Group Presentation Essay Example for Free

Group Presentation Essay 1. Watch two of Pal’s commercials. What do they emphasize? After watching two of the commercials for Pal’s you see that they emphasize a lot on how fast their product is made and how popular their food products are too many people including old to young. Pal’s product line consists of a focused group of food, hamburgers, ham and chicken sandwiches, hot dogs, French fries, and breakfast biscuits and beverages, soft drinks, tea, coffee, milk shakes with a unique flavor profile designed to meet their customers taste requirements. Pal’s has developed the ability to effectively integrate manufacturing, service, and retail into its operational systems. They have also learned to apply world-class management principles and best-in-class processes that cause other companies emulate to our systems. 2. What type of waiting line model is found at Pal’s drive-thru restaurants? Pal’s drive-thru facilities have been designed to be efficient and effective. The equipment, facilities, and technologies that Pals uses to meet customer needs are components that serve our manufacturing, service and retail needs through ongoing use of our Benchmarking, Innovation and Product/Service/ Process Introduction processes. Their process layout is designed so that raw materials enter through a delivery door and are worked forward through the store with one process serving the next process in the processing/assembly/packaging line until a finished product is handed to an external customer. The major technologies involved are order taking, cooking, holding, filtering, order delivery, and packaging. They have developed proprietary state-of-the-art technology to achieve product and service quality and to provide efficient product flow. 3. What waiting time do you think is acceptable at a drive-thru restaurant? What order accuracy? I would think that anytime from 5-7 minutes would be acceptable wait time for a drive-thru restaurant. I did some research and it said that in 2011 Wendy’s is fastest once again with an average time of 145.5 seconds, while Taco Bell is second at 146.7 seconds and McDonald’s has the longest time at 184.2 seconds. Though the benchmark brands have not increased their speed over past years, all the operators who commented for  the study say they are working to improve the efficiency of their drive thus so that the speed can improve. Order accuracy should be almost always correct. By getting customer orders correct it will make them have a good experience with your company and they will be happy with your business, making them want to come back. 4. From the Baldrige award data, what is the average order speed at Pal’s and at its best competitor? What other things does Pal’s measure? In customer satisfaction, including food quality, service, and order accuracy, Pals is outperforming its primary competitor. For example, customer scores for quality in 2001 averaged 95.8 percent, as compared with 84.1 percent for its best competitor. Pals order handout speed has improved more than 30 percent since 1995, decreasing from 31 seconds to 20 seconds, almost four times faster than its top competitor. Errors in orders are rare, averaging less than one for every 2,000 transactions. The company aims to reduce its error rate to one in every 5,000 transactions. In addition, Pals has consistently received the highest health inspection scores in its market and in the entire state of Tennessee. Pals aims to provide the quickest, friendliest, most accurate service available. 5. What influence do you think Pal’s name has on customer expectations of service? I believe that the name of a company has a lot of influence on how customers think about them. If you are known for your fast service and good food your name will be popular and be advertised a lot which will help your business grow. If you have a good name you want to keep it and make sure to keep customers satisfied and happy with your service. 6. What factors associated with order completion time are beyond Pal’s control? Pals is exhaustive in its pursuit of useful data, the basis for sound planning and decision-making. Owner/operators also maintain a communications log. They record what they have learned about sales, expenses, customers, staff, products, services, equipment, and suppliers, and they list ideas for improvement. Weekly logs are sent to senior Pals executives, who comb the entries for issues and opportunities to be addressed at formal monthly management reviews of organizational and  business results. Data are gathered systematically at all levelsprocess, shift, individual store, and entire business. The companys enterprise resource planning system, SysDine, is a key tool, generating store-level and company-wide data on sales, customer count, product mix, ideal food and material cost, and turnover rates. This information supports daily operational decisions. It also is used to update Pals Balanced Sc orecard of Core Performance Measures, which links directly to its key business drivers: quality, service, cleanliness, value, people, and speed. Managers regularly review the value of the data collected, and the company employs an outside statistician to evaluate the type of information tracked, how it is used, and how it is collected. 7. How does Pal’s â€Å"drive-thru only concept† affect speed of service? The quick-service restaurant business, the facilities and equipment must be capable, reliable, and sanitary. The drive-thru facility at Pal’s has been designed to be efficient and effective. The equipment, facilities, and technologies that Pal’s uses to meet customer needs are components that have been determined to serve the manufacturing, service, and retail needs by our staff through ongoing use of our benchmarking, innovation, and product/service/process introduction processes. Pal’s has created an environment that promotes continual improvement. Pal’s leadership supports this environment by being a role model for its systematic evaluation and improvement processes. Because of the management-led and organization-wide focus on continual improvement, major results are improving. 8. What are Pal’s core values? How does employee training differ at Pal’s? The companys Business Excellence Process is the key-integrating element, a management approach to ensuring that customer requirements are met in every transaction, today and in the future. Carried out under the leadership of Pals two top executives and its 17 store owner/operators, the Business Excellence Process spans all facets of the operationfrom strategic planning to on-line quality control. Every component process, including those for continual improvement and product introduction, is interactively linked, producing data that directly or indirectly inform the others. Developed with the aid of benchmarking studies, the companys training  processes support improvement in operational and business performance. Owner/operators and assistant managers have primary responsibility for staff training. They use a four-step model: show, do it, evaluate, and perform again. Employees must demonstrate 1 00 percent competence before they are certified to work at a specific workstation. Initial training for all employees includes intensive instruction on effective listening skills. In addition, in-store training on processes, health and safety, and organizational culture is required for new staff at all facilities via computer-based training, flash cards, and one-on-one coaching. Cross training is required of all store-level staff to ensure their complete understanding of all production and service procedures as well as quality standards. Recognizing that most of their front-line workers are first-time entrants into the labor force, Pals management believes it has responsibility to help its workers develop knowledge and skills that can be applied in future jobs. This approach, along with competitive wages and financial incentives, has made the restaurant chain a desirable place to work for high school and college students. Pals has leveraged its reputation by implementing a statistically controlled, talent-based hiring system that helps managers identify applicants with attributes associated with effective job performance and customer satisfaction. 9. How does Pal’s use technology? Pal’s Leadership Team members partner with three information technology firms to maintain awareness of currently available and emerging technologies and methods for making information and data more reliable, accurate, available, and usable. Input from these partners is considered during strategic planning where their data capabilities and requirements are aligned with their business objectives and action plans. At Pal’s, they ensure that hardware and software are reliable and user friendly by using established standards and specifications in the selection of each of the computers and point-of-sale terminals they use in all operations. Their standards and specifications include strict criteria to review reliability and user friendliness. They also test new systems in advance before installing them in all of their stores. During use, they measure and review mean time  between failures on their systems components, and we routinely assess whether they have sufficient redundant backup. To help assure the reliability of the software, they also have strict controls over who can make changes in the programs. Changes are tested and verified prior to being used on a production basis. They review the way their systems perform within operations with the people who actually use the equipment and programs. They also keep abreast of technology changes through their partners, trade shows, and publications. During strategic planning they use this input to analyze how their systems are meeting all current user requirements. They also assess what is needed to support our strategic objectives and action plans.

Abuse in Government Care Essay example -- Childcare Foster Adoption Ab

Abuse in Government Care   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It is unfortunate that in our society some children grow up without the opportunity of having a loving family to raise them. More unimaginable is children growing up with parents or family members that are abusive. Children raised in abusive environments that are reported to social services and removed from their home are placed into foster care. Foster care is defined supervised care for delinquent or neglected children usually in an institution or substitute home set up by the government. Some advocates claim that the government child care system is adequate, but others like David Van Biema of Time Magazine state that, â€Å"foster care is intended to protect children from neglect and abuse at the hands of parents and other family members, yet all too often it becomes an equally cruel form of neglect and abuse by the state (Biema).† There is substantial research that looks deeper into the foster care system. It reveals that abuse in foster care is a big e nough problem that it needs to be addressed, but what changes can or should be made?   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Government statistics, newspaper articles, and thorough research projects have been completed to answer the question, â€Å"is there a problem in the foster care system?† The results have revealed that a serious problem exist within foster care in the United States. At any given time there are approximately 542,000 children in the foster care system (Dept of Health). This number continues to rise each year. In 2001, 290,000 children entered into foster care, while only 263,000 children left the system (Dept of Health). Of the 263,000 children that left foster care in the year 2001, 31% were in care for over two years (Dept of Health). Nineteen percent of those children were in foster care for one to two years (Dept of Health). Two years is an unacceptable amount of time when taken into consideration that between the ages of 8 and ten are critical developmental years in a child’s life. The average age of the a child leaving the foster care system in 2 001 was 10.2 years old (Dept of Health). The amount of children per foster home at any given time is another problem. The average number of children per home in the foster care system is 3.7, which is up from 1.4 in 1983. Although 3.7 children is an average per home, there are claims that tens of thousands of homes have 5 – 8 children at once (C... ... we can ask for is that they come out alive (Thoma 8).† Work Cited: Biema, David Van. â€Å"The Storm Over Orphanages.† Time Magazine, p. 144   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  12 Dec. 1994. Cohen, Deborah L. â€Å"Foster-Care Reforms Often Ignore Problems Children Face in   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  School.† Education Weekly 15 June 1991. Maier, Timothy W. â€Å"Suffer the Children.† Insight on the News 24 Nov. 1997: Pg. 11. Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. â€Å"Public records and confidentiality laws.† Jan. 2004 http://emanuals.odjfs.state.oh.us/emanuals/legal/pubrec/@Generic__BookTextVie w/3;cs=default;ts=default;pt=23. Ritchotte, William. â€Å"Foster Care Reform.† Adoption.com   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  http://library.adoption.com/Advocacy/Foster-Care-Reform/article/5053/1.html. Thoma, Rick. â€Å"How Widwspread a Problem? A Critical Look at the Foster Care System† Liftingtheveil.org 24 June 2003 http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster04.htm. Thoma, Rick. â€Å"A Critical Look at the Foster Care System: How Safe the Service?† Liftingtheveil.org 15 Nov. 2002 http://www.liftingtheveil.org/foster03.htm. U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services. â€Å"Foster Care National Statistics.† 2003   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/factsheets/foster.cfm.

Motivation and Emotion Worksheet Essay

Discuss the following as a team and provide a brief summary of the each discussion. The word count for individual answers may vary but your responses should total 500- to 800-words for the entire worksheet. 1. Describe three approaches to motivation. Explain how each approach affects motivation. The first being instincts which are the patterns of behavior that are biologically determined rather than learned. People as well as animals are preprogrammed when born with behavioral and survival instincts. The second being incentive approach. I feel that I’m more motivated when there is some incentive involved because I know at the end of the day I am going to be rewarded for my assistance. The third would be arousal approach where each person tries to maintain a certain level of stimulation and activity to keep you consistently motivated. 2. Theorists vary on why we experience emotions. Discuss at least two different theories related to emotional experiences. Physiological theories suggest that responses within the body are responsible for emotions. Your emotional reaction is dependent upon how you interpret those physical reactions. Neurological theories states that the activity within the brain leads to emotional responses. 3. Choose one positive and one negative emotion related to being a student. Provide one example for each of how these emotions may affect your performance in class. Positive emotion from being in school would be your satisfaction on completion of a course. You give yourself the emotion of complete success. Negative for me is withdrawing a course and having to retake it. Not only in your mind do you feel like a failure but you also have to revisit that state of emotion when you’re retaking the course again. 4. Summarize two theories of intelligence. What are the benefits and drawbacks to intelligence testing? Benefits to intelligence testing can be used as a great tool when making decisions regarding which careers to pursue and which to avoid. Professional organizations can use intelligence testing to ensure that the right person is being placed in the right job. As with professors/instructors they can use it to help in identifying which and what students need that extra help. An added benefit of the partitioning of IQ tests into aptitude tests is that intelligence testing can now be used by career counselors to guide students in their future career choices. Drawbacks to intelligence testing that is limits potential for mostly students both as kids and adults. You’re also limited to the types of intelligence. A fact that I found out after doing my research was that IQ test only results in a single number as an overall score for intelligence. The test does not show an accurate result of what people’s strengths are. Two people can have the same score with very different streng ths and weaknesses.

Are Identities Do Not Exist A Vacuum - 1321 Words

Identities do not exist in a vacuum. They are thrust upon us, formed and reinforced through all manners of social pressures but, in particular, through consumption itself, as well as how we consume. This is particularly true for the binary way in which gender is defined – ouridentities as â€Å"male,† â€Å"female,† or otherwise. Our possessions, things, come to have personal significance and meaning to us and how we exist in this world. More than that, we come to view people the same way we view a product – one more thing to be consumed and added to our collection. This system does affect all genders, but in many ways does seem stacked against femininity or gender non-conformity. Moreover, the commodification of women and women’s bodies has been normalized to such an extent so as to be made out to be feminist in its own ways – one needs to look no further than the porn industry or sex work, or the rhetoric which suggests to women that all th ey need to do to subvert patriarchy is to put on some makeup, go out, get drunk, and sleep with whomever they want. This brand of liberal â€Å"choice† feminism seems to free women from the bonds of the expected and from society, and yet it simply is a form of control that comes from within, rather than from some governing body. Empowerment is important in its own ways, but it is served to the public as a soporific, something to distract from the systematic discrimination and objectification of women, and prevent any sort of criticism on the matter. ItShow MoreRelatedThe Murder And Serial Killers960 Words   |  4 Pagesif you sleep next to this person, don’t do it. Hire a hitman -- that’s why they exist. Killing a stranger. 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