Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Tolerance Range:

Tolerance range is the difference between the upper specification limit and the lower specification limit.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Copy Worksheet to a New Workbook:

1. Right-click the appropriate sheet tab.
2. From the shortcut menu, select Move or Copy. The Move or Copy dialog box enables one to copy the sheet either to a different location in the current workbook or to a different workbook. Be sure to mark the Create a copy checkbox.

Search Calendar:

Not sure when that meeting on a specific topic is? Want to quickly find someone's birthday? Know you have a meeting in a particular location, but can't remember what the meeting is for? Well, when you are viewing your calendar, you can quickly locate a document by searching for a word that is displayed in screen.

Simply start typing the letters that the word you want to find. The "Starts with..." dialog box will appear, and you then click Search, or press the Enter key. Notes will highlight the document you are looking for. This is especially useful in the By Month view.




Note:
- "Starts with" search forward in time from the day you have highlighted, so you need to pay attention to which day you have selected when you start the search.
- You don't have to type the entire word, just the letters your search term starts with.
- This works from all calendar views, not just the 2-day as shown above.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Efficient Consumer Response (ECR):

Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) is a joint trade and industry body working towards making the grocery sector as a whole more responsive to consumer demand and promote the removal of unnecessary costs from the supply chain.
There are four focus areas under ECR: Demand management, Supply management, Enablers and Integrators, which are intended to be addressed as an integrated set. These form the basis of the ECR Global Scorecard.
To better serve the consumer, ECR has set out to invert the traditional model and break down non-productive barriers. The impacts have been extensive and continue to resonate across industry.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Quickly Replicate Text or Graphics:

Here's a quick way to make copies of text or graphics in Word:
1. Select the item or text you want to copy.
2. Press and hold down the CTRL key.
3. Then use the mouse to drag the item to the desired position.
A copy of the original item is made right where you want it. This is helpful when you're creating a document that will include a lot of repeated text or images.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Theory of Constrains:

Theory of Constraints (TOC) is an overall management philosophy that is geared to help organizations continually achieve their goals.
Theory of Constraints is based on the premise that the rate of goal achievement is limited by at least one constraining process. Only by increasing throughput (flow) at the bottleneck process can overall throughput be increased. The five focusing steps aim to ensure ongoing improvement efforts are centered around the organization's constraints.
Assuming the goal of the organization has been articulated (e.g., "Make money now and in the future") the steps are:
1. Identify the constraint (the resource/policy that prevents the organization from obtaining more of the goal)
2. Decide how to exploit the constraint (make sure the constraint's time is not wasted doing things that it should not do)
3. Subordinate all other processes to above decision (align the whole system/organization to support the decision made above)
4. Elevate the constraint (if required/possible, permanently increase capacity of the constraint; "buy more")
5. If, as a result of these steps, the constraint has moved, return to Step 1. Don't let inertia become the constraint.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Tamil New Year:

Puthandu, or better known as Tamil New Year, is the celebration of the first day of the Tamil New Year traditionally in mid-April by people of Tamil origin in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry in India, and by the Tamil population in Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka.
The Tamil New Year follows the Nirayanam vernal equinox and generally falls on April 14 of the Gregorian year. April 14th marks the first day of the traditional Tamil calendar. The 60-year cycle of the Tamil Calendar is also found in many North and South Indian traditional calendars, with the same name and sequence of years. Its earliest reference is to be found in Surya Siddhanta, which Varahamihirar (550 CE) believed to be the most accurate of the then current theories of astronomy. This 60-year cycle is also used in the Chinese calendar. April 2009 to April 2010 is called as Virodhi Year.
Every year in the month of Chitterai (the first month of the Tamil solar calendar), in the temple city of Madurai, the Chitterai Thiruvizha is celebrated in the Meenakshi Temple. A huge exhibition is also held, called Chitterai Porutkaatchi. In some parts of Southern Tamil Nadu, it is also called Chitterai Vishu. The day is marked with a feast in Tamil homes and entrances to the houses are decorated elaborately with kolams.
On the day of Tamil New Year, a big Car Festival is held at Tiruvadamarudur near Kumbakonam. Festivals are also held at Tiruchirapalli, Kanchipuram and many other places.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

XML:

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages. It is classified as an extensible language, because it allows the user to define the mark-up elements. XML's purpose is to aid information systems in sharing structured data, especially via the Internet, to encode documents, and to serialize data.

XML's set of tools helps developers in creating web pages but its usefulness goes well beyond that. XML, in combination with other standards, makes it possible to define the content of a document separately from its formatting, making it easy to reuse that content in other applications or for other presentation environments. Most importantly, XML provides a basic syntax that can be used to share information between different kinds of computers, different applications, and different organizations without needing to pass through many layers of conversion.

XML is recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is a fee-free open standard. The recommendation specifies lexical grammar and parsing requirements.
An XML document has two correctness levels:
• Well-formed. A well-formed document conforms to the XML syntax rules; e.g. if a start-tag (< >) appears without a corresponding end-tag (), it is not well-formed. A document not well-formed is not in XML; a conforming parser is disallowed from processing it.
• Valid. A valid document additionally conforms to semantic rules, either user-defined or in an XML schema, especially DTD; e.g. if a document contains an undefined element, then it is not valid; a validating parser is disallowed from processing it.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Stakeholder Analysis:

What is it?
A stakeholder analysis is a technique you can use to identify and assess the importance of key people, groups of people, or institutions that may significantly influence the success of your activity or project. You can use this technique alone or with your team members.
Who uses it?
Members of your quality improvement team.
Why use it?
Use a stakeholder analysis to:
• identify people, groups, and institutions that will influence your initiative (either positively or negatively)
• anticipate the kind of influence, positive or negative, these groups will have on your initiative
• develop strategies to get the most effective support possible for your initiative and reduce any obstacles to successful implementation of your program.
When to use it?
Conduct a stakeholder analysis in the early stages of planning a quality improvement initiative.
How to use it:
Develop a Stakeholder Analysis Matrix like the one below:
Stakeholder Stakeholder Interest(s) in the Project Assessment of Impact Potential Strategies for Obtaining Support or Reducing Obstacles



1. Organize group brainstorming. Identify all the people, groups, and institutions that will affect or be affected by your initiative and list them in the column under "Stakeholder."
2. Once you have a list of all potential stakeholders, review the list and identify the specific interests these stakeholders have in your project. Consider issues like: the project's benefit(s) to the stakeholder; the changes that the project might require the stakeholder to make; and the project activities that might cause damage or conflict for the stakeholder. Record these under the column "Stakeholder Interest(s) in the Project."
3. Now review each stakeholder listed in column one. Ask the question: how important are the stakeholder's interests to the success of the proposed project? Consider:
o The role the key stakeholder must play for the project to be successful, and the likelihood that the stakeholder will play this role
o The likelihood and impact of a stakeholder's negative response to the project
Assign A for extremely important, B for fairly important, and C for not very important. Record these letters in the column entitled "Assessment of Impact."
4. The final step is to consider the kinds of things that you could do to get stakeholder support and reduce opposition. Consider how you might approach each of the stakeholders. What kind of information will they need? How important is it to involve the stakeholder in the planning process? Are there other groups or individuals that might influence the stakeholder to support your initiative? Record your strategies for obtaining support or reducing obstacles to your project in the last column in the matrix.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Keyboard shortcuts for formatting paragraphs:

Format Paragraphs: Single-space lines = CTRL+1
Double-space lines = CTRL+2
Set 1.5-line spacing = CTRL+5
Add one-line spacing preceding a paragraph = CTRL+0 (zero)
Remove one-line spacing preceding a paragraph = CTRL+0 (zero)
Center a paragraph = CTRL+E
Justify a paragraph = CTRL+J
Left-align a paragraph = CTRL+L
Right-align a paragraph = CTRL+R
Indent a paragraph from the left = CTRL+M
Remove a paragraph indent from the left = CTRL+SHIFT+M
Create a hanging indent = CTRL+T
Reduce a hanging indent = CTRL+SHIFT+T
Remove paragraph formatting = CTRL+Q
Apply a style = CTRL+SHIFT+S
Start AutoFormat = ALT+CTRL+K
Apply the Normal style = CTRL+SHIFT+N
Apply the Heading 1 style = ALT+CTRL+1
Apply the Heading 2 style = ALT+CTRL+2
Apply the Heading 3 style = ALT+CTRL+3
Apply the List style = CTRL+SHIFT+L

Monday, April 6, 2009

Code Date:

A date and source code printed on an item to indicate its shelf life. Date codes simplify rotation and help prevent the sale of off-quality or spoiled products.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Reducing the size of the document:

If you have to make documents using MS Word and you make many formatting changes for the paragraph, fonts, page etc., you will see your file size gets bigger. Microsoft Word saves files by blocking, so any change you made for your document it will create a new block with the new formatting and disappear the old block without deleting it from the file.
You can solve this problem.
1. If you open your file and select File \ Save As and give your file a new name, it will save only the active blocks with out the old ones.
2. If you compare the two files you will see a difference in size
There is, however, a much easier way.
1. Choose Tools
2. Options...
3. Open the Save tab
4. Uncheck Allow Fast Saves
This makes Word rewrite the entire document file from scratch each time it is saved. The save command takes slightly longer, but your files can be drastically smaller (especially if you've done lots of formatting changes).

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Repeating calendar Entries:

When you schedule a meeting, click on repeat, and you will see a wide variety of options. You can choose when the meeting should repeat (weekly, monthly, yearly), for how long (duration or to a specific date), and even control things like what happens on weekends (move to Friday or Monday, or don't schedule at all). You can even choose "Custom" to select specific dates if none of the available combinations of parameters accomplishes what you are looking for. The dates are computed and displayed for you in real time on the right hand side.

File/Folder Shortcuts:

Whether you’re saving a file or opening a file try these shortcuts
Alt + 1 Go to previous folder
Alt + 2 Go up one folder level
Alt + 3 Search the web
Alt + 4 or Delete deletes selected file.
Alt + 5 Create a new folder
Alt + 6 repeatedly Cycle through all views.
Alt + 7 Display the Tools menu

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

April 1:

April 1 is the 91st day of the year (92nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 274 days remaining until the end of the year. April 1 is most notable in the Western world for being April Fools' Day.
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day, although not a holiday in its own right, is a notable day celebrated in many countries on April 1. The day is marked by the commission of hoaxes and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, enemies, and neighbors, or sending them on fool's errand, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. Traditionally, in some countries, the jokes only last until noon: like UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, someone who plays a trick after noon is called an "April Fool". Elsewhere, such as in Ireland, France, and the USA, the jokes last all day. Another origin is that April 1 was counted the first day of the year in France. When King Charles IX changed that to January 1, some people stayed with April 1. Those who did were called "April Fools" and were taunted by their neighbors.