The film When Harry Met Sally - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1306 Downloads: 8 Date added: 2019/03/19 Category Art Essay Level High school Tags: Film Analysis Essay Did you like this example? The film When Harry Met Sally is a love story portrayed as taking place over a decade. Initially, both characters find one another generally unlikable and largely incompatible with one another. At the same time, Harry admits to Sally that he finds her physically attractive. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "The film When Harry Met Sally" essay for you Create order But then he shares a personal belief with her that more or less doubles as a theme the film goes on to explore in great detail. His belief is succinctly captured in this quote from the movie: You realize of course that we could never be friends men and women cant be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. This question about the possibility of male-female friendship in the face of male heterosexuality becomes a motif the film explores from the opening scenes through to the finale. The theme is first introduced in the couples dialogue on a road trip they take together as strangers to New York City after graduating from the University of Chicago. This tension between platonic possibilities between men and women and erotic masculine compulsion is repeatedly introduced throughout the film as the duos bond evolves from friendship to confused lovers to committed spouses. On the surface, the film is a love story. In my view, this popular assessment is fair but superficial. Instead, I posit that the film is better understood as a movie about how a man and a woman, each governed by heteronormativity, cope with both (a) ambivalent feelings about .intimacy and (b) existential fears of loneliness. To help both Harry and Sally deal with these issues, I would employ Salvador Minuchins Structural Family Therapy (Minuchin et al. 2013). This approach to treatment focuses on identifying patterns of interaction that cause and embed problems within family and couple relationshi ps (Minuchin et al. 2013, pg. 11). The goal of treatment is to alter these patterns of interaction not necessarily to change the people engaged in the therapeutic process (Minuchin et al. 2013, pg. 4). In Minuchins approach, a key means to effecting change in relationship patterns is the identification â€Å" and ultimately the challenging â€Å" of latent or implicit rules that relationship members follow without necessarily being able to consciously articulate that their behavior is rule conforming. Importantly, the therapist is encouraged to become a participant observer of familial interactions and relationships, working to become an active member of the treatment process with clients (Minuchin et al. 2013, pg. 5). This immersion by the therapist in the family interactional patterns helps him or her to better understand the system as an insider does. Equally important, it also helps the therapist to nudge the family towards change while also enabling the therapist to strengthen a revised structure and rules at the same time (Minuchin et al. 2013, pg. 11). Being an utter novice, the treatment approach Id take would follow steps advocated for by Minuchin himself. As indicated above, a key facet of my approach would be to challenge the couples conception of their interpersonal problem. The issue isnt about tensions between erotic compulsion and platonic possibilities, per se. Rather, I posit that the core issues in the relationship revolved around intimacy ambivalences, loneliness fears, and heteronormative assumptions about adult male-female relationships. The ambivalence theme is expressed well by Sally in the film when she utters: You see? That is just like you, Harry. You say things like that, and you make it impossible for me to hate you. Similarly, Sally expresses the loneliness theme directly during a New Years Eve scene at the end of the movie: Im sorry, Harry. I know its New Years Eve. I know youre feeling lonely, but you just cant show up here, tell me you love me, and expect that to make everything all right. It doesnt work this way. And finally, Harry captures heteronormative assumptions in this dialogue between the couple following one of Sallys breakups: Sally: I dont have to take this crap from you. Harry: If youre so over Joe, why arent you seeing anyone? Sally: I see people. Harry: See people? Have you slept with one person since you broke up with Joe? Equally important, I would work to unwrap the manner in which the identities of Harry and Sally are cathected to these ambivalence, fears, and assumptions. To accomplish this work, I would work to develop an empathic relationship with each member of the relationship, though I suspect Id need to ward off countertransference issues related to Harrys hegemonic sense of masculinity. The social justice issue I would tackle is hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). He clearly finds it easy, even seemingly natural, to objectify women and to orient towards women as a means to sexual gratification. This theme is expressed clearly in the following dialogue from the film: Harry: No man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her. Sally: So you are saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive? Harry: No, you pretty much want to nail them too. For much of the film, women to him are conquests not full human beings. In his view, intimacy is a zero-sum game and sex is an aggressive act (you want to nail them). Even if he is able to be a physically pleasing partner to his mate, Harry still considers sex a kind of victory. If he scores, so to speak, the woman loses, structurally speaking. This is exemplified by his compulsive flight response after sex with women, including Sally. As Sally suggests in response to Harrys description of his post-coitus flight response, You are a human affront to all women and I am a woman. The logic of the game hes playing makes no sense once hes consummated the act; this reflects his limited conception of intimacy and his warped sense of what it means to be a man. Harrys issues with masculinity, I believe, would need to be tackled directly if Sally and Harry stand a chance of cultivating a healthy, sustainable bond and sexuality in their relationship. Personally, I had a surprisingly difficult time doing this assignment. This film has a special place in my relationship to my wife. When we were younger, she and I would often spend weekends at her familys vacation home in Vermont. During the evenings, we would watch movies together. This was back in the day when movies were watched on VCRs. Her familys movie collection was remarkably limited. So we wound up watching When Harry Met Sally too many times to even count. The film is part of my marital lore. Beth and I have considered the film a kind of romantic comedy. On some level, it is. However, this assignment forced me to critically engage with complex and unflattering themes in the narrative and in the characters, especially Harry. On this level, the film has been de-romanticized for me. But the experience cuts even deeper as I can see in hindsight that I held many of Harrys sexist beliefs when I was a younger man, despite the fact that I was raised by a feminist and worked for a battered womens organization for several years. In this way, the film is a piercing reflection of a previous version of myself that, frankly, makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. This film analysis assignment dredged up some unresolved issues for me. In the end, however, I still found the film peppered with funny lines, such as the following: Harry: I had my dream again, where Im making love and the Olympic judges are watching. Ive nailed the compulsories so this is it, the finals. I got a nine eight from the Canadian, a perfect ten from the American, and my mother disguised as an East German judge gave me a five six. Mustve been the dismount. This line would be an intellectual feast for a Freudian Psychoanalyst, Im sure.

The Rationality of Probabilities for Actions in Decision...

The Rationality of Probabilities for Actions in Decision Theory ABSTRACT: Spohns decision model, an advancement of Fishburns theory, is valuable for making explicit the principle used also by other thinkers that any adequate quantitative decision model must not explicitly or implicitly contain any subjective probabilities for acts. This principle is not used in the decision theories of Jeffrey or of Luce and Krantz. According to Spohn, this principle is important because it has effects on the term of action, on Newcombs problem, and on the theory of causality and the freedom of the will. On the one hand, I will argue against Spohn with Jeffrey that the principle has to be given up. On the other, I will try to argue against†¦show more content†¦In 1969 Robert Nozick introduced Newcombs problem to the philosophic community as a conflict between the principle of expected utility maximization and the principle of dominance. Nozicks introduction led to a Newcombmania (Levi 1982), because philosophers have decisively different opinions about t he correct solution to this problem. The Newcombmania showed itself in the development of causal and evidential decision theories and other proposals. Because the evidential theories (for example Jeffrey 1965, 1983) do not use the principle, they cannot give a solution to Newcombs problem in case you accept the principle. The causal theories which use subjunctive conditionals (for example Lewis 1981) are problematical, because they still have to provide a logic of subjunctive conditionals, a probability theory for subjunctive conditionals and a corresponding decision theory. Because Skyrms (1980) causal theory and Kyburgs (1980) proposal of epistemic vs. stochastic independence also dont use the principle, only Spohns solution (1978) to Newcombs problem is left. This solution which recommends taking both boxes is valuable for its simplicity in contrast to the theories with subjunctive conditionals. According to Spohn it is a mistake to use probabilities conditionalized on actions fo r the results of the prediction, if the prediction is earlier than the choice. According to Spohn it is right that theShow MoreRelatedStudy Stock Market Trends : Ron Insana. Investments Don t Always Work As Planned On Wall Street1487 Words   |  6 Pagesparticular investment. Game theory applies to industrial organizations, labor markets and pricing. Game theory rarely applies to finance. The Nash equilibrium is a term used in game theory to describe equilibrium where each player s strategy is optimal given the strategies of all other players. A Nash Equilibrium exists when there is no unilateral profitable deviation from the players involved. 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Cyclermate Free Essays

string(49) " the finance issue of this company is in danger\." CYCLERMATE REPORT I. Introduction of Cyclermate Lewis Llewellyn and Dai Armstrong were the first two men who made a plan of opening their own company after being redundant as the consequence of the closure of their town’s steel works in South Wales. Both of them belonged to the local cycle touring club and since then, they had become close friends. We will write a custom essay sample on Cyclermate or any similar topic only for you Order Now With the idea of making a traditional upright cycle in sharp of the 1940’s and 1950’s, Cyclermate Ltd has been established and quickly gained success and attracted a number of attentions of customers owing to its high quality hand – made products and word – of – mouth reputation. Over the next 15 years, the company had still expanded and continued to be successful when persuading many small cycle shops in Wales and England to display or at least to keep a stock of brochures of its products. Everything seems to work quite smoothly until 2010, when Cyclermate has faced a lot of issues in terms of finance, human resource and operation. To be specific, the demand among buyers in this field continues to fall even price of each Cyclermate’s product has been reduced; the quality of its products are no longer as good as it was in the past which illustrated by the increase of complaints from customers about its quality and fault and the bank manager has expressed concern about the overdraft which will cost Cyclermate a big trouble if it does not solve these problems immediately. These are just some of the obstacles which the company has faced so in this essay, I will analyze more clearly about its difficulty and recommend some positive solutions for Cyclermate which it can follows to handle these issues. II. Cyclermate analysis 1. SWOT analysis First of all, in order to have a wide vision about this company, I have used SWOT as a tool to identify and analyze the situation of Cyclermate at the moment. As regards internal factors, one of the strength of this company which makes it different compared to the other companies is unique products. As far as I am concerned, with the development of technology, many cycle shops nowadays use a modern production chain to dispose and assemble materials. Nonetheless, the cost for this activity is quite high and most of the products will be the same. When it comes to Cyclermate, almost processes have been settled by hand; thus, staffs can easily add their creation into products and attract customers by the wide range of style of its bicycle. Furthermore, by using traditional method, Cyclermate have brought some new things to the market making buyers feel more interesting, especially when products have been sold in the market are quite common and familiar. When it comes to the weaknesses, as almost Cyclermate’s products have been made by hand so mistakes and faults are inevitable. That is to say, besides the price paying for materials, it also has to spend some more for fixing service. Moreover, with the lack of employees and capital, Cyclermate has struggled in operating the company and consequently, it normally has to face the insufficient production selling in the market. As regards external factors, a huge opportunity for Cyclermate at the very first is that it produces an unfamiliar product so Cyclermate can avoid big competitors and has a chance to dominate the market. Besides, according to Mr. Llewellyn, there is still strong growths to come in the cycle market as more and more people abandon their cars; hence, this is a good chance for this company to reach to its customers. One of the most striking features which should be considered here is the economic crisis occurring in 2008 resulted in the threat of total collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market also suffered, resulting in evictions, foreclosures and prolonged unemployment. The crisis played a significant role in the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in trillions of US dollars, and a downturn in economic activity. As the consequence, people will have to think about a solution to save money and one possible way at this time is reduce the usage of petrol; in another word, reduce using gas transportation and change to physical vehicle such as bicycle. So if Cyclermate can attracts customers and creates a habit of using bicycle among them, it definitely will success in the future. The only threat of Cyclermate which I want to mention here is the appearance of some competitors in this major for example Halfords which gained success at the moment even there are many cycle shops are closing – outpriced. At the very first, Cyclermate was one of the first company entering this field so it did not have to pay much attention about how to deal with the others competitors. Nevertheless, when the time passed by, many companies have noticed about this potential market so it is time for Cyclermate to try their best to gain trust of customers if they do not want to lose the market to their rivals. 2. Current issues of Cyclermate a. Finance problem After having an overlook about the situation of Cyclermate, the next part of my essay will come closer to all the issues which Cyclermate has met. Firstly, this company has to deal with a huge trouble which comes from finance. As I mentioned before, Cyclermate had to reduce the cost of its product to maintain sales, costs are rising and the overdraft is increase year by year which push the company on the edge of bankruptcy. Besides, according to Ms. Barry the budget for the coming year will further decline and possible trading losses as the consequence of a decline in sales. Moreover, based on the profit statement for the last five years, it is clearly that the finance issue of this company is in danger. You read "Cyclermate" in category "Essay examples" To illustrated, the profit retained of the company had decreased significantly compared to the last 4 year (from ? 42734 in 9/30/2009 to ? 12724 in 9/30/2010) and it did not even pay the dividends for shareholder and the cash on hand of Cyclermate in 30/9/2010 was just ? 657; put it in another words, the liquidity of this company was too low and if there was something happen for example the banks did not believe Cyclermate anymore and they wanted their money back, it could not have enough cash to pay for its creditors and had to mortgage its non-current assets; hence, this company will not have enough machine or capital to run its business. In order to help the company overcome this problem, there are some solutions which I am considered will be possible. First, according to the financial statement, even the direct sales units sold was lower than shop sales price, the profit which Cyclermate received from direct sale was much more higher. To be specific, in 9/30/2006, even there were just 743 units sold by direct sales, compared to 1010 units by shop sales, the revenue from the former was much more higher ( 743Ãâ€"650 – 1010Ãâ€"390 = â‚ ¬89050). That is to say, by reducing the products sold in shop, Cyclermate can saves and gains more money. Furthermore, in order to maintain the connection which suppliers after reducing the quantity, Cyclermate can negotiate with these suppliers and offer some extra interest rate or commission so that its supplier will still remain display and sell the product of this company. Another solution is that Dai Armstrong should allow Lewis Llewellyn to retire. The reason is that Lewis Llewellyn himself does not willing to work anymore and he usually find his work increasingly tiring and stressful. Besides, although he is one of the first 2 men who established Cyclermate as well as the shareholder of the company, he himself thinks that this company should close down or should be sold for the others UK firms. If employees in Cyclermate know what he is thinking, will they want to work for its workplace anymore; and even they still work for this company, no one can guarantee that they will put 100% of their mind on working. So let Lewis Llewellyn go seem to be the right choice at this time. However, Dai Armstrong must negotiate with Lewis about his share in the company because if he wants his money back; I believe that the capital of Cyclermate will not meet the standard to run its business. In my opinion, the negotiation will success as these two men has a strong relationship and has worked with each other for such a long time so if everything is ok, Cyclermate will save a lot of money for the next coming year. b. Human resources problem There are a number of problems with the human resource of Cyclermate. First of all, it does not have enough staffs to run the business smoothly after expanding. For instance, Dai Armstrong is the chairman of the company and normally, he must takes in charge of operating and controlling the activity of Cyclermate and distributes a particular job for his employees. Nonetheless, owing to the insufficient workforce, Dai himself still makes all the frames, using the original jigs constructed in his garage all those years ago and the inevitable thing is that he is finding it hard to keep up this level of production, both because of the physical demands of the task, and because of his other duties as factory manager and business director; as regards package, it is usually taken by anyone who has spare time. That is to say, it cannot guarantee the productivity of the firm, especially in rush time, when the staffs cannot even meet the quantity requirement of their main duty so how can they handle another. Moreover, at the moment, the company does not have as much skillful staffs as possible in order to maintain the productivity of Cyclermate and Gwyneth Morgan is one of typically example. She usually deals with internal and external enquiries, ata entry, and other routine tasks which is classify as paper work; however the main responsibility of her job is purchasing and help company avoiding disruption from stockouts; hence, the work cannot meet the efficiency as expected or Ffred Gregory who is 18 years old and quite new to the process, often has to work overtime to ensure that orders are met on time so that training him has further slowed production recently. Of course, Cyclermate still has some professional employees like Idris Pugh who was recruited from a local cycle repair shop. He is a perfectionist in terms of wheel manufacture and never cause for any complaints but sometimes, the work were late for appointment owing to his old-age and bad healthy. As far as solutions are concerned, I have found out some possible ones which Cyclermate can applies. At the very first, it should re-train the staffs in the company in order to meet the requirement of their field. This train can be hold by the boss himself or skillful employees of Cyclermate so that they can not only save a bundle of money for the company but also have more time to chat and understand each other, especially newcomers. Moreover, after enrolling in this course, employees should be guaranteed to understand their job clearly and easily to combat with the task given. Another thing which can be done is recruit some new employees for Cyclermate. This is kind of positive way at this time as a new and professional staffs can help the company find out a new and creative way to complete the task and maintain the requirement quantity and quality of the company. However, I do not highly recommend this solution as the finance issue of the company is in danger and it is hard for Cyclermate to hire some new employees at this time. c. Operation problem The very last problem of Cyclermate which I want to mention here is Operation ones. First of all, the leader of the company does not have a clear distribution for each staff which leads to the unstable in their job and costs a low productivity for such a long time. To be illustrated, Dai Armstrong has to take charge of many different responsibilities included the chairman of Cyclermate, the worker who makes all the frames of products and even a packaged man. With a bunch of workloads which have been handled like that, how can this man has time to think about a new strategy, a new plan to improve the current situation of the company? And the others workers, with a number of things have been done in a short time, how can they guarantee that no mistake will be made, not mention about some majors are not their professional field. Besides, as far as I concerned, before establishing Cyclermate, Lewis was just on his way up from apprentice to be chief mill engineer while Dai had progressed from â€Å"office boy† to a senior marketing post. That is to say, with this current position, how can they have enough management skills to lead the other in the company? Last but not least, the problem even come from the top manager of the company which is Lewis and Dai who share management of the business, though by nature of their differing roles, Lewis tends to focus more on production issues and Dai on external relations. Like people have said â€Å" 1 dat khong the co 2 vua†, with a different role like that, they cannot guide their employees to a single task which is break the basic rules of a corporation; consequently, Cyclermate’s staffs do not know what to concentrate on and lack of clear vision about the goal of what they have to do. When it comes to the solution, I believe that there are some ways which can help Cyclermate improve the current situation of this company. Firstly, Dai Armstrong has to set down a clear distribution for each position in the company. He has to reduce the multi – responsibility among his workers so that they can focus 100% on their current job and maintain the productivity of each process. Secondly, as I mentioned above, If Cyclermate accepts the retirement of Lewis Llewellyn, it can concentrates deeply on a single task at the moment for example maintain the productivity or improve the quality of its products, etc which is clear so that employees will know what they have to do to meet the goal of the company. Lastly, in order to save money, save materials and still supply enough products to meet the need of customers, Cyclermate itself should considers to apply JIT method on produce the products. This method was described by Henry Ford in his book as a production model in which items are created to meet demand, not created in surplus or in advance of need. I absolutely think that this solution will fit the Cyclermate’s situation well, especially when it has a huge issue with finance; Thus, by calculating an exact figure of materials has been and should be used, this company can avoid the waste associated with overproduction, waiting and excess inventory. In order to support for this method, I highly recommend the company to use Kanban cards to make JIT become more efficiency. As far as I oncerned, this Kanban card is like a label which contained a number of information about products such as name, number of units and a variety of other news that clearly conveys what must be done. By applying this card in manufacturing, especially in the situation of Cyclermate when the work of each staffs does not fix, it will help employees to control and identify which should be done next by analyze the color of Kanban cards for instance the white or green Kanban cards mean that a product do not have to manufacture yet, the yellow ones mean that employees should start producing a goods immediately, etc. III. Recommendation After analyzing the case study about Cyclermate, I want to note down briefly about some potential routes which this company can follow to reach to the market. First of all, as far as I am concerned, Cyclermate has a good supplied channel who ready to advertise and sell the product of the company and Word of Mouth method seems to bring a positive chance for it to attract customers. That is to say, developing this supplied channel can help Cyclermate increase its image on the eyes of customers and there are many others retailers which have not been asked about selling Cyclermate’s products so this a one of a best way for this company to expand its business. Another striking feature here is that it can focus on direct sale to sell its product to buyers. This method can help the company reduce the price paid for middleman and furthermore, Cyclermate can take this chance as an opportunity to interact with customers in order to understand and identify what they really want and need. Lastly, with the significant develop of technology, marketing is now become more and more important within any corporation around the world to approach and attract buyers. However, this way seems to be forgotten by Cyclermate indicated in the meeting’s report that the marketing activity of this company in recent year is quite rare. As the consequence, Cyclermate can spend some of the money saved from firing Lewis Llewellyn and profit retained to improve this activity to rise up its status and advertise a great hand-made bicycle to customers. IV. Conclusion Cyclermate Ltd, in my opinion, is a brave company as it does not follow the trend of current market but identifying and having its own idea to manufacture a unique product, even in a harsh time like this. However, it has met a number of issues when trying to operate its business which I have mentioned above. In the future, there will be a lot of difficulties which this company has to handle. Having said that, with all the ideas and solutions which I have noted down in my essay, I strongly believe that it is possible for Cyclermate to recover and strengthen as it did in the past. How to cite Cyclermate, Essay examples

Cyclermate Free Essays

string(49) " the finance issue of this company is in danger\." CYCLERMATE REPORT I. Introduction of Cyclermate Lewis Llewellyn and Dai Armstrong were the first two men who made a plan of opening their own company after being redundant as the consequence of the closure of their town’s steel works in South Wales. Both of them belonged to the local cycle touring club and since then, they had become close friends. We will write a custom essay sample on Cyclermate or any similar topic only for you Order Now With the idea of making a traditional upright cycle in sharp of the 1940’s and 1950’s, Cyclermate Ltd has been established and quickly gained success and attracted a number of attentions of customers owing to its high quality hand – made products and word – of – mouth reputation. Over the next 15 years, the company had still expanded and continued to be successful when persuading many small cycle shops in Wales and England to display or at least to keep a stock of brochures of its products. Everything seems to work quite smoothly until 2010, when Cyclermate has faced a lot of issues in terms of finance, human resource and operation. To be specific, the demand among buyers in this field continues to fall even price of each Cyclermate’s product has been reduced; the quality of its products are no longer as good as it was in the past which illustrated by the increase of complaints from customers about its quality and fault and the bank manager has expressed concern about the overdraft which will cost Cyclermate a big trouble if it does not solve these problems immediately. These are just some of the obstacles which the company has faced so in this essay, I will analyze more clearly about its difficulty and recommend some positive solutions for Cyclermate which it can follows to handle these issues. II. Cyclermate analysis 1. SWOT analysis First of all, in order to have a wide vision about this company, I have used SWOT as a tool to identify and analyze the situation of Cyclermate at the moment. As regards internal factors, one of the strength of this company which makes it different compared to the other companies is unique products. As far as I am concerned, with the development of technology, many cycle shops nowadays use a modern production chain to dispose and assemble materials. Nonetheless, the cost for this activity is quite high and most of the products will be the same. When it comes to Cyclermate, almost processes have been settled by hand; thus, staffs can easily add their creation into products and attract customers by the wide range of style of its bicycle. Furthermore, by using traditional method, Cyclermate have brought some new things to the market making buyers feel more interesting, especially when products have been sold in the market are quite common and familiar. When it comes to the weaknesses, as almost Cyclermate’s products have been made by hand so mistakes and faults are inevitable. That is to say, besides the price paying for materials, it also has to spend some more for fixing service. Moreover, with the lack of employees and capital, Cyclermate has struggled in operating the company and consequently, it normally has to face the insufficient production selling in the market. As regards external factors, a huge opportunity for Cyclermate at the very first is that it produces an unfamiliar product so Cyclermate can avoid big competitors and has a chance to dominate the market. Besides, according to Mr. Llewellyn, there is still strong growths to come in the cycle market as more and more people abandon their cars; hence, this is a good chance for this company to reach to its customers. One of the most striking features which should be considered here is the economic crisis occurring in 2008 resulted in the threat of total collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market also suffered, resulting in evictions, foreclosures and prolonged unemployment. The crisis played a significant role in the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in trillions of US dollars, and a downturn in economic activity. As the consequence, people will have to think about a solution to save money and one possible way at this time is reduce the usage of petrol; in another word, reduce using gas transportation and change to physical vehicle such as bicycle. So if Cyclermate can attracts customers and creates a habit of using bicycle among them, it definitely will success in the future. The only threat of Cyclermate which I want to mention here is the appearance of some competitors in this major for example Halfords which gained success at the moment even there are many cycle shops are closing – outpriced. At the very first, Cyclermate was one of the first company entering this field so it did not have to pay much attention about how to deal with the others competitors. Nevertheless, when the time passed by, many companies have noticed about this potential market so it is time for Cyclermate to try their best to gain trust of customers if they do not want to lose the market to their rivals. 2. Current issues of Cyclermate a. Finance problem After having an overlook about the situation of Cyclermate, the next part of my essay will come closer to all the issues which Cyclermate has met. Firstly, this company has to deal with a huge trouble which comes from finance. As I mentioned before, Cyclermate had to reduce the cost of its product to maintain sales, costs are rising and the overdraft is increase year by year which push the company on the edge of bankruptcy. Besides, according to Ms. Barry the budget for the coming year will further decline and possible trading losses as the consequence of a decline in sales. Moreover, based on the profit statement for the last five years, it is clearly that the finance issue of this company is in danger. You read "Cyclermate" in category "Essay examples" To illustrated, the profit retained of the company had decreased significantly compared to the last 4 year (from ? 42734 in 9/30/2009 to ? 12724 in 9/30/2010) and it did not even pay the dividends for shareholder and the cash on hand of Cyclermate in 30/9/2010 was just ? 657; put it in another words, the liquidity of this company was too low and if there was something happen for example the banks did not believe Cyclermate anymore and they wanted their money back, it could not have enough cash to pay for its creditors and had to mortgage its non-current assets; hence, this company will not have enough machine or capital to run its business. In order to help the company overcome this problem, there are some solutions which I am considered will be possible. First, according to the financial statement, even the direct sales units sold was lower than shop sales price, the profit which Cyclermate received from direct sale was much more higher. To be specific, in 9/30/2006, even there were just 743 units sold by direct sales, compared to 1010 units by shop sales, the revenue from the former was much more higher ( 743Ãâ€"650 – 1010Ãâ€"390 = â‚ ¬89050). That is to say, by reducing the products sold in shop, Cyclermate can saves and gains more money. Furthermore, in order to maintain the connection which suppliers after reducing the quantity, Cyclermate can negotiate with these suppliers and offer some extra interest rate or commission so that its supplier will still remain display and sell the product of this company. Another solution is that Dai Armstrong should allow Lewis Llewellyn to retire. The reason is that Lewis Llewellyn himself does not willing to work anymore and he usually find his work increasingly tiring and stressful. Besides, although he is one of the first 2 men who established Cyclermate as well as the shareholder of the company, he himself thinks that this company should close down or should be sold for the others UK firms. If employees in Cyclermate know what he is thinking, will they want to work for its workplace anymore; and even they still work for this company, no one can guarantee that they will put 100% of their mind on working. So let Lewis Llewellyn go seem to be the right choice at this time. However, Dai Armstrong must negotiate with Lewis about his share in the company because if he wants his money back; I believe that the capital of Cyclermate will not meet the standard to run its business. In my opinion, the negotiation will success as these two men has a strong relationship and has worked with each other for such a long time so if everything is ok, Cyclermate will save a lot of money for the next coming year. b. Human resources problem There are a number of problems with the human resource of Cyclermate. First of all, it does not have enough staffs to run the business smoothly after expanding. For instance, Dai Armstrong is the chairman of the company and normally, he must takes in charge of operating and controlling the activity of Cyclermate and distributes a particular job for his employees. Nonetheless, owing to the insufficient workforce, Dai himself still makes all the frames, using the original jigs constructed in his garage all those years ago and the inevitable thing is that he is finding it hard to keep up this level of production, both because of the physical demands of the task, and because of his other duties as factory manager and business director; as regards package, it is usually taken by anyone who has spare time. That is to say, it cannot guarantee the productivity of the firm, especially in rush time, when the staffs cannot even meet the quantity requirement of their main duty so how can they handle another. Moreover, at the moment, the company does not have as much skillful staffs as possible in order to maintain the productivity of Cyclermate and Gwyneth Morgan is one of typically example. She usually deals with internal and external enquiries, ata entry, and other routine tasks which is classify as paper work; however the main responsibility of her job is purchasing and help company avoiding disruption from stockouts; hence, the work cannot meet the efficiency as expected or Ffred Gregory who is 18 years old and quite new to the process, often has to work overtime to ensure that orders are met on time so that training him has further slowed production recently. Of course, Cyclermate still has some professional employees like Idris Pugh who was recruited from a local cycle repair shop. He is a perfectionist in terms of wheel manufacture and never cause for any complaints but sometimes, the work were late for appointment owing to his old-age and bad healthy. As far as solutions are concerned, I have found out some possible ones which Cyclermate can applies. At the very first, it should re-train the staffs in the company in order to meet the requirement of their field. This train can be hold by the boss himself or skillful employees of Cyclermate so that they can not only save a bundle of money for the company but also have more time to chat and understand each other, especially newcomers. Moreover, after enrolling in this course, employees should be guaranteed to understand their job clearly and easily to combat with the task given. Another thing which can be done is recruit some new employees for Cyclermate. This is kind of positive way at this time as a new and professional staffs can help the company find out a new and creative way to complete the task and maintain the requirement quantity and quality of the company. However, I do not highly recommend this solution as the finance issue of the company is in danger and it is hard for Cyclermate to hire some new employees at this time. c. Operation problem The very last problem of Cyclermate which I want to mention here is Operation ones. First of all, the leader of the company does not have a clear distribution for each staff which leads to the unstable in their job and costs a low productivity for such a long time. To be illustrated, Dai Armstrong has to take charge of many different responsibilities included the chairman of Cyclermate, the worker who makes all the frames of products and even a packaged man. With a bunch of workloads which have been handled like that, how can this man has time to think about a new strategy, a new plan to improve the current situation of the company? And the others workers, with a number of things have been done in a short time, how can they guarantee that no mistake will be made, not mention about some majors are not their professional field. Besides, as far as I concerned, before establishing Cyclermate, Lewis was just on his way up from apprentice to be chief mill engineer while Dai had progressed from â€Å"office boy† to a senior marketing post. That is to say, with this current position, how can they have enough management skills to lead the other in the company? Last but not least, the problem even come from the top manager of the company which is Lewis and Dai who share management of the business, though by nature of their differing roles, Lewis tends to focus more on production issues and Dai on external relations. Like people have said â€Å" 1 dat khong the co 2 vua†, with a different role like that, they cannot guide their employees to a single task which is break the basic rules of a corporation; consequently, Cyclermate’s staffs do not know what to concentrate on and lack of clear vision about the goal of what they have to do. When it comes to the solution, I believe that there are some ways which can help Cyclermate improve the current situation of this company. Firstly, Dai Armstrong has to set down a clear distribution for each position in the company. He has to reduce the multi – responsibility among his workers so that they can focus 100% on their current job and maintain the productivity of each process. Secondly, as I mentioned above, If Cyclermate accepts the retirement of Lewis Llewellyn, it can concentrates deeply on a single task at the moment for example maintain the productivity or improve the quality of its products, etc which is clear so that employees will know what they have to do to meet the goal of the company. Lastly, in order to save money, save materials and still supply enough products to meet the need of customers, Cyclermate itself should considers to apply JIT method on produce the products. This method was described by Henry Ford in his book as a production model in which items are created to meet demand, not created in surplus or in advance of need. I absolutely think that this solution will fit the Cyclermate’s situation well, especially when it has a huge issue with finance; Thus, by calculating an exact figure of materials has been and should be used, this company can avoid the waste associated with overproduction, waiting and excess inventory. In order to support for this method, I highly recommend the company to use Kanban cards to make JIT become more efficiency. As far as I oncerned, this Kanban card is like a label which contained a number of information about products such as name, number of units and a variety of other news that clearly conveys what must be done. By applying this card in manufacturing, especially in the situation of Cyclermate when the work of each staffs does not fix, it will help employees to control and identify which should be done next by analyze the color of Kanban cards for instance the white or green Kanban cards mean that a product do not have to manufacture yet, the yellow ones mean that employees should start producing a goods immediately, etc. III. Recommendation After analyzing the case study about Cyclermate, I want to note down briefly about some potential routes which this company can follow to reach to the market. First of all, as far as I am concerned, Cyclermate has a good supplied channel who ready to advertise and sell the product of the company and Word of Mouth method seems to bring a positive chance for it to attract customers. That is to say, developing this supplied channel can help Cyclermate increase its image on the eyes of customers and there are many others retailers which have not been asked about selling Cyclermate’s products so this a one of a best way for this company to expand its business. Another striking feature here is that it can focus on direct sale to sell its product to buyers. This method can help the company reduce the price paid for middleman and furthermore, Cyclermate can take this chance as an opportunity to interact with customers in order to understand and identify what they really want and need. Lastly, with the significant develop of technology, marketing is now become more and more important within any corporation around the world to approach and attract buyers. However, this way seems to be forgotten by Cyclermate indicated in the meeting’s report that the marketing activity of this company in recent year is quite rare. As the consequence, Cyclermate can spend some of the money saved from firing Lewis Llewellyn and profit retained to improve this activity to rise up its status and advertise a great hand-made bicycle to customers. IV. Conclusion Cyclermate Ltd, in my opinion, is a brave company as it does not follow the trend of current market but identifying and having its own idea to manufacture a unique product, even in a harsh time like this. However, it has met a number of issues when trying to operate its business which I have mentioned above. In the future, there will be a lot of difficulties which this company has to handle. Having said that, with all the ideas and solutions which I have noted down in my essay, I strongly believe that it is possible for Cyclermate to recover and strengthen as it did in the past. How to cite Cyclermate, Essay examples

Oxidation †Reduction Titration Determination of Iron free essay sample

Abstract: The purpose of this experiment was to determine the percentage purity of the iron(II) salt in an unknown sample. We performed titrations using Potassium permanganate which is a strong oxidizing agent, with unknown sample dissolved in deionized water. The result of the experiment was a 99.5% purity for the anhydrous iron (II) ammonium sulfate. Introduction: In this experiment, oxidation/reduction (or redox) will be used in the titration analysis of an iron compound. We will use potassium permanganate, KMnO4, as the titrant in the analysis of an unknown sample containing iron to determine the percent iron by mass in the sample. In acidic solution, potassium permanganate rapidly and quantitively oxidizes iron(II) to iron (III), while itself being reduced to manganese(II). (2) The half reactions for the process are: MnO4+8H + 5e→Mn2++4H2O reduction Fe2+ → Fe3+ + e− Oxidation When these half reaction are combined to give the overall balanced chemical reaction equation, a factor of five must be used with the iron half-reaction so that the number of electrons lost in the overall oxidation will equal the number of electrons gained in the reduction: MnO4+8H + Fe2+ →Mn2++4H2O + 5Fe3 Potassium permanganate is one of the most commonly used oxidizing agents because it is extremely powerful, inexpensive and ready available. (1) it does have some drawbacks however. Because KMnO4 is a strong oxidizing agent, it reacts with practically anything that can be oxidized. This tends to make solutions of KMnO4, difficult to store without it decomposing or changing in concentration. Because of this limitation, it is common to prepare a standardized, (3) and then use KMnO4 solutions for analysis all on the same day. It is not possible to prepare a KMnO4 standard solution based on a mass: Solid potassium permanganate cannot be obtained in a completely pure state due to the high reactivity mentioned above. Thather,potassium permanganate solutions are prepared to be an approximate concentration, and are then standardized against a known primary standard sample of the same substance which is to be analyzed in the unknown sample. The KMnO4 provided for this experiment has been standardized for us. Potassium permanganate is particularly useful among titrants since it requires no indicator to signal the endpoint of a titration. Potassium permanganate solutions-even at fairly dilute concentrations-are intensely coloured purple. The product of the permanganate reduction half-reaction, manganese (II), in dilute solution shows almost no colour. Therefore, during a titration using KMnO4, when one drop excess of potassium permanganate has been added to the sample, the sample will take on a pale red/pink colour. Materials Required †¢Potassium permanganate solution †¢Burette †¢Deionized water †¢Clamp †¢Beakers †¢Magnetic stirrer †¢Weighing paper †¢Sulfuric acid †¢250 mL Erlenmeyer flask †¢Graduated cylinder †¢Analytical balance †¢Pipette †¢Analytical balance Methods: Standardization fo potassium Permanganate 1 Obtain two 0.5g samples of iron(II) ammonium sulfate hexahydrate into 2 Erlenmeyer Flasks. Record the weight. 2 Add deionized water and 25mL 3M of H2SO4 to each flask. 3 Fill the burette with potassium permanganate stock solution, and titrate it with the 4Repeat steps above with the 2nd sample. The volume per gram should agree within 0.5mL/g, otherwise a thrird titration is needed. The percentage purity of the iron(II) Salt 1Obtain the unknown sample and weigh out to 1.0g 2Dissolve the solid in deionized water and transfer the solution to a 250.0mL volumetric flask. 3Pipette 50.00mL of the iron solution into an Erlenmeyer flask and add 25mL H2SO4. Then titrate the solution with potassium permanganate until a faint pink colour appears. 4Repeat the titration and the two volumes must agree to within 0.3mL. If not, do a 3rd Titration. Data: Table of standardization of Potassium Permanganate Mass (g) Mass (g) Mass (g) Mass of FeSO4(NH4)2SO4 and weighing boat0.4494 g0.4871g0.4800g Mass of the weighing boat 0.02640.02180.0244 Mass of FeSO4(NH4)2SO40.4494g0.4871g0.4800g Volume (mL) Volume (mL) Volume (mL) Final Burette reading23.85 31.9032.10 Initial burette reading00.30 7.207.80 Volume of Potassium permanganate23.55 24.7024.30 Ratio (mL/g)Ratio (mL/g) Ratio (mL/g) Titration volume per gram of Fe.A.S.49.12350.70850.625 Mass of impure Iron(II) salt = 1.322g Table of standardization of the unknown sample Volume (mL)Volume (mL)Volume (mL) 0.6119.3228.21 Initial Burette reading10.4110.4119.32 Volume of KMnO49.808.918.89 Discussion: In part 1: standardization of the potassium permanganate, as expected, a faint pink colour indicating the endpoint appeared after titrating with 24.50mL of titrant. This shows that the half reactions: MnO4- + 4H+ +3e- ïÆ'   MnO2 + 2H2O Fe2+ → Fe3+ + e− The Permanganate was reduced to form MnO2 indicated by a change from purple colour, while the Iron was oxidized to form an iron (III) ion. In the 2nd part: The percentage purity of iron (II) Salt , an unknown sample of Impure Iron (II) salt was weighed to 1.322g. This sample was then diluted in a 250mL of deionized water and titrated with the potassium permanganate until a faint colour was observed. A total of 8.90mL of titrant was used until a faint pink colour was observed. Conclusion: The percentage of anhydrous iron (II) ammonium sulfate in the unknown sample was found to be 99.5%.