Sample Essay Comparison Between Two Short Stories

Sample Essay Comparison Between Two Short StoriesSample essays comparing two short stories are an excellent way to compare two different writing styles. You should be able to spot a few common errors in both stories, and in addition, the comparison can help you find creative new ways to make your story stand out.A short stories comparison is one of the most important things you can do for a writing project. When you have an essay to write, the odds are that it will take several drafts and multiple revisions before you can complete the project. By comparing two short stories, you can avoid getting discouraged or frustrated with the first draft.I used an effective sample essay comparing two short stories to help me improve a story I had completed. It helped me learn about the different types of characters in the stories, the pacing of the stories, the structure of the story, the themes and many other points that you may not have considered.The types of characters in the short stories a re another important thing to consider when comparing two short stories. As mentioned above, a typical novel will contain a bunch of characters in different groups; however, most short stories only contain one character in a specific group. The best part about this is that you can try to use the same type of character for all three stories.You also want to think about the pacing of the short stories. In a novel, you might start a short story with a fast pace, then slow it down when the main character decides to be more adventurous in his/her adventures. However, if you compare two short stories, you need to make sure that the pace is different in each story.When compared by comparison, you can also learn about the structure of the short stories. In a novel, the structure is very similar; however, in a short story, the structure changes for each story. The structure of a short story is usually very different than a novel; the only similarity is that the hero usually goes through a cr isis at the end of each story.Finally, when compared by essay, you will also learn about the themes in short stories. Sometimes, authors will talk about a theme and write about it in different contexts throughout the story. You can also learn about these themes and how they are presented throughout the writing.These are just a few things to consider when comparing two short stories. Remember, the goal is to use a sample essay to help you understand what to change or add to your short stories. This sample essay will allow you to see how other people did the story.

Supply Chain Automotive Industry Essay Example

Supply Chain Automotive Industry Paper Abstract While sometimes characterized as â€Å"stable† the World automotive industry continues to experience dynamic change—change that sweeps across national borders. These changes have struck in particular, the U. S and the Japanese automotive industries. To succeed, auto manufacturers must manage large and complex supply chains, spanning many geographic regions, and pursue opportunities in diverse national markets. While national policies play an important role in shaping the environment for local manufacturing operations and resulting products, cost competition increasingly drives the industry toward global product offerings. This report explores several important dimensions of the forces of change facing the U. S. and the Japanese auto industry. We will present a comparison between the Asian and North American automobile manufacturing practices and in particular, the two companies, Ford and Honda Motors. A comparison will be made between the two markets on how each handles product varieties, their delivery methods from the factory to consumers, as well as the markets channels used. A comprehensive study is made to compare the automobile product varieties in the two regions and explain how customer choices and the effect of competition have led to this diversification in the products. The importance of marketing channels has gone largely unnoticed. For this purpose, marketing channel strategies will be discussed in detail. The relationships among suppliers, customers and logistics service providers will also be analyzed, in other words, the sourcing and the in-bound supply strategies. North America Asian ? Ford Motors â€Å"Ford Taurus† ?Honda Motor â€Å"Honda Accord† Table 1: North American and Asian automakers to be analyzed in this project These two models have been chosen based on the annual report posted at the corporate sites for both companies. Honda Corporate site shows that Honda Accord achieved its highest sales recently. The choice of Ford Taurus comes from the many similarities it has with Honda Accord concerning its size, price and de mands. iii 1. Introduction U. S. Sales of Honda Automobiles (by Model) We will write a custom essay sample on Supply Chain Automotive Industry specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Supply Chain Automotive Industry specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Supply Chain Automotive Industry specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Worldwide vehicle production ability is growing today more rapidly than it has in the last 20 or 30 years, and this has interesting implications for the world’s auto makers. Clearly most automobile manufacturers are very optimistic about the willingness of consumers to buy up this capacity. While environmental issues exist, they are not being factored into investment decisions about increases in car production capacity. At present, the world has the capability of producing 15 to 20 million more vehicles than it is currently buying. The last four years have been extraordinary for U. S. auto companies, earning them every year between 13 and 14 billion dollars. This is not bad financial performance for an industry that was viewed as dead in 1990, when both GM and Chrysler were on the verge of filing bankruptcy. This year again will be an outstanding year both for Ford and GM. In examining how the Japanese and U. S. auto industries have changed and adjusted to adversity, we find that the turnaround of the Japanese industry has had more to do with the value of the currency than it has had to do with fundamental change for several companies. While Japanese automobile companies have suffered fairly staggering losses over the last few years, both 2001 and 2002 showed improvement because of the stronger dollar. What happened to Japanese manufacturers during the bubble economy? First, all had huge, very unrealistic expectations about where the Japanese market was going. Japan is as saturated with motor vehicles as the United States, and yet during the last few years virtually every Japanese automaker built another factory to expand capacity and maintain market share. Companies rationalized this massive increase in capacity by believing that somehow their company’s market share would grow and another company’s market share would shrink. But that theory works only if there are other companies around willing to give up market share. This, of course, is no longer the case; the world has changed and it has changed very dramatically. ?1 In the case of the U. S. industry, however, substantial fundamental changes have occurred within the automobile companies themselves, allowing them to reduce excess capacity and in the process adjust their break-even points. Over the last decade and a half, for example, Ford has closed enough capacity and start to invade the Japanese markets. In terms of productivity in the factory, Japanese also have benefited from very close relationships with suppliers. In fact, they were able to get new cars on the market every four years, mainly because their suppliers were linked to the automobile company in familial relationships that entrusted the supplier to do a great deal of the engineering work for the manufacturer. In effect, the Japanese shifted a lot of their fixed costs onto their suppliers and became variable cost assemblers. That has been hard to replicate outside Japan because U. S. automobile companies were very highly vertically integrated. But companies such as GM and Ford are no longer as vertically integrated. The company is getting rid of this business, pushing the engineering responsibilities onto their suppliers. In sum, supplier relationships in the United States are firming up and look very much like the structure in Japan. Parts manufacturers now have specific expertise and technical capability to absorb engineering work from the auto companies. As a result, companies are now looking to five-year product cycles. Suddenly what factors things that have distinguished Japanese auto manufacturers in the past and enabled them to gain market share are being matched by U. S. and European companies. So what constitutes competitive advantage? For a long time the Japanese were able to offset their excess capacity at home with higher exports throughout the world but that export potential is no longer there, especially with regard to the developed markets of North America and Western Europe. And in most markets of the developing world, the growth of home auto industries has hampered the ability of Japanese manufacturers to shift surplus capacity away from Japan. Even though exports are up substantially this year because of the weak yen, they are no where near the levels of a few years ago and certainly not high enough to absorb the excess capacity. Another trend influencing the automotive industry is consumer preference for certain features. Consumers are choosing safety (e. g. , airbags, antilock brake systems) with amenities (e. g. air conditioners, powerful engines, power steering, and compact disc players) over vehicles whose primary appeal is size and interior space. Factors influencing customer choices are performance, suitability to personal needs, and family lifestyle, safety, comfort, and appearance. Consumers are showing a taste for the practical, as embodied in the Toyota Camry and the Ford Taurus, both top sellers in the medium price range. Japanese automaker s, however, have 2 increased market share in the United States through new â€Å"luxury† nameplates: Lexus, Infiniti, and Acura. In addition, previously â€Å"compact† models such as Toyota’s Camry and Honda’s Accord have become larger and more luxurious. One of the most critical issues for the automotive industry today is competitiveness in cost, quality, and product offerings. Companies cannot survive in today’s market if they neglect any of these areas. Since that time, differences between the United States and Japan in productivity and quality have shrunk and effectively disappeared in new product development lead time, pointing to a dramatic overall improvement in the competitive position. Trends in the practices of the foreign competitors show an important part of the overall picture. Japanese trends show a strong emphasis on total product quality (e. g. , Honda, Infiniti), perhaps at the expense of lead time and development productivity (total engineering hours per development project). However, in part because of the rise in the value of the yen, the pendulum between â€Å"cost is no object† quality and cost-effectiveness is rapidly swinging toward the latter. Nevertheless, the Japanese demonstrate a strong command of the link between product design and lean production. The automobile is one of the most complex consumer products in existence. The automotive manufacturing process serves as the â€Å"moment of truth† for the entire design, development, supply chain, and manufacturing process. If the parts do not fit when the manufacturer attempts to put them together, the system has a defect that must be tracked down and eliminated. Thus, auto companies focus a great deal of attention on understanding and improving the manufacturing process. Across the world auto industry, the differences in regional averages in quality, productivity, and diversity are declining. Within regions, however, the variance in performance is high, with large gaps between the best and worst plants. Quality performance trends are similar to those for productivity. Much of the quality gap between Japanese companies and their American and European competitors has been closed. However, the variation among plants in each regional group is large. The greatest improvement is shown by European plants and by Ford plants in North America. While this improvement closed much of the quality gap with Japanese competitors, Japanese plants improved in Japan and in North America. The North American transplants have eliminated any gap in quality performance with their sister plants in Japan. As far as talking about the flexibility in manufacturing, the strategic advantages (the ability to assemble multiple product lines in a single plant) have been widely discussed over the past 3 decade. Companies that are able to produce a variety of products in their manufacturing plants have a number of advantages. Such plants are an important resource for a company with a product development strategy of high variety. In addition, flexibility enables plants to respond more effectively to changes in their competitive environment. The manufacturing plants with the highest levels of product variety have typically been those that produce many different models for export— Japanese plants in Japan and European plants. Ford plants in North America have typically been dedicated to one or a few models. The Japanese transplants started their operations in North America with low product variety while they established their production system philosophy and have slowly increased variety over time. The Japanese and U. S. utomotive industries operate differently. Japanese manufacturers typically ask suppliers regardless of location or national origin-to assume more responsibility for engineering design. In many cases, the Japanese automakers do not own patent rights to the designs for the parts they use, so that the parts suppliers must be quite specific. By contrast, American automakers usually provide d etailed designs and ask suppliers to bid on a part. We come here to the most important point in our project; the supply chain policies. The world’s automotive manufacturing sector consists primarily of about 20 very large multinational corporations. The automotive supply sector, however, comprises thousands of firms ranging in size from a few employees to more than 100,000. Drawing conclusions about such a large and diverse sector is much more difficult than for the manufacturing sector. Best practice in automotive supply chain management involves close, trusting relationships with long-standing suppliers that are intimately involved with the development and production of the components and subsystems they provide. In the past five years, Chrysler has aggressively incorporated those findings into its modus operandi, GM has largely rejected that hilosophy, and Ford has settled somewhere in between. On the surface, the advice to improve partnerships along the supply chain, drawn largely from Japanese practices, seems to have significantly helped Ford on its return to growth and profitability. At the same time, Honda insists on exerting extreme price pressure on its suppliers and aggressively negotiating division of the returns to innovations in supplied parts and subsystems. Automotive distribution and retailing were once given little attention because they were viewed as adjunct to the core business of engineering and manufacturing vehicles. However, in the past several decades, the pressures on the industry to make its factories and product development processes more efficient have spilled over into the distribution and retailing (post manufacturing) sectors—cutting profit margins and causing significant restructuring in the 4 distribution and retail industry base. This restructuring, although quite significant, has attracted much less attention than the manufacturing sector’s changes because it involves no dramatic dislocation of people, jobs, or economic base. These downstream segments of the supply chain are experiencing a shift from being capital intensive (focused on inventory investment) and people intensive (sales forces) to being more information intensive (having the right vehicle in the right place at the right time). Due to greater flexibility of labor and capital in the post manufacturing markets, this conversion from physical logistics to information logistics is shifting the power and leverage in the supply chain toward economic agents that are highly entrepreneurial and flexible. These economic forces have reduced the number of dealers in the United States (now approximately 22,000) and are expected to continue doing so. More important than the absolute dealer count is the trend toward segmentation of the many industries that make up distribution. Unlike the small group of relatively tightly organized supply chains, the post manufacturing sector is a much looser collection of organizations that are not so centrally focused around the automaker. The combination of high national productivity and the relative decrease in value of the dollar against the yen and the deutsche mark has made the United States a more attractive manufacturing site for foreign automakers. This development has provided a new source of investment, jobs, and training for Americans. Moreover, the transplant assemblers are significantly influencing the U. S. automotive supply base, both by encouraging traditional Japanese and German suppliers to set up transplant operations and by inciting the traditional U. S. suppliers to become more competitive. These improvements to the supply base, driven in part by the Japanese transplants, in turn benefit the American automobile manufacturing companies. The Japanese-transplant assemblers in North America have continued to expand their production and are now approaching a volume of three million cars and light trucks per year. The transplants represent an enormous positive economic impact for the United States, compared with having that many vehicles imported from Japan, for example. These investments have helped the Japanese companies as well, which would be in far deeper trouble had they not diversified their manufacturing base outside the high-priced labor and parts markets in Japan. The displacement of the automobile manufacturing industries employment and production with transplant production is more difficult to assess. In the main, it has decreased the financial and market dominance of the American auto industry, although none are currently threatened with survival concerns. It has also affected the geography of automotive employment within the United States. The combination of high national productivity and the relative decrease in value of the dollar against the yen and the deutsche mark has made the United States a more attractive 5 manufacturing site for foreign automakers. This development has provided a new source of investment, jobs, and training for Americans. Moreover, the transplant assemblers are significantly influencing the U. S. automotive supply base, both by encouraging traditional Japanese and German suppliers to set up transplant operations and by inciting the traditional U. S. suppliers to become more competitive. Japanese companies have constructed manufacturing facilities in many industries in the United States, including the automobile and electronics industries in recent years. However, it is the automobile parts industry that is currently perceived as being under siege. Nearly 50 Japanese automotive parts suppliers have constructed facilities here since 1979, most of them clustered around new Japanese automobile assembly plants in California, Tennessee, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. Hundreds more suppliers are reportedly planning American plants in the next few years and local governments throughout the United States are competing vigorously for them. Local government officials view the Japanese plants as a major source of investment, employment, and tax revenues for their communities. However, despite the warm welcome given the Japanese parts manufacturers by local communitiesand especially by the unemployed in those communitiesthey are resented by some of their American competitors. A subgroup of American auto parts manufacturers feels it is being discriminated against by U. S. -based Japanese automakers that prefer to purchase some of their parts from Japanese suppliers. In short, the industry subgroup feels it is being discriminated against because it is American, not because it cannot produce auto parts as well as Japanese companies can. In America, Honda introduced just-in-time parts delivery and rolling-model changes, which allows production of the old model right up until production of the new model begins. This approach continues to put customers first. The truth is that the customers will not just drive Hondas – they will drive Honda with their expectations. Another Honda difference is their flexibility. Honda plants have always been able to build more than one model on the same line. Recently Honda implemented an even more flexible manufacturing system that increases the speed and efficiency when introducing new models. Honda’s New Manufacturing System does this by standardizing production capabilities among its plants worldwide. This makes the shift within a plant to new model production less complex and more cost efficient.

The Tiwanaku

The Tiwanaku and sacred public areas in the capital. Significantly, there were distinctly secular structures built at the top of the pyramid that Kolata interprets as domestic residences of an elite (117). Substantial quantities of domestic refuse were found in middens associated with these rectangular structures, which were built with finely cut stones and faced inward toward a patio area in a manner not unlike that of the much smaller and earlier buildings at Chiripa. Furthermore, the Akapana is interpreted as an artificial sacred mountain by Kolata (90). In conclusion, Kolata notes that there was a very dense population outsidee Tiwanaku's architectural core. Janusek's excavation, onehalf kilometer east of the architectural core in the area called AKE2, indicated dense residential structures that dated to his late Tiwanaku IV and Tiwanaku V (Kolata 78). These structures were on top of sterile, undisturbed strata, indicating that the first expansion of an urban nature in this area occurred in the Tiwanaku IV period, after Tiwanaku III or Qeya, and that the site was not occupied during the Upper Formative. However, the Tiwanaku IVV occupation was substantial. Overall, it seems that ethnohistorical,archaeological evidence is suggested t be the most reliable by Kolata.

Negotiation Skills for Managers Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Negotiation Skills for Managers - Research Paper Example 2006, p.3). For example, a sales manager and his clients may have contrasting interests. Clients always like to get the job done as cheaply as possible whereas the manager would like to get that job for a price as higher as possible. A compromise is necessary between the manager and his client in order to protect mutual interests as much as possible and for that purpose negotiation is a must. Since sales is a profession in which negotiation takes place quiet frequently, I decided to interview a car salesman of a Toyota dealership in order to get more awareness about various aspects of business negotiations. This paper is written based on the interview I conducted with that Toyota car salesman. My own perspectives of negotiation In my opinion, various types of negotiations occur every day in our life. However, in business world, negotiation occurs between an organization and its clients, organization and its employees, organization and its suppliers, organization and communities in wh ich it operates. However, negotiations between the sellers and buyers are more common in the business world. The seller wants to sell his product for maximum prices whereas the buyer would like to purchase things for minimum prices. Since these two motives are traveling in opposite directions, negotiation is the only way to settle the issues between the sellers and buyers. In short, better deal is the major motive behind every business negotiation. It is not necessary that all negotiation process may end up in victories or failures. In certain cases, both the parties may sacrifice many of their interests to get the work done. Characteristics of business negotiations As per the opinions of the car salesman I interviewed, negotiations can be classified into two different groups; 1) Negotiations that end up in the victory of one party and the failure of the other party 2) Negotiations that end up in victory to both the parties. He has labeled these negotiations as distributive (win-los e) and integrative (win-win). He has pointed out that a win-win or integrative negotiation is always desirable as both the parties may get some benefits out of the negotiation process. Distributive or win-lose negotiations may end up in the victory of only one party at the expense of the other. I asked him about the type of negotiation usually he undertakes and the reasons for that. He has told me that majority of the times he will go for integrative negotiations and only at the unavoidable circumstances; he will go for the distributive type of bargaining. In his opinion, business concepts are changing rapidly. Business management principles in the past and at present are entirely different. Earlier, sales people concentrated more on selling the goods at any cost. They used all positive and negative tactics to sell the product in the past. In other words, the intentions of a salesman in the past were to conduct only distributive negotiations in which the ultimate winner would be the salesman. As a result of such distributive negotiations, many companies lost their customer base as cheated customers or the losing customers started to look for other options. He has mentioned that as per the modern business principles, retaining of the customers is as important as attracting a new customer and therefore

How to successfully implement technological change using Essay

How to successfully implement technological change using sociotechnical principles lessons from case studies - Essay Example The whole electric-power industry felt the consequences" (Strategos, 2008). The problems that occurred at Babcock and Wilcox were attributed to quite a few different factors, namely technological difficulties. The company had built a plant at Mt. Vernon on the Ohio River and had pre-sold an entire year of pressure vessels. Before long, they noticed that every single one of the pressure vessels they were manufacturing was behind schedule (Strategos, 2008). Other problems abounded at the Mt. Vernon plant. Labor shortages, malfunctioning machines, rigid standards, and added expenses plagued the company, causing unprecedented delays to take place. Critics of the company's management team also say that corporate arrogance played a role, as had the choice for the location of the plant in the first place (in an area where labor was short and people were very difficult to train). A lot of money had to be spent in vain training workers that only 33% stayed behind after training to actually work for the company. In addition to being short on labor, the company was also short on skilled labor. The company also had equipment problems. These led to even further delays in getting the pressure vessels out (Strategos, 2008). Its customers were so frustrated by the delays that they began to take partially-manufactured units out of the Mt. Vernon plant and have the company's competitors finish them. The costs associated with these customers waiting any longer were just too high (Strategos, 2008). Kaizen Event for NC Machining According to the case study for this particular machining company "A Kaizen Event helped a jobbing-type machine shop implement workcells and set the stage for dramatic improvements in inventory, delivery, productivity, and quality." In this particular case, the results were that, "In the three months after cell startup, the pump assembly line was never once stopped or inconvenienced by a parts shortage from this cell. WIP inventory went from three months to three days. Productivity improved by about 50%. Capacity was released for increased production demand. Quality improved" (Strategos, 2008). Mechanical Control Cables This case study tells about an older organization that had grown to be very successful, but as has often been the case, met up with technological times and hit a roadblock. Their traditional way of doing things had led to too much overhead. After 2-3 consultants spent a great deal of time at the company and "taught, learned, experimented, and cajoled" (Strategos, 2008). According to the case study for this particular company, "In the end, five workcells were in place and a macro layout showed the locations of remaining cells. Training was well along and teams were developing. Supervisors were learning to deal with the cell environment. Mechtrol carried on this work in the years that followed" (Strategos, 2008). Compare & Contrast The last two cases are similar in structure, but are completely different from the first case. In the first case, major problems are causing unforgivable delays that rocked an entire industry. In the second and third cases, a few relatively minor adjustments in cell layout needed to be made in order to maximize speed, efficiency, productivity, and overall profitability. The decisions were also better thought out in the second and third cases, and the management teams took things impressively slower

Factors change Essay Example for Free

Factors change Essay After I have recorded all the results and written into tables, I used the data to make graphs, which are voltage against current. When I finished marking all the points on to the graphs, I put a line of best fit through. There are five graphs in total, each represents a thickness, on a graph there are five lines of best fits, and each represents a length of a thickness. Then I pick a point on the lines of best fits and calculate the gradient (resistance) by dividing the point on y-axis (voltage) by the point on the x-axis (current) as the ohms law states that V=IR. Finally, I have to draw five graphs to show the relations between length (on the x-axis) and resistance (on the y-axis). Also, I have to draw another graph to show the relations between thickness (on the x-axis) and resistance (on the y-axis). Evaluating Although the whole experiment has been going very well, but the results seems to show some bias or errors as in one or two of the graphs, the pattern is quite strange because some of the gradient (resistance) is not proportional to the lengths. Overall, the experiment can be said as a success. The aim of this experiment is to measure how the resistance change as the factors change. There are so many variables-temperature of surroundings, length, thickness, material, temperature of the wire, surface area, magnetic properties, coated or not and purity-that can be chosen to measure in this experiment. But in this experiment I am only going to measure two of them, which are length and thickness because these two are the easiest to measure and show the effects on the resistance. Prediction: The result should be showing that the resistance increase as the length or thickness increase. This happens because when length or thickness increases, the current will decrease. As the voltage wont change, if the current decreases, then the resistance will increase. Method: In the experiment I will need to use apparatus listed below.

Antigone :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  ee cummings once said, â€Å"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.† That quotation is exemplified in many works of literature, but the opposite is too. No matter what people try to be or not to be, they don’t always succeed. For example, in the play, Antigone, by Sophocles, the character, Antigone displays the idea of being her own person, but Creon displays the opposite of that.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the prologue, Antigone tells Ismene that she will do whatever she wants pertaining to their brother, whether or not Ismene agrees and wants to do the same. Antigone tells Ismene, â€Å"If that is what you think, I should not want you, even if you asked to come. You have made your choice, you can be what you want to be.† Antigone displays ee cummings’ thought. The gods want her to think and act a certain way  their laws  but she has her own belief that her brother, Polyneices, should be buried and his spirit should have the proper life, instead of being punished. Even if he was brave, he should be punished. But Antigone doesn’t believe in that. No matter what the consequences, she fights it and does what she thinks is right.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Creon, the king of Thebes, exhibits cummings’ idea. Kings are always supposed to be these big, mighty, terrors that triumph over all and tell their kingdom what to do. Even if Creon did not want to commit someone to demise, he would, because that’s what he’s â€Å"supposed† to do. Creon may be trying to stray from being everyone else, and be his own person, but he’s not succeeding. He is what everyone else wants him to be: a controller over everyone. Creon believes that, â€Å"this is [his] command, and you can see the wisdom behind it. As long as [he is] King, no traitor is going to be honored with the loyal man. But whoever shows by word and deed that he is on the side of the State, --he shall his [Creon’s] respect while he is living, and [his] reverence when he is dead (Scene 1, line 38).† But he doesn’t follow through on that statement. If Creon were to commit someone to his death, he would not give him r espect when he’s dead.