Fire Safety in Buildings Essay Example

Fire Safety in Buildings Essay Example Fire Safety in Buildings Essay Fire Safety in Buildings Essay Essay Topic: To Build a Fire Fire Safety in Buildings Name: Lecturer: Course: : Date: Fire Safety in Buildings In today’s world, it is essential for people to take the necessary precautions to ensure that their safety is not compromised. Fire has been known to destroy a lot of property. In addition to that, many people have succumbed to fire so many times. This has made it top priority for fire safety regulations to be followed. Buildings should be protected most of all as people are always in them. They serve as homes, restaurants and living space for people. It is estimated that there are at least six fires in a week in the United States. With the number of fires in buildings, increasing every day, people need to be more careful. It is important that people take extra precautions to ensure that their lives are secure. This is why most buildings are fit with equipment that protects them from fires. There are sprinkler systems to fire extinguishers. All these things are meant to either slow down fire or completely put it out. It is also important to find ways to reduce fire occurrence . This is why a number of researchers that have written papers that talk about the safety measures of fires in buildings. ‘Smoke and fire in building Atria’ a paper written by Robert N. Meroney and David Banks, is about fire in building atria. The writers talk about how fire starts in atria and ways in which they can be contained. Atria are constructed in buildings to provide air and sunlight. Since these areas are in direct sunlight and climatic conditions, there is special need for them to look after carefully. The wind environment makes it particularly hard for fires to be controlled. This is because since the atrium is in an open area the environmental elements make it had to contain the fire. It is therefore important for fire protection engineers to find special ways to contain fires in this area. Using different buildings as the sample study, the authors were able to find how an atrium affects fire (Meroney Banks, 2004). A case study of a building atrium was made to show how fire spreads through a building using wind as a factor that helps it to spread. It was found that depending on the design of the atrium in a building, a fire could spread either too fast or slow. Enclosed empty spaces are considered as too restrictive when a fire occurs. Thus, it is advisable that newer models of atrium should be connected partially or fully to adjacent spaces. It ensures that there is less space for wind to enter the building and control the fire. The authors came up with a number of solutions to lessen fires that are caused by atria in buildings. For one it was not advisable for buildings to have simple zone models. It was found that these models impinged smoke on the ceiling and consequently produced wall jets that made fires spread more rapidly. Secondly, there should be a field modeling study that will ensure that incase of a fire the building will be secure. This is also done to ensure that smoke can be detected in a building faster thereby lowering the risk of a fire occurring. The study also highlighted the importance of a hybrid combination of physical, zone and field model. This ensures that a fire engineer has adequate knowledge of how to put out a fire in a building without the weather influencing this decision. Another study carried out by Francine Battaglia, Ronald Rehm, Howard Baum, Mohammed Hassan and Kozo Saito looked at the different paradigms of combustion. All of which are influenced by circulation flows. The study hoped to show how fire patterns are influenced by circulation of air. The study was purely theoretical with the researchers concentrating on the elements of fire. They looked at the gases that support combustion under a controlled environment. They wanted to learn more about the patterns of fire. They also wanted to find out how combustion is affected by different elements. The governing factors that they used are Froude, swirl and Reynolds’ numbers. Using these parameters, they were able to find how combustion takes place. From the study, they were able to examine the effect of a swirl on combustion-driven flows. They were able to find how much buoyancy is needed to make a fire burn. Several discrepancies on the length and mixing were cited in the paper and subsequent researches. This was because of experimental conditions that the study was based. Depending on the way in which the swirl is imposed on the flame brings these differences. The rotating device and its position to the flame is also of importance. After analyzing the fire whirls, it was found that there are certain conditions that a fire has to have for it to burn. It was found that there was a correlation between swirl and combustion. This study shed light to how boundary conditions play a major role in the behavior of a swirling flame. The experiment also addressed obvious gaps in parametric space unlike previous studies (Battaglia et. al., 2001). In the paper, ‘Thermal and Fluid dynamic structures of a Laboratory-scale fixed-frame fire-whirl, researchers Mohammed Hassan, Helali A. and Kozo Saito tried to explain fires even further. They felt that a fire whirl was very destructive during fires. Their study was purely based in the laboratory. They used the help of different apparatus in the laboratory so that the experiment did not go out of hand. Using different propane, JP-8 and diesel fuel burning separately, they were able to study how a fire whirl behaves in different conditions. The velocity of the fires changed with different conditions. From the experiment, they were able to calculate their findings numerically. They found out that there was a two-dimensional azimuthal velocity profiles. The type of fuel used is also of importance as fires burnt in different velocities. They were measured by PIV each at different heights. The fires all burned at different velocities when exposed to different conditions (Hassan et. al., 2001). The researchers also wrote a paper titled, ‘Propagation characteristics of flame spread over propanol, butanol and JP8.’ The study was to show how a flame spread over the three fuels would behave over different ranges of temperature and different amounts of fuel. The range of temperature was between eight to thirty degrees Celsius. The different amounts of fuel were between five to forty millimeters. The flame spread pattern in the tray that was wider tended to be more pulsating than the narrower trays. The narrower trays had a tendency of forming a pseudo-uniform, which meant that the tray width had a significant effect on the flame pattern. The flame of the JP8 fuel was found to be different from that of the other fuels in the study. It required higher ignition energy than those of the alcohols used in the study. JP8 fuel showed an unsteady mode of flame compared to the others (Hassan Saito, 2003). The experiment parameters are tray size, fuel chemical structure, and fuel ignition temperature and ignition source. The results from the alcohol-based fuels showed minor differences as compare to those of JP8. The tray’s size played a major role in the experiment. They found that detailed flow and temperature structure played an important role in how a flame reacts over fuel. They recommended that understanding how a fire spreads over a liquid fuel surface at certain conditions is important. ‘Flow Structure of a fixed frame type fire whirl’ was a study to find out how fire whirl reacts. The study was both experimental and numerical. The frame was made up of two cylinders placed in an off-center l0ocation. It was found that at different heights the fire whirl has a transient 2-D radial and a tangential velocity. The fire whirl creates its own unique tangential velocity and this in turn increases its radial flow to approximately three times its width. There was a qualitative agreement between the calculated and measured velocity. This means that the proposed model captured all the required characteristics (Hassan et. al., 2000). Reference Meroney R. N., Banks D. (2004). Smoke and fire in building Atria. Wind Effects on Buildings and Urban Environment. Battaglia F., Rehm R., Baum H., Hassan M., Saito K (November 11-16, 2001). Paradigms of combustion-driven Flows with circulation. Asme Publication Htd. Hassan, M. I., Helali, A., Saito, K. (January 01, 2001). Thermal and Fluid Dynamic Structures of a Laboratory-Scale Fixed-Frame Fire-Whirl. Asme Publications Htd, 4, 129-132. Hassan, M. I., Saito, K. (2003). Propagation characteristics of flame spread over propanol, butanol and JP8. Asme Publication. Hassan, M. I., Kuwana, K., Wang, F., Saito, K. (2000). Flow Structure of a Fixed-Frame Type Fire Whirl. University of Kentucky.

Free Essays on Edison

Aside from his amazing history as an adult, Thomas Alva Edison lived an equally exciting childhood. Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. At the time, his father was owner of a successful shingle and lumber company. However, with new railroads being built through Milan, his father lost customers to the bigger companies that began to open. The Edison’s were forced to move to Port Huron, where he first began his education. When he was only seven years old his teacher, the Reverend G.B. Engle, considered Thomas to be a dull student and was terrible in math. After three months of school his teacher called him addled, which means confused or mixed up. Thomas stormed home. The next day, Nancy Edison brought Thomas back to school to talk to Reverend Engle. He told her that Thomas couldn’t learn. His mother became so angry with the strict Reverend that she decided to home-school him. After a while his mother, a former teacher herself, recognized his unusua l abilities to reason. She quickly got him interested in History and Classic books. Thomas, however, was strangely attracted to the subject of science. By the age of ten Thomas Edison had already been experimenting and by now owned a sizable quantity of chemicals. Unfortunately, his experiments were often quite expensive and he found it his duty to pay for them. Because he didn’t go to school, he had plenty of time to earn money by himself. When he was only twelve, he began selling newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railway; he even printed the newspapers himself. He spent everything he earned on books and chemicals. After about one year, his mother became so sick of the noises of exploding beakers, the smells of burning, and smoke filling the house that he was no longer allowed to perform his experiments at home. Luckily, he was given permission to move to his lab into the train baggage car. He would be able to experiment during the long five-hour layover in Detroit. ... Free Essays on Edison Free Essays on Edison Aside from his amazing history as an adult, Thomas Alva Edison lived an equally exciting childhood. Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. At the time, his father was owner of a successful shingle and lumber company. However, with new railroads being built through Milan, his father lost customers to the bigger companies that began to open. The Edison’s were forced to move to Port Huron, where he first began his education. When he was only seven years old his teacher, the Reverend G.B. Engle, considered Thomas to be a dull student and was terrible in math. After three months of school his teacher called him addled, which means confused or mixed up. Thomas stormed home. The next day, Nancy Edison brought Thomas back to school to talk to Reverend Engle. He told her that Thomas couldn’t learn. His mother became so angry with the strict Reverend that she decided to home-school him. After a while his mother, a former teacher herself, recognized his unusua l abilities to reason. She quickly got him interested in History and Classic books. Thomas, however, was strangely attracted to the subject of science. By the age of ten Thomas Edison had already been experimenting and by now owned a sizable quantity of chemicals. Unfortunately, his experiments were often quite expensive and he found it his duty to pay for them. Because he didn’t go to school, he had plenty of time to earn money by himself. When he was only twelve, he began selling newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railway; he even printed the newspapers himself. He spent everything he earned on books and chemicals. After about one year, his mother became so sick of the noises of exploding beakers, the smells of burning, and smoke filling the house that he was no longer allowed to perform his experiments at home. Luckily, he was given permission to move to his lab into the train baggage car. He would be able to experiment during the long five-hour layover in Detroit. ...

MAKING HEALTH CARE SAFE Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

MAKING HEALTH CARE SAFE - Article Example Using of computers and other communication devices like tablets is gaining popularity in recording vital information on diagnosis, prescription and general recovery progress of the patient. This is equally important in helping healthcare officer to communicate and exchange ideas on the most appropriate ways to minimize mistakes on patient care. Use of modern technology in observing the various changes in patient condition like pulse rate, blood pressure among others have helped reduce cases of misdiagnosis and improve the speed, timeliness and accuracy of patient charting. In the next 10 years there is a brighter future in health system safety and technology as far as patient care and elimination of errors are concerned. Nursing practice is likely to shift much dependence on informatics as an integral part of the quality healthcare improvement policy. This means that as a nurse, one will have to emphasize on the recording and analysis of data concerning the health history of the patient for sound decision making when it comes to critical situations. Communication techniques is likely to take Centre stage in the future nursing practice as this is critical in reducing widespread cases of mistakes that have cost patients their lives in the hands of healthcare providers. There is an increasing training of nurses on how to collect data and record electronically for use in analysis the progress of the patient towards recovery so that interventionary decisions may be done with accuracy and precision. Reliance on data and information will improve co-ordinatio n of various healthcare provision activities which sets stage for an increased technology based nursing practices. The assertion of Gibson and Singh concerning the improved application of informatics in the current healthcare provision holds. The cases of mistakes when caring for the patients

Soren Chemical Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Soren Chemical - Case Study Example The sales results have been dwindling and disappointing owing to several strategic and tactical problems (Kasturi & Yong, 2011). The company failed to make the consumers aware of their products and their benefits and Poor communication strategy by the company to retailers and distributors with enquiries. There is an extremely low sale of coracle which was launched for residential pool water clarification In three years time, the company sales can be revived if solutions to curb low sales are properly adopted and implemented. If this is not the case then, it could lead to closure of the company as it has not made any significant sales to ensure its sustainability. If the recommended solutions are carefully implemented, the sales will go up and the company will make profits which could lead to expansion. 1. The pool service professionals and contractors are not aware of the actual value of Coracle. Most of the service professionals believe that Clearblue, a product by a competitor company is more effective and solely reduces the need for other chemicals. Soren chemicals should therefore focus on advertisement to make the professionals aware of the benefits of Coracle. 2. Consumers are unaware of the benefits of coracle. Majority of pool owners maintain their pools by themselves. Since they do not know of the benefits Coracle presents, they settle for what the distributor gives them and mostly cheaper products. Soren chemicals should let the customers in on the positives of using Coracle if they are to increase their sales. 3. Lack of support by the distributors. Using Coracle reduces the need for other pool treatment chemicals by over 20%. This is not a favorite of the distributors and retailers as they are set to sell chemicals and make profits. They fail to mention this to the customers and pass it on as just another pool product (Kasturi & Yong, 2011). 4. Poor communication strategy. There exists a communication gap

Lin Article Critique Essay Example for Free

Lin Article Critique Essay However, when splitting the forty patients into two treatment groups, the clients were split randomly. This places twenty participants in each subgroup. Pyrczak (2008) suggests that number of participants can be so small that generalizing would be inappropriate. At the conclusion of the study caution was given to the small sample size provided, but it was noted that â€Å"the sample size was more than sufficient to detect meaningful statistical differences, a major goal of all treatment studies† (Lin et al. , 2004). This indicates that a generalization was drawn from the target group of residential drug rehabilitation clients and was not drawn from a diverse source. Some participant dropped out of the study resulting in a 35% completion rate (Lin et al. , 2004). This low rate does effect generalizing the findings of the study. The participants were similar on relevant variables in that all of the patients were diagnosed with a mental disorder, had a history of a chronic addiction, a poor response to treatment and relapse, legal issue related to addiction and little motivation to change (Lin et al. 2004). Critique of Procedures The procedures followed in acquiring participants in this study initially were not chosen at random. The forty-three patients selected for the study were from a residential drug treatment center that had specific criteria preferred by the researchers. However, when the patients were separated into treatment groups, â€Å"they were randomly assigned to FT or ADC† (Linn et al. , 2004). The treatments described in this study are sufficiently explained in detail. The researchers describe ADC, alcohol and drug counseling as a common treatment plan for substance abuse. The article is written in more descriptive detail about forgiveness therapy for the reason that its effectiveness is being tested. The treatments were administered by a therapist trained in both FT and ADC therapy with more than twenty years of therapeutic counseling experience. The treatments that were administered were monitored by taping the therapy sessions with a member of the team arbitrarily selecting the tapings for review of â€Å"consistency between expected and delivered treatments† (Linn et al. 2004). The same therapist conducted all the therapy sessions so that the personal effect is eliminated as a factor from this study. The therapist used the same methodology in both types of treatment programs. The setting for the experiment was a natural setting in the sense that it was not conducted in a laboratory. The therapy sessions took place within the current living environment of the rehabilitation residential facility. The researcher considered attrition in this study stating that, â€Å"given the high levels of mobility and chaos that characterize the lives of this client population, this dropout rate is not unusual. However, the sample size was more than sufficient to detect meaningful statistical differences, a major goal of all treatment studies† (Linn et al. , 2004). Critique of Instrumentation The evaluating instruments for the research did not include actual items in the research, but did explain in great detail the description of each instrument. The researchers also included research that supported validity of each assessment. Specialized formatting and detail was used when the instruments were administered in random order and the response format was provided. Restrictions were placed upon the research when the patience were initially chosen with the three dispositions of a chronic addiction with relapse, psychiatric diagnoses, poor response to treatment with low motivation to change, and legal issues dealing with substance abuse (Linn et al. , 2004). Multiple methods are used to collect information on each variable within this research. The EFI, BDI-II, CSEI, STAI, SSTAEI and vulnerability to drug use scale were used to obtain data on each patient and use for statistical analysis (Linn et al. , 2004). The researchers provided sources and well researched information for each published instrument. The self-report assessments were not administered anonymously, therefore, there is some reason of doubt that information obtained from patients could have been influenced by â€Å"social desirability or response-style biases† (Linn et al. , 2004). This researcher believes steps were taken to keep the instrumentation from influencing any overt behaviors due to the fact that all patients were exposed to the same therapist as a constant, expected occurrence, causing little deviation from the expected schedule.

Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping - Beyond Reason Essay -- Robinson Ho

Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping - Beyond Reason   Ã‚   Marilynne Robinson gives voice to a realm of consciousness beyond the bounds of reason in her novel Housekeeping. Possibly concealed by the melancholy but gently methodical tone, boundaries and limits of perception are constantly redefined, rediscovered, and reevaluated. Ruth, as the narrator, leads the reader through the sorrowful events and the mundane details of her childhood and adolescence. She attempts to reconcile her experiences, fragmented and unified, past, present, and future, in order to better understand or substantiate the transient life she leads with her aunt Sylvie. Rather than the wooden structure built by Edmund Foster, the house Ruth eventually comes to inhabit with Sylvie and learn to "keep" is metaphoric. "...it seemed something I had lost might be found in Sylvie's house" (124). The very act of housekeeping invites a radical revision of fundamental concepts like time, memory, and meaning.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Robinson delights in an intense "undifferentiated attentiveness to all the details" (82). The ordinary is given added significance and, as a result, the pace of the novel is slowed considerably. While supplying a layer of added realism, these mundane, fragmentary domestic details serve as an important thematic strategy to Robinson. The reader's attention becomes focussed on the passing of each moment in time. Ruth is initially frustrated with the seeming discontinuity of her own existence and tries to assign some order to it. "What are all these fragments for if not to be knit up finally?" (92). She yearns for a time when there "would be a general reclaiming" of the various seemingly meaningless fragments of human existence, a moment when "time... ...ould become unnecessary and meaningless "if only the darkness", like nothingness, "could be perfect and permanent" (116). Nothingness does preclude individual identity of any sort, however. Surrendering completely to nothingness would negate any possibility of authentic intimate human relations: the one source of meaning and happiness to Sylvie.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The house Sylvie attempts to "keep" must accommodate change including the peace and threat implied by nothingness. "A house should be built to float cloud high, if need be...A house should have a compass and a keel" (184). Rather than being seduced by the ultimate and final separation of nothingness, Ruth learns (as a transient) that housekeeping can be an expansive and inclusive method of engaging and interpreting the world. Work Cited: Robinson, Marilynne. Housekeeping. New York: Bantam Books, 1982.

Project success: success factor and success criteria Essay

1.Since the 1960s there have been an increasing number of Project Management scholars that have expressed concerns regarding the ways to manage the success or failure of a project. Crawford (2000) theorised that there are two major avenues of thought in this area being: how success is judged and the factors that contribute to the success. These two avenues were later crowned ‘success factors’ and ‘success criteria’ respectively of which both will be discussed in depth during this essay to provide an insight for future project management scholars. SUCCESS CRITERIA 2.The way by which a project is judged as to whether it is successful or not has long since been deliberated by many Project Management scholars. Crawford’s (2000) efforts to detail these criteria has helped however a better understanding is required such that each project manager or key stakeholder can choose as to what criterion will defined whether the project is a success or failure. This section will elaborate on Crawford’s (2000) studies by drawing on one of her principle advisers, Atkinson. Atkinson uses the Iron Triangle as the foundation of the work and then building on it to develop a robust methodology for success. 2 Figure 1: Iron Triangle (Atkinson, 1999) 3. Iron Triangle. Oilsen (1971) over fifty years ago stated that the Iron Triangle (Atkinson, 1999) of Time, Cost and Quality were the key success criteria for any project. This triangle was reduced to just time and budget by Wright (1997) however Turner (1993), Morris (1987), Wateridge (1998), deWit (1988), McCoy (1987), Pinto and Slevin (1988), Saarinen (1990), and Ballantine (1996) all agree that the Iron Triangle should be used albeit not exclusively. Temporary use of criteria can be used during certain parts of the project to ascertain whether or not a project is going to plan. An example of temporary criteria that was used by Meyer (1994) was the earned value method. The Earned value method in a project can demonstrate it the project is on track, specifically when earned value (what the project is worth at that time) is less than actual costs it means the project is over budget. This is countered however by deWitt (1988) that states when costs are used as a control they manage progress rather than project success. Atkinson (1999) adds that some projects may need to be bound by time; he uses a Millennium project (e.g. a computer system with a potential year 2000, Y2K, bug) as an example, if the project doesn’t meet the time constraint it could have catastrophic consequences. 4. Alter (1996) considers process and organisational goals as another measure, utilising the concept of ‘did they do it right’ and ‘did they get it right’; this gives rise to the concept of measuring success both during and after the project. Atkinson (1999) reflects this concept by the introduction of the ‘Square Root,’ which proposes three additional criteria to the Iron Triangle. The three additional criteria for determining project success are: the technical strength of the resultant system, the benefits to the 3 resultant organisation (direct benefits) and the benefits to the wider stakeholder community (indirect benefits). A detailed breakdown of the Square Root is explained in table 1. Iron Information Benefits Benefits Triangle system (organisation) (stakeholder community) Cost, Maintainability, Improved efficiency, Satisfied users, Social and Quality, Reliability, Improved effectiveness, Environmental impact. Time Validity, Increased profits, Personal development, Information– Strategic goals, Professional learning, and quality use Organisational-learning, contractors’ profits. Reduced waste Capital suppliers, content project team, economic impact to surrounding community. Table 1: The Square Root (Atkinson, 1999) Figure 2: The Square Root (Atkinson, 1999) 5. The Information System. Whilst Atkinson (1999) doesn’t detail the information system success criteria other than what is described in the table it is reasonable to suggest he was concerned with the ‘ilities’ of the project. Essentially Atkinson was considering the maintenance of the project to ensure that it was not only resourced but also governed that the information would support its continued success. 4 6. Organisational Benefits. Success of a project must not only be considered from an individual perspective, rather it must look at how it will also benefit the organisation. Table 1 presents these areas however there are two areas that must be considered individually, namely efficiency and effectiveness. Success of a project is not necessarily guaranteed due to efficiency, reducing the amount of workload due to shortening of processing won’t necessarily help without the consideration of effectiveness. Effectiveness considers whether or not the goals are being achieved thus when placed with efficiency it ensures that the goals are being achieve quickly and in full. 7. Stakeholder Community Benefits. The final area of the Square Root that Atkinson considers is the success criterion that benefits the stakeholder community. These criterion consider the wider benefits of not just the direct outcomes of the project rather this area considers the stakeholder satisfaction and the social and environmental impacts that the project provides. These areas in a house project for example are criteria that  improve the socioeconomic factors of the community around the actual house. Thus this project could use improved gardens or visual impacts of the housing project that will improve the community’s view of the suburb rather than just that particular site. These secondary and tertiary impacts provide success criteria for the project. Furthermore in the acquisition of a new aircraft for military the stakeholder community benefits that could be used as success criteria could be the level of host nation employment or involvement to improve their knowledge base. Thus whilst it may not improve the actual new aircraft it will allow the host nation to build the aircraft themselves next time that that nation wishes to purchase a new aircraft. SUCCESS FACTORS 8. Since the late 1960’s Project Management scholars have been trying to establish the factors that lead to project success (Baker, 1988) (Pinto, 1988) (Lechler, 1988), which have led to conclusions being published for project management practitioners. Despite decades of research and countless articles being written (Kloppenborg, 2000) (Morris, 1994) projects continue to disappoint stakeholders (O’Connor and Reinsborough 1992) (Standish Group, 1995) (Cooke-Davies, 2000). So what factors actually lead to successful projects? Cooke-Davies (2002) states that project success 5 factors are based upon answering three separate questions: â€Å"What factors are critical to project management success?†, â€Å"What factors a critical to individual success on a project?† and â€Å"What factors lead to consistently successful projects?† 9. What factors are critical to project management success? Cooke-Davies (2002) analysed a selection of 136 mainly European projects which varied in size and scope however had an average of $16M over a period of two years, a  detailed breakdown is at (Cooke-Davies, 2000). The analysis found a surprising differentiation between the correlation of schedule delay and cost escalation, only a small amount of cost escalation was accounted for schedule delay. This analysis found that when adequacy and maturity specific project management practices are compared with the performance of each criterion then different practices are found to correlate significantly. This correlation relates to nine factors (the first nine factors depicted at Table 1). The analysis for â€Å"Adequacy of documentation of organisational responsibilities on the project† is depicted at figure 1 with the vertical axis showing the 95% confidence interval of time predictability and the horizontal axis showing ‘not at all adequate’(1) to ‘fully adequate’(4). Essentially it shows that the more adequate the factor the more confidence can be shown that the project will achieve its schedule target. Figure 3: Adequacy of project documentation improving schedule confidence (Cooke-Davies, 2002) 6 10. What factors are critical to the success of an individual project? Cooke- Davies (2002) suggests that there is a single factor; which leads to individual project success. He states that the existence of an effective benefits delivery and management process that involves the mutual co-operation of project management and line management functions (Table 2, Factor 9). Without this factor an individual project is likely to singularly fail. Essentially this factor requires a process to which the project outcome is delivered and managed. This factor further requires the cooperation of a project team with a single goal to achieve this project benefit outcome. 11. What factors lead to consistently successful projects? Cooke-Davies (2002) now moves away from the individual project and considers that corporate functions that enable a project to succeed. Whilst this analysis was complex to derive from analysis it was found via extensive questionnaires three main factors corporate influenced the factors for project success. These three factors are identified at Table 2 (Factors 10-12) however directly relate to resourcing, feedback loops and learning from experience. 12. Resourcing (Table 2, Factor 10) being governed by corporate is essential to project success, for if a project is not able to have the right people or assets at the right time a project is unlikely to succeed. If a project management corporation sets up the correct plans, processes and procedures to ensure that each one of its subsidiary projects are adequately resourced, Davies-Cooke (2002) envisages that it is set up for success. An example of this is the development of Standard Operating Procedures for purchase of support equipment in a large-scale acquisition project. The standardisation of this resource alignment by corporate enables the factors for success later in the project. 13. Feedback loops (Table 2, Factor 11) are essential to a line manager knowing if what they are doing is appropriate and in line with the project manager and the stakeholder’s perceptions of what the project needs to succeed. Whilst it is acknowledged that if a feedback loop is too short it will tend to misguide a line manager rather than improve the chances of success. This is the job of the project manger to ensure that the loop is correct for the particular project, for example a long lead time project is suited to a larger feedback loop whereas a rapid prototype project 7 needs to have potentially daily feedback to key line managers to ensure the project is going in the right direction given the potentially fast  innovations in technology. Cooke-Davies (2002) finally proposes the success factor of learning from experience (Table 2, Factor 12). Corporations should in order to succeed implement plans, programmes, and procedures to ensure that the lessons learnt from previous projects are not re-learnt the hard way. Constantly (Pinto, 1990) (Robertson, 2006) (Baker, 1988) (Atkinson, 1999) when project scholars analyse how a project has performed it is recognised that a lot of issues that cause failure are not ground breaking rather they are just repeated with a delay loop. Thus project management corporations should endeavour to ensure that as a project is finding solutions to problems they are documented to ensure that in the next project they are not realised again. 14. These three questions relate directly back to a vicious ‘oval’ of influences as depicted by Cooke-Davies (2002) of four key elements (Figure 4). These influences from a project management, individual project and corporate area all play out to enable success of a project. Figure 4: Corporate Project Success Model (Cooke-Davies, 2002) 8 Factor F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 Factor Type Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Individual Project Success factor F10 Corporate success factors F11 Corporate success factors F12 Corporate success factors Description Adequacy of company-wide education on the concepts of risk management. Note Factor that correlates to on time performance Maturity of an organisation’s processes for assigning ownership of risks. Factor that correlates to on time performance Adequacy with which a visible risks register is maintained. Factor that correlates to on time performance Adequacy of an up-to-date risk management plan. Factor that correlates to on time performance Adequacy of documentation of organisational responsibilities on the project. Keep project (or project stage duration) as far below 3 years as possible (1 year is better). Allow changes to scope only through a mature scope change control process. Factor that correlates to on time performance Maintain the integrity of the performance measurement baseline. Factor that correlates to on budget performance Factor that correlates to on time performance Factor that correlates to on budget performance The existence of an effective benefits delivery and management process that involves the mutual co-operation of project management and line management functions† Portfolio and programme management practices that allow the enterprise to resource fully a suite of projects that are thoughtfully and dynamically matched to the corporate strategy and business objectives A suite of project, programme and portfolio metrics that provides direct ‘‘line of sight’’ feedback on current project performance, and anticipated future success, so that project, portfolio and corporate decisions can be aligned. An effective means of ‘‘learning from experience’’ on projects, that combines explicit knowledge with tacit knowledge in a way that encourages people to learn and to embed that learning into continuous improvement of project management processes and practices. Table 2: Success Factors (Cooke-Davies, 2002) 9 CONCLUSION 15. This essay has discussed the ways to manage success of a project via two means being how it is judged and the factors that contribute to its success. The success criteria have been shown to be wide and varied however they ultimately boil down to the Iron triangle, the information system, organisational benefits, stakeholder community benefits. Furthermore the factors that lead to this success are multiple however they are mostly governed on the project mangers competence to ensure that the project is maintained within the triangle of time, cost and scope. 10 BIBLIOGRAPHY Alter S. Information Systems a management perspective, 2nd ed. Benjamin and Cummings, California, 1996. Atkinson RW. Effective Organisations, Re-framing the Thinking for Information Systems Projects Success, 13–16. Cassell, London, 1997. Atkinson, R., Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria, International Journal of Project Management, Volume 17, Issue 6, December 1999, Pages 337-342, retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(98)00069-6. Baker BN, Murphy DC, Fisher D. Factors affecting project success. In: Cleland DI, King WR, editors. Project management handbook. (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley, 1988. Ballantine, J, Bonner, M, Levy, M, Martin, A, Munro, I and Powell, PL, The 3-D model of information systems successes: the search for the dependent variable continues. Information Resources Management Journal, 1996, 9(4), 5-14. Cooke-Davies TJ. 2000. Towards improved project management practice, PhD thesis, Leeds Metropolitan University. Crawford, Lynn (2000) Profiling the Competent Project Manager. In: Project Management Research at the Turn of the Millennium: Proceedings of PMI Research Conference, 21 – 24 June, 2000, Paris, France, pp. 3-15. Sylva, NC: Project Management Institute (ftp://ns1.ystp.ac.ir/YSTP/1/1/ROOT/DATA/PDF/MISC/PMI2000%20Research.pdf) de Wit, A, Measurement of project management success. International Journal of Project Management, 1988, 6(3), 164-170. Kloppenborg TJ, Opfer WA. Forty years of project management research: trends, interpretations and predictions. Proceedings of PMI research conference paris project management institute. Paris: Project Management Institute, 2000. Lechler T. 1998. When it comes to project management, it’s the people that matter: an empirical analysis of project management in germany. In:  Hartman, F., Jergeas, G., Thomas, J. editors. IRNOP III. The nature and role of projects in the next 20 years: research issues and problems. Calgary University of Calgary. pp.205–15 McCoy FA. Measuring Success: Establishing and Maintaining A Baseline, Project management Institute Seminar/Symposium Montreal Canada, Sep. 1987, 47-52. Meyer C. How the right measures help teams excel. Harvard Business Review 1994, 95-103. Morris PWG, Hough GH. The Anatomy of Major Projects. John Wiley, 1987. Morris PWG. The management of projects. London: Thomas Telford, 1994. O’Connor MM, Reinsborough L. Quality projects in the 1990s: a review of past projects and future trends. International Journal of Project Management 1992;10(2):107–14. 11 Oilsen, RP, Can project management be defined? Project Management Quarterly, 1971, 2(1), 12-14. Pinto JK, Slevin DP. Critical success factors across the project life cycle. Project Management Journal 1988;19(3):67–75. Pinto, J.K.; Mantel, S.J., Jr., â€Å"The causes of project failure,† Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on , vol.37, no.4, pp.269,276, Nov 1990, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=62322&isnumber=2268 Pinto, JK and Slevin, DP, Critical success factors across the project lifecycle. Project Management Journal, 1988, XIX, 67-75. Robertson, S. and Williams, T. Understanding project failure: using cognitive mapping in an insurance project. Southampton, UK, University of Southampton, 43pp. University of Southampton Discussion Paper Series: Centre for Operational Research, Management Sciences and Information Systems,2006. Saarinen, T, Systems development methodology and project success. Information and Management, 1990, 19, 183-193. Standish Group. 1995. Chaos. Available: http://standishgroup.com/ visitor/chaos.htm. Terry Cooke-Davies, The â€Å"real† success factors on projects, International Journal of Project Management, Volume 20, Issue 3, April 2002, Pages 185-190, ISSN 02637863, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(01)00067-9. Turner JR. The Handbook of Project-based Management. McGraw-Hill, 1993. Wateridge, J, How can IS/IT projects be measured for success? International Journal of project Management, 1998, 16(1), 59- 63. Wright, JN, Time and budget: the twin imperatives of a project sponsor. International Journal of Project Management, 1997, 15(3), 181-186.

How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate

SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION Spotlight ARTWORK Josef Schulz, Form #1, 2001 C-print, 120 x 160 cm How P&G Tripled Its Innovation Success Rate Inside the company’s new-growth factory by Bruce Brown and Scott D. Anthony 64 Harvard Business Review June 2011 HBR. ORG Bruce Brown is the chief technology o? cer of Procter & Gamble. Scott D. Anthony is the managing director of Innosight. June 2011 Harvard Business Review 65 B SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION 66 Harvard Business Review June 2011 BACK IN 2000 the prospects for Procter & Gamble’s Tide, the biggest brand in the company’s fabric and household care division, seemed limited.The laundry detergent had been around for more than 50 years and still dominated its core markets, but it was no longer growing fast enough to support P&G’s needs. A decade later Tide’s revenues have nearly doubled, helping push annual division revenues from $12 billion to almost $24 billion. The brand is surging in emerging markets, and its iconic bull’seye logo is turning up on an array of new products and even new businesses, from instant clothes fresheners to neighborhood dry cleaners. This isn’t accidental. It’s the result of a strategic effort by P&G over the past decade to systematize innovation and growth.To understand P&G’s strategy, we need to go back more than a century to the sources of its inspiration— Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. In the 1870s Edison created the world’s first industrial research lab, Menlo Park, which gave rise to the technologies behind the modern electric-power and motion-picture industries. Under his inspired direction, the lab churned out ideas; Edison himself ultimately held more than 1,000 patents. Edison of course understood the importance of mass production, but it was his friend Henry Ford who, decades later, perfected it.In 1910 the Ford Motor Company shifted the production of its famous Model T from the Piquette Avenue P lant, in Detroit, to its new Highland Park complex nearby. Although the assembly line wasn’t a novel concept, Highland Park showed what it was capable of: In four years Ford slashed the time required to build a car from more than 12 hours to just 93 minutes. How could P&G marry the creativity of Edison’s lab with the speed and reliability of Ford’s factory? The answer its leaders devised, a â€Å"new-growth factory,† is still ramping up.But already it has helped the company strengthen both its core businesses and its ability to capture innovative new-growth opportunities. P&G’s efforts to systematize the serendipity that so often sparks new-business creation carry important lessons for leaders faced with shrinking product life cycles and increasing global competition. Laying the Foundation Innovation has long been the backbone of P&G’s growth. As chairman, president, and CEO Bob McDonald notes, â€Å"We know from our history that while prom otions may win quarters, innovation wins decades. The company spends nearly $2 billion annually on R&D—roughly 50% more than its closest competitor, and more than most other competitors combined. Each year it invests at least another $400 million in foundational consumer research to discover opportunities for innovation, conducting some 20,000 studies involving more than 5 million consumers in nearly 100 countries. Odds are that as you’re reading this, P&G researchers are in a store somewhere observing shoppers, or even in a consumer’s home.These investments are necessary but not sufficient to achieve P&G’s innovation goals. â€Å"People will innovate for financial gain or for competitive advantage, but this can be self-limiting,† McDonald says. â€Å"There needs to be an emotional component as well—a source of inspiration that motivates people. † At P&G that inspiration lies in a sense of purpose driven from the top down—the m essage that each innovation improves people’s lives. At the start of the 2000s only about 15% of P&G’s innovations were meeting revenue and profit targets.So the company launched its now well-known Connect + Develop program to bring in outside innovations and built a robust stage-gate process to help manage ideas from inception to launch. (For more on C+D, see Larry Huston and Nabil Sakkab, â€Å"Connect and Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble’s New Model for Innovation,† HBR March 2006. ) These actions showed early signs of raising innovation success rates, but it was clear that P&G needed more breakthrough innovations. And it had to come up with them as reliably as Ford’s factory had rolled out Model Ts.HOW P&G TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG Idea in Brief Procter & Gamble is a famous innovator. Nonetheless, in the early 2000s only 15% of its innovations were meeting their revenue and pro? t targets. To address this, the company set ab out building organizational structures to systematize innovation. The resulting new-growth factory includes large newbusiness creation groups, focused project teams, and entrepreneurial guides who help teams rapidly prototype and test new products and business models in the market.The teams follow a step-by-step business development manual and use specialized project and portfolio management tools. Innovation and strategy assessments, once separate, are now combined in revamped executive reviews. P&G’s experience suggests six lessons for leaders looking to build new-growth factories: Coordinate the factory with the company’s core businesses, be a vigilant portfolio manager, start small and grow carefully, create tools for gauging new businesses, make sure the right people are doing the right work, and nurture cross-pollination. ithout a further boost to its organic growth capabilities, the company would still have trouble hitting its targets. P&G’s leaders recog nized that the kind of growth the company was after couldn’t come from simply doing more of the same. It needed to come up with more breakthrough innovations—ones that could create completely new markets. And it needed to do this as reliably as Henry Ford’s Highland Park factory had rolled out Model Ts. In 2004 Gil Cloyd, then the chief technology officer, and A. G.Lafley, then the CEO, tasked two 30-year P&G veterans, John Leikhim and David Goulait, with designing a new-growth factory whose intellectual underpinnings would derive from the Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s disruptive-innovation theory. The basic concept of disruption—driving growth through new offerings that are simpler, more convenient, easier to access, or more affordable—was hardly foreign to P&G. Many of the company’s powerhouse brands, including Tide, Crest, Pampers, and Swiffer, had followed disruptive paths.Leikhim and Goulait, with suppor t from other managers, began by holding a two-day workshop for seven new-product-development teams, guided by facilitators from Innosight (a firm Christensen cofounded). The attendees explored how to shake up embedded ways of thinking that can inhibit disruptive approaches. They formulated creative ways to address critical commercial questions—for example, whether demand would be sufficient to warrant a new-product launch. Learning from the workshop helped spur the development of new products, such as the probiotic supplement Align, and also bolstered existing ones, such as Pampers.In the years that followed, Leikhim and Goulait shored up the factory’s foundation, working with Cloyd and other P&G leaders to: Teach senior management and project team members the mind-sets and behaviors that foster disruptive growth. The training, which has changed over time, initially ranged from short modules on topics such as assessing the demand for an early-stage idea to multiday cou rses in entrepreneurial thinking. Form a group of new-growth-business guides to help teams working on disruptive projects.These experts might, for instance, advise teams to remain small until their project’s key commercial questions, such as whether consumers would habitually use the new product, have been answered. The guides include several entrepreneurs who have succeeded—and, even more important, failed—in starting businesses. Develop organizational structures to drive new growth. For example, in a handful of business About the units the company created small groups focused Spotlight Artist Each month we illustrate primarily on new-growth initiatives.The groups our Spotlight package with (which, like the training, have evolved significantly) a series of works from an acaugmented an existing entity, FutureWorks, whose complished artist. We hope charter is to create new brands and business mod- that the lively and cerebral creations of these photograels. Dedic ated teams within the groups conducted phers, painters, and instalmarket research, developed technology, created lation artists will infuse our pages with additional energy business plans, and tested assumptions for specific and intelligence and amplify projects. hat are often complex and Produce a process manual—a step-by-step abstract concepts. This month’s artist is guide to creating new-growth businesses. The Josef Schulz, a German manual includes overarching principles as well as photographer who often detailed procedures and templates to help teams turns his lens on modern industrial constructs and describe opportunities, identify requirements for digitally strips away de? ning success, monitor progress, make go/no-go decisions, details to render moreand more. abstract, universally relRun demonstration projects to showcase the evant images. In the ? rst step I’m a photographer emerging factory’s work. One of these was a line of with his limitations, † he pocket-size products called Swash, which quickly once told an interviewer, refresh clothes: For example, someone who’s in a â€Å"and then an artist with his freedom of decisions. † hurry can give a not-quite-clean shirt a spray rather View more of the artist’s than putting it through the wash. work at josefschulz. de. June 2011 Harvard Business Review 67 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION Sustaining CommercialCommercial innovations use creative marketing, packaging, and promotional approaches to grow existing o? erings. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, P&G ran a series of ads celebrating mothers. The campaign covered 18 brands, was viewed repeatedly by hundreds of millions of consumers, and drove $100 million in revenues. P&G’s Four Types of Innovation Sustaining innovations bring incremental improvements to existing products: a little more cleaning power to a laundry detergent, a better ? avor to a toothpaste. These provide what P&G calls  "er† bene? s—better, easier, cheaper—that are important to sustaining share among current customers and getting new people to try a product. Sharpening the Focus By 2008 P&G had a working prototype of the factory, but the company’s innovation portfolio was weighed down by a proliferation of small projects. A. G. Lafley charged Bob McDonald (then the COO) and CTO Bruce Brown (a coauthor of this article) to dramatically increase innovation output by focusing the factory on fewer but bigger initiatives. McDonald and Brown’s team drove three critical improvements.First, rather than strictly separating innovations designed to bolster existing product lines from efforts to create new product lines or business models, P&G increased its emphasis on an intermediate category: transformational-sustaining innovations, which deliver major new benefits in existing product categories. Consider the Crest brand, the market leader until the late 1990s, when it was us urped by Colgate. Looking for a comeback, in 2000 P&G launched a disruptive innovation, Crest Whitestrips, that made teeth whitening at home affordable and easy.In 2006 it introduced Crest Pro-Health, which squeezes half a dozen benefits into one tube—the toothpaste fights cavities, plaque, tartar, stains, gingivitis, and bad breath. In 2010 it rolled out Crest 3D White, a line of advanced oral care products, including one that whitens teeth in two hours. Such efforts helped Crest retake the lead in many markets. Pro-Health and 3D White were both transformational-sustaining innovations, meant to appeal to current consumers while attracting new ones. These sorts of innovations share an mportant trait with market-creating disruptive innovations: They have a high degree of uncertainty—something the factory is specifically designed to manage. Second, P&G strengthened organizational supports for the formation of transformationalsustaining and disruptive businesses. It estab lished several new-business-creation groups, larger in size 68 Harvard Business Review June 2011 and scope than any previous growth-factory team, whose resources and management are kept carefully separate from the core business.These groups— dedicated teams led by a general manager—develop ideas that cut across multiple businesses, and also pursue entirely new business opportunities. One group covers all of P&G’s beauty and personal care businesses; another covers its household care business (the parent unit of the fabric-and-household and the family-and-baby-care divisions); a third, FutureWorks, focuses largely on enabling different business models (it helped guide P&G’s recent partnership with the Indian business Healthpoint Services).The new groups supplement (rather than replace) existing supports such as the Corporate Innovation Fund, which provides seed capital to ideas that might otherwise slip through the cracks. P&G also created a specialized te am called LearningWorks, which helps plan and execute in-market experiments to learn about purchase decisions and postpurchase use. Third, P&G revamped its strategy development and review process. Innovation and strategy assessments had historically been handled separately. Now the CEO, CTO, and CFO explicitly link company, business, and innovation strategies.This integration, coupled with new analyses of such issues as competitive factors that could threaten a given business, has surfaced more opportunities for innovation. The process has also prompted examinations of each unit’s â€Å"production schedule,† or pipeline of growth opportunities, to ensure that it’s robust enough to deliver against growth goals for the next seven to 10 years. Evaluations are made of individual business units (feminine care, for example) as well as broad sectors (household care).This revised approach calls for each business unit to determine the mix of innovation types it needs to deliver the required growth. HOW P&G TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG Transformational-Sustaining Transformational-sustaining innovations reframe existing categories. They typically bring order-of-magnitude improvements and fundamental changes to a business and often lead to breakthroughs in market share, pro? t levels, and consumer acceptance. In 2009 P&G introduced the wrinkle-reducing cream Olay Pro-X.Launching a $40-a-bottle product in the depths of a recession might seem a questionable strategy. But P&G went ahead because it considered the product a transformational-sustaining innovation—clinically proven to be as e? ective as its much more expensive prescription counterparts, and superior to the company’s other antiaging o? erings. The cream and related products generated ? rst-year sales of $50 million in U. S. food retailers and drugstores alone. Disruptive Disruptive innovations represent newto-the-world business opportunities.A company enters ent irely new businesses with radically new o? erings, as P&G did with Swi? er and Febreze. Running the Factory Let’s return now to Tide, whose dramatic growth highlights the potential of P&G’s approach. Over the past decade the brand has launched numerous products and product-line extensions, carved new paths in emerging markets, and tested a promising new business model. If you had looked for Tide in a U. S. supermarket 10 years ago, you would have found, for the most part, ordinary bottles and boxes of detergent.Now you’ll see the Tide name on dozens of products, all with different scents and capabilities. For example, in 2009 P&G introduced a line of laundry additives called Tide Stain Release. Within a year, building on 26 patents, it incorporated these additives into a sible to 70% of Indian consumers and has helped to significantly increase Tide’s share in India. More radically, Swash moved the Tide brand out of the laundry room. The line has clear dis ruptive characteristics: Swash products don’t clean as thoroughly as laundry detergents or remove wrinkles as effectively as professional pressing.But because they’re quick and easy to use, they offer â€Å"good enough† occasional alternatives between washes. Swash took an unconventional path to commercialization. When the products were first sold, in a store near P&G’s headquarters in Ohio, they carried a different brand name and had no apparent connection to Tide. After that experiment, P&G opened a â€Å"pop up† Swash store at The Ohio State University. Both Tide Dry Cleaners is a factory innovation that represents an entirely new business model. new detergent, Tide with Acti-Lift—the first major redesign of Tide’s liquid laundry detergent in a decade.The product’s launch drove immediate marketshare growth of the Tide brand in the United States. P&G has also customized formulations for emerging markets. Ethnographic research showed that about 80% of consumers in India wash their clothes by hand. They had to choose between detergents that were relatively gentle on the skin but not very good at actually cleaning clothes, and more-potent but harsher agents. With the problem clearly identified, in 2009 a team came up with Tide Naturals, which cleaned well without causing irritation.Mindful of the need in emerging markets to provide greater benefit at lower cost—â€Å"more for less†Ã¢â‚¬â€P&G priced Tide Naturals 30% below comparably effective but harsher products. This made the Tide brand accestests helped the company understand how consumers would buy and use the products, which P&G then began selling exclusively through Amazon and other online channels. In early 2011 the company ramped down its promotion of Swash, although learning from the effort will inform its work on other disruptive ideas in the clothes-refreshing space.Whereas Swash was a new product line, Tide Dry Cleaners represent s an entirely new business model. It started when a team began exploring ways to disrupt the dry-cleaning market, using proprietary technologies and a unique store design grounded in insights about consumers’ frustrations with existing options. Many cleaning establishments are dingy, unfriendly places. Customers have to park, walk, and wait. Often the cleaners’ hours are inconvenient. P&G’s alternative: bright, boldly colored cleaners June 2011 Harvard Business Review 69 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATIONThe Factory’s Consumer Research at Work In October 2010 P&G launched the Gillette Guard razor in India, a transformational-sustaining innovation whose strategic intent was simple: to provide a cheaper and e? ective alternative for the hundreds of millions of Indians who use double-edged razors. The company’s researchers spent thousands of hours in the market to understand these consumers’ needs. They gained important insights by observing men i n rural areas who, lacking indoor plumbing, typically shave outdoors using little or no water—and don’t shave every day.The single-blade Gillette Guard was thus designed to clean easily, with minimal water, and to manage longer stubble. The initial retail price was 15 rupees (33 cents), with re? ll cartridges for ? ve rupees (11 cents). Early tests showed that consumers preferred the new product to double-edged razors by a six-to-one margin. Its breakthrough performance and a? ordability position it for rapid growth. featuring specialized treatments, drive-through windows, and 24-hour storage lockers to facilitate after-hours drop-off and pickup.Using the new-growth factory’s process manual, the development team identified key assumptions about the proposed dry cleaners. For example, could the business model generate enough returns to attract store owners willing to pay up to $1 million for franchise rights? In 2009 P&G’s guides helped the team open three pilots in Kansas City to try to find out. That year P&G also formed Agile Pursuits Franchising, a subsidiary to oversee such efforts, and transferred ownership of the dry-cleaning venture to FutureWorks, whose main mission is to pursue new business models that lie outside P&G’s established systems.It remains to be seen how Tide Dry Cleaners will fare, but one promising sign came in 2010, when Andrew Cherng, the founder of the Panda Restaurant Group, announced plans to open 150 franchises in four years. He told BusinessWeek, â€Å"I wasn’t around when McDonald’s was taking franchisees, [but] I’m not going to miss this one. † To ensure strategic cohesion and smart resource allocation, Tide’s innovation efforts have been closely coordinated through regular dialogues among several leaders—CEO McDonald, CTO Brown, the vice-chair of the household business unit, and the president of the fabric care division.They’ve also been the focu s of discussions at Corporate Innovation Fund meetings and similar reviews. This isn’t just the methodical pursuit of a single innovation. It’s part of a steady stream of ideas in development—a factory humming with work. and learning, and personally engage. Our journey at P&G suggests six lessons for leaders looking to create new-growth factories. 1. Closely coordinate the factory and the core business. Leaders sometimes see efforts to foster new growth as completely distinct from efforts to bolster the core; indeed, many in the innovation community have argued as much for years.Our experience indicates the opposite. First, new-growth efforts depend on a healthy core business. A healthy core produces a cash flow that can be invested in new growth. And we’ve all known times when an ailing core has demanded management’s full attention; a healthy core frees leaders to think about more-expansive growth initiatives. Second, a core business is rich with capabilities that can support new-growth efforts. Consider P&G’s excellent relationships with major retailers. Those relationships are a powerful, hard-to-replicate asset that helps the factory expedite new-growth initiatives. Swiffer wouldn’t be Swiffer without them.Third, some of the tools for managing core efforts—particularly those that track a project’s progress—are also useful for managing new-growth efforts. And finally, the factory’s rapid-learning approach often yields insights that can strengthen existing product lines. One of the project teams at the 2004 workshop was seeking to spur conversion in emerging markets from cloth to disposable diapers. Subsequent in-market tests yielded a critical discovery: Babies who wore disposable diapers fell asleep 30% faster and slept 30 minutes longer than babies wearing cloth diapers—an obvious benefit for infants (and their parents).Advertising campaigns touting this advantage helped m ake Pampers the number one brand in several emerging markets. 2. Promote a portfolio mind-set. P&G communicates to both internal and external stakeholders that it is building a varied portfolio of innovation Lessons for Leaders Efforts to build a new-growth factory in any company will fail unless senior managers create the right organizational structures, provide the proper resources, allow sufficient time for experimentation 70 Harvard Business Review June 2011 HOW P&G TRIPLED ITS INNOVATION SUCCESS RATE? HBR. ORG approaches, ranging from sustaining to disruptive ones. See the sidebar â€Å"P&G’s Four Types of Innovation. †) It uses a set of master-planning tools to match the pace of innovation to the overall needs of the business. It also deploys portfolio-optimization tools that help managers identify and kill the least-promising programs and nurture the best bets. These tools create projections for every active idea, including estimates of the financial potential a nd the human and capital investments that will be required. Some ideas are evaluated with classic net-present-value calculations, others with a risk-adjusted real-option approach, and still others with more-qualitative criteria.Although the tools assemble a rank-ordered list of projects, P&G’s portfolio management isn’t, at its core, a mechanical exercise; it’s a dialogue about resource allocation and business-growth building blocks. Numerical input informs but doesn’t dictate decisions. A portfolio approach has several benefits. First, it sets up the expectation that different projects will be managed, resourced, and measured in different ways, just as an investor would use different criteria to evaluate an equity investment and a real estate one.Second, because the portfolio consists largely of sustaining and transformational-sustaining efforts, seeing it as a whole highlights the critical importance of these activities, which protect and extend legitim ate disagreement about the best way to organize for new growth. Whereas we believe in a factory with relatively strong ties to the core, some advocate a â€Å"skunkworks† organization. Others argue for â€Å"distinct but linked† organizations under an â€Å"ambidextrous† leader; still others recommend mirroring the structure of a venture capital firm. (P&G’s factory uses several organizational approaches. Treating capability development itself as a new-growth innovation lets companies try different approaches and learn what works best for them. A staged approach serves another important purpose: It’s a built-in reminder that a new-growth factory is not a quick fix. The factory won’t provide a sudden boost to next quarter’s results, nor can it instantly rein in an out-of-control core business that’s veering from crisis to crisis. GILLETTE GUARD After thousands of hours of research in the ? eld, P&G learned that a single-blade ra zor was a cheaper and e? ective alternative to double-edged razors for many consumers in India. CREST 3D WHITEUsurped by Colgate in the late 1990s, Crest has regained the lead in many markets owing to its introduction of several innovative oral care products, including ones that make teeth whitening at home a? ordable and easy. 4. Create new tools for gauging new businesses. Anticipated and nascent markets are notoriously hard to analyze. Detailed follow-up with one of the project teams that attended the pilot workshop showed P&G that it needed new tools for this purpose. P&G now conducts â€Å"transaction learning experiments,† or TLEs, in which a team â€Å"makes a little and sells a little,† thus letting consumers vote with their wallets.Teams have sold small amounts of products online, at mall kiosks, in pop-up stores, and at amusement parks—even in the company store P&G now conducts â€Å"transaction learning experiments,† which let consumers vote wi th their wallets. core businesses. Finally, a portfolio approach helps reinforce the message that any project, particularly a disruptive one, may carry substantial risk and might not deliver commercial results—and that’s fine, as long as the portfolio accounts for the risk. 3. Start small and grow carefully. Remember how the new-growth factory began: with a simple two-day workshop.It then expanded to small-scale pilots in several business units before becoming a companywide initiative. Staged investment allows for early, rapid revision—before lines scribbled on a hypothetical organizational chart are engraved in stone. It also provides for targeted experimentation. For example, there is and outside company cafeterias. P&G devised a venture capital approach to testing the market for Align, its probiotic supplement, providing seed capital for a controlled pilot. The company has also tested entire business models—recall the Kansas City pilots of Tide Dry Cle aners. 5.Make sure you have the right people doing the right work. Building the factory forced P&G to change the way it staffed certain teams. At any given time the company has hundreds of teams working on various innovation efforts. In the past, most teams consisted mainly of part-time members—employees who had other responsibilities pulling at them. But disruptive and transformational-sustaining efforts June 2011 Harvard Business Review 71 SPOTLIGHT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION HBR. ORG CONNECT WITH THE AUTHORS Do you have questions or comments about this article? The authors will respond to reader feedback at hbr. org. TIDE DRY CLEANERSStill in an early stage, this innovation arose in part from insights about consumers’ frustrations with the dinginess and inconvenience of most existing drycleaning establishments. require undivided attention. (As the old saying goes, nine women can’t make a baby in a month. ) There need to be people who wake up each day and go to sle ep each night obsessing about the new business. New-growth teams also need to be small and nimble, and they should include seasoned members. P&G found that big teams often bog down because they pursue too many ideas at once, whereas small teams are better able to quickly focus on the mostpromising initiatives.Having several members with substantial innovation experience helps teams confidently make sound judgment calls when data are inconclusive or absent. Finally, building a factory requires a substantial investment in widespread, ongoing training. Changing mind-sets begins, literally, with teaching a new language. Key terms such as â€Å"disruptive innovation,† â€Å"job to be done,† â€Å"business model,† and â€Å"critical assumptions† must be clearly and consistently defined. P&G reinforces key innovation concepts both at large meetings and at smaller, focused workshops, and in 2007 it established a â€Å"disruptive innovation college. People workin g on new-growth projects can choose from more than a dozen courses, ranging from basic innovation language to designing and executing a TLE, sketching out a business model, staffing a new-growth team, and identifying a job to be done. 6. Encourage intersections. Successful innovation requires rich cross-pollination both inside and outside the organization. P&G’s Connect + Develop program is part of a larger effort to intersect with other disciplines and gain new perspectives.Over the past few years P&G has: †¢ Shared people with noncompeting companies. In 2008 P&G and Google swapped two dozen employees for a few weeks. P&G wanted greater exposure to online models; Google was interested in learning more about how to build brands. †¢ Engaged even more outside innovators. In 2010 P&G refreshed its C+D goals. It aims to become the partner of choice for innovation collaboration, and to triple C+D’s contribution to P&G’s innovation development (which would m ean deriving $3 billion of the company’s annual sales growth from outside innovators).It has expanded the program to forge additional connections with government labs, universities, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, consortia, and venture capital firms. †¢ Brought in outside talent. P&G has traditionally promoted from within. But it recognized that total reliance on this approach could stunt its ability to create new-growth businesses. So it began bringing in high-level people to address needs beyond its core capabilities, as when it hired an outsider to run Agile Pursuits Franchising. In that one stroke, it acquired expertise in franchise-based business models that would have taken years to build organically.SOME THINK it’s foolish for large companies to even attempt to create innovative-growth businesses. They maintain that organizations should just outsource innovation, by acquiring promising start-ups. But P&G’s efforts appear to be working. Recall that in 2000 only 15% of its innovation efforts met profit and revenue targets. Today the figure is 50%. The past fiscal year was one of the most productive innovation years in the company’s history, and the company’s three- and five-year innovation portfolios are sufficient to deliver against their growth objectives.Projections suggest that the typical initiative in 2014 and 2015 will have nearly twice the revenue of today’s initiatives. That’s a sixfold increase in output without any significant increase in inputs. Our experience tells us that although individual creativity can be unpredictable and uncontrollable, collective creativity can be managed. Although the next Tide or Crest innovation might stumble, the factory’s methodical approach should bring many more innovations successfully to market. The factory process can create sustainable sources of revenue growth—no matter how big a company becomes.HBR Reprint R1106C At P&G’s â €Å"disruptive innovation college,† people working on new-growth projects can choose from more than a dozen courses. 72 Harvard Business Review June 2011 Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009 Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses.Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact [email  protected] org.

Nikki Giovanni essays

Nikki Giovanni essays Some people descried Nikki Giovanni as been a History of Nikkis Family and Early Childhood. A woman named Emma Watson was born in 1890, then at the early age of nineteen was married to John Brown Watson. John was a shy, gentle man who was twenty years older than his wife Emma. Emma gave birth to their first daughter on January 5, 1919, thins was Nikkis mother, Yolanda Cornelia Watson. Soon after the birth of their child the Wastons had to leave Albany in a rush. Emma had argued with a white woman shopkeeper about the lengths of some cloth. Having disagreements with white people was very dangerous for people of color in those days. Because in southern towns, lynching of the colored people were still popular. After leaving Albany Georgia the Watsons settled down in Knoxville, Tennessee, by buying a house in a black neighborhood. Over the next years the Watsons had two more daughters Anna and Ages. John supported the family by teaching Latin at an all black school call Austin High. Yolanda, John and Emma oldest daughter and child was smart, pretty and artiste, and athletic. In Knoxville College in the mid-thirties she met Jones Giovanni. He was a well-manner, hansom guy with an unusual last name. Gus Giovanni, and Yolanda got married after their graduation, and soon welcomed first child to the world on September 2, 1940. They had a baby girl named GaryAnn. A couple of years later Yolanda was pregnant again. Yolanda was hoping for a boy, and told Gary she would soon have a brother. The whole family started calling the unborn child Nikki. The on June 7, 1943 Yolanda had a baby girl, named Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni Jr. As she grew people began to call her Nikki. Yolanda and Gus both had college degrees, but in that time the job choices for blacks were limited. Nikkis father worked as a bellhop in a local hotel, and stoked furnaces for a government agency. Shortly after the birth of Nikki the Giovann...

Tourism and Leisure for Youth Target Market

Tourism and Leisure for Youth Target Market Introduction The following is a report on youth as a target market in tourism and leisure industry. Tourism and leisure industry is popular with most young people. It looks into how the youths perceive tourism and leisure activities. It also looks into how companies wish to market their services to the youths and the approaches they can use to reach out this wide and robust market.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Tourism and Leisure for Youth Target Market specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Background information Most countries define a youth as an individual aged between eighteen years and thirty-five years, which is the time of transition from childhood to adulthood. Though many young people love pleasure and leisure activities most of them cannot afford to pay for the costs that are involved in tourism. Tourism and leisure are considered by the youths as a preserve for the elderly who have retired, have no jobs and are not thinking much about future. However, with appropriate marketing youths can embrace tourism and leisure industry and enjoy such services without feeling as though it is waste of time. Most of the youths view leisure and tourism as pleasure and consider engaging in travelling and leisure activities once they retire. However, they have participated in leisure activities through work related travels and holiday sponsorships from the companies they work for (Nicholas, 2007). Travel is an aspect of growing and transiting to adulthood. The youths therefore engage in travel and adventure activities either as an informal group, school or as a personal initiative to visit friends, new places and learning about other cultures. Earlier this was not seen as part of tourism but time has made the youths a market for the growing tourism and leisure activities (Schultz, 2000). Although the youths do not have high disposable income, they have energy and avenues of receiving resources from th eir friends, relative and even employment opportunities that give them a chance to satisfy their passion for leisure and adventure. Because youth travels are usually in large groups as either school travel or an organizational travel, the tourist agencies that deal with this market enjoy economies of scale emanating from having a wide customer base (Nicholas, 2007).Advertising Looking for report on communications media? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More With the advancement in technology, communication and transport systems, it is now possible to travel to many places at an affordable cost compared to the cost in ten years ago. Travel logistics are now not complicated and most of the countries accept that tourism is a major industry and therefore have little restrictions for people coming into the country as tourists. The young population is looking for adventure and not the experience. Most of the young people travel to see new places and meet new people as well as learn new things (Nicholas, 2007). Any new place gives youths a lot of pleasure and sense of accomplishment. For the elderly, travel rekindles old memories and nostalgic feeling about the previous experience or information they have about a particular place. This makes it easier for the companies targeting the youths to provide affordable adventures when focusing on adventure rather than experience (Clow, 2007). Strategies for reaching out to the youths There are marketing strategies that would suit any company that is focusing on the youths as their target market. The first step is having a positive strategy that involves social media. Most of the young people are well connected to the internet and are compliant with the modern technology. To reach out to this group of people, it is necessary to have pay per click that will reach out to the young people (Strokes, 2010). These pages create publicity for the company and provide an opp ortunity for the company to display its services dealing with leisure as well as the destination where they take the youth travellers. This is imperative as the pages provide a forum for potential tourists to identify a company that deals with the tour and travel activities through pictorial displays (Pickton, 2000). The second strategy is that a company that wishes to reach out to the target market must interconnect with the youth population. It must have good colours, and images, which communicate to the young people. This is because to the youth, image has a lot of meaning.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Tourism and Leisure for Youth Target Market specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Creating a youthful perception may involve having a strategy of employing youths to work in the tour agency. Such employees will interconnect and build a rapport with the youth easily as compared to the middle aged and the elderly (Gre gory, 1997). From the background information, it is evident that the youth love engaging in leisure and tourism activities as a group rather than as individuals. For the youths, tourism or travel activities involve leisure and adventure, as they are memorable. Companies targeting the youth’s market must have a strategy of reaching out the youth groups in universities, churches or organizations that deal with young people. This is because such organizations have leisure activities or travel activities in their budgets and having them consider a particular tour and travel company as their choice company of travel is imperative (McDonald, 2007). To reach out the youth population the company must also consider the public relation marketing approach. Public relations involve activities that elicit media reporting or publicity without directly paying for it. For instance, a company targeting the youth population must consider activities that elicit participation of the youth. Such activities include sports, travel, and leisure activities that elicit the attention of the youth. Sponsoring a sporting activity such as a football match by paying tickets for youthful fans elicits high level of publicity, which makes the potential customers aware of the company and the services, which it provides. Sponsoring college activities such as orientation week or an entertainment event in the university exposes the company to potential customers especially the student’s clubs and organizations that engage in travel activities. The student population represents a potential market in the long term as once they are through with schooling and get into organizations where they may need to travel, the company will have the advantage of being the tour and travel company of their choice (Hofstede, 2001).Advertising Looking for report on communications media? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Tour and travel as well as leisure activities do not involve tour companies alone. They also involve the destinations, the hotels, the airline services used during that travel and other stakeholders such as tour guides. These stakeholders should create experience for the youthful tourist, as they are likely to act as repeat customers if the experience, which they will have, is pleasurable, memorable and exciting (Holbeche, 2006). Most of the elderly people visit places where they have gone before when young and they had a pleasurable and memorable experience which they would want to rekindle in their old age. Therefore, creating a memorable experience for the young people is imperative in making them lifetime clients of a particular destination (Strokes, 2010). The youth are challenged by the fact that they do not have much information on various destinations and they only look for any available destination that will give them pleasure. Creating and providing information about the o rganization and destinations is critical in reaching out this target market. Such information may be in brochures or mailing lists providing information about different tour destinations, the experiences that they provide as well as the cost of that experience (Morgan, 2006). To reach out the youth as the target market, it may involve adjusting prices to fit the young people. As indicated earlier young people do not have, enough resources or money and they therefore look for the lowest priced destinations, which can provide the adventure and the experience they are looking for. Because the young people may not be widely travelled, they rarely look for experience as much as for the adventure. Pricing the ticket packages, the hotels with a specific destination and experience for young people at affordable prices will be the winning edge for attracting the young people who want to have fun, pleasure while saving on the expenses (Clow, 2003). Conclusion The young people are an emerging market in the tourism industry and they cannot be underscored, Gone are the days when leisure and tourism was a preserve for the elderly people who had money and were enjoying their retirement packages. The youthful population wants to have leisure and adventure. This market can be tapped by providing a good experience at an affordable price. Companies reaching out this target must focus on numbers and not only on the profit margin, as youths are markets similar to the mass market. References Clow, K. (2003). Integrated advertising for luxury items. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Clow, K. (2007). Integrated advertising, promotion, and marketing communications 3rd edition. London: Pearson Education. Gregory, R. (1997). Leveraging the corporate brand. Chicago: NTC. Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences. California: Thousand Oaks. Holbeche, L. (2006). Understanding change: Theory, implementation and success. London: Heinemann. McDonald, M. (2007). Marketing plans (6th ed.). Ox ford: Butterworth-Heinemann. Morgan, G (2006). Images of organization. London: Sage. Nicholas, I. (2007). Youth tourism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pickton, D. (2000). Amada. Integrated marketing communications. New York: Prentice Hall. Schultz, M. (2000). The expressive organization: Linking identity, reputation and the corporate brand. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Strokes, R. (2010). E-marketing: The essential guide to online marketing. New Jersey: McGraw Hill.

Improving Female Preventive Health Care Delivery through Practice Essay

Improving Female Preventive Health Care Delivery through Practice Change., (article review) - Essay Example 401). The authors noted however that despite the reduced or no cost access to the program, â€Å"the level breast and cervical cancer screening falls short of the ideal† (Backer et al., 2005, p. 401). As a result, the program was examined using the GAPs model with GAPS standing for â€Å"goal-setting, assessing existing routines, planning the modification of routines, and providing support for these improvements† (Backer et al., 2005, p. 402). The authors described the study as multi-method: a qualitative study design was used to describe the process of changes that took place in the implementation of the program while quantitative audits on mammogram and Papanicolaou test data were used to measure the success that was assumed to be related with the practice. The data that was used to assess the program involved observational field notes, audio-taped interviews with physicians and key staff, and chart reviews of the last female patients from 19 to 64 found in the clinic . Backer et al. (2005) led respondents to identify potential reforms in the EWM that can improve screening rates and advance key reforms that must be instituted in the program. Respondents identified several initiatives that may improve screening rates. ... Thirdly, it was suggested that the patient educational materials be more readily available. Fourthly, it was raised that the program creates a monthly computer-generated reminders for patients needing screening. Fifthly, it was proposed that a reminder system for patients be designed. Sixthly, it was recommended that a common fact sheet for all health providers be used. Finally, the recommendations were forwarded to increase the accessibility of the patient educational materials. Although these are the most practical recommendations of the research activity reported by Backer et al. (2005) in the discussion section of their papers, the authors focused on the theoretical aspects of their research initiative. In particular, Backer et al. (2005) stressed that their findings â€Å"support the concept of practices as unique, complex organizational systems† which may be hardly immediately relevant for the immediate and more important concern of improving clinical or public health st rategies; improving strategies and service delivery to promote preventive breast and cervical cancer screening. One important insight discussed in the discussion section of their research is that most practices are sometimes unable to institute change because of inertia. In other words, what is currently practiced tends to be perpetuated as practitioners tend to resist the movement to change: without friction, a body at rest tends to be rest while a body in motion tends to be in motion. However, a systems change model such as the GAPS can promote vigilance for systems change (Backer et al., 2005). II. Recommendations for Improving Every Woman Matters Program On reviewing the material of Backer et al. (2005), it is easy to see where the EWM program was probably weak. Firstly, while the

Critically examine the international expansion strategy for an Essay

Critically examine the international expansion strategy for an organisation of your own choice during a specific period of its e - Essay Example The clothing and accessories offered often depict young male and female models with aesthetic facial and body features in order to gain marketing interest in their target market of 18-35 year old buyers. This exclusive mentality positions them differently from main competition, such as the Gap and H&M, allowing them to retain considerably high market share among the competitive environment both in its home country of the U.S. and its new expansion locations internationally. This essay describes the current strategic management functions and principles at A&F related to their current, ongoing expansion strategy. A&F statistics and sales At the end of 2010, Abercrombie & Fitch operated 1,069 stores. These included 316 A&F stores, 502 Hollister Co. stores, and 181 Abercrombie stores dedicated to children and adolescent youths (euroinvestor.co.uk, 2011). The company has adopted many different strategies in an effort to gain more customer interest and improve market share. However, it has never lost focus on its core competencies and core products, which are often provocative and always exclusive fashions that are heavily branded with the Abercrombie & Fitch name and/or logo in order to help customers identify with their name and reputation. In previous years, from 2007 to 2009, A&F experienced considerable losses in profitability that came from a variety of factors, including economic downturns in the international economies and changing buyer behaviours. However, through aggressive advertising and downsizing of underperforming stores, Abercrombie & Fitch has managed to regain its competitive edge and just recently experienced a 7.6 percent increase in sales for the last quarter of 2010 (Stothard, 2011). Again, this is due to a strategic focus on remaining dedicated to the core brand philosophy of exclusivity, a series of short-term pricing reductions and the closing of non-performing stores internationally (especially in the United States where the economy has bee n poor). Strategic focus and intention In order to fully understand the international expansion strategy of Abercrombie & Fitch, it is necessary to identify with the concept of strategic management and leadership. â€Å"Strategic management is based on the belief that an organisation should continually monitor internal and external events so that timely changes can be made as needed† (Aluko, Odugbesan, Gbadamosi & Osuagwu, 2004, p.44). There is a need to be adaptable to change and be trend-focused so that their product offerings and values can shift along with changing environmental, economic and consumer behaviour trends related to retail buying. Strategic management, then, is a â€Å"continuous process of administering operations with an emphasis on overall corporate purpose and future opportunities† (Stone, 2010, p.S215). Abercrombie & Fitch is a very strategic-focused business that is always operationally-adaptable in the face of these conditions, however it never loses focus of its core mission and core competencies related to marketing and branding which are their most priority revenue-building strategies. Abercrombie & Fitch is currently closing underperforming stores in the United States and abroad, based on same-store sales and economic conditions in their current operating environment. However, these closings offer the