Interesting Program | A Look at China’s Green Plan
China hopes to quadruple their economy while only doubling their energy use. This PBS documentary looks at a topic on the minds of every developing nation concerned with global pollution and its effects. Highly recommended.
http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/105_china_trailer.html
Let’s Talk About the Weather
I just checked weather.com/The Weather Channel to see how our Three Cities are looking for the trip. It looks like the average range for October is around 60-70 degrees Farenheit. So if we -15 or -20 degrees for mid-November, then it should be pretty comfortable.
Beijing – High Oct.30th predicted to be 61F/Low 49F.
Hangzhou – High Oct.30th predicted to be 68F/Low 60F.
Dalian – High Oct.31st predicated to be 50F/Low 43F.
Three Cities Wiki
This is more of a reminder to myself to do research on the cities we’ll be visiting before we leave, but I thought I’d post it anyway. This is just the beginning. I’d like to collect more information beginning with the Wikis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing
The China Experience: The World Is Flat
Finishd The World Is Flat last weekend. An interesting read at times. I think that being in the middle of the change or nearly on top of it my entire life (maybe Friedman being of the generation before mine), makes me sort of oblivious to the rapid change. I have never been static. I learn something new about technology every minute. Perhaps for Friedman, the change was more abrupt? (I do understand where he’s coming from, though. He made most of the general population aware of the change. This is a necessary thing to prepare for the change and everyone’s place in the “flat” world.)
A good personal example: I have never been without a computer. My first one was a Commodore 64. I spent hours in my bedroom programming a little guy to dance. Back then, this took more than a couple hundred lines of code for what seemed like one squat and kick from the guy as he moved back and forth across the blue screen. He was very much a one-trick pony. Ah, I miss those blue screens and pixelated characters sometimes. (Gimp is fun to reminisce–and freely available.) Things are too “real”-looking now. But I digress…
We got the Internet early as well in my home. So, when you spend your formative years with the Internet, the shift doesn’t feel like such a monumental change, because the increments are constantly occurring. I learned in chat rooms and user forums about advancing technology. And it was advancing…like an army with swords of slashes (/) and semicolons (;) and tags <place image, color etc. info HERE>. I was learning things on the Net from people all over the world and so it didn’t seem strange to find my company asking people from those same countries to work on projects for them. Nothing seemed amiss or shift-y. It just seemed like an awfully natural, logical progression; one of which I didn’t give a second thought.
I bought the book and the audiobook. I thought about downloading it from iTunes, but it was an impulse buy from Barnes and Noble. I wasn’t really even going to purchase the audio, because I had the book. Sometimes I just want the CD in my hands, too. That really hasn’t changed so much for me. It feels like I purchased something real, not just bits of audio data. You know?
That’s why I still buy all of these books required for all the China courses, too. I still enjoy a tangible book, especially when it costs an arm and a leg. At least someday, if the flat earth goes through a nuclear apocalypse, I can burn it to keep warm.
The China Experience: Logistics
Dean McNeil stated earlier that we needed our passports to apply for our Visas on October 1st to allow the time it takes for them to process. Being that it was already September 28th, and the students hadn’t been instructed on where to get the Visa application or to whom we needed to deliver the passports, I emailed him immediately. It was my understanding that someone would be coming up from Springfield (or Jana in Peoria) to collect our passports and assist us in filling out the Visa paperwork. I was mistaken. Now I’m trying to figure out this application and I hope that I’m doing it correctly! I did email the person who will be processing our Visas with some questions. I’m not even sure the complete name or contact info for any of our Chinese contacts and wish that we’d had more help in this arena. It seems (again) a little bit unorganized and last-minute.
I had requested the new syllabus with updated flight information, but I’m not seeing it in the revised copy circa September 28th. Wondering why the people flying back from Beijing on United are not included in the last item, as we wil NOT be flying back from Dalian and need ground transportation. If it is indeed going to be set up for us, I would like to see it on the syllabus for reassurance.
Tickets are purchased, passport, Visa application (with Rachael’s help) and extra photo (came with passport, needed for Visa application; others may have to get new passport photos and at short notice) hopefully to be in to Jana in the Peoria office by October 1st.
Just be ready for a little frustration on the student end, everyone. Previous cohorts didn’t even know until a month before the exact dates of the trip, so I still consider our cohort lucky.
EDIT: Rachael and Jana have stated that certain information on the Visa application will be filled out by the processors. Regular Visas are what we are applying for (Question 1.9), and the processors have our Chinese contact information (Question 4.7-4.10). Also, we need to submit our travel itinerary from TravNET or a copy of our E-Ticket as well as the Visa application materials.
The China Experience: Reference Materials
Purchased The World Is Flat back in May. I have yet to crack it open, but MIS 525 has a lot of resources in regards to this work. Chapter 2 actually includes some of the central ideas and the professor has posted a video about it on our BlackBoard. Here is the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat
Another required book for the UIS course is Revolutionary Wealth. I haven’t ordered this yet, but hope to this weekend. Here is the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Wealth
There are also additional books on the UIS list that are not required. I’ll look into those next post.
I have purchased all of the following books for the “China Business 102″ course offered at my workplace:
• De Mente, Boye Lafayette, Survival Chinese: How to Communicate without Fuss and Fear – Instantly, Tuttle Publishing, Boston, 2004
A review follows that concerned me. I still bought the book, though.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A16NM08XAMIKCT/ref=cm_cr_dp_pdp
• Strother, Stuart and Barbara Strother, Living Abroad in China. Moon Handbooks, Berkeley, CA, 2006, reference for planning a trip to or live in China.
• Seligman, Scott D., Chinese Business Etiquette: A Guide to Protocol, Manners, and Culture in the PRC, Warner Business Books, New York, 1999
• McGregor, James, One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China, Free Press, New York, 2005
• Pye, Lucian, Chinese Negotiating Styles, Quorum Books, Westport, CT, 1992
The last is an expensive book. New I think it costs around $90-100 and used I found it for $40 + $3.99 shipping. The instructor says that it won’t be necessary for this module, but a subsequent one is focused mainly on negotiation.
I would also recommend Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. My brother has a copy that I intend to borrow and read (finally!).
The China Experience: Intro Post
From the National Geographic Website
Fellow UIS Students:
Hello! Nin hao! (Neen How) I have the opportunity to travel to China with Cohort VIII. As part of preparation for my trip, I enrolled in a China Business 102 course at my workplace, which I joined in late August 2009. (I will share everything that I learn in class with you. If anyone wants copies of the material, I can send you PowerPoints and links.)
I also have the pleasure of working with a Chinese citizen here at work. Her English name is Elaine and she is one of the pricing analysts who started work in our group in late 2008/early 2009. I also recently learned that my cousin and his wife are adopting a little boy from China! Congratulations to them! I know that they will also be visiting early 2010 to bring him back to the U.S. to be a part of their family.
Going back further, I was first exposed to the Chinese culture not from a mainlander, but from a student teacher from Hong Kong who taught in my 1st grade class. (Yes, this is going back much, much further!) Other than that, my experience with China has been mainly from music, film, literature, documentaries and martial arts. Having actual contact with the country or its people has been very limited up until a few years ago.
So let’s get started!
I will mark the posts “China: Part I, II, II, etc.” and put them in the “Business in China” category. This way, if any students are potentially interested in the trip, I will give you a no-holds-barred, true account of what it is really like to do this trip as part of your MBA program. I will try to be as honest and forthcoming as possible, while keeping an open mind. I think that Cohort VIII felt that we weren’t given a whole lot of information, so I hope that this helps.
Thanks for reading!
Chapter Eleven – Supply Chain Management (terms)
Avoidance – finding ways to minimize the number of items that are returned
Bullwhip effect – inventory oscillations become progressively larger looking backward through the supply chain
Centralized purchasing – purchasing is handled by one special department
Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) – a supply chain initiative that focuses on information sharing among supply chain trading partners in planning, forecasting, and inventory replenishment
Cross-docking – a technique whereby goods arriving at a warehouse from a supplier are unloaded from the supplier’s truck and loaded onto outbound trucks, thereby avoiding warehouse storage
Decentralized purchasing – individual departments or separate locations handle their own purchasing requirements
Delayed differentiation – production of standard components and subassemblies, which are held until late in the process to add differentiating features
Disintermediation – reducing one or more steps in a supply chain by cutting out one or more intermediaries
Distribution requirements planning (DRP) – a system for inventory management and distribution planning
E-business – the use of electronic technology to facilitate business transactions
Event management – the ability to detect and respond to unplanned events
Fill rate – the percentage of demand filled from stock on hand
Gatekeeping – screening returned goods to prevent incorrect acceptance of goods
Information velocity – the rate at which information is communicated in a supply chain
Inventory velocity – the rate at which inventory (material) goes through the supply chain
Logistics – the part of a supply chain involved with the forward and reverse flow of goods, services, cash, and information
Outsourcing – buying goods of services instead of producing or providing them in-house
Purchasing cycle – series of steps that begin with a request for purchase and end with notification of shipment received in satisfactory condition
Reverse logistics – the backward flow of goods returned to the supply chain from their final destination
Radio frequency identification (RFID) – a technology that uses radio waves to identify objects, such as goods in supply chains
Strategic partnering – two or more business organizations that have complementary products or services join so that each may realize a strategic benefit
Supply chain – a sequence of organizations – their facilities, functions, and activities – that are involved in producing and delivering a product or service
Supply chain visibility – a major trading partner can connect to its supply chain to access data in real time
Third-party logistics (3-PL) – the outsourcing of business management
Traffic management – overseeing the shipment of incoming and outgoing goods
Vendor analysis – evaluating the sources of supply in terms of price, quality, reputation, and service
Vendor-managed inventory (VMI) – vendors monitor goods and replenish retail inventories when supplies are low
Chapter Five – Strategic Capacity Planning for Products and Services (terms)
Bottleneck operation – an operation in a sequence of operations whose capacity is lower than that of the other operations
Break-even point (BEP) – the volume of output at which total cost and total revenue are equal
Capacity – the upper limit or ceiling on the load that an operating unit can handle
Capacity cushion – extra demand intended to offset uncertainty; =100% – Utilization
Cash flow – the difference between cash received from sales and other sources, and cash outflow for labor, material, overhead, and taxes
Diseconomies of scale – if the output rate is more than the optimal level, increasing the output rate results in increasing average unit costs
Economies of scale – if the output rate is less than the optimal level, increasing the output rate results in decreasing average unit costs
Outsource – obtain a good or service from an external provider, (make or buy?)
Present value – the sum, in current value, of all future cash flows of an investment proposal
Chapter Four – Product and Service Design (terms)
Computer-aided design (CAD) – product design using computer graphics
Concurrent engineering – bringing engineering design and manufacturing personnel together early in the design phase
Design for assembly (DFA) – design that focuses on reducing the number of parts in a product and on assembly methods and sequence
Design for disassembly (DFD) – design so that used products can be easily taken apart
Design for manufacturing (DFM) – the designing of products that are compatible with an organization’s capabilities
Design for recycling (DFR) – design that facilitates the recovery of materials and components in used products for reuse
Designing for operations – taking into account the capabilities of the organization in designing goods and services
Failure – situation in which a product, part, or system does not perform as intended
Life cycle – incubation, growth, maturity, and decline
Manufacturability – the ease of fabrication and/or assembly
Mass customization – a strategy of producing basically standardized goods, but incorporating some degree of customization
Modular design – a form of standardization in which component parts are grouped into modules that are easily replaced or interchanged
Normal operating conditions – the set of conditions under which an item’s reliability is specified
Product bundle – the combination of goods and services provided to a customer
Product liability – the responsibility of a manufacturer for any injuries or damages caused by a faulty product
Quality function deployment (QFD) – an approach that integrates “voice of the customer” into both product and service development
Recycling – recovering materials for future use
Reliability – the ability or a product, part, or system to perform its intended function under a prescribed set of conditions
Remanufacturing – refurbishing used products by replacing worn-out or defective components
Research and development (R&D) – organized efforts to increase scientific knowledge or product innovation
Reverse engineering – dismantling and inspecting a competitor’s product to discover product improvements
Robust design – design that results in products or services that can function over a broad range of conditions
Service – something that is done to or for a customer
Service blueprint – a method used in service design to describe and analyze a proposed service
Service delivery system – the facilities, process, and skills needed to provide a service
Service package – the physical resources needed to perform the service, the accompanying goods, and the explicit and implicit services included
Standardization – extent to which there is absence of variety in a product, service, or process
Uniform Commercial Code – products carry an implication of merchantability and fitness
Value analysis – examination of the function of parts and materials in an effort to reduce cost and /or improve product performance
