Respond to differences of opinion and conflict constructively Essay

As a teaching assistant I am part of the wider team of teaching staff in a school. Everyone has different roles and responsibilities and this can sometimes lead to conflicts. On one occasion I was working with an EMA class doing role plays in a hall. It was the last lesson of the day and we were using the interactive white board. The after school film club was due to use the room straight after us and the coordinator was very annoyed that she was unable to come in and set up ahead of her class. She insisted that the EMA class use another space. While I could understand her frustration at being delayed I could also see the benefits to the EMA class of using the hall. It provided the children with opportunities to do exercises that couldn’t be done in standard classroom. I could also tell that they really enjoyed working in the space. The discussion between the teachers became slightly heated and I could see that there was tension. In order to resolve the conflict I suggested we carry out the activities that require the white board early so that the coordinator could come in towards the end of our lesson and set up the film. This solution was accepted by all. I felt I dealt with the situation constructively. Seek advice and support from relevant people when needed. As a teaching assistant I always seek advice on issues I am unsure of. If had a difference of opinion with another member of staff I would ask the teacher I worked with or different member of staff for advice. If was having difficulty with any of my responsibilities I would ask another member of staff to help and support me to ensure I was doing things correctly.

Ready to Eat Food

NEW ERA OF INDIAN READY TO EAT FOOD (RETORT FOOD – Having shelf life up to 18 months) Sanjeev Bhanga BRIEF India has made lot of progress in agriculture & food sectors since independence in terms of growth in output, yields and processing. It has gone through a green revolution, a white revolution, a yellow revolution and a blue revolution. Today, India is the largest producer of milk, fruits, cashew nuts, coconuts and tea in the world, the second largest producer of wheat, vegetables, sugar and fish and the third largest producer of tobacco and rice. Now the time is to provide better food processing & its marketing infrastructure for Indian industries to serve good quality & safest processed food like ready to eat food. It is opening a new window in world scenario as far as taste & acceptance is concerned. Therefore, Indian Government is providing more infrastructure for this sector. Excise duty is now ZERO % on RTE and 100 % tax deduction for the first 10 years for new units. This allows manufactures to bring down their prices & spreads its flavors to the world. The retort processed foods do not require rehydration or cooking and can be consumed straight from the pouch with or without pre-warming, depending upon the requirement of the users and the weather conditions. These foods meet the specific needs of convenience, nutritional adequacy, shelf stability, storage, distribution to the centers and have become very popular after the Year 2002. Some of the mouth-watering dishes in retort pouches include sooji halwa, upma, chicken curry, mutton curry, fish curry, chicken madras, chicken kurma, rajma masala, palak paneer, dal makhnil, mutter paneer, potato-peas, mutter mushroom, vegetable ulav chicken pulav, and mutton pulav, etc. The pioneer introduction of retorting technology has made the sale of ‘Ready-to-Eat’ food products commercially viable with great taste. CONCEPT †¢ Ready to Eat Meals like already cooked or prepared lunch & dinner are relatively new products which came in market only a few years back and are now sold through retail general stores in especially made sealed aluminum laminates. †¢ The retorting or sterilization process ensures the stability of the Ready-to-Eat foods in retort pouches, on the shelf and at room temperature. The application of sterilization technology completely destroys all potentially harmful micro-organisms, thereby making sure that the food product has a very long shelf life of over 12 months and needed no refrigeration. †¢ When customer needs to eat, the food item pouch is either put in microwave oven to warm it or keep in heated water for a few minutes and then serve to eat. †¢ Such ready to eat meals have been especially given to soldiers in army of many countries who require carrying their rations while on war front or while located far away from their main unit. The advertisements like, â€Å"Hungry Kyaa† are adding zest to the market by popularizing such food items which are precooked and free from any preservative, and yet have a long shelf life of over 12-months. These food items are normally selling in pouches, well packed in cardboard printed boxes of small book size and carry about 300 grams of cooked food at a price of about Rs. 40 to 200 in foreign marke t depending upon the type of dish packed. One packet of vegetable dish is normally sufficient for one meal for three persons and therefore falls in economic zone of consumer’s preferences. WHY READY TO EAT FOOD Globalization of Indian food and its culture are the core factors for popularization of ready to eat foods. Main motivation for these ready to eat foods is fast growing foreign market. Retail outlet culture is now growing rapidly in India. Shelf life of these foods are at least 12-18 months. Quality, Taste and Flavor of these foods remains as good as fresh up to the expiry date. Women wanting to spend more time out of the kitchen. More working bachelors staying away from homes. Cost effective in comparison to the Indian cuisine served by the restaurants in foreign countries. TYPES OF READY TO EAT FOOD Veg Food Alloo Matar Palak paneer Sarso Ka Saag Chana Masala Kadi Pakora Cheese Tomato Dal Makhani Rajma Masala Non Veg Food Chicken Curry Butter Chicken Karahi Chicken Mughalai Chicken Mutton Masala Mutton Korma Karahi Mutton Mutton Biryani Deserts Gajar Ka Haluaa / Sugi Ka Haluaa / Milk Kheer PLAYERS IN READY TO EAT FOOD MTR Kohinoor Foods ITC Haldiram Tasty Bites RETORT & ITS PACKAGING The water RETORT is an equipment or vessel or sterilization module through which steam (at 130 degree centigrade for 25 minutes) is applied on food products packed in retort pouches. The retorts use water or steam/air combination as processing medium to heat the container/packages. Compressed air or additional steam is introduced during the processing cycle to provide the overpressure (any pressure supplied to the retort in excess of that which can be normally achieved under steam at any given retort temperature). Overpressure is important in preventing package damage or loss of seal integrity (like bursting), during the heating process. Retort pouches is a flexible packaging material that basically consist of laminates or bounded layers of different packaging films of Polyster-Nylon-Aluminium-polypropylene that can withstand high process temperature & pressure. Their most important feature is that they are made of heatresistant plastics unlike the usual flexible pouches. This makes the retort pouches unique which are suitable for the processing of food contents at temperatures around 120 degrees Celsius. That is the kind of ambient temperature prevalent in the thermal sterilization of foods. There is lesser time to spend in cooking food themselves and so ready to eat foods are preferred. To get the food of different cultures, taste etc, it is important that food has good shelf life so that it can be made available at far off places too and then can be conveniently consumed also. ADVANTAGES OF RETORT PACKAGING †¢ Pouch laminates permits less chance to overcook during the retorting thus products having better color, texture & less nutrients loss. †¢ It requires less energy for sterilization. †¢ It requires less disposal & storage space. †¢ Low oxygen & moisture permeability. Shelf stable for longer time & requires no refrigeration. †¢ Sun light barrier, light weight, easy to open. MARKET & ITS GROWTH The popularity of ready to eat packed food now is no longer marks a special occasion. Peoples want value for time, money in terms of quality and variety. The food processing industry is one of the largest industries in India and it is the ranked fifth in terms of Production, Consumption, Export & Expected growth. Processed food market in India accounts for 32% that is Rs. 1280 billion or 29. 4 billion US $ in a total estimated market of Rs. 990 billion or 91. 66 US $. Euromonitor International, a market research company says that amount of money Indian spend on ready to eat snacks & food is 5 billion US $ in a year while on abroad Indian or Indian subcontinents spend 30 billion US $ in a year. Ready to eat packaged food industry is over Rs. 4000 crore or 1 billion US $ and it is growing at the rate of 20 % per annum. Ready to eat food market is developing specifically in UK, USA, Canada, Gulf & South Asian Countries with the growth rate of over 150 % per annum. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS What is retort packaging? Retort packaging is a self stable flexible package What is the shelf life of retort food? – The shelf life of a retort package is a year plus. What are the shipping advantages? – A retort package will not b reak or dent and weigh less. Where do you display the package in the retail store? – You can display at room temperature at any corner of the retail store What are some of the main reasons, a packager of consumer products would like to go from a conventional package material to a flexible retort pouch? – The package provides a flat surface for graphics and text, needs no refrigeration and is microwave compatible. What's the difference between foil and non-foil retort structures? – Non-foil retort packaging can be put in the micro wave. What about taste of products in a retort package? – People say that products packaged with retort material taste fresher and maintain a more natural flavor. What about shelf appeal? – Retort pouches are more space efficient and provide a larger surface for graphics and text. What kind of food products can be packed in retort packaging ? – All kind of veg & Non- veg food products Email: [email  protected] com

Caffeine and its effects on the human body Essay

Over 90% of Americans consume caffeine every day of the year. Caffeine is the ingredient that makes the public crave coffee, soda, chocolate and many other caffeine-carrying products. Americans consume about 45 million pounds of caffeine each year. In the United States, coffee drinkers drink an average of 2.6 cups per day. Total caffeine intake for coffee drinkers was 363.5 mg per day – this includes caffeine from coffee and other sources like soft drinks, food and drugs. Non-coffee drinkers get plenty of caffeine as well: former coffee drinkers get about 107 mg per day and people who have never had coffee get about 91 mg per day. Many facts are known about caffeine, such as its composition, effect on the human body, and origin; however, there are many long term effects that are currently being studied in order to discover how harmful this substance truly is. [Caffeine- Neuroscience for Kids] Caffeine occurs naturally from the coffee tree indigenous to Ethiopia, and it may have been used as early as 850 AD in Upper Egypt, though it is considered a legend. Coffee is the seed of a cherry from the tree of the genus Coffea. The tree yields about one kilogram of coffee per year. There are over 25 different species of coffee, the three main ones being Robusta, Libaria, and Arabica. The Ethiopians mixed crushed dried coffee beans with rolled fat balls used as food on journeys. Its cultivation and use as a beverage occurred in Arabia. By the early 16th century, the beverage was well-established in the Islamic world. Through cultural diffusion, coffee was a fashionable drug of the 17th and 18th centuries. From thereon, coffee’s popularity grew tremendously. America owes its present day coffee habits to the Boston tea party of 1773, which made coffee’s availability easier. [Owen, Daniel] Caffeine is an organic substance medically known as trimethylxanthine, and its chemical formula is C8H10N4O2. Caffeine is an alkaloid. There are numerous alkaloids. These compounds have different biochemical effects, and are present in different ratios in different plant sources. These compounds are very similar and differ only by the presence of methyl groups in two positions of the chemical structure. They are easily oxidized to uric acid and other methyluric acids, which are also similar in chemical structure  .Pure caffeine is odorless and has a bitter taste. This chemical is a useful cardiac stimulant and mild diuretic substance, or increases urine production. Many people take advantage of its energizing sensation; hence, it has become the world’s most widely used drug. Caffeine increases dopamine levels, like cocaine and heroin but to a lower extent. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in specific parts of the brain that can activate pleasure sensations. Because caffeine be longs to the xanthine chemical group, it interferes with the production of adenosine in the brain. Xanthenes are yellow crystalline organic compounds that are soluble in ether and are used as a fungicide and in organic synthesis. Adenosine is a naturally occurring xanthine used as a neurotransmitter in the brain. Adenosine binding to the brain causes slowing down of the nerve cells and drowsiness. Caffeine is very similar to adenosine, since they are from the xanthine chemical group. Caffeine interferes with the binding of adenosine because nerve cells recognize the intruding caffeine as adenosine. When caffeine binds to the receptors, nerve cells speed up. Caffeine causes the brain’s blood vessels to constrict because it blocks the adenosine’s ability to open them up. When the caffeine blocks the adenosine, neurons start firing at an accelerated pace. Henceforth, the brain’s signals help to other body parts, causing them to react. The pituitary gland reacts to the signals of excessive neural activity and sees it as an emergency. It then releases hormones that stimulate the adrenal glands. The adrenal glands then produce adrenaline thought out the body, Adrenaline is a hormone secreted by the adrenal medulla in response to stress and it stimulates autonomic nerve action. Adrenaline causes: dilation of the pupils, expansion of respiratory tubes, an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, tightening of muscles in order to make them ready for action, a release of sugar by the liver into the bloodstream for extra sugar, and increase blood flow to muscles. The euphoric feeling induced by caffeine makes the chemical addictive to its consumers. [â€Å"Caffeine,† Microsoft ® Encarta ® Online Encyclopedia 2004] Caffeine, like any other drug, is addictive. The long term effects of caffeine are unhealthy as they change the natural chemistry of the brain, primarily sleep. Adenosine is important to deep sleep because it causes proper reactions in the brain during sleep, yet caffeine interrupts its  function. The half-life of caffeine in a human body is about six hours long, meaning that for six hours the consumer’s body and brain will be in an accelerated state. This can tire the body, especially the heart, which has to keep up in speed to pump the necessary blood throughout the body. After months of use, a person who consumes caffeine may develop a dependency on the drug because his/her body has grown accustomed to being stimulated by the foreign substance. Withdrawal symptoms are common among caffeine consumers, which is a body’s way to ask for caffeine. Headaches, stomach cramps, irritation, and depression are common symptoms of caffeine withdrawal. These symptoms can occur within 24 hours after the last dose of caffeine. In huge doses, caffeine is lethal. A fatal dose of caffeine has been calculated to be more than 10 grams (about 170 mg/kg body weight) – this is the same as drinking 80 to 100 cups of coffee in rapid succession. Like many other chemicals, caffeine is deadly in large doses. [Caffeine- Neuroscience for Kids] There are many harmful effects which caffeine is blamed for, but there is no solid proof of most of the accusations. Pediatricians and Nutritionists argue that caffeine is harmful to developing individuals, mainly children and adolescents. They think that by using caffeine, the developing individuals are upsetting the normal and natural balances of neurochemistry. Withdrawal shows that there has been a disturbance in the brain since the brain rewires itself to crave the caffeine. In addition, a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine found the effects of caffeine on pregnant women. The equivalent of one to three cups of coffee increases the risk of miscarriage of pregnant women by 30%. Consumption of three to five cups increases the risk by 40%. The study was directed by Dr. Sven Cnattilgils involved 562 women between six to twelve weeks of pregnancy. After the publication of the study in 2002, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the March of Dime, which finds r esearch on birth defects, have advised pregnant women to avoid caffeine. There were several other studies made with regard to infertility in women between 1987 and 1990 by the Centers for Disease Control and Harvard University. They found that caffeine had little or no influence in infertility. Caffeine has also been linked to calcium loss in bones, yet its effects are not strong enough to be  considered dangerous by the FDA. Aside from the negative aspects of caffeine, the drug is used in prescription and nonprescription drugs because it boosts their power. Aspirin and other painkillers contain caffeine to improve its effectiveness. Furthermore, a study by the Journal of the American Medical association suggests that consuming caffeine may help prevent Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’ disease is a progressive nervous disease happening most often after the age of 50, associated with the destruction of brain cells that produce dopamine and characterized by weakness, muscular tremor, slowing of movement, and partial facial paralysis. Apparently, caffeine reduces the neurotransmitters, such as glutamate, which can kill neurons under certain conditions the same way it reduces adenosine. Caffeine also increases the levels of dopamine in the body, which are destroyed by Parkinson’s disease. Caffeine can also be used to treat asthma attacks as it stimulates the production of adrenaline, causing the respiratory muscles to expand. [Cherniske, Stephen & Weinberg,B.A] In summary, caffeine is the world’s most widely used drug for a reason. It triggers pleasure areas in the brain that cause its user feelings of elation. However, using caffeine in excess or for a prolonged amount of time can be hazardous to health by causing problems such as birth defects, miscarriages, and the body’s dependence. Though there are no concrete studies on the neurological effects of caffeine, many doctors and scientists agree that caffeine is not as safe as it appears. They recommend that consumers be careful of how much caffeine they are using or possibly abusing, since health is too precious to ignore.

American History (the Old America and the New America) Essay

American History (the Old America and the New America) - Essay Example Author Gene Smiley (2008) writes that "despite the 1920-1921 depression and the minor interruptions in 1924 and 1927, the American economy exhibited impressive economic growth during the 1920s. The same can be said for the periods from 1992-2000, where the American economy grew only to worsen in the years after. Economic commentators in both era's have suggested that the 'seeds' to both the depression in the 1930's and the current recession in 2008 were sown in the boom periods preceding them. According to Smiley (2008), the 1920's America economic growth was very impressive. Many in the population owned cars, new household appliances, and homes. Innovations and inventions were in high rates and drove growth. Manufacturing was increasing leading to the growing rise in the productivity of labor and capital. New innovations and products created new markets and services. Company stocks experienced a boom in the markets. For example RCA, one of the 'high end' stocks of the era, experienced an appreciation in its value even though it paid no dividends: expectations were that high. Again similar to 'Old America', the period of the Internet boom of the late 1990s, led to a rapid expansion in the stock market for 'New America', especially for dot com and related companies. Schisms in 1920 American Society While America has transcended much of its infamous past, the issues of those days caused major splits in opinions between the supporters and those in opposition. The issues included conflicts of city and country, science and religion, and even issues relating to relationship with the monarchy and modernism. Schisms were the proof of America's multi-racial, multi-cultural fabric and multi-idealistic society. The 'melting pot' of nations was battling for its identity and there was a lot of resistance and disagreements. The Conflict of City and Country The so-called war [of ideas] between 'Old America' and 'New America' was in full throttle about the 1920's. Around 1919 anti-immigrant sentiments, nativism and radicalism were on the rise, mostly directed at the new arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe. During period, urbanization trends were on the rise among native-born American population. The trends were spurred on because many Americans were now first time owners of automobiles. A drove of individuals from rural America migrated into the cities, and the cities expanded into the rural hinter lands. This shift brought issues between the city and country to the 'front burner' of debates. Yet this split between the rural and urban life was not between two exclusively opposing sides; there was an intertwining relationship. There were small towns with radicals and immigrants citizens, and a majority of people in cities still had ties to the country or were from it. At times the schisms seemed like they would 'destroy' the country. Indeed for many of the rural or city-dwellers the times were apocalyptic. There were no shortages of movements and schools of thoughts 'preaching' Freudianism, Evolutionism, and innumerable other ideas that seemed to be in concert to erase the traditional life or values of 'Old America'. It was also during this period that America initiated

Motivation is a very important force that affects and directs our Essay

Motivation is a very important force that affects and directs our behaviour. As a consequence, it is a vital factor for teachers to understand and apply in the - Essay Example Alcott’s, Little Women. Two different interesting books written by two women driven by their passion in writing intended to impart a part of their lives for the society. L.M. Alcott unlike J.K Rowling with her magical adventure, L.M. Scott’s Little Women was about her childhood. She used her own childhood to appeal to the hearts of both young and old embarking on self-expression and women’s rights. Also, her novel draws the public because it’s story of real people struggling to achieve life’s happiness along with it, to learn life’s lesson (Lkwdpl.org, 2006) Ofofegbu (2004) asserts that teacher motivation is equated with the attitude of a teacher concerning work. It has to do with teacher’s desire to participate in the pedagogical processes of the school environment. Moreover, it is concerned with teachers interest in student discipline and control particularly in the classroom. It can determine the involvement or non-involvement in academic and non-academic activities, which operate in schools. The teacher, is the one that translates educational philosophy and objective into knowledge and skill and transferring it to students. Classroom climate is important in teacher motivation. If a teacher creates a safe, healthy, happy atmosphere in the room with supportive resources and facilities for teaching for optimal learning, he/she tends to participate more than expected in the process of management, administration, and the overall improvement of the school. The teacher takes charge and projects the image of one who improves knowledg e and the physical conditions of the classroom through orderliness, discipline and control. He makes a diagnosis of students feelings and attitudes inferred by their behaviour and response in the classroom environment. Classroom management, curriculum, instruction, and teacher–student relationships must create a social context that sets up the pattern for successful

5.1 Identify the interested parties and 5.2 Identify the need of the Essay

5.1 Identify the interested parties and 5.2 Identify the need of the interested parties - Essay Example The construction company will require the services of workers who will mostly come from Plymouth and its surroundings. With the availability of building materials and enough labour, the casino will be completed in time (Fewings 2013). The local community will play a critical role in the process of building the casino. Firstly, it is the local community that gives consent for the construction of the casino. The community must first know that the facility will help the local economy in order for it to get a go ahead. There is a lot of labour work that is involved in the construction of the facility. The local community will provide the much-needed labor skills for the completion of the casino. Once the casino is completed, a huge percentage of employees will come from the neighbourhood. The local community is the most interested party in the construction of the facility. Many people visit casinos for various purposes. Where, traditionally, there is entertainment, people will most often enjoy their favourite drinks and food. Food and drink suppliers will be a crucial party after the building of the casino. Depending on the population of the casino, at any given time, suppliers will have to supply food and drinks occasionally. Drinks such as soft drinks and beer will be much needed because the customers will enjoy them as they follow their favourite activities. Since a majority of the people will spend most of their time in the casino, a lot of food will be needed to keep them replenished instead of them going outside and look for food. Every business requires investors who can pump in financial resources. Several business activities can be carried out inside the casino and can contribute to additional revenue. Finances from investors are very much needed to ensure that the casino will live to its expectation and help all the interested parties. Investors help to employee the locals who may be unemployed, but having

Strategic Rationale, Masters Objectivity and Self Analysis Essay

Strategic Rationale, Masters Objectivity and Self Analysis - Essay Example The influence came from the observation that without furthering my education, there wouldn’t be the ability to advance in any career field or set the pace for the desires which I had and the goals which were set into place for my future. The rationale and objectivity for studying the Masters Degree and positioning this into longer term strategies began with overall goals which I had toward a career field and the skills required for movement further forward in my desired area of knowledge. The main approach was to gain business knowledge that was associated with the degree and the associations which related to this. My long term goals were based on business development and moving forward within a career and workspace. There was an understanding that this couldn’t be done without the proper business knowledge. After beginning to study, the personal and career ambitions began to change with personal needs that required altering for my desired field. The personal and career ambitions that were developed were based on gaining business knowledge for a future career. The new expectations which I have are now based on advancing into managerial and high – end executive positions based on my own skills and desires. I believe that the success factors and career ambitions which I now hold are based on beginning to move into the practical applications of the knowledge which I have gained and to continue to practice each of the skills to advance within the career field. The more in which I can gain insight and practical applications to the knowledge from the Masters Degree, the easier it will be to move into the higher positions that are a part of the business field of my choice. Strategic Analysis of your Masters Abilities   The ability to perform with a future international business is one which is dependent on both personal and interpersonal skills. There are a variety of expectations that are a part of functioning with a multinational business, inc luding time management, organization, research, critical thinking, writing and communicating with others. Each of these skills alters the ability to work within different fields and allow an individual to propel forward with their career (Davies, 2011: 51). I found that, while I had the ability to have a strong personality and desire for a future with an international business, most of the basic skills were not allowing me to move forward with specific needs. The need to move into stronger communication and management skills is the main focus which I have found that I need to focus on. The academic and intellectual business knowledge that is combined with the personal Mastership objectives is based on furthering the skills which I did not have when beginning the Masters program. This concept moves into in – depth practices that I have learned, specifically with communication. The basis begins with writing skills that are associated with the academic knowledge needed. This com bines with skills that pertain to listening, responding appropriately and communicating in the proper manner. The interviewing and questioning that is associated with this combines with the ability to work in teams and to have better academic and intellectual understanding of organization and concepts such as IT skills. Developing these and continuing to practice with different needs

America's Health Reform Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

America's Health Reform - Essay Example The New Health Care Reform Bill will include coverage for uninsured children, and people who are in poverty. This hopefully will make for a much better and healthier society. This new health care system will be beneficial to society and allow consumers more security in their futures. Although the American government has been working to improve the health care system, it still needs more development. There have been many changes from the past up until today. One of the biggest problems is the hospital pricing market. It has become very expensive for lower income people to afford. Many people argue that the health care system we have now works effectively, and that people are satisfied with it. However, I do not think this is true. Consumers, employers, and the government are all demanding lower costs and higher quality from medical services. However, most hospitals retain an increasing profit in their market. The high costs of health care make medical treatment unattainable for povert y stricken people. Based on research, â€Å"approximately a thousand hospitals located in the United States closed their doors, and the hospital admissions declined by 11 percent from 1980 to today† Meaning that many hospitals have been deficit, due to the high costs charged to patients. These people did not want to go to the hospital due to unaffordable prices. Therefore, many hospitals in America are not earning a profit. It seems very beneficial to lower their prices, as it will attract more people to buy health care services. This can, in turn, increase their profits. In South Korea, there are many government subsidies to hospitals through tax collection. Its’ subsidy from the government decreases the cost, and increases the demand for health care. Older people, who suffer from poverty, and people with any financial difficulties, can receive medical care. In America, there is a need to change the market price. The current health care systems that are offered to Ame ricans are eating up much of their regular incomes. According to an article released in Los Angeles Times, one of the health services provided to consumers by their employers consumes, â€Å"30% of unemployment benefits for individual coverage and almost 84% for family coverage.† It is evident that, although workers are provided with health coverage, it is taking a large toll on their incomes. You might say it is burning a hold in their pockets. This is another reason why the health care system needs to be altered; to better accommodate more Americans. If the health care services system were changed, it would provide a better future for the younger generation. Children deserve to start their lives with a healthy body and mind. All children need access to complete health services, and treatment that provides for them when they are sick. But today, about 11 million children, more than 90 percent of them from working families, have no health insurance. According to an article pu blished in Individual Child Health Insurance, children under the age of 18 are not insured. Their parents earn too much money to qualify for Medicare, but too little to afford any health coverage for their own children. Many of the parents get up every morning, go to work, pay their taxes, and abide by laws that do not provide their children with health insurance. In 1996, 70 percent of all Americans added to the ranks of the uninsured were children. The employers from the health insurance companies are supporting the idea

Compulsive Gambling a Lifetime Long Problem Essay

Compulsive Gambling a Lifetime Long Problem - Essay Example While gambling can be a harmless activity for many people, for others it can be a dangerous activity that has the potential to destroy their lives. Compulsive gambling can lead to many problems for the participants and their families, often leading to high levels of stress, the loss of finances and criminal activity. For pathological gamblers, the relaxing activity of gambling has progressed into a more serious and dangerous pastime. People in this position generally lack the ability to control their gambling habits. They are not able to stop gambling, even if they do not have the finances to support their bets. This is the most severe form of gambling and is considered to be a mental disorder. Current estimates place pathological gambling as being five percent of the gambling population .The terms compulsive and problem gambling are also used, often interchangeably, although sometimes problem gambling is also used to refer to other gambling problems that do not fall under the defini tion of pathological .Gambling is traditionally considered an addition, even though it does not have any of the obvious physical signs that most addictions share. Because of this, it is easier for people to hide their addiction, and this makes intervention difficult . There are many different causes of gambling and research has yet to fully determine how these interact with one another. One study examined three characteristics of individuals that could potentially have an effect on likelihood of gambling, these were personality, perceived luck and attitude towards gambling. The authors found that personality traits had a significant influence on the development of problem gambling. These traits included emotional stability, reasoning, openness to change and social boldness although there were many others . Research suggests that the more gambling activities that a person is involved in, such as slots, card gambling and betting on racetracks, the greater change they have of being inv olved in problem gambling . Research has shown a significant link between gambling and crime. Many problem gamblers lose large amounts of money in their bets, and may turn to crime to try and pay their debts, to maintain the appearance of normality or to continue gambling. However, the direction of this interaction is not clear. Gamblers may be more likely to become criminals, or being criminals may make one more likely to gamble . Law has moved away from banning gambling and towards finding methods of regulating it. This includes giving local authorities the ability to act if a location breaches gambling laws. Authorities have the ability to inspect gambling locations, to review licenses and to enforce conditions . This means that the number of locations that gambling can occur is limited, and prevents a boom of gambling and associated gambling problems. This is particularly important, as research has shown that many aspects of gambling venues themselves are able to facilitate gamb ling and increase the frequency at which it occurs. A study on gambling accessibility showed that two factors were significant drivers of people choosing a particular location to gamble. The first of these was social accessibility, which related to how socially enjoyable the gambling location was. This included the atmosphere as well as the entertainment options that were present at the venue. The second aspect was

My Advices to Upcoming High School Students Essay Example for Free

My Advices to Upcoming High School Students Essay If I was able to go back to my high school year, some advice that I would give to upcoming students is: join many academic activities, join lots of club to stay connect to the school, do your homework assignments and turn in the assignments on time. I am sure that if you follow at least two or three of these suggestions, you will love going to school and also have a motive to go to school every day and do your homework. When you do your assignments on time, you will receive good grades and good honors, too. Firstly, when you are able to join at least one or two academic activities after school, you have so much fun and you get to meet more and more people. The activities also help you lose weight and the best benefit is competing with others. For instance, when my sister was in the swimming team her freshman, sophomore and junior year, she was barely home. She was always busy with her swimming team and having fun swimming against other schools. After every swimming competition, she will always come home with a smile on her face and we always thought her school had won, but really they didn’t win. She told me she didn’t care about winning; the most she cared about was being able to have fun, enjoy herself, and know what her capability is. For that, I would recommend students to take after school activities and be able to learn what their body is capable of doing instead of being shy like me and not do anything except coming home and just do my everyday routine. Secondly, joining after school clubs are awesome too. You are able to connect with students and also many teachers. This is a really great opportunity to do when student’s first entering a new school because you get to know other students faster and also different teacher’s in your school. They can also write you recommendations for college too. The better the teacher knows about you, the more they can write and elaborate to the colleges about you in the recommendations. Some students join clubs to help out after school activities like sports, parent conferences, school dances, and many more. This way you are able to be known in school for being a very great and helpful student and make many friends since everybody will know you by all the support you have given. Lastly, doing your homework is the number one priority in school and in college because without doing your homework, you are not able to do after school activities and play any sports. You have to be able to do the homework and turn the homework in on time to receive full credit for a good grade. Putting all your effort into the homework may seem like it is not worth it, but afterwards, you see how far you have gone and what things you have learned thanks to all the homework and all the teachers pushing deadlines and being so strict about homework. Always do your homework no matter how hard it is because the homework is doable; you just have to put all your time and effort into it to get it done the way the teacher wants it. Heeding these tips, you are able to gain many assets and help that you will be very proud of yourself and it will always help you down the future of life. You will always need recommendations for colleges and jobs and you will be able to get that easily because of all the after school activities. You will be able to go to attend more education and do all your assignments and turn them on time because you have already been down that route already. You will also learn how to stay fit because you were able to stay fit during high school with all the academic activities and learning how to motivate yourself without anyone motivating you.

Harley Davidson: Supply Chain Management

Harley Davidson: Supply Chain Management Introduction: In the business market there are many different organizations, but those who have good quality, design, and manufacturing process with low cost and meet market requirement they wins like Harley-Davidson. The main objective of Harley- Davidson was to focus on Just In Time manufacturing, Supply Chain Management and Total Quality Management in order to compete with other organizations. In this case study the emphasis is on how they developed the Supply Chain Management, Supplier Relationship, timed delivery and Quality. How sharing of information help them to implement just in time at supplier end ,its brief history ,problems it had faced in mid 70s, the remedies, the steps followed to overcome the downfall, with emphasis on Supply Chain Management, and lastly it concludes with the findings and learnings from the overall case study Brief History Harley Davidson is an American manufacturing motor cycle company which was built in 1903 by William Harley and author Davidson. In year 1970 the decision taking power was in the hand of cooperate parent company American machine and foundry at that time Harley Davidson was sole surviving company who were making heavy weight motor cycle in united states.AMF wanted to take the advantage of the market so decide to increase the production neglecting the importance of supply chain which made the quality go out of control. In 1981 new management was appointed by Harley Davidson to get out of this issue .Better operations towards better Bikes was their goal. Problems faced by Harley Davidson In the mid 1970s H-D had tough times, the market share was decreasing due to the poor quality of the product. After a detailed analysing it became evident that overproduction has resulted in a defocus from the Supply Chain Management. The quality of the H-D product which was the basis for their success did no longer exist. The low number of the Inventory Turns led to a high level of Stocks. With the demand decreasing and the high stocks the company was cash ridden. The recession also had its impact on low returns of the company. Another problem was they had no control over the suppliers and supplier quality was unpredictable which added to customer dissatisfaction. Remedial Measures Taken In 1980 Harley Davidson really had bad time so the management decided to take action by organizing there company with new start, management launched production schedule which increased inventory turns.Inventory Turns is define as the ratio of cost of goods and average inventory. The inventory dropped to 4 million Dollars, with high level of productions. Inventory turns increased from 16 to 28 million per year. Supplier base was reduced from 320 to 120 it leads to focus on supplier and better relationship with supplier. Set up times were reduced drastically, it made smaller lifesize feasible which increased the production. Harley Davidson introduced SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMET and JUST IN TIME MANAGEMENT which help to achieve continuous improvement in quality and delivery services,so there was drop in warranty cost also helped to eliminate inventory. Shift of production focus from PUSH (anticipating demand) to PULL (responding to orders). Supplier involvement program was evolved to improve the product development efficiencies and effectiveness which lead to development cost and reduction of developed time and reduce the cost and increase product value. Suppliers must install JIT, Statistical Operator Control, and should work for continuous improvements. Supplier development must increase the performance and capability to meet the long term supply need. Rewards and Outcome The main achievement of Harley Davidson is Quality and Delivery, it had established its base in the market.Introduction of just in time management helped them to work according to customer needs which led to customer satisfaction. Continuous improvement and bench marking the supplier helped them to improve the quality of the product. Analysis Supply chain management:-It is an activity which is defined as planning of operations, implementing the operations and controlling the operation of the supply chain to satisfy customer requirement as efficiently as possible. It includes production scheduling; Order processing, inventory management and customer services. Just in Time or Man: Just in time helped Harley Davidson by eliminating waste by using quality of raw material, producing right quality of product in right place at right time. It also improves the product quality, increase the productivity and decrease the cost. Harley Davidson called just in time as man (material as needed).just in time help Harley Davidson to develop trust between suppliers, it also helped to increase inventory turns which generate the cash flow. Principles and Technique of just in time used by Harley Davidson Total quality control:- The purpose of total quality management is to focus on customer satisfaction by improving process, high quality of product and services. Total quality can be achieved by Employee involvement program and stastical operator control. Reducing batch size production:- small batch size production helps to reduce inventory, reduce handling cost, smooth production flow and improves quality of the product. Reduce set up time:- Reduction of set up time helps to make smaller and larger size doable. It also increases the productivity and quality. Reduces inventory, space and time. Pull system (kanban):- pull system is a method in which we can control the flow production based on customer demand. In this system production is done in small batches in case if there is any problem at any point of operation the whole production line will quickly come to stop. Implementation of pull system can help you to eliminate waste in handling, optimize the shop floor space usage and improves on time delivery to customer. Supplier development:- supplier development is long term relationship between customer and supplier that intent to benefit both. Supplier should not be treated as external source but part of supply chain management. Supplier development is actually developing supplier in same way the employer are developed, providing scheduling information about product and involving supplier in design stage can improve the quality of product. Darren docemsolo lean supply chain mgnt Total employee involvement:- Each and every employee should be committed and dedicated to their work.employeer should be involved in quality circle with in the organization in order to discuss and develop management issue. Quality circle to encourage employee to take responsibility of their work which helps to improve quality and elimination of waste. Supplier selection: The best decision taken by the management of a Harley Davidson was proper selection of supplier .In the past there were lot of suppliers so quality of the product was unpredictable single sourcing helped them to check the defect .selection was done by better interviewing the supplier and understanding supplier capability. Supplier relationship: Another important step taken by Harley Davidson was improvement of supplier relationship .Their past relationship with suppliers was not that good which lead to quality and delivery problem ,weak relation with supplier can affect the organization and entire supply chain. Sharing information and conducting problem solving programs like statically operation control and employee involvement program helped Harley Davidson to improve the long term relationship. Working together with the supplier in various forms improves effectiveness and efficiency of operations in a company. Good use of relationship with the supplier can enhance the resource and capability of the company and hence it can improve market effectiveness. Harley Davidson would conduct meeting twice a year and looked for continuous improvement process. Continuous improvement continuous improvement is a management policy that sees quality improvement as an on-going process, and increasing improvement rather than once and for all improvement efforts. It helps to improve the supply chain as a whole. Future Trends Harley Davidson has diversified futuristic plans. Apart from being a leader in the Motorcycle manufacturing, they are into Branding of their logos. Supplier trainings, which includes a detailed study of their past strategies, problems and the way they have approached the solutions. The innovative Supply Chain Management systems which they inculcated in the organization. Also their aims are: Being world class customer Make worlds profitable motor cycle To have best supplier in the world To be recognised by customer for quality, value of product, services Key point Key points that we could learn from this layout are Quality cost Delivery and demand Development Management Quality is the main objective of each and every organization but is should also be cost effective. The efficient logistics must ensure that the delivery is on time, which in turn increases the demand. Continual improvement of the product is achieved by development of research, training and supplier relationship. Management must be actively involved in strategically controlling the operations of Supply chain. Conclusion From the above study we can conclude that how Harley Davidson regained their reputation in the market by applying Supply Chain Management, just in time program and also good relation with the supplier helped them to improve their quality and standard of the product. Supplier quality was unpredictable in past, sharing information, good scheduling and teaching their supplier to adapt just in time program improved Harley Davidsons quality, delivery and sevices.Thus applying supply chain management organization can improve their product range and make a better way for their future.

Compressive Sensing: Performance Comparison of Measurement

Compressive Sensing: Performance Comparison of Measurement Compressive Sensing: A Performance Comparison of Measurement Matrices Y. Arjoune, N. Kaabouch, H. El Ghazi, and A. Tamtaoui AbstractCompressive sensing paradigm involves three main processes: sparse representation, measurement, and sparse recovery process. This theory deals with sparse signals using the fact that most of the real world signals are sparse. Thus, it uses a measurement matrix to sample only the components that best represent the sparse signal. The choice of the measurement matrix affects the success of the sparse recovery process. Hence, the design of an accurate measurement matrix is an important process in compressive sensing. Over the last decades, several measurement matrices have been proposed. Therefore, a detailed review of these measurement matrices and a comparison of their performances is needed. This paper gives an overview on compressive sensing and highlights the process of measurement. Then, proposes a three-level measurement matrix classification and compares the performance of eight measurement matrices after presenting the mathematical model of each matrix. Several experimen ts are performed to compare these measurement matrices using four evaluation metrics which are sparse recovery error, processing time, covariance, and phase transition diagram. Results show that Circulant, Toeplitz, and Partial Hadamard measurement matrices allow fast reconstruction of sparse signals with small recovery errors. Index Terms Compressive sensing, sparse representation, measurement matrix, random matrix, deterministic matrix, sparse recovery. TRADITIONAL data acquisition techniques acquire N samples of a given signal sampled at a rate at least twice the Nyquist rate in order to guarantee perfect signal reconstruction. After data acquisition, data compression is needed to reduce the high number of samples because most of the signals are sparse and need few samples to be represented. This process is time consuming because of the large number of samples acquired. In addition, devices are often not able to store the amount of data generated. Therefore, compressing sensing is necessary to reduce the processing time and the number of samples to be stored. This sensing technique includes data acquisition and data compression in one process. It exploits the sparsity of the signal to recover the original sparse signal from a small set of measurements [1]. A signal is sparse if only a few components of this signal are nonzero.   Compressive sensing has proven itself as a promising solution for high-density signals and has major a pplications ranging from image processing [2] to wireless sensor networks [3-4], spectrum sensing in cognitive radio [5-8], and channel estimation [9-10].   As shown in Fig. 1. compressive sensing involves three main processes: sparse representation, measurement, and sparse recovery process. If signals are not sparse, sparse representation projects the signal on a suitable basis so the signal can be sparse. Examples of sparse representation techniques are Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) [11]. The measurement process consists of selecting a few measurements,   from the sparse signal that best represents the signal where. Mathematically, this process consists of multiplying the sparse signal by a measurement matrix. This matrix has to have a small mutual coherence or satisfy the Restricted Isometry Property. The sparse recovery process aims at recovering the sparse signal from the few measurements selected in the measurement process given the measurement matrix ÃŽ ¦. Thus, the sparse recovery problem is an undetermined system of linear equations, which has an inf inite number of solutions. However, sparsity of the signal and the small mutual coherence of the measurement matrix ensure a unique solution to this problem, which can be formulated as a linear optimization problem. Several algorithms have been proposed to solve this sparse recovery problem. These algorithms can be classified into three main categories: Convex and Relaxation category [12-14], Greedy category [15-20], and Bayesian category [21-23]. Techniques under the Convex and Relaxation category solve the sparse recovery problem through optimization algorithms such as Gradient Descent and Basis Pursuit. These techniques are complex and have a high recovery time. As an alternative solution to reduce the processing time and speed up the recovery, Greedy techniques have been proposed which build the solution iteratively. Examples of these techniques include Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) and its derivatives. These Greedy techniques are faster but sometimes inefficient. Bayesian b ased techniques which use a prior knowledge of the sparse signal to recover the original sparse signal can be a good approach to solve sparse recovery problem. Examples of these techniques include Bayesian via Laplace Prior (BSC-LP), Bayesian via Relevance Vector Machine (BSC-RVM), and Bayesian via Belief Propagation (BSC-BP). In general, the existence and the uniqueness of the solution are guaranteed as soon as the measurement matrix used to sample the sparse signal satisfies some criteria. The two well-known criteria are the Mutual Coherence Property (MIP) and the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) [24]. Therefore, the design of measurement matrices is an important process in compressive sensing. It involves two fundamental steps: 1) selection of a measurement matrix and 2) determination of the number of measurements necessary to sample the sparse signal without losing the information stored in it. A number of measurement matrices have been proposed. These matrices can be classified into two main categories: random and deterministic. Random matrices are generated by identical or independent distributions such as Gaussian, Bernoulli, and random Fourier ensembles. These matrices are of two types: unstructured and structured.  Ã‚   Unstructured type matrices are generated randomly following a given distribution. Example of these matrices include Gaussian, Bernoulli, and Uniform. These matrices are easy to construct and satisfy the RIP with high probability [26]; however, because of the randomness, they present some drawbacks such as high computation and costly hardware implementation [27]. Structured type matrices are generated following a given structure. Examples of matrices of this type include the random partial Fourier and the random partial Hadamard. On the other hand, deterministic matrices are constructed deterministically to have a small mutual coherence or satisfy the RIP. Matrices of this category are of two types: semi-deterministic and full-deterministic. Semi-deterministic type matrices have a deterministic construction that involves the randomness in the process of construction. Example of semi-deterministic type matrices are Toeplitz and Circulant matrices [31]. Full-deterministic type matrices have a pure deterministic construction. Examples of this type measurement matrices include second-order Reed-Muller codes [28], Chirp sensing matrices [29], binary Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes [30], and quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check code (QC-LDPC) matrix [32]. Several papers that provide a performance comparison of deterministic and random matrices have been published. For instance, Monajemi et al. [43] describe some semi-deterministic matrices such as Toeplitz and Circulant and show that their phase transition diagrams are similar as those of the random Gaussian matrices. In [11], the authors provide a survey on the applications of compressive sensing, highlight the drawbacks of unstructured random measurement matrices, and they present the advantages of some full-deterministic measurement matrices. In [27], the authors provide a survey on full-deterministic matrices (Chirp, second order Reed-Muller matrices, and Binary BCH matrices) and their comparison with unstructured random matrices (Gaussian, Bernoulli, Uniform matrices). All these papers provide comparisons between two types of matrices of the same category or from two types of two different categories. However, to the best of knowledge, no previous work compared the performances of measurement matrices from the two categories and all types: random unstructured, random structured, semi-deterministic, and full-deterministic. Thus, this paper addresses this gap of knowledge by providing an in depth overview of the measurement process and comparing the performances of eight measurement matrices, two from each type. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we give the mathematical model behind compressive sensing. In Section 3, we provide a three-level classification of measurement matrices. Section 4 gives the mathematical model of each of the eight measurement matrices. Section 5 describes the experiment setup, defines the evaluation metrics used for the performance comparison, and discusses the experimental results. In section 6, conclusions and perspectives are given. Compressive sensing exploits the sparsity and compresses a k-sparse signal by multiplying it by a measurement matrix where. The resulting vector    is called the measurement vector. If the signal is not sparse, a simple projection of this signal on a suitable basis, can make it sparse i.e. where. The sparse recovery process aims at recovering the sparse signal given the measurement matrix and the vector of measurements. Thus, the sparse recovery problem, which is an undetermined system of linear equations, can be stated as: (1) Where is the, is a sparse signal in the basis , is the measurement matrix, and   is the set of measurements. For the next of this paper, we consider that the signals are sparse i.e. and . The problem (1) then can be written as: (2) This problem is an NP-hard problem; it cannot be solved in practice. Instead, its convex relaxation is considered by replacing the by the . Thus, this sparse recovery problem can be stated as: (3) Where is the -norm, is the k-parse signal, the measurement matrix and is the set of measurements. Having the solution of problem (3) is guaranteed as soon as the measurement matrix has a small mutual coherence or satisfies RIP of order. Definition 1: The coherence measures the maximum correlation between any two columns of the measurement matrix . If is a matrix with normalized column vector , each is of unit length. Then the mutual coherence Constant (MIC) is defined as: (4) Compressive sensing is concerned with matrices that have low coherence, which means that a few samples are required for a perfect recovery of the sparse signal. Definition 2: A measurement matrix satisfies the Restricted Isometry Property if there exist a constant such as: (5) Where is the and is called the Restricted Isometry Constant (RIC) of which should be much smaller than 1. As shown in the Fig .2, measurement matrices can be classified into two main categories: random and deterministic. Matrices of the first category are generated at random, easy to construct, and satisfy the RIP with a high probability. Random matrices are of two types: unstructured and structured. Matrices of the unstructured random type are generated at random following a given distribution. For example, Gaussian, Bernoulli, and Uniform are unstructured random type matrices that are generated following Gaussian, Bernoulli, and Uniform distribution, respectively. Matrices of the second type, structured random, their entries are generated following a given function or specific structure. Then the randomness comes into play by selecting random rows from the generated matrix. Examples of structured random matrices are the Random Partial Fourier and the Random Partial Hadamard matrices. Matrices of the second category, deterministic, are highly desirable because they are constructed deter ministically to satisfy the RIP or to have a small mutual coherence. Deterministic matrices are also of two types: semi-deterministic and full-deterministic. The generation of semi-deterministic type matrices are done in two steps: the first step consists of the generation of the entries of the first column randomly and the second step generates the entries of the rest of the columns of this matrix based on the first column by applying a simple transformation on it such as shifting the element of the first columns. Examples of these matrices include Circulant and Toeplitz matrices [24]. Full-deterministic matrices have a pure deterministic construction. Binary BCH, second-order Reed-Solomon, Chirp sensing, and quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check code (QC-LDPC) matrices are examples of full-deterministic type matrices. Based on the classification provided in the previous section, eight measurement matrices were implemented: two from each category with two from each type. The following matrices were implemented: Gaussian and Bernoulli measurement matrices from the structured random type, random partial Fourier and Hadamard measurement matrices from the unstructured random type, Toeplitz and Circulant measurement matrices from the semi-deterministic type, and finally Chirp and Binary BCH measurement matrices from the full-deterministic type. In the following, the mathematical model of each of these eight measurement matrices is described. A. Random Measurement Matrices Random matrices are generated by identical or independent distributions such as normal, Bernoulli, and random Fourier ensembles. These random matrices are of two types: unstructured and structured measurement random matrices. 1) Unstructured random type matrices Unstructured random type measurement matrices are generated randomly following a given distribution. The generated matrix is of size . Then M rows is randomly selected from N. Examples of this type of matrices include Gaussian, Bernoulli, and Uniform. In this work, we selected the Random Gaussian and Random Bernoulli matrix for the implementation. The mathematical model of each of these two measurement matrices is given below. a) Random Gaussian matrix The entries of a Gaussian matrix are independent and follow a normal distribution with expectation 0 and variance. The probability density function of a normal distribution is: (6) Where is the mean or the expectation of the distribution, is the standard deviation, and is the variance. This random Gaussian matrix satisfies the RIP with probability at least given that the sparsity satisfy the following formula: (7) Where is the sparsity of the signal, is the number of measurements, and is the length of the sparse signal [36]. b) Random Bernoulli matrix A random Bernoulli matrix is a matrix whose entries take the value or with equal probabilities. It, therefore, follows a Bernoulli distribution which has two possible outcomes labeled by n=0 and n=1.   The outcome n=1 occurs with the probability p=1/2 and n=0 occurs with the probability q=1-p=1/2. Thus, the probability density function is: (8) The Random Bernoulli matrix satisfies the RIP with the same probability as the Random Gaussian matrix [36]. 2) Structured Random Type matrices The Gaussian or other unstructured matrices have the disadvantage of being slow; thus, large-scale problems are not practicable with Gaussian or Bernoulli matrices. Even the implementation in term of hardware of an unstructured matrix is more difficult and requires significant space memory space. On the other hand, random structured matrices are generated following a given structure, which reduce the randomness, memory storage, and processing time. Two structured matrices are selected to be implemented in this work: Random Partial Fourier and Partial Hadamard matrix. The mathematical model of each of these two measurement matrices is described below: a) Random Partial Fourier matrix The Discrete Fourier matrix is a matrix whose entry is given by the equation: (9) Where. Random Partial Fourier matrix which consists of choosing random M rows of the Discrete Fourier matrix satisfies the RIP with a probability of at least , if: (10) Where M is the number of measurements, K is the sparsity, and N is the length of the sparse signal [36]. b) Random Partial Hadamard matrix The Hadamard measurement matrix is a matrix whose entries are 1 and -1. The columns of this matrix are orthogonal. Given a matrix H of order n, H is said to be a Hadamard matrix if the transpose of the matrix H is closely related to its inverse. This can be expressed by: (11) Where is the identity matrix, is the transpose of the matrix. The Random Partial Hadamard matrix consists of taking random rows from the Hadamard matrix. This measurement matrix satisfies the RIP with probability at least provided    with and as positive constants, K is the sparsity of the signal, N is its length and M is the number of measurements [35]. B. Deterministic measurement matrices Deterministic measurement matrices are matrices that are designed following a deterministic construction to satisfy the RIP or to have a low mutual coherence. Several deterministic measurement matrices have been proposed to solve the problems of the random matrices. These matrices are of two types as mentioned in the previous section: semi-deterministic and full-deterministic. In the following, we investigate and present matrices from both types in terms of coherence and RIP. 1) Semi-deterministic type matrices To generate a semi-deterministic type measurement matrix, two steps are required. The first step is randomly generating the first columns and the second step is generating the full matrix by applying a simple transformation on the first column such as a rotation to generate each row of the matrix. Examples of matrices of this type are the Circulant and Toeplitz matrices. In the following, the mathematical models of these two measurement matrices are given. a) Circulant matrix For a given vector, its associated circulant matrix whose entry is given by: (11) Where. Thus, Circulant matrix has the following form: C= If we choose a random subset of cardinality, then the partial circulant submatrix that consists of the rows indexed by achieves the RIP with high probability given that: (12) Where is the length of the sparse signal and its sparsity [34]. b) Toeplitz matrix The Toeplitz matrix, which is associated to a vector    whose entry is given by: (13) Where. The Toeplitz matrix is a Circulant matrix with a constant diagonal i.e. .   Thus, the Toeplitz matrix has the following form: T= If we randomly select a subset of cardinality , the Restricted Isometry Constant of the Toeplitz matrix restricted to the rows indexed by the set S satisfies with a high probability provided (14) Where is the sparsity of the signal and is its length [34]. 2) Full-deterministic type matrices Full-deterministic type matrices are matrices that have pure deterministic constructions based on the mutual coherence or on the RIP property. In the following, two examples of deterministic construction of measurements matrices are given which are the Chirp and Binary Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes matrices. a) Chirp Sensing Matrices The Chirp Sensing matrices are matrices their columns are given by the chirp signal. A discrete chirp signal of length à °Ã‚ Ã¢â‚¬ËœÃ… ¡ has the form:   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   (15) The full chirp measurement matrix can be written as: (16) Where is an matrix with columns are given by the chirp signals with a fixed and base frequency   values that vary from 0 to m-1. To illustrate this process, let us assume that and Given , The full chirp matrix is as follows: In order to calculate, the matrices and should be calculated. Using the chirp signal, the entries of these matrices are calculated and given as: ; Thus, we get the chirp measurement matrix as: Given that is a -sparse signal with chirp code measurements and is the length of the chirp code. If (17) then is the unique solution to the sparse recovery algorithms. The complexity of the computation of the chirp measurement matrix is. The main limitation of this matrix is the restriction of the number of measurements to    [29]. b) Binary BCH matrices Let denote as a divisor of for some integer an

Fern Hill :: essays research papers

The poem "Fern Hill", by Dylan Thomas, is being told by a speaker who is recalling his youthful past. Many images, symbols, and metaphors increase the depth of the speaker's message to the reader. An image that is spoke about alot in the poem is the color of gold. Gold is usually used with youthful objects. Gold represents vibrance. Vibrance is usually associated with youth. Gold appears in the following locations: "Golden in the heydays of his eyes" "Trail with daisies and barley" "Golden in the mercy of his means," "And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves" "And the sun grew round that very day." "In the sun born over and over," "Before the children green and golden" A symbol in the poem occurs: "And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns." Princes are those who have a lot of political and social power. What separates them from kings, is that princes are generally young, at least younger than their fathers. Many metaphors concerning the opposite of youth, aging, are located in the entirety of the last stanza of the poem. " Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea." "In the moon that is always rising" reveals that the speaker has experiances what seems like countless days and nights. "The childless land" means that where the speaker was before, everyone has grown up by now.

William Wycherley’s The Country Wife Essay -- William Wycherley Countr

William Wycherley’s â€Å"The Country Wife† â€Å"A Restoration comedy is like an eighteenth-century sitcom; it’s entertaining† (MacKenzie, â€Å"Behn†). However, the similarities between the two genres are more far-reaching than their equal entertainment value. For example, the cast of William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy, â€Å"The Country Wife,† consists of some central characters that are strikingly similar to those in the cast of the modern situation comedy, Seinfeld. Harry Horner from â€Å"The Country Wife† and George Costanza from Seinfeld both fit the male â€Å"wit† character type. Likewise, Lady Fidget, one of Horner’s lovers, and another woman, who’s one of Costanza’s fleeting lovers, both fit the female â€Å"wit† character type. Through the interplay of these characters, the Restoration comedy and the situation comedy both assert the superior power of the female wit, when compared to that of the male wit. Wits of both genders ar e characterized by their skill at lying, hiding their lies from the public, and seeking and obtaining selfish, short-lived pleasures; they are also characterized by their discerning nature and their gambling nature of risking losses to get gains (MacKenzie, â€Å"Wycherley†). However, female wits are more powerful than male wits when they take risks to secure pleasures because: female wits are not required to hold down a job or earn money; they gain greater returns from the risks they take, than men do, and they never risk losing their honor. First, female wits are more powerful than male wits because they are not required to hold down a job or earn money. Lady Fidget and Horner illustrate this assertion through their interactions in â€Å"The Country Wife,† and another woman and Costanza illustrate it in an epis... ... the social rules that do not require a woman to work, or that prohibit her from working, paradoxically conspire to make female wits more powerful than male wits. Society provides women with ample free time to pursue pleasure, and their interdependent cohorts provide them with the free reign to do so. As a result, these powerful female wits take more selective, calculated risks than male wits do; they also gain greater returns, whether they appear in an eighteenth-century Restoration comedy or a twentieth-century situation comedy. Works Cited MacKenzie, Scott. â€Å"Behn, Oroonoko.† Seventh Class Meeting. English 260. Davidson College. 8 Sept. 2004. MacKenzie, Scott. â€Å"Wycherley, The Country Wife.† Ninth and Tenth Class Meetings. English 260. Davidson College. 10, 13 Sept. 2004. (Textbook). â€Å"The Subway.† Seinfeld. NBC. 8 Jan. 1992.

Hair Braid in the Global Market

Supremely confident market registering strong growth rates. South African salons unaffected by economic downturn Chemical relaxing and African hair styling most popular services accounting for almost all salon business. Products formulated to suit new service combinations – such as colouring relaxed hair – in demand, command premium prices in salons The South African haircare market – both professional and consumer – is growing in double digits and this strong growth is expected to continue for 2010 and beyond. Hosting the World Cup may have inspired the country but the economic fundamentals are extremely positive.The economy develops and employment expands in South Africa. The number of people in image or appearance conscious workplaces – such as consumer service industries, media sector and the professions – is growing strongly. The middle classes, in particular the black middle class, are increasing in size and influence. In South Africa p atterns of consumption of hair services and products differ by consumer segment and by ethnic group. The ethnic African segment is the single largest consumer group and this market has the most potential. As one salon expert in Johannesburg explained, â€Å"There is a big market for ethnic hair.These needs have to be addressed† Chemical relaxing and African hair styling are the most popular services accounting for almost 80% of salon business. Hair relaxing is the leading service category and will continue to be the mainstay of the African professional and consumer hair care market. The complex relaxing process consists of a package of services with many procedures. A wide product range covering different formulations and packages for the various process stages is required. There is strong – as yet unmet- demand for colourants suitable for using on relaxed hair.African styling is the next most important service category in black salons. This term is used to cover a num ber of styles such as braiding, hair extensions and pieces, dreadlocks or dreads, bonding, their infinite variations and many combinations. These hairstyles can last for up to three months, during which time they require the on-going use of conditioners and treatments to prevent damage and breakage. South African consumers – for reasons of convenience and comfort – need salons and hairdressers to provide these complex and labour intensive services.Chemical relaxing and African hairstyling which require specific and different stylist skills are quite different markets. Salons must be multiservice on order to meet their clients' needs. In addition, the product range required for styling and dealing with relaxed hair is extensive. A multiplicity of brands and products is now needed because few, if any brands, can be described as â€Å"multi tasking† that is effective on the different types of hair seen by salon stylists on a daily basis. Salons are looking for mult i-platform products to be formulated. Products that deliver these goods can command double the price in salons in South Africa.The South African market is the largest in Africa, is a bridge head to the larger sub Saharan regional market, and to the descendants of ethnic Africans in other parts of the world. In this new report Professional Hair Care Market South Africa, the author quantifies the value of the salon haircare market (in South African Rand) and the number of salons and hairdressers -both formal and informal- operating in South Africa. The market is segmented in terms of price points, service categories and products used. This new research determines demand for chemical relaxing, African hair styling and colouring services in hair salons in South Africa.The research also focuses on company and brand share in this fragmented market. Findings are based on in-depth discussions conducted with salon experts in Johannesburg during November 2009. This report is also available in the following Languages Afrikaans, Sesotho and IsiXulu. The report consists of 2 parts (a powerpoint presentation and the report itself as a pdf file) Contents: (Hair care, haircut, style, African styling, braiding, weaves, wefts, hair extensions, dreadlocks, relaxing, texture, curls, colour, treatments, wet and dry products, beauty, nails, brands, salon, spa. ) REPORT STRUCTURE SECTION 1

Organizing Work Essay

McDonalds Corporation It has become clear to upper management that the way McDonald’s has been operating over the past decade is not helping in moving the company forward. Upper management feels that the company is falling behind, and changes must be made immediately. The changes need to start with how the organization is structured. Once proper changes in structure are made, it is believed that McDonald’s will then be able to implement plans that will lead McDonalds into a successful future. The purpose of this paper is to make recommendations as to what changes in organizational structure would help McDonalds become more sufficient. Along with changes in structure the paper will also determine what work needs to be done, how it is to be done, and the approach that should be used to bring success back into the organization. Recommendations There have recently been talks between upper management about making necessary structural changes to the McDonald’s organization here in the U.S. The first recommended change is eliminating levels of management. Numbers of the past have shown that the old traditional way of communication and barriers of so many levels of management had become a barrier to decision making (Jennings, Maze, 2014). The team agrees with this change and believes that the change should be implemented as soon as possible. The basis for this change is that it will help in bring the company closer to the customers. With so many layers of management it seems as if there is more time being spent arguing and talking to each other, rather than talking to the customer and making decisions. McDonald’s marketing has shown that they need to adapt to the current customer’s needs of what they want. McDonald’s  president has worked for McDonalds for the last ten years, and he has seen numbers drop drastically which means, it is time for change (Jennings, Maze, 2014). Essentially it is safe to say that McDonalds is losing its relationship with its customers. Another huge change that McDonalds has been thinking about is changing the number of divisions here in North America from three to four. It is believed that grouping the regions into four divisions, as well as eliminating some levels of management will allow for regional leaders to have more autonomy, and will allow leaders to set a menu based on the restaurants geographic location. According to the McDonald’s website, Jennings, Maze, (2014), â€Å"The changes are highlighted by the elimination of layers of management, giving leaders of its 22 U.S. regions more autonomy in setting the menus and making marketing decisions.† These changes will also allow McDonald’s leaders to restructure the menu to be more diverse to any one’s eating habit. They will be allowed to market more things on the menu than just burgers and fries. Change is good, and they are excited to embrace it. How to do Work Effectively Every organization has its’ own structure to follow. McDonald’s current structure is failing when it comes to the customers’ wants. This is why upper management has been talking about restructuring the design by dividing McDonald USA into four divisions. These divisions would include, Northeast, South, Central and West (Jargon, 2014). Each region would have a president in charge. Under each president there should be different types of managers who know the culture of each region. This will allow for the company to deliver the right product to the customers. They also need to remove some of the managerial levels because having too many managers’ results in decisions not being made. Eventually leading to a lack of growth in the business. McDonald needs to adapt according to the changes that are taking place in the world such as; the economy, competitors and technology. They need to have basic meals that fit all regions; in addition to that, they need to create new products to fit with the culture of each region. Sweet tea is a good example of a product that fits in with the culture in the south. Therefore it would be good for McDonalds restaurants in the south to  promote sweet tea. However, sweet tea is not very popular in the Northeast so it would be pointless to spend money promoting a product that no one is interested in. This is where the president of the region would need to find another product to promote. One that will fit the culture, and interest of the people in the Northeast. This means that management in each region needs to focus on research and development in order to make the right decision. In addition, technology is really important nowadays that is why McDonald needs to work with Apple to create an account in Apple Pay. Customers can pay quickly and order their food ahead of time. This will satisfy their customers because most of them do not have the time to wait to pick up their meal. It will take both an individual and team effort for McDonalds to complete the work. Upper level managers will need to work individually to make the right decisions. For instance, upper level manager should study the region and try to figure out how they can enhance the product or create a new product to fit the culture. Lower level employees need to work in teams so they can satisfy the customers. For example, the worker operating the grill cooks the meat and when it is done he or she passes it to another worker to make the sandwich according to the customers preference. Each team member is important because if they are not motivated to do their work the whole team will fail to deliver the product to the customer. It is very important that there is manager in each branch to motivate and coach the employees. Managers must be able to fill the role of an employee if the branch was crowded and direct them to do the right job. The manager should focus on increasing the sales by satisfying the customers. Best Approach McDonald’s Corporation needs to embrace that changes that are set to take place. Upper management will need to stick by their decisions, and have faith in their management. This means allowing the presidents in each of the four new divisions to take full control of operations within their regions. The division’s presidents must look to regional managers for input on necessary changes. It is up to them to find out what the customers want, and what the customers want is what they should get. Ideally McDonalds is looking to do two things when making these structural changes. The first is to keep the same basic product menu in every region, but allow for different  regions to add certain products that cater to the customers in that region. Second is to allow for decisions to be made more efficiently and effectively. Conclusion The planning for these changes has already begun and sometime in the immediate future the changes will be implemented. These are good changes and the team feels that they will eventually make a significant difference in the overall success of McDonalds Corporation. It is going to take time, but we feel these changes will lead us into the future on the right path. References Jennings, Maze,, L.J. (2014). McDonald’s Reorganizes US into Four Regional Divisions. Retrieved from http://nrn.com/mcdonalds/mcdonald-s-reorganizes-us-four-regional-divisions Jargon, Julie, (2014). McDonalds Plan to Change U.S. Structure. Rettrieved from http://online.wsj.com/articles/mcdonalds-to-change-u-s-structure-1414695278

Stefan Thomke

9-603-022 REV: OCTOBER 28, 2002 STEFAN THOMKE Bank of America (A) The banking industry is ripe for innovation. We need to grow through value creation and excellent service that is appreciated by customers as opposed to price alone. — Milton Jones, president, Georgia Banking Group â€Å"I wonder if we’re being ‘overrewarded’! † exclaimed Warren Butler to Amy Brady, the executive responsible for Bank of America’s Innovation & Development (I&D) Team in Atlanta, Georgia.As an executive in the consumer bank’s quality and productivity group, Butler led innovation and process change in Brady’s group, which was responsible for testing new product and service concepts for the th bank’s branches. In the company’s elegant 55 floor conference room on a day in May 2002, the two prepared for a team meeting on an important strategic decision that would affect how experimentation would be done in the I&D Market. Seeds of change wer e in the air at Bank of America.Indeed, earlier in the day, Butler had escorted an astonished visitor, a European banking executive, on a tour of some two dozen real-life â€Å"laboratories† in Atlanta. Each was a fully operating banking branch, yet in every location new product and service concepts were being tested continuously. Experiments included â€Å"virtual tellers,† video monitors displaying financial and investment news, computer stations uploading images of personal checks, and â€Å"hosting stations. † (See Exhibit 1 for a selection of experiments carried out in a single branch. Currently, the I&D team had 25 bank branches in Atlanta in its experimentation portfolio. Senior management, however, had now offered them additional branches across the country that could expand experimentation capacity by nearly 50%. This offer appeared a vindication of the I&D Market project, which had been launched as an experiment itself only two years earlier. This rewa rd posed some tough questions. Would increasing the size of its innovation laboratories aid or inhibit the group’s ability to develop new product and services? What would be the effect on the group itself?The issue of whether it was a dedicated research and development (R&D) operation or not had yet to be resolved. And, finally, what kinds of expectations would be placed on the group if its size were to increase so dramatically? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Professor Stefan Thomke and Research Associate Ashok Nimgade prepared this case. HBS cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management.Copyright  © 2002 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www. hbsp. harvard. edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 603-022 Bank of America (A) Bank of America: A Pioneer in BankingMany innovative banks have gone out of business, often because they deviated from the â€Å"best practices† followed by most. — Rick Parsons, executive vice president, Strategic Projects When Bank of America was formed in 1998 through a merger between California-based Bank of America and NationsBank of North Carolina, it could be proud of a long and rich history that spanned more than 150 years. Under its last CEO, the colorful but controversial Hugh McColl, the company had gone on a three-decade-long acquisition binge that resulted in a truly nationwide bank.In the fitting end to an era of hunting, McColl left his last annual meeting wearing cowboy boots and jeans on his way to a turkey shoot in Texas. Toward the end of the 20th century, Bank of America was the second-largest national bank with nearly 4,500 banking centers in 21 states, more than any other financial services company and with most of them in the high-growth belts of the South and the West Coast (see Exhibit 2 for a map of the bank’s regional market share). In the United States, the bank served 27 million households and two million businesses and processed more checks per day than the Federal Reserve System.Globally, it boasted over 140,000 employees across 190 nations, over $8 billion in annual revenues, $360 billion in deposits, and some $600 billion in assets (see Exhibit 3 for key financial data). Yet, increasing competition ensured that Bank of America could not rest on its laurels. Like many of its successful peers, its growth had been driven by cost reduction a nd consolidation. From 1985 until 2000, the number of U. S. banks had dwindled from around 14,000 to about 7,000. These still large numbers—especially when compared with there being only six major banks in Canada— reflected the highly competitive nature of the U.S. banking industry as well as its regional focus. Driving consolidation had been a realization that while service was local, products were national. Despite this realization, however, banks continued viewing financial services as commodities, and this bottom-line orientation did not make for an industry rife with innovation. In the estimation of Butler, a senior vice president and industry veteran, â€Å"People’s expectations for banks are very low; in fact, they’re used to being treated badly by banks. To meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive environment, Bank of America had started decentralizing its national operations and encouraged branch managers to undertake more responsibili ties. According to reengineering expert Michael Hammer, however, the era of acquisitions had left the bank with â€Å"the loopiest organizational structure I’d ever seen†Ã¢â‚¬â€organized partly by customer, partly by geography, and partly by product (see Exhibit 4 for a section of the bank’s organization). As CEO Kenneth Lewis put it, â€Å"We’d talk about customer satisfaction, then go out and buy that next bank. 1 For the new century, however, things would change. Fortune magazine observed: The hunter will become a farmer. â€Å"Organic growth† is the strategy, reduced earnings volatility and greater profitability the goals. The plan is to make more money from essentially the same customers by selling more services. In the huge Consumer & Commercial bank, which generated 65% of earnings, that means getting a bigger â€Å"share of wallet† by encouraging 1 T. A. Stewart, â€Å"BA: Where the Money Is,† Fortune, September 3, 2001. 2 B ank of America (A) 03-022 consumers to consolidate their banking and—the Holy Grail—bring their portfolios over from Fidelity and Merrill Lynch. 2 Few banks, however, had formal efforts under way that would generate the continuous stream of new products and services needed to grow organically. Only in recent years did banks start filing for patent applications. When innovation occurred, it did so only in specific areas: the Fifth/Third Bank in Ohio, for instance, innovated on the cost side, while Washington Mutual (WAMU) innovated on the service side.Many large banks had pockets of innovation that quite often simply remained that— pockets. WAMU, one of the more innovative U. S. banks, had aggressively started opening traditional as well as experimental branches, sometimes directly across the street from Bank of America’s I&D Market branches. Taking a cue from retailers such as department stores as well as coffee retailer Starbucks, WAMU started its Occasi o pilot program. A concierge at the front entrance and several casually dressed roving sales representatives carrying mobile handheld computer devices answered customer questions.Several strategically placed teller stations replaced the traditional monolithic teller counter. Play areas for children also provided parents more time for banking. The first five Occasio branches opened in Las Vegas in April 2000, and customers opened checking accounts at twice the rate of regular branches. 3 For most banks, however, little sense of urgency existed. The State of Innovation in Banking Our banking branches haven’t really changed much in the last hundred years. If Jesse James brought his gang here, he’d still know where to go for the cash. Al Groover, senior process design consultant and I&D Team design lead One of the first actions Lewis took when becoming CEO was to consult several outside executives in areas from e-commerce to process management on what they considered to be â€Å"best management practice. † â€Å"Process and competence will win,† insisted Lewis, who also announced a Six Sigma quality program to reduce errors and streamline processes. In his focus on operational excellence, Lewis tried to rectify a situation that, according to a leading financial consultant, could be best described as â€Å"banks are very good at being mediocre at a lot of different things. 4 Innovation, too, would require a revolution. That banks traditionally downplayed product and service development was reflected by a near universal lack of R&D departments. The comforting, stolid shadow of the three-piece-suited banker, after all, still loomed over most large banks. New products and services in the banking industry, if and when they came, generally arose from marketing departments, which lacked the formal processes, methodologies, and resource commitments that companies in many other industries took for granted.In fact, even inspired senior executive s with sufficient initiative could, through relatively informal channels, bring their own ideas to test markets. Although banks had IT departments, these primarily supported ongoing infrastructure changes in technology and software. 2 Ibid. 3 WAMM Web site at . 4 T. A. Stewart, â€Å"BA: Where the Money Is,† Fortune, September 3, 2001. 3 603-022 Bank of America (A) In the late 1990s, however, several converging forces led Bank of America to launch its formalized system for product and service development, the I&D Team.First, along with other industries, the bank began appreciating the value of continuous experimentation and testing in its efforts to grow through innovation. Second, Internet fever had nurtured a spirit of innovation everywhere, including the banking world. Third, banks began realizing that value creation had to be based on the voice of the customer to grow revenue and deepen customer relationships. Bank of America initially viewed the emerging Internet as a wa y to overcome geography. This led to a strategy of moving customers out of branches.As a result, according to Butler, â€Å"Sometimes we were downright rude in our attempts to get people out of our branches. But eventually we realized that people like dealing with people and therefore branches were our strongest base. † Frank Petrilli, president of TD Waterhouse, the country’s second-largest discount brokerage, also acknowledged that â€Å"branches are a crucial customer acquisition tool which solicits 30% to 50% of our clients through the 160 offices in the U. S. The branches are continuous advertising outlets, allowing us to spend only $58 per new account, compared with our online competitors that have cost up to $250. 5 The question then became how to change the role of the branches to balance customers’ needs for a human touch with the bank’s desire for cost-efficient, high-technology-based transaction platforms. The strategists at Bank of America re alized that such a balance could not be found overnight; nor, in a world of changing technologies, could solutions ever prove permanent. A dynamic test bed for experimenting with new banking concepts had to be found. The Innovation & Development Team VisionThe Innovation and Development Market is a test bed for creative ideas to increase customer satisfaction and grow revenues. — Amy Brady, senior vice president, I&D Team executive Every day, Bank of America processed 3. 8 million transactions—including more checks than the entire Federal Reserve System. A typical noncommercial customer entered a branch every nine days and used an ATM nearly three times a week. 6 Thus, even a 99. 9% success rate would still mushroom into over one million mistakes a year and expose consumers to problems ranging anywhere from paycheck deposit errors to bill mispayments.It was feared, therefore, that â€Å"experiment† and â€Å"mistakes† would be considered synonymous. Yet i f consumers wanted Swiss-watch precision for their money, they also craved Mediterranean warmth for their service experiences. At about the same time that WAMU was taking a page from successful retailers to create more inviting bank branches, so too was Bank of America thinking about how to experiment with the human dimension of its bank branches as well as the human-technology interfaces.To reduce risks of large-scale failure, the bank confined its experimentation to a set of bank branches eventually called the â€Å"I&D Market. † In the controlled environment of these laboratory branches, routine transactions could be handled efficiently while customers’ wishes for a good experience could be studied and experimented with. The bank could explore myriad questions: Could people’s waiting time in line be made more tolerable? Was there even a need for lines? Could technology-inexperienced customers relate well to American Banker, October 7, 1999. 6 T. A. Stewart, à ¢â‚¬Å"BA: Where the Money Is,† Fortune, September 3, 2001. 4 Bank of America (A) 603-022 using keyboards and other devices? How best could staff members coach customers about Internet banking options? The goal was to boost customer and staff satisfaction at bank branches, which would ideally boost revenue growth within a given customer base while secondarily lowering staff turnover. The original idea for the I&D Market came from different sources, including several senior executives. Proceeding with the Innovation & Development Market project was a no brainer,† according to Rick Parsons, one such executive. â€Å"What was trickier were issues such as execution and budgeting of the project. For execution-level leadership, we assigned Amy Brady, Rob Johnson, and Warren Butler, all managers with good track records of getting results on a day-to-day basis. † The team sought to establish a process whereby ideas could be generated, collated, and queued up for systematic , objective evaluation (see Exhibit 5 for its product and service innovation process).For the few ideas that made it through this â€Å"filter,† experiments would be designed and planned for the I&D Market branches. Successful experiments—determined on the basis of consumer satisfaction or revenue growth—could then be recommended to senior management for a national rollout To set up the new system for innovation, little upfront financial investment was required, as many team members worked part time on the project. Soon, however, the team grew to roughly a dozen managers, who often worked evenings and weekends.The 2001 budget allocation was $11 million, of which only $6. 3 million was spent on the team’s experiments. Management considered this allocation generous, even for a company with $8 billion in revenues. The company’s senior leadership resisted any attempts to carve out a â€Å"president-level† special budget for the innovation and pr ocess change team, arguing that, instead of enabling it to become another cost center, the group’s funding should be tied directly to the performance of the 25 I&D banking centers.These branches also â€Å"brought their own checkbook† and paid for part of the experiments themselves. Intensive initial debates had centered on whether the new group should operate as a stand-alone R&D center. Those in favor argued that a specific budget for new products and service development would protect the team from the day-to-day responsibilities of running a bank. Without such protection, the risk always existed that short-term market pressure would stifle long-term thinking and opportunities.It would also prevent comparisons between new concepts and mature products or even help prevent premature testing in live conditions. Thus, products and services under development could incubate properly without risking premature termination. After all, no automobile company would want a custom er to walk up to one of its dealers and drive away with an untested prototype car. And finally, creating an R&D group charged to tinker allowed for much more organizational focus on innovation rather than a group that was supposed to also show operating results.Many executives, however, felt that a separate R&D center would run the risk of becoming â€Å"too hypothetical and impractical. † Some feared that results from the I&D Market might then not prove duplicable elsewhere. Marrying experiments with real-world banking facilities would thus decrease cycle time for rollout. As Jones reflected on the thinking of the bank’s senior leadership: â€Å"We were really looking at being able to execute fast—so making a separate R&D center is harder. Furthermore, ideas in some R&D centers never get a chance to see the light of day. But the issue of dual operating and innovation responsibility was hardly settled. As one employee in a feedback seminar put it succinctly, â €Å"We are building a plane as we are flying it. † Indeed, the issue was still up in the air in May 2002. 5 603-022 Bank of America (A) The Vision at Work: Atlanta’s I&D Market Branches For a variety of reasons, Bank of America settled on Atlanta as the site for its I&D Market. The bank branches here boasted the most advanced communications infrastructure, with T1 and broadband communication lines installed.Atlanta also represented a â€Å"stable† market, with the bank’s last major acquisition there in 1996. Finally, Atlanta lay a stone’s throw from the bank’s national headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina. Of its 200 branches in Atlanta, Bank of America initially gave 20 to the I&D Team. This hardly proved an imposition on the Mid-South Banking Group. The locations generally came from richer neighborhoods where customers were more computer literate and interested in a wider range of services.The I&D Team also replaced the conventional à ¢â‚¬Å"one size fits all† mentality with three different types of branches configured to satisfy varying customer needs: â€Å"express centers,† where consumers could quickly perform routine transactions; â€Å"financial centers,† where consumers could access more complex technologies and more highly trained associates for a wider range of services; and â€Å"traditional centers,† which provided conventional banking services, albeit with enhanced processes and technologies (see Exhibit 6 for a brief description of the banking centers).The Atlanta I&D Market included 5 express centers, 5 financial centers, and 15 traditional centers. The group unveiled its first remodeled branch—a financial center—in the posh Buckhead section of Atlanta at a cost of about $1 million, for mostly technology. The other branches were remodeled to one of the three branch types and reopened shortly thereafter. Customers entering any financial center were greeted by a host at the door—an idea taken from department and clothing stores. Customers no longer needed to sign in to see bank officers.At freestanding low kiosks, associates stood ready to perform transactions such as opening accounts, creating loans, retrieving copies of old checks, or, in some instances, even selling stocks and mutual funds. None of these associates had private offices. Customers could visit an â€Å"investment bar† with computers where, once online, they could bank, check personal portfolios, or just surf the Internet. Customers waiting for tellers could pass the few minutes in line watching television news monitors above the tellers’ desks or observing electronic stock tickers running along another wall.Some branches featured â€Å"investment centers† where customers, sipping complimentary coffee, could lounge on couches reading magazines, newspapers, or financial journals or hook up their personal computers. All these nontraditional items w ere, in fact, experiments. The flat-panel monitors above the tellers, for instance, represented part of the â€Å"Transaction Zone Media† experiment (detailed in a later section); the instant retrieval of old checks comprised the â€Å"ImageView† experiment; the investment centers and complimentary coffee, too, came under experimental scrutiny.All branches closely monitored customer reactions to these innovations through a variety of means, including customer satisfaction surveys and statistics on such factors as revenue growth, deposit growth, and number of services used by each customer. Prior to introducing these experiments into the I&D Market branches, the team actually rehearsed how the activity should occur. So, in a â€Å"prototype center† in Charlotte, North Carolina, people acted out how the host would behave as he or she handed off customers to specialists.They choreographed how a bank associate (not a specialist) might spend only 30 minutes with a cu stomer to set up a mortgage. To maximize the fidelity of these prototype rehearsals, actual specialists mimicked the intervening steps. When all the kinks were worked out in this rehearsal process, the experiment was launched in the â€Å"living laboratory. † The Walt Disney Company designed and taught them a â€Å"Bank of America Spirit† program—demonstrated in theme parks and taught through seminars as a service approach to other industries—which was a principal motivator of the team. 6 Bank of America (A) 603-022The staff at local branches put the â€Å"Bank of America Spirit† into action in different ways. They got to know their customers better, more personally. And the results were impressive. Bank teller Kemaly Jacques recalled: â€Å"One customer had been boycotting our branch for the past three months because of poor service; now he swears he won’t go anywhere else. † The host, a key figure who guided customers as they entere d the branch toward appropriate services, became a great success story, though at the outset the role confused some customers, particularly those with complex transactions. â€Å"Where do I sign in? many would ask. Host Kilah Willingham, who had worked her way up the organization from teller to loan officer, described the host’s role as follows: I spend up to five minutes probing customer needs. I also intercept people going toward the old-fashioned tellers and usher them toward our innovative stations [where â€Å"experimental† technologies were offered]. A lot of customers are wary of technological change, for instance, of having the camera on them at the virtual personal banker station. My role is to make them comfortable here. I like not knowing what’s coming up next; it keeps me on my toes.During the early months, however, planning and running experiments tied up tellers and associates in meetings for almost 30%-50% of their time (later this would drop to about 25%). On one occasion, a fill-in teller, providing temporary coverage during one of the meetings, mistakenly gave a customer a â€Å"dye pack,† a fake wad of dollar notes meant for use only during robberies. As the customer walked out, the wad started smoking in his pocket and exploded. The Bank of America Spirit, however, persevered. Hosts and tellers emerging from the meeting showed their service experiments to firemen arriving at the scene. â€Å"This is so cool! cried out one fireman before opening an account. Experimentation, Learning, and Measurement At the end of the day, the most critical aspect of experimentation and learning is measurement. Measurements will defend you if done right; otherwise they will inhibit you. — Milton Jones, president, Georgia Banking Group Of the many difficulties the team faced, one of the thorniest was resolving â€Å"how to† questions: how to gauge success of a concept, how to prioritize which concepts would be tested , how to run several experiments at once, and how to avoid the novelty factor itself from altering the experimental outcome.Moreover, according to Butler: â€Å"While we were building R&D capabilities, those controlling the purse strings thought we were doing just a one-time experiment. † Thus, the problem list included one last addition: how to defend the I&D Market itself from budget cuts. The team selected concepts to be tested on the basis of available funding, business fit, and business case. To some extent, just continuing with the evaluation process served as a natural filter for ideas. But with many ideas and concepts that needed formal testing, according to team managers Joann Donlan and Mark Lewis, â€Å"Even top-priority experiments need prioritization. As a result, the team started assigning priorities (high, medium, or low) based on the assumed impact to customers, and Brady and Butler made the final decisions about which product or service concepts to actually test. By May 2002, more than 200 new ideas had been generated, of which 40 made it to testing, 36 were successfully implemented and measured, and 20 were recommended or had been already rolled out nationally. Only four experiments eventually failed—and one of these became a â€Å"redefined† concept. 7 603-022 Bank of America (A)Central to the team’s innovation process was how quickly people could learn from experiments, and measurements played an important role. The group amassed considerable experience and mastery of the subtle factors that affected learning. High-fidelity experiments The team sought to ensure that its experiments mirrored reality, or possessed high â€Å"fidelity. † Concepts that worked only inside their branches, after all, had little value to senior management interested in the scale effect of national rollouts. But high fidelity also meant high cost and commitment, which was hard to justify when ideas were at an early stage.Sometimes , low-fidelity tests using small focus groups gave the team an alternative during the very early stages of idea assessment. Experiments requiring minimal human intervention, such as news monitors over the teller’s counter, for instance, would likely work just as well in regular branches as in I&D Market branches. But not all innovations might transfer perfectly in the course of a nationwide rollout. For instance, would staff in a regular branch provide the handholding and attention required to initiate technophobes to a virtual teller?In such cases, the insistence by upper management that experimentation occur in a live banking situation helped ensure high fidelity and confidence in the team’s learning. Minimize the effect of noise Isolating the effect of a particular experiment on a bank branch’s performance meant being clear on what that effect was in itself, minus â€Å"noise† factors. Such noise could arise from a variety of sources such as seasonal p erformance fluctuations and changing market or even weather conditions. To minimize the effect of noise on learning, the team made heavy use of two techniques, repetition of trials and experimental controls.First, repeating the same experiment at one branch or running it simultaneously at different branches averaged out the effect of noise and thus reduced the possibility of obscuring the changes that teams were interested in observing and measuring. It would also ensure that success of a given concept would not rely on factors unique to a given branch. Second, pairing up two similar branches, one with an experiment (the â€Å"intervention†) and the other running under normal conditions (the â€Å"control†), enabled the team to attribute differences between the branches primarily to the intervention itself.It could draw on controls from the I&D Market, or even from other branches in Atlanta or nearby regions such as North Carolina. The best controls, however, were like ly the very same I&D Market branches themselves in a before-and-after type of experiment; if properly done, this would help factor out the so-called Hawthorne effect. The Hawthorne effect referred to the implications of actually participating in an experiment and how that might affect its outcome. The team was aware this was possible, given the direct and indirect pressure on staff to perform. Willingham acknowledged, â€Å"We are spoiled.We get special corporate shirts, we get parties; every quarter we have special ‘let’s talk’ sessions. We associates can even contact the regional manager if we need. Other associates envy us. So we had better do well. † Rapid feedback The cycle time for any given experiment carried out by the I&D Team was specified at 90 days. This did not include a preliminary â€Å"washout† period of a couple of weeks during which the novelty for both staff and customers hopefully subsided. Obviously, shorter turnaround time for feedback would help experimenters learn and prepare modified experiments more rapidly.Occasionally, it became quickly evident after the first few days if a concept would flop or succeed. Only rarely, however, did the team remove flops prematurely. On one occasion the team canceled a mortgage loan program after just a 30-day trial, primarily because getting credit approvals took far too long. The early termination allowed for quicker revision of this experiment, leading to a successful mortgage program. Increase experimentation capacity The number of experiments a single branch could run depended on available floor space and personnel, among other things.Less capacity would force the team to cram more experiments into one branch. If no capacity remained, the team could be forced to 8 Bank of America (A) 603-022 do things sequentially, which, in turn, would slow the entire concept-evaluation process. If the team succumbed to the understandable temptation of cramming too many experimen ts in a single branch, it would be hard to analyze the contribution of each individual experiment—another signal-to-noise problem. A single branch might have as many as 15 active experiments running at any given time.If customers loved an experiment, however, it was left in the branch even after the 90-day trial period. This being the real world, after all, the branches could not simply pull the plug on something customers had grown to relish. Measurement team leader Scott Arcure admitted, â€Å"We often worry about changing too many chemicals in the mix and wonder about which one made it explode. As bankers, we’re not experts at this type of measurement. † The team planned to bring in a statistics expert to help sort out the effects of multiple variables.One of the bank’s outside research partners suggested moving to an entirely different market for further experiments. But the group was focused on its Atlanta market. With the customer satisfaction perce ntage higher than in traditional bank branches, some felt that capacity still remained for assessing additional experiments. In any case, Arcure warned that â€Å"the Hawthorne effect would spike again in any new bank branch. † The biggest problem with experimenting in a real-world laboratory was balancing innovation with a need for bottom-line success.Pursuing radical innovations would allow the team to explore entirely new possibilities; an incrementalist approach, however, allowed for improving current banking processes. Successful radical innovations would bring glory to the team. But home runs came at the cost of strikeouts. With its future not ensured, the team could simply not take outrageous chances. Many tests thus ended up validating ideas that were likely to succeed. Team members readily acknowledged such to be the case for host stations Transaction Zone Media and Bank of America Spirit.According to Teri Gann, a former regional executive, â€Å"Interestingly, and not surprisingly, many of our successes, such as the host station, have been simple and low cost. † The biggest impact so far came from Bank of America Spirit—technologically, a nonrevolutionary program transplanted wholesale from Disney. While the original vision called for a 30% failure rate, the actual rate in the first year hovered close to 10%. Butler commented, â€Å"We’re trying to sell ourselves to the bank. If we have too many failures, we just won’t be accepted.Currently, we may have failure within concepts, but not failure in concepts. † â€Å"We might tweak a process, but everything conforms to the status quo,† observed Wells Stanwick, Bank of America manager of channel strategy. â€Å"Could we try out a more radical concept such as providing branch offices similar to attorney offices in large office buildings for wealthy customers? † Deborah McAdams, banking center manager, agreed: â€Å"Let’s do something really i nnovative, such as trying out loan machines similar to automatic teller machines like they do in Japan.When I mention this, some people aren’t sure if I am joking. † Concepts that appeared intuitively obvious did not always prove so in reality. Such was the case for innovation and for financial payback. Team leaders wondered if a â€Å"breakthrough† product should be measured through its degree of innovation or through financial payback or both. According to Brady, â€Å"Our metric should be how an innovation affects the bottom line two years out, rather than looking for instant feedback [through customer satisfaction]. † Problems with assessing innovation soon surfaced.What might appear radical to one person, for instance a â€Å"mobile teller† to a technophobe, might prove less radical from a purely technical standpoint. Nor did the innovation team take financial performance into account, largely because of an anticipated lag of 18 months to 2 yea rs in going from concept to rollout beyond Atlanta. The I&D Market, instead, would settle on the proxy measure of consumer satisfaction. Many team members recognized the shortcomings of their measurement process. Gann stated, â€Å"I believe we’re doing the wrong thing by measuring the I&D Market staff on productivity, not innovation. But, she added, More learning comes from more radical experiments 9 603-022 Bank of America (A) â€Å"You can’t chase two rabbits at the same time. † Some team members pointed to WAMU as a possible benchmark, for it was â€Å"a competitor willing to change and willing to raise the bar. † The Transaction Zone Media Experiment A good example of the bank’s new innovation process at work was the Transaction Zone Media (TZM) experiment. Internal researchers, who â€Å"intercepted† some 1,000 customers at bank lines, noted that after about three minutes the gap between actual and perceived wait time rose exponential ly.Two focus groups with sales associates and a formal analysis by the Gallup organization provided further corroboration—and the TZM experiment was born. The team speculated, based on published psychology literature, that â€Å"entertaining† clients through television monitors above the lobby tellers would reduce perceived wait times by at least 15%. The team chose one enhanced â€Å"traditional center† for the TZM experiment and another one as a control branch so it could maximize learning from the experiment. In the summer of 2001, the team installed monitors set to the Atlanta-based news station CNN over teller booths in the branch.The team then waited for a week’s washout period to allow the novelty to wear off before measuring results for the subsequent two weeks. Results from the TZM-equipped branch showed that the number of people who overestimated their actual wait times dropped from 32% to 15%. During the same period, none of the other branches reported drops of this magnitude. In fact, the control branch saw an increase in over-estimated wait times from 15%–26% (see Exhibit 7 for results from the experiment). Though these were encouraging results, the team still had to prove to senior management that TZM could positively affect the corporate bottom line.To do so, the team relied on a model that used the easily measurable â€Å"customer satisfaction index† (based on a 30-question survey) as a proxy for future revenue growth. Prior studies indicated that every one-point improvement in a customer satisfaction index corresponded to $1. 40 in added annual revenue per household from increased customer purchases and retention. A banking center (branch) with a customer base of 10,000 households would thus increase its annual revenues by $28,000 should the index increase by just two points.Percentages generally ranged in the mid-80s in Atlanta’s I&D Market and in the high 70s to low 80s nationally. The team me asured an overall 1. 7% increase after installation of the TZM monitors. Sufficiently encouraged, it entered a second phase, to study and optimize the impact of more varied programming, advertising, and sound speaker parameters. While the benefits of the TZM program were laudable, the team now had to consider whether they outweighed the costs. Studies indicated that it would cost some $22,000 to install the special TV monitors at each I&D Market branch.For a national rollout, the estimated economies of scale would bring costs down to about $10,000 per site. Incentive and Compensation Issues: Tellers Do Not Like Change Another thorny â€Å"how to† issue the team faced was how to motivate its staff. Could—and should—the performance of employees who were part of continuous experimentation be measured and rewarded conventionally? At the Atlanta branches, Bank of America tellers earned about $20,000 a year; annual turnover averaged about 50%. The next step up from te ller was sales associate; people in this job helped 10 Bank of America (A) 603-022 ustomers start up savings or checking accounts, fill out mortgage applications, notarize documents, and entice customers with new services. At I&D Market branches, some associates could serve as hosts—making many decisions without bringing in the branch manager. Some 30%–50% of associates’ compensation derived from performance bonuses based on a decade-old point system that used sales quotas—where points varied according to product, customer satisfaction, local market demographics, as well as managerial discretion. Given this system, associates were tempted to ignore customers’ actual needs. For instance, they would encourage customers to open up a checking account, which yields one point, rather than a savings account, which yields none,† said an internal financial consultant. For the first several months, the I&D Market maintained the conventional incentive s cheme. The sales associates seemed to relish the additional pressure. But it soon became apparent that they would have to spend as much as a quarter of their time in special training sessions, not to mention â€Å"alternate† time working as hosts, an experiment that yielded no bonus points.The staff, thus, began feeling disadvantaged by their rewards as hosts, since they faced the same monthly quota of points despite having less time with customers as part of an actual selling activity. For some, however, being part of the experiment proved reward in itself. â€Å"I would not go back to my old job,† said one associate who looked forward to working every morning. â€Å"It would be like stepping several years back in terms of technology and service. † Annual â€Å"Bank of America Spirit† motivational sessions with vibrant music and motivational speakers reinforced this sense of exclusivity.Yet cracks in the prevailing incentive scheme began showing. â€Å" Let’s be realistic,† one sales associate admitted, â€Å"you can’t be happy all day long; sometimes you have to fake it. † In January 2001, senior management switched associates in all 25 branches to fixed-incentive compensation. Most of them welcomed the change, which added to the feeling of being special. It also represented a commitment from top management to the experimentation process. But not all staff thrived under the new fixed incentives.One executive complained that â€Å"those in the I&D Market branches now thought they didn’t have to chin to the same level as others. † Another manager had to reassign an associate â€Å"since that person now sat passively at a desk; the team mentality of working for the customer proved foreign to her. † With all the attention and resources dedicated to the I&D Team, some senior executives echoed a growing impatience that it was time â€Å"to pay the piper. † Resentment from personnel in other conventional branches might also have fueled this feeling.The group already enjoyed more resources than other branches, and there was a fear that different incentive schemes would remove them further from the daily realities of banking. There was also uncertainty whether the concepts tested in prototype form would work nationally because of different market conditions. As Allen Jones, a regional executive, pointed out, â€Å"If a test is successful only under fixed-incentive schemes, then we can’t roll it out elsewhere. † With growing discomfort, senior management switched the staff back to the old point-based incentive system after just a six-month trial.Not surprisingly, with this about-face the behavior of the staff reverted as well. Hosts, for instance, became reluctant to send customers over to insurance agents because they got no points for such referrals. On two occasions, in fact, supervisors witnessed a host undertake entire transactions just to make his points quota rather than direct customers to associates. The about-face also led one staff member to question Brady about senior management’s commitment to the I&D Market vision. What concerned Brady and Butler the most, however, was the impact of incentives on the learning and quality of in-branch experiments. 1 603-022 Bank of America (A) First-Year Performance I see the following challenges for the I&D Market: ownership, evaluation, and continued support in a changing environment. The solution is to highlight successes, have a good batting average, rapid experimentation cycles, and maintain awareness at senior management level. — Milton Jones, president, Georgia Banking Group By traditional banking measures, the I&D Market performance appeared less than stellar. Overall deposit growth in 2001 stood at just 0. 5%, compared with 3. 7% growth in other Atlanta branches.In terms of revenue, however, I&D branches did about 10% better than traditional branches. Some ex periments proved quite effective; for instance, a â€Å"loan solutions† experiment generated an extra $700,000 in the first quarter in all 15 participating I&D branches combined. With all additional costs factored in, however, the I&D Market was not, at least on a pilot scale, a winning proposition. The team therefore wondered about how senior management would react to its performance in an environment where many programs throughout the bank were being axed.Were comparisons with traditional benchmarks fair, given its mission of being the bank’s product and service development laboratory? Despite just a slight rise in customer volume, many associates observed a larger spike in customer satisfaction, with some customers now coming from longer distances just to bank at the new branches. Another promising trend not captured by traditional measures involved personnel turnover. Except for an initial turnover spike, annual teller turnover had dropped from 50% over the past th ree years to 28%.In the last quarter of 2001, annualized teller turnover had dropped to as low as 20%, but it was unclear how much of this stemmed from employment uncertainties in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. At the same time, some senior executives viewed the I&D Market as the crown jewels of the Atlanta branches. The bank offered tours of its gleaming prototype facilities to customers, Bank of America executives, visitors from other industries, and even competing banks. â€Å"Everyone’s eyes are on us,† admitted Allen Jones. â€Å"Just last week, one of the bank’s top executives visited us. In 2001 the I&D Team received an additional five branches as part of a corporate reorganization that would increase each regional manager’s branch portfolio. While these measures increased operating budgets, they did not boost the research budget for experimentation and testing. Brady and Butler wondered how to deal with the unexpect ed â€Å"reward. † Some people even suggested leaving these five new branches untouched to serve as additional experimental controls. Ultimately, the five branches joined the ongoing experimental portfolio, bringing the total to 25. The new branches added much-needed experimentation capacity.Operationally, however, taking on additional branches stretched the team’s efforts thin, since it required staff retraining and the setup of additional experiments, let alone all the minor logistics of managing branches that literally involved running among them all day long. With the potential drag of these branches on overall portfolio performance, the team also worried about increased corporate pressure for positive results. A Vote of Confidence? â€Å"We had a good first year,† Brady said as the last of the small group took their seats at the conference table overlooking downtown Atlanta. [The year] 2001 was our year to prove the I&D Team vision; 2002 is our year to grow up. At the end of this year I will have to restate our case, but 12 Bank of America (A) 603-022 hopefully to double funding. † The I&D Team had been one of the few projects to survive companywide cuts, albeit with a smaller budget. â€Å"We still make a small profit in our branches,† Brady added, â€Å"and potentially, this could cover our salaries, but it is too early to say. † Next, Brady explained how the bank’s senior leadership had offered the group yet another â€Å"reward† of additional branches across the country.These branches could expand experimentation capacity by some 40%–60% and take the strain off the 25 branches that were piling up so many experiments. But only about half the team responded to the news with smiles—just as Brady and Butler had expected. The team had debated almost since inception the use of external control branches from North Carolina or even other Mid-Atlantic or East Coast regions. Some felt that geo graphy did not matter in this Internet age, as long as demographics, customer profiles, and size of banking centers were comparable.Others, such as Stanwick, disagreed: â€Å"The prospect of using, say, North Carolina branches as controls for our Atlanta Innovation and Development Market scares me to death. † Those in favor of taking on the new branches pointed to the limited experimentation capacity and the increasing testing backlog. In 2002 alone, 26 new experiments were added to about 25 on-going tests carried over from 2001, bringing the number of active experiments to more than 50 (see Exhibit 8a for the group’s growing idea pipeline).They argued that more experimentation capacity allowed for faster evaluation of ideas through the running of more tests simultaneously and reduced feedback times because of potentially lower capacity utilization (see Exhibit 8b). Alternatively, the bank could run fewer simultaneous experiments and obtain cleaner and more reliable re sults. They further noted that the team by now had gained much experience in running experiments. In any case, it took the same time to design concepts for one center as for 10.Having a larger portfolio of branches might also make scale-up and national rollout of successful concepts easier and quicker. By making a big splash within the corporation, the I&D Team could win greater prominence. Because the offered branches were underperfomers, the team would look good in case of turnarounds but lose little if these new branches failed. Those against taking on the additional branches argued that the current 25 branches (or even fewer) in the portfolio were optimal. Taking on five branches within Atlanta had been difficult enough.Ten additional branches would be difficult to manage even if they were all in Atlanta. How much harder would it be for Atlanta managers, who were already stretched thin, to simply march into another branch and say, â€Å"Hi, we’re here to test. † Sp ecifically, some pointed out that associates in other states such as California appeared more individual than team oriented. Experience had also shown that associates would need to spend a quarter of their time undergoing additional training. In Atlanta, increased demands on tellers and associates had led to an initial rise in turnover (before eventually declining).Who could predict teller and associate turnover in a different geographic area? Some executives further noted that a larger I&D Market would increase the drag on the balance sheet, potentially stifling innovation. Too large a market might also confuse customers using more than one branch. Brady and Butler jotted down the rapidly flying ideas. Soon they would formulate a recommendation to the bank’s senior leadership about whether to accept new branches into its experimentation portfolio. One thing that stuck in both their minds was, ironically, â€Å"failure. In particular, the need for failure so as to generate m ore learning. Failures had been few and far between so far—indeed, the last failure was that of a mortgage loan experiment whose post-mortem analyses indicated â€Å"red tape† as the cause, that is, too much paperwork at the back end. Hardly a â€Å"revolutionary† experiment, thought Brady; hardly something—even if it had worked—remarkable. For both Brady and Butler, the words of their superior, Jones, an enthusiastic champion of their efforts, rang loud: â€Å"So far, most of our experiments have been successful.Perhaps we don’t fail often enough. † 13 603-022 -14- Exhibit 1 Examples of Selected Experiments in Atlanta’s Buckhead Financial Center Media Wall Main Stock Ticker Assisted Work Station Self-Service Internet Tool Host Station Source: Bank of America. 603-022 -15- Exhibit 2 Bank of America’s Regional Deposit Market Position and Share (consumer and commercial banking) Source: Bank of America Web site, . Deposits are as of June 2001. 603-022 Bank of America (A) Exhibit 3 Selected Financials and Operating Data (dollars in millions, except per-share data)Bank of America Year Cost of goods sold Selling and administrative expenses Research and development expenses ROA ROE Market value Total interest income Total interest expenses Net interest income Provision for loan losses Net interest income after provision for loan losses Other Income Salaries, occupancy, and equipment Depreciation Total other expenses Pre-tax income Income taxes Income before extraordinary Items & discontinued operations Earnings per share basic from operations Earnings per share diluted from operations 2001 22,290 12,718 n. a. 1. 14 98,158 38,293 18,003 20,290 4,287 16,003 8,564 12,718 1,732 14,450 10,117 3,325 6,792 4. 8 4. 71 2000 27,351 12,255 n. a. 1. 2 15. 8 74,025 43,258 24,816 18,442 2,535 15,907 9,920 12,255 1,784 14,039 11,788 4,271 7,517 4. 77 4. 72 1999 20,906 12,281 n. a. 1. 2 17. 8 84,179 37,588 19,086 18,237 1,820 16,417 9,996 12,281 1,917 14,198 12,215 4,333 7,882 4. 77 4. 68 Source: Compustat. 16 603-022 -17- Exhibit 4 Section of Bank of America’s Organizational Chart Ken Lewis Chairman and CEO Consumer/ Commercial Bank Banking Center Channel Commercial ChannelSmall Business Banking Channel Premier Channel MiddleMarket Treasury Management Quality & Productivity (Milton Jones) Consumer & Commercial Bank Credit Processing Mid-South Banking Group Banking Center Channel Support Liability Risk Management Network Strategy / Location Planning Innovation & Development (Amy Brady) (Warren Butler) Source: Bank of America. 603-022 Bank of America (A) Exhibit 5 The I&D Market’s Product and Service Innovation Process and Activities 2. Planning & Design 5. Recommend 1. Idea Conception The Innovation Process 3.Implement 4. Test ! Accepts, implements, and tests ideas and concepts (â€Å"experiments†) ! Optimizes speed to market and cost ! Coordinates activities and decisions thro ugh stages Market Rollout = Go / No Go 1. Idea Conception Conceive Ideas Input: Ideas/Info Output: Updated Idea Queue Desired outcome Assess Ideas Input: Updated Idea Queue Output: Approved Ideas Decision Ideas Input: Approved Ideas Output: List of Prioritized Ideas Success factors Key measures Desired outcome Success factors Key measures Desired outcome Success factors Key measuresInnovative ideas generated through internal and external sources Bank awareness and commitment # of total ideas % of approved ideas Rapid design, build and rollout planning Minimal planning time Timing and quality of design Cycle time for design types Ratio of redesigns Successful implementation of ideas Successful integration Zero market overload Cycle time Market readiness On-time implementation Stable operating environment for testing of new concepts and ideas Fast feedback of results Meeting test and mkt. oals Test cycle < 90 days Operating results Idea evaluation and national market rollout Quality r ecommendation package Cycle time Clarity/completeness 2. Planning and Design Assign and Scope Input: Prioritized Ideas Output: Design Needs Complete Design Input: Design Needs Output: Design Plan Build Rollout Plan Input: Detail Design Output: Rollout Plan 3. Implement Develop Test Plan Input: Individual Rollout Plan Output: Integrated Rollout Plan Implement Idea Input: Integrated Rollout Plan Output: Implemented Ideas 4. Test Manage the Market Monitor PerformanceInput: Output: Implemented Ideas Data Results Desired outcome Success factors Key measures Desired outcome Success factors Key measures Report Results Input: Output: Data/Research Test/Mkt Reports Conclusions Improve I&D Process Input: Process/Output Measures Output: Enhancements 5. Recommend Complete Recommendation Input: Idea Test Results Output: Recommendation Review/Approve Recommendation Input: Recommendation Output: Approval Communicate Recommendation Input: Approval Output: Communication Source: Bank of America. 18 B ank of America (A) 603-022 Exhibit 6Banking Branches in the Innovation and Development Experimentation Portfolio Financial Centers (5): Provide ability to advise across product line with expanded people, technology, process, and environment capabilities Express Centers (5): Provide fast, friendly, convenient access for routine transactions with self-directed options and teller services Traditional Centers (15): Provide traditional banking products and services with enhanced processes and technology Source: Bank of America. 19 603-022 Bank of America (A) Exhibit 7 Data from Transaction Zone Media (TZM) ExperimentThe TZM Experiment: ! Flat-panel monitors above bank tellers broadcast news for people waiting for service. ! Do such customers perceive shorter waiting times to service? ! Are such customers more satisfied with their banking experience? Actual versus Perceived Waiting Time (Customers who wait > 5 minutes) D iffe re nce 8. 16 Pre-Tes t 6. 17 P erc eived Tim e A c tual Tim e E xperimental Site: 32% 7. 04 Post-Test 6. 14 Tim e (m in) 0 2 4 6 8 10 15% ! Prior to installation of TZM, customers who waited longer than five minutes significantly overestimated their waiting time (32%). After installation, overestimates for the same customer group dropped to 15%. Control Branch: 8. 48 Pre-Tes t 7. 38 P erc eived Tim e A c tual Tim e 15% ! No experimental intervention was carried out during the observation period. ! Control branch had very similar customer demographics to experimental site. ! During the observation period, overestimates actually increased from 15% to 26%. 9. 27 Post-Test 7. 37 Tim e (m in) 0 2 4 6 8 10 26% Source: Bank of America. 20 Bank of America (A) 603-022 Exhibit 8a List of Product or Service Concepts Waiting to be TestedJanuary 13 (4) (10) 10 0 10 (7) -8 (7) -9 February 5 (1) (6) 6 0 6 (1) +29 March 27 4 (1) 1 0 1 (20) -21 April 3 0 (4) 4 0 4 (5) +16 May 27 0 (6) 6 0 6 (40) +7 Total 75 (1) (27) 27 0 27 Process Measure Inflow of new ideas be fore assessment* Ideas put on hold/reactivated Assessments completed — recommended for design/testing — not approved Ideas moved to design/testing New ideas discontinued (before or during assessment) Change in idea backlog** * New ideas come from brainstorming workshops, employee input, etc. * The January 1, 2002, backlog of new ideas awaiting a decision (assessment or discontinuation) is about two months. Source: Bank of America. Exhibit 8b Waiting Time Waiting for a Resource According to queuing theory, the waiting time for a resource increases gradually as more of the resource is used. But when the utilization passes 70%, delays increase dramatically. 0 40 50 70 80 90 100 60 Percent of Resource Utiliza tion Source: S. Thomke, â€Å"Enlightened Experimentation: The New Imperative for Innovation,† Harvard Business Review, February 2001. 21