Module 3

 

       This book I am reading for this class is a mind opener, the more of it I read the better understanding I get for the title of the book and why Thomas Friedman keeps saying “the world is flat”.  What is offshoring? Offshoring is when a company moves their jobs or services to a foreign country, so they take advantage of cheaper labor, lower taxes, subsidized energy, and lower health care cost.  China has become an unparalleled zone for offshoring; it can collect so many low-wage workers, but can produce the same product in the same way. It is said that there are fifty thousand Chinese electronic suppliers. When China joined the World Trade Organization it took the World to a whole new level of offshoring.

      Supply chain is a supply/demand planner, a form of global collaboration drawing parts and products from everywhere in the World. It is a process that must take place to get the product to the right place and in a timely manner. They say that Wal-Mart is “China” in supply chains; it is the biggest retail company in the World. Wal-Mart built an inventory and supply chain system that changed the face of business. I love Wal-Mart, I shop there more than anywhere else the owner or CFO of Wal-Mart is very smart they know how to get and keep customers. The supply chain system they have is really cool, after the trucks drop their products off the workers place them on a conveyor belt, as its flowing its way in Wal-Mart has an electrical eye scanner that reads the bar code so when a customer buys the product and the computer scans the product it automatically sends a signal through the network to the supply so they know to make more and ship more out soon, then the process will start all over again.  

          I love google, I think it is the best place to find information and you can be anywhere and get on your phone and go to google and search love it. This is nice for businesses they can use it to find out all the information and get it faster so it saves them a lot of time. On google you can find a lot of back ground information on people, so businesses can search the employees history for back ground checks. I don’t like it and It is kind of scary how much information can get on someone.   

Module 2

 

 It amazes me how much the internet has expanded right in front of my eyes without even realizing it. When the internet first came out my thoughts were that it is evil and I didn’t want anything to do with it. I started using the internet about 5 years ago so everything was new to me, so to read about the process and all the software we use to do things is mind blowing to me, it makes me think that maybe the internet is not all evil.

Workflow Software is a management system that started up in 1990s. This software made things change in a huge way; people no longer have to work from their desk they can work from anywhere that has the internet connection. PC and Email were the biggest breakthrough in the workflow software so people can connect with others like never before.  This software saves so much time and money for companies and individuals all around the world; it made getting the work load done so much faster, and makes work so much easier.  Using standardized Protocols you can set your computer up to take over for you and do things for you without anyone being there to help. I think it is awesome how easy it is now for someone to start up their own business, and run it all by their self without having to hire anyone to work for them, and can make money doing it from their own home.     

With Community developed software people are able to share things like music, movies, and books for free cutting out the traditional providers. Community-developed software movement, Wikipedia, and Blogging/ podcasting are three forms of uploading. With uploading we can all be producers, and critics. I can upload a song I wrote and hear what people think about it. The cool thing about Community developed software is it is free to use. I find it really nice to download a movie that I would like to watch and not have to pay for it or to go anywhere to get it. The bad side to this software is that a lot of people are going out of business because when you don’t have to go leave your house or pay for things why would.

Outsourcing is a day to day business strategy.  Out-sourcing reduces and controls operating cost and it improve company focus. It is a strategy, where an organization contracts out major functions to specialized and efficient service providers.  Outsourcing helps companies mitigate risk, can deliver significant savings, and to provide a buffer capital fund to companies that could be leveraged that best profits the company.   

 

Globalization

The book we are reading “The World is Flat” By. Thomas Friedman, is an interesting book so far. It is crazy to read this book about things I have known about but never thought about, until I started reading this book and it opened up my mind to how the world has changed and is still changing and how it affects us as Americans.

In this book Friedman talked about 3 different eras of Globalization and how each era affects the world making it smaller with each era. Globalization 1.0 began in 1492, opening trade between the Old World and the New World, until 1800. Globalization 2.0 lasted from 1800 to 2000 when multinationals companies went global for markets and labor. In this era in 1998 the internet and e-commerce just started taking off, and the connectedness of the world's economies and cultures grew very quickly, because of this he says that around the year 2000 we entered a new era. Globalization 3.0: the flat world platform, the newfound power for people to work jointly with each other and to strive globally, including the rise of the telegraph, electronic communications, most remarkably mobile phones and the Internet, connecting world wide of people in new ways by the year 2010. With this era people had more opportunities to compete with other people all over the world, and this is flattening and shrinking the world.

According to Friedman the events which flattened the earth was the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall helped us to see the world differently, to see it as something better, Belin Wall was blocking are vision and thoughts on the world being a single market, ecosystem and community, “It was a way of preventing a kind of global view of our future.” We just couldn’t think globally about the world.  Common standards create a flatter and level playing field. Windows- enable PC, along with the fall of the Wall, begun the whole flattening of our world.  Apple, Windows, IBM PCs and others gave us power, a way to communicate and get information in minutes.

  Netscape a web browser that allows you to create, organize, and link documents to make it easier for us to look at on the internet. The web could not be without the net, the net has programs to communicate between computers for the web. The net is useful because people want information, knowledge and wisdom and don’t have to know that much about computers. Netscape was a big part in the flattening force; it brought the internet alive, people started wanting to do other things on the internet and needing more computers, software, and networks.  Netscape is very important in our lives, jobs that can be done in an hour, would take a month. Being able to communicate with people out of the country is amazing to me, a lot of people world be lost without it.  I believe Netscape is Globalization 3.0 because it gave everyone the opportunity to upload to the cite directly, and to connect with each other around the world.