Operations Management Case Study Essays

Operations Management Case Study Essays Operations Management Case Study Essay Operations Management Case Study Essay Operations Management Case Study Questions Maria Yee, Inc. Read the case study and then spend time browsing mariayee. com. You will also need to research additional material related to Maria Yee, Inc. , as well as Ikea, the Forest Stewardship Council, etc. Answer the following questions: 1. Research and attempt to assess the corporate culture at Ikea. Does the culture at Maria Yee, Inc. appear to be different than the culture at Ikea, or are the two cultures similar? 1.Which aspects of Maria Yee’s personal background do you think instilled in her the passion that she has for environmental issues in general, and for building furniture in a way that is less impactful to the environment? 2. Research some ways in which other furniture companies have organized their supply chain operations. Provide some examples of companies that still produce furniture within the U. S. (including cutting, millwork, assembly, etc. ). Does it appear to be common for furniture companies to OWN offshore factories? Do you think that owning and running its own factories gives Maria Yee Inc. competitive advantage, or is this vertically-integrated approach inefficient? 3. Ikea’s business model relies heavily on assembly by consumers (i. e. , minimal case goods are carried by Ikea). Does Ikea promote any green products or processes? Are Ikea and Maria Yee Inc. targeting the same market segments? Explain. What other international companies specialize in producing furniture requiring assembly by the consumer? For example, most of the furniture sold in Wal-Mart comes in this manner, but who actually makes it? 4. How would you characterize the personal management style of Ms. Maria Yee?Is this management style beneficial or detrimental when it comes to running and improving operations at her two Chinese factories? 5. On page 7, in the second paragraph, the statement is made, The company used a made-to-order’ model in which nothing was pre-made and it essentially held no inventory. What are the pros and cons of this approach? Do you think Maria Yee Inc. still uses this practice today? See if you can get an estimate of the lead time for a typical Maria Yee product. For example, check the Crate Barrel website, etc. 6. Do any other furniture companies tout certification by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)?List a few, if any are found. 7. In the case, Maria Yee stated, We don’t think going green has to be premium-priced. Do you agree with this statement? How does Maria Yee Inc. manage to keep prices on its furniture within the upper-middle price point? Do you feel that green products generally cost more money? 8. Bamboo has steadily moved up the value chain (as stated on page 10), thanks in part to the efforts of Maria Yee Inc. Is there any supply chain risk associated with creating furniture using higher-quality bamboo and eco-friendly glue and finishes?

Definition and Examples of Theme-Writing

Definition and Examples of Theme-Writing Theme-writing refers to the conventional writing assignments (including five-paragraph essays) required in many composition classes since the late-19th century. Also called school writing. In his book The Plural I: The Teaching of Writing (1978), William E. Coles, Jr., used the term themewriting  (one word) to characterize empty, formulaic writing that is not meant to be read but corrected. Textbook authors, he said, present writing as a trick that can be played, a device that can be put into operation . . . just as one can be taught or learn to run an adding machine, or pour concrete. Examples and Observations: The use of themes has been maligned and vilified in the history of writing instruction. They have come to represent what was bad about the Harvard model, including an obsession with correcting the themes in red ink, but the womens colleges typically used themes to get students writing regular essays based on common topics. . . . Theme writing, as David Russell notes in Writing in the Academic Disciplines, 1870-1990, continued to be a model for required composition courses at small liberal arts colleges much longer than it did in the larger universities, in large part because the universities could no longer keep up with the labor-intensive practice of having students write multiple essays over the course of a semester or year.(Lisa Mastrangelo and Barbara LEplattenier, Is It the Pleasure of This Conference to Have Another?: Womens Colleges Meeting and Talking About Writing in the Progressive Era. Historical Studies of Writing Program Administration, ed. by B. LEplattenier and L. Mast rangelo. Parlor Press, 2004) Camille Paglia on Essay Writing as a Form of Repression[T]he present concentration on essay writing at the heart of the humanities curriculum is actually discriminatory against people of other cultures and classes. I think its a game. Its very, very obvious to me, having been teaching for so many years as a part-timer, teaching factory workers and teaching auto mechanics and so on, the folly of this approach. You teach them how to write an essay. Its a game. Its a structure. Speak of social constructionism! Its a form of repression. I do not regard the essay as its presently constituted as in any way something that came down from Mount Sinai brought by Moses.(Camille Paglia, The M.I.T. Lecture.  Sex, Art, and American Culture. Vintage, 1992)English A at HarvardHarvards standard, required composition course was English A, first given in sophomore year and then, after 1885, moved to the first year. . . . In 1900-01 writing assignments included a mix of daily themes, which were brief two- or three-paragraph sketches, and more extended fortnightly themes; topics were up to the student and thus varied widely, but the dailies usually asked for personal experience while the longer ones covered a mix of general knowledge.(John C. Brereton, Introduction. The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925. Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1995) Theme Writing at Harvard (Late 19th Century)When I was an undergraduate at Harvard our instructors in English composition endeavored to cultivate in us a something they termed The daily theme eye. . . .Daily themes in my day had to be short, not over a page of handwriting. They had to be deposited in a box at the professors door not later than ten-five in the morning. . . . And because of this brevity, and the necessity of writing one every day whether the mood was on you or not, it was not always easyto be quite modestto make these themes literature, which, we were told by our instructors, is the transmission through the written word, from writer to reader, of a mood, an emotion, a picture, an idea.(Walter Prichard Eaton, Daily Theme Eye. The Atlantic Monthly, March 1907)The Chief Benefit of Theme-Writing (1909)The chief benefit derived from theme-writing lies probably in the instructors indication of errors in the themes and his showing how these errors are to be corrected; for by these means the student may learn the rules that he is inclined to violate, and thus may be helped to eliminate the defects from his writing. Hence it is important that the errors and the way to correct them be shown to the student as completely and clearly as possible. For instance, suppose that a theme contains the sentence I have always chosen for my companions people whom I thought had high ideals. Suppose the instructor points out the grammatical fault and gives the student information to this effect: An expression such as he says, he thinks, or he hears interpolated in a relative clause does not affect the case of the subject of the clause. For example, The man who I thought was my friend deceived me is correct; who is the subject of was my friend; I thought is a parenthesis which does not affect the case of who. In your sentence, whom is not the object of thought, but the subject of had high ideals; it should therefore be in the nominative case. From this information the stud ent is likely to get more than the mere knowledge that the whom in this particular case should be changed to who; he is likely to learn a principle, the knowledge of whichif he will remember itwill keep him from committing similar errors in future.But the theme from which one sentence is quoted above contains fourteen other errors; and the forty-nine other themes which the instructor is to hand back to-morrow morning contain among them about seven hundred and eighty-five more. How shall the instructor, as he indicates these eight hundred errors, furnish the information called for by each one? Obviously he must use some kind of shorthand.(Edwin Campbell Woolley, The Mechanics of Writing. D.C. Heath, 1909)