Business person or Entrepreneurship?

I am very much a business type person. I am not comfortable with just jumping out and trying something without thinking it completely through two or three times. Despite what the author of the article thinks, I am pretty sure entrepreneurs also have business rivals who are not himself. The real question is who is going to get to market first with a viable product. I am not really much of a cooperative person; I can’t help but turn stuff into a competition. The more I read the articles list of what an entrepreneur is, the more I think the author has an idealized viewpoint. I know one entrepreneur and I could not live like that. I prefer stability.
Entrepreneurship is more than just starting a business; it’s a complete mind-set and attitude. An entrepreneur may be quick on their toes but they will eventually end up in a business mindset as others copy their original idea or other entrepreneurs begin to improve on the original concept. A business person may end up flowing into the entrepreneur side of the equation when they encounter a problem and start working on a new concept to deal with it. I think most business people and entrepreneurs are a mix of the two archetypes that were listed in the article. The guy I know would dearly love to have a steady income instead of getting small amounts of investment here and there. As for who will achieve and live the happiness’s that they seek in life, well that depends on what makes them happy. A business person is happier with stability and working within a set system and an entrepreneur is happier striking off into new territory and hoping they achieve what they set out to do.
For the record, I found that the author is highly biased towards what he thinks entrepreneurs are like because he calls himself an internet entrepreneur. I suspect that he wants to be like all the things on his list but in reality is far more businesslike than he would like to admit.

A bit more of PDP

In the last two months I have thought about a couple of things I would like to try doing sooner or later.

I want to try raising Belgian Blue cattle.  Mostly because they are very low fat and I like steak.  Plus they look impressive.

I would also like to own a place where I could raise research grade fish.  There are only 3 places in the US that do this and we have had trouble with two of them so far.  This upsets me.

Implementing a Lean Process

For a lean process, I did an adjustment to our SOP for making brine shrimp.  We currently have considerably less fish than when we last updated the SOP and were making far too much shrimp for the fish to eat.  I estimated that we could use half a scoop instead of a full scoop and have plenty of shrimp.  This has worked out pretty well so far.  I am thinking of further reducing it to a quarter scoop because we have had a disease kill several fish recently and we are over-producing again.

Criteria for ranking people on the final project.

Here are the Criteria discussed in class. Use these to shape the final criteria that will be used by your group. Post the final criteria and the process you will use to evaluate and rank the members of your team related to the final project.

-Attendance/Participation

-Tasks Accomplished

-Professionalism

-Communication

-Contribution

Simple ranking by numbers based on how I feel how helpful the other members were or how much work they did. Also, on if they actually went up front for the presentation.

5S process

1 Sorting (Seiri)

            I went through all the junk laying around and moved stuff into piles of things that need to be together.

2 Straightening or setting in order / stabilize (Seiton)

            I straightened the storage areas

3 Sweeping or shining or cleanliness / systematic cleaning (Seiso)

            I gave everything a quick washdown.

4 Standardizing (Seiketsu)

            Both rooms C and D are set up roughly the same.  Ok they are back to back with differences to what is in them but its minor.

5 Sustaining the discipline or self-discipline (Shitsuke)

            This will come in time.

6 Safety

            Toxic chemicals are in their own cabinet in the back of the room where they are out of the way.

7 Security

            We have a locked door.

8 Satisfaction

                                I will be more satisfied once I get a couple of other people to stop undoing what I have done.

Pre-clean

Post-clean

Quality Managment

ISO-9000 is a quality assurance program that is published by the international organization of standards.  The purpose of it is to verify that companies are following their published standards consistently.  “The ISO 9000 family of standards represents an international consensus on good quality management practices. It consists of standards and guidelines relating to quality management systems and related supporting standards. –ISO”.

The ISO-9001:2008 is a standard that provides a standardized set of requirements for a quality management system.  The standard lists what must be required in the management system, but does not dictate just how they are to be met.  This is regardless of what the industry the company is involved in.  It is the only standard against which companies can be certified.  This certification, however, is not required by the standard.  Other aspects of the ISO-9000 family cover fundamentals, vocabulary, performance improvements, documentation, financial, and other economic respects.  The standard requires the company to audit itself that it is managing its processes effectively.  This is basically to so the company can insure that it is in full control of its activities.  If a company wished to do so, they could have an outside certification body do the process to get a certification.  This will cut down on customer audits or reduce the duration of those audits.  All of this is to satisfy customers that the products made by the company will meet their requirements.

There are 8 principles of ISO-9000.

  The 8 principles are:

 Principle 1: Customer focus

 Principle 2: Leadership

 Principle 3: Involvement of people

 Principle 4: Process approach

 Principle 5: System approach to management

 Principle 6: Continual improvement

 Principle 7: Factual approach to decision making

 Principle 8: Mutually beneficial supplier relationships

Customer focus: 

A business is in business to help customers get what they want.  “Organizations depend on their customers and therefore should understand current and future customer needs, should meet customer requirements and strive to exceed customer expectations.”  Three benefits from a customer focus are, increased market share from more people wanting to buy from you, increased effectiveness in the use of resources to help customer satisfaction, and improved customer loyalty.

Leadership:

”Leaders establish unity of purpose and direction of the organization. They should create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives.”  Benefits of this are that people will understand and be motivated toward the company goals, all activities are evaluated, aligned, and implemented in a unified way, and miscommunication between levels of a company will be minimized.

Involvement of people:

            “People at all levels are the essence of an organization and their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organization's benefit.”  If everyone in the company is involved in the quality process some benefits would be motivated workers, further innovation and creativity in furthering the organization objectives, people being accountable for what they do, and people feeling a need to help improve the process and therefore having a greater participation.

Process Approach:

“A desired result is achieved more efficiently when activities and related resources are managed as a process.” If your process is well documented and can be managed you will have lower costs and a shorter cycle times using resources more effectively.  You will also have better results and a more focused and higher priority for improvement opportunities.

System approach to management:

            “Identifying, understanding and managing interrelated processes as a system contributes to the organization's effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objectives.“  Some benefits of understanding how each part of your management sytem works with the other parts would be having the systems integrated and aligned to achive the desired results, you will be able to focus effort on key processes, and provide confidence to interested parties that you are consistent, effective, and efficient.

Continual Improvement:

“Continual improvement of the organization's overall performance should be a permanent objective of the organization.”  The benefits of continuing to improve on your processes would be better performance through improved organization, better alignment of activities to the company strategy, and greater flexibility to take advantage of opportunities.

Factual approach to decision making:

            “Effective decisions are based on the analysis of data and information.”  Making decisions on facts instead of what people think can lead to better informed decisions, an increased effectiveness in past decisions through reference to factual outcomes, and an increased ability to review, challenge, and change prior decisions and opinions.
Mutually beneficial supplier relationships:
            “An organization and its suppliers are interdependent and a mutually beneficial relationship enhances the ability of both to create value.”  Some benefits to a better relationship with suppliers would be an increased ability to create value for companies, greater flexibility and speed to respond to changes in market forces or customer wants, and a greater optimization of costs and resources used.

 After reading through these I wonder if we could make an ISO-9000 system for the fishroom.  I am going to have to think about this.

"ISO - ISO 9000 Quality Management - ISO 9000 Essentials." ISO - International Organization for Standardization. Web. 18 Dec. 2011. <http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_9000_essentials>.

Post 10

Gene-manipulation, yes or no?

                Some arguments in favor of genetic manipulation would be to eliminate genetic diseases, repair mutations within the genome, modifying food so that insects will not eat it or so that it will grow faster or larger.  Some arguments against genetic manipulation would be the creation of a “super-race” of humans and an end to genetic diversity.  Once the tinkering starts, where does it stop?

                I personally believe that gene-manipulation in humans is wrong unless it is to cure an otherwise incurable disease.   In the movie Gattaca humanity started using the “best” genetic outcomes for children, which lead to discrimination against people who are not the “best” genetic outcome for a single pairing, basically sentencing them to menial tasks without hope of bettering themselves.

http://www.helium.com/items/166289-weighing-the-pros-and-cons-of-gene-therapy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

http://www.whatisgenetherapy.net/gene-therapy-pros-and-cons.html

http://www.ashevillelist.com/history/gene-therapy-pros-cons.htm