Harley Davidson Supply Chain Improvements Essay Example for Free

Harley Davidson Supply Chain Improvements Essay In the early 1980’s Wisconsin-based Harley-Davidson Motor Company, the country’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles, was struggling to survive. Faced with an onslaught of sever competition from Japan and failing new products, †¦ Harley-Davidson was challenged to remain profitable. However, not only did Harley-Davidson survive, it became a huge success story, with sales increasing from 36,735 motorcycles in 1986 to 291,417 in 2003 to over 350,000 motorcycles in 2006. It has also expanded globally into Europe, China and India. A significant factor in its turnaround was the strategic changes it made in managing its supply chain during the next decade. †¦ In the mid-1990’s Harley-Davidson initiated sophisticated supply chain strategies to reduce inventory and purchasing costs while improving product quality and delivery times from suppliers. Harley-Davidson now expects suppliers to focus strategically on cost, delivery, and quality improvement and to hit established cost and quality targets. Suppliers are expected to meet â€Å"twice the level of quality† and to develop a written strategic plan to achieve goals for quality improvement. Suppliers are graded according to defective â€Å"parts-per-million† and it has a target goal of 48 defective parts-per-million that suppliers are expected to achieve. Harley-Davison sends suppliers a monthly report showing their quality and delivery performance, and if the supplier receives a bad report Harley-Davidson sends their people to the supplier to determine the problems and help them resolve them. If the supplier does not improve its performance, it is replaced. In 1995 defective parts-per-million for suppliers were generally around 10,000; however, by 2001 approximately 75% of Harley-Davidson’s supplier base was performing at 48 defective parts-per-million or better, and 36 suppliers were performing at zero defective parts-per-million. †¦ These objectives consciously reduced Harley-Davidson’s supplier base that could not meet expectations for cost, quality, and delivery by 80%, from 4,000 suppliers to 800. In some cases Harley-Davidson has moved toward single-source relationships with suppliers. In these instances, the company partners with one supplier for a part, system, or component – for example, lighting systems, instrumentation gauges, or ignition systems – and works closely with the supplier to develop technology that the company needs to remain competitive. Approximately 80 on-site (resident) suppliers take part in new product design, creating an interface between the company and its suppliers that helps Harley-Davidson improve quality and cut costs. In return, Harley-Davidson remains loyal to the supplier and reduces supplier uncertainty, provided of course that the supplier continues to meet the company’s objectives for improvement. In order for Harley-Davidson suppliers to remain competitive they must enforce similar exacting goals and standards on their own suppliers, thus creating efficiency and cost effectiveness along the entire length of the supply chain from Harley-Davidson’s suppliers to its suppliers’ suppliers, and so on. Harley –Davidson is using the Internet to further improve its supply chain performance. The company launched an interactive Internet-based supply chain management strategy that placed a large portion of the company’s supply chain management only to the Internet. It provided all suppliers with information they need to conduct online financial transactions and reduce the time spent chasing invoices. Suppliers are linked by a web portal to critical business transaction information, including data on delivery and quality performance and the status of financial transactions. In-house software reports defect rates that provides quick feedback to suppliers about bad components. Suppliers can look at production schedules and delivery requirements and assess their ability to meet those schedules. Documents and information previously sent using an EDI format are now sent more cheaply through the Internet, which is also more universally available to supply companies, particularly smaller ones. What has been the effect of these changes in supply chain management at Harley-Davidson? They reduced operating expenses by $161 million; the company now manages its inventory according to a JIT system, and it runs on 6. 5 to 10 days’ worth of inventory compared to 8 to 15 days of inventory before its supply chain initiatives; its logistics and distribution center costs as a percentage of sales decreased by 59%. By any measure Harley-Davidson’s supply chain management strategy has been a success.

TH :: essays research papers

Needs completing The Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, through its subsidiaries, designs, sources and markets men's and women's, and children’s clothing under the Tommy Hilfiger trademarks. The Tommy Hilfiger Corporations major product is clothing which is broken into two major product categories men’s and women’s clothing. Tommy Hilfiger has an aggressive market development strategy with diversifying and pursuing markets that are already carried by the company. The company has taken their success in the U.S and found comparable markets overseas with a great deal of success. The company is strongest in the US because of sheer volumes. They are the fastest growing in Europe. They are also the No 1 designer brand in Central America, South America and Canada. The company holds steady in the top ten in Japan with lots of competition. The business is also strong in South-East Asian markets like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore. Tommy Hilfiger is currently setting up all over China and considers India its new horizon. The company’s market development is strong and growing with each quarterly report. They offer new products to existing target markets worldwide and are also exploring the involvement in products without the Tommy Hilfiger namesake. Through a range of strategic licensing agreements, the Company offers a broad array of related apparel, accessories, footwear, fragrance and home furnishings. The Company's products can be found in leading department and specialty stores throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Central and South America, Japan, Hong Kong and other countries in the Far East, as well as the Company's own network of specialty and outlet stores in the United States, Canada and Europe. www.tommyhilfiger.com   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Tommy Hilfiger has a competitive advantage compared to its competitors. There product mix is what gives them the advantage on competitors like Sean John, Phat Pharm, Ecko and Enyce. With other competitors like Nautica and Polo, they compete on similar grounds, but lead them with the shear diversity of their product mix. Both Polo and Ralph Lauren are legendary brands, but Tommy Hilfiger has done and outstanding job with micromarketing and appealing to the core of fashion buyers. Tommy Hilfiger leaves his urban competition behind with his strong International markets and the ability to open new markets where fashion has not been a top sale. Within the volatile industry of fashion, Tommy Hilfiger is seen as a much more stable brand. Their product appeals to a larger segment of the U.

Should a Piece of Literature Be Judged on Its Literary Merits Alone, Regardless of Its Historical Context?

Steven Brust once wrote: â€Å"In my opinion, the proper way to judge a novel is this: Does it give one an accurate reflection of the moods and characteristics of a particular group of people in a particular place at a particular time? If so, it has value. Otherwise, it has none. † (Brust, Steven. 2005. Sethra Lavode). Brust, quite clearly has joined this debate regarding literary theories. He claims that if aspects of literary piece, aside from its own merits, are not significant then it has no worth.It is continually and widely argued by critics of literature whether a book should be based on its literary merits alone, or if only certain aspects, such as history, regarding its writing should be relevant. The relationship between history and literary work is often questioned. There are four main models that have been devised to explain this. The first regards a piece literary work as universal and belonging to no time period. The model states that historical context has no si gnificance in literary texts, and that both should remain autonomous from each other.Critics are concerned with literary texts being artefacts in themselves that surpass the possibilities of a particular time, thus the idea of specific historical context is dismissed. R. S. Crane supports this view and in an essay said history is part of â€Å"the general history of culture† whereas literature should be â€Å"imaginative works considered with respect to those qualities which can truly be said to be timeless†¦ quite apart from any knowledge of their origin or historical affiliation† (Crane, Ronald. 1967. History versus Criticism in the study of literature’, in The idea of the Humanities and Other Essays Critical and Historical, Vol. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press). In short, this model centres around the basis that a literary work should be judged on its, as Crane said, ‘timeless qualities’ for example the quality of its linguistic feat ures and other aspects that give a work literary merits. The second model regarding history and literature is based on the idea that the historical context of a literary piece helps lead to proper understanding of it.A text is produced within a certain historical context but this should remain separate from the literary context. This model is often favoured by critics that analyse literary texts by considering their historical background and context. This can be regarded to any aspect whether it is: political, cultural or linguistic. A 1934 study by Basil Willey: The Seventeenth Century Background: Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion shows even by its title a support for this model.It is implied that Willey and similar critics agree that historical context forms a foundation of understanding when studying a literary text. They would argue that literary work in order to be analysed must be understood and to be understood needs to be looked at in respe cts to its historical context. The third model when looking at the relationship between pieces of literature and history is essentially the opposite of the second. It centres on the idea that a literary piece can help us understand the time in which it is set.This is explanation talks about realist texts in particular and how they can provide creative depictions of historical events or periods. It assumes that literary texts are almost subordinate to their historical context and they are reflections of their time. For example Keith Thomas appeals to Shakespeare to justify this point of view: â€Å"In Shakespeare’s plays, the curses pronounced by the characters invariably work†¦ not just for dramatic effect† but that â€Å"it as a moral necessity that the poor and the injured should be believed to have this power of retaliation when all else failed† (Thomas, Keith. 971. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Century En gland. London: Wensfield and Nicolson). This model is known as the reflective approach, it regards literary work as an aid to develop our knowledge of history using the historical context of a literary piece. The last model regarding literature and history is probably the most complex, though it is also seen as the most interesting to theorists. It claims that literary texts are connected with other discourses and this makes literature itself a part of history that is continually being written.Critics that agree with this theory, widely known as ‘new historicists’, argue that the question of the relationship between history and literature is wrong; despite their differences the last three models assume that ‘history’ and ‘literature’ are fundamentally separate. They distinguish between the interpretations of literary texts and the transparency of history. Stephen Greenblatt writes in an essay: â€Å"methodological and self-conscious is one of the distinguishing marks of the new historicism in cultural studies as opposed to historicism based upon faith in the transparency of signs and nterpretive procedures† (Greenblatt, Stephen. 1990. ‘Towards a poetic of Culture’, in Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. London: Routledge). Hence, new historicists argue that the making of the literary texts is a cultural practice, and only differ in their specific mode. No absolute distinction can be made between literary and other cultural practices. Theorists such as Hayden White, claim that this model implies that just like literary texts the ‘facts’ of history need to be read (tracing the past is similar to telling a story).In an extract from White’s book, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, He writes: Histories ought never to be read as unambiguous signs†¦ but rather as symbolic structures, extended metaphors, that ‘liken’ the events reported in t hem to some form with which we have already become familiar in our literary culture†¦ By the very constitution of a set of events in such a way as to make a comprehensible story out of them, the historian changes those events with the symbolic significance of a comprehensible plot structure. (White, Hayden. 1991. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism.Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press) Considering this we would come to the conclusion that methods of (critical) analysis should be suitable for both history and literary texts. In short, a new historicist perspective think that in the reading of a literary text the idea of historical context cannot be settled, and that this context is decided by a negotiation between the text and the reader Ultimately, the majority of literary theorists fall on the side that accepts the use and aid historical context when critically analysing a literary text.Only the first model seems to completely disregard historical contex t in literary work for the belief that a piece of literature should be ‘timeless’. The second and third model accept historical context as part of the method of analysing a literary piece. However, still confidently differentiate between literature and history, they are seen as merely aids for each other.The last model is set apart from the rest as it does not polarise the categories and treats them as to intertwine subjects that cannot be considered without each other. In my opinion historical context should be relevant to the reading of literary text, it is inevitable that the two should overlap especially during an in depth analysis of a literary text.

Theories Concerning Human Development Free Essay Example, 1500 words

Jim today suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is mainly caused due to the extreme level of anxiety or exposure to serious psychological trauma. As diagnosed, this could be the possible consequence of his mental and physical reaction to the World Trade Centre massacre in 2001. Contextually, his age might have been an influencing factor as through the normative stage models it is apparently discussed that young adults tend to decipher more active response towards any kind of trauma being steered with their quench for unique identification in their workplace. Young adults are also observed to possess the high degree of moral values which might have influenced Jim s response to the disaster when he was 25 years old in 2001 (Papalia 493-494). His PTSD syndrome may affect his capability to deal with stress in his future career which shall further limit his job opportunities. He might also develop anxiety and frustration in his married life which will again disrupt his physical as well as mental health making him stressed and emotionally weaker. These forces shall thus increase emotional vulnerability within Jim making him less confident in his relationship. We will write a custom essay sample on Theories Concerning Human Development or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now He might also seek the less stressful job and be reluctant in accepting diversity easily as compared to other people. Hence, he might have to face severe constraints when performing in working areas such as schools where stress level and diversity are perceived to be quite high. However, regular interaction with young children might be helpful for him to reduce his psychological vulnerability (Papalia 494). From the group discussion, I was able to learn that caused disequilibrium related with the linkage between environmental hazards, genetic orders or heredity and time in prenatal development. Although class members were arguing regarding the influences of these factors, least significance was provided towards control measures regarding these factors which could have significantly assisted in gaining the better understanding of human development.