Application of the european customer satisfaction index to postal services. Structural equation models versus partial least squars

Customer satisfaction and retention are key issues for organizations in today’s competitive market place. As such, much research and revenue has been invested in developing accurate ways of assessing consumer satisfaction at both the macro (national) and micro (organizational) level, facilitating comparisons in performance both within and between industries. Since the instigation of the national customer satisfaction indices (CSI), partial least squares (PLS) has been used to estimate the CSI models in preference to structural equation models (SEM) because they do not rely on strict assumptions about the data. However, this choice was based upon some misconceptions about the use of SEM’s and does not take into consideration more recent advances in SEM, including estimation methods that are robust to non-normality and missing data. In this paper, both SEM and PLS approaches were compared by evaluating perceptions of the Isle of Man Post Office Products and Customer service using a CSI format. The new robust SEM procedures were found to be advantageous over PLS. Product quality was found to be the only driver of customer satisfaction, while image and satisfaction were the only predictors of loyalty, thus arguing for the specificity of postal services

Applying the Lessons of “Lean Now” to Transform the US Aerospace Enterprise

Lean is common sense and good business sense. As organizations grow and become more successful, they begin to lose insight into the basic truths of what made them successful. Organizations have to deal with more and more issues that may not have anything to do with directly providing products or services to their customers. Lean is a holistic management approach that brings the focus of the organization back to providing value to the customer. In August 2002, Mrs. Darleen Druyun, the Principal Deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition and government co-chairperson of the Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI), decided it was time for Air Force acquisitions to embrace the concepts of lean. At her request, the LAI Executive Board developed a concept and methodology to employ lean into the Air Force’s acquisition culture and processes. This was the birth of the “Lean Now” initiative. An enterprise-wide approach was used, involving Air Force System Program Offices (SPOs), aerospace industry, and several Department of Defense agencies. The aim of Lean Now was to focus on the process interfaces between these “enterprise” stakeholders to eliminate barriers that impede progress. Any best practices developed would be institutionalized throughout the Air Force and the Department of Defense (DoD). The industry members of LAI agreed to help accelerate the government-industry transformation by donating lean Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to mentor, train, and facilitate the lean events of each enterprise. Currently, the industry SMEs and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are working together to help the Air Force develop its own lean infrastructure of training courses and Air Force lean SMEs. The first Lean Now programs were the F/A-22, Global Hawk, and F-16. Each program focused on specific acquisition processes. The F/A-22 focused on the Test and Evaluation process; the Global Hawk focused on Evolutionary Acquisitions; and the F-16 focused on improving the Contract Closeout process. Through lean, each enterprise made many significant improvements. The F/A-22 was able to reduce its Operational Flight Plan (OFP) Preparation and Load process time of 2 to 3 months down to 7 hours. The Global Hawk developed a new production plan that increases the annual production of its Integrated Sensor Suite from 3 per year to 6 per year. The F-16 enterprise generated and is working 12 initiatives that could result in a contract closeout cycle time reduction of 3 to 7 years. Each enterprise continues to generate more lean initiatives that focus on other areas and processes within their respective enterprises.

L'Estudiant com a focus de la classe d'espanyol com a llengua estrangera

En 'L’estudiant com a focus de la classe d’espanyol com a llengua estrangera' vull presentar com en les meves classes d’Espanyol 232, l’estudiant és el focus i l’eix de la classe. Més concretament m’adreçaré a les següents preguntes: quin tipus de metodologia empro per aconseguir aquest objectiu, quines són les expectatives del professor cap a l’estudiant, quins són els objectius de la classe i com s’aconsegueixen, i quines eines s’empren perquè l’estudiant aconsegueixi el nivell de competència requerit per satisfer el requisit de llengua de la universitat. També inclouré dues o tres lliçons i una varietat d’activitats interactives com a exemples. Per aconseguir aquest equilibri i per maximitzar l’experiència d’aprenentatge en l’estudiant el tipus de metodologia és important, a la vegada que també ho és establir uns objectius clars des del primer dia de classe on l’estudiant assumeix el seu paper actiu dins la classe i on les expectatives de la classe són detalladament explicades

A quality-based cost distribution charging scheme for QoS multicast networks

This paper presents a new charging scheme for cost distribution along a point-to-multipoint connection when destination nodes are responsible for the cost. The scheme focus on QoS considerations and a complete range of choices is presented. These choices go from a safe scheme for the network operator to a fair scheme to the customer. The in-between cases are also covered. Specific and general problems, like the incidence of users disconnecting dynamically is also discussed. The aim of this scheme is to encourage the users to disperse the resource demand instead of having a large number of direct connections to the source of the data, which would result in a higher than necessary bandwidth use from the source. This would benefit the overall performance of the network. The implementation of this task must balance between the necessity to offer a competitive service and the risk of not recovering such service cost for the network operator. Throughout this paper reference to multicast charging is made without making any reference to any specific category of service. The proposed scheme is also evaluated with the criteria set proposed in the European ATM charging project CANCAN

Lineamientos para la creación de una cultura de servicio al cliente en una empresa del sector alimentos : caso Martmore Ltda.

El presente trabajo de grado, enfoca el sentido práctico de la administración al Sector Alimentos, generando soluciones a futuro y un mejor desempeño en Martmore Ltda., objeto de estudio. Conforme a grandes autores, "El servicio al cliente es un conjunto de actividades interrelacionados que ofrece un suministrador con el fin de que el cliente obtenga el producto en el momento y lugar apropiado y se asegure de un uso correcto del mismo". Pero en este trabajo de grado se tiene en cuenta la visión de Carlos Eduardo Méndez Álvarez, quien dice que "el servicio al cliente se percibe como una tecnología en la cual el hombre de la organización y todos los recursos disponibles a la satisfacción de las expectativas y necesidades del cliente". Así mismo se hace uso de ciertos procesos y herramientas que ayudan al mejoramiento y a la creación de una cultura de servicio al cliente en la empresa lo que genera a un plazo determinado un cambio al interior de la compañía que se vera reflejado en el exterior y hacia los clientes que son parte fundamental de la empresa.

It will be succesful to have a commercial relation between France and Colombia focus on the milk sector ?

Globalization has led to a drastic change on the international trade, this has caused that many countries such as France and Colombia find new business partners. This is the raison because I develop the investigation about How these countries can be integrated commercially in the dairy sector? Colombia and France had active trade relations for more than 8 years, but this has been declining for several factors. In the case of France, it has found that Germany is an excellent producer of raw milk, which can supply domestic demand and can export large quantities with a low price to European countries because of its proximity. For this reason, Colombia is a country that can not compete with Germany directly in raw milk, but I concluded that Colombia could become a major competitor with organic milk. This is the result of a research of the way they raise and feed the cows in the two countries, Colombia is generally on open country and Germany is on cow housing. In Colombia, the country found that Venezuela could offer many benefits in the processing of raw milk, and other processes that require high technology. But today Colombia has had several disputes with Venezuela and many Colombian companies are affected in this sector. Additionally, France is one of the largest producers and distributors of processed milk and its derivatives; it launches annually many manufactured products with high technology. At this point, Colombia can take out the best advantage because it can create an strategic alliance with French companies to bring most innovative and processed products such as cheese and yoghurts. The theoretical framework of this thesis consists on the analysis of competitiveness, because it is relevant to see if these two countries are competitive or if one has the comparative advantage over the other. The related authors are: Michael Porter, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. To complete the theoretical part, we found that France has a comparative advantage over Colombia in this sector thanks to its high technology, and Colombia is not currently competitive in the area of raw milk because the milk price is higher and the distance is a barrier, and it has no technology. But this research indicates that Colombia could become a competitive country selling organic milk.

Plan de empresa “GAIA”

GAIA es un restaurante que se dedicará a ofrecer a los clientes comidas sencillas como son pizzas personales, hamburguesas, calzones, empanadas. Además, su diferencial está en ofrecer un espacio de relajación y tranquilidad mediante una decoración adecuada, un servicio de atención al cliente especial y el arte consciente a través de colectivos.

Logística de servicios en bancos

Este trabajo de grado inicialmente esta dado por una presentación de la logística a través del tiempo a nivel mundial y nacional, mostrando la situación actual del sector, con el fin de mostrar los diversos conceptos que de la logística se derivan, en este caso algunos como; servicio al cliente, relación con proveedores, trasporte, inventarios, entre otros. De igual manera verán algunas teorías de diferentes autores, que soportaran el porqué implementar la logística del servicio, enfoque principal de la investigación. Se presentaran temas como teoría de colas, balanceo de línea, balance de servicio y simulación de operaciones, todos enfocados a la implementación de los servicios prestados por un banco. Posteriormente, se dará una introducción del banco, en este caso el Banco Av Villas, en el cual nos basamos para realizar un modelo de simulación utilizando la herramienta PROMODEL, presentada en este trabajo. Finalmente presentamos los resultados de la investigación, con sus conclusiones y recomendaciones a los que se llegaron al terminar la investigación.

Les activitats nàutiques i les persones amb hipoacúsia : una experiència amb focus groups.

Resumen tomado del autor

Interviews And Focus Groups: Purpose Paradigms Protocols and Pragmatics

Introduction to interview data, how it is used and how and why it might be collected

A Focus on Distributed Denial of Service

An Arbor Networks paper describing DDoS attacks and related attacks. The first 9-10 pages or so are good background reading for INFO6003. Students may also find the rest of the paper interesting.