Preschooler observation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Preschooler observation - Essay Example Among his fellows he was looking aggressive and a bit ailing (Berger, p.210-212). The three were standing in a row while about four or five children were motivating them to start the race. One of them count up to three and the race begun. Jacob fell to the ground and lost the race, but his reaction was very unnatural. He started crying and called himself a loser who cannot win anything. I approached him and asked why he is crying? He replied quickly that I am a loser because I didnt win the race and I never wins, furthermore, that "all my mates think I am a loser in light of the fact that I always cry. They make fun of me for my crying." I attempted to console him and let him know I did not think he was a loser. He was just assuming himself a loser on the basis of his past experiences but have no logical understanding (Berger, p. 182). I told him that his friends were playing with colorful cards while he was trying to climb rings. This made him tired while his fellows were relaxed and full of energy. Some of his friends called him to play with them, but he refused and remained crying. I tried to convince him that his friends are still eager to play with him because for them he is their friend not a loser. He was hard to convince because at the time he was relating many other things to his failure, perhaps the behavior of his parents, siblings and caregivers (Berger, p. 216). His attitude made me think about his family and I assumed that he is from a family where his parents are too busy to spend time with him and his elder siblings may tease him and discourage him in doing things. Jacob’s social and emotional behavior was influenced by his fellows at the center. His fellows won the race and this made him cry and aggressive that why he didn’t win the race. His stressed reaction showed that he never got encouragement from others, hence he strongly believed that he cannot win as he has no traits of winners. At this age group, children are open to

In the past 15 years, the United Kingdom & the European Union have Essay

In the past 15 years, the United Kingdom & the European Union have created a legal and regulatory system that encourages the ad - Essay Example For the first time in history, contracts can be routinely entered by parties who have never met, who have had no prior relationship, who do not know each other and who may often be located in different legal jurisdictions. When internet shopping was first introduced in the mid-90’s, these facts represented major hurdles to consumer confidence towards online retailers. Indeed, in a traditional shopping experience, the consumer is located on the premises of the retailer, can see the goods and services provided to others and can interact with staff and other shoppers during the process of making a shopping decision. Moreover, in the event of a problem with the goods or services purchased, the consumer can return to the premises and interact with the service desk, or even alert friends, family, the local authorities or perhaps the media in the event of unresolved issues. This level of extensive horizontal interaction and recourses is not only required to make the retailer more per sonable to the shopper and thereby secure, establish and propagate the business’s goodwill, it was also the key ingredient missing from online shopping in it’s early years, some of which is addressed by the United Kingdom’s e-commerce laws. The requirement for online businesses to provide their geographical address, contact information, business registration information and supervising regulatory or professional bodies (Business Link, n.d.) addresses many of these concerns, but above all gives the consumer i) the possibility to recognize, report and avoid recidivist fraudulent businesses, ii) the peace of mind that not only are the regulatory authorities watching, but iii) fraudulent businesses can be found out and prosecuted if needed. All these benefits synergize to bolster consumer confidence. As rapid technological advancements over the past decade have made powerful and versatile electronic devices accessible to the general public, the computer and electron ic gadget culture has secured a foothold in all spheres of society. An extensive online culture has developed with social media, virtual friends, digital media and electronic hobbies of all kinds, and every single one of these phenomena has almost completely replaced their offline counterpart (CBC, 2011), especially in the younger generations that have grown-up with ready access to this culture. It was inevitable that this cultural shift would also transform other aspects of daily life, from becoming one of the leading causes of motor vehicle collisions to being able to do all banking, shopping and business meetings in the palm of one’s hand, wherever a wireless internet connection is available. As a direct result of consumer confidence bolstered by the regulatory framework, the United Kingdom has become one of the leading electronic economies of the world, both in terms of proportion of retail sales and amount spent per capita (Robinson, 2010). Just as the younger generation in the 80’s was a force pushing home entertainment systems and gaming consoles into every home and the younger generation in the 90’s pushed personal computers, high-speed internet and digital media into every household, the current

The extra credit Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The extra credit - Essay Example There are negative effects of these externalities in production for instance; industrial pollution causes the marginal social cost (MSC) to curve higher than the private marginal cost (MPC). The externality for this discussion will be sea pollution by water vessels. Sea pollution occurs due to oil spillage from ships and sea vessels on transit, especially in cases of accidents or leakage. Other forms of pollution by the sea vessels are from discharging domestic wastes into the sea when the vessel is in transit. Passenger ships are the main dischargers of domestic effluent into the sea such as kitchen wastes and waste from sanitation areas. Other pollution may be from chemicals, and garbage from the sea vessel that find their way into the water during transit. Scrapping of old ships on beaches may also pollute the water is the scrap metal, paints, and pieces find their way into the water. However, most of the sea pollution comes from people living near the beaches, when they dispose chemicals, soil, oil, and rubbish into the sea. Disposal of Bunker oil from cargo ship is very dangerous and toxic to the sea creatures and is very difficult to clean sea pollution is bad for the society as it destroys the marine ecosystem by killing the aquatic plan ts organisms. There are some policies to control sea pollution in various countries such as government intervention through regulations, which include taxing polluters and forcing the polluters to compensate the affected. International regulations to prevent marine pollution from ships aim at preventing and lowering ship pollution. Port waste management under Merchant Shipping and Fishing Vessels highlights the requirements for all vessels to give a prior notice to the port on the waste onboard. The vessels should also offload the waste at the port and pay for waste discharge facilities. All ships of between 150

Virginia Business Lawsuit Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Virginia Business Lawsuit - Term Paper Example This would lead to the endangerment of their lives and would also inconvenience them in their shopping. The plaintiffs complained of there parking spaces being built on slopes and that the curb ramps were built on excessively steep grades. They also complained of the mall having improper access point to the buildings making access to the building for the disabled difficult. The malls also lacked handrails to assist the disabled in their movements into the mall. This made it to be increasing difficult for the disabled customers to navigate efficiently in the malls. The restrooms had toilet facilities that were unsuitable for the disabled customers since, they did not have the required specifications to accommodate the disabled. All this factors led to the disabled taking action against the mall for discrimination and ignorance on the needs of the disabled. The lawsuit involved the major malls located in the region. They included â€Å"Crossroads mall, Valley View Mall, Tanglewood Mal l, Towne Square Shopping Center, Lake Drive Plaza and Spartan Square Shopping Center† (Hammock, 2012). The lawsuit was forwarded on behalf of the plaintiffs by the national alliance for accessibility. The group cited the lawsuit was because of the gross violations by the malls on the Americans with Disabilities Act. The act was created to protect the rights of the disabled by ensuring they can access public places. The act has litigation that governs the environment that is needed to make certain that this admission is realized. The lawsuit also included other public institutions. These institutions comprised of two motels and a university (Hammock, 2012). The management of the malls had not put the interests of the disabled high on their agenda. They seemed to have forgotten about the special needs of the disabled segment of the clientele. This neglect led to the lawsuits that not only discredited malls, but also suffered financial consequences for the violations. It is essen tial for the management to ensure that their companies or organizations follow the rule of law. This is by ensuring that the set requirements for the business are met to avoid legal consequences. In the case of the disability lawsuit, the managers of the malls mentioned in the lawsuit could have avoided this whole scenario if they complied with the law. The managers of the malls and the other mentioned institutions should have carried out a risk assessment. This is in order to know what risks the customers and employees face, in the mall environment. This would have enabled the management to categorize the issues that need to be rectified and the matters that need to be addressed. This risk assessment would have enabled the management to be conscious of the predicament of the disabled and correct them before they became a legal matter. The risk assessments are inclusive since the views of customers and employees are collected. If the risk assessment would have been carried out, the management would have become aware of the plight of the disabled customers. This would have made it possible for them to rectify the problem avoiding lawsuits that would rise from the issue. This would have saved the company legal fees and settlement payments. The risk assessment would also have been helpful in that other problems that the management was not aware of would be brought to light

Elements That Influence State Government Essay Example for Free

Elements That Influence State Government Essay The special interest group we are going to look at is the Sierra Club. The sierra club is a body of volunteers that come together to fight for the environment. This interest group has offices in every state in the union. As we look at the Sierra Club in whole we will describe what this organization stands for and try to define its relationship two each of the political parties and lastly we will look at how the interest groups influences state government. According to Carl Pope, â€Å"We stand for the principle that ordinary people don’t believe that they’re here to use up the earth and have the bank account exhausted when they die; that most people really see the planet as an ongoing enterprise. They’re inspired by nature. They want to leave it behind and they feel responsible for it Pope (2008), (para. 1)†. That being said the sierra club is an organization with of over 750,000 members with a common goal in mind (Pope, 2008). That goal is to protect the earth we live on. What is unique about the sierra club is depending on what state you’re in, the sierra club will come at you in very different ways depending on the cause at hand. This means if you live in California, the sierra club will fight to protect water rights and conservation as well as air pollution. If one lives in Kentucky then the sierra club will fight you on coal while promoting wind industry. The unique thing the sierra club has going for it is that it has many different platform to speak from while fighting for a common goal. One of the ways the sierra club has found to gain support on different issues is to a line its self with different political party to gain the support and win favor with state voters. What this means is that the sierra club leverages power of their net work of volunteers and members in every state for the chance to help elect candidates that are environmentally friendly and in line with the thoughts and values that the sierra club represents. Another way the sierra club has grown in power is that they have endorsed like minded candidates from state, local, and municipal arenas. One of the ways that make the sierra club so effective in endorsing a candidate is the multi step process; each candidate receives before the sierra club will publicly support said candidate. The sierra club generally a lines its self with the Democratic Party because Democratic are more liberal than Republicans. For this reason this organization will give democrat contributions to help a candidate become elected to office. According the sierra club leadership the more like minded officials we have in office the more changes can be to the ongoing fight to help preserve the environment. The sierra club supports Kentucky Representative John Yarmuth Democrat (Sierra Club Endorses John Yarmuth, 2012). One of the reason the sierra club support Representative Yarmuth is because of his views on the environment, energy as well as the Kentucky Clean Water Protection Act. The Republican Party has not so lucky when it come to getting support from the sierra club. According to the Perspective a news letter, in this news letter the sierra club comments on how they do not believe the republicans care about the environment due to their stand on climate change. The perspective go’s o to tell about how thinks there is not enough scientific fact to support the accusation, it is for these types of reason that the sierra club has failed to support Republican candidates material (The Republicans, The Sierra Club and the Environment, 2012). Since the sierra club is disenchanted with the Republican Party they see very little money or contributions of any kind from this organization. So how does a special interest group influence state government? Interest groups are the ones that fund a lot of the politicians campaigns, so it’s usually an exchange of some kind of service. The interest groups push for certain legislation to go through the House of Representative, and then the Representative relies on their support in their next election. Organizations like the sierra club can influence government by getting candidates elected that have similar goals. Contributions of money on different issues help with advertizing to help sway voters or to inundate the public with information either for or against a cretin issue. Special interest groups like The Sierra Club has become very crafty in the different way they have found to influence government. Most people do not understand that interest groups dont just lobby for legislation and wine and dine politicians. They actually write legislation, to give to politicians to sponsor. For example, the legislation popularly known as No Child Left Behind was actually commissioned by and basically written by an interest group called the Business Round Table. Another angle to look at is that interest groups often employ lobbyists who already have working relationships with the members of the House, and so these groups tend to have more influence over the way the legislation is worded. This way the lobbyist can protect and benefit the company or industry they are lobbying for. References Pope, C. (2008). Big Think. Retrieved from http://bigthink.com/ideas/2378 Sierra Club Endorses John Yarmuth. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.kentucky.sierraclub/newsroom The Republicans, the sierra club and the environment. (2012). Retrieved from http://povcrystal.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-republicans-sierra-club-and.html

Warehouse Management Essay Example for Free

Warehouse Management Essay Abstract: The study presented here considers arrangement and management policies to improve the order picking procedure in the existing company warehouse. The study was conducted in a timber goods production and trading company. The main objective was to reduce the overall picking time that is quite high due to the lack of proper management and the nature of the stored items. The first stage was to register the situation in the warehouse. The second stage involved the analysis of the obtained data, to identify promising modifications and quantify the benefits of adopting them. The proposed modifications were based on policies and methodologies suggested in the literature. After the company approved and implemented (some of) the proposed modifications, the final stage was to measure and analyse the achieved improvements. Keywords: warehousing, case study, facility layout, order picking time 1. INTRODUCTION Order picking (OP) appears as one of the most significant activities in a warehouse. The picking tasks may contribute by over 65% in the warehouse operating costs. In fact, the retrieval cost exceeds by far the storage cost of any given item (Coyle et al., 1996). The factors affecting the efficiency of OP typically include the product demand, the warehouse layout, the location of the items, the picking method in combination with the routing methods, the experience of the employees, and the extent of automation (Gattorna, 1997). Note that the high cost associated with the automation of the procedure forces the majority of companies to use manual operation, usually at the expense of efficiency and time. The case study is carried out in a timber goods production and trading company. We consider one of the existing warehouse facilities and we attempt to improve its performance. The performance measure is the total picking time, so our objective is to find ways to reduce it as much as it is practically possible and desirable. At the first stage involves the collection of time data, to target the improvement that may be accomplished from the transition from a totally disorderly situation to an organized and controlled warehouse environment. The second stage suggests, implements and studies alternative storage, picking and routing schemes, according to observations made during the first stage. During the third stage, a second series of time measurements is carried out to investigate the achieved benefits. 2. REVIEW OF WAREHOUSE POLICIES RELATED TO ORDER PICKING There is a variety of studies on methods, policies, principles and/or techniques developed to improve the overall OP procedure. The decisions usually concern policies for the picking of the product items, the routing of the pickers in the warehouse, and the storage schemes for the products in the warehouse. The research scope has been to investigate the effect of changes in these policies on the reduction of the overall OP costs and the increase of percent savings. Petersen and Gerald (2003) was the first to attempt a simultaneous evaluation of all the three policies, whereas the usual practice is to consider them separately. 2.1. Picking policies In terms of the picking policies, Ackerman (1990) divided OP into strict, batch and zone picking and proposed policies tailored to each case. In strict picking, a single order is assigned during a picking tour, leading to lower service times and higher customer satisfaction. The policy is ideal when the group of the picking products is quite small and easy to be found. Drawbacks of the policy include an increase in the overall transportation time and a cost penalty. Alternatively, the batch picking policy assigns to a picker more than one orders during a picking tour (Gibson and Sharp, 1992; De Coster et al., 1999; Petersen, 2000). The batch scheme may bring significant reduction on the total picking time, but introduces an additional cost for monitoring and separating the orders at a later stage. Zone picking assigns a picker to a designated picking zone, where the picker is responsible for those products that are in his/her zone of the warehouse. This scheme decreases the chances for destructions and mistakes, but a possible delay in a zone is a threshold for the entire picking procedure for a big order. Frazelle and Apple (1994) further divided zone picking into: sequential zone, batch zone and wave OP. Petersen (2000) suggested that in the sequential zone scheme the order integrity is maintained, in batch zone the orders are batched together and each picker collects the products within a zone, and in wave picking a group of orders is programmed in precise time period. 2.2. Routing policies Routing policies suggest the route for a picking tour and the picking sequence of the items on the pick list. The suggestions are based on decision-making technologies that range from simple heuristics to mathematical optimization procedures. Using mathematical programming tools Ratliff and Rosenthal (1983) found that optimal routing reduced the travel time, but the optimal routes were quite confusing routes and difficult to implement in practice. Hall (1993) and Petersen and Schmenner (1999) examined the efficiency of heuristic routing in minimizing the distance traveled by the picker. In practice, many warehouses use the traversal policy, where the picker must pass through the entire aisle and in order to collect the items. Petersen (1997) and Roodbergen and Koster (2001) examined the possibility of combined traversal and return routes to reduce further the travel distance. 2.3 Storage policies Storage policies remain the least investigated among the three policy categories. Random storage is the most widely used option, and Schwarz et al. (1978) examined its performance. Petersen and Aase (2003) claimed that random storage is by far the simplest option and requires less space compared to the more sophisticated storage policies. The simplest structured-storage schemes apply class-based and/or demandbased policies in the arrangement of the products. In class-based storage the products are classified, and items of each class are placed within the same area of the warehouse. In demand (or volume) –based storage the products are stored according to their demand (or their size) near the Pick-up / Drop-off point (P/D). Jarvis and Mc Dowell (1991) suggested that the optimal storage strategy is to place the items with great demand in the aisle, thus reduce the travel time. Gibson and Sharp (1992) and Gray et al. (1992) stated that locating high volume items near to the P/D point increased the picking efficiency. Petersen and Schmenner (1999) examined the volume-based storage policies and concluded that the method resulted to less time compared to other storage policies. Eynan and Rosenblatt (1994) claimed that the class-based storage required less data processing and yielded similar saving with volume-based storage. Tompkins and Smith (1998) suggested that the overall picking time could be reduced applying the Pareto principle on the storage arrangement. In a warehouse, a relatively small number of products constitutes the largest part of the stock and accounts for the largest part of the dispatches of the warehouse. Consequently, if high demand items are placed in near distance and grouped into classes, then picking time can be significantly reduced. The former is easy to apply by allocating a number of the front area piles to items of high demand or leftovers. In terms of more sophisticated storage options, Ven den Berg (1999) suggested a separation of the warehouse into a forward and a reserve area. The forward area was for order picking, while the reserve area was used for replenishing the forward area. The variety of different methods and techniques makes it difficult to identify the most appropriate policy to increase the overall performance of the picking activity. The decision on the appropriate principles and policies to be applied depends on the characteristics of the particular system, i.e. product and warehouse. By reducing the non-productive elements during OP, Gattorna (1997) presented a set of basic and general productivity improvement principles. 3. DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDIED WAREHOUSE – INITIAL SITUATION The company considered here deals with wood production and trading, and uses 6 warehouses for the finished products. Each warehouse is further divided into individual sections where different categories of products are stored. Panels, i.e. sheets of compressed wood (chipboard) account for 80% of the total product sales of the company. The panels are covered with coloured melamine to imitate the appearance of various types of wood. The panel warehouse has over 6000 codes of stored products, distributed into 4 individual sections. The study considers one of these sections, where the number of codes is around 1000. The most frequent values for the size of the panels is 3.66Ãâ€"1.83m, and the thickness is between 6cm and 25cm. Instead of using shelves, the products are piled one on top of the other using small chocks between the packages. Great attention is paid to the alignment of the items in each pile, to avoid sheet warping. Warping can easily occur due to the small thickness of the packages and the large load they take. The studied warehouse section consists of three parts: two of them have 12 front piles each and the third part has 6 front piles (Figure 1). The piles are 7m high and the products are stored in up to 4 depths of pile levels. The main aisle is used by the clarks to gain access to the front piles. The aisle is wide enough to allow the clarks to remove the items of the front piles and to retrieve items stored in the deeper levels. Each part of the section contains different groups of products. Customer orders are collected by the Sales Department and sent to the Traffic Office on daily basis. The loading plans contain information on the ordered items and their quantities, the customer placing the order, and the requested mode of loading on the lorry. In the course of a day, the Traffic Office prepares over 25 order plans. The plans are usually collected and loaded at the same time. Initially, the warehouse suffered from many problems that mainly affected the search and retrieval times. The picking followed the strict OP policy. Each pair of pickers (an operator and an assistant) undertook a single order-plan at the time. Orders from other plans were collected once the pickers completed their current plan, even if this required revisiting the same areas of the warehouse. There was no automated or optimal routing system used here, and the choice of an efficient route remained on the experience of the picker. The grouping of the products in the section parts was based on the type of their surface (e.g. porous or smooth), regardless of the kind of wood. This was the only storage rule, and then the items were stored randomly in the section parts. Tracing a product was relying on the experience of the warehouse managers and the memory of the pickers. From the point of management the process depended on the experience of the personnel, while even a simple WMS version was certain to improve the situation. Once the location of an item was specified, the retrieval time was affected by the size/weight of the products, and the mode of storage. For instance, if the ordered product was located on the second, third or fourth depth of pile levels, many items had to be removed until the product was finally retrieved. Then, the removed items had to be placed back to their original locations. 4. MEASUREMENTS AND PROPOSED MODIFICATIONS The time measurements were carried out twice. The first measurement (stage 1) presented the initial anarchous situation of the system (see Section 3). The second measurement (stage 3) showed the effect of the improvements suggested by the authors and adopted by the company. The picking procedure is divided into four phases, and the time measurements concern the: 1. the travel time required for the picker to reach the pick point, 2. the search time required for the products to be found, 3. the retrieval time required for the products to be retrieved, and 4. the return time required for the picker to transport the products to the order point. Each time measurement considered 15 order plans selected by the Traffic Office of the company in collaboration with the authors. The selected plans were representative and included a large number of products, so that the analysis of the obtained time schedules yields reasonable and reliable conclusions. The number of orders in the studied plans ranged from 5 to 17 per plan. To allow comparison between the picking times measured for items of different size, the results are presented as the measured time over the volume of the respective item, namely in minutes per cubic meter. 4.1. Stage 1: Results of the 1ST measurement series The results of the 1st measurement series are reported on Table 1. The time required to complete the picking cycle is 5.69 min/m3. In terms of the itemized times for travel, search, retrieval and return, we observe that finding and retrieving the products are the most time-consuming procedures. The search time is around 36% (2.05 min/m3) of the total OP time. The percentage is quite high and reveals the need for an automated system to control and monitor the placement of the stock. Tracing the products becomes an extremely difficult and demanding procedure relaying mainly on the experience of the operator and the assistant. Many years of work in this particular position and the ability to locate the items using visual contact are decisive factors. In many cases, finding an item quickly is merely a matter of coincidence or luck. Our results include cases where locating a stocked product took over 45 minutes of searching and the product eventually failed to reach the customer on time. Table 1: Final results obtained during the 1st and the 2nd measurements Phases Travel time Search time Retrieval time Return time Travel return times Total 1ST measurement before modifications t1 (minutes) % total 0.51 9.0 2.05 36.0 2.50 43.9 0.63 11.1 1.14 5.69 20.0 100. 2ST measurement after modifications t2 (minutes) % total 0.33 11.5 0.37 12.9 1.73 60.5 0.43 15.0 0.76 2.86 26.6 100. Relative time reduction (t1-t2) / t1 % 35.3 82.0 30.8 31.7 33.3 49.7 The retrieval time is around 44% (2.50 min/m3) of the total OP time. Most of this time is spent on removing products in the front levels until the desired item comes to surface. The multiple storage depths combined with the surface type-based storage makes retrieval the most time-consuming procedure. Note that the initial choice of storage policies was based upon empirical criteria since, without a systematic measurement and consideration of the real system. Typically, the travel and return times account for over half of the total OP time (Tompkins, 1998), and most of the research work in increasing the efficiency of OP has focussed on the assumption. This does not apply to the problem considered here, where the retrieval times are considerably higher due to the nature of the products. Supported by the results of Stage 1, the retrieval times can be reduced by rearranging the warehouse and applying storage principles as discussed in Section 2. 4.2. Stage 2: Proposed and implemented mo difications The scope here is to reduce the time spent to reach the picking area and the packaging point. Based on the analysis of the first measurements the following were suggested to the company. Introduction of a Warehouse Management System (WMS): The use of a WMS can facilitate and speed up the tracing of the products. This is expected to reduce significantly the search time that is over a third of the total OP time. Improvement of the picking policies: After introducing a WMS, it is advisable to change the method of OP from strict to zone picking. Application of optimal routing policies: In total, the travel and return time is only around 20% of the total OP time. A techno-economical feasibility study (in the form of an ABC analysis) can quantify how much of this can really be reduced by the choice of routing policies, and provide incentives to carry out the necessary modifications. Changing the location of fast moving products in the warehouse, to reduce the retrieval time for small orders. The number of the wood panels ordered is usually other than those contained in the panel lots. The initial policy was to leave the remaining items in their original locations until they were again in demand. The result was to have many broken lots of the same product stored randomly in various places and levels within the warehouse. The remainders of the product lots can be placed in easily accessible front piles assigned for this purpose. Extending the storage space to reduce the storage depths from four to two, to reduce the retrieval time. This however increases the fraction of the void over the total space in the warehouse, and creates a trade off between the time needed to access the products and the cost of extending the warehouse area. The company adopted some of the above suggestions, namely the installation of a simple WMS and a change in the location of its products, following an ABC analysis. The storage mode changed to demandbased, hence the fast moving products were placed closer to the section entrance to reduce the travel and return times. Also, two piles were allocated on each side section, where the remainders under 20 sheets would be placed (see the broken lot piles in Figure 1). The company did not switch to zone picking, because separating the items of the different order packs needs extra space. Also, the company could not consider our suggestion to reduce the storage depth levels, since this requ ired building an additional warehouse. 4.3. Stage 3: Results of the 2ND measurement series Once our suggestions were implemented, the second measurement series was conducted to evaluate the subsequent reductions on the total OP time. The results and the differences between the first and the second measurements are presented on the Table 1. The total time to complete the picking cycle is now 2.86 min/m3, thus a reduction of nearly 50% was achieved. More specifically, the search time is down by over 80% and is now nearly 13% (0.37 min/m3) of the total. This is because the item locations are registered and given to pickers along with the order plan. Further reductions could be achieved if the employed WMS specified the height along with the depth of the product location. The demand-based storage and the use of the two piles for the broken lots reduced the retrieval time by 30.8%, to 1.73 min/m3. There is also significant reduction (33.3% on average) in the travel time to and from the picking points, due to the new storage policies adopted. Despite the significant overall reduction on the OP time, the problem of item retrieval remains unresolved. In effect, the current retrieval time is 60% of the total OP time. Redu cing the storage depths is not considered presently, as it requires expansion of the warehousing establishments. 5. CONCLUSIONS This work presents a real case study to improve the performance of order picking in an existing company warehouse. The main objective is the reduction of the overall picking time. The work is divided into three stages. The first stage is to register the situation in the warehouse with regard to the required order picking times. The total time is divided into travel, search, retrieval and return time to allow a more detailed analysis of the situation. The analysis of the obtained data identifies promising modifications and quantifies the benefits of adopting them. In effect, the measurements indicated the need for more systematic management, storage and arrangement of the products in the warehouse, and more efficient routing. After the company approved and implemented (some of) the proposed modifications, the time measurements were repeated to see the benefits. Finally, a mean 50% reduction in the total picking times was achieved. There is still space for improvement, even given the reluctance of the company to carry out expensive modifications. Our future research considers the development of a simple warehouse simulation tool to apply different arrangement options and evaluate their performance, using the time data collected in this work. REFERENCES Ackerman, K. B., 1990. â€Å"Practical Handbook of Warehousing†, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY. Coyle, J.J., Bardi, E.J., Langley, C.J., 1996. â€Å"The Management of Business Logistics†, 6th ed., West Publishing, St Paul, MN. De Koster, M.B.M., Van der Poort, E.S., Wolters, M., 1999. â€Å"Efficient order batching methods in warehouses†, International Journal of Production Research, vol. 37, no. 7, pp. 1479-1504. Eynan, A., Rosenblatt, M.J., 1994. â€Å"Establishing zones in single-command class-based rectangular AS/RS†, IIE Transactions, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 38-46. Frazelle, E.H., Apple, J.M., 1994. â€Å"Warehouse Operations†, in J.A. Tompkins and D.A. Harmelink (Eds), The Distribution Management Handbook, McGraw-Hill, NY, pp. 22.1-22.36. Gibson, D.R., Sharp, G.P., 1992. â€Å"Order batching procedures†, European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 58, pp. 57-67. Gray, A.E., Karmarkar, U.S., Seidmann, A., 1992. â€Å"Design and operation of an order-consolidation warehouse: Models and application†, European Journal of Operational Research, vol. 58, pp. 3-13. Hall, R.W., 1993. â€Å"Distance approximations for routing manual pickers in a warehouse†, IIE Transactions, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 76-87. Jarvis, J.M., McDowell, E.D., 1991. â€Å"Optimal product layout in an order picking warehouse†, IIE Transactions, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 93-102. Gattorna, J., 1997. 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The History And Growth Of Animation

The History And Growth Of Animation Ever since the establishment of photography people learned that if pictures of moving objects were taken in a quick series and flipped through in succession to create the false impression of a moving picture. Pottery is one of the best examples of early art still around today. One of the very first attempts at translating the motionless image into a moving image is found on such piece of pottery. About 5000BC a piece pottery, if spun illustrates a goat jumping and eating from a tree. It consisted of five sequential drawings. The interest of illustrating figures in motion can be seen in the still drawings of Paleolithic cave paintings, as in these paintings animals are illustrated with multiple legs in superimposed arrangements. The movement of anatomical structure was defined by Leonardo Davinci, courtesy to which today artists can come up with believable and beautiful animation. A toy created in 1824 known as the thaumatrope demonstrated the phenomenon of diligence of vision. The design was a disc, which showed a bird on one side and an empty cage on the other. When the disc was spun, the appeared in the cage. According to Patrick James à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦..This proved that the eye retains images when it is exposed to a series of pictures, one at a time. After the thaumatrope William George Horner invented Zeotrope in 1834. This device was cylindrical in shape with vertical slits around the sides. To the opposite side of the slits series of pictures were kept, around the inside of the cylinde r. In order to see the illusion of motion the user had to spin the cylinder and look through the slits. Peering through the slits was quite annoying for people, so in year 1877 Emile Reynaud invented Praxinoscope. This device was much like Zeotrope the difference was that animation was reflected on motionless mirrors on the inside of the wheel. It was much better than Zeotrope as it allowed large group of people to view animation at the same time. The first animated film was created in 1892. It was fifteen minutes long and was made by Reynaud. It was shown with the help of praxinoscope and a projector. Animation started appearing before 1910. It consisted of simple drawings photographed one at a time. As there were hundreds of drawings per minute of film, the animation process was highly labor intensive. As the time passed by, the technology evolved and new animation techniques came into existence. An animation technique, known as stop action was used by the animators earlier. The directors used to stop the camera and rearrange or remove items to the shot and then start rolling again. In 1900 J.Stuart Blackton created a film called The Enchanted Drawing by combining the live action of him drawing and stop action technique. Later in year 1908 Emile Cohl created a film named Fantasmagorie. This film was considered to be the first true animated film. The industrial revolution took place and most of the American studios turned to flat animation as it was much more efficient for their assembly line technique of making animated films. Animation was easily done by the celluloid technique developed around in the beginning of 1914. With the help of these celluloids the animators just had to make a complex background or foreground and compress in moving characters in between a number of other pieces of celluloids, which is transparent apart from where drawings were painted on it. This helped the animators, as they would just draw once the background as it remained motionless and only the character moved. If the foreground elements were positioned in the frame, it also formed a false impression of depth. In 1914 one of the pioneer of animation named Winsor McCay created the first animated cartoons titled Gertie the Dinosaur. Gradually animation then started to progress with quite a lot of animated films produced in next twenty years. Producers like Warners, MGM and Disney developed cartoon techniques in 1920s and 1930s. They used traditional animation methods of constructing complicated backgrounds and then imposing moving figures in them with celluloid. Then in 1928 it was Walt Disney, who took animation to a complete new level adding sound and producing the first ever animated film with sound, which was Steamboat Willie. In this film he introduced a new character named as Mickey Mouse. And in 1937 Walt Disney change the entire world of animation by opening doors that people never even thought of. The first full-length animated film in 1937 that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was a box-office smash. This era was known as the Golden age of Animation. According to Steve Nyman The film became the most successful motion picture of 1938 and earned over $8 million in its original theatrical release. While looking at it economically, when Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the studio ran out of money, as it was quite a labor incentive task. Immediately after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Pinocchio and Fantasia were released and both of them were financial disappointments. Traditional animated feature films were financially unsuccessful in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Traditional animation was not successful because it required a lot of money, a huge team (labor) and the quality was also not that great as compared to todays computer animated films. With the passage of time animation has developed and evolved a lot. We can see the drastic changes in the way of doing animation. With the changing era technology is also changing hand in hand, as earlier people used to use traditional ways of doing animation but today animation is mostly computer generated which is far more easy and it consumes less time. Since then animated films have become one of the most frequently enjoyed forms of entertainment. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King are some of the best movies by Disney. The social impact of animation is also very drastic. Earlier the target audience of animated cartoons or films were children. But as the evolving time every single person like animated movies. These films have a very light humor which sometimes doesnt even make sense, but it is done in such an appealing way that an 8 years old kid or a 80 years old granddad would love them. Every generation has been enjoying the stories and characters of these animated featured films. Traditionally animation was done in time consuming and labor intensive process of two-dimensional hand drawn cel animation. Today the way of doing animation is completely different and it is much more effective and it majorly depends on new advanced computer technology. Without the new advances in computer technology, outstanding animated films wouldnt have been possible. Films like Toy Story, Madagascar, Finding Nemo, Up etc are the magnificent pieces of work done by Walt Disney and they wouldnt have been possible without the computer technology. Earlier animators used to work very hard and they had to put a lot of effort just to make a small animated video, but now it is all computerized and one can easily see the evolution of animation that how significantly it has improved and made a special place for it self in the industry. According to Buffy Naillon, Computer animation changed the animated film industry. Animation today is based more on math formulas than the ability to draw According to Library.ThinkQuest.org, The company created a design system called DAC (Design Augmented by Computers). With it, they could look at 3D models of their cars from every angle. Consistent with PIXAR à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦.where films go through four stages: development, creating storyline; pre-production, addressing technical challenges; production, making the film; and post-production, polishing the final product. Today the way of doing animation is completely different and is very effective, its a complete process with various steps which include the idea of the film development, then to create a story line in which pre-production is done and dealing with all the technical challenges are also done in this step, later comes the production and the making of the film and then with the final touches the polishing is done. Today we have 3 dimensional animated films, which give the impression of being more realistic. Everyone today is fond of animated films. The stories are very beautiful and yet simple, most of the time the comic stories arent even really funny and most of the time they dont even make sense and are completely illogical but still people love them as when that sledgehammer drops on Sylvesters Big toe and it grows to the size of a watermelon theres no trick photography involved. And the most important the quality of the animated films today is way different then what we had in past. Today when animated films are played in rapid succession they appear to have seamless movements within the layouts. Comparing the methods used today and the methods used earlier one can easily see that how the animation process has evolved and how it is getting better and better. The amazing animated films carry on in the new millennium with great movies like How to Train your Dragon, Toy Story 3, Shrek The Fi nal Chapter, and many more to follow as animated featured films are one of the best way of entertainment today.