CSIT 534 Operating Systems Project Presentation

Below is the Project Presentation slides of CSIT 534 Operating Systems - prepared by Cherri Chiang and me.

CSIT 534 Presentation Cherri_edmond

View more presentations from lowedmond.

BUS540 Marketing Project Presentation

Below is the Project Presentation slides of BUS 540 Marketing - prepared by Cherri Chiang and me.

Bus 540 presentation cherri_edmond

View more presentations from lowedmond.

BUS 600 Week 10 Assignment Checklist

Summary of Wk10 Assignment checklist.

click image to view in full size

BUS 600 Week 10 Assignment 1

Assignment 1
Chapter 9 – Strategy

Brief Strategy analysis using the Seven S model on Nintendo Co. Ltd. - a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan.

Structure

Nintendo founded on 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi and their original product is handmade hanafuda cards. They did well in early 20th century with their playing cards product. They even structure the company by hiring assistants to mass production the cards as the demand is high.

Nintendo also implement the ability to change and to varies the market segment during 1950s when they venture to US market - taxi company, food industry and TV network plus toy manufacturing.

Their flexibility of the company structure allows them to react on failures or market slump of above products.

Nintendo made a good move by valueing their employee that changes the whole company structure and focus in 1970s with one of their maintenance engineers, Gunpei Yokoi with electronic background changed the entire business plan to start focussing on electronic gaming device.

Nintendo becomes one of the most influential in the video gaming industry and Japan's third most valuable listed company, with a market value of over US$85 billion.

Strategy

Nintendo is sensitive to the changes of the external environment - customer and competitor. They aim to attract customers from all ranges. Nintendo push technology to the edge with their newest consoles that made gaming more interactive with wireless (Wii).

Their all age inclusiveness has made Nintendo friendly and the most popular gaming system today as it helps to cultivate the family value and friends together. Good strategy!

Style

Japanese are well known for hardworking culture. Their ability to change and strong emphasization of quality and goal achievement allow them to be success. Nintendo is not exempted from this style at all.

In 1956, Hiroshi Yamauchi (Fusajiro Yamauchi's grandson) visited the U.S. to talk with the United States Playing Card Company to expand the international market with Disney character's.

They constantly develop new products from Famcom to Nintendo console and a whole new changes of technological gaming console of Wii. Not to forget their hand held game device of game boy to new Nintendo DSi XL.

Skills

With their superb research and development in technology and understanding of customer need skills, Nintendo manage to transform their ever lasting Mario character the legacy of Nintendo to where he is now - world most recognised video game character (official Nintendo's mascot)

Mario games, as a whole, have sold more than 210 million units - this prove the success of Nintendo staff's skill and ability to sustain and improve Mario character/ game. It's not easy to do this remarkable record referring to the history of the video game market.

Systems

Their Marketing research and sales tracking systems allow them to gather information about their customers to stay competitive with others companies.

As of October 2, 2008, Nintendo has sold over 470 million hardware units and 2.7 billion software units

Superodinate Goals

Nintendo's goals - "to build customers' loyalty, strengthening the relationship online."

Mission Statements

"At Nintendo we are proud to be working for the leading company in our industry."

"We are strongly committed to producing and marketing the best products and support services available."

"We believe it is essential not only to provide products of the highest quality, but to treat every customer with attention, consideration and respect. By listening closely to our customers, we constantly improve our products and services"

BUS 600 Week 9 Assignment Checklist

Summary of Wk9 Assignment checklist.


click image to view in full size

BUS 600 Week 9 Assignment 1

Assignment 1
Chapter 8 – Economics

When we read history books, we get to know that the success of a country or empire is related to the strength of the economy itself.

I would like to share some story telling (country economic analysis) about my home-country, Malaysia's economy history.

Hope you don't fall asleep! Hang on with me!

Malaysia Yesterday

Malaysia is situated right at the middle of South East Asia nation.

Long time ago during the 14th century.... during Malacca empire (one of the state in Malaysia) lead by a Sultanate named Parameswara transformed Malacca and Southeast Asia as a centre of trade that lasted for centuries. Various items such as porcelain and spices were actively traded during that time mainly with Europe, East Asia and China empire.

Parameswara

Malacca became an important international trading port in the far east during the 14th to 16th century. It became so rich that the Portuguese writer and trader Tome Pires said "Whoever is lord of Malacca shall have his hands on the throat of Venice".

Malaysia is known to be a source of gold, tin, birds’ nests, aromatic woods, tree resins and etc. The importance of the country mainly boosted by its strategic location. Many European traders made way into the nation in the 16th century. All begins with Portugese that came in 1511.

Bristish empire during 18th to 19th century.

Malaysia continued to attract and last conquer by English with their expansion of the British in the Malay Peninsula from 1870, Sarawak from 1841 and Sabah (Borneo) from 1882. British took over as administrators of Malaya (Malaysia's old name) and , rubber and palm oil trees were introduced for commercial purposes. Over time, Malaysia became the world's largest major producer of tin, rubber, and palm oil. These three commodities, along with other raw materials, firmly set Malaysia's economic tempo well into the mid-20th century.

With this economic expansion opportunities during that time, attracted the Chinese and Indian migrants. They work in the mines, plantations and fill up the void in professional expertise.

Malaysia national flag

Malaysia became independent in 1957. In the 1960s there was an increase in the export of hardwood timber log. The primary exports switched and came from the discovery of large deposits of oil and natural gas in East Malaysia and off the east coast of the Peninsula in the 1970s.

During 1970s, Malaysia began to imitate the four Asian Tiger economies Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Malaysia committed itself to a transition from being reliant on mining and agriculture to an economy that depends more on manufacturing.

With Japanese investment, heavy industries flourished and in a matter of years, Malaysian exports became the country's primary growth engine. Malaysia consistently achieved more than 7% GDP growth along with low inflation in the 1980s and the 1990s.

The development was assisted by improving health, service and education sectors. Malaysia economy continued to boom for much of the 1990s.

Malaysia Today

Manufacturing sector in Malaysia

Today, Malaysia is one of the world's largest computer hard disk manufacturing sites and involved in alot of heavy industry such as car manufacturing and high technology industry - nano technology.

The National Vision Policy (NVP) was launched in the new century. The NVP focuses on building a resilient and competitive nation. It uses key strategies of its previous policies, while summing up new policy dimensions. These dimensions include developing Malaysia into a knowledge-based society.

The ethnic Chinese continue to control the locally owned sector of the country's economy, meanwhile, has been ceded largely in favour of the Malays in many essential or strategic industries such as petroleum retailing, transportation, agriculture, automobile manufacturing, and other industries and with the support of Indian community and others ethnic group further develop and strengthen Malaysia market economy demand.

Malaysia is now one of the region's top education and healthcare destinations. Malaysia also have strong support and foundation in ICT sector. The world class ICT hub infrastructure and service - Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) initiative manage to attract leading ICT companies to locate in the MSC and undertake research, development of new products and technology. Malaysia also attracted flows of foreign investment in this sector.

Malaysia is recognised as a newly industrialised country. In 2008, GDP per capita (PPP) of Malaysia stands at US$14,215, ranking 48th in the world, and 2nd in Southeast Asia.


Malaysia Tomorrow

Malaysia's Vision 2020

Vision 2020 is a Malaysian ideal that calls for the nation to achieve a self-sufficient industrial, Malaysian-centric economy by 2020. The nation required an annual growth 7% (in real terms) in order to achieve that vision, that allow the economy to be eightfold stronger than its 1990 GDP of RM115 billion (US$38 billion). This would translate to a GDP of RM920 billion (US$290 billion) in 2020.
Globalization is also one of the key element in Vision 2020.

Conclusion:

In short, The old day economic sector of agriculture is still important for Malaysia as a backbone support of sustainability. Manufacturing plays important role in modernising the country to become the central of world technology development. Services and Investing sector is rapidly growing and will be the core of Malaysia's future economic.

BUS 600 Week 8 Assignment Checklist

Summary of Wk8 Assignment checklist on 4/29 (Follow up)

click image to view in full size

Summary of Wk8 Assignment checklist on 4/10

click image to view in full size

**To update once Assignment 2 done - comment and read blogs**

BUS 600 Week 8 Assignment 1

Assignment 1
Chapter 7 – Operations

I would like to further elaborate and improve the class exercise of "Coffee Making Process" by using CPM model and also Gantt Chart.

A) Below is the CPM Model and Gantt Chart of the first Initial Coffee Making Process that we discuss during the class. This process enable us to achieve 25 sec of the start and end process of preparing a coffee.

Initial CPM Model = 25 sec process

B) I further improve above 25 sec cycle time process by:

• changing the process of selecting the cup - only select cup while brewing in progress.
• breaking down the process into two kinds of process:

1. Preparing Hot Coffee process - only 19 secs of total cycle time
2. Preparing Cold Coffee process - only 21 secs of total cycle time
   How can this possible? Refer below.

New CPM Model of Hot Coffee = 19 sec process

New CPM Model of Cold Coffee = 21 sec process

Gantt Chart and CPM model can really helps to improve operation process efficiency successfully and also to identify the critical path at the same time simplifying process will improve product delivery and quality.

Hope to use this for my dream business plan.

BUS 600 Week 7 Assignment Checklist

Summary of Wk7 Assignment checklist on 4/28 (Follow up)


click image to view in full size

Summary of Wk7 Assignment checklist on 4/10

click image to view in full size

**To update once Assignment 2 done - comment and read blogs**

BUS 600 Week 7 Assignment 1

Assignment 1
Chapter 6 – Finance

Is Finance a science or an art?
After researching some materials, I have the same thought that Finance is a science and also an art.

Why science?
Finance has strong relation in scientific fields such as statistics and mathematics.

Why art?
Finance investment relates to human emotions or behaviour that play a large role in many aspects of the financial world.

One needs to understand the science behind the number analysis and the art behind the stock picking exhibited by investors.
Therefore, I would like to relate this with Warren Buffett’s investment methodology as a reference here.

Buffett's Brief Methodology summary:

1. Has the company consistently performed well?

Study the ROE (return on equity) that will reveals the rate at which shareholders are earning income on their shares. Look at the performance consistency comparing to other companies in the same industry for the past 5 years or 10 years historical performance data. ROE is calculated as follows:

= Net Income / Shareholder's Equity

2. Has the company avoided excess debt?

Debt and equity ratio is another key thing to consider carefully. The debt/equity ratio is calculated as follows:

= Total Liabilities / Shareholders' Equity

The higher the ratio, the more the debt - rather than equity - is financing the company.

3. Are profit margins high? Are they increasing?

The profitability of a company depends on a good profit margin and also on consistency increase of the profit margin. This margin is calculated by:

= Net Income / Net Sales

>4. How long has the company been public?

Buffett typically considers only companies that have been around for at least 10 years. It makes sense that one of Buffet's criteria is longevity/ sustaining.

5. Do the company's products rely on a commodity?

Company product diversity and offer anything different than another firm within the same industry is important and provide competitive advantage in the market.

6. Is the stock selling at a 25% discount to its real value?

To check this, an investor must determine the intrinsic value of a company by analyzing a number of business fundamentals, including earnings, revenues and assets. And a company's intrinsic value is usually higher than its liquidation value.
Once Buffett determines the intrinsic value of the company as a whole, he compares it to its current market capitalization to see if the value

is at least 25% higher than the company's market capitalization.

Let’s try to analyze the stock that you are planning to invest or already owned.

BUS 540 Week 6 Assignment Checklist

Summary Wk6 Checklist

click image to view in full size

BUS 540 Week 6 Assignment part 2 (re-visit)

As committed, it's time to re-visit Week 6 Assignment to review Google Analytics data on 9th of April.

• Build links to your site or blog


Links available on my blog.
http://lowedmond.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-website-found-for-san-jose.html
http://lowedmond.blogspot.com/search/label/Badminton%20Hot%20Deal

**click image to view in full size**

Also the link to http://lowedmond.blogspot.com/ is also added to my:

1. Linked in - My Blog (Interesting information provided by linked in on the no. of view scored)
2. Twitter - Web
3. Facebook account. - Links
4. uLearn - Forums
   

• Analyze your Google metrics - ECD: 4/9

A) It's time to review the Google Analytics (GA) that i enrolled to since March 28.

• Manage to set up the GA tools on both of my blogs on 28th March and gather 2 weeks data.
• Below is the chart of the overview of both the website profile
• In summary, "usedracket blog" scored 40 visits and "My Blog" scored 113 visit.

B) Then, the following chart shows the Dashboard of "My Blog" website.

• We observed the peak of no. of visits happen started on 4th and 5th of April.
• This is because i posted the link in my Facebook account on 4th of April (two postings).

C) Let's review the Map Overlay summary (this is interesting for me as i can monitor where are the users from).

• Out of the 117 visits that "My Blog" scored - 74 visits generated from US and 43 from Malaysia.
• 74 visits from US are mainly from California area. Based on my analysis and prediction - The visitors are mostly from CALMAT MBA students, my colleagues & linked in users in Bay area. (shown below)
• Average time spent : ~12 minutes (prooven that CALMAT users are really doing their homework in reading blogs)

• Meanwhile, 43 visits are from my home country Malaysia and the visitors are mainly from my Facebook Malaysia friends - 31 out of 55 friends in my facebook account.
• And again, the visitors from Malaysia started surfing "My Blog" when i posted the link in my Facebook on 4th April
• As "My Blog" content is more on the MBA studies, Malaysia visitors did not spend much time surfing it as it is not in their interest.

D) Review of the traffic sources (another important part of the metrics)

• This piece of information provid eme the outlook of which sources that users/ visitor manage to find my websites.
• Top Traffics sources - "Blogger.com"
• Unexpected sources - "google search page."

E) Content Overview page.

• This is another interesting facts gather to monitor the traffic of visitors on specific page or posting.
• This give me the overview which content is able to attract the visitors.
  

Below is another Overall summary of the Dashboard of "usedracket.blogspot.com" website that i am monitoring.

• Post your findings in the forum for discussion – Done

BUS 600 Forum Case Study Analysis posted by Jerry

Forum Case Study Analysis
A Question Regarding Cash Flow Posted by Jerry on Thursday, 1 April 2010, 04:53 PM

When I read The Ten Day MBA chapter 5 about cash flow example, page 169, I don't understand what is the real cost of $10k in inventory and Increased payable of $8000, I understand extra inventory cost money, but is that one part of "cost of goods sold"? Also the "payable" seems just the money owe to farmers and container company, but later Quaker Oats still need to fullfil the payable, so I don't understand why the "inventory" and "payable" in the cash flow calculation.
Could anybody give me some help?

Thanks
Jerry

My respond to Jerry as per below:

Hi Jerry,

Below explanation is based on what I learnt from online research of your questions. Please forgive me if i misintepret, as I have no accounting background or experience.

1. You highlighted that you “don’t understand what is the real cost of $10k in inventory”
1. The case study is about Quaker Oats interest on investment project. They wanted to expand/ increase their production capability by investing in a new machine/ tools (cereal filling machine):
1. This means besides spending $100k on the machine in Year 0, they need to spend additional $10k on buying more raw material to enable the increase of production at the beginning of the investment Year 0 – in this case, the grains or wheat is the raw material.
2. Of course, they have COGS that incurred yearly even before this investment which is not shown in this case study (which logically should be lower than >$20k compare to the COGS of Year 1 if they invest on the cereal fill machine).
3. Bare in mind, this case study is an investment project of "if" they invest on a new machine that also require additional cost to increase production to cater the increase of market demand.
   
2. Next point, that related to item 1 above “is inventory cost part of "cost of goods sold”?
1. The answer is "Yes" - Cost of goods sold consist of:
1. Inventory at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year
2. Purchases less cost of items withdrawn for personal use
3. Labor costs
4. Materials and supplies
5. others cost
2. But why the $10k increase cost of inventory is not in COGS??
1. It is because in Year 0, you do not factor in your COGS.
2. It only started to factor in Year 1 Cash Flow statement taking account of item 2.1 above (inventory/ labor/ material/ others)
3. Meanwhile, on your question concerning the “ Increased payable of $8000” you claimed “that it seems just the money owe to farmers and container company, but later Quaker Oats still need to fullfil the payable.”
1. You are right in a way, but they are something that we need to understand why this $8k is a “+” in cash flow.
2. First, Let’s understand what is payable or we can also call it as Accounts Payable (A/P):
1. A/P is a account that contains money that a person or company (in this case Quaker Oats (QO) is the company) owes to suppliers ( referring to farmers and Stone Container), but has not paid yet (a form of debt).
2. When QO receive an invoice - QO add it to the account, and then QO will only remove it when they pay.
3. A/P is a form of credit that the farmer and Stone Container offer to their purchaser – QO by allowing them (QO) to pay for their farm produce(wheat) or Storage service by Stone Container after it has already been received.
4. In other words (just to emphasize the key points):
1. A/P are amounts QO owe to their supplier (farmer and Stone Container) that are payable sometime within the near future — "near" meaning 30 to 90 days which is the payable period.
2. Using this payable period to slow down cash outflows can significantly improve your cash flow.
3. Therefore this $8k debt that haven’t been paid off is an added point (+) of QO as part of the money they owns.
4. And when QO pay the suppliers, the money will only factor in COGS in Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 and so on....
5. But still QO get the special privilege of $8k in their pocket (account) anytime as part of the deal or offer by doing business with the farmers and Stone Container.

This is as per my understanding. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Thanks.
Regards,
Edmond