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Needles Accounting Resource Center Financial & Managerial Accounting , 2002 Edition Belverd E. Needles, Jr., DePaul University Marian Powers, Northwestern University Susan Crosson, Santa Fe Community College Internet Research Activities Chapter 15: A Manager's Perspective: The Changing Business Environment The Goal of Continuous Improvement Instructions: Use the following business periodicals' web sites to locate and write a summary of a business article related to continuous improvement. A linked web site article is included below as an example. Be sure to include the article's title, author(s), publisher, and date. Business Periodical Web Sites: CNNfn Forbes U.S. News & World Report BusinessWeek MSNBC Commerce Barron's USA Today Money Fortune Time Financial Times Sample Article: "Glass Act: How a Window Maker Rebuilt Itself" (Fortune—November 13,2000) Pella has created world-class, highly efficient production lines made that way by nearly a decade of practicing kaizen, the process of continuous improvement developed in Japan. In late 1992 three Pella executives attended a session on kaizen because sales had flattened, share was falling, and competition was increasing. After trying to implement kaizen on their own with uneven results, they called in TBM Consulting Group of Durham, NC for advice. In the past seven or eight years, Pella has changed relations with suppliers and dealers, product design and breadth of line, and manufacturing methods. While the company doesn't release financial statements, an informed guess is that annual sales have at least tripled since 1991, to something over $600 million. All that change is the result of kaizen sessions; more than 1,000 have taken place in just the past two years. As practiced by TBM and Pella, a team is formed for each session, which could consist of members of one department or production cell or include people from various parts of the company. Although Pella runs shorter kaizen sessions, its standard has a five-day schedule. Get everybody thinking about the problem and how to attack it on Monday, come up with some tentative solutions Tuesday, start working the new arrangement on Wednesday, prove it out on Thursday, and on Friday, show off what's been done, not what's planned or recommended. For the true believers in kaizen at Pella, there is no end to the process. Something can always be improved. Says Gary Christensen, Pella's president and CEO: "Every year, the product has got to be better." Research Activity Use the business periodicals' web sites above to find an article related to the standards of ethical conduct promulgated by the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) as discussed in you text. Write a short summary of the article. If the article is about standards violations, state which standards were violated and the details of the violation. A linked web site article is included below as an example. "Ethics and Conflict of Interest" (UBC Center for Applied Ethics) Either print out your answers for submission or email them to your instructor.   Site Map I Partners I Press Releases I Company Home I Contact Us Copyright Houghton Mifflin Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms and Conditions of Use, Privacy Statement, and Trademark Information