The Toyota Production System (TPS)

Many companies are currently working to optimize and streamline their processes and production lines to achieve higher profitability. In increasingly competitive markets, companies are working to find solutions to increase the value of their production with such a small use of resources as possible. A tool used to accomplish this is the Lean management system. Lean comes from the production system that Toyota has been developing since the early 1900's, The Toyota Production System (TPS). The Lean philosophy helps companies, by working towards continuous improvement in its operations, to achieve higher customer satisfaction, more efficient production and ultimately higher profitability. Many companies are working to implement Lean in their organization. But there are many who fail to implement a complete change towards Lean. That's because many companies use only a few theories and tools as described in Lean, which is not enough. This leads to the purpose of this study which is to examine how Lean tools can be used to achieve more efficient operations, increased customer satisfaction and improved profitability. In addition to this, Toyota's assertion that there is always room for continuous improvement within a business is examined to find out if it’s reasonable or not. To get answers to the above stated problem, a theoretical study of Lean and its principles and tools was conducted. In addition, a short study of process, organization and motivation theory to complement Lean theories was done. The theoretical findings were analyzed and then put in relation to an empirical study to link Lean to a specific case. The conclusions of these studies are that Lean and its theories can help companies increase efficiency, increased customer satisfaction and ultimately increased profitability. Strong commitment and deep understanding is required of both the company management as of the employees in the organization. Only when the organization has the full understanding of the current situation, why a change in the business is required and the aim with the change is understood, you can put Lean into effective use. Lean is a powerful tool for an organization that wants to change and develop their business.Många företag arbetar idag med att optimera och effektivisera sina processer och produktionslinor för att nå en högre lönsamhet. På alltmer konkurrensutsatta marknader arbetar företag med att hitta lösningar för att öka värdet på sin produktion med en så liten resursanvändning som möjligt. Ett verktyg för att åstadkomma detta är ledningssystemet Lean. Lean härstammar från det produktionssystem som Toyota har utvecklat sedan början av 1900-talet, The Toyota Production System (TPS). Leanfilosofin innebär att företag genom att arbeta mot ständiga förbättringar i sin verksamhet skall nå en högre kundnöjdhet, effektivare produktion och slutligen en högre lönsamhet. Många företag arbetar med att implementera Lean i sin organisation. Det är många som inte lyckas att genomföra en fullständig implementering av Lean. Det beror på att många företag endast använder enstaka teorier och verktyg som Lean beskriver, vilket inte är tillräckligt. Det leder fram till den här studiens syfte att undersöka hur Lean som verktyg kan användas för att nå en effektivare verksamhet, nöjdare kunder och en förbättrad lönsamhet. Utöver detta undersöks också om Toyotas påstående att det alltid finns utrymme för ständiga förbättringar inom en verksamhet är rimligt. För att få svar på ovanstående genomfördes en teoretisk studie av Lean och dess principer och verktyg. Utöver det gjordes en kortare studie av process-, organisations- och motivationsteori som en komplettering till Leanteorierna. De teoretiska slutsatserna analyserades och ställdes sedan i relation till en empirisk studie för att anknyta Lean till ett konkret fall. Slutsatserna av studierna är att Lean och dess teorier kan hjälpa företag till ökad effektivitet, ökad kundnöjdhet och slutligen ökad lönsamhet. Stort engagemang och djup förståelse krävs av såväl företagsledningen som hos de anställda i organisationen. Först när förståelsen för den aktuella situationen, varför en förändring av verksamheten krävs och vad målet är, kan Lean börja användas effektivt. Lean som verktyg är ett kraftfullt instrument för en organisation som vill förändra och utveckla sin verksamhet

Genetics of adaptation in modern chicken

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.We carried out whole genome resequencing of 127 chicken including red jungle fowl and multiple populations of commercial broilers and layers to perform a systematic screening of adaptive changes in modern chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus). We uncovered >21 million high quality SNPs of which 34% are newly detected variants. This panel comprises >115,000 predicted amino-acid altering substitutions as well as 1,100 SNPs predicted to be stop-gain or -loss, several of which reach high frequencies. Signatures of selection were investigated both through analyses of fixation and differentiation to reveal selective sweeps that may have had prominent roles during domestication and breed development. Contrasting wild and domestic chicken we confirmed selection at the BCO2 and TSHR loci and identified 34 putative sweeps co-localized with ALX1, KITLG, EPGR, IGF1, DLK1, JPT2, CRAMP1, and GLI3, among others. Analysis of enrichment between groups of wild vs. commercials and broilers vs. layers revealed a further panel of candidate genes including CORIN, SKIV2L2 implicated in pigmentation and LEPR, MEGF10 and SPEF2, suggestive of production-oriented selection. SNPs with marked allele frequency differences between wild and domestic chicken showed a highly significant deficiency in the proportion of amino-acid altering mutations (P<2.5×10−6). The results contribute to the understanding of major genetic changes that took place during the evolution of modern chickens and in poultry breeding

Stronger Neural Modulation by Visual Motion Intensity in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Theories of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have focused on altered perceptual integration of sensory features as a possible core deficit. Yet, there is little understanding of the neuronal processing of elementary sensory features in ASD. For typically developed individuals, we previously established a direct link between frequency-specific neural activity and the intensity of a specific sensory feature: Gamma-band activity in the visual cortex increased approximately linearly with the strength of visual motion. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated whether in individuals with ASD neural activity reflect the coherence, and thus intensity, of visual motion in a similar fashion. Thirteen adult participants with ASD and 14 control participants performed a motion direction discrimination task with increasing levels of motion coherence. A polynomial regression analysis revealed that gamma-band power increased significantly stronger with motion coherence in ASD compared to controls, suggesting excessive visual activation with increasing stimulus intensity originating from motion-responsive visual areas V3, V6 and hMT/V5. Enhanced neural responses with increasing stimulus intensity suggest an enhanced response gain in ASD. Response gain is controlled by excitatory-inhibitory interactions, which also drive high-frequency oscillations in the gamma-band. Thus, our data suggest that a disturbed excitatoryinhibitory balance underlies enhanced neural responses to coherent motion in ASD

Two doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination induce robust immune responses to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern

The extent to which immune responses to natural infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and immunization with vaccines protect against variants of concern (VOC) is of increasing importance. Accordingly, here we analyse antibodies and T cells of a recently vaccinated, UK cohort, alongside those recovering from natural infection in early 2020. We show that neutralization of the VOC compared to a reference isolate of the original circulating lineage, B, is reduced: more profoundly against B.1.351 than for B.1.1.7, and in responses to infection or a single dose of vaccine than to a second dose of vaccine. Importantly, high magnitude T cell responses are generated after two vaccine doses, with the majority of the T cell response directed against epitopes that are conserved between the prototype isolate B and the VOC. Vaccination is required to generate high potency immune responses to protect against these and other emergent variants

Geology of the State of Morelos and contiguous areas in South- Central Mexico

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