「華人戴明學院」是戴明哲學的學習共同體 ,致力於淵博型智識系統的研究、推廣和運用。 The purpose of this blog is to advance the ideas and ideals of W. Edwards Deming.

2010年3月21日 星期日

台灣戴明圈 300-09

台灣戴明圈

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關於張華 還可以補充
我無意中留有一份2002年的毛毛虫兒童哲學月刊
其中有內容是請L.C. 專家張兄去演講Alice

張兄這一翻譯演講讓我想起一些事
我喜歡香港翻譯學會選的fellows之辦法 似乎每人都必須翻譯一本名著
近來 中國大搞翻譯學 可能都是三流角色

昨天重翻(進書太多歸檔之後可能幾年後再見)陆谷孙 著《余墨二集》
此公採用"虛論"談翻譯

(此書可知復旦大學以前一hall 叫"登輝堂" 後來趕快改名
此公是老"愛國熱情主義者" 對於諾貝爾文學獎的同胞 竟然說"...分瑞典軍火販的遺..."這是"新"中國之嘴臉.....)


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hc 評: 可運作/操作/作業定義(operational definition)不教的話
就無法有確實的內容 換句話說 作文在字彙功夫之外


.......本書是「臺灣大學寫作教學中心」的寫作教學系列書,是為臺灣大學寫作教學中心「英文論文寫作」課程而編撰,寫作教學中心針對研究生開設多門中英文學術寫作課程。
  
  對於許多國內英語學習者而言,英文作文一向是件難事。當大家邁入高等教育的殿堂,要將研究成果發表,撰寫學術論文時,往往不知如何下筆。不同於報紙或是聯考作文的文體,學術英文的結構嚴謹,並有一定的脈絡可循,用字更是精準簡潔。雖然不同的學術領域,皆有各自的寫作格式與慣例,但除卻專業用字以外,所有領域常用的學術字彙,大致相同。這些學術字彙也是英語學習者,在面對學術論文寫作時,最好掌握的一部分。
  
  學習者在學習字彙的過程中,常會忽略了字彙的搭配詞與片語的重要性,造成中式英文或是詞不達意的情形。有鑒於此,本書根據Averil Coxhead (2000)所發表的學術字彙表(Academic Word List),將學術英文最常用的570個字彙家族(word family),加上學術寫作常用之搭配詞與片語,整理編撰而成。本書期盼讀者能透過字彙與搭配詞的學習,克服學術寫作障礙;透過學術字彙與搭配詞的活用,跨出論文寫作的第一步。
  
  本書除了針對常見的學術字彙,選錄學術寫作上常使用到的字義,並提供學術例句外,最大的特色是依照學術寫作的使用習慣,收錄這些字彙常見的搭配詞、片語與介係詞。搭配詞與片語皆為經常一起出現的字串,雖然學界對於搭配詞與片語的區別尚無共識,但兩者大致的區別如下:搭配詞為常見且較有彈性的字詞組合,在使用上有較多的自由與變化;片語則是固定的字詞組合,不可隨意變換。
  
以definition為例:
當我們要表示「下定義」這個意思, definition可搭配的動詞包括formulate,give,provide或write。我們可說provide clear definitions或是give a brief definition。與definition搭配的動詞,或形容詞,可彈性替換。但是by definition則為片語,by加上definition是固定的用法,不能任意變換成by definitions,或是by clear definitions。.......


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但如果失败呢?李书福告诉来访者,大不了回家种地。这就是作为一名诗人的好处——2006年,李书福写了一首诗,其中有这么一句话:“人生没有标准的答案。”对一个标准答案似乎不再奏效的行业来说,这也许恰恰是正确的态度。
And if that does not work? Li tells visitors he can always go back to the land. That is where being a poet comes in handy: in 2006 Mr Li wrote a poem that includes the line: “Life is a question without a standard answer.” It may be just the approach for an industry in which the standard answers no longer seem to deliver.

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履豨


正獲之問於監市履豨也, 每下愈況。..."意指欲知豬的肥瘦, 就愈要踩踏豬的腳脛等低下的部位; 要明瞭"道", 就愈要從低賤的事物著眼。 今有一用法'每況愈下', 是從'每下愈 ...

所谓“履豨”(用脚去踩猪)是古代检验猪身肥瘦的一种方法。监市(集市管理员)履豨,不检验猪的腹背等大处,而检验它的腿脚等细部,因为腿脚是不容易长肥的,如果腿脚都 ...


(305)

transpose, transport link,transcription error

Reports of Rhine's length exaggerated, academic finds

A biologist has found that Germany's most important river, the Rhine, is
around 90 kilometers shorter than most atlases and official figures have
suggested for decades. A simple transcription error is likely to blame.

The DW-WORLD Article
http://newsletter.dw-world.de/re?l=ew4b8nI44va89pIa

(304)

标准化的世界


(1)台灣很風行
標準化病人(SP)

(2)冠军:德国

德国素有一板一眼、一丝不苟的外在形象,而这种老生常谈倒也不无道理,因为德国是公认的标准化世界冠军。这当然与国家经济实力有关,因为标准化是一个价值几十亿的经济因素。

" 标准化"在日常生活里早已是如此的理所当然,几乎没人感受到它的存在:当人们步上楼梯的时候,没人会去想,为什么脚步这样的平稳:根据德国标准DIN 18065的规定,阶梯的间距必须均匀一致,恰好让一个成年人毫不费力地逐级登高。德国标准化学会(Deutsches Institut für Normung)制定的标准简称DIN。德标DIN在经济领域及日常生活中所起的作用,远远超过人们的想象:几乎百分之一的国民生产总值要归功于标准化的 使用。柏林理工大学研究标准化经济应用的教授克努特·布兰德(Knut Blind)表示,特别对德国的出口来说,标准化是一个真正的经济因素:"与英国等其它国家相反,德国有非常显著的国家标准化传统。比如在机械制造等强项 出口领域,将强势的国家标准制上升到国际层面当然是非常重要的:因为标准化的推广有助于开拓国际市场。"

它 的逻辑很简单:谁能将国内的产品标准也推广成国际化标准,就能为自己的出口经济拓宽道路。德国在这方面做得很成功:三分之二的国际机械制造标准是根据德标 制定的。难怪人称德国是"标准化的世界冠军",这与坊间所说"一板一眼的德国民族性 "无关,更重要的是它所涉及的实实在在的经济利益:通过德国工业的标准化,使产品达到完全一致的标准规格,从而每年平均可节省160亿至200亿欧元的工 业生产成本。德国标准化学会的希贝勒·加布勒(Sibylle Gabler)指出,德国思考的背景因素与美国完全不同:"欧洲人深信,制定一套统一的标准规格是件好事,这样,当出现争议问题时,就有一个共同认可,能 提供解决方案的标准答案作为各方遵循的基础。但美国的情况就不一样了:他们没有常设的国家标准化机构,而是存在超过200个私营标准化机构。在多如牛毛的 各种标准中,就会出现一些互相矛盾的标准。"

当 美国的标准化在相互竞争的时候,德国则更着眼于统一规格产品间的竞争。有人担心大公司会将他们的产品标准确定为最终标准,从而取得市场的主导地位。但希贝 勒·加布勒反驳了这种观点:"能获得贯彻执行的并非靠雄厚的财力,而是具有说服力的理论根据,然后各方就在最终协议的基础上运作。制定统一标准需要经过长 时间的协商、规划,直到没有反对意见为止。而在这一过程中,技术框架和利益问题也必须列入考虑。

标 准化的制定一般需要三年时间,因为它是在民主与协商的基础上进行。每位公民都可提出标准化申请。作为公共机构的德国标准化协会非常重视组建专家小组时的均 衡性,他们邀请生产商,消费者和科学家坐在一起讨论标准的制定。而即使标准化的制定过程,也是根据德标820的规定进行的。有人担心,标准化可能削弱产品 的多样性。经济学家克努特·布兰德对这种看法不以为然:"总的来说,越来越多产品是由各种不同的零部件组装而成。标准化使一个产品可以用不同厂商生产的零 部件组装完成,最后反而促使了多样性的上升。"

同 时标准化能让日常生活更为简单和安全。标准化使数字信号为互联网上的交易提供了更加安全的传递途径。因此,标准化行业也在互联网上看到了未来的发展前途: 例如信息科技、纳米技术和移动电字技术等,已成为发展国际标准化的新挑战。如今国际标准化的发展趋势已显而易见:1985年时世界还存在15万个标准化规 格,而今天只剩下十分之一。在全球化的时代,制定一部世界统一的标准目录已成为指日可待的一个远景。

作者:Joscha Weber/子江/杨家华

责编:谢菲



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跟手頭上有張華譯著的Alice in Wonderland 的朋友 報告這兩周的一些updating
昨天我們"隔壁"的書林重新裝潢 放了兩部電影: 1991年的The Double Life of Véronique
姑且不論它似曾相識 2008年的Phoebe in WonderlandAlice 的另一應用版
應該收入張先生的百科全書中

想起一家書局在過去30年來的崛起繁榮
百多年來人們在藝術上精進
在在令我輩生之意志更為堅強


我們的出版社希望許老師從今年起出版他的的四書 敬請期待:

  1. 《二十世紀台灣短篇小說史論》。三校中。約700頁。2010
  2. 《十八和十九世紀台灣社會史論》。約450頁。
  3. 《台灣人民起事和歷史發展,1683-1894》。約650-700頁。
  4. 《漢族族群械鬥和台灣社會,1683-1894》。


(302)
I.H.T. Op-Ed Contributor

Learning the Hard Way

By FINBARR O'NEILL
Published: March 24, 2010

It is a paradox of business that success brings risk. In recent months, Toyota has learned this lesson the hard way. This is not a Toyota problem, it is an industry problem. And while some competitors may delight in the company’s stumbles, most realize they could be next.

For decades the Toyota name has been synonymous with quality. Some say the company simply began taking this reputation for granted. The late quality expert G. Edwards Deming, who inspired many of Toyota’s industry-leading innovations, often warned that when companies focus on increasing profits and market share in the short run, the quality of their products and customer service will decline in the long run.

But there is more to Toyota’s story. The company’s challenges are symptomatic of the dangers that often follow long periods of growth. Such prosperity often leads to complacency and a reliance on internal information systems and controls. When these internal controls fail, the company stumbles and is slow to react.

This is not to say that Toyota allowed its quality to deteriorate. Rather, its competitors have closed the gap. Over the past decade, industry-wide quality has improved by an average of 5 to 6 percent per year. This is true in the United States, Europe, China and elsewhere.

This industry-wide improvement is a significant threat to Toyota. The quality lead that it once enjoyed over most rivals has shrunk dramatically. Moreover, the gap in perceived quality has also been closing and recent events have hastened the process.

Without a clear advantage in actual or perceived quality, Toyota must now place a greater emphasis on the appeal of its vehicles, including styling and performance. To his credit, when Akio Toyoda took over Toyota in June 2009, he acknowledged that the pursuit of rapid growth — including a goal to become the world’s largest automaker — had stretched the company’s engineering and management resources too thin.

Toyota must now return to what made it great in the first place. It must hear what customers are saying from the showroom and service departments to call centers around the globe. We see it every day in our syndicated surveys and in the blogs and chat rooms that we monitor across the Internet.

But hearing the voice of the customer is not enough. The voice must not be filtered by self-serving internal sensors that may lead a company astray. Companies must balance what they learn internally with undiluted independent external feedback. It is this balanced view which gives companies the insight and the confidence they need.

In its long and storied history, Toyota has faced many challenges, and managed to overcome them. In the short-term, its corporate psyche will be battered and bruised by the current situation. Over the long-term, however, we can expect a humbler and stronger Toyota than ever before — one that is keenly focused on the voice of its customers.

Finbarr O’Neill is the president of J.D. Power and Associates, which conducts surveys of customer satisfaction.


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豐田復甦之路不及預期坎 坷
調查顯示﹐近期召回事件對豐田品牌的打擊程度沒 有起初擔心的那麼嚴重﹐其租賃汽車的預期殘值率只比召回事件發生以前下降0.9個百分點﹐不及先前估計的5個百分點。

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《赵元任全集》中英文著作序中 赵元任說寧可將學術用語以不精確的普通話說明 而不願讓人覺得莫名其妙 這是他在學校邏輯老師的說法
Deming 說晚年的Shewhart作品就是這樣"誤入歧途"

2010年3月15日 星期一

台灣戴明圈 290--99

移除選取文字的格式台灣戴明圈

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考績法3趴考丙爭議 吳揆封口 【聯合報╱記者李明賢、鄭文正、張弘昌/連線報導】 2010.03.21 03:13 am

考績法爭議上演行政、考試兩院隔空互槓,銓敘部長張哲琛昨天表示,考績法修法都有完整配套,外界有太多誤會、甚至「若干部會 首長也有誤解」,銓敘部會一一解釋清楚。「倘若吳揆有疑慮,銓敘部也會安排時間報告」。

行政院長吳敦義昨天受訪時,強調自己完全支持改革,但媒體問及考績丙等相關敏感話題,吳揆閉口不談,不願再上火線。

吳揆昨天出席中華戰略學會會員大會前,媒體問及考績法爭議,吳揆說,上周四在馬英九總統主持的會議中,他基於行政院長職責,已經說明清楚立場,上周五在立 院答詢時也重申己見,「除這兩個場合外,我不再多談!」

吳揆以往對媒體採訪一向來者不拒,昨天卻罕見祭出封口令,令人嗅到濃厚敏感政治味,吳揆略帶慍色說「有人跟我講,媒體攔路,應該要拒絕才對。」

台北市長郝龍斌昨天說,他支持公務員考績要有淘汰制,但不是齊頭式的淘汰,應依不同單位、不同績效,訂定透明、公開標準進行淘汰。

他舉例說,像台北市政府研考會「一九九九」市民熱線服務,獲得八成台北市民肯定,每天要接七千多通以上電話,卅多位負責同仁都表現的完美無缺;如果真要以 百分之三規定將同仁列為丙等,對他們並不公平。

銓敘部上周五晚間緊急發出新聞稿,說明丙等考績限定百分之三僅是初步擬定,張哲琛解釋,這是針對吳敦義在立法院答詢時提出三點質疑做出澄清,考績法修訂都 有完整配套機制。

針對吳揆質疑為何排除法官,張哲琛表示,司法部門自有嚴謹的考核系統,才會排除適用。

張哲琛也說,目前考績法修正草案僅是銓敘部擬定的初步版本,考試院會尚在審議階段,四月才會送立法院。考試院提出考績法版本不必會銜行政院,但仍會找時間 向行政院做簡報。


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Dear all,
我也都習慣看公視house讓我懷念起以前看的漫畫:怪醫黑傑克.醫療技術與我們所無法想像到的觀念技術來治癒病患.
至於toyota TPS總是讓我感覺~品質與第一如何權衡,就看他們智慧

Justing
(297)

Dear all
最近也是每晚看House, 而且是全家一起看, 滿有意思的, 它突顯出醫療的種種可能風險, 或是誤判, 或是巧合, 或是直覺經驗, 相較於傳統醫學觀念技術, 有些荒誕不經. 但總能有驚無險的治癒病患.
總之, House在以治癒病人為目的下, 與其醫療團隊所能採取的各種手段, 尋找病因以及醫療措施, 這還包括跨越了醫療體系所設定的紅色警戒線. 以及病患及其生活親近的人的溝通, 或者團對彼此間的溝通, 都可能成為病因的蛛絲馬跡, 這團隊猶如在尋找出整個病理體系(瞎子摸象)後, 好能採取適當措施治癒(也可能治死)病患.

詳見 http://web.pts.org.tw/~web01/House/

Peter
(296)
日々の感想: トヨタ・リコール対策で副社長を増やす
By ヒロ
トヨタ・リコール対策で副社長を増やす · トヨタがリコール対策の問題会社の収益を良くするための活動など現在の社長・豊田章男を支える人を増やす為 トヨタの副社長を現在の5人から6人へ増やすそうです。 リコール問題でつつかれているトヨタここが ...
トヨタ、副社長を5人から6人に リコール機に陣容厚く (12:20 ...
By admin
トヨタ、副社長を5人から6人に リコール機に陣容厚く (12:20) | クレセントワークス[Crescentworks] 尼崎市 ホームページ WEBサイト制作.


(294-95)
Kevin Lin
各位,

附檔為天下雜誌441期中有提到Toyota的相關文章,
供各位參考。
不知豐田神話是否能持續,但看來競爭的要素仍是品質、速度及成本。但如何整
合,則一直是我們所追求的目標;多年後,發現這條路不僅沒有盡頭,而且是一條
沒有標準答案的旅程;豐田這次表面看來是品質出了問題,但為何這麼重視品質的
公司都會出這個問題?究竟這背後出了什麼問題,不知有人有更深入的了解及見
解?目前個人還是覺得霧裏看花,是因要奪世界第一而將品質的可接受風險提高
呢?還是整個流程的那一個關卡出問題了?或是成本降低成偷工減料呢?至今我還
是沒有個譜。

@鍾老師,
從部落格看到您提到了"怪醫豪斯",過去一年來,NCIS 及House M.D. 可能是我主
要的娛樂之一,不過我不是看公視,而是PPS,我也介紹給我部門的人員看,因為
我覺品保的trouble shooting及客訴案有類似,但House M.D. 則提供了更多可以
討論的話題;不知其他伙伴是否也熟悉House M.D.,若有興趣,或許改天我們也可
以輕鬆一下,討論這影集及若在現實,如何選擇行動的方向及做法。

Kevin
--
HC
Toyotac和 House 這的確是些有趣的相關主題 雖然T為真 H為虛 不過真的大公司的決策和運作 可能也是虛需的
House 團隊一起腦力激盪時 叫 differentiate 這是少數聽得懂的英文 或許醫學和人體我們都不熟(就像車輛2萬零件的問題) 所以這真是高科技


(293)
這兩天我的初中老師伉儷北上玩 77歲
跟他們說公視"怪醫豪斯"或可一看
他說他們試過 不過不像我輩成為粉絲--說到粉絲 真妙 昨天知道某音樂系研究生要寫藝霞 我問為什麼還有記錄 原來都是fans 提供的


(292)

王寵惠先生文集 [王寵惠作] 中國國民黨中央委員會黨史委員會編輯 Wang Ch'ung-hui hsien sheng wen chi 此書有一張海牙國際法庭的明信片 王告訴未婚妻朱學勤女士每日在彼處之公務 民12年或1912年忘啦

(291)
Leadership on the line ,Harvard Bisoness Press 1995

告訴我們CLINTON 和議長GINRICH 都因輕敵或沒耐心而無法通過建保

(290)
這家近30年前與GM合組的公司的關閉 錯在Toyota 應在10年前就決斷才對


Op-Ed Columnist

Workers Crushed by Toyota




Published: March 15, 2010

California has been very, very good to Toyota. It is one of the largest markets in the world for the popular Prius hybrid. Nearly 18 percent of all Toyotas sold in the U.S. are sold in California. The state has showered the company with benefits, including large-scale infrastructure improvements for its operations and millions of dollars for worker training. California is one of the key reasons that Toyota is the wealthiest carmaker on the planet.


Toyota is paying the state back with the foulest form of ingratitude.

The company is planning to shut down the assembly plant in Fremont, Calif., that makes Corollas and the Tacoma compact pickup. The plant closure will throw 4,700 experienced, highly skilled and dedicated employees onto the street during the worst job market since the Depression, and it will jeopardize nearly 20,000 other jobs around the state.

It is a cold and irresponsible act on Toyota’s part, a decision that was not necessary from a business standpoint and that completely disregards the wave of human misery it is setting in motion.

The New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant (generally referred to as NUMMI) began as a joint venture between Toyota and General Motors in 1984. G.M. abandoned the venture when it collapsed into bankruptcy proceedings last year. Toyota declared that the plant was no longer viable because of the absence of G.M. and announced that it would close at the end of this month.

What has not been made clear to the public is that for many years the plant has been used primarily to produce vehicles for Toyota, not General Motors. A report prepared for a state commission that has been seeking to avert the plant closure noted that “G.M. accounted for only 10 percent of the plant’s production last year and an average of 15.4 percent between 2001 and 2009.”

In fact, from Jan. 1 to Feb. 27 this year, with G.M. gone, Toyota produced 61,000 sparkling new vehicles at the plant. That was more than double the 27,000 that were produced in the same period in 2009, when G.M. was part of the operation.

The report, written by Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that “Toyota could easily fill its production lines at NUMMI by building a higher percentage of the Corollas it sells in the U.S.,” or by adding a new model to the plant — a hybrid, for example.

What we’re dealing with here is the kind of corporate treachery toward workers and their local communities that has ruined countless lives over the past several decades and completely undermined the long-term prospects of the economy.

The NUMMI plant is a heck of a lot more viable than the nonstop dissembling of top Toyota executives. The company could keep the plant open and profitable if it wanted to. But, instead, it has decided to shift the production of these vehicles to Japan, Canada, Mexico and Texas.

The scale of the ingratitude is breathtaking. The U.S. is the largest market for Toyota vehicles in the world, larger even than Japan. The Corolla, one of the vehicles produced at NUMMI, is the best-selling car of all time.

Beyond sales, Toyota has reaped endless benefits not just from California, but from the U.S. government and other states as well.

The federal cash-for-clunkers program, for example, was a bonanza for Toyota. As Professor Shaiken’s report put it: “The automaker ranked first in ‘Cash for Clunkers’ sales in summer 2009, a stimulus effort that allocated $3 billion in incentives to trade in older models for newer, more fuel-efficient ones. The Corolla proved the most popular model.”

Among the infrastructure investments made by California on behalf of the NUMMI plant was the dredging of the Port of Oakland 12 years ago at a cost of $410 million. That was done to accommodate the types of cargo ships required by the plant.

It will be a crushing economic blow if Toyota, as planned, high-tails it out of Fremont. Like the rest of the nation, California is struggling with the worst employment crisis since the 1930s. The NUMMI plant closure would be the single biggest layoff in the state since the start of the Great Recession in December 2007.

Those who are trumpeting the alleged fact that the recession is over should consider that the unemployment rate in California in January (the last month for which complete statistics are available) was a mind-numbing 12.5 percent. That was the fifth worst in the nation. In eight California counties, the jobless rate — not the underemployment rate, mind you, but the official jobless rate — was higher than 20 percent. Those counties are suffering through a depression.

The human toll behind such data is of no apparent interest to the fabulously wealthy Toyota operation.

2010年3月11日 星期四

台灣戴明圈 280-89

台灣戴明圈



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时事风云 | 2010.03.15

美国展开大规模人口普查

从本周一起,美国将开展大规模的人口普查。此项行动预计历时数月之久,估计该国3亿零8百万居民都将接受普查-其中也包括估计近1100百万在美国非法居 留的外国人。公益慈善组织和非政府组织将在今年的人口普查中扮演重要角色。这些组织愿为人口普查工作提供支持,因为他们认为,其关注弱势群体将从准确的人 口普查中获益最多。但与此同时,这些人很有可能不会主动填表。

所有想了解美国人口普查的音乐迷们都能无偿欣赏这支Pitbull歌曲。人们只需将这首歌曲从网上下载到手机上,并且参加人口普查问答即可。

发起这项运动的是加州一个名为"投票给拉丁裔"的非政府组织。由于少数民族以及社会边缘组织往往不参加人口普查,所以"投票给拉丁裔"非政府组织计划在加州启动广泛的宣传活动。凡是参加问答,用链接方式将问答转给亲朋友好的人都可无偿下载音乐。

" 投票给拉丁裔"组织的玛丽亚·特雷莎·库马尔(Maria Teresa Kumar)发现,四分之一的iPhone拥有者是拉美族裔,而且平均年龄非常年轻。恰恰是年轻人对长辈有着不小的影响.他们可以驱散长辈对人口普查的担 忧和偏见-尤其当人口普查涉及移民身份时.库马尔说: "人口普查可靠安全,它有助于帮助拉丁裔族群获得更多的政治分量。此外它还关系到很多钱的问题."

因为美国政府每每根据人口普查结果为教育、运输和基础设施分配数十亿美元经费。准确的人口结构统计至关重要。

所以,"投票给拉丁裔"组织与博客和各组织进行合作,他们负责以手机短信的方式传播信息。相关费用由诸多公益组织承担,其中包括开放社会研究所、福特基金会以及硅谷基金会等。

此外,"投票给拉丁裔"组织也从伊斯诺斯州的乔伊斯基金会那里获得资金。该公益组织负责人艾伦·阿尔贝尔丁(Ellen Alberding)表示。其所在组织已为"将我计算在内"运动出资一百多万美元:"即将启动的人口普查将对与基金会合作的居民产生很大影响。"

密歇根公益组织的凯尔·考德威尔(Kyle Caldwell )坚信:"认为人们会在人口普查前两三个月聘用一名人口普查员,派他沿街走巷寻找无家可归的流浪汉就未免过于天真了。公益基金会比政府更接近社会边缘组织,因为他们与这些人保持联系-比如与无家可归者等。"

考德威尔所在组织为此次人口普查出资13万欧元。经济困难地区尤其亟需国家的财政支持。比如密歇根州,因为那儿有很多居民在房地产危机中失去了自己的住所:"原来的地址如今已经作废。因为危机的受害者现在已住在其它地方,所以必须找到他们。"

公益组织对地方和联邦层面政府提供支持。因为资金短缺。今年加州仅出资2百万美元。2000年上一次人口普查时,加州还出资2千5百万美元。穷则思变。在危机期间,公益慈善组织也将从贫穷居民族群的准确统计数字中获益。

作者:Jan Tussing/祝红

责编:乐然



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丰田遭遇至少 89起集体诉讼

http://www.sina.com.cn 2010年03月11日 07:14 北京晨报

  索赔或逾卅亿美元

  美联社9日发布一项调查,美国消费者对丰田提起至少89起集体诉讼,索赔金额可能超过30亿美元。这些诉讼涉及购车者因特定车型“贬值”所蒙受 的经济损失等。分析师估算,丰田因大规模召回所涉及的一系列损失将以数十亿美元计。

  缘跌价

  美联社调查美国联邦法院文件后发现,以大规模召回事件导致丰田汽车价值下跌、给先前购车者造成经济损失为起因,全美范围对丰田提起的集体诉讼数 量截至本月8日为89起。

  这些诉讼涉及购车者因自己的车辆在二手车市场上价格下跌所受损失,而不包括关联因为车辆缺陷而丧生或受伤的赔偿金、丰田股票市场价格下跌给持股 人带来的经济损失等。

  一些原告在起诉材料里援引美国最大汽车价格评估企业“凯利蓝皮书”本月发布的数据:二手车市场上,经过召回检修的丰田汽车平均销售价格下调 3.5%,如“卡罗拉”(Corolla)单价下跌300美元,“红杉”(Sequoia)单价下跌750美元。

  购车者认为,丰田先前知晓产品存在安全隐患,但在较长时间内选择隐瞒信息,以致他们蒙受损失。

  佛罗里达州迈阿密市购车者杰里·博尔邦眼下寻求提起集体诉讼。他说,妻子怀有8个月身孕,不敢再驾驶先前购买的“普锐斯”;无奈这款车“恶名在 外”,难以卖掉,“我们摆脱不了它”。

  “更可怕”

  美国东北大学法学教授蒂姆·霍华德参与了针对丰田的集体诉讼。他说,原告人数可能为600万。如果按每人最终获赔500美元计算,总额为30亿 美元,而这一赔偿额为保守估计。

  美国宾夕法尼亚大学法学教授汤姆·贝克说,对丰田而言,集体诉讼“比那些涉及人员受伤的案件更可怕”。后者可能获判一笔2000万美元赔偿金, 而前者“却可能涉及数以百万计购车者,每人获赔1000美元”。

  “如果我是丰田,会更忧心那些(集体诉讼)案件。”他说。

  分析师认为,可以预见,集体诉讼牵涉数十亿美元计赔偿金,而涉及人员伤亡的每起案件赔偿额以数百万美元计,再加召回检修等措施所需资金投入,丰 田这次将损失至少几十亿美元。



(287)
戴久永老師引述 解釋 Dr. Deming的

什麼是新經濟觀?
1
傳統經濟觀

  我們都在競爭的氣氛中成長,不論是人與人或者團隊、部門、學生、中學、大學之間,都充斥著競爭。經濟學家教導我們,競爭會解決我們的問題。事實上,我們現在了解,競爭具有破壞性。

2新經濟觀
  更好的作法是,每個人都能以「人人皆贏」為目標,如同一個系統而共同工作。我們所需要的是合作以及向新的管理方式轉型。



(286)

宏遠紡織停工三天 外勞暫時安置附近學校

(宏遠興業是台灣知名的紡織公司及一貫製造廠,同時也是Nike, Adidas, Patagonia, the North Face, Clumbia, Spyder 等知名國際品牌的布料供應商。)
  • 2010-03-05
  • 【中廣新聞/龐清廉】

台南縣宏遠紡織廠大火,燒了近20小時,損失上億元,上午仍有消防人員在火場進行殘火處理。廠方表示,火災雖然燒毀了倉儲大樓、研發中心和部分宿舍,但並未損及生產線,工廠預計三天後恢復生產,至於,近三百名外勞,這兩天將暫時安置在國小活動中心和山上鄉公所。

位於台南縣山上鄉的宏遠紡織廠,四日上午八點半,也就是在甲仙大地震後,發生火警,猛烈的火舌和濃煙直竄天際,不僅燒毀了佔地千坪高六層樓 的倉儲大樓,還延燒到研發大樓,以及員工宿舍,由於火場範圍相當大,大火燒了近20個小時才撲滅,一直到上午還是可以看到火場在冒煙,並有許多消防人員在 場進行殘火處理。

宏遠紡織廠副總向文桂表示,大火燒毀了二棟廠房和部份宿舍,但慶幸的是生產設備並沒有受到波及和影響,由於顧慮員工安全,加上廠區必需花時間整理,因此將暫時停工,預計三天後復工。至於,工廠裡面近三百名外勞,則先安置到山上國小活動中心以及山上鄉公所。

宏遠紡織廠大火,損失金額初估至少上億元,廠方雖然有保火險,但卻沒有保地震險,如果大火是由地震所引起,恐怕無法獲得理賠,因此,對於起火原因,廠方態度十分保守和低調,只強調會交由消防鑑識單位,進一步確定起火原因。



(285)
Dear Mr. Hanching Chung,

I stand corrected. My memory said it was Oxford where Dr. Deming went to study under Sir Ronald Fisher but my memory is sometimes faulty. Fisher also spent some time on the staff at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, USA. I was in a small conference room there once and there stood in the corner a device that looked like a treadle sewing machine. I lifted the lid and under a glass plate was a bunch of mechanical gears. A faded, yellowed note card in the corner said it was an early calculator that Sir Ronald Fisher insisted that the University buy for him. ...


Louis E. Schultz

Process Management LLC



****
Dear Lou,

Thanks for your kind background.
First, "How I knew/traced your article?"
The answers is very simple. I use Google's key word "Deming" for articles. It automatically feed me your article to my Gmail.

My name sees familliar?
I think I help your " Profiles ..." to be published in Taiwan in Chinese. I remember you send one of your friends who in teaching job in Taiwan to visit me. We went to the publisher for copies of your book.

Some words for myself. I got a Msc from U.K., I worked for 16 years for some USA Multi-National Companies. From 1995 I translated and published about 12 books of Dr. Deming and his students. My annual Deming Memorial Speechesand its related books are still functioning. In 2008, Bill Scherkenbach was in Taiwan, so he was the keynote speaker. In 2009, I published two books forworded by David Kerridge (for The Essential Deming) and J-M Gogue. This year the theme is about Systems and Variations and will foreworded by Bill.

For each book, I wrote about 250 pages and with about 100 pages for the conference materials.

Yesterday I guessed why you think Fisher was an Oxford Don? My possible explanation was Fisher's books were published by Oxford University Press. in 1970s, OUP published a collection of Fisher's three books.

I ocasionally do some consulting to earn some money to support my activities in Taipei.

Nice to have a chance to talk with you in email.


Best wishes,

HC


(284)
錦坤兄的胡適紀念館明信片

道德經: 天下皆謂我道大,似不肖。夫唯大,故似不肖。若肖久矣。其細也夫!我有三寶,持而保之。一曰慈,二曰儉,三曰不敢為天下先。慈故能勇;儉故能廣;不敢為天下先,故能成器長。今舍慈且勇;舍儉且廣;舍後且先;死矣!夫慈以戰則勝,以守則固。天將救之,以慈衛之。



(283)

恭禧 ch張華
(最新消息:
這本書星期日才上架(印4000本),昨天(星期三)
遠流即準備修改若干錯誤,印第二版,看來銷路不錯。)

可要出版社安排更上層樓之造勢
王榮文因毛傳被我記大過一次
這回給他一嘉許

(282)
吳老師
恭喜"生"教授 不過
一杯美味的Cointreau on ice 似乎太便宜啦

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Cointreau
Liqueur cointreau.jpg


















(281)

Dear Louis Schultz,

I like your article "Management must create ‘culture of quality’".
But I think "Oxford’s Fisher" is misleading. I copied some information for your reference:


Fisher, Sir Ronald Aylmer, 1890-1962, English statistician and geneticist, b. East Finchley, Middlesex, England; educated at Cambridge (1909-1915; Sc.D., 1926). From 1919 to 1933 he worked at the Rothamsted Experimental Station. He was professor of genetics at University College, London (1933-43) and at Cambridge (1943-57) and conducted research at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Adelaide, Australia from 1957 until his death. He revolutionized inferential statistics, developing the concepts of analysis of variants and factorial experimentation. He wrote the classic Statistical Methods for Research Workers (1925) and Design of Experiments and Statistical Methods (1934). He also made extraordinary contributions to the field of genetics and statistically reconciled the principals of Mendelian inheritance with Darwin's notion of natural selection. He wrote the seminal work The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930).


The Industrial Revolution brought the first interchangeable parts for machinery.

Once mass production began, it took manufacturing out of the hands of the individual craftsman and put it in the hands of large organizations. Those who led the organizations realized that assembly-line manufacturing was a process to be studied, and people with certain skills were required to study it.

At the same time, scholars such as Oxford’s Fisher were using statistics to study agricultural cycles. These techniques were soon adapted to the manufacturing process, which could be studied through numbers.

It was not until many years later that service organizations discovered their work was also a series of processes and the same statistical techniques would work for them.

Walter Shewhart was the first to devise a way to use numbers to examine processes; but others, such as W. Edwards Deming and Juran soon followed. All three worked during the 1920s at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Plant in Chicago, where the company sought to create new ways to make its equipment – at that time the most high-tech products in the world – more reliable.

The telephone was the space program of its day. In the decades after its invention, the telephone spawned a vast, broadening circle of new technology, requiring and creating a level of quality and dependability previously unknown in manufacturing.

Once the effort was initiated, however, it became clear that quality and reliability could be increased in almost any industry. Thus, the search for higher quality was launched.

No one casts so large a shadow across the quality movement as Deming. Often called the man who taught quality to the Japanese, Deming persisted throughout his career in going where few others dared – from an unchallenged mastery of statistics to a crusade for greater understanding of the new role of management.

It is in this focus on management that Deming differed from some of the other “gurus.” The popular quality movements such as Total Quality Control, Six Sigma, Lean, and Kaizen focus on the use of statistical techniques for process improvement, but Deming taught that these approaches alone were not sufficient.

Management must learn their new role and create a culture of quality throughout the organization for the effort to endure.

This gives us pause to look at what is currently happening at Toyota, once the epitome of quality. I have been told that Toyota has a key position of quality coordinator in each of their operations. This person is responsible for creating and maintaining a culture of quality throughout the facility.

My source said Toyota has grown so fast that they could not grow the coordinators fast enough, and for some reason they have never been able to grow them in America.

Other Japanese companies call this position company wide quality control manager. This position is often the stepping-stone to the top executive office and what better training than to become familiar with every key process in the organization.

An interesting observation is that typically in America the top executive has a background in finance or marketing and in Japan they typically have a background in engineering or quality.

Deming learned about statistics from exchanging ideas with Shewhart at regular meetings and from his study at Oxford under Fisher. He and Shewhart together learned about creating the proper culture and how to treat people from their study of Clarence Irving Lewis in his book, Mind and the World Order.

Lewis based his book on his study of the ancient philosophers.

Deming published several books on statistics early in his career but his seminal works are Out of the Crisis where he listed his 14 principles of management and The New Economics where he detailed his four elements of profound knowledge.

More on these will come later.

Louis Schultz, managing director of Process Management LLC, has assisted organizations worldwide with performance improvement. He currently assists area business owners as a SCORE counselor. E-mail him with questions or comments at lou@processman agement.com.

Tags: , ,



(280)

Outsiders to test Toyota's cars

THE ASAHI SHIMBUN

2010/03/04


photoJay Rockefeller, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, at the hearing in Washington on Tuesday (TOSHIHIKO OGATA/ THE ASAHI SHIMBUN)

WASHINGTON--Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it would ask an outside agency to examine whether there is any connection between a controversial electronic control system and complaints of sudden acceleration in its vehicles that led to the company's massive recalls.

Toyota executives told members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that they had asked Rodney Slater, secretary of transportation under President Bill Clinton, to serve on an advisory panel tasked with overseeing the external investigation into the system.

Toyota has already asked a scientific consulting firm, Exponent, to conduct tests on the electronic control system, but the new investigation will be initiated and supervised by the company's recently established Special Committee for Global Quality, which is headed by Toyota President Akio Toyoda.

Slater was transportation secretary when the U.S. subsidiary of Bridgestone Corp. conducted a major recall of tires.

Toyota officials have long insisted that there are no problems with the electronic control system, a point repeated by Toyoda when he appeared before a congressional hearing last Wednesday.

The move to bring in outside investigators appears to be in response to strong doubts raised about the system in two separate committees of the U.S. House of Representatives last week.

Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota Motor North America Inc., Toyota Executive Vice President Shinichi Sasaki and Executive Vice President Takeshi Uchiyamada attended the Senate committee hearing on Tuesday.

Uchiyamada, the vice president in charge of technology, moved to allay criticisms that the company was using a scarcity of vehicle analysis equipment to cover up defects in its vehicles.

Currently, there is only one data reading device in the United States capable of retrieving information from the event data recorders that are installed in all Toyota vehicles.

Uchiyamada said the company would distribute about 150 of the readers by the end of April.

The event data recorders are activated when air bags are inflated or when a driver presses hard on a vehicle's brakes. They record information on car speed, whether brakes have been applied and how the gas pedal was used from about five seconds before impact to about two seconds after the collision.

The information cannot be retrieved from the recorders without the special readers.

The Toyota executives were stung by criticism from Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller. He expressed disappointment that Toyota was not presenting all of the answers to the many questions being raised about the safety of its vehicles.

Rockefeller, who studied in Japan and knew members of the founding Toyoda family, also suggested that laws to make brake override systems mandatory for all makers and vehicle were necessary.

Brake override systems give priority to the brake when both the gas pedal and brakes are applied at the same time.

The technology would enable drivers to stop vehicles in the event of the problems with sudden acceleration reported in some Toyota vehicles.

Toyota officials have already pledged to install a brake override system in all models manufactured worldwide.

2010年3月5日 星期五

W. Edwards Deming: The Story of a Truly Remarkable Person

McNary, Lisa Deane
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W. Edwards Deming: The Story of a Truly Remarkable Person

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由 RB Austenfeld Jr 著作 - 1917 - 被引用 1 次 - 相關文章
It was Dean Lester who also encouraged Deming to go to Yale (New Haven, ...... Lisa McNary, one of Deming's last graduate students (began working with her in March 1992) ...... Deming: The Way We Knew Him. New York: St. Lucie Press. ...

博士論文

作者McNary, Lisa Deane

The University of New Mexico
書名The Deming management theory: A managerial leadership profile for the new economic age
稽核項163 p
附註Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-05, Section: A, page: 1873

Co-Chairs: M. Jane Young; Kenneth Walters

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of New Mexico, 1993

A recent feature of organizational America which appears to be acquiring permanency is the concept of Quality Management, now considered the third stage of the Industrial Revolution. Although this concept was introduced by an American, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, over five decades ago, the Japanese became the forerunners in the global Quality Movement while American businesses remained complacent on the issue. Yet, in the last two decades, organizational America has experienced serious economic decline due to the diligent quality efforts of the Japanese, and American businesses have only recently entered the Quality Management arena, prompted primarily by the necessity to fight for their economic survival

A necessary element for success of the Quality Movement is management leadership in organizational America. Dr. Deming (1990b, 1993) has articulated a holistic theory of management called the "System of Profound Knowledge" which provides insight into the profile of a manager in the new economic age and its shaping of American society. Through a quantitative methodology, this study investigated the underlying principles of the "System of Profound Knowledge," to determine whether the managerial leadership properties of this theory represent a paradigm shift in current management leadership theory

The characteristics of a managerial leader which form the foundation of Dr. Deming's (1990b, 1993) "System of Profound Knowledge" were identified. From these characteristics, a profile inventory was developed, complete with a modified semantic differential interval rating scale which ranged from "0" to "10" with "10" representing the ideal from the "System of Profound Knowledge"

Individuals selected for this study were a random sample of 255 managers taken from the mailing lists of the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC) and the Academy of Management (AOM). A hierarchical cluster analysis using the squared Euclidean distance method was completed in order to determine if distinct groups existed. The data clustered into three groups, revealing distinct profile patterns for the three groups which were characterized as Deming managers, traditional (i.e., non-Deming) managers, and "not sure" managers. The inventory can be used as a management hiring or management development tool with further validation


2010年3月4日 星期四

Behind the Troubles at Toyota/ Toyota's Management Challenge

Behind the Troubles at Toyota

Feb 11, 2010

Correction Appended: February 24, 2010

What's wrong with Toyota?

Not much. At least not from an engineering, mechanical or even a quality point of view. You don't reach the top gear in the global auto industry unless you make outstanding cars, which Toyota does — most of the time. Though cars are familiar machines, they are also highly complex ones. To create a modern car, a company has to design, engineer, build, buy and then assemble some 10,000 parts. Sell 7.8 million cars, as Toyota did worldwide in 2009 — a horrible year for the industry — and there are billions of new parts with the potential to go kerflooey. Inevitably, some do.

What makes the recall since November of nearly 9 million Toyotas that are susceptible to uncontrolled acceleration and balky brakes such a shocking story is not so much the company's manufacture of some shoddy cars or even its dreadful crisis management — though those are errors that will cost it more than $2 billion in repairs and lost sales this year. It's something more pernicious: the vapor lock that seems to have seized Toyota's mythologized corporate culture and turned one of the most admired companies in the world into a bunch of flailing gearheads. Not only is Toyota producing more flawed cars than in the past, but an organization known for its unrivaled ability to suss out problems, fix them and turn them into advantages is looking clueless on all counts. (See the 50 worst cars of all time.)

Although the recalls seemed sudden, the evidence has been piling up. Literally. According to a report from Massachusetts-based Safety Research & Strategies (SRS), a consumer-advocacy group, there was a spike in the number of unintended-acceleration incidents in some Toyota vehicles in 2002, about the same time that Toyota introduced its electronic throttle control. The problem was initially blamed on a floor mat or vehicle trim that, if it came loose, could jam the accelerator pedal in an open-throttle position. That was followed by the first of several National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) investigations, in 2003, and two small recalls in 2005 and 2007. But accidents mounted, and last November the company had to take back nearly 3.8 million U.S. Vehicles — its biggest-ever recall — to address the problem.

Modifying the floor mats, though, didn't fix things. Toyota at first refused to believe that there was a mechanical problem with its pedals, blaming customers for improperly installing the floor mats. But by the time Toyota got around to a second recall, on Jan. 21, this one of 2.3 million vehicles, its reputation was in tatters. (See the top 10 product recalls.)

There was no place left to park the blame. The company backhandedly singled out a U.S. Partsmaker — CTS Corp., of Elkhart, Ind. — as the supplier of defective pedals while exonerating a Japanese company, Denso, that makes the same part. But CTS CEO Vinod M. Khilnani wasn't about to take the fall. He says his company met Toyota's engineering specifications and notes that the recalls tied to unintended acceleration extend to vehicles built as long ago as 2002. "CTS didn't become a Toyota supplier until 2005," he says.

There was more to come. In early February, Toyota managed to back over any remaining political goodwill it had when it voluntarily recalled more than 400,000 Prius and other hybrid cars — this time, to update software in the antilock brake system that could cause a glitch if the car traveled over a bumpy surface. The Lexus is Toyota's top-selling luxury model — bad enough — but the Prius is its darling, a car that demonstrated the company's ability to solve technical issues that kept other automakers from fielding gas-electric hybrids, at the same time clinching Toyota's green cred. Only last month at the Detroit Auto Show, executives described the Prius as the cornerstone of Toyota's future growth. Toyota planned to sell a million hybrids a year globally, most of them in North America.

As Toyota dithered, it lost hold of the wheel. Lawyers and politicians took charge. In Washington, Toyota executives are poised to replace bankers as populist targets before a congressional hearing. "Toyota drivers have gone from being customers of the company to being wards of the government," says Jim Cain, senior vice president of Quell Group, a marketing-communications firm in Detroit, and a former Ford media-relations executive. "It's absolutely the worst possible position to be in." Tort lawyers around the U.S. have filed class actions. SRS says it has identified 2,262 instances of unintended acceleration in Toyotas leading to at least 819 crashes and 26 deaths since 1999.

At Toyota dealerships, meanwhile, customers have had to haul their cars in to have the sticky gas pedals repaired. Loyal Toyota owners now have a reason to flirt with other brands, though switching could cost them: trade-in prices for Toyotas have fallen. And at global headquarters in Toyota City, Japan, corporate officers belatedly grasped the seriousness of the situation and tried to make amends. "I apologize from the bottom of my heart for all the concern that we have given to so many of our customers," a chastened Akio Toyoda, grandson of the corporation's legendary founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, told reporters in Nagoya, taking the requisite deep bow of the disgraced.

The Little Company That Could
So what happened? What went awry at the car company whose widely admired Toyota Production System (TPS) had made it the paragon of the art of manufacturing?


The reputation for quality that Toyota has damaged in just a few months took decades to build. Though Toyota was founded in the 1930s, its climb to global prominence started after World War II as the company became one of the exemplars of Japan's miracle — the creation of a successful, technologically advanced economy out of the ashes of war. In the 1950s, the company experimented with ways to manufacture cars more efficiently. Ironically, Japan's awful postwar poverty acted as a spur. The production techniques of American car companies — with heaps of stored components awaiting assembly, and ample machinery to do it — was just too wasteful and expensive for Japan. Toyota had to learn to do more with less. The result was TPS — or, more generically, lean manufacturing. Inventories were all but eliminated by employing just-in-time delivery techniques, in which suppliers brought components to the assembly line only when needed.

One organizing philosophy behind TPS is popularly ascribed to a concept called kaizen — Japanese for "continuous improvement." In practice, it's the idea of empowering those people closest to a work process so they can participate in designing and improving it, rather than, say, spending every shift merely whacking four bolts to secure the front seat as each car moves down the line. Continuous improvement constantly squeezes excess labor and material out of the manufacturing process: people and parts meet at the optimal moment. Kaizen is also about spreading what you've learned throughout the system. And then repeating it. It's the reason, for instance, that when Toyota assumed full control of the New United Motor Manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif., which it had co-owned with GM, it got way more productivity and quality out of it than GM could with essentially the same workforce and equipment. (See the most exciting cars of 2010.)

Sakichi Toyoda developed another concept, jidoka, or "automation with a human touch." Think of it as built-in stress detection. At Toyota, that means work stops whenever and wherever a problem occurs. (Any employee can pull a cord to shut down the line if there is a problem.) That way, says Steven Spear of MIT, author of Chasing the Rabbit: How Market Leaders Outdistance the Competition and an expert in the dynamics of high-performance companies, "When I see something that's not perfect, I call it out, figure out what it is that I don't know and convert ignorance to knowledge."

That was the idea. But the fact that Toyota has produced so many imperfect cars is evidence that its system developed faults. Management experts like John Paul MacDuffie, a co-director of the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, place the blame on the company's headlong growth in the past 10 years. In 2000, Toyota produced 5.2 million cars; last year it had the capacity to make 10 million. Since 2000, when Toyota had 58 production sites, it has added 17. In that time, in other words, Toyota has added the capacity of a company virtually the size of Chrysler in a stated ambition to become the world's No. 1 auto company. (See pictures of Japanese design's greatest hits.)

But rapid expansion puts enormous pressure on any company's ability to transmit know-how and technology, especially over long distances and across national cultures. When Toyota opened its Georgetown, Ky., plant in 1988, hundreds of work-team specialists and other experts were transplanted from Japan for several years to make sure the new plant fully absorbed the Toyota way. That kind of hand-holding may still be possible, but it isn't as easy. How can that be fixed? Says Spear: "The big deal is this question, Does an organization know how to hear and respond to weak signals, which are the problems, or does it have to hear strong signals? You have to listen to weak signals. By the time you get to strong signals, it's too late."

When weak signals started coming out in 2002, Toyota's top management wasn't listening. By then, the heroic stage of Japan Inc. was over; parts of its business culture had become sclerotic. Compared with the nimbleness seen in Silicon Valley, Japan's manufacturers and their systems began to be seen as inflexible, too removed from a changing global economy to adapt. Analysts describe a Toyota management team that had fallen in love with itself and become too insular to properly handle something like the current crisis. "The reaction to [the situation] is a very Japanese thing," says Kenneth Grossberg, a marketing professor at Waseda University's business school in Tokyo. Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan, says Toyota's managers don't understand how sensitive the American public is to auto-safety issues. "Their focus on the customer has been nonexistent," he says. "Toyota is famous for having an arrogant culture. They're so used to dealing with successes that when they have a problem, they're not sure how to respond."

Kingston puts his finger on one failing in modern Japanese corporations like Toyota: those lower in the organization find it difficult to deliver bad news to managers. Nearly every company faces this issue from time to time. "But this is a brand-threatening, life-endangering crisis," he says. Changing the way Toyota works won't be easy, says Grossberg. "Management cannot turn on a dime. They have so much invested in doing things the Toyota way," he says.

How to Lose Influential Friends
The recalls came at time when Toyota was regaining momentum after losing $4.9 billion in its latest fiscal year, as recession-racked consumers parked their money. For much of the past year, hundreds of Toyota employees in the U.S. didn't build cars at all, instead attending classes or doing "maintenance" work on half-built vehicles at idled factories in Texas and Indiana. Toyota kept the workers on in anticipation of better times ahead. Now the company is looking at another year of losses and significant overcapacity in North America.

Read "Toyota's Flawed Focus on Quantity Over Quality."

See the 12 most important cars of all time.

See why it'd be a shame to see the Prius go the way of the Pinto.

Read "At Toyota's Home Base, Townspeople Are Worried."

See pictures of Detroit's decline.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1963595,00.html#ixzz0hHbsF8EB

******
Toyota's Management Challenge

To the dismay of its growing chorus of critics, Toyota Motor (TM) continued to insist this week that its electronic throttle control isn't to blame for any unintended acceleration in its cars. But what the company has readily conceded—and what Peter Drucker would have surely seen as the key to its hoped-for resurgence—is that it needs to get a much better handle on another type of control system: that by which the entire enterprise manages the reliability of its products.

"We are fundamentally overhauling Toyota's quality assurance process…from vehicle planning and design to manufacturing, sales, and service," Shinichi Sasaki, an executive vice-president, told a Senate committee.

Given the pleasure that some lawmakers and news outlets seem to be taking in Toyota's fall, it would be easy to dismiss Sasaki's comments as empty rhetoric or to overlook them altogether. At the same time, Toyota hasn't done itself any favors with some of its behavior. The company's now-infamous "safety wins" presentation—in which it boasted of having saved $100 million by averting a full-blown recall of 50,000 sedans—has only helped fuel the tar-and-feather-them attitude that many have adopted.

Yet the steps that Sasaki outlined—and that have been echoed by others, including Toyota President Akio Toyoda—are anything but hollow or trivial. For they get right to the heart of a question that Drucker thought every company needs to rigorously address: What set of "controls" will provide the utmost "control"?

"The synonyms for controls are measurement and information," Drucker wrote in his 1973 book Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. "The synonym for control is direction. …Controls deal with facts, that is, with events of the past. Control deals with expectations, that is, with the future. Controls are analytical, concerned with what was and is. Control is normative and concerned with what ought to be."

Manager Control

Drucker explained that to give a manager proper control, controls must satisfy a number of criteria, including several that Toyota seems to be zeroing in on. For example, the company has pledged to increase its collection of consumer complaints and to then respond to them more quickly than in the past by deploying "SWAT teams" of technicians. It has also vowed to give its executives in the U.S. and other regions across the globe a greater voice in safety-related decisions. Until now, such authority has resided largely in Japan.

Drucker, having stressed the need for controls "to be timely," would undoubtedly have favored these moves. But what may be most crucial here is the way that Toyota is positioning itself to meet another one of his specifications: "Controls," Drucker wrote, "must be operational. They must be focused on action."

In a day-to-day context, Drucker added, "this means that controls—whether reports, studies, or figures—must always reach the person who is capable of taking controlling action. Whether they should reach anyone else, and especially someone higher up, is debatable. But their prime addressee is the manager or professional who can take action by virtue of his position in the flow of work. …This further means that the measurement must be in a form that is suitable for the recipient and tailored to his needs."

More Than Just Data-Tracking

There is more, as well. "Controls," Drucker wrote, "have to be appropriate to the character and nature of the phenomena measured."

In other words, it's quite possible to track data on quality and safety—and yet completely miss "what the real structure of events is," as Drucker put it.

Toyota, for its part, seems to be cognizant of this danger. Rather than just paying attention to "technical and regulatory considerations" going forward, Sasaki said, "we need to do more to consider customer expectations and real-world usage of our vehicles, even irregular use."

Another Drucker insight: "Control is a principle of economy. The less effort needed to gain control, the better the control design." One imagines that Toyota had this very notion in mind when it committed to Congress that it would go beyond the use of Event Data Recorders—the so-called automotive black box—and "improve our vehicle diagnostic tools."

Finally, there is Akio Toyoda's promise to push senior managers to actually drive those cars in which troubles have surfaced. "I believe that only by examining the problems on-site can one make decisions from the customer perspective," he said. "One cannot rely on reports or data in a meeting room."

Such sentiments speak directly to a big concern that Drucker had about controls: their tendency to be inward-looking. "The central problem of the executive in the large organization is his…insulation from the outside," Drucker asserted. "This applies to the president of the United States as well as to the president of United States Steel. What today's organization therefore needs are synthetic sense organs for the outside."

Setting Values

In his testimony on Capitol Hill and in other recent remarks, Toyoda acknowledged that his company became preoccupied with precisely the wrong metrics: market share and short-term profitability. By enhancing its controls around safety and dependability, the automaker is sending a powerful message to all of its employees about what really matters.

Drucker, whose teachings have had a great influence on Toyota, noted that the mere act of measuring something is "neither objective nor neutral." For "no matter how 'scientific' we are are," he wrote, "the fact that this or that set of phenomena is singled out for being controlled signals that it is…considered to be important." In this way, Drucker concluded, controls in any company are both "goal-setting and value-setting."

In the end, this is what's most significant about the overhaul that Toyota is undertaking: It recognizes that regaining control of the company's gas pedals and brakes cannot be achieved without also regaining control of its values.

Rick Wartzman is the executive director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University.

3月1日 Ken Su為我在滿月圓照的相

https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=86ac3a8a18&view=att&th=1272978708bf03a0&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_g6dmegqv0&zw

3月1日 Ken Su為我在滿月圓照的相


https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=86ac3a8a18&view=att&th=127297e8047f1c81&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_g6dmmgmk0&zw

2010年3月3日 星期三

鼓動: 系統與變異--2010 紀念戴明博士新書

2010 新書

目次
序 (Foreword by William W. Scherkenbach)

Dear Bill,

I think you might receive my last year's two books.
This year, the theme is SYSTEMS and Variations.
How about write a foreword for it before August?
I'll send you a content of it.
---

HC:

Be glad to.

Bill Scherkenbach

Consultant for the Improvement of

Individuals and Organizations

*****

2010年3月1日 星期一

台灣戴明圈 260-69

台灣戴明圈


(269)

Teacher performance pay that keeps paying even after student ...
Atlanta Journal Constitution
... renown educator Dr. W. Edwards Deming did not equivocate: “Performance of the individual can not be measured, except possibly on a long-term basis. ...


(268)
A Golden Opportunity for Ford and GM
With Toyota caught in a downshift, competitors should make aggressive moves to capitalize, says HBS professor Bill George. For starters, they need to improve their auto lineups for the long term. He explains how Ford and GM can best navigate the industry landscape ahead.

Views on News: Tragedy at Toyota: How Not to Lead in Crisis
"Toyota can only regain its footing by transforming itself from top to bottom to deliver the highest quality automobiles," says professor Bill George of the beleaguered company. He offers seven recommendations for restoring consumer confidence in the safety and quality behind the storied brand.



(267)

Katharine Horler, of Connexions, which provides advice to teenagers, said people were wrong to judge careers advice on whether they ended up doing the job their advisor suggested.

She explained: "That's not what careers advice is about.

"Careers advice is about developing decision making skills, developing resilience to help you manage the ups and downs that come with a career.

"Good careers advice is actually about helping people develop those skills for the whole of their careers and for the rest of their lives."

(266)
李家同:我們的光榮,我們的憂慮
【聯合報╱李家同】

2010.02.23 04:17 am

我們國家的工業技術,最近有相當不容易的成就:比方說,我們已有一家半導體儀器供應廠商,他們最新的儀器價值五百萬美金(約合一億六千萬台幣),而且他們已經賣掉了四十幾架。我們有一家生產CPU智慧財產的公司,已能生產性能相當不錯的CPU,我們自製的引擎也已用在國人自己的汽車上。這類產品,當然不止以上這三種,我僅僅是舉例而已。這些成就,值得我們引以為傲,但要能將這類產品推銷到全世界去,並不簡單。

這類產品的共同特色乃是在於他們的功能是非常重要而有關鍵性的,生產線上的儀器,手機裡的CPU和汽車裡的引擎,都扮演著極為關鍵性的角色。這類產品有別於烤麵包機,家裡的烤麵包機壞了,不會引起恐慌,生產線上的儀器有瑕疵,公司的損失就大了。使用者在購買這些產品的時候,免不了會有些猶豫,畢竟我們的產品是新的,和世界著名廠商來比,買著名廠商的產品,風險的確小得多。

這類產品的另一特色是他們常需要和客戶密切合作,以生產線上儀器為例,儀器廠商不一定充分瞭解使用者廠商生產線上的需求,如果有廠商用他的產品,不僅可以去掉他們產品的缺點,也可以使他們的產品越來越精良。反過來說,如果沒有這類合作,這家儀器廠商會越來越失去競爭力的。CPU更是如此,如果要使手機廠商使用,必須有通訊廠商肯開始將這顆CPU和通訊系統連接起來,也要在CPU上面寫很多軟體,這種工作是十分繁重的,目前的著名CPU廠商,因為問世得早,已有很多通訊公司利用了這些老牌CPU,任何一家手機廠商,如果用那些老牌CPU,比較會得心應手,所以我們的CPU廠商,雖然產品性能已相當優越,在推廣上比較會處於劣勢的地位。

我們有時會驚訝韓國為什麼會在短時間內,產生了一個極有競爭力的廠商,考其原因,是因為這家廠商往往有另一家廠商是他的合作夥伴。假設有一家A公司想生產一架機器,他極有可能找到一家B公司幫他的忙。B公司使用這類機器已有多年歷史,深知目前世面上這類機器的缺點,也對這類機器的原理弄得很清楚,A公司從B公司那裡得到不少非常有用的資訊,雛型機器發展出來,立刻有人替他作徹底的測試,它的機器當然會具有相當好的競爭力。

這種產品廠商和使用者廠商密切合作的文化極為重要,初期,產品廠商需要使用者廠商的支援協助,才得以生存茁壯,我們的機器和零組件,如果要扮演極重要的角色,使用者一定會有點猶豫,政府一定要想出一種機制,替生產這類產品的廠商找到協助的廠商。政府本身也應該起帶頭作用。比方說,政府可以訂做幾架非常高級的機器或某種軟體,以供政府單位測試及使用。如果我們的產品越來越高級,性能也越來越有關鍵性,但個個都是單打獨鬥,他們會不容易壯大的。我們為我們的高性能產品感到光榮,也為他們的處境備感憂慮,希望政府能注意這個問題。

(作者為暨南、清華、靜宜大學榮譽教授)

(265)

什么是企业的意义? FT专栏作家斯卡平克:经历了过去几年的风风雨雨,人们终于认识到,企业的目标应该是:通过从事我们为之自豪的工作,赚取利润,并服务客
(264)

Quote:

"Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company."George Washington


(263)

田汽車公司(Toyota Motor Corp.)總裁豐田章男(Akio Toyoda)週三對美國國會表示﹐公司從未逃避問題﹐並為因其產品故障釀成的事故進行道歉。

豐田章男在證詞中稱﹐公司的發展步伐過快令他感到不安﹐他對由此導致的在此次召回事件中暴露出來的安全問題表示遺憾﹐對豐田汽車駕駛人所遭遇的事故深感抱歉。53歲的豐田章男是該日本汽車生產商創始人的孫子。

他在發言中稱﹐他的名字銘刻在公司的每一輛車上﹐豐田將致力於重新贏得人們對其產品的信任。

豐田章男表示他有絕對的信心認為﹐公司電子油門系統的設計沒有問題。

他在回應美國國會議員的質詢時說自己完全確信豐田汽車的電子油門控制系統不存在設計缺陷。

此前有消費者投訴稱豐田汽車會突然自動加速﹐一些議員懷疑這一問題可能是由電子系統的故障導致的﹐週三的聽證會就是圍繞這些投訴展開的。

豐田章男表示將承擔此次問題的責任﹐並承諾將重塑客戶對豐田汽車的信心。

當天出席美國國會聽證會的美國運輸部部長Ray LaHood則表示﹐豐田召回的車輛存在安全問題。他呼籲這些車的車主將車輛送至經銷商處檢修。

大規模召回 暴衝有解?

  • 2010-02-25
  • 工商時報
  • 【記者鍾志恒/綜合外電報導】

 豐田社長豐田章男在周三出席美國國會聽證會,他為豐田的安全問題道歉。然而對美國人來說,更重要的是豐田大規模召回汽車能否根絕問題,但豐田高層周二說可能無法靠召回維修的方式完全解決暴衝問題。

 華爾街日報周三報導,根據豐田章男向眾議院監督暨政府改革委員會提交的書面證詞,他為豐田涉及的各起交通意外道歉,對因為安全問題而召回 逾850萬部汽車表達悔意。他承認豐田擴張速度,超過公司人力與組織的增長,把汽車品質問題歸咎於公司成長太快而無法完全掌控。

 眾議院能源委員會周二已率先召開第1場聽證會,主席維克曼(Henry Waxman)痛批豐田高層過去10年漠視汽車暴衝問題,並指責包括國家高速公路交通安全管理局(NHTSA)等汽車安全監管機關沒有足夠設備去評估汽車的電子故障問題。

 維克曼指汽車業已經進入電子化世代,但NHTSA卻仍停留在過去機械操控結構的舊思維,認為NHTSA必須有新工具和資源,去確保汽車電子操控系統和車用電腦的安全性;指豐田事件所引發的危機,將必須由立法來監管和解決。

 對於有人指美國政府因為擁有通用汽車60%股權,而讓NHTSA修理豐田以提升通用的競爭力,運輸部長拉胡德(Roy LaHood)對此直斥胡說八道。

 美國許多國會議員深信豐田的電子故障,是導致多起交通意外的肇因,豐田美國區總裁兼營運長藍茲(Jim Lentz)周二在聽證會上強調其電子油門控制系統沒有問題,強調暴衝是油門踏板等零件問題造成。


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Toyota says other acceleration issues being probed
Toyota is continuing to investigate other causes for sudden acceleration in its vehicles even after it issued two major U.S. recalls to address the problem, a top Toyota executive testified Tuesday before Congress.


Reticent Toyota president typical for Japan Inc., where harmony reigns not ...
Los Angeles Times
In harmony-loving Japan, company heads are rarely management professionals, and are picked more to be cheerleaders for the rank-and-file. ...



美国大陪审团和证交会介入调查丰田召回 英 丰田可能面临刑事起诉和巨额罚款

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Tech.view

Bring back the metal-bashers

Building quality into cars was easier before they went digital

Feb 22nd 2010 From The Economist online

LATE one night in a Ginza bar, a veteran executive at Nissan recounted to your correspondent the early days of exporting to America, when his firm’s cars were known abroad as Datsuns. Before being shipped, all export models went through additional inspections because the cost of fixing warranty claims so far from the factory and its supply chain would wipe out any profit made on them. On the rare occasions they did break, the parts had to be shipped in from Japan.

One day, the story goes, a plane carrying a crate of such parts lost an engine over the Midwest and had to jettison its cargo to save weight. On the ground below, a farmer noticed the debris falling from the sky. “Ah,” he mumbled to himself, “it’s raining Datsun cogs.”

Shutterstock

The point the Nissan man was making with this shaggy-dog story was that the quality of Japanese cars sold abroad was well above average while they were being shipped from factories in Japan and extra precautions taken to save on warranty claims. At the time, this strategy made perfect sense. Japanese carmakers saved a ton of money from not having to finance expensive inventories around the world. Meanwhile, Honda, Toyota and Nissan (the Datsun name was dropped in 1982) gained reputations, deservedly so, for quality and reliability. Until Toyota’s recent fiasco, those brand values remained largely intact, despite Japanese carmakers relocating much of their capacity to factories overseas.

The modern view is that carmakers everywhere have learned the secrets of Japanese manufacturing and now build products of comparable quality. That is debatable. Price for price, Japanese manufacturers still manage to make their products more reliable than average. At least, they did until recently. But, in what might now be viewed as a straw in the wind, Toyota (or, rather, its luxury Lexus brand) was dethroned from the top spot in last year’s J.D. Power report on vehicle dependability.

J.D. Power and Associates, a market-research firm based in Westlake Village, California, issues this report on the American car market every year. Lexus had topped it for the previous 14. In 2009, though, Buick and Jaguar came joint top. Toyota still did well overall. Its vehicles earned nine awards for reliability in specific market segments. No other marque, save Ford’s Lincoln division, which took two, won more than one such award. But the balloon of invincibility had been punctured.

The person who began the process of inflating that balloon was, ironically, an American. From 1950 onwards W. Edwards Deming, an expert on quality control, taught a generation of Japanese managers how to improve their products. The lesson they took back to their factories was the overriding importance of statistical quality control (SQC). In industrial countries elsewhere, even in Deming’s own America, manufacturers were still relying on inspection and rejection of faulty parts—a horrendously wasteful process.

One of the main tools for SQC that Deming introduced to his Japanese disciples was the control chart, invented by Walter Shewhart at Bell Labs, the research arm of America’s former telephone monopoly, Bell System, in the 1920s. Shewhart was among the first to recognise that data collected from observations of manufacturing processes rarely follow a simple Gaussian distribution (bell curve) in the way that natural phenomena like human height do. Instead, each manufacturing process exhibits its own pattern of variation. Some display a controlled variation inherent to the process itself. Others display uncontrolled variation caused by something external to the process.

The distinction between the two patterns goes to the philosophical heart of probability theory. Deming and his colleagues at Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of Bell System, coined the terms “common cause” for the former and “special cause” for the latter.

For quality purposes, any common cause of variations in manufacturing (tool wear, say, or poor set-up) can be predicted statistically from previous observations, and the process controlled accordingly. Any special cause in variation is something that comes out of the blue from outside the process (a power surge, perhaps, or an operator falling asleep) and is beyond the scope of statistical forecasting.

The purpose of a control chart is to identify instances when variations in manufacturing are causing the specifications of a product to move above or below a mean value by more than a critical amount—say, three standard deviations. The standard deviation is a measure of the spread of a statistical curve such as a bell curve around its mean. The idea, then, is to define acceptable tolerances above and below this mean value, and design the manufacturing process to draw in the tails of the curve so that those tolerances are met a given fraction of the time. If the tolerance limits are three standard deviations from the mean, and the curve is a true Gaussian distribution, then 99.7% of production will within the zone of tolerance. If that falls, it suggests something had gone wrong. This way, any unpredictable special-cause effects can be spotted and corrected before doing too much harm.

Many refinements have been made to statistical control and the theory of quality assurance since Deming’s days—with acronyms like TQM, CMMI, MSA, QFD, FMEA and APQP, each with its own loyal band of adherents and eras of fashion. One of the more successful has been the Six Sigma strategy for identifying and removing the causes of defects, pioneered by Motorola in the 1980s. (Sigma is the Greek letter that mathematicians use to represent the standard deviation in equations.) Today, Six Sigma is used by two-thirds of the firms in Fortune’s “500” list.

Processes that operate with Six Sigma quality (in principle, within six standard deviations of a mean value) over a short sampling period produce defect levels over the long term of less than 3.4 per million—providing, of course, a lot of other management practices are also in place. When achieved, this translates into a production yield of 99.99966%. Six Sigma is said to have saved Motorola more than $17 billion over the years.

So, how did Toyota—a manufacturer that has made some of the most significant contributions to the science of quality assurance—manage to screw up so badly? It is not just the move offshore. Though the firm has 52 overseas plants in 27 countries, the quality practices honed at its headquarters in Aichi prefecture can be packaged and transplanted to Mexico or Kentucky just as readily as to a Komatsu press shop.

Nor was it Toyota’s obsession with overtaking General Motors at any cost to become the world’s largest carmaker. There is no evidence to suggest that increasing volume on modern production lines will lead inevitably to some loss of quality.

Instead, two recent trends, both software related, hint at the reason behind Toyota’s unexpected decline. One is the shortening of product-development cycles generally in the car industry. These are down from a typical four or five years to little more than 15 months, thanks to computer-aided design and manufacturing, and the virtual simulation of the resulting products. To save money and time, Toyota has even dispensed on occasion with building test “mules” and other engineering prototypes.

The other trend is the wholesale replacement of mechanical components with electronic controls. It started with ignition systems, then spread to air-conditioning, cruise-control, engine-management, throttle linkages, transmissions, and now the steering and braking systems. Drive-by-wire is not cheap, but it reduces the number of components needed to do the job. It also allows them to do extra things as well as to compensate for wear and changes in driving style and road conditions.

But software is not hardware, and software “engineers”, despite their appropriation of the name, are a different breed from the sort that bash metal. Programming digital controllers is not one of Toyota’s core competences. Even with the most diligent of testing, bugs will always find their way into software. Right now, it seems Toyota is learning that lesson the hard way.




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這個"研發"是更前段的研發
3還不用考慮到"鞋子"這個概念的研發
都是物理化學的階段


Working paper: The Evolution of Science-Based Business: Innovating How We Innovate
Download the PDF. Science has long been connected to innovation and thus to the business enterprise. However, the nature of the connection between science and business in recent decades has begun to change in important ways. On the one hand, we have witnessed the decline of corporate industrial laboratories. At the same time, we have seen the emergence of a new class of entrepreneurial firms that are deeply immersed in science in sectors like biotech, nanotech, and more recently energy. HBS professor Gary P. Pisano examines the changing nature of the science-business intersection and describes the emergence of a science-based business as a novel organizational form. He also describes the institutional and organizational challenges created by this convergence.

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