Common Inventory System Problems & Solution Essay Example for Free

Common Inventory System Problems Solution Essay Symptoms: Preoccupation with the forecast within the execution time frame. Typically, companies begin altering their forecast management processes when addressing supply chain performance. But this is unwise without understanding the nature of your demand and the root causes of forecast errors. When forecast accuracy is overemphasized, fill rates and inventory turns don’t improve, even when forecast accuracy does. No measure of customer service or inventory turns. Customers must be satisfied on an ongoing basis for a company to achieve long-term sustainability. Yet, inventory managers often have no idea how well customers’ needs are being met. Similarly, without knowing how quickly inventory moves through the value-creation-and-delivery system, a company won’t be able to manage inventory levels. Daily planning is based on a back order report. This is an entirely reactive model. Today’s fast-paced marketplace requires proactive inventory planning to meet current demand. Customers will switch to a competitor if their needs are consistently unmet in the time frame they dictate. Solutions: Mandatory tracking of fill rate and inventory turns for all product lines. Product managers should know these measures at all times. Fill rate should be measured daily, while inventory-turn measures will vary based on sales and production cycles. The important thing is that managers are both tracking and working to improve these rates. Develop realistic forecast-error measures. Developing realistic measures for how much forecast error you can tolerate without a SKU stock-out is essential. Typically, companies estimate plus or minus 10 for this measure, which equals about two days worth of inventory-a miniscule amount considering that companies often have weeks or months worth of inventory. Effective forecast management and inventory planning require accurate data, so accurate forecast error measures are a must. Mistake No. 2: Having unqualified employees manage inventory Symptoms: A sentiment that â€Å"our business is different because (fill in the blank).† Every company has inventory planning challenges, such as variable demand. No business is so different that it would not benefit from strategic  inventory management. Decentralized inventory management. If warehouse managers, office clerks, and other employees without specific inventory-management training are making inventory-management decisions, then it is certain that wasteful inventory is piling up throughout the system. Usually, this model reflects a company with no clear goals or strategy for inventory planning. Lack of formal training program or professional peer interaction. Inventory management is a professional skill that requires upfront and ongoing education. Emphasizing â€Å"buying† over planning. Buyers make purchases, but planners make strategic decisions to meet goals. Thinking of inventory planning from a purely â€Å"buying† point of view means opportunities for improvement and financial benefits will be overlooked—daily. Solutions: Recognize that inventory management requires professional job skills, and hire and train accordingly. Just as a company with hundreds of thousands of free dollars on its balance sheet would hire professional investment advisers, a company with hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory should have professional inventory managers. Assign accountability for inventory management. Often, companies can’t answer the question, â€Å"Who is in charge of making sure inventory levels support strategic goals?† If no one is, then these inventory planning goals will never be met. TOP 5 SOLUTIONS: 1. Use reorder points on inventory items to keep purchasing streamlined and inventory manageable. Reorder points (otherwise known as min. and max. levels) are the best method for making sure you have the right amount of inventory in your warehouse at all times. If you have too little inventory you could lose out on sales, but if you have too much your cash is tied up in inventory that will not be sold. One of the biggest problems many companies have is managing their cash. A quick way to solve that from an inventory standpoint is by making sure you have set the appropriate reorder points for your business. 2. Spend money on specialized training for mission-critical software. Companies with a lot of inventory spend thousands of dollars on software they need in order to manage and track their items as  they move all over the world. This software manages millions of dollars’ worth of assets. After spending so much money on software, some companies don’t want to spend a f ew thousand dollars extra to buy the specialized training they need to implement the software. This is a big mistake because this software won’t do you any good if you don’t spend a little bit more to learn how to use it. If you try to learn your software on your own you may suffer for months before you learn the basics of how it works. 3. Rearrange the warehouse to set up for picking efficiencies. Sometimes trainers see mistakes that are so obvious you would think they’d be corrected immediately, but warehouse managers may be too distracted to notice them. We often see 100,000-square-foot warehouses that are organized inefficiently. These companies could save themselves large sums of money by making a few changes to where they place their inventory. The items that you sell the most or send out the most should be right next to the shipping dock. This keeps your employees from having to walk all the way across the warehouse to pick them up every time you are going to send them out. As companies grow, sometimes they just randomly put things where there is sp ace. This works for a little while, but as you grow you need to think about efficiency because the minutes that your employees spend driving around the forklift cost you money. 4. Take time to get to know your technology so that you can use all the functionality. Rarely will a company use all of the functionality their software provides. Most of the time there is more that the software can do for you that you haven’t explored. Software companies always hear from their customers about which features they want added to the software when a lot of the time the features are already there. The more features that you use in the software the more effective you can be in managing your inventory. You should either assign someone within the company to learn the software functionality or pay someone to come in and teach it to you. 5. Stop doing yearly physical inventories and move to a more regular, smaller cycle counting and reconciling routine. Businesses used to shut down for a day to a week each year to go into their warehouse and physically count everything to make sure that it matched the information in their software. This practice is mostly outdated because of the amount of time and money it takes. Doing these checks in smaller, more regular cycles keeps a company from having to shut down. We recommend picking one section each day to check  your product levels against the information from your inventory software.

How typical is England to Her Sons Essay Example for Free

How typical is England to Her Sons Essay How typical is England to Her Sons of the poems in this section of the anthology. Happy is England in the brave that die. This is a line from Happy is England now. In my opinion it sums up the section as a whole because it is stating that the people of England wanted the soldiers to fight and they respect the sacrifices the men have made. The whole section revolves about the acknowledgment of the deaths of the soldiers and also the acceptance of it. Personification is used in England to her Sons and Happy is England Now about England itself. It conjures u a motherly and maternal image of the Motherland towards the soldiers going out to fight. Moreover, it unites England and makes it seem everyone had a positive attitude towards the war when it is mentioned that happy is England now as never yet, which implies that the whole of England is proud and glad that the soldiers are going to war. Happy is England Now projects a very strong and patriotic message of making sacrifices and protecting this picturesque England with her hills, rivers and her chafing sea. It uses natural imagery to stir up a desire to protect the land where these soldiers were born and raised. Moreover, a sense of experiencing this Happy England caused by the sacrifice of war, is created by the intensified senses created in the last stanza where birds sing the sweeter in our English ears and nobleness that shines the purer in their English hearts. It would have created a longing for people to be part of this wonderful land, and therefore they would have wanted to have protected it. Symbolism also has a large presence in these poems and it gives the poems depth and more complexity. England to her Sons uses symbolism to create a sense of ownership of the soldiers, Sons of mine I hear you thrilling and it is also implied that she bore the children which the Motherland then sends to war. In Fourth of August, the symbolism is used to make the soldiers seem very young and naive, Spirit of England, ardent eyed which makes the soldiers seem very keen and apprehensive, but also innocent and defenceless. Finally, symbolism is used to create a religious link between the War and the destroying dragon which Saint George, who represents England and her Soldiers, slays to protect his people. The soldiers in this section are made heroes for being martyrs. This is shown especially in Fourth of August on the last two lines, We step from the days of sour division into the grandeur of our fate, which shows that the soldiers and people believed that it was a good thing to die for ones country. This is also emphasised again in England to her Sons, where it creates a great sense for the soldiers and England, as they accept the death of their sons, save a little space to weep. And the worst friend and enemy is but Death, is a reference to Peace, and it just emphasises that even though Death reaps them of their lives, it also enables them to come closer with their Maker, God. Overall, England to her Sons represent this section of the anthology very well, because it includes everything that this section is trying to convey to the reader. It shows the sacrifice of England and the soldiers who give their life, and it projects the religious message of God, who will send them to heaven for their good deeds. Moreover it glorifies death by using euphemism, And if He in wisdom giveth Unto His beloved sleep, to acquire an acceptance of the soldiers. Lastly, it also shows the undoubting faith that the people of England had at that time, as they all believed that God would protect them and guide them to winning the War.

The Strategic Priorities Of Glaxosmithkline Plc Economics Essay

The Strategic Priorities Of Glaxosmithkline Plc Economics Essay Part I Pharmaceutical Business Model The business model of companies in pharmaceutical industry for almost two decades is blockbuster model. The blockbusters (drugs that have sales over $ 1 billion per year) have turned out to be a significant factor that driven the pharmaceutical industry from 1990s. There were 65 blockbusters in 2002 increased from only 7 blockbusters in 1990 (Deutsche Bank, 2003 cited in Froud et al, 2006: 169) but, by 2006, the number was raised to 114 (La Merie Business Intelligence, 2007). Exhibit 1 shown that the sales of top ten blockbuster companies from blockbuster drugs alone were accounted larger than one-fourth of world pharmaceutical market in 2006. This blockbuster model was adopted in order to maximize revenue because it was seemed to be possible approach to satisfy high growth expectation of financial community (Business Insight 2003: 10). To conclude, the blockbuster business model was underpinned big pharmaceutical companies success over the past decade. This model is embedded in phar maceutical industry. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 1 Top 10 Blockbuster companies, 2006 Company Sales of Blockbuster US$ billion Number of Blockbuster As % of World Pharmaceutical Market Pfizer 28.8 9 4.48 GlaxoSmithKline 24.3 12 3.78 AstraZeneca 21.1 11 3.28 Sanofi-Aventis 19.9 9 3.09 Johnson Johnson 17.5 8 2.72 Roche 16.1 7 2.50 Amgen 13.4 5 2.08 Merck Co. 12.7 4 1.98 Wyeth 10.0 5 1.56 Eli Lilly 9.4 5 1.46 Total 173.2 75 26.94 Source: La Merie Business Intelligence, 2007 Challenges of Big Pharmaceutical model To begin with, the big pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer and GSK are over-reliance on the sales of blockbuster drugs. In other words, the companies are generated their main revenue from small number of drugs from their product lines. For example, in 2006, Pfizer had 9 blockbuster drugs which generated almost 60 % of total sales. GSK had 12 blockbuster drugs that contributed 56 % of total sales. Another example, in 2007, we can see that 12 blockbuster drugs of GSK accounted for almost 60 percent of companys total drug sales (see Exhibit 2). Therefore, companies are exposed to high insecurity if they cannot find replacement of products which have equivalent financial size. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 2 GSKs contribution of blockbuster to total drugs sales, 2007 Products Sales US$ million As % of total drugs sales Seretide/Advair 7,001 18.26 Flixotide/Flovent 1,243 3.24 Valtrex 1,869 4.87 Lamictal 2,195 5.72 Imigran/Imitrex 1,371 3.57 Seroxat/Paxil 1,107 2.89 Wellbutrin 1,059 2.76 Coreg 1,175 3.06 Avandia products 2,439 6.36 Augmentin 1,061 2.77 Hepatitis 1,059 2.76 Infanrix/Pediarix 1,087 2.83 Total 22,663 59.1 Source: Company annual report, 2008 Next, the less productive of RD pipeline and increasing cost of RD. There is a downward trend of the number of New Molecular Entities (NMEs) and Biologics License Applications (BLAs). In 1996, there are almost 40 approvals of NMEs and BLAs but, by 2007, the figure was decreased to 18 (Riley 2008). In addition, the cost to develop a drug is ten-fold increase from $138 million in 1975 to $ 1.318 billion in 2006 (PhRMA 2009) (see Exhibit 3). Hence, from the opposite direction of RD cost and RD productivity, we can conclude that the overall efficiency of RD in industry is lower than in the past. Finally, the expiry of patent and the impact of generics. For example, the best selling drug of GSK Seretide/Advair which generated US$ 7,653 million or 17 % of total turnover in 2008 will be expired in 2010 in the US and in 2013 in the EU. In this case, there is a possibility that GSKs turnover might drop sharply after the expiry of Seretide if the company cannot develop product or new source of income to make up for the loss of Seretide/Advair sales. In addition, the increasing in number of patent expiries of blockbusters has a positive impact to the growth in generic market. As exhibit 4 shows, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the global generic market was 16.4% during 2004 to 2007. In contrast, growth rate of overall pharmaceutical industry was at a CAGR of 8.3% in the same span. Another factor driven the growth of generic drugs is the greater attentiveness of payors as a result of current economic recession such as tightened healthcare budget of governments or private p ayors. It is likely that the price of drugs will be pushed down by the greater bargaining power. For instance, Japan had cut the price of drugs on the National Health Insurance (NHI) in 2008 by average 5.2% (Business Insight 2008). All in all, economic and stakeholders in the demanding side of the industry are now shaping the new form of the pharmaceutical market. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 3 Cost of developing new drug, 1975 2006 Source: PhRMA, 2009 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 4 Global Generics Market, 2004 2007 Source: Business Insight, 2008 The Strategic priorities of GlaxoSmithKline PLC In 2008, Andrew Witty was selected to be a CEO of GSK. After two months of being a CEO, he announced new strategy to steer GSK in global pharmaceutical market. There are three new strategic priorities; grow a diversified global business, deliver more products of value and simplify the operating model. This section will discuss how these new strategic a response to problem pharmaceutical business model problem. Grow a Diversified Global Business In this strategic, the company is trying to lessen its risk by widening and balancing its products across all geographic boundaries. In other words, company tries to reduce reliance on blockbuster drugs for companys growth as Witty said The biggest thing Im trying to change is to go from saying its okay to have a blockbuster once every five years to a situation where we are delivering several new products every year (Goodman 2008). As a recession in the USA, it had a huge impact in the US sales which is a main market for company that accounted for 40% of total revenue in 2008. The sales in the US decreased by 4.2% in 2008 compare to 2007 while Europe market and rest of the world market sales were increased by 16.3% and 16.6% respectively (GlaxoSmithKline 2009). Therefore, at this moment, the US market is saturated; company is now focusing on the market which has high growth such as Africa, China and India but also not ignore the US market. It shows that company is adapted to the curr ent market situation. There are many actions that have been taken by the company that response to the business model problems. First, company is focusing on vaccine, biopharma and consumer healthcare which have high potential growth which in turn might create revenue to make up the loss of sales from expired patent blockbusters. Second, fulfill the potential of emerging markets and Japan market. Japan, alone, accounted for 10% of global pharmaceutical market (Medicines Australia 2009) which is the second largest from the US. It is a big market and a high growth market with market value of US$ 68.6 billion in 2008 and sales growth of 17.2% over 2007 (Business Insight 2009). In emerging markets, particularly, the seven pharmerging market including China, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, India, Turkey and Russia seem to be the major driven of growth in the global pharmaceutical industry (see Exhibit 5). Better approach to generic is driven this growth. It is likely that GSK is now more con centrated on generic drugs, for example, company acquired branded generics from both Bristol-Myers Squibb and UCB as well as formed alliance with South Africas Aspen Pharmacare and Dr Reddys of India (Hirsler, 2009). To conclude, this strategic priority seems to be positive reaction of the company regarding the over-reliance on blockbusters, market decline in the US and the impact of generics as Johnson et al. (2008) suggested that diversification is suitable when current markets saturated while need for more rapid growth. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 5 Sales in 7MM and pharmerging markets ($m), 2003 2007 Markets 2007 CAGR 2003-07 7MM 466,145 5.62% Pharmerging markets 58,652 15.79% 7MM = USA, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, UK Pharmerging markets = China, Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, India, Turkey and Russia Source: Riley, 2008 Deliver More Products of Value GSK is lack of therapy area diversification and technology concentration. We can see that there are only 6% of biopharma in GSKs pipeline. Moreover, oncology area represented only 1% of GSKs Sales in 2007 while this area had global market growth of 3%. In order to maintain growth in the long term, GSK need to adjust its RD issues (Riley 2008). Therefore, company announced plan as follow. First, company will focused on eight areas of therapy. Second, externalize RD as its take a long time to create and develop by in-house. Third, GSK will create new biopharma and oncology RD unit in China that have lower cost than established in developed countries which in turn help company to control RD budget. Finally, divided RD units into small group and financed dependent upon its performance which in turn will stimulate innovation. To conclude, GSK redefined its RD pipeline and structure is reacted directly to the problems of RD as mentioned previously as well as problem of over-reliance on blo ckbusters. Simplify the Operating Model GSK is trying to reduce cost in running business. First, develop commercial model; for example, integrate the back office finance system into one system across organization. Second, reduce cost in manufacturing. Company has a plan to cut two-third waste in production by 2015 (Jack, 2009a). As a result, company will be able to redeploy the money from cost reduction into investment. Overall, this strategy is not related directly to the problems of business model, however, the amount of reduction in working capital can be put to RD or other investments which might turn to be in form of company growth (Bender and Ward 2009). In conclusion, it is obvious that new strategy of Andrew Witty is reflected directly to the problems of business model which are heavily reliant on blockbusters, RD problem and impact of generic drugs. However, company is likely to put their focus on small molecules which is the core heritage of the company and the existing products as well as diversify its portfolios and adapted itself into recent market environment. Part II Will new strategy succeed? The new strategy of GSK is likely to lead the company to succeed in the future as it is reflected straightforwardly to the problems of business model. Additionally, it is not simple to point out or evaluate the firms performance as Rosenzweig (2007) argued that the success or performance is not totally forced by internal factors; in contrast, it is relative to a company itself and environment as a whole. Therefore, successful of strategy in this paper will be defined as if company can increase its shareholder values in the long term. In addition, how will company succeed will evaluate by if the new strategy will increase value of its shareholder. Rappaport (1998) pointed out that shareholder value can be driven by seven factors; raise sales growth, boost operating profit margin, lessen cash tax rate, reduce incremental investment in capital spending, reduce investment in working capital, increase time period of competitive advantage, and reduce cost of capital. Regarding companys diversified global business strategy; there are many significant improvements as a result of applying this strategy. First, there is sales growth compared with quarter in previous year in every quarter from third quarter of 2008, after announcement of new strategy, in British pound term. Furthermore, GSK had an increasing in third quarter 2009 of sales 19% in Japan, 25% in emerging market, and 8% in consumer products (Jack, 2009b). In first quarter of 2009, company experienced decline in US market by 22% company Overall, this strategy reflects directly with sales volume which leads to growth in sales. Therefore, company increases its shareholder value as it can raise its sales growth. Deliver more products of value; from this strategy, company should be able to create more revenue from its value added activities. From the company financial data comparing nine month of 2008 and 2009, we can see that GSK had an increasing in gross profit and operating profit 16% and 8% respectively (see Exhibit 6). However, gross margin and operating margin were decreased slightly by 0.4% and 2.39% to 74.05% and 29.48% respectively. Therefore, company unable to raise its shareholder value by this strategy as it was failed to increase operating margin. Moreover, company has less efficiency as its return on capital employed (ROCE) was dropped (see Exhibit 6 and 7) from 22.18% in three quarter of 2008 to 19.71% in three quarter of 2009. There is a probability that company is unable to deliver more values from money that put it investment. However, value added activities of this industry is more likely as RD process. It takes long time to get outcome from money that invested today. For example, to evaluate the RD performance, we should not consider only the approval of new drugs only, as it takes 10 15 years to develop a new drug which mentioned in part I but also we need to take in account the drug development in the early phase, this drugs which are in process cannot generate profit for company today. Overall, we can see that in this strategy. The company is unable to enhance in shareholder value as it cannot increase it operating margin. This is mean that at this period of time a company is inefficiency to control their selling, administration and RD expense. The third strategy, simplify the operating model. There is one mission in this strategy that related directly to increase shareholder value which is reducing working capital. As in September 2008, company was able to reduce its working capital by 500 Million GBP, therefore, shareholder value is increasing as money from working capital can be return to shareholder in form of dividend or can reinvest in company at low cost of capital. This strategy should able a company to lower cost of operation, in contrast, exhibit 6 shows that selling and administration expense was increasing by 24% while turnover increased only 16%. It seems that company cannot succeed its goal by this strategy. If we take a look at stock price of company, we can see that price is hit the highest in 52 weeks in December 2009 (see exhibit 8). This can indicate that market gains confidence about the company performance. However, P/E ratio 13.79% of the company as 14 December 2009 is still lower than competitors; Pfizer at 15.19% and Novartis at 16.1%. This can be interpreted that price low of GSK is low than competitors. All in all, despite the confidence of the market about GSK, in my opinion, up to the present moment the new strategy is not successful in term of maximizing its shareholder value. As we can see from the numbers such as ROCE and operating margin that company cannot build up or even maintain these ratios. However, it needs to be seen it long run whether strategy will succeed since only internal factors cannot make company to succeed. (2420 Words) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 6 GSK; Nine Month ended Income Statement, 2008 and 2009 Source: GSK Press Release, 28 October 2009 Available at : www.gsk.com [accessed 13 December 2009] à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 7 GSK; Nine Month ended Balance Sheet, 2008 and 2009 Source: GSK Press Release, 28 October 2009 Available at : www.gsk.com [accessed 13 December 2009] à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ Exhibit 8 Stock Price of GSK, London Stock Exchange, 2years ended 14 December 2009 Source: http://uk.finance.yahoo.com

The Benefits of Sin Revealed in Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Lette

The Benefits of Sin Revealed in The Scarlet Letter      Ã‚  Ã‚   According to Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, each of us is born with "original sin" we have inherited from the misdeeds of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. As Eve bit hungrily into the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, starving for wisdom, little did she know that the entire human race would thereafter be tainted by her "sin." Hawthorne and many others believe that ever since, human beings have been inclined to evil, more likely to disobey than to act in a godly manner. This is a faithless, cynical view of humanity, but one perhaps justified by the actions of Hester Prynne and the Reverend Dimmesdale. Sin seems to be an inevitable factor in their lives; though they are good people, their sin boils up and nearly destroys them. Do they make a conscious choice to sin? Or does their sin simply take control, as it is bound to do in all human beings? Perhaps this leads to a greater question of fate and free will, but in the end, the one thing they can really chan ge in their lives is the way they deal with sin, how they attempt to atone for it - and whether they view the affair they had as sinful in the first place.    Puritan society in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a system based on religion. The Bible and the law were intertwined and could not be separated, not even in the minds of the people. Therefore it was difficult to argue that there were any laws at all that were worth having, if they were not spelled out explicitly in the Bible. Hester had committed adultery and given birth to a bastard child, and there it was, in the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not commit adultery. And so she was punished. The Puritans nodded and were satisfied, comfortabl... ...., C.E. Frazer, ed. The Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal 1975. Englewood: Indian Head, 1975. Coxe, Rev. Arthur Cleveland. "The Writings of Hawthorne." Church Review 3 (1851): 489-511. Gartner, Matthew. "The Scarlet Letter and the Book of Esther: Scriptural Letter and Narrative Life." Studies in American Fiction (1995): 131-144. Hawthorne, J. (1886, April). "The Scarlet Letter." The Atlantic Monthly [On-line], pp. 1-20. Available: http://wwww.theatlantic.com/unbound/classrev/scarlet.html Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: St. Martins, 1991. Loring, G. B. (1850). "The Scarlet Letter and Transcendentalism." Massachusetts Quarterly Review [On-line], pp. 1-6. Available: http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/loring.html Scharnhorst, Gary. The Critical Response to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. New York: Greenwood, 1992.   

Parental Involvement in Childs Education :: Parent Involvement in Education, Teaching

Parental involvement promotes the social growth of a child. Children whose parents are involved in their education have many advantages. They have better grades, test scores, long-term academic achievement, attitudes and behavior than those with disinterested mothers and fathers (Gestwicki, 2001). Parents becoming involved in their child's schooling creates extra sources of social constraint to influence the child's behavior (McNeal, 2001). For example, parents talking to their children and becoming involved in the school conveys a message to the child of education being important. Parents should be talking with your children's teacher and letting her know about your family. The more she knows about your child, the better she will be able to connect with your child. Telling your child's hobbies, pets, as well as learning difficulties and strengths will provide for a more intimate school year (Spencer, 2001). One of the ways in which parents play a critical role in their children?s social development is by encouraging their interactions with other youth (Updegraff, 2001). If children are able to work in group settings, this will not only help the child get along with other students, but it will also lessen the amount of disruptions in class thereby making it easier for the teacher to teach (Barbour, 1997). Parents need to stress the importance of little things your child can do to smooth the teacher?s day and help himself learn, such as listening when classmates answer questions, writing his name on assignments, and keeping his desk and work area tidy (Spencer, 2001). Parents can help your children avoid interrupting. Teachers love enthusiasm but yelling out too often will cause unneeded disruptions. Explain the good times to speak, such a s when the teacher is inviting questions and the not so good times, such as when the teacher is talking to another student or giving directions (Spencer, 2001). Practicing these classroom manners will help with less disruptions and a better teaching and learning environment. Parental involvement promotes emotional growth of a child. The attachment between a child and parent is a long-lasting, emotional, learned response. It is the attachment in a parent and child relationship that forms the basis for a child to trust or not to trust their environment (Gestwicki, 2000). This proper attachment is essential for a child to trust other adults, such as their teachers and also to trust other students and make friends.

Gender Bias in the courtroom Essay examples -- essays research papers

Although there have been many changes in our society concerning discrimination against one’s gender, there is still one area that has yet to change. If we take a man and a woman convicted of the same crime, it is very likely that the man will receive a more callous sentence. Since the beginning of the colonial era, 20,000 people have been lawfully executed in America, but only 400 of them have been women, including 27 who were found guilty of witchcraft. In the 23 years since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment, 5,569 total death sentences have been given out by courts, 112 to women. Of these 112, only one has been executed, compared with 301 men. Leigh Beinen, a Northwestern University law professor who studies the gender bias in capital cases nationwide, thinks the reason so few women face execution has to do with the symbolism that's central to the death penalty. She said, â€Å"Capital punishment is about portraying people as devils, but women are usually seen as less threatening." In 1977, Guinevere Garcia murdered her daughter, and later received a 10-year sentence for the killing. Four months after her release, she killed her husband during a robbery attempt. This time, the court imposed the death penalty. Garcia had refused to appeal her sentence, and opposed efforts to save her. Death penalty opponents turned to Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar who as a state legislator, voted to restore the death penalty. The facts of the case sway...

Frank Lloyd Wright Essay

As an architect, Frank Lloyd Wright pushed the American boundaries of art, and for over seventy years he envisioned and physically brought to the world his vision of space, buildings, and a slight avant-guard construction in architecture. Wright, as an architect in the late 19th and early 20th century became synonymous with Prairie style houses as well as organic architecture. In the following essay his exploits in the endeavor of architecture, as well as his career from early in his life to his later life will be examined. â€Å"Frank Lloyd Wright introduced the word ‘organic’ into his philosophy of architecture as early as 1908. It was an extension of the teachings of his mentor Louis Sullivan whose slogan â€Å"form follows function† became the mantra of modern architecture. Wright changed this phrase to â€Å"form and function are one,† using nature as the best example of this integration. † (Elman). It is with great accolades that Wright is thought of as one of America’s best architects, and with innovative style, his uncompromising nature as an artist, and his unyielding artistic view Wright is still considered to be ahead of his time (Ken Burns). Wright studied at the University of Wisconsin at Madison but soon learned he had a great passion for architecture and so moved to Chicago. In Chicago he teamed up with architect J. L. Silsbee. After this apprenticeship, Wright moved on to the firm Sullivan and Adler. It is with Louis Sullivan that Wright began to establish himself as an architect, as Westcott House states, â€Å"As an apprentice to Louis Sullivan, Wright shared Sullivan’s desire to create uniquely American architecture and to rebound from the chaotic restlessness in American architecture of the late 1800s. † Although this conglomeration was beneficial for Wright, he eventually discovered that he was more interested in residential architecture, and broke with the firm in 1893 to begin his own business Oak Park Studio in Oak Park Illinois. (Westcott). Although the tutelage that Sullivan offered to Wright was slightly traditional in scope, Wright managed to extrapolate from Sullivan and Adler the beginnings of his own ideas of space and architecture. In the architectural world, buildings were still being built as traditional and classical, along the lines of Greek facades, and clean, straight lines; mostly boxed shaped and unimaginative (Library). In this awkward and banal stage of architecture, Wright turned his attention to the Far East, for he found no muse with the Occident. It was with Japanese style and tradition that Wright created the Winslow House (1939), as Westcott states, â€Å"From Japan, he borrowed the concept of the tokonama, a permanent element in the home and the focus of contemplation and ceremony. What is tokonama in Wright’s work? The hearth. The hearth is often the vertical axis from which the horizontal floors radiate. † Frank Lloyd Wright’s early style was not yet as progressive as his later works such as the Guggenheim. In 1909 Wright traveled to Europe. It was in Europe that Wright became more independent with his ideas of architecture. While most of the architectural world was focusing on the denial of the machine and technology, Wright was fully embracing the concept as Blake writes, †¦between 1889, when Wright built the first section of his house in Oak Park, and 1909, twenty years later, when his first two most beautiful Prairie houses – the one for Avery Coonley and Frederick C. Robie, respectively-were completed, Wright had actually built something like 140 houses and other structures! In addition, he had completed nearly fifty project for various clients, and many of these were widely published and exhibited. Indeed, Wright’s work took up an increasing share of the annual exhibitions at the Chicago Architectural Club from 1894 onward†¦unlike the latter-day functionalists, Wright never believed that the machine look was an essential result of machine fabrication. ‘This plain duty (of dominating the machine) is relentlessly marked out for the artist in this, the Machine Age. ’ (Blake, 315). Contemporary America was embellished with style works involved purely in height and construction materials, Wright was indulging his artistry in a completely different light. Although Wright was a great experimentalist, he also delved into the idea of space, and how space functions. Even in his early career, in works such as FLLW Home and Studio and Unity Chapel (Heinz), that expressed his Shingle Style, Wright was still very much obsessed with how space can be manipulated by the materials, or lack of materials around it, as Scully writes, Through all these experiments in spatial continuity and abstract control Wright never entirely abandoned the rectangular module, nor did he ever entirely lose sight of European achievements†¦Wright remained, too, more sculpturally aggressive than the Europeans were at that period. His sculpture has the double quality of seeming almost solid and yet being fully expressive of his deeper considerations, the hollow of interior space. The Lloyd Lewis House of 1940 is an excellent embodiment of this expressive union (Scully, 27). Throughout Wright’s entire career, the objective of union was pressing for him. Again, it was with the machine that Wright found a way in which art and environment engaged with one another. With steel and concrete Wright focused his attention on structure, and the advances that these materials made were innumerable especially when considering the Charnley residence. Though this house was built during his Sullivan years, Wright still harbored what would be known as his personal style, or even the influential Chicago style (Blake, 276) and the key element of modernity. The house is of a geometric shape, three stories high, with ‘Roman’ brick, or elongated brick, and the composition involved basic classical symmetry. Wright, in his early career focused much of his architecture with the block system. He enjoyed using rectangular shapes, and incorporated the classical manner with the base of the building, truncated masonry shafts, and a slab roof (Blake). The Charnley house was built in 1891, and exhibited the box look that Wright quickly shied away from as it was too pedestrian and stale for any modern way of approaching architecture. He did however stick with this block system for a few more years and produced dramatic houses as Scully states, Wright went on to exploit his block system in many other houses which were as appropriate as the Millard House to the California landscape. In the Storer House he developed the blocks as piers and opened the building into an articulated pavilion; in the Freeman House he dramatized the system with great beams and elaborated the patterns and perforations of surface which the blocks made possible. The Ennis House used its hill as a Mayan temple base and loomed at the top like something from Tikal. But the twenties were not rich in commissions for Wright, and his sometimes rather desperate search for stimulus led him to other Indian forms, as in the Lake Tahoe Summer Colony project of 1922, where the cottages not only closely evoked the shaped of the pines around them but also resembled the tepees of the Plains Indians. (Scully, 25). From the rectangle to the circle, Wright advanced in architecture and his ideas of what form should contain as Davis states, â€Å"Frank’s designs gradually evolved from rectangular, triangular, and hexagonal forms toward designs based on circle. Some circular forms first appeared in solar residences, such as the Jacobses’ second house. † (108). It is with this evolutionary concept that Wright made his mark in the architectural world. While in Europe, Wright was witness to various designs that incorporated environment in their composition. The strict adherence of the block that was so popular in America at the time had no niche in European style. Wright enjoyed seeing the German styles ebb and flow with their construction materials and he was undoubtedly convinced of their superior performance as part of the landscape than were skyscrapers (i. e. Sears Tower, and others) that were being aggrandized in America in the early 20th century. The epiphany that introduced itself to Wright while in Europe can best be attributed to Raymond, and as Secrest states, What was equally distressing for Wright, perhaps, was a contemplation of the direction that modern art was clearly taking. If he had seen flowing movements in Germany closely, as no doubt he had, he should have seen the similarities between the landscape Raymond had painted, to which he had taken such a dislike, and similar landscapes painted by Kandinsky in 1909. Raymond’s exaggerated distortions of line and color and his radical simplification of the actual scene being illustrated, all of which were meant to produce a far great emotional impact than, say the serene and naturalistic landscapes of the Impressionists, were in the accepted manner of the new group of Expressionist painters†¦Wright somehow knew that Expressionism and its closely related school, Abstractionism, were taking art, and architecture along with it, down a path to which he would become absolutely opposed. (Secrest, 234). So, it was not with Expressionism that Wright found a kindred spirit but with Abstractionism that the revolution of architecture grabbed hold of Wright. The trip, and later trips to Europe greatly impressed Wright, however, it must not be surpassed that his own Midwest upbringing had great influence in his style. Wright brought to the architectural world the Prairie style . This included low sloping rooflines, cantilevered overhangs that juxtaposed the concrete and windows that in turn created an horizontal line that gave the style the name Prairie (Westcott House). The natural landscape was a great influence on Wright throughout the breadth of his career, as Blake states, There was no chance for a free, democratic architecture, Wright felt, until man could make buildings unbend, until the building could be shaped by the desired flow of space in any and all direction. Such buildings would be truly ‘organic,’ for not only did they express the aspirations of free men to free space, but they also expressed a kind of structure that had within it all the elements of living things in nature-muscles, tendons, fibers, skin-all woven together into a single organism acting in unison†¦To Wright, American architecture had to be Nature’s architecture-organic, flexible, free. Conversely, he felt, all straight, post-and-beam architecture was, in effect, an expression of a straight-laced, autocratic, European concept of society. (Blake, 340). With the notion of organism, and the organic Wright left his early architectural ‘block’ years and traversed into his more controversial buildings such as the Usonian Houses. One very spectacular Usonian style was the Turkel house, built in Detroit in 1955. Usonian architecture occurred much later in Wrights career, and was an antithesis to how urban architecture was becoming in America; Usonian was ‘anti-urbania’. Though Wright is well known for his residential buildings, he also liked to maintain the involvement of nature in buildings. Usonian buildings were seen as a sanctuary for Wright, one in which a person could feel rejuvenated and not pressed in by the foreboding buildings of the city. Wright taught his Taliesin Fellowship apprentices that architecture is about emotion and the expression of that emotion with reference to the landscape in which the building will reside. This reflection of nature in art would soothe the occupant’s spirit, and thus the philosophy of architecture for Wright in his later career was that of fluidity in design in all aspects. The Usonian ideal built itself out of this philosophical outlook and ten Ohio projects were finished after World War Two (Westcott House). The Usonian design can best be described with the Jacob’s house built in 1937. The culmination of flawless design and organic architecture proved to apex with the Jacob’s house. Wright still had a decade plus left in his career, but the joining of his ideas and construction materials can best exhibited with the Jacob’s House as McDonough states, Wright included other design innovations in the Jacobs house, such as the use of glass, stained wood, and brick walls in order to eliminate the need for paint, varnish, plaster, and wallpaper,. In place of a cellar, Wright tripled storage space with a row of closets running the length of the outside wall of the bedroom corridor. Holed piercing the house’s roof overhangings conducted rainwater into drains in the foundation blab, eliminating gutters and downspouts. He replaced the garage with a carport that was walled on only two sides and connected to the front entry. Wright removed doors from kitchen cabinets, abolished light fixtures and radiators, and designed much of the furniture himself. (McDonough, 92). Wright had complete control over this house and its construction, right down to the furniture. He was completely in power for every inch of the plans. The innovation involved in the Usonian style was progressive. The layout of the house, with the absence of gutters was very non-traditional. Though Wright’s contribution to architecture was expansive, until 1949, he was not fully recognized by the American Institute of Architects . Wright was criticized for his somewhat post-modern glimpse into the world of architecture. His organic style though praised overseas in Europe did not win a large audience in the states, â€Å"Despite the face that Frank had never joined the American Institute of Architects and over the years had been quite critical of its members, he received their prestigious gold medal in 1949. Ironically, Frank cherished this award more than any other. At last, he had received the highest of honors from professionals in his own country. † (Davis, 119). This was a great moment in Wright’s career, previously rebuffed by the American architectural community for being avant-guard, he now owned a captivated audience, and from his Prairie, to his Usonian style, Wright was still breaking architectural boundaries. Wright was the leading architect in the Chicago style as can be exhibited with his Charnley residence, as previously stated, and from his Shingle style in his early career, the block style which he quickly abandoned to the Usonian and Oriental style residencies, he came to be one of America’s leading architects. He lead the trends in buildings, and surpassed the ideals of the classical, Greek look to come to his own influenced Oriental style houses such as the Guggenheim museum. Wright was being recognized the world over as an innovative and purely pioneering architect, †¦Wright’s genius began to be recognized and honored throughout the world. The Royal Institute of British Architects awarded Wright a gold medal (1939), he was inducted into the National Academy of Architects in both Uruguay (1941) and Mexico (1942), and he was invited to represent the United States at the International Convention of Architects in Moscow 91937). On the domestic scene, he received honorary degrees from Wesleyan, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Wisconsin. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City held an extensive retrospective of Wright’s work from November 1940 to January 1941, and he was featured in the Masters of Four Arts Exhibition at Harvard’s Fogg Museum along with French sculptor Aristide Maillol, Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, and Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. (McDonough, 100). With this recognition, Wright is still known throughout the world today as one of America’s best architects. His buildings scope the expanse of seventy years worth of work. He used a myriad of styles and ideas to construct buildings and in his imaginative approach he created for architects a way in which nature twined with machine, and through his Usonian concepts, conglomerated into a work of not just construction materials, but art. In the culmination of Wright’s career, the apex can best be attributed to his plans and development of the Guggenheim museum. World renowned for its genius in design, the Guggenheim museum offered Wright the chance to display his Oriental concepts in a building that was purely his own. In the development of its lines, its structure, its very shape, denied the urbania movement in American architecture, in fact nothing in the world existed quite like the Guggenheim, nor is it imitated to the degree for which Wright conceptualized it. In its flowing movements of the outbuilding, to its naturalistic color scheme of clay, did Wright ever produce something so similar to an organism in nature. The Guggenheim museum was a statement for Wright; one in which he favored the ideas of going against the mainstream popular notion of steel construction in a city. With the Guggenheim, again, Wright created the antithesis to the city, he gave the city something natural, which made the building stand out even more- the steel surroundings and glass were eclipsed with the clay design of the Guggenheim, The Guggenheim Museum was almost finished when Wright died in April 1959. Apart from its importance as a plastic statement, it is important as Wright’s last slap at the city. No building could be designed to fit less well into the established urban pattern-and that, in Wright’s view, was about as great a compliment as you could pay a building. Both in form and in its clay color the Guggenheim Museum looks like a growing organism in a graveyard-not pretty, but certainly alive and kicking. Its exterior is perhaps a little too plain and crudely finished-one of the few unornamented Wright buildings, perhaps because Wright wanted nothing to distract from the boldness of the principal statement. But the chances are that when the planting begins to trail over the curved parapets, the Guggenheim Museum may look a good deal softer than it did on its opening day-almost mellow toward its surroundings†¦(Blake, 379-380). In its lack of conformity, Wright made his architectural statement best with the Guggenheim museum. The organic shapes, from the outside as well as the inside lead the viewer to fully engross themselves in a mixture of light and air, which are common sensations exhibited with Usonian works. The exhibition area is a concave dome with a glass covering at the top. The space inside the museum creates the atmosphere of fluidity so prevalent in Wright’s designs. The genius of the art museum is that Wright had a completely new concept of how art should be displayed. The spiral’s continuity allows the viewer to see art in an uninterrupted fashion and the narrow galleries allow the viewer to become involved in the art because they are seemingly accosted by it, forced to view it. (Janson, 37). It is with organic form that Wright can best be remembered as an architect. The organic form is prevalent even in his early Prairie house style, though the block style does not exactly call attention to this. His organic style is one that developed from Wright’s love of the Orient, and the early Japanese houses he accomplished. Wright was not simply interested in the art of organic architecture but in the philosophy behind the designs, as he writes, Many people have wondered about an Oriental quality they see in my work. I suppose it is true that when we speak of organic architecture, we are speaking of something that is more Oriental than Western. The answer is: my work is, in that deeper philosophic sense, Oriental. These ideals have not been common to the whole people of the Orient; but there was Laotse, for instance. Our society has never known the deeper Taoist mind. The Orientals must have had the sense of it, whatever may have been their consideration for it, and they instinctively built that way. Their instinct was right. So this gospel of organic architecture still has more in sympathy and in common with Oriental thought than it has with any other thing the West has ever confessed. (Wright, 218-219). Wright’s mark in the architectural world is strongly tied with his philosophy of the organic. Wright, while talking about instinct, developed for future architects a way in which buildings gave residents a sense of something natural in space. The walls, the ceilings, the floors in each of Wright’s buildings each gave a sense of heightened space, of air and light moving naturally through the framework of the lines of the building. Wright did not like to see limitation in architecture, but chose to see possibility. In this possibility such works as the Imperial Hotel, Fallingwater, Johnson Wax and the Guggenheim were each created. It is the possibility of space existing not separate from the design but twined with the environment, and harboring to the natural landscapes own detail that made Wright famous (as can be best seen in Fallingwater, where the house doesn’t disrupt the flow of water, but allows the building to converge with the water, and thus gives that fluidity so governed in Wright architecture). As Wright writes, But in this land of ours, richest on earth of all in old and new materials, architects must exercise well-trained imagination to see in each material, either natural or compounded plastics, their own inherent style. All materials may be beautiful, their beauty much or entirely depending upon how well they are used by the Architect. In our modern building we have the Stick. Stone. Steel. Pottery. Concrete. Glass. Yes, Pulp, too, as well as plastics. And since this dawning sense of the ‘within’ is the new reality, these will all give the main motif for any real building made from them. The materials of which the building is built will go far to determine its appropriate mass, its outline and, especially, proportion. Character is criterion in the form of any and every building or industrial product we can call Architecture in the light of this new ideal of the new order. (Wright, 61). In America still there exists Wright’s philosophy of the organic. It is with his use of light and space in his buildings that his career culminated in a worldwide acceptance of genius paired with artistic persuasion. The materials involved in creating a building are very harsh, they denote sharp lines, and geometrical alignment. Wright gave architecture a new and innovative way in which buildings could be unified with the earth. Modern architecture would not be the same if Wright had not developed the Usonian style, and thus give freedom from the block, and classical styles incorporated even today in architecture. Wright wrote, I learned to see wood as wood and learned to see concrete or glass or metal each for itself and all as themselves. Strange to say this required uncommon sustained concentration of uncommon imagination (we call it vision), demanded not only a new conscious approach to building but opened a new world of thought that would certainly tear down the old world completely. Each different material required a different handling, and each different handling as well as the material itself had new possibilities of use peculiar to the nature of each. Appropriate designs for one material would not be at all appropriate for any other material. In the light of this ideal of building form as an organic simplicity almost all architecture fell to the ground. That is to say, ancient buildings were obsolete in the light of the idea of space determining form from within, all materials modifying if indeed they did not create the ‘form’ when used with understanding according to the limitations of process and purpose (Wright, 23). For Wright, and other progressive architects today, function has a different meaning, one other than synonymous with blocks. And the shapes of buildings are forever changed with Wright’s organic style. Work Cited Blake, Peter. (1961). The Master Builders. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Burns, Ken. (1998). Frank Lloyd Wright. PBS home video. Burbank California. Davis, Frances A. (1996). Maverick Architect. Lerner Publications Company, Minneapolis. Elman, Kimberly. Legacy Essays. Heinz, Thomas A. (1993). Frank Lloyd Wright Midwest Portfolio. Gibbs-Smith, Salt Lake City. Janson, H. W. & Anthony F. (1997). History of Art. Harry N. Abrams, Inc, New York. Library. McDonough, Yona Zeldis. (1992). Frank Lloyd Wright. Chelsea House Publishers, New York. Scully, Vincent Jr. (1960). Frank Lloyd Wright. George Braziller, Inc. New York. Secrest, Meryle. (1992). Frank Lloyd Wright. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Westcott House. (2002). Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright, Frank Lloyd. (1954). The Natural House. Horizon Press, New York.