Purchasing And Storage Department Commerce Essay

Purchasing And Storage Department Commerce Essay Purchasing  refers to a business or organization attempting to acquiring goods or services to accomplish the goals of its enterprise. Though there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly  between  organizations. Typically the word purchasing is not used interchangeably with the word procurement, since procurement typically includes  Expediting, Supplier Quality, and Traffic and Logistics (TL) in addition to Purchasing. What is storing? Basically, storing is when staying in a hotel during vacation, its likely youll have some valuable items and documents on hand like jewelry or passports. Its important to have a safe place to store these items when staying overnight at a hotel, and understanding the different types of storage options different hotels are likely to offer will help you decide how to store your valuables. In Restaurant sector, storing refers to preserving and keeping stock of food and beverages in order to use them when needed. PURCHASING Simplifying purchase While technology is enabling all departments related to purchase to appear on a common platform, there are a few issues where technology fails to offer any solution, thereby calling the need for  human  intervention with sound judgment. While operating a hotel is supposed to be a difficult task, managing the entire procurement process (for such a unit) is even more so. The purchase department handles the task of procurement yet all departments  play  a crucial role in it. That said technology ensures that inter-departmental activities takes place flawlessly. Although purchase has now become dependent on technology for managing inventories and order status, it was originally a manual job. From selection of products to deciding on a vendor, this department rests on the human ability of judgment. However technology is now making the processes related to other departments easier by streamlining all activities. Bulk buying Purchase is about procuring products in large quantities for the stores catering to various department needs. In this, various operational tools bridge the relationship  between the purchase department and stores, fulfilling the requisites of all departments. If we trace back to earlier times, the process of procuring was done manually where storekeepers would spend time contacting suppliers and then placing the orders after checking and re-checking the inventories placed by various departments for duplication of orders and so on. There existed a Bin card system that took stock manually and preparing all the relevant reports through various stock registers, etc. Das adds, Today, technology is helping us to indent, maintain, analyze and control the total inventory with greater ease and accuracy. The systems are smart as well as user-friendly to provide you the alerts and prior intimation about the PAR stock and expiry date, etc. Simplifying purchase order Technology might be one crucial aspect that is vital for procurement today but the genesis of the software systems used for it have been a perfect replica of the tasks earlier done manually i.e. the purchase order. Das simplifies this and says, There are a lot of different aspects which are kept in mind while preparing a purchase order and its frequency. The preparation of the purchase order is proportionately related to the consumption pattern and its requirement. Technology still has some drawbacks in the decision making process. It helps in collating information but that doesnt help in making the final decision. Kailash Bahuguna, purchase manager at The Metropolitan Hotel New Delhi, is of the opinion that technology has not invaded this area of operation totally; a lot of tasks are human-driven and would remain so in future as well. The important job of this department would always remain the negotiation that we do with vendors, reviewing of content for purchasing, etc. Technology can only assist, he adds. While the preference for vendors could be gauged with data like withstanding capacity, rate comparison, stipulated delivery time and extended credit facility, the final decision is made after identifying the suppliers reputation and relationship the hotel shares with it, which are subjective issues and purchase committee makes a final decision. Das says, Frequent market surveys are conducted by the standing purchase committee to assess the current prevailing rate and subsequently used for fruitful negotiations. Technology runs parallel to all tasks to enable swift decisions thereby assisting the entire process. Vendor and inventory management play an important role in preparing the purchase order by various departments (in terms of substitute and new vendors depending on the product demand and urgency), which is notified to purchase for requisition. Das says, In hotels, the purchase officer is in close coordination with other department heads for timely procurement, maximum utilization of materials, seasonal variance in material procurement, and combating the non-availability of materials in unprecedented conditions. Challenges to overcome The challenges vary from hotel to hotel. The structure though remains the same; one needs to take various factors into consideration like geographic location, size of the hotel, operation period, etc. During the initial days of operations of a new property, the challenges are distinctively unique identifying the possible consumption and requirement needs meticulous calculation as there are no past records to look at. A property that is in operation for some years should try and bring all departments (with reference to purchase) on a single platform for smooth information flow. Bahuguna says it enables a sound way to justify codification and stacking methods helping in the inventory management. STORING Any type of foodservice facility begins its food preparation process at the  back  door, by receiving and storing the raw materials. Food, beverages, and supplies must all be accounted for and properly stored until theyre needed. There are two basic types of storage: dry and refrigerated.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Dry storage is for canned goods, paper products, and anything else that doesnt need to be kept cold. Refrigerated storage is for items that must be kept chilled or frozen until used.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In this article, youll learn more about them both and about the types of equipment needed to outfit your receiving and storage areas for efficiency, safety, and conservation of space. The list includes: Scales Pallets Carts Shelves Well also explain how refrigeration systems work in refrigerators, coolers, freezers, ice makers, and specialty systems like beer kegs and soft-serve machines, and discuss how to select them for your operation.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   RECEIVING AND DRY STORAGE  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Youd be amazed at how many deliveries arrive at the back door or loading dock of the average restaurant in a week. And they all have one thing in common: They must all be checked for accuracy by someone on your staff. Many owners and chefs go a  step further, personally inspecting the quality of fresh items such as produce and seafood and rejecting on the spot those that do not meet their standards or expectations.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Having a well-organized receiving area, setting certain hours for deliveries, and designating employees who are responsible for accepting and storing incoming stock will save you time and money. Illustration 10-1 shows some of the smartest outdoor dock area features.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Merchandise goes from the dock area into the receiving area, shown in Illustration 10-2. The well-equipped receiving area will contain these basic items: Scales Pallets Carts and trucks Shelves MEASURES TO BE TAKEN CARE OF Storerooms should be well ventilated, free of dampness and free of pests and bugs. Bulk products such as sugar and flour, can be emptied into tightly covered, properly labeled approved containers to prevent outside contamination. Storage containers must have openings large enough to allow easy cleaning between uses. Food cannot be stored in locker rooms, rest rooms, dressing rooms, garbage rooms, mechanical rooms, under sewer lines that are not shielded to intercept potential drips, under leaking water lines (including leaking automatic fire sprinkler heads) under Lines on which water has condensed, or under open stairwells. Products must be stored on shelves or platforms 6 inches from the floor to ensure adequate cleaning of the storeroom floor. REFRIGERATION All food must be labeled and dated. Arrange containers apart from one another in a refrigerator to ensure proper cooling. This allows air to circulate around containers. Cover all food while in storage. Covering keeps food from drying out and minimizes the possibility of contamination. In walk-in coolers, store all food on shelves. The food should be kept at least 6 inches off of the floor. The floor needs to be swept and mopped. Store poultry and meats on the bottom shelves to prevent meat from leaking onto other foods. Use foods on a first in, first out basis (FIFO). Refrigerated, ready-to-eat, potentially hazardous food prepared and held for more than 24 hours in a facility must be marked with the date of preparation. It must be discarded if not sold or served within ten calendar days. RECEIVING PROCEDURES IN THE RESTAURANT Receiving food and supplies from your vendors requires more than simply taking boxes off a delivery truck. Restaurant owners and managers should have procedures in place for any employee who handles deliveries. Consider these suggestions for ways to manage deliveries and other receiving procedures in your restaurant. VERIFICATION Whenever a restaurant receives an order, the manager or responsible employee should check in the order, or verify that the correct amount of products were received as well as checking the quality of the incoming product. Follow these steps: Verify the quantity   Be sure that every product you ordered is accounted for in the delivery. An easy way to do this is to compare your order guide to your invoice and manually check off all items as you look through the delivery. Be sure that product weights and counts are correct. Ensure quality Be sure the items are of good quality. All refrigerated or frozen items should arrive at the proper temperature, and products should show no signs or damage. However, for one reason or another, food products may arrive unusable. When product is received in poor condition, such as moldy or rotten, the manager should refuse the order if possible, and contact the vendor immediately to schedule another delivery. Check the cost Make sure the total cost on the invoice is correct. The money you spend on food orders and other supplies usually makes up a large part of your restaurant expenses, and recording the appropriate amount in your financial records is very important to your overall profits and losses. KEEP TRACK OF ALL PURCHASES Keeping track of all purchase invoices will help you stay organized and aware of your spending. When you receive your order, record the total cost the order invoice on your restaurant profit and loss statement (PL). You can easily log this data in most accounting software, or in a PL spreadsheet on the back  office computer. This will also help you calculate your inventory and usage, since you add the newly purchased goods to those you have on hand to determine your total available inventory. Date and Store Supplies Once you have checked your food for quality and recorded the cost and inventory amount in your records, you are ready to put away your food and supplies. This should be done immediately to ensure that food remains at safe temperatures and to keep an organized kitchen. For perishable foods, this involves dating and appropriately storing the products on your  restaurant storage and shelving units. How to Keep Your Customers Healthy There are laws and systems that have been established to help ensure that the food served in restaurants is safe. Bacteria grow very easily if given the chance. The local Health Department will send out inspectors to make sure that the chefs and servers are following the proper guidelines. Inspectors will issue fines for minor violations and can shut you down for major violations. Working with Inspectors from The Local Health Department The Heath Department will work with you to establish the correct systems and practices. The inspectors are often feared and dreaded (as they usually show up unannounced at the worst possible time), but most of the regulations have important ramifications for keeping food clean and safe. A system called  HACCP Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point  consists of seven important steps to ensure food safety. This system was actually first designed to maintain food safety for NASA astronauts so you know this stuff works! The three main elements of the system are:  food microbiology,  quality control  and  risk assessment. The 7 steps of HACCP are as follows Assess hazards and potential risks. Identify critical control points including cross contamination, cooking, cooling, hygiene. Set up procedures to make sure safety is maintained at all critical control points. Monitor critical control points and use the correct signs, tools, and training materials to ensure this. Take corrective actions as soon as a critical control point is in jeopardy or when any violations are pointed out by the Health Department. Set up a record-keeping system to log all of your flowcharts and temperature checks Keep up with the system to make sure it is working. Each food item served in your restaurant will need its own flow chart, which looks at every step of the foods journey from being received into the restaurant from a purveyor to being served to a customer. The steps in between include storage, preparation, holding/display, service, cooling, storage of leftovers and reheating techniques. The  Executive Chef  will be responsible for these flow charts. Avoiding Food Contamination There are many safety procedures to follow when preparing food in your restaurant. One of the most important is to thaw frozen foods properly. You can cook food from its frozen state or by refrigerating it at under 38 degrees F. You may also thaw under running water at a temperature of 70 degrees F. or below for up to two hours. A microwave is another acceptable way to thaw foods, but only if the entire cooking period will be in the microwave or the food will be finished (immediately after microwaving) by another cooking method. Food items such as meats and poultry must be cooked to the correct internal temperatures. Thermometers are the best way to ensure accuracy of these temps. Avoid Cross Contamination Cross contamination is all too common in kitchens today. Be sure to clean and sanitize any equipment used to prepare food between uses and be particularly vigilant when handling a potentially harmful food such as raw poultry,beef or fish. There is a danger zone of temperature, 40 degrees F. 140 degrees F., within which food bacteria multiply rapidly and can thrive. The temperature of food should be kept out of this zone as much as possible. The limit for time spent in the danger zone including all aspects of storage, preparation and service is 4 hours. Food Storage Storage is another way to protect your food from becoming contaminated or spoiled. There are rules for this area as well. Use the first in, first out (FIFO in accounting) rule meaning that foods should be used in the order they are delivered. For instance, do not use the newest milk first if you still have two gallons that are good from your last delivery. Date goods and place the new behind the old on your storage shelves. Keep all foods wrapped and clean. Each item in your walk-in refrigerator, freezer and your dry storage should be in a sealed labeled container or package with the contents and date received. Do not take a chance on questionable foods: When in doubt, throw it out is a great rule to live when it comes to food safety. Go through your refrigerator unit regularly and get rid of spoiled foods. The refrigerator temperature must be below 38 degrees F. Items stored include meats, seafood, vegetables and dairy products. Keep a working thermometer in the unit at all times so you will know at a glance if there is a problem. You do not want to lose your entire inventory! Freezers should keep foods at below 0 degrees F. Most foods will not maintain their quality in a freezer so it should be used only as needed. Use fresh products whenever possible.Items in dry storage should be kept between 50 70 degrees F with a relative humidity of 50 60%.

Detective Fiction & Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Essay -- Literature

According to the English crime writer P.D. James (1920-) â€Å"for a book to be described as detective fiction there must be a central mystery and one that by the end of the book is solved satisfactorily and logically, not by good luck or intuition, but by intelligent deduction from clues honestly if deceptively presented.† (James. 2009: 16). This is traditionally conducted via a detective; a figure deployed within the narrative structure ‘whose occupation is to investigate crimes’ (Oxford. 2006: 202). Therefore detective fiction represents an enigma, a puzzle to be solved through an intriguing series of events and clues presented by the writer to its audience; that are taken on a journey through a process of reasoning, elimination and conclusion to solve a mystery. The narrative formula allows the audience to engage on an exploration of self-discovery as â€Å"the mystery’s solution supplies a temporary sense of self through which the reader is offer ed an apparatus for negotiating the boundaries that define identity.† (McCracken. 1998: 50). Detective fiction can be defined and situated into various different categories; â€Å"one is taxonomic†¦placing it in relation to other types of popular literature†¦Westerns, science fiction, spy tales and so on. John G. Cawelti’s (Adventure) has grouped these types into larger categories called ‘archetypes’ which are convenient for making an initial distinction between two major kinds of detective fiction, ‘Mystery’ and ‘Adventure.’ (Rzepka. 2005: 9). This raises the question of how detective fiction appeals to past and present audience’s and its position as part of a mass market publication in contemporary society. In order to answer this question it is important to briefly summarise the rise o... ...http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Detective_Fiction_(Bookshelf). [Accessed 20th April 2012] Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. (2007) Detective Fiction, Herman, D. Jahn, M. & Ryan, M. [On-line] Available from: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wWNnBndF9uEC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=generic+conventions+of+detective+fiction&source=bl&ots=nN3XjelCQo&sig=w_epfgfc-_S9UUZhgH65xBIxMbY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p7KfT-H_GafE4gTW_-y2Aw&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=generic%20conventions%20of%20detective%20fiction&f=false. [Accessed 19th April 2012] Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate. (2000) The Official Website of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate. [On-line] Available from: http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/. [Accessed 20th April 2012] The Sherlock Holmes Company, (2010). [On-line] Available from: http://www.sherlockholmes.com/. [Accessed 21st April 2012]

Ethical Issues in Organizational Behavior Essay

Ethical decisions play a very important role in an organization. Ethics is the concept of good and bad behavior. Ethical behavior is governed by state, federal, and local laws. It is important for an organization to promote good moral choices and do everything in its power to prevent unethical behavior from taking place in the workplace. This can be achieved through continuous training and reinforcement of the desired behavior. Unethical behavior in the workplace can be detrimental to an organization because it is both costly and can ruin a good relationship between business associates. There are several influences on ethical behavior. They can range from the diversity of the workforce to the technology used in the organization to the quality that is now required of the products produced by an organization. Diversity can become an issue when a manager uses personal race related biases in organizational decisions. Technology can be an issue when proper training is not available to the employees in an organization. The fact that the employee is not trained properly makes them more likely to make a mistake or incapable of performing job duties. Quality can become an issue when an organization does provide its employee with the tools necessary to provide products within the specifications of their customers’ requirements. An employee is then forced to make a decision on whether or not to continue in the development of the less than required product. All of these influences to ethical behavior can be tracked back to a system breakdown. An organization can influence the ethical behavior of employees in several ways. First the organization can offer some kind of reward for behavior defined as ethical. This will give the employee reason to continue making the â€Å"right† or desired organizational behavior. Continuous training will enable the employees to efficiently perform specified job duties. It will also enable managers to clarify desired behavior and give the employee a sense of security and confidence. Management is primarily responsible for ensuring that the proper tools and training are available to all employees. Deming’s observations led him to believe that â€Å"the typical manager spends most of his or her time wrongly blaming and punishing individuals for system failure† (Kinicki, & Kreitner, 2009, pg. 11). His 85-15 rule is helpful in preventing a manager from jumping to conclusions and making an unethical decision. Using the principles of Total Quality management will also aide in influencing ethical behavior in the workplace. They are as follows: a) Do it right the first time to eliminate rework b) Listen to and learn from customers and employees ) Make continuous improvement an everyday matter d) Build teamwork, trust, and mutual respect These principles will add to the security and confidence that employees will get from continued training. An example of ethical issue being faced by an organization is the ethical, legal, and social issues derived from the Human Genome Project. This project is funded by the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There are several ethical issues related to this project. One concern is fairness in the use of genetic information. It must be determined who should have access to the information and how the information should be used. Another ethical issue faced by funders of the Human Genome Project is privacy and confidentiality. It needs to be determined who owns and controls the findings from the project. Another ethical issue is the psychological impact and stigmatization. Before findings are made public, it needs to be determined how this information will affect an individual. The uncertainties that are tied to gene testing are another ethical issue that DOE and NIH are faced with. They have to decide if testing should be done even when treatment is not available. They have to decide if a parent has the authority to test their children for potential diseases. They must determine if the test are reliable and interpretable by members of the medical community. There are many other ethical decisions that must be made with the continued study of human genetics.

Analysis Of Shakespeare s Antigone And Julius Caesar

Piper Jacobs 12/23/2014 Literature Survey II - Honors Essay: Antigone and Julius Caesar Option 3 The involvement of women is very important in the two stories, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare and Antigone by Sophocles. Throughout each story it becomes clear that the ideas and biases surrounding women play an important part in how society views women, and how women see themselves. Readers also see these ideas spread into the minds of women affecting what they do in their life, and how they act. Antigone and Ismene, from Antigone, and Calpurnia and Portia, from Julius Caesar are both examples of this major theme. These four women heavily influence their play and the outcome. Because of this it is clear to see the importance and relevance of women in Antigone and Julius Caesar. In both Antigone and Julius Caesar the societal views that women are weak, submissive and inferior play a major role in each story and their conclusions. In Antigone, King Creon is shocked when he discovers that it is Antigone that disobeys him. The betrayer was right under his nose, but he was too blind to see it. King Creon was blinded by the belief that women are inferior. Likewise, in Julius Caesar, women are considered inferior. When Portia, Brutus’ wife, wants Brutus to trust her she has to prove herself strong by stabbing herself. It is the societal view of women that makes her have to prove herself. Another major example of this is when the threat of being considered weak by his peers