Global Positioning Systems Essay -- Term Papers Research Essays

Global Positioning Systems The possibilities for the future afforded to the human race by the technology created today is endless. However, one technology has already and will continue to change the way people travel around the planet: Global Positioning Systems (GPS). For travelers throughout history, figuring out where they were and where they were going was one of the oldest problems. Even in recent years, navigation and positioning was crucial to many activities but extremely cumbersome. However, in its need for a precise form of global positioning, the Department of Defense (DoD) created the most useful navigation system in history. The creation and production of the GPS system by Rockwell Collins changed the way people travel today and will continue to change the way people travel in the future. Imagine driving to the grocery store while sitting in the back seat reading a book or landing a plane in zero visibility conditions and not worrying about where the runway is. The scenarios listed are possible du e to the creation of the GPS system, which consists of a series of 24 satellites, numerous ground stations, individual receivers, and radio signals to locate the exact position of an object. The process by which all these components interact to provide location information is simple in theory but complex in reality. The basis of the GPS system in locating a receiver is a technique called triangulation. In triangulation, a receiver measures the distance from itself anywhere on earth to each of three satellites in the GPS system. In order to triangulate, it first measures the distance to the first satellite and recognizes that it must be located on the surface of a sphere. The sphere’s center must therefore be located a... ...roaming receivers use the transmitted time differentials for the satellites they are measuring to perform the calculations and therefore have the ability to determine positions more accurately. As the accuracy of GPS systems continues to increase, the possible uses for GPS units will continue to increase. The possibilities for GPS uses are endless and GPS units in the future will aid in determining locations, help people navigate the seas and skies, help track people and vehicles, aid in mapping roads and seas, and provide atomic accuracy timing to the entire world. Once the accuracy of GPS systems reach to such small distances as centimeters, automatic construction equipment will build roads without needing time consuming manual measurements, cars will drive themselves to predetermined destinations, and planes will be able to land in zero visibility conditions.

Narayan Murthy’s Retirement Speech Essay

Different people run out of endurance and intellectual horsepower at different points of time. Some people drop out of the marathon since they do not see any value in an organization when their own time under the arc light is over. A leader’s responsibility is to recognize this, provide them opportunities outside the organization, and usher in suitable replacements. Infosys’ journey is replete with many such examples. The Essence of Leadership : Many intelligent people possess a high ego and low patience to deal with people less capable than themselves. Leaders have to manage this anomaly very carefully; counsel these errant people from time to time, and allow them to operate as long as they do not become dysfunctional and start harming the organization. If they do cross the threshold it takes courage to inform the individuals that their time in the organization is over and that they have to leave. However, one aspect that marks out a truly superior organization is the ability of its employees at all levels to be driven by values and to ensure adherence and compliance under any circumstance. No individual is high or important enough for an organization to put up with non compliance. Leadership by example is what creates trust in people to follow a leader. As long as a leader is able to show his or her sacrifice and commitment to a cause others will follow him or her I am glad we decided on respect from our stakeholders (customers, employees, investors, vendor, partners, government of the land and the society) as the primary objective of the company. I have seen hundreds of instances of such leadership-by-example at Infosys. A sense of ownership among employees is extremely important to build a long term future for a corporation. Such ownership comes from fair merit based and generous sharing of wealth and perquisites among each member of the company. This is my answer to many of my friends who wonder why when Infosys was founded I took a small percentage of my earlier salary while every other cofounder’s salary was increased by at least 10 per cent. The same friends tell me that they do not know of any other instance where as much as 10 to 15 per cent of the company equity was given to co-founders who had just 12 to 18 months of work experience. I do not know of any Indian company that has given away as much as Rs 50,000 crore (at current stock prices) of stock options to employees. Today; every Indian employee at every level who joined us on or before March 2010 is a stockholder of Infosys. The point I would like to make is that such acts demonstrate that our leaders walked the talk in sacrifice and commitment. Strategy is about ensuring sustained differentiation m a changing environment for better net income margins Differentiation without better net income margins is meaningless. In my opinion operating margins and earnings before taxes depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) are not appropriate measures. In fact the best measure of differentiation is the per capita free cash flow generated. Such cash flows bring cash to invest in better people research and development infrastructure training and better customer and employee confidence The famous Harvard historian Niall Ferguson says in his book Civilization: The West and the Rest that the six attributes that have made Western civilization dominant during the last five hundred years are ompetition, science, property rights, medicine, consumption and a good work ethic. I have been saying for many years now that the factors that differentiate a corporation from its competitors are an enduring value system open mindedness, pluralistic and meritocratic approach and practicing speed, imagination and excellence in execution. Leaders have to focus on creating such an environment. The Essence of Leadership : Leadershi p is about taking bold and firm decisions with incomplete information in an environment of uncertainty: Leaders who waffle do not inspire confidence in their people. It is important to use as much data and modeling as possible to eliminate clearly bad decisions. My decision to walk away from a Fortune 10 company when they contributed 25 % of our revenue was one such example of decision making under uncertainty. It was a tough decision that was taken so firmly and calmly that the head of sales at Infosys at that time thought I was not bothered about the future of the company! I had to explain to him that I did indeed agonize over it but that as a leader I could not be driven by panic since such an important decision required a calm and composed mind. Every leader must have a mental model of his or her business with at best five to seven parameters that determine sensitivity to revenue and net income. It is important to update that model suitably as the business landscape changes. Any leader who cannot quickly do such sensitivity calculation would not be able to take quick and bold decisions. Even today I carry and update the mental model of our business in my mind. Generosity is an essential part of a leader. It is the foundation on which teamwork is built. The ability to share the limelight with ones colleagues, the ability to step aside and give opportunity to younger people when they want that fame, power and glory: and the ability to provide a safety net of advice for them is an important aspect of strengthening the future of an organization. It is not easy to give up power, particularly when you have been the object of so much adulation. I must say that Infosys has done a good job in bringing two such transitions before I leave the portals of this company. What Makes an Organization Worldclass : Scalability is the true test of the endurance of an organization. The ability to grow successfully without losing quality productivity employee investor and customer satisfaction and the spirit of a small company is what makes Infosys a great company. We have grown from 50 customers to 620 customers from 10 projects to 6,500 projects from 100 employees to 130,820 employees from 100 sq ft to 28 million sq ft of built up space and from 100 investors to over 450,000 investors. Such a scalability exercise has been successful thanks to our PSPD model of operation. PSPD stands for Predictability of revenues, Sustainability of such predictability, Profitability of such realized revenues and Derisking. Predictability happens because of a good forecasting system that derives realistic data from the trenches and tempers it with the wisdom of senior business leaders. Sustainability refers to the systems that help the efforts of sales people beating the pavement and meeting customers to make the prediction true, the efforts of our delivery people to deliver quality products on time within budgets, and to the efforts of our finance people raising the invoice on time and collecting money on time. Profitability refers to the systems that help our people make value-based sales, follow rigorous budgeting exercises, control costs, get best value for money and ensure the agreed-upon profitability. Derisking refers to systems that identify risks in various dimensions of our operations – people, geographies, technologies, application areas and services – collect periodic data, review the risk levels and mitigate them. Innovation is the best instrument for creating sustained differentiation. However it must be accepted that revenues for a corporation come from well understood ideas and business models. For example, most of a bank’s revenues will come from borrowing money at a certain rate and lending it at a higher rate. Part of the profits from such models will be used for research and development to generate new ideas. A few of these ideas will be seeded and some of them will become mainstream revenue earners. Therefore, it is very important for a leader to focus on innovation particularly when the times are good. Customers put food on our table. Therefore, we have to have a laser focus on exceeding their expectations, being open and honest with them, and ensuring that they look good in front of their customers. Employees are the only instruments we have to make our customers and investors succeed. Therefore, we have to create an environment of openness, meritocracy; fairness, transparency, honesty and accountability amongst our employees. Our investors understand that businesses will have their share of up and downs. They want us, the management, to level with them at all times. Therefore, â€Å"when in doubt, please disclose† is a good policy for a corporation. Society provides customers, employees, investors, bureaucrats and politicians. Therefore, earning the goodwill of every society that we operate in is extremely important for us. Global benchmarking is a powerful instrument that helps us to improve our self-confidence, compete with the best global competitors and serve our customers better. Success and Failure – We are our best friend and We are our Worst Enemies : We Indians must recognize as we have done at Infosys that we are our main enemies. There is no external enemy. Our failures are because of our lack of commitment to our cause, our inability to accept meritocracy and our indifference to honesty and want of a good work ethic amongst our leaders. Performance alone is the key differentiator. This stems from my belief that performance leads to recognition brings respect and respect brings power. Therefore if India wants to be a superpower as we keep hoping the only instrument we have is performance. We have demonstrated that businesses can be run legally and ethically that it is possible for an Indian company to benchmark with the global best and that any set of youngsters with values hard work team work and a little bit of smartness can indeed be successful entrepreneurs. This way we have enthused millions of young men and women in India. This in my opinion is Infosys’ greatest contribution. I have realized that humility grace and courtesy are genuine only when you have power and glory. That is why the leaders at Infosys have practiced this time and again. Humility provides us the strength of mind to learn from people better than us. Grace and courtesy make us worthy competitors. They also remind us that such glory and power are ephemeral and give us the strength to handle the days when we too could lose our shine. The crucial things we have to do in the future are to recognize our weaknesses; be open-minded about learning from people better than us; learn from our mistakes and not repeat them; be humble, honest and courteous; benchmark with the best in every dimension; use innovation to perform at global levels; and create a worthwhile vision and improve every day. This is how our mantra of focusing on speed imagination and excellence in execution will take this company very far. I have absolutely no doubt about it. I wish Kris and my fellow Infoscions the best in their journey forward. The board has been kind enough to name me the Chairman Emeritus. Therefore, I will always be there to add value if asked. Thanks, Narayana Murthy

Counter-Productive Behavior Indexâ„¢

Counter-Productive Behavior Indexâ„ ¢ Every single day employees don't show for work, steal cash and inventory, surf the web, e-mail on company time, and disrupt the workplace. It is burning up billions of dollars of profits and inventory each and every year. The Counter-Productive Behavior Index (CBI) is a contemporary integrity test – a cost-effective screening procedure for identifying job applicants whose behavior, attitudes, and work-related values are likely to interfere with their success as employees. The CBI consists of an objective questionnaire with 140 true/false items that can be completed by the job applicant in about 15 minutes. CBI is a self-scoring assessment available in both English and Spanish. The candidate completes a questionnaire which is then scored within seconds by the hiring manager or assistant. A manager's interview question guide is available. (Free with the first purchase). NEW! An online version called Candid Clues is available too. Candid Clues generates an objective report addressing degree of potential concern about the six major areas identified below, a measure of overall or total concern, and an assessment of self-serving response bias. Counter-Productive Behavior Index is the most cost-effective pre-employment screening test to identify high-risk and disruptive work-related attitudes and behaviors: †¢Employee Dependability †¢Honesty †¢Substance Abuse †¢Computer Abuse †¢Workplace Aggression †¢Sexual Harassment CBI is the perfect solution for all size businesses. Saves time and money. How CBI Works The basic meaning of the scores are as follows: Dependability Concerns. Low scorers are dependable, conscientious, and reliable. High scorers can be undependable, careless, lazy, and disorganized. Aggression Concerns. Low scorers handle their feelings well and are unlikely to be disruptive. High scorers can be aggressive, hostile, disruptive, and have poor control of their anger. Substance Abuse Concerns. Low scorers have no problems with alcohol and/or illegal drugs. High scorers report substantial use of alcohol and/or illegal drugs and may be disruptive. Honesty Concerns. Low scorers have no problem with workplace dishonesty. High scorers have the potential for dishonest behavior in the workplace. Computer Abuse Concerns. Low scorers use their workplace computers only for work-related uses. High scorers use their computers in ways that are unrelated to their work activities or are disruptive to their work. Sexual Harassment Concerns. Low scores are unlikely to engage in sexual harassment at work. High scorers have attitudes and behaviors regarding sexuality that are likely to be considered as harassment by the opposite sex. Overall Concerns. Low scorers report few instances of workplace deviance. High scorers report a wide range of deviant behaviors in the workplace and are likely to be problematic employees. (The Overall Concerns score is included in order to help identify applicants whose individual scale scores might all fall below the cutting score for inclusion in the Concern category, but whose total score does identify them as worthy of special attention. It is important to note that high Overall scores still require a close examination of the six individual scale scores. ) Good Impression. Low scorers are open about acknowledging their normal faults and imperfections. High scorers deny normal shortcomings and exaggerate personal virtues, suggesting that their scores on the other scales may be artificially depressed by their efforts to make a good impression. Scores on this scale can be used to determine the degree of confidence that should be placed in the remainder of the profile.