Continuous supply chain collaboration : Road to achieve operational excellence

Supply chain management (SCM) is becoming critical as firms recognize that competition is shifting from company versus company to supply chain versus supply chain. In the present competitive scenario, the fierce competition has driven most companies to seek means of enhancing performance beyond their four wall boundaries. The firm’s ability in collaborating with its upstream and downstream partners determines its success in attaining better performance with supply chain collaboration; a firm is able to serve fragmented markets in which end customers require more product varieties and availability with shorter product life cycle and at the same time lower supply chain costs. Hence, this paper introduces the framework of continuous supply chain collaboration (CSCC), which extends the traditional frame of reference in strategic sourcing from a supplier centric to a supply-chain-scope as continuous improvement efforts to enhance the customer satisfaction. CSCC practices are rather exceptional, yet CSCC is believed to be the single most comprehensive framework for attaining operational excellence.Continuous supply chain collaboration (CSCC); Supply chain management: Continuous improvement; Operational excellence; Supply Chain Management

Mind mapping management

A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid to studying and organizing information, solving problems, making decisions, and writing. The fundamentals of mind map are arranged naturally according to the importance of the concepts, and are classified into groupings, branches, or areas, with the goal of representing semantic or other connections between portions of information. Mind maps may also aid recall of existing memories. The ideas are documented in a mind map radiate from the center of diagram, similar the branches or root system of a tree. The colors are important because they provide an extra dimension of information to help your brain interpret the data more effectively. The mind mapping technique can be used as a authoritative, creative and dynamic way to administer projects, structure and classify multifaceted information, and provide motivating reports that grasp people’s attention. By minimizing words and focusing on associations, mind maps allow project managers and team members to rapidly see dependencies and problems, saving time and money. Using mind maps can notably improve a project team’s productivity.Mind mapping management

A study on occupational health hazards among women beedi rollers in Tamilnadu, India.

The beedi industry occupies a prominent place in rural development in terms of its capacity to offer potential employment opportunities to a large number of people. For the beedi industry Tamilnadu is one of the major hub in India. It is estimated that around one million workers mostly woman and children are employed in Beedi making. It is an ardu¬ous, labour intensive task because each beedi is rolled individually. Beedi industry is almost an unorganized sector hence even the government officials finding it difficult to enforce the various legal requirements. Apart from the other legal implications the health hazards which the women employees who are rolling the beedis are enormous. This study aims to explore the level of health hazards experienced by the woman beedi rollers in Tamilnadu. A total of 388 usable responses obtained from women beedi rollers comprising from the beedi rollers concentrated districts i.e., Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Tiruchirappalli & Vellore are used for this study. The study found that more than 70% of the beedi rollers suffered from eye, gastrointestinal and nervous problems while more than 50% of the respondents suffered from respiratory problems, mostly throat burning and cough. More than 75% of the respon¬dents faced osteological problems. From the study is it understood that the health hazards level is very high. This study proposes a framework to be implemented with the Government agencies, NGOs and Welfare organizations for the welfare of the beedi rollers.Beedi rollers, Health Hazards, Welfare measures, Tamilnadu.

Quality of work life: Perception of college teachers

Several Research Studies in the world have measured the Quality of Work of Employee’s in Industries, Universities, Schools, Government and Non Government Organizations. This research study highlights the quality of work life of college teachers under various dimensions. New Challenges can be faced with employee’s commitment and involvement in achieving organizational goals. This study helps the college teachers to know the level of perception towards QWL and to enhance the same by the educational administrators.. Quality of Work Life is the essential concept of favorable situations in a working environment. The Quality of Work Life facilitates employee’s training opportunities, job satisfaction and working conditions. A better Quality of Work Life improves the growth of the employee’s along with the organization growth. The universe of the study includes 12 colleges located within the Tiruchirappalli city limit and 1279 college teachers were working during May 2008 – February 2009. A sample of 239 respondents was collected from the universe. The collected data after being coded were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social sciences Research (SPSS) and various statistical tests were applied based on hypotheses and matching variables. There is a significant association between quality of work life total and quality of life in teaching environment total. It shows QWL of college teachers is in low level.Quality of Work Life: College Teachers; Perception

Smart Rating for Electronics Gadgets Data

Aggregator websites of Electronic gadgets listings decide if they want to pick a particular listing from an e-commerce website and display on their own website. Selection of the right items to list is essential to customers selecting products for purchase, therefore leading to higher revenues. Many e-commerce websites do not collect user ratings, or do not provide this data to our website. Hence, it is difficult to determine whether to display the product or not. Simply removing all items without ratings could lead to high opportunity costs, hence, another solution is required Predict the High - Low rating for any new electronic gadget listing to be introduced on the aggregator website monitored by bargain.in. The same model can also be used to predict the High - Low Rating on websites that do not support the feature of Average Rating

Analysis of a benchmark suite to evaluate mixed numeric and symbolic processing

The suite of programs that formed the benchmark for a proposed advanced computer is described and analyzed. The features of the processor and its operating system that are tested by the benchmark are discussed. The computer codes and the supporting data for the analysis are given as appendices