Will Revolution in Libya succeed Research Paper - 1

Will Revolution in Libya succeed - Research Paper Example These rights have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society†1. In Libya, Gaddafi is trying to sustain his power against the will of the people. Majority of the people in Libya are against the dictatorship of Gaddafi because of the human right violation happening in Libya under his administration. It is difficult for the Libyan public to express their opinion freely, if it is against the political administration. Just like in communist China, Gaddafi is trying to impose hue censorship upon media so that the to and fro motion of unhealthy information between Libya and other countries would be prevented. In civilized world like ours, people like to choose their administration through ballots. Gaddafi is trying to prevent people from enjoying such democratic freedoms. ‘Hope for a new government and for more fearless opposition to the regime is reflected in the ongoing protests. Multiple Libyan diplomats and politicians, including the justice and interior ministers, have resigned†2. Many prominent people in Libya joined the agitation which definitely shows that the countdown for Gaddafi administration is already started. Dictators cannot sustain their power for longer period as the examples from Iraq and Egypt is right in front of us. Under such circumstances, it is difficult for Gaddafi to continue in power. Gaddafi is ruling Libya for the last 40 years. He failed to grasp the confidence of the public during his last 40 year administration period. He succeeded in remain in power by suppressing the agitations against him using iron fists. â€Å"Many in Libya still remember how Gaddafi used to execute those who opposed him — or those he felt had opposed him — and would leave their bodies hanging from nooses for days as a warning†3. Even during Ramadan period, Gaddafi killed many innocent people who opposed him. In other words, Gaddafi has less belief in Islamic beliefs and traditions even though he proclaimed to be true Islamic

Rights and Responsibilities of Employer and Employee Essay Example for Free

Rights and Responsibilities of Employer and Employee Essay The Trusts purpose is to provide the best possible health care to defined standards of cost, volume and quality. Generally all employees are expected to adopt values and standards of conduct consistent with the trusts purpose. Employees are expected, at all times, to deal politely, respectfully and use civilised language and behaviour with all patients, public and other employees. Aggressive, abusive, threatening or violent behaviour is not acceptable. Employees are also expected to be aware of the need for quite and calm movement and behaviour in many patient, public and office areas. And are not permitted to consume food or drinks in view of patients or the public in the workplace, unless it is part of the model care, or in the absence of appropriate facilities, the manager has given his or her permission. On the other hand, employees are expected to be considerate of others and present themselves with due regard to social acceptability, tidiness and personal hygiene. However, they are expected to help patients and the public feel confident and at ease with the services they provide, with this they are expected to comply with particular requirements regarding the dress applicable in their Department. Employees are required to handle patients humanely, respectfully, courteously and with physical care. Employees should not have sexual relationships with patients who are in care or receiving treatment. Employees are told that sexual behaviour with patients who are mentally ill or mentally handicapped is not acceptable, if an employee is caught or reported of any suspicions he or she would face the Mental Health Act, and carry a liability to prosecution. Finally, Employees are expected to be honest in all their dealings with the Trust, for example, making reports and giving information, presenting claims for payment (travelling expenses, attendance records, recording work done etc.).Dishonesty, making false claims for payment etc., is treated as a serious offence. All employees are also expected to comply with all legal requirements at all times (Discrimination, harassment, victimisation and bullying at work on grounds of gender, race, colour, ethnic or national origins, social group, marital status, pregnancy, disability, sexual orientation, religion or creed, age, and so on). All employees have got responsible to meet their terms and condition of their job description and job specification. Employees rights: To begin with all employees in the NHS are entitled to receive statutory sick pay if the individual earn more than à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½67 a week. In the NHS, majority of the female group tend to use their Careers leave. All employees are entitled a reasonable time off work without pay, to deal with an emergency involving a dependant. For example, if a dependant falls ill or is injured, to arrange or attend a dependant funeral. In addition to this all employee are entitled 28 day paid holiday a year, this depend to the individuals title and period of time theyve worked for the hospital (the longer youve been in the job the more days you are given). Moreover, all pregnant employees are entitled to time off with pay to keep appointments for antenatal care made on the advice of a registered medical practitioner, midwife or health visitor. Likewise all working mothers are entitled to 18 weeks maternity leave. Most women will qualify for statutory maternity pay or maternity allowance. Alternatively if an employee is been employed by the NHS for more than a year he or she is qualify for 13 weeks of unpaid parental leave to be taken before the new-born is five. Although the rules apply to mothers and fathers, few men are expected to take it since the leave is unpaid. It is important for employees to meet the terms of their contracts because, if an employee fails to comply with his or contract of employment or policies set by Barts and The London. For example, if an employ does not attend work for the hours stated in the contract, they will be dealt with in an appropriate manner depending on the circumstances. The mission of the hospital is to excel in patient care, staff employment, education and training and research into new cures and treatments. For almost, every member of staff have objectives relate to achieving Pathfinder priorities directly; others are about delivering the ambitious programmes that underpin Pathfinder. These include Clinical quality, Service efficiency, Patient experience, Systems, culture and partnerships, Patient access, Patient choice, the hospital environment , access to information, The performance of workforce and Financial management. There are supervisors that work with junior staff, at the (a month or three) they meet and discuses (review) whether they have achieved their targets or not. Health and Safety is Making the work environment safe for personnel, patients and the public. Health and Safety Management is the strategy for eliminating or reducing hazards so that people are not injured or affected by disease. It is important for employer to follow Health and Safety regulations because employers must comply with a request to establish a safety committee which has the function of keeping under review the measures taken to ensure the health and safety at work of the employees. As they have a duty to cooperate with safety representatives usually appointed by a Trade Union. A hazardous substance can be any substance, whether solid, liquid or gas that may cause harm to your health these substances (corrosive, flammable, explosive, spontaneously combustible, toxic, oxidising, or water-reactive) they must be identified in the work place by a coloured diamond symbol. Moreover, Hazards in the healthcare sector is identified by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work such as, Working shifts, Needle stick injuries, Latex allergy; Manual handling; Psychosocial issues such as violence at work. In this case it may be necessary for the employer to resort to the legal process or to approach the emergency services for assistance, depending on the nature and imminence of the hazard. Alternatively employees have a duty under section 7 of the Act to take care of their health and safety, and the health and safety of their colleagues, and to co-operate to the extent necessary to enable the employer to comply with his duties under the Act. This could include maintaining or co-operating in the maintenance of safety equipment such as breathing apparatus or fire fighting equipment. Like wise all employees expect promotion and pay rise from their employer. According to the contract of employment, all employees in the hospital will be paid monthly by credit transfer. If an employee is paid less than the sum stated in their contract the individual can explain this to a manage and the manage will discuss the matter to the payroll manage. On the other hand, an employee can take legal action is her payment is not on time and the sum stated is not paid on her next payment. Anyone aged 22 or over must be paid at least à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½3.70 an hour. Those aged 18 21 get a minimum of à ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½3.20. Some groups are excluded (prisoners and family members working in a family business). The advantages of minimum wage is that minimum wage laws have raise the level of unemployment and make those that do have a job work harder. It is also a means of reducing poverty and improving the well-being of low-income workers. The key responsibilities for work place health and safety are set out by the occupational Health and safety Act 1985. Employer should by law provide a healthy and safe working environment for their employees. It is important to provide employees with a safe working environment because an employer has control and management of the work place; they have the primary responsibility for ensuring it is safe. Alternatively employees must also take responsibility for looking after their own health and safety, and must not place others at risk by their actions (or by any failure to act which could result in an incident). However, if the hospital (employers) fails to provide employees with a safe working environment, they are liable to heavy fines and may receive bad reputation or publicity. The benefits of a safe and healthy working environment include; Better employee health and well-being, improved productivity and reduced legal pressures on employers, as many health and safety at work issu es come under statutory responsibilities. All nurses in Barts and The London belong to an association called The Royal college of Nursing (RCN). The Royal College of Nursing membership is the largest professional association and union of nursing staff and students in the UK. It is an influential voice for nursing at home and abroad. The RCN promotes nursing interests on a wide range of issues by professional bodies and voluntary organisation. The RCN provides a comprehensive range of services and benefits for its members, this include advice and support on a range of clinical, employment and welfare issues. The RCN also promotes research, quality and practice development through the RCN institute. The royal College of Midwives (RCM) is the only trade union and professional organisation run by midwives for midwives. It is the voice of midwifery, providing excellence in professional leadership, education, influence and representation for and on behalf of midwives. The RCM produces information and advice on a wide range of midwifery issues. The Trust encourages employees at all level of the organisation to belong to a Union and use their services. The Trust recognises UNISON, RCN, RCM, British Medical Association (BMA for doctors) and THE Chartered Society Physiotherapy (CSP). The Unions have sole recognition and bargaining rights to represent employees with the expectation of Directors, individual Senior Managers and Clinical Managers Contracts. The Trust promise not to recognise or negotiate with Unions that are not known to the Trust. However the Trust will comply with the Employment Relations Act 1999 on the recognition of trade unions which are not currently recognised. It is important for employer to train their employees appropriately because this can help to make employees more efficient at their jobs, and in return can help to make the business more competitive with other branches (hospital). For example, employer must HBV vaccination must be made available to employees within 10 working days with occupational exposure. Before the vaccination is given employees must receive the training required. If an employee has previously received the complete HBV vaccination series or antibody testing shows that the employee is already HBV-immune then he or she will not be vaccinate. Hepatitis B Virus is a virus that causes illness directly affecting the liver. It is a blood borne pathogen. In this case you can see that the well being of employees is taken into account. With this attitude the hospital is helping to stop the virus from spreading and protecting the employees. The consequences of poor trained can seriously damage a company, if an employee is affected (ill) due to hygiene problems or poor training. Replacing that employee can cost six months or more of that employees salary when all costs are taken into account. However, recruitment expenses (newspaper advertising) losing an employee will costs the hospital time spent by other staff interviewing, training, and doing the work of the former employee until a replacement is found. It can also result in lower morale and productivity as employees discuss the situation around the hospital as a result this will leave them with fear in their jobs. Employers must pay both men and women equally for doing the same work, unless one of the following exceptions applies, a valid seniority system is in place, when entry level salary is based on experience, or If the job title is the same, but the work involved is different, equal pay rules do not apply. However, if a wage inequity exists between genders, an employer cannot lower the higher-paid employees salary; the employer must raise the lower paid employees salary to equal the higher paid employee. The Trust recognises its responsibility to ensure that the terms of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and other relevant legislation are observed. According to Barts and The London they said employee will receive less favourable treatment than another on grounds of sex, sexual orientation, race, age, religion, colour, ethnic origin or disability. Therefore, any direct or indirect racial or sexual discrimination or harassment will be treated as serious as a disciplinary offence. The N.H.S allows certain document to be access, base on under the Freedom of Information Act an employee client can access information base on the list below. 1. The NHS and how they fit 2. Who they are 3. Financial and Funding Information 4. Corporate Information 5. Aims, Targets and Achievements 6. Their Services 7. Reports and Independent Enquiries 8. Policies and Procedures 9. Public Involvement and Consultation 10. Regular publications and information for the public 11. Complaints 12. Human Resources 13. Communications with the Press and Media Releases 14. Environmental Information On the other hand, data protection laws are quite complex but generally they are base on principles. The first data protection Act came into force in the UK in 1984 to protect individuals who had information on them held on computers (meaning personal information must be obtained legally). This Act gave people the right to see their personal file, recently the data protection Act of 1998 was introduce because the previous Act does not apply to written data, therefore individuals had little control over the use of personal data. However the Act regulates the way personal is collected, stored, process and used. It applies to all data stored in a computer systems and paper based on manual records that are stored in a structure way. Within the N.H.S a person, called the data controller should take charge of the storage of all personal records. All managers are accountable to have good code of conduct of employees relations within NHS every effort should be made to resolve grievance without the need to put the law into use. It is in the interest of both parties that grievance should be resolve as quick as possible at its lowest level of management, and to the closest point of referral. For instance if an employee feels unhappy about a situation that he/she think the firm has acted unreasonable or failed to take his/her into account. This can then lead to complaint and may even lead to dispute. In the NHS all employees have the right to have their grievance fairly considered by a supervisor or manager, their grievance should be considered at a higher level of management, if it cannot be resolved at the first stage the individual should be accompanied by a Trade Union representative, a friend or colleague at all meetings convened under the procedure of grievance. ACAS offer employers, trade unions and individuals the opportunity to obtain unbiased assistance in solving disputes and negotiation. ACAS can offer advice to all sides in the disputes. It can also try to bring the sides together as it tries to conciliate and suggest ways to move towards a solution. Finally ACAS can list evidence from both sides and then provide a solution. Never the less, it will insist that both sides agree to abide by its decision before starting the arbitration process. Arbitration and conciliation involve, giving support to both parties in resolving disputes. Conciliation involves listening to both parties before suggesting solutions, whereas arbitration involves providing a solution given certain criteria that both parties are comfortable with. For instance, docking pay or dismissing the employee. The employee may then take the case to an Employment Tribunal. ACAS will be involved in trying to resolve these issues so that they do not go as far as the Tribunal or by creating codes of good practice and giving advice so that an employer can establish working relationships that do not lead to such disputes. ACAS will conciliate by working with the two parties. In addition to this, most of the disputes dealt with by an employment tribunal are for unfair dismissal. In this case the employee must first of all ask ACAS whether the case needs to be taken to an employment tribunal. The tribunal is made up of individuals who have specific knowledge of employment law. After listening to the evidence presented, the chair of the tribunal and other solicitors will make decision by simple majority verdict. Individual whose complaint are upheld are entitled to compensation, reinstatement or reengagement. For example, a deaf worker takes a case for disability discrimination to an Employment Tribunal and wins. A co-worker, who is hearing, appears as a witness for the deaf worker. Later, the employer does not promote the co-worker and this was due to her support for her deaf colleague. This would be victimisation and, under the DDA, the co-worker could take a case to the Employment Tribunal. Moreover appeals made by an employment tribunal can be referred to the Employment Appeal Tribunal. Some cases can be taken further to the court of Appeal, and sometimes up to the final court of appeal in the UK, the House of Lords. Since the UK is part of the European Union, individuals and employers can take their cases to the European court of justice. For example, Customer Service Customer service is an organisations ability to supply their customers wants and needs. Excellent customer service is the ability of an organisation to constantly and consistently exceed the customers expectations. And customer satisfaction is a top priority at each point of interaction. Customers are demanding more service, more convenience and more personalised communications. Businesses a-days must maximise every interaction with their customers to make positive impressions and enhance loyalty and preference with good customer service businesses can position for long-term success. Excellent customer service is about being aware of customer needs and reacting to them effectively. Gain and retain customers Good customer service is good business. It costs much less to keep an existing customer than to win a new customer, so retaining existing customers is more profitable for business. If Barts and The London NHS Trust has effective customer complaints systems in place, many of those customers with questions or problems can be retained. Satisfied complainants can be nearly as, or even more loyal than, patients who did not have a problem. Even if things do not go badly, research suggests that some patients will still leave because they are not totally satisfied with the service. Never the less, Poor service drives patients away, and they will not always come back and give you the chance to put it right. Often businesses are the last persons to hear about their customers problem. They will talk to their friends and talk with their feet by taking their custom elsewhere. Even if they do complain to you, you could still lose a number of these customers after only their first complaint. Businesses can gain customer through advertising, public relations, press releases, direct mail, sales letters and promotional items. Whereas in the retail industry, businesses like Mark and Spencer, Tescos, Sainsburys, provide similar products and charge similar prices. Improving the quality of customer service can help their businesses to gain and retain customers. For instant, if Tescos opens for 24 hours and prices are low then Tescos will gain customers from other competitors and retain their own customers. Gain customer satisfaction and loyalty: Satisfying customers will help to make customers more loyal and less tempted to go to its competitors. Now a-days Customer loyalty matters because selling more to existing customers is easier, and cheaper, than finding and selling to new ones. Loyal customers tend to buy more, more regularly. And they will frequently recommend your business to others. In this case, the NHS will have to provide patients with good health service. But patients are less likely to move from the NHS; unlike if the patient would like to be treated privately. Improving the image and reputation of the business: Good customer service allows business to improve the image and reputation of the business by fulfilling or satisfying customers. Satisfy customers spread good news about the business service and attract new customers. However, customer reputation is more likely to win more customers in a business. Barts and The London NHS Trust would put patients interest first and by doing so they should not let patients be on the waiting list for a long period. It is important for businesses to recognise that the reputation of years can be determined and destroyed by 60 seconds of poor conduct at the front line service delivery level. Providing information about the product in use: Moreover, good customer service means the business listen to their customers, they can find out what customers think about their product or service that is been offered to them. This feedback can help find ways to improve goods or services for customer. For NHS the competition to get drugs prescribed is fierce. Sales and marketing managers therefore need to have confidence that their sales plan is having the maximum effect. In order to do this, sales and marketing managers should surround their sales representatives with the necessary training and development tools. By helping patients to make savings in their prescribing budgets the hospital will also have helped them to release money to spend on other products and services as a result, they may be more receptive to meeting the hospital representatives. Patients will see the hospital as a prescribing partner who understands and is responsive to their needs and resource pressures. Help your business to keep market share: By providing good customer service, customers who remain loyal and new customers won by quality service will decide to buy shares from the business and retain their shares in the market. In the NHS modern sales representative needs to have superior knowledge of the market; effective access to customers; and an accurate means of assessing their impact. The NHS is based around controlling the uptake of a product as appropriate given the evidence, priorities and resourcing. Increase your business sales revenue and profit: Good customer service will allow businesses to increase sales and profit because satisfied customers can encourage others to go for the same good or service. Extra days off from work mean more opportunities for customers to buy goods, and that most often translates into increased sales for retailers. As a result, businesses today are seeking ways to make returned goods enhance financial performance, rather than reduce it, retailers and consumer goods companies can turn the reverse supply chain into a powerful source of profit and customer satisfaction. In the NHS there are departments that serve as internal customers; their job is to check the service that will be provided for external customer. The internal customers help the NHS to provide high quality service to patients. For example, secondary care organisations are the internal customers of primary care, and operating departments are the internal customers of central sterilising units and linen services. Quality depends on all (external and internal) customers in a system getting what they need, when they need it. External customers are the people who the NHS provides their service to (patients), they are the final customer. Final customers could be in-patients or out patients, these patients are individual that go to hospitals for treatment To begin with value for money is very important in the NHS (for private patients, within the country and over sea patients). I will not conduct a customer survey, but will try and search for a survey that will be available in the internet from that survey I will try and explain the most important customer expectations of the NHS. Customer satisfaction is vital for the survival and growth of any business. Findings from the National Homeowner Satisfaction research study indicate that most customers of the participating investigation are very satisfied with the service offered to them. In fact, the average index score of all NHS study participants is an extraordinary 96. The study measures the following components of customer satisfaction: project design, quality of materials, quality of workmanship, work-site conditions, production schedules, budget, price/value of projects, sales process. The survey also asked respondents to rate their willingness to recommend their hospital. Each respondents score for this question is averaged with its overall satisfaction score to yield an NHS Index score. However, the survey has a great percentage of patients who would recommend it to family and friends. Patients like to know services the NHS provide and price that they are expected to pay if any. Clear labelling can help patients with to build their trust and loyalty to any business. The NHS can win new patients by offering specialised advice about their service. The NHS target is to improve patients time to excel in anticipating and quickly responding to customer needs, many patients are not happy for the time they spent in the waiting list. The NHS should try and treat patients on time of need. I also think the NHS should improve Document Management service, in line with best industry standards and good value for money. Add value by providing a wider range of products and services to patients. Personal believe that good Employer should be able to sustain a working environment that attracts, retains and develops committed employees and to improve by investing in people, technology and processes, at the moment the NHS is not fulfilling much of this. Never the less the NHS should be working to build on reputation as a strong and self-reliant business with customer focus, profit orientation, and professional outlook. Market research allows businesses to target customers, sell effectively, compete with suppliers and sport new opportunities. There are many ways in conducting market research, Depending what the business is and the group the business is hoping to aim its product at, particularly the resources allocated to marketing research, there are two main ways of carrying out market research. First and for most, a small business can do the market research personally. This is often in smaller businesses. Here, marketing staff do the research themselves. Sample sizes tend to be small which may be appropriate if there are a relatively small number of customers. Secondly, a business can employ a marketing research manager, as the business may benefit from specialist research skills. Barts and The London NHS Trust has recently conducted a patients surveys, questionnaires and suggestions. Most Market research uses quantitative techniques to discover answers to broad questions from questionnaires. Employees can ask patients questions to know out they think about the NHS or the service being offered to them. Normal this take place when nurses and doctors are in regular contact with patients that are having difficulties with staff or have being in the waiting list for years, sometimes it could be that they are not satisfied with the service theyve received. For example, a new born baby had heart problem and was put on the heart transplant waiting list and he was admitted to the Pediatric ICU at Saint Marys Hospital to wait for a donor heart. Years later the parents were told a possible donor heart had been found, he was taken to be prepared for surgery, after the surgery the baby was doing fine. Expect weeks later when his parents were told that infections could mean a serious illness for him and at a time hes already infected. This took a long period of time for him to recover (something that the hospital could have prevent from happening) finally his family was told that the boy have hope for the future. After many complaints managers may decide to research, managers may achieve this by observing and assuming staff as they deal with patients. Sometimes ward managers employ elderly people, parents to assess and report on how well their workers are doing. In the case of observation, it takes long for GP to put their patients on a hospital waiting, this is due to how many people that are sill waiting and GPs are told to observe the attitude of the patient. Meaning many patients have to be referred by their GP to attend an outpatient clinic where their need for an operation will be assessed. However, the common way to find information from patients is getting them to complete questionnaires, which they will send by post or a nurse will help a patient complete, like an interview. Alternatively the NHS have a committee where patients report about services they provide to the public. This committee gives their views on how the NHS should run and sometimes provide useful and detailed information on how communication can take place in the NHS (patients and workers). As we all know almost all big businesses have websites that are available to clients. Barts and THE London have a website that patients can use regarding the service they offer, most of the time the site have information about the hospital, recent achievements, health information and so on. The website also has an E-mail which patients can use to contract Barts and The London NHS customer service. This way gives patients the chance to offer their views on the NHS and it service it does provide. Patients can use this method (e-mail) to complain about unsatisfactory service or complete forms before visiting the hospital. Barts and The London NHS must supply high quality of service to patients; their service must be of high standard and reliable. Patients must be assured about safety when in the hands of specialists; for instant doctors must explain to patients about side effect of any treatment or medication they are taking. Information on medication must be clear to patients in order to avoid over-dose and help patients to be safe. Barts and The London should have employees with the right skills and attitude to work in other provide patients with right treatment. Nurses or any other work in the NHS are well trained to carry their duties as stated on their contract of employment. All staff wear their uniform this is to help patients recognise all employees in the hospital. As weve been hearing there have been many complaints that the hospitals are not clean enough for patient to be treated and patients often suffer from different sicknesses while in hospital, this is said to be that it is the spreading of disease. Never the less, Barts and The London NHS provide signpost so that patients can find their way around the hospital. By using technology effectively, its possible to do more with fewer resources and compete work in a larger field. Businesses that shy away from technology find themselves at a disadvantage; technology is best suited for customer interaction and information. E-mail is as important as the telephone for the average working man and woman, and in some cases, more important than any other communications, nowadays people send more email than postal mail, exchange drafts of reports via email, schedule meetings via email, and close deals via email. Workers who dont know how to make use of email servers will waste hours or lose information. And those that are content to continue with one-to-one communications will fall behind their competitors. Protecting the customer means making sure that the customer is receiving the actual goods or service he or she wants, and that they are in the right condition to work as expected. There are many laws that exist to protect the customer, on such things as the contents and labelling of food, consumer credit and claims about sale price. In addition, in some cases business has set up its own help for the consumer through such things as voluntary codes of practice. The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 makes it an offence for a trader to apply, by any means, false or misleading statements, or to knowingly or recklessly make such statements about goods and services. This means you have rights as a consumer for what you purchase to do what it says it will. As a consumer if you feel like you have been ripped off or treated unfairly by a shop or a manufacturer then you can speak to a Personal Adviser at your local Connexions or the consumer and trading standards business advice service. If a description has been applied thee a business is not sure about, If at all possible, the trade description should be removed forthwith. Customers should certainly be informed about any doubt about any significant description. The Health and Safety at work 1974 state that all employers were required keeping their workplaces healthy and safe. The act provides a strong framework for good. Never the less, the consumer protection Act 1987, improve the law on the sale of dangerous goods. Certain goods must be marked with warnings and safety advice (bleach). Other goods, including heaters and toys, are covered by safety regulations. The sale of goods Act 1979 set the principles of fit for the purpose, as described and of merchantable quantity. This means products must be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. If goods do not conform to contract at the time of sale, purchasers can request their money back within a reasonable time. Weight and measures Act 1985, makes it an offence for traders to give short weight or measure. The Act was established to ensure that buyers receive sufficient and accurate information with which to compare quantity and price.

Forensic Analysis of Personal Data Leakage on Android Phone

Forensic Analysis of Personal Data Leakage on Android Phone Sheriff Drammeh  Ã‚   RESEARCH STATEMENT The proposed research will explore personal data leakage on the android mobile application platform through forensic analysis of volatile and non-volatile memory. PROPOSAL SUMMARY The proposed research will employ both volatile memory forensic techniques and traditional disk forensic techniques to the android platform in order to identify privacy breaches primarily in android mobile applications [1]. The proposed research also aims to demonstrate that forensic artifacts can be found both in the disk drive (non-volatile) and memory (volatile). AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH 1. Acquire non-volatile data from an android device using the traditional forensic approach and the memory dump, analyse the acquired data for any forensic artifacts and make a comparative analysis of both approaches. This will be achieve by conducting an experimental simulation of both approaches. 2. Develop an effective methodology to improve the detection of personal data leakages and sensitive information from android mobile applications. RESOURCES The major part of this proposed research will be conducting an experiment, hence few equipments are essential to be in place in order to carry out the experiment. The proposed research is mainly memory dumping and disk drive imaging for forensic analysis. Some open source tools will be highly utilize during the course of this proposed research, such as android studio SDK, Odin, ADB and mem. Additionally, books on android forensics, mobile forensics, journals and YouTube video tutorials will also be utilize. As the research progresses more resources might be needed. The following is a non-exhaustive list of resources currently available for use: à ¢-  Window 10 OS with processor Intel (R) Core(TM)i7, install memory of 16.0GB is the host operating system and forensic workstation for disk image analysis à ¢-  Linux Ubuntu 15.10 x32 with kernel v2.6 is our forensic workstation for memory analysis à ¢-  VMware Virtual Machine v11.1.2: Will be used to install guest operating system à ¢-  Physical android phone Samsung galaxy S3: Is the subject of the experiment à ¢-  Android SDK developer tool for Linux x32: Is a software development tool used for application development and analysis. à ¢-  mem is an open source tool for dumping running process on android phone à ¢-  Odin3.-v3.10 is open source tool that enable us to rooted android phone à ¢-  Samsung usb drive for mobile phone used to enable debugging bridge between android phone and forensic workstation à ¢-  CF-Auto-Root-2dcan-2dvl-sghi747m is used to update firmware during rooting process. à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ · AccessData Forensic tool kit version 3.4.2 ( Download FTK Imager 3.4.2) is forensic software tool used to analysis disk image file 3 | P a g e CONNECTION TO THE COURSES OF MISSM PROGRAM This proposed research is closely related to Digital forensic course (ISSM536), which is one of the course we had covered in our Information Systems and Security Management program. The proposed research used the techniques learned from this class and applied them in the android environment to reveal several types of personal information such as username, password, date of birth, postal addresses contact, photos, account number, messages etc. The comparative analysis method used covers the principles of digital evidence collection learned in Information Technology Security Laws and Ethics course (ISSM561). The proposed research has a beginning and ending, as a result it need to be managed in order to deliver the end result. Therefore, the knowledge learned from (ISSM545) System Development and Project Management. REVIEW OF RELATED RESEARCHS Fuchs, et al., [2] presented the first analysis tool for android called SCanDroid, a framework for Android to perform information flow analysis on applications in order to understand the flow of information from one component to another component. Consider a case where an application request permission to access multiple data stores i.e., public data store and private data store. The application requires permission for reading the data from the private store and writing data to the public store. SCanDriod analyzes the information flow of the application and reports whether the application will transfer the information in the private store to the public store or not. However, SCanDroid also suffers from the same limitation of security policy expressibility. In order to consider some information flow to be dangerous, the policy writers must define certain constraints prior to executing the policy. Similarly, if an information flow is not explicitly added to the set of constraints the f ramework will consider it to be safe. In 2012, C. Gibler, et al., presented AndroidLeaks, a static analysis framework for automatically finding potential leaks of sensitive information in Android applications on a massive scale[4]. It informed the user if applications are leaking their personal information. AndroidLeaks drastically reduces the number of applications and the number of traces that a security auditor has to verify manually. To secure privacy information, they set up a mappings between Android API methods and the required permissions as the sources and sinks of private data for data flow analysis. However, AndroidLeaks does not yet analyze Android-specific control and data flows. This includes Intents, which are used for communication between Android and application components, and content providers, which provide access to database-like structures managed by other components. Sasa Mrdovic et al., [3] proposed a combination of static and live analysis for memory image, which is obtained by hibernation mode (power management feature that exists in most portable computers). After they obtained the physical memory image, they used it to boot the investigated system in the virtual machine (live view) to resume the system to the same state before it went into hibernation mode. Their proposal of using hibernating feature was to obtain the memory contents without violating the evidence integrity, but during their analysis they found out that they lost all the information about network connections because hibernation mode terminates the network connections before it starts in Windows environment. As one of best well-known analysis approaches, Taint Droid detects privacy leaks using dynamic taint tracking [5]. Enck et al. built a modified Android operating system to add taint tracking information to data from privacy-sensitive sources. They track private data as it propagates through applications during execution. If private data is leaked from the phone, the taint tracker records the event in a log which can be audited by the user. In 2015,Young ho Kim et al., proposed a methodology and an architecture for measuring user awareness of sensitive data leakage, which features runtime application analysis over timing distance between the user input event and actual privacy data leak[6]. 4 | P a g e Nai-Wei Lo, Kuo-Hui Yeh, and Chuan-Yen Fan present a user privacy analysis framework called LRPdroid[7]. LRPdroid has been proposed for an Android platform to offer a user privacy management model. In the LRPdroid framework, they defined required models to achieve user privacy management: App execution data flow, user perception, leakage awareness, information leakage detection, privacy disclosure evaluation, and privacy risk assessment. To support the proposed privacy analysis model, two information capture modules for LRPdroid were designed to acquire incoming data inputted by a mobile user and outgoing data transmitted from a targeted App. A system prototype based on the LRPdroid framework was developed to evaluate the feasibility and practicability of LRPdroid. Two general App usage scenarios were adopted during the usage of Line App to evaluate the effectiveness of LRPdroid on user privacy disclosure by social engineering attack, user information leakage from normal operations o f a running App, and privacy risk assessment of targeted running App. In 2015[10], Pasquale Stirparo, Igor Nai Fovino, and Ioannis Kounelis developed a novel methodology called MobiLeak, for analysis of security and privacy level of mobile applications, which focuses more on user data instead of application code and its architecture. Their research work addressed and solved the problems related to the following three research questions for mobile environment and applications: (1)what are data and where can such data exist? (2) How is personal data handled? (3)How can one properly assess the security and privacy of mobile applications? They start their research work with a fundamental prerequisite in order to be able to properly treat them, which is studying and identifying every possibility state at which data can exist. After this step, they analyzed how real life mobile applications and operating systems handle users personal data for each of the states previously identified. Based on these steps they developed MobiLeak, which also combined concepts and principles from the digital forensics discipline. DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED RESEARCH THE FOCUS OF THE RESEARCH The aim of this proposed research is to examine user data storage mechanism on a mobile application in a context of android platform. Analyzing mobile application for personal data leakage require extensive analysis and in-depth understanding of both the OS and application architecture. The analysis is expected to be conduct to data at rest and data in motion. The result of this proposed research will help to create awareness to both application developers and the android community that users personal data information such as username, password and other sensitive information are at risk both in volatile and non-volatile memory. Finding user sensitive data on android smart phone could be in three (3) locations: disk drive, memory and app server. Our research is limited to two out of the three application data store which is disk drive and memory, both storage areas could prove strategic locations for finding vital information for android smart phone users. The motive of this research is to examine whether applications encrypt user sensitive information both in the memory and the disk drive. This pose the following questions: 1. Does user credentials are encrypted on a memory ? 2. Among the two method which one is more forensically sound? 3. What information could be found in disk drive and not in memory? During the experimental phase of the proposed research certain applications will be examining, such as VOIP applications, social media applications, financial applications and telecom applications. I chose this samples of android application from various categories. Because these applications are fairly popular and are used by millions of people around the globe. For each application I will look at how user sensitive data, such as user name, password, date of birth and account number are store both in the disk drive and the memory. 5 | P a g e The rest of the proposed research section is divided into 4 parts: First I am going talk about my methodology, next I will present the series of preliminary result both in the memory analysis and disk analysis, third I give the highlight of the expected result and finally, I will discuss about certain obstacles that may arise. METHODOLOGY The method used in carrying out the experiment of the proposed research consist of four phases. Phase One: Gather the require tool both in term of hardware and software As the proposed research required memory dump and disk drive imaging analysis a physical android phone is needed to conduct our experiment. 1. Window Host OS and Ubuntu Guest OS as our forensic workstation 2. Android phone Samsung Galaxy S3 3. Installing Odin3.-v3 which will allow us to root our android phone 4. Install android SDK tool for using ADB(Android Debug Bridge) to get shell access on our android Phone 5. Mem application software loaded into our android phone through ADB which allow us to dump the running process from the Phone Phase Two: Installation and configuration of experimental environment At this phase all the required tools, such as the hardware and software are installed and configured. Pre-experiment of memory dump and disk imaging is performed, and tools are verified. Phase Three: Acquisition of disk image and memory dump At this phase the disk image drive is acquired using dd command tool from the internal memory to internal SDcard of the phone and ADB pull is utilize to pull/copy the disk partitions to our forensic work station. Mem program software is utilize, this allow us to dump the running process. We used ADB to install mem application into our phone in order to dump the desired running application process. Phase Four: Preservation and analysis of acquired data The purpose of this phase is to examine acquired application data both in the memory and disk drive. For example, we will check if the application is encrypting users credential both data at rest and data in transit? MEMORY DUMPING ANALYSIS This section provide detail steps taken to analysis the dumped memory of certain applications selected for this proposed research. The result shows that users credential are not properly handle by the application, which can result in personal data leakage. A program called mem was used to facilities the process dump, ABD was also used to install mem program into our android phone. List the running process and dump them into the internal SDcard and finally pull it to our forensic workstation for further analysis. Strings and sqlite3 command were utilized to look for ASCII text format from the dumped memory to understand the output result. Interestingly, the result showed that users credential are not encrypted at all. The applications analyse in this proposed research are as follows: A) Africallshop App Africallshop is a VOIP application which allows customers to buy credit online to make national and international calls and send text message worldwide to friends and family at a cheap rate. The application is 6 | P a g e rated about 4.4 in the android play store and was downloaded by five thousand (5000) customers during the time of this proposed research. The prominent outcome of this application are as follow: The username, password, caller id and user account balance are not encrypted. We ran the sqlite3 and string command on the dumped memory, which produce the result below: sip.africallshop.com XXXXXXX 0017802986780 CANADA 12590 xxxxxxxxx yes CAD proxy.africallshop.com:443 574b690276bc5 [emailprotected] 0,434 B) EHarmony App EHarmony is an online dating site for singles. Those using this app can communicate freely, share picture, video and text. During the time of this proposed research the application was downloaded by five million people and rated 3.1 in the app store. The prominent outcome of this application analysis are as follow: The user credential, such as username, password and device information are all in plaintext. The result below: POST /singles/servlet/login/mobile HTTP/1.1 j_username=sdramme1%40student.concordia.ab.caj_password=123qazplatform=androidj0r1D7fg4ArJ2uSVPgSti5zcEnltO919mHUV88E%2FKUWcan9NEMgT820MygiKsWf0Sg1147vdZbXIo tLS HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: eHarmony-Android/3.1 (SGH-I747M; Android OS 4.4.2; en_CA; id f9d8a2acfec7b901) X-eharmony-device-id: f9d8a2acfec7b901 X-eharmony-device-os: Android X-eharmony-device-os-version: 19 X-eharmony-device-type: 1 X-eharmony-client: eHarmony X-eharmony-client-version: 3.1 Accept: application/json lBxp c_te j_username=sdramme1%40student.concordia.ab.caj_password=123qazplatform=android 8KTB stevedocwra on 7 | P a g e C) Virgin Mobile My account App Virgin mobile is GSM mobile application that allow user to manage their account features and usage. Users can make payment and add a buddy to their list. This application was downloaded by five hundred thousand (500,000) people during the time of this proposed research and was rated 3.4 in the app store. The prominent outcome of this application are as follow: Sim sequence number, cell phone number, UMTS number, activation date, user data of birth, subscribe date, user e-mail address, initial password, pin unlock code and account number. all this information are not encrypted. [emailprotected]:~/android-sdk-linux/platform-tools$ strings virginmobile | grep [emailprotected] We run the ps and string command on the dumped memory, which produced the result below: imeioriginal:null,simsequenceNumber:174392323,esnequipmentType:null,imeiequipmentType:{value:LTEDevice,code:T},simequipmentType:{value:USimVal,code:U}},telephoneNumber:7802356780,networkType:{value:UMTS,code:85},language:{value:EN,code:E},isBillSixty:false,isTab:false,commitmentStartDate:null,commitmentEndDate:null,commitmentTerm:0,contractType:{value:OFF_COMMITMENT,code:O},paccPinStatus:{value:NOT_ENROLLED,code:78},padPinStatus:{value:NOT_ENROLLED,code:78},initialActivationDate:1463112000000,accountCommPref:{value:BILL_INSERTS,code:66},isAccountSMSPerm:true,birthDate:512197200000,lastUpdateDate:1464062400000,lastUpdateStamp:9863,lastHardwareUpgradeDate:null,daysSinceLastHWUpgrade:null,subscriberEstablishDate:1463112000000,daysSinceActivation:16,nextTopupDate:1465704000000,cancelledSubStatusDate:1463371200000,initialPassword:5069,isCallDisplayAllowed:false,pricePlan:VHV226,portInidicator:null,primeMateInidicator:{value:UNKNOWN,code:R},primeSubNumber:null,subMarket:{value:UAC,code:UAC },telcoId:MOBL,pinUnlockKey:[36761817,63094923],manitobaIndicator:O,thunderBayIndicator:O,portabilityIndicator:O,serviceArea:N,hasOrderInProgress:false,isWCoCSubscriber:true,hasDomesticDataServices:false,hasRoamingDataServices:false,domesticDSBlockedUntil:null,roamingDSBlockedUntil:null,isAccessible:false,promotionGroupCode:null,emailAddress:[emailprotected],wcoCDate:1463112000000}]},emailAddress:[emailprotected],arbalance:{name:{http://bside.int.bell.ca/customer/profile/types}ARBalance,declaredType:java.lang.Double,scope:ca.bell._int.bside.customer.profile.types.MobilityAccountType,value:0,nil:false,globalScope:false,typeSubstituted:false},ebillInfo:{isEBillEnrolled:true,isEBillNotifyEnabled:true,ebillStartDate:1463112000000,ebillEndDate:null},siowner:{value:BELL_MOBILITY,code:MOBL},arpuamount:19.13}]},wirelineAccounts:null,internetAccounts:null,tvaccounts:null},activeHouseholdOrders:null,emailAddress:[emailprotected]},username:7802986780,guid:SCP9O0ELLDDUN2J,profileType:BUP,savedT imeStamp:2016-05-29T01:30:38.458-04:00,profilebanNumbers:[{accountType:Legacy,ban:527566075,profileSaveTime:1463945744000}],accountType:,paymentData:[[{paymentInfoList:{billAvailable:true,lastPaymentAmount:40.18,totalAmountDue:40.18,lastPaymentDate:2016-05-22T00:00:00.000-04:00,paymentDueDate:2016-06-06T00:00:00.000-04:00,billEnddate:2016-05-14T00:00:00.000-04:00,balanceForward:0,bankAccountNumber:null,creditCardNum:null,customerId:null,ban:527566075,mdn:52756607UAV580,eligibilityInd:Y}}]]}` DISK IMAGING ANALYSIS This section provided detail steps taken to conduct traditional forensic technique for non-volatile memory acquisition and analysis. During this phase the acquired memory will be examine and the primary concern will be user data stored, in particular share_pref folder. Share_pref folder is a storage location for key-value in side application database. Android application store user data within /dev/block[8]. With the use of common forensic command, such as dd, will be utilize to image disk drive partition. For this proposed research the following partitions are imaged for analysis: System file Cache file 8 | P a g e User data Persist But our proposed research experiment will be focus on user data folder, as it is consider to be the storage location for application data. To image disk drive, shell access is need through android SDK, we then look for mount file on the disk drive before executing dd commands to copy the partition from the internal memory to internal SDcard and finally pulling it to our forensic work station using adb pull command. 1. Checking the mounted file on the disk drive mount /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/userdata /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/cache /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system /dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist 2. Copying the user date partition and pull it to forensic work station dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/userdata of=/mnt/sdcard/test1 17399538+0 records in 17399537+0 records out 8908562944 bytes transferred in 1934.464 secs (4605184 bytes/sec) adb pull /mnt/sdcard/test1 3. Imaging the cache partition to internal SDcard dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/cache of=/mnt/sdcard/cachefile1.img 1720320+0 records in 1720320+0 records out 880803840 bytes transferred in 118.669 secs (7422358 bytes/sec) 4. Copying the system partition dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/system of=/mnt/sdcard/systemfile.img 3072000+0 records in 3072000+0 records out 1572864000 bytes transferred in 255.874 secs (6147025 bytes/sec) [emailprotected]:/ # 5. Copying the persist partition dd if=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/persist of=/mnt/sdcard/persist.img 16384+0 records in 16384+0 records out 8388608 bytes transferred in 0.865 secs (9697812 bytes/sec) The above command will image each partition of the mounted file of dev/block with the default block size of 512 byte during bit-by-bit copy of the file and direct the output file to internal SDcard. Finally, copy it to our forensic workstation, Which can be analysis using forensic tool called AccessData FTK imager version 3.4.2. FTK is recommended forensic tool for disk image analysis by both forensic and legal community for its powerful carving capability, stability and ease of use. AccessData FTK ANALYSIS 1. PayPal App PayPal is an online payment system that allows its member to transfer funds locally and globally. Members can receive, send money and buy or pay for goods and services online. The application was downloaded by 10 million people at the time of this research and rated as a good app in the app store. We added evidence item to 9 | P a g e FTK navigate to data and com.paypal.android.p2pmobile then share_pref folder. The folder share_pref/PresentationAccount.RememberedUsersta../ reveal user data information such as user first and last name, cell phone number, and email address. 2. AfricallShop App Africallshop is a VOIP application that allow the users to make cheap international call worldwide, user can purchase credit online to communicate with peer by text message and voice call. After adding user data partition to FTK imager, navigate to com.v2.africallshop folder, expand the folder view share_pref folder. In sher_pref folder an xml file called com.v2.africallshop-prefrences.xml was view and contain user sensitive data such as app domain name, caller ID, country, ID, user password, username and account balance all in plain text. 10 | P a g e 3. Keku App Keku is a VOIP application which facilitate call or text through Wi-Fi or mobile data. User buy credit online to make local and internationally calls. The package of the application contain probative information about the user. App database store was reveal through FTK analysis and the share_pref folder contain sensitive information about the user. In share_pref folder a file called Org.keku_preferences.xml, this file contain users sensitive data and device information such as, password, username, device-mac address and user phone number. 11 | P a g e EXPECTED RESULTS During the experimental phase of the proposed research, aim and objective of the experiment is to demonstrate or show that users personnel data information are at risk during application data process in transit and at rest. The research has observe the dumped process and disk drive imaged to reveal personal data leakage and has successfully uncover vital information about App users, such as username, password, date of birth etc. OBSTACLE The obstacles encountered during the experimental phase of the proposed research as follow: 1) Lack of enough material regarding android forensic as the field is immature 2) Unable to image the whole memory of the actual phone, as the system configuration file is missing and couldnt be found to compile it with LiMe in order to acquire the whole memory. 3) Lack of enough analysis tool to cross examine or evaluate both the dumped and disk drive memory, Ubuntu Linux tool was used to do our analysis. CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE The proposed research show that application developers are far less careful with user sensitive data when it being stored both in the disk drive and memory in running applications. Using very simple forensic investigation techniques running strings and sqlite3 on dumped memory and disk drive imaging analysis on FTK show quite a lot of private information. OUTLINE OF FINAL RESEARCH PAPER ISSM 580/581 The final research document will be structure as follows [9]: Section 1, will be the abstract then the Introduction to the paper. Section 2, will discuss memory analysis technique. Section 3, will discuss disk imaging analysis 12 | P a g e technique. Section 4, will discusses the forensic artifacts unveil during the analysis . Section 5, related work. Section 6, the result summary. Section 7; conclusion and future work. . RESEARCH DELIVERABLES This research will be conduct in Fall Semester 2016, from September 2016 to December 2016. Nevertheless, some major preliminary steps have already being taken. Most of the required tools both hardware and software for the proposed research have already being obtained and implemented. Spring 2016 April Researching the Topic of Interest Week 1 2 Finalize the Topic with Primary Advisor Week 3 4 Read the Area/Topic of Interest May Week 1 2 Read relevant Journal or Article related to the topic of interest Week 3 4 Gathering and installation of test Environment, Conducting and Experiment. June Week 1 Writing First Draft proposal and submit Week 2 -3 Edit and Improve proposal based on advisor guidance, Further Experiment and literature review read. Week 4 Final Proposal and Submit.

?The Wreck of the Hesperus? and The Perfect Storm :: essays research papers

The More Powerful Sea Disaster Story   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Some of the most intriguing stories of today are about people’s adventures at sea and the thrill and treachery of living through its perilous storms and disasters. Two very popular selections about the sea and its terrors are The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and â€Å"The Wreck of the Hesperus† by Henry Longfellow. Comparison between the two works determines that â€Å"The Wreck of the Hesperus† tells a more powerful sea-disaster story for several different reasons. The poem is more descriptive and suspenseful than The Perfect Storm, and it also plays on a very powerful tool to captivate the reader’s emotion. These key aspects combine to give the reader something tangible that allows them to relate to the story being told and affects them strongly. A common person’s knowledge about sea disasters comes from what they have read in books and articles, and what they see on TV and in movies. The average person does not get to experience the fury of a hurricane while on a boat. In order to capture the audience’s attention, consideration to details and vivid descriptions are needed to paint a realistic picture in their minds. For this reason, the stories have to provide all of the intricate details. In The Perfect Storm, the story starts out with a radio call, not a dramatic scene that immediately foreshadows the possibility of danger. Rather than describing the storm and its fury, the only mention of the setting is of the visibility and the height of waves. However, in â€Å"The Wreck of the Hesperus†, the poem begins by stating there is a hurricane possible right away. The current weather conditions are pointed out to the reader as shown in the following quote.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Colder and louder blew the wind,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  A gale from the Northeast,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The snow fell hissing in the brine,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  And the billows frothed like yeast.†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  (Longfellow 125) The realistic adjectives paint a picture that the average person can relate to and understand. As shown from the word choice in The Perfect Storm, the poem is easily seen to evoke more powerful imagery. One quality a story needs to possess in order to keep the reader eager and captivated to read is suspense. Both stories have elements of suspense, but utilize it in different ways. â€Å"The Wreck of the Hesperus† does an excellent job of foreshadowing, so one can predict the sequence of events that will happen.

Related Local Literature Essay

This study deals with the review and analysis of the literature and studies relevant to inventory management techniques that the researchers will be using in the optimization. It consists of information culled from studies and literature, both local and foreign, from which this study is subject to. This chapter will certainly help in giving the reader a better understanding of what is Economic Order Quantity model and Dynamic Programming to optimization of the inventory system. Definition: Inventory Inventory refers to any kind of resources having economic value and is maintained to fulfil the present and future needs of theconsumers.It is a physical stock of items that business or production enterprise keeps in hand for efficient running of affairs or its production. Inventory is the quantity of goods, raw materials or other resources that are idle at any given point of time. Inventory control is the means by which materials of the correct quantity and quality is made available as a when required with due regard to economy in storage and ordering costs and working capital. It is also defined as the systematic location, storage and recording of goods in such a way that desired degree of service can be made to the operating shops at a minimum ultimate cost† (S.C sharma (1999). P. 509, 512). Inventory model: Economic Order Quantityand Dynamic Programming For over a century, the literature encompassing hundreds of books and journals has included frequent writings of management scientists applying quantitative methods to help inventory managers make two critical decisions: how much inventory to order, and when to order it. Inventory management started as early as the beginning of the 20th century when F. W. Harris originally developed the lot size formula or the EOQ model in 1915. R. H. Wilson independently developed the same formula in 1918. Apparently, Wilson popularized the model so the EOQ model is also referred to as the Wilson EOQ model. The EOQ formula has been independently discovered many times in the last eighty years. It is simplistic and uses several unrealistic assumptions. In Cargal discussed the basic EOQ model; he said that they cannot determine what quantity of an item to order when ordering supplies. Despite the many more sophisticated formulas and algorithm available, some large corporations still use the EOQ formula. In general, large corporations that use the EOQ formula do not want the public or competitors to know they use something so unsophisticated. The variables, graph, and the formula was also discussed in this paper. The classic EOQ model has been directly used in practice but which, more importantly, represents the key foundation of decision rules dealing with more complicated circumstances.Different variations and applications of the EOQ model in production and inventory operations were expanded over the years such as dealing with the quantity discounts, shelf-life considerations, replenishment lead time and constraints on the replenishment. Further advancements in inventory management took place when dynamic programming was used, with R. Bellman as its founding father. However, earlier works in DP were produced by Arrow, Karlin and Scarf. Bellman, who popularized DP, used the stochastic models for the inventory management problems. But in 1958, Wagner and Within started with a deterministic model, referred to as the Wagner-Within method, with known demands in each period, and fluctuating costs from one period to the next. A few years later, results for the stochastic model were established by Iglehart and Wagner with Veinott, which involves a demand with a continuous distribution. Inventory models have been applied and adapted by organizations. Silver enumerated the extensive research and application done over the years. In retail inventory management, retail outlets are increasingly adopting equipment that permits capture of demand data and updating of inventory records at the point of sale. In integrated logistics, a very complex system, it utilizes operations inventory management where maintenance, transportation and/or production are involved. In interactions with marketing, inventory management is applied on how to routinely take account of the effects of promotional activities on the control of inventories, how to predict and account for the effects of the system on the demand pattern, and the allocation of the shelf space in outlets such as supermarkets. Stock on Inventory The American Institute of Accountants defined the term inventory as â€Å"the aggregate of those items of tangible property which (1) are held for sale in the ordinary course of business, (2) are in process of production for such sale or (3) are to be available for ‘sale’. In Nigeria, inventory is usually referred to as stock-in-trade or work-in-progress. Stock may consist of (i) Raw materials and supplies to be consumed in production (ii) work-in-progress, or partly manufactured goods, (ii) Finished stock or goods ready for sale. Stocks are valued in a fundamentally different way from fixed assets; the latter are usually valued at cost less accumulated depreciation. No method of stock valuation is suitable for all types of business in all circumstances. Stock is valued at cost less any part of cost, which needs to be written off when net realizable value or the replacement price is lower than cost. The Functions of Inventory Inventories perform a number of vital functions in the operations of a system, which in turn makes them critical to the production sector as well. Without inventories, organizations could not hope to achieve smooth production flow, obtain reasonable utilization of machines and reasonable handling cost or expects to give reasonable service to customers. The basic function of inventories whether they are raw materials, work-in-progress or finished goods are that of decoupling the operations involved in converting inputs into outputs. This allows the successive stages in the purchasing, manufacturing and distribution process to operate reliance on the schedule of output, of prior activities in the production process. Furthermore, the decoupling function allows both time and spatial separation between production and consumption of products in the operating system. Lastly, inventories can also be used for other purposes apart from the decoupling functions. For example, when inventories are displayed, they serve as promotional investment. Raw materials and finished inventories are frequently accumulated to wedge against price rises, inflation and strikes. Inventories also serve to smooth out irregularities in supply. In essence, inventories act to decouple organizational activities, thereby achieving lower costs of operations. Inventories act to reduce procurement costs, and inventories act to provide good customer service and smooth production flow by providing onetime delivery and avoiding costly stock shortages. Inventories ordered in large quantities can result in lower freight charges and price discounts. On the other hand, inventory requires tying up capital that would otherwise be invested elsewhere. Inventory also requires costly storage space; and such costs as insurance, spoilage obsolesce, pilferage and taxes must be incurred as a result of maintaining inventory. Hence, there is an appropriate opportunity cost associated with their value. It is therefore, the duty of the management to seek decision rules that will actually balance these controversies of costs for a given system. It is in response to this management quest for guidance in handling inventory decision situations that a number of techniques (models) have been developed to serve as aid to management in achieving optimal inventory solutions. Inventory Cost The objectives of materials management are to minimize inventory investments and to maximize customer service. It is a plan to see that, the goals can be inconsistent or even indirect conflicts the role of the materials management is thus to balance the objective in relation to the existing conditions and environmental limitations. The basic object of inventory management is to maximize customer service through maintaining appropriate amount of inventory with minimum possible cost. Inventory costs are costs associated with the operation of an inventory system. Thus the relevant costs included inventory are the following: The purchase cost (P)The purchase costs of an item are the unit purchase it is obtained from an external source or the unit production costs it is produced internally. For the purchase items it is the purchase costless modified for different quantity levels manufacturing items the unit cost include direct labour or company overhead. Ordering or set up cost (C)This is the cost of placing an order. This cost directly with the number of order or setups placed and not at all weigh the size of the order. The ordering cost included making analysing materials inspecting materials follows up orders and doing the processing necessary to complete the transaction. Carrying costs or holding costs (H)There are costs of items (inventories) in storage. These costs vary with the level of inventory and occasionally with the length of item an item is held. The greater the level of inventory overtime, the higher the caring cost caring casts can be included the costs of losing the use of funds field up in inventory like storages casts such as rent of building heating cooling righting security, record keeping, deprecation obsolescence, product deterioration etc. Stock out cost (shortage cost) This is the cost as a result of not having items in storage. This can bring loses of good will profit loss of incur back order cost and delay in the customer service. Establishing the correct quantity to order from vendors or the size of lots submitted to the firms productive facilities involves a search for the minimum total cost resulting from the combined effects of fewer individual costs holding costs, setup costs ordering costs and storage costs (Tersine, R.J, 1994. PP. 13-15) Inventory Costing Method There are three methods of inventory costing method. These are:First – in First – out (FIFO)This method is based on the assumption that costs should be computed out in the order in which incurred. Inventory is thus stated in terms of recent costs. Last – in First – out (LIFO)is a method based on the assumption that goods should be charged out the latest cost be the latest cost be the first that are charge out. Inventories are thus stated in terms of earliest cost.Weighted average method is a method based on the assumption that goods should be charged out at an average cost such average being influenced by the number of unites acquired at the price. Inventories are stated at the same weighted average cost.

Swot Au Bon Pain in Malaysia

Strengths * Au Bon Pain has the most successful overseas franchisee at Malaysia’s geographic neighbor Thailand. The similarity between these two countries might smooth the expansion of the business in Malaysia. * Au Bon Pain customized its menu in every operating Asian countries, this can be adapted to Malaysian market as well. (e. g. , poultry-based meat is favored by majorities). Like in Thailand and South Korea, beginning Au Bon Pain’s business plan with cafes in prime office locations (targeting foreign and local businessmen) might work as Kuala Lumpur is one of the economic centers in Asia-Pacific area. * Au Bon Pain has a tradition to support charities. Meanwhile, Malaysia has one of the highest Gini coefficients in Asia, poverty rates also vary significantly from state to state. Weaknesses Au Bon Pain is a new brand while Malaysians term to put a | Opportunities * Increasing consumer awareness in nutrition value and food fortification for healthcare * Malaysia's Economic Transition Plan calls for real GDP growth of 5-6% per year over the next ten years. * The service sector makes 44. 9% of GDP, Malaysia's development plan has a target of 35 million tourists in 2020 * Malaysia is the third largest producer of poultry meat in the Asia Pacific region.Malaysia is self-sufficient in poultry, pork and eggs * More and more hectic and stressful lifestyle in urbanized Malaysia contributed to the growing demand for convenient fast food * Malaysian consumers take to eating out more frequently, which boosts foodservice volume sales in 2011 * Increasing consumer awareness in nutrition value and food fortification for healthcare has created the demand for functional/healthy minimally processed fresh and organic food * Most of the respondents prefer to dine at western fast food restaurants than local fast food| Threats * Malaysia has a Muslim population of 60%.Most retailers, foodservice operators and food manufacturers are inclined to ask for halal certi ficates for non-meat based food products and ingredients. * Malaysia’s rising inflation rate dampened consumer spending in  Malaysia  during 2011. | SWOT: Au Bon Pain in Malaysia