and effects on system performance. The analysis is successfully performed preferably early in the development cycle so that removal or mitigation of the failure mode is most cost effective. This analysis can be initiated as soon as the system is defined: FMEA timing is essential.† [24] 1 below shows some random forms as an example of FMEA version 1, 2 3 charts. For FMEA to be effective its is very important to use this tool in the early development phase as catching errors and fixing them in earlier stages is more effectual and less costly. FMEA can be implemented to the highest level of block diagram to the functions of the of the discrete components. Also FMEA can be used again and again as the design is developed. â€Å"The FMEA is an iterative process that is updated as the design develops. Design changes will require that relevant parts of the FMEA be reviewed and updated.† [24] Hence FMEA could play an imperative role in going for the process changing for improvement. The change planned for the process for improving it can be verified by the application of this technique. 2.5 Quality Function Deployment (QFD) QFD has been used along with the integration of other effective tools to achieve quality in processes and products, reducing cycle times and improving performance. {600} found out that in the span of the first seven years, between 1977 and 1984, the Toyota Auto body plant employed QFD and claimed that with its use: Manufacturing startup and pre-production costs were reduced by 60%. The product development cycle (that is, time to market) was reduced by 33% with a corresponding improvement in quality because of the reduction in the number of engineering changes. Quality function deployment QFD is based on the concept of companywide quality control. The company wide quality control philosophy is characterised by customer orientation, cross functional management and process rather than product orientation. Also the roots of Japanese companywide quality control are the same concepts of statistical quality control and total quality control as originated in the USA. 2.6 Quality Improvement A Need or A Neccessity In the technological advanced manufacturing industry today, organziations are trying their level best to imorove their quality standards yet reducing their cycle times and time to reach the market. This pushes them to adopt the latest availaible technologies to manage and inject quality into their products and processes, so that the production time is not effected by increasing concern of quality management. Nowadays there is a tough competition in every . Aberdeen Group has done an extensive research on Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence and it says that the best in class organzaitions are â€Å"ensuring that continuois improvement programs yeild the expected results help to unlock hidden capabilities as well as allows for greater flexibility in altering schedule to meet shifting demands. It is essential that executives are provided visibility across plants, product lines and demand when making decisions on delivery, discounts and staffing. Many companies can manufacture the sam e product in mutiple facilities and are continually evaluating the most cost effective loaction to manufacture based on a mutitude of factors. Finally, establishing key performance indicators mapped to corporate goals allows shop floor process across different plants to be standardized and alligned to the goals of senior management.† [27] The focus is on ensuring continuous improvement programs and establishing key performance indicating targets that eventually supports corporate goals. Also what is part of best in class manufaturers strategic goals is to provide visibility across the plants, production lines and demands, This would help the exectives of the organzaition to understand monitor the performanc of ongoing processes. In the survey carried out by aberdeen group following percentage was calculated of the best in class organizations of the top three strategic actions taken by them: The above research indication shows the top three strategic actions of the Best-In-Class organizations and all of these actions are quality related. This very well proves that for the organizations that wants to be included in the best in class list or that wants to stay in best in class list must improve their quality standards as per the market and industries requirements. Hence quality improvement could be termed as the necessity of todays era and to survive in todays market an organization needs to update it quality management systems. All the indicators from research above points towards the advancements in quality management and that lead us to the topic of quality management systems of today that is Web-based quality management. CHAPTER 3 Quality Management Systems From time to time quality gurus and scholars have only been focusing and trying to develope appropriate control charts for processes, but now due to the advancements in technology and shifting towards real time quality management

The Host Chapter 10: Turned

The electric bell rang, announcing another visitor to the convenience store. I started guiltily and ducked my head behind the shelf of goods we were examining. Stop acting like a criminal, Melanie advised. I'm not acting, I replied tersely. The palms of my hands felt cold under a thin sheen of sweat, though the small room was quite hot. The wide windows let in too much sun for the loud and laboring air-conditioning unit to keep up. Which one? I demanded. The bigger one, she told me. I grabbed the larger pack of the two available, a canvas sling that looked well able to hold more than I could carry. Then I walked around the corner to where the bottled water was shelved. We can carry three gallons, she decided. That gives us three days to find them. I took a deep breath, trying to tell myself that I wasn't going along with this. I was simply trying to get more coordinates from her, that was all. When I had the whole story, I would find someone-a different Seeker, maybe, one less repulsive than the one assigned to me-and pass the information along. I was just being thorough, I promised myself. My awkward attempt to lie to myself was so pathetic that Melanie didn't pay any attention to it, felt no worry at all. It must be too late for me, as the Seeker had warned. Maybe I should have taken the shuttle. Too late? I wish! Melanie grumbled. I can't make you do anything you don't want to do. I can't even raise my hand! Her thought was a moan of frustration. I looked down at my hand, resting against my thigh rather than reaching for the water as she wanted to do so badly. I could feel her impatience, her almost desperate desire to be on the move. On the run again, just as if my existence were no more than a short interruption, a wasted season now behind her. She gave the mental equivalent of a snort at that, and then she was back to business. C'mon, she urged me. Let's get going! It will be dark soon. With a sigh, I pulled the largest shrink-wrapped flat of water bottles from the shelf. It nearly hit the floor before I caught it against a lower shelf edge. My arms felt as though they'd popped halfway out of their sockets. â€Å"You're kidding me!† I exclaimed aloud. Shut up! â€Å"Excuse me?† a short, stooped man, the other customer, asked from the end of the aisle. â€Å"Uh-nothing,† I mumbled, not meeting his gaze. â€Å"This is heavier than I expected.† â€Å"Would you like some help?† he offered. â€Å"No, no,† I answered hastily. â€Å"I'll just take a smaller one.† He turned back to the selection of potato chips. No, you will not, Melanie assured me. I've carried heavier loads than this. You've let us get all soft, Wanderer, she added in irritation. Sorry, I responded absently, bemused by the fact that she had used my name for the first time. Lift with your legs. I struggled with the flat of water, wondering how far I could possibly be expected to carry it. I managed to get it to the front register, at least. With great relief, I edged its weight onto the counter. I put the bag on top of the water, and then added a box of granola bars, a roll of doughnuts, and a bag of chips from the closest display. Water is way more important than food in the desert, and we can only carry so much – I'm hungry, I interrupted. And these are light. It's your back, I guess, she said grudgingly, and then she ordered, Get a map. I placed the one she wanted, a topographical map of the county, on the counter with the rest. It was no more than a prop in her charade. The cashier, a white-haired man with a ready smile, scanned the bar codes. â€Å"Doing some hiking?† he asked pleasantly. â€Å"The mountain is very beautiful.† â€Å"The trailhead is just up that -† he said, starting to gesture. â€Å"I'll find it,† I promised quickly, pulling the heavy, badly balanced load back off the counter. â€Å"Head down before it gets dark, sweetie. You don't want to get lost.† â€Å"I will.† Melanie was thinking sulfurous thoughts about the kind old man. He was being nice. He's sincerely concerned about my welfare, I reminded her. You're all very creepy, she told me acidly. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers? I felt a deep tug of guilt as I answered. There are no strangers among my kind. I can't get used to not paying for things, she said, changing the subject. What's the point of scanning them? Inventory, of course. Is he supposed to remember everything we took when he needs to order more? Besides, what's the point of money when everyone is perfectly honest? I paused, feeling the guilt again so strongly that it was an actual pain. Everyone but me, of course. Melanie shied away from my feelings, worried by the depth of them, worried that I might change my mind. Instead she focused on her raging desire to be away from here, to be moving toward her objective. Her anxiety leaked through to me, and I walked faster. I carried the stack to the car and set it on the ground beside the passenger door. â€Å"Let me help you with that.† I jerked up to see the other man from the store, a plastic bag in his hand, standing beside me. â€Å"Ah†¦ thank you,† I finally managed, my pulse thudding behind my ears. We waited, Melanie tensed as if to run, while he lifted our acquisitions into the car. There's nothing to fear. He's being kind, too. She continued to watch him distrustfully. â€Å"Thank you,† I said again as he shut the door. â€Å"My pleasure.† He walked off to his own vehicle without a backward glance at us. I climbed into my seat and grabbed the bag of potato chips. Look at the map, she said. Wait till he's out of sight. No one is watching us, I promised her. But, with a sigh, I unfolded the map and ate with one hand. It was probably a good idea to have some sense of where we were headed. Where are we headed? I asked her. We've found the starting point, so what now? Look around, she commanded. If we can't see it here, we'll try the south side of the peak. See what? She placed the memorized image before me: a ragged zigzagging line, four tight switchbacks, the fifth point strangely blunt, like it was broken. Now I saw it as I should, a jagged range of four pointed mountain peaks with the broken-looking fifth†¦ I scanned the skyline, east to west across the northern horizon. It was so easy it felt false, as though I'd made the image up only after seeing the mountain silhouette that created the northeast line of the horizon. That's it, Melanie almost sang in her excitement. Let's go! She wanted me to be out of the car, on my feet, moving. I shook my head, bending over the map again. The mountain ridge was so far in the distance I couldn't guess at the miles between us and it. There was no way I was walking out of this parking lot and into the empty desert unless I had no other option. Let's be rational, I suggested, tracing my finger along a thin ribbon on the map, an unnamed road that connected to the freeway a few miles east and then continued in the general direction of the range. Sure, she agreed complacently. The faster the better. We found the unpaved road easily. It was just a pale scar of flat dirt through the sparse shrubbery, barely wide enough for one vehicle. I had a feeling that the road would be overgrown with lack of use in a different region-some place with more vital vegetation, unlike the desert plants that needed decades to recover from such a violation. There was a rusted chain stretched across the entrance, screwed into a wooden post on one end, looped loosely around another post at the other. I moved quickly, pulling the chain free and piling it at the base of the first post, hurrying back to my running car, hoping no one would pass and stop to offer me help. The highway stayed clear as I drove onto the dirt and then rushed back to refasten the chain. We both relaxed when the pavement disappeared behind us. I was glad that there was apparently no one left I would have to lie to, whether with words or silence. Alone, I felt less of a renegade. Melanie was perfectly at home here in the middle of nothing. She knew the names of all the spiny plants around us. She hummed their names to herself, greeting them like old friends. Creosote, ocotillo, cholla, prickly pear, mesquite†¦ Away from the highway, the trappings of civilization, the desert seemed to take on a new life for Melanie. Though she appreciated the speed of the jolting car-our vehicle didn't have the ground clearance necessary for this off-road trip, as the shocks reminded me with every pit in the dirt-she itched to be on her feet, loping through the safety of the baking desert. We would probably have to walk, and all too soon for my taste, but when that time came, I doubted it would satisfy her. I could feel the real desire beneath the surface. Freedom. To move her body to the familiar rhythm of her long stride with only her will for guidance. For a moment, I allowed myself to see the prison that was life without a body. To be carried inside but unable to influence the shape around you. To be trapped. To have no choices. I shuddered and refocused on the rough road, trying to stave off the mingled pity and horror. No other host had made me feel such guilt for what I was. Of course, none of the others had stuck around to complain about the situation. The sun was close to the tips of the western hills when we had our first disagreement. The long shadows created strange patterns across the road, making it hard to avoid the rocks and craters. There it is! Melanie crowed as we caught sight of another formation farther east: a smooth wave of rock, interrupted by a sudden spur that swung a thin, long finger out against the sky. She was all for turning immediately into the brush, no matter what that did to the car. Maybe we're supposed to go all the way to the first landmark, I pointed out. The little dirt road continued to wind in more or less the right direction, and I was terrified to leave it. How else would I find my way back to civilization? Wasn't I going back? I imagined the Seeker right at this moment, as the sun touched the dark, zigzagging line of the western horizon. What would she think when I didn't arrive in Tucson? A spasm of glee made me laugh out loud. Melanie also enjoyed the picture of the Seeker's furious irritation. How long would it take her to go back to San Diego to see if this had all been a ploy to get rid of her? And then what steps would she take when I wasn't there? When I wasn't anywhere? I just couldn't picture very clearly where I would be at that point. Look, a dry wash. It's wide enough for the car-let's follow it, Melanie insisted. I'm not sure we're supposed to go that way yet. It will be dark soon and we'll have to stop. You're wasting time! She was silently shouting in her frustration. Or saving time, if I'm right. Besides, it's my time, isn't it? She didn't answer in words. She seemed to stretch inside my mind, reaching back toward the convenient wash. I'm the one doing this, so I'm doing it my way. Melanie fumed wordlessly in response. Why don't you show me the rest of the lines? I suggested. We could see if anything is visible before night falls. No, she snapped. I'll do that part my way. You're being childish. Again she refused to answer. I continued toward the four sharp peaks, and she sulked. When the sun disappeared behind the hills, night washed across the landscape abruptly; one minute the desert was sunset orange, and then it was black. I slowed, my hand fumbling around the dashboard, searching for the switch for the headlights. Have you lost your mind? Melanie hissed. Do you have any idea how visible headlights would be out here? Someone is sure to see us. So what do we do now? Hope the seat reclines. I let the engine idle as I tried to think of options besides sleeping in the car, surrounded by the black emptiness of the desert night. Melanie waited patiently, knowing I would find none. This is crazy, you know, I told her, throwing the car into park and twisting the keys out of the ignition. The whole thing. There can't really be anyone out here. We won't find anything. And we're going to get hopelessly lost trying. I had an abstract sense of the physical danger in what we were planning-wandering out into the heat with no backup plan, no way to return. I knew Melanie understood the danger far more clearly, but she held the specifics back. She didn't respond to my accusations. None of these problems bothered her. I could see that she'd rather wander alone in the desert for the rest of her life than go back to the life I'd had before. Even without the threat of the Seeker, this was preferable to her. I leaned the seat back as far as it would go. It wasn't close to far enough for comfort. I doubted that I would be able to sleep, but there were so many things I wasn't allowing myself to think about that my mind was vacant and uninteresting. Melanie was silent, too. I closed my eyes, finding little difference between my lids and the moonless night, and drifted into unconsciousness with unexpected ease.

The Influence Music Has on Society

Chantal Foster College writing 21 October 2012 The influence music has on society Music has been around for thousands of years. Many people have been shaped from it differently. For some music has been a bad influence, and others it’s been a good influence. Different types of music have grown rapidly in these past few years. Throughout the years music has changed the way it influences people. In earlier years music was used more for celebration and now music is used to voice your opinion and try to influence your audience to believe what you stand for.Music is usually one of the highly blamed sources for the influences on society today. Many people are influenced by music they listen to. Mostly because they want to copy their favorite artist or because they feel that’s a way of expressing themselves and fitting in with the people that are into the same music. It’s also a way to find similar things to other people who listen to different music. Music influences ho w people act, what people do and our religion. Some ways that society has been influenced by music is, for example music can dictate how a person speaks.In most rap songs its most rappers rap with mostly slang words, so most people think it’s cool to talk just like them. Some slang words that rappers would use that society uses today are â€Å"crib† which means house and most people use that slang today. Then society talks like them and stick to talking like that for the rest of their life, and that makes them the person they are today. Another way music has influenced society is the way society dresses. For example, in some music videos rappers have on baggy jeans, showing their draws.Most people watch those videos and get ideas from it, and start dressing just like them. In some songs the artists has a certain style of clothing that looks really nice. This could be a good inspiration on society. Many people try to dress nice like them, and set a style for their selve s. For example an artist might talk about all the different clothing and styles they wear and then have on some of the amazing clothing. That makes people want to buy some and wear it like their favorite rapper or singer. This is one of the good influences on society.Music can also influence the way we act, feel and believe in sometimes. There are so many different types of music that can influence society. Like christian music, this type of music influences to believe in something. Religion has always had music of some form and the songs that they sing influence people to believe in their god. Music can sometimes dictate us towards what religion we might be interested in or the way we feel about a certain subject or concept in life. Firstly Christian music influences them to believe more in there God and is a way they gain love with God.Secondly the songs are usually about joyous things and make the audience feel happy, which inspires them to do good things. The lyrics in Christian songs are about either doing good or praising God. The songs about doing good influence the listener to want to help others and show love to everyone. This is one of the good ways music influences society. Some of the bad influences that music has had on society is when music starts to talk about drugs, murders,and sex. Most of the violent acts that society does is blamed on music, for the simple fact that most rappers talk about â€Å"shooting† or â€Å"fighting† their enemies. Like in the

Ark Angel Essay Example

Ark Angel Essay Example Ark Angel Essay Ark Angel Essay Ark Angel Anthony Horowitz 10/27/08 Creative Writing Kevin Gross Period 2 Alex is in his bed in the hospital. He had been hit by a sniperâ„ ¢s bullet and was recovering. Then he heard a sound from somewhere downstairs. Heâ„ ¢s wondered, should I go down He did go downstairs and saw four men. One man was holding a gun and asked the night receptionist what room is Paul Drevin in Alex wondered why these men would want his roommate The night receptionist answered, Iâ„ ¢m not allowed to tell. Then the man with the gun says, Tell me in the next three seconds or Iâ„ ¢ll shoot you! The night receptionist quickly consults his computer and says, Second floor, room eight!! Then the man with the gun says, Thank you and shoots him anyway. Alex is now very scared and turns and runs back to his room. Alex then switches the numbers on his and Paulâ„ ¢s connecting doors, so now Alex is Paul Drevin. Alex moved quickly, then the men came out of the elevator, approached and opened Alexâ„ ¢s door. They wanted to take Alex, but he ran and they reacted slowly. The men chased after him, but one man was slowing down so Alex took a fully charged defibrillator and shocked him. Alex was pleased with his success. Then one of the men heard the other man scream and came to find Alex. Alex hit him right between the legs with a tank of oxygen and the man fell to the ground. The leader was following Alex, but Alex was faster and he went to the physical therapy room. Alex then grabbed some elastic and a medicine ball. When the leader arrived in the hallway, Alex was on the other side and he fired the medicine ball at the leader with a slingshot made of elastic. Alex felt sorry for the men he had hurt, but he couldnâ„ ¢t let Paul get taken away. Only one man was left, he was short, but very muscular and wore a big steel watch, so we will call him Steel Watch. Alex, panicking, was trying to find a place to hide. Then he found the radiology department and went to the MRI room. Then Alex turned the MRI machine on. Steel Watch aimed his gun at Alex and said, Freeze donâ„ ¢t move or Iâ„ ¢ll put a bullet in your leg. Then the magnetic force kicked in and the gun flew out of his hand and started to pull on his steel watch. He was pulled along with his watch right into the MRI machine. He was in an awkward position. Alex gave a sigh of relief. After taking down four professional killers he was pretty tired. His stitches from his previous injury were hurting his chest, so he decided he would go back to his room. Then, if the front door hadnâ„ ¢t just opened, he would have missed something very important. Four men went to take Paul, but five were assigned to the job. Then it hit him, he had forgotten about the driver!

History of Omar Khayyam essays

History of Omar Khayyam essays The man who was to keep the torch of scientific humanism alight within early Islamic civilization was born a thousand years after the death of Lucretius, and into a vastly different cultural setting. Nevertheless, in all that Omar Khayyam wrote one can clearly recognize the influence of the great Roman poet, and of the naturalistic Epicureanism that he celebrated. This is doubly remarkable when we recall that, during the centuries between Lucretius and Khayyam, a Dark Age had engulfed and stifled Western Europe. The spread of a mystical form of religion throughout the remnants of the Roman empire, combined with the influence of the Germanic tribes, had gradually produced what amounted to a reversion to barbarism. Gullibility and ignorance pervaded life at all levels, while economic activity declined to primitive levels of barter. An attitude of contempt for earthly existence and bodily pleasures had become the norm, along with belief in all manner of superstition and magic. Southward and eastward, however, two different cultural patterns had emerged. One was the Byzantine Empire populated by Hellenized Central Asians: Greeks, Syrians, Jews, Armenians, Egyptians and Persians. It existed as a static, class-dominated, authoritarian society, with change occurring only in extreme form and imposed from without. Yet, by the sheer fact of its existence, in those first cruel centuries following the fall of Rome, this remnant of the ancient civilizations performed a critical holding action for human culture. Within it were preserved many of the achievements of the Hellenic and Classical world. Then, in the seventh century, came the emergence of a new religion among the Arabs and Bedouins to the south, sparking a civilization which eventually encompassed and surpassed what little there had been of original Byzantine achievement. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, became at the same time the founder of a new Arabic state with its capital at M...

Pathophysiology Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

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