An Investigation of the Relationship between Profitability and ISO 9000 Certification for Fortune 500 Companies

This study examined the relationship between ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems and profitability to determine if there is any relationship between implementation of ISO 9000 and their profit or loss. Fortune 500 companies in the United States were selected as the research population. Data were collected from Fortune magazine, Quality magazine, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), ISO Survey, ISO Secretariat, Registrar Accreditation Board (RAB), and ISO Directory of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 Accreditation and Certifications Bodies. Companies that remajned on the Fortune 500 list from 1990 to 2000 were selected for this study. The research utilized a sample paired t test to determine the significance of the relationship between profitability and ISO 9000 certification for the companies in assets, profits, sales, and stockholders\u27 equity, respectively. Indices of profit earning efficiency (PEE) and stockholders equity efficiency (SEE) were developed to measure profit earning efficiency. One hundred and nineteen (119) companies remained on the 500 Fortune list from 1990 to 2000. Sixty-nine of those 119 companies have achieved ISO 9000 certification. In assets classification, 36 of 69 companies were found to have significant changes after implementing ISO 9000 certification. Of those 36 companies, 33 companies were found to have an increase in assets. In sales classification, 30 of the 69 companies were found to have significant changes after implementing ISO 9000 certification. Of the 30 companies, 29 companies were found to have increases in sales. In profit classification, 13 companies out of the 69 were found to have significant changes. All of those 13 companies were found to have positive net increases. In terms of PEE, 12 out of the 13 companies had a positive increase, and only one company decreased slightly. In stockholders\u27 equity classification, 34 out of 69 companies were found to have significant changes. Of the 34 companies, 25 companies were found to have increased in stockholders\u27 equity. In terms of SEE, 12 out of the 34 companies were found to have significant increases. It was determined that the selected companies have gained benefits on profitability due to implementing ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems. This research uncovered three major findings. First, the selected companies with significant changes have gained benefits in terms of profitability due to implementing ISO 9000 certifications. Second, the majority of selected companies devoted their resources and efforts to implementing ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems as one of their management tools. Third, the selected companies represent various industrial sectors, which indicate that ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems apply to a broad range of industries. This research has developed two effective measures for large companies on their profitability: PEE and SEE. PEE reveals the efficiency of a company for using minimum assets to generate maximum profits before and after implementing ISO 9000 Quality Management Systems. SEE represents the effectiveness of a company to increase its market value. On the other hand, the annual growth rate was not effective to examine large companies for their profitability

Personality Facets and Customer Loyalty in Online Games

Online games have attracted numerous customers and brought stable revenues to game providers. However, some customers frequently switch to other games, and thus, it is important to identify which customers are likely loyal customers. The literature has identified openness, conscientiousness, and extraversion as predictors for loyalty in online games (Teng, Huang, Jeng, Chou, & Hu, 2008). However, the three broad traits contain multiple facets. Thus research addressing the three broad traits may mix the influences of multiple facets. Thus this study investigates the influences of personality facets on online game customer skill, challenge, flow experience, and loyalty. The sample comprised 994 online gamers. This study employed structural equation modeling for analysis, and found that (1) ideas and achievement striving are positively related to skill, (2) achievement striving, competence, and excitement-seeking are positively related to challenge, (3) gregariousness is positively related to interdependence, (4) fantasy, skill, challenge, and interdependence are positively related to customer likelihood of experiencing flow, and (5) experienced flow is positively related to customer loyalty. The study findings suggest managers improve gamer skill and challenge when gamers are in their early stages in online games, boosting their likelihood of experiencing flow and thus building their loyalty. Managers are also suggested to target individuals who are high in personality facets such as ideas, achievement striving, competence, excitement- seeking, to effectively build a loyal customer base. Educators are also suggested to notice students who are high in those personality facets, because these students may continuously play online games when they begin to play

Efficient Deformations Using Custom Coordinate Systems

Physics-based deformable object simulations have been playing an increasingly important role in 3D computer graphics. They have been adopted for humanoid character animations as well as special effects such as fire and explosion. However, simulations of large, complex systems can consume large amounts of computation and mostly remain offline, which prohibits their use for interactive applications.We present several highly efficient schemes for deformable object simulation using custom spatial coordinate systems. Our choices span the spectrum of subspace to full space and both Lagrangian and Eulerian viewpoints.Subspace methods achieve massive speedups over their “full space” counterparts by drastically reducing the degrees of freedom involved in the simulation. A long standing difficulty in subspace simulation is incorporating various non-linearities. They introduce expensive computational bottlenecks and quite often cause novel deformations that are outside the span of the subspace.We address these issues in articulated deformable body simulations from a Lagrangian viewpoint. We remove the computational bottleneck of articulated self-contact handling by deploying a pose-space cubature scheme, a generalization of the standard “cubature” approximation. To handle novel deformations caused by arbitrary external collisions, we introduce a generic approach called subspace condensation, which activates full space simulation on the fly when an out-of-basis event is encountered. Our proposed frameworkefficiently incorporates various non-linearities and allows subspace methods to be used in cases where they previously would not have been considered.Deformable solids can interact not only with each other, but also with fluids. Wedesign a new full space method that achieves a two-way coupling between deformable solids and an incompressible fluid where the underlying geometric representation is entirely Eulerian. No-slip boundary conditions are automatically satisfied by imposing a global divergence-free condition. We are able to simulate multiple solids undergoing complex, frictional contact while simultaneously interacting with a fluid. The complexity of the scenarios we are able to simulate surpasses those that we have seen from any previous method

Nutrition and Coccidiosis

Coccidiosis is the most common parasitic disease caused by Eimeria spp., leading to over $14 billion economic loss worldwide annually. The most prevalent Eimeria spp. in poultry include E. tenella, E. maxima, E. acervulina, E. brunetti, E. necatrix, E. praecox, and E. mitis and have different level of pathogenicity and specific infection sites in the intestine. Eimeria spp. invade intestinal epithelial tissues and induce intestinal damage, causing inflammation, oxidative stress, hemorrhage, and diarrhea. Furthermore, coccidiosis causes reduction of growth performance, intestinal integrity, nutrient digestibility, and increase of mortality and mobility in poultry. Nutrition strategies have been evaluated to mitigate detrimental impact of coccidiosis in poultry. Prebiotics, probiotics, enzymes, antioxidants, amino acids, vitamins and minerals have shown to reduce severity of intestinal damage and stimulate nutrient digestion and fast recovery of the intestinal damage and growth performance. In order to develop efficient nutrition strategies, understanding of Eimeria infection on gut health and nutrient digestibility is critical. Thus, this paper will discuss about 1) Eimeria infection on gut health; 2) Eimeria infection on nutrient digestibility; and 3) Roles of key amino acids in Eimeria challenged broilers