The Strategic Distribution Management Initiative and its effects on inventory levels and readiness

Until just a few years ago, no organization was tasked with measuring overall effectiveness, design, or optimization of DOD's global supply chain management system. As a result, the Strategic Distribution Management Initiative (SDMI) was created as a joint venture between Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the United States Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) charged with enterprise level redesign, streamlining, and optimization of the DOD global supply chain. This thesis examines the affects of the SDMI implementation on the Army's two maneuver divisions stationed in the Europe. Specifically, it analyzes affects of SDMI implementation on the eight supply support activities located within the two maneuver divisions in USAREUR. This thesis studies SDMI impacts on inventory levels; inventory turbulence in the SSAs during SDMI implementation; SDMI improvements with respect to readiness; and existing barriers to improving velocity. The research indicates that: (1) expected inventory reductions were not realized following SDMI implementation, (2) inventory turbulence consumes limited resources and is a lucrative target for further improvement, (3) there is no evidence that SDMI increased fleet readiness, and (4) backorder rates and time, along with sub-optimization of pieces of the DOD supply chain, are significant barriers to velocity that still must be broken through.http://archive.org/details/thestrategicdist109455797Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Research methodology of grazing

Throughout Europe, grass is the main feed for dairy cattle. This report presents the main results of the first meeting of the European Grassland Federation (EGF) Working Group Grazing in Kiel on 29 August 2010. The theme of the meeting was "Research methodology of grazing". There were three sessions: - setting the scene; - modelling of grazing; and - field measurements

No Security Through Obscurity: Changing Circumvention Law to Protect our Democracy Against Cyberattacks

Cybersecurity is increasingly vital in a climate of unprecedented digital assaults against liberal democracy. Russian hackers have launched destabilizing cyberattacks targeting the United States’ energy grid, voting machines, and political campaigns. America\u27s existing inadequate cyber defenses operate according to a simple assumption: hide the computer code that powers critical infrastructure so that America\u27s enemies cannot exploit undiscovered weaknesses. Indeed, the intellectual property regime relies entirely on this belief, protecting those who own the rights in computer code by punishing those who might access and copy that code. This “security through obscurity” approach has failed. Rightsholders, on their own, cannot develop effective countermeasures to hacking because there are simply too many possibilities to preempt. The most promising solution, therefore, is to open the project of cybersecurity to as many talented and ethical minds as possible. Openness, not civil remedies and secrecy, is a greater means of ensuring safety. This Article proposes that we adopt a “defense in depth” approach to security that will increase transparency by modifying anticircumvention laws and by facilitating communication between the security community and product vendors

MSW Portfolio

My written explanation for how my life, work, and MSW experience has led me to be a well rounded social worker through the 13 NASW core competencies.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/grad_portfolios/1279/thumbnail.jp

Music, Padlocks and the Commons

Depuis l’avènement des formats de compression numérique et des services d’échange point à point (Peer-to-Peer) comme Napster, l’industrie du disque est en émoi. Plus fondamentalement, il y a lieu de se questionner sur ce qui apparaît comme une crise d’efficacité du droit d’auteur. Si les copistes semblent avoir pris de court de puissants intérêts, les contre-mesures ne sauraient tarder à venir. L’apparition de protections techniques ­ Trusted Systems ­ présage une ère de contrôle total par les titulaires de droits. L’«hyper efficacité» bouleversera le rapport à l’œuvre, entraînant du même souffle un déséquilibre dans les dimensions privée et publique du droit d’auteur.Since the advent of the digital compression formats and Peer-to-Peer transaction services like Napster, the recording industry is in a state of disarray. Fundamentally, there is reason to reflect on what appears to be a copyright efficacy crisis. While the copyists seemed to have gained an upper hand against some powerful interests, countermeasures are in the wake. The foreseeable implementation of secured formats, so-called Trusted Systems, portends an era of total control by the titleholders. ‘Super efficacy’ will radically change in relation to the work, compromising the balance struck between the private and public dimensions of copyright law

Discipleship camp : a model for developing and making disciples

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/2455/thumbnail.jp

Content Control: The Motion Picture Association of America's Patrolling of Internet Piracy in America, 1996-2008

This historical and political economic investigation aims to illustrate the ways in which the Motion Picture Association of America radically revised their methods of patrolling and fighting film piracy from 1996-2008. Overall, entertainment companies discovered the World Wide Web to be a powerful distribution outlet for cultural works, but were suspicious that the Internet was a Wild West frontier requiring regulation. The entertainment industry's guiding belief in regulation and strong protection were prompted by convictions that once the copyright industries lose control, companies quickly submerge like floundering ships. Guided by fears regarding film piracy, the MPAA instituted a sophisticated and seemingly impenetrable "trusted system" to secure its cultural products online by crafting relationships and interlinking the technological, legal, institutional, and rhetorical in order to carefully direct consumer activity according to particular agendas. The system created a scenario in which legislators and courts of law consented to play a supportive role with privately organized arrangements professing to serve the public interest, but the arrangements were not designed for those ends. Additionally, as cultural products became digitized consumers experienced a paradigm shift that challenged the concept of property altogether. In the digital world the Internet gives a consumer access to, rather than ownership of, cultural products in cyberspace. The technology granting consumers, on impulse, access to enormous amounts of music and films has been called, among many things, the "celestial jukebox." Regardless of what the technology is called, behind the eloquent veneer is the case in point of a systematic corrosion of consumer rights that, in the end, results in an unfair exchange between the content producers and consumers. What is the relationship of the MPAA to current piracy practices in America? How will Hollywood's enormous economic investment in content control affect future film distribution, exhibition, and consumer reception? Through historical analysis regarding the MPAA's campaign against film piracy along with interviews from key media industry personnel and the pirate underground, this contemporary illustration depicts how the MPAA secures its content for Internet distribution, and defines and criticizes the legal and technological controls that collide with consumer freedoms

A new cosmology of risks and crises time for a radical shift in paradigm and practice

Crisis management theory and practice was in the main elaborated in the late 70s and 80s and developed and implemented in the 90s. We now have a rich knowledge of crisis intelligence and best practices. But, even if we can be proud of that advance, a further challenge remains: crises in the 21st century differ?structurally? from those we had to deal with in the last century. By way of example, the disparity between now and then is equivalent to that which existed between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the First. Thus, if we stick to former paradigms ?we are bound to be defeated in every battle?. Even if it is extremely difficult to forge new routes into Terrae Incognitae, it is vital to do so ? or at least to try.Crises, emerging crises, discontinuity, decision-making

Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks - OMCO NET

The mini conference “Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks” focuses on advanced methods for search and optimisation applied to wireless communication networks. It is sponsored by Research & Enterprise Fund Southampton Solent University. The conference strives to widen knowledge on advanced search methods capable of optimisation of wireless communications networks. The aim is to provide a forum for exchange of recent knowledge, new ideas and trends in this progressive and challenging area. The conference will popularise new successful approaches on resolving hard tasks such as minimisation of transmit power, cooperative and optimal routing