Case 4.4 Waste Management

Waste Management, Inc. Waste Management, Inc. , incorporated in 1968, had become a leader in the industry of waste management services ranging from industrial operations to curbside collection. This company had become synonymous with many different kinds of disposal services that allowed for the company to grow and grow with a solid base over the course of twenty-eight years. Finally in 1996, the company reported total assets of almost $20 billion with net income close to $200 million. However, even with this growth and solid base, the company was feeling competitive pressures and net income was on the decline.Everyone from local to national collection companies were now charging less to the customer and this was taking a major toll on the gross margins and net income of Waste Management. With a balance sheet that was heavily based on equipment and land Waste Management was beginning to see that the only way to keep the company growing was to use depreciation and salvage value manipu lation to lower the direct hits of these expenses. Now that the issues were becoming large enough to notice, the SEC began stepping in to investigate the operations, assets and accounting methods that were being used.Due to this, the company issued a release saying they would be amending and restating certain periods of their reporting and issuing new form 10-Ks and 10-Qs. Once the restatement occurred and a $3. 5 billion dollar loss was found the company’s incorrect accounting processes were finally exposed. This resulted in net losses for the company as well as debt and equity ratings dropping precipitously. The SEC now launched a formal investigation into the accounting processes and found many misstatements from avoiding depreciation to improper capitalization and failure to accrue to proper liabilities.Many techniques were used and the end result was that many of the management team’s members were named as defendants in this case as it was seen that they were the ones who were primarily responsible for the execution of this fraud. Through the investigation, it was found that Arthur Andersen helped to keep the fraud going by not demanding that PAJEs be undertaken to correct errors. Instead, Arthur Andersen, who viewed Waste Management as their â€Å"jewel† client, entered into an agreement with Waste Mangement to fix these errors in coming years.This constituted an agreement to cover up fraud and Andersen was then sued for civil fraud by the SEC that carried a heavy price. The company stock plunged and Arthur Andersen’s partners were fined and banned from the auditing of public companies for up to five years. This overall lack of internal control and greed in the company ultimately led to a downfall for many partners and managing members at both Andersen and Waste Management. Case Questions: 1) Three conditions are often present when fraud exists.First, management or employees have an incentive or are under pressure, which provi des them a reason to commit the fraud act. Second, circumstances exist – for example, absent or ineffective internal controls or the ability for management to override controls – that provide an opportunity for the fraud to be perpetrated. Third, those involved are able to rationalize the fraud as being consistent with their personal code of ethics. Some individuals possess an attitude, character, or set of ethical values that allows them to knowingly commit a fraudulent act.Using hindsight, identify factors present at Waste Management that are indicative of each of the three fraud conditions: incentives, opportunities, and attitudes. Incentive Management teams of publicly traded companies are always under enormous pressure from shareholders to meet and exceed earnings expectations. Many shareholders view year over year growth, and performance vs. earnings as a sign of health of the company they’ve invested in. The pressure on management teams is compounded when poor results could easily spell the end of an executive’s tenure with the company.In the case of Waste Management during the 1990’s, founder & CEO Dean Buntrock created and nurtured an entire culture of fraud. While Waste Management continued to produce false numbers to the public, Buntrock used company money to make charitable contributions and present himself as a decent, ethical person (Securities and Exchange Commission: 2002). He received large amounts of money while he perpetrated the fraud, and his executive team was incentivized for their role as well. Opportunity At the time the fraud existed, internal controls were almost non-existent.The management team employed a number of improper accounting practices that did not comply with GAAP. As stated earlier, CEO Dean Buntrock not only allowed internal controls to be bypassed, he encouraged them to be ignored and shaped accounting policy with the sole purpose of making the targeted earnings numbers every year. The auditing firm, Arthur Andersen, LLP, was also shown to have complicity. The partners at Andersen knew that the company’s policies were not compliant so they provided Waste Management with proposed adjusting entries to their books.Waste Management refused to make the adjustments so Andersen had Waste Management sign off on a list of 32 steps the company must do to change its practices. The document legally constituted an agreement among the two parties and clearly shows that Andersen was aware of fraud that Waste Management had covered up in the past. Furthermore, Andersen did not stand up to the company and continued to issue unqualified audit opinions. Andersen was motivated by greed, as they billed Waste Management over $25M in seven years.Additionally, until 1997, Waste Management had never hired a CFO or CAO that had not worked for Andersen in the past. During the 1990’s when the fraud occurred, 14 former Andersen employees worked for Waste Management, many in key positions. The circumstances existed so that an outsider, who could wind up being a whistleblower, seemed to not be allowed into the inner circle where the fraud was happening. Waste Management could be ensured by the high fees it was paying Andersen that the company would have a steady stream of potential finance/accounting employees who understood the fraud and how to continue to perpetrate it.Attitude One’s attitude and ethical beliefs shape how they perform under circumstances in life. The two main reasons why people choose to act unethically, like in the Waste Management case, are that their standards are different than society as a whole, or the person chooses to act in a selfish manner (Securities and Exchange Commission: 2002). Greed, praise and recognition can all be motivating factors for someone to behave unethically. Waste Management’s Dean Buntrock possessed a set of ethics (or lack thereof) that allowed him to commit fraud.He was clearly motivated by gre ed, was selfish, and had no issues with defrauding investors. He acquired almost $17M in personal wealth while investors lost billions of dollars of value in their shares of Waste Management. He also perhaps rationalized his behavior. He may have calculated that his odds of being detected were very low since he knew that the auditors at Arthur Andersen would issue an unqualified audit opinion regardless of how creative he got with his accounting fraud. The auditors also clearly acted unethically in their dealings with Waste Management.Even though they were aware that fraud was occurring, as stated above, they continued to issue unqualified audit opinion and bend to the will of Waste Management executives. The auditors never stood up to the company, most likely out of fear of losing a client that paid them almost $25M a year in fees. Additionally, Waste Management had a track record of hiring Andersen auditors into high level position, so they were acting out of greed as well. 2) Rev iew Waste Management’s Consolidated Balance Sheet as of December 31, 1996.Identify accounts whose balances were likely based on significant management estimation techniques. Describe the reasons why estimates were required for each of the accounts identified. Waste Management had several fixed/long-term asset accounts whose balances were based on estimation techniques. On the December 31, 1996 balance sheet, the Vehicles and equipment account is grossly overstated. The company â€Å"avoided depreciation expenses on their garbage trucks by both assigning unsupported and inflated salvage values and extending their useful lives† (Arens: 2011).In other words, company management inflated their â€Å"vehicles and equipment† account through estimation. With regards to the Land – disposal sites account, Waste Management also assigned random salvage values for many assets that had no salvage values at all. Estimates are required because there is no way to determin e exactly what the resell value of a truck is 10 years from now. The accounting team must use their best judgment to estimate values based on past and present data.The realm of value estimation is a significant gray area for accountants where fraud can be committed. To that end, accumulated depreciation is another account that is grossly understated on the December 31, 1996 balance sheet. Accountants must estimate depreciation values based on a particular method of depreciation, but they can lessen the effect of depreciation on the balance sheet by artificially increasing the salvage value of assets and/or by lengthening the estimated useful life of an asset.Again, estimates are required because an accountant’s assumption is necessary to determine the expected values because of the impossibility of predicting what will happen in the future. 3. Describe why accounts involving significant management estimation are generally viewed as inherently risky. a. When dealing with manag ement estimations, many different factors always come into play which are not always easily understandable. Management has the ability to use many different models, industry standards, and internally developed methods in order to properly or improperly state the item under estimation.For this reason, auditors must always have some kind of backup to show both consistency and a clear line of numbers, methods and evaluations in order to arrive at an ending number of estimation. However, as easy as this may be to say, in the presence of fraud, numbers can be manipulated and tweaked to arrive at certain assumptions that can give the appearance of consistency while still not having a proper base. Along with this, auditors, while well versed and understanding of industries, do not have the time nor the knowledge to properly assess every single factor that may be used in the valuation of management estimates.Management estimation techniques vary far and wide and when dealing with a client t hat uses techniques not akin to the industry, it can be very hard to truly feel comfortable about the numbers used and the valuations presented. 4. Review Auditing Standards (AU) Section 342, Auditing Accounting Estimates, and describe the auditor’s responsibilities for examining management-generated estimates. Also, AU Section 342 provides guidance to assist auditors in examining estimates. Describe the techniques commonly used by auditors to evaluate the reasonableness of management’s estimates. b.According to the PCAOB, an auditor is responsible for considering all of the subjective and objective factors that go into the management estimates. The auditor must obtain sufficient evidence to reasonable agree that: i. All estimates that could be material to the notes have been developed ii. They are reasonable given the circumstances iii. The estimates are presented in conformity with applicable accounting principles and are properly disclosed (PCAOB US: 1989). There ar e, of course, a plethora of guidelines offered to the auditors relating to this inherently risky field of auditing management estimates.However, these guidelines not only help to evaluate the actual estimates and their uses, but also help to look into the reasonability of the estimates and the need for them. In order to assess the reasonability of an estimate an auditor must have the information from prior years present and available so as to compare both the inputs and the outputs of all the estimates (PCAOB US: 1989). This allows for the auditor to see if there are any divergences or deviations from the usual historical outputs of the estimates.This also can give the auditor the ability to see what inputs are able to be manipulated or subject to potential bias. This insight can prove very necessary when so many numbers and formulas are involved. Along with evaluating the historical inputs/outputs and the processes used, the auditor should have their own view on the estimates so as to agree upon the use of the estimate. In order to truly have one’s own view, the past is of course necessary but the future transactions and events can help to further enhance the reasonability of the estimate (or malign the use of it, if such be the case).These subsequent events can help an auditor to decide if there should be other key factors used or if changes in the business and industry should become significant in the assumptions. The last idea, and offering, by these auditing standards is to hire a specialist (PCAOB US: 1989). Of course this is something should be done if, after review, the auditor determines that they need further expertise or analysis on the assumptions. At times, an industry can be some complex and calculations so convoluted that an auditor has no choice but to hire an industry professional to liaise with regarding the factors and computations. . The Waste Management fraud primarily centered on inappropriate estimates of salvage values and useful lives for property and equipment. Describe techniques Andersen auditors could have used to assess the reasonableness of those estimates used to create Waste Management’s financial statements. Arthur Andersen auditors failed miserably on the audit inspection of waste management from 1992-1997. The auditors failed to realize the inappropriate salvage estimates and depreciation values of Waste Management’s Equipment.The first thing the auditors should have done was to check the accuracy of the estimates. The auditors should have checked every year in order to make sure the estimates were accurate. By checking the accuracy of the estimates Andersen Auditors would have seen in 1996 that Waste Management changed the salvage values of their equipment. Waste Management was allowed to change the salvage value, but the auditors should have made sure that it was a reasonable change, which is it was not. Next, the auditors would have been able to check these estimates on industry and governmental standards.By checking against the governmental and industry standards the auditors would have once again been able to see that the salvage value was unreasonable. Another technique Andersen could have used was to get an independent estimate. By getting an independent estimate the auditors would have been able to compare the independent estimate to the salvage value that Waste Management was applying to their equipment. These numbers would have been able to be compared and evaluated to each other in order to figure out the proper salvage amount to use. The auditor is responsible for checking these numbers and they did not do their job.Also, the auditors could have done some more research on the items being salvaged and applied the fair value to each one of the items. This way the auditors would be able to back up these different estimates when comparing them to the estimates given by Waste Management. Andersen should have also seen red flags when these new salvage n umbers were given. They were not historically accurate and were completely off from prior years. Part of the reason Andersen did not do anything was due to former Andersen auditors working for Waste Management. Andersen needs to be independent and they were not.By not being independent from Waste Management it caused them to â€Å"overlook† an estimate that caused stock holders to lose billions of dollars. 6. Several of the Waste Management accounting personnel were formerly employed by the company’s auditor, Arthur Andersen. What are the risks associated with allowing former auditors to work for a client in key accounting positions? Research Section 206 of the Sarbanes? Oxley Act of 2002 and provide a brief summary of the restrictions related to the ability of a public company to hire accounting personnel who were formerly employed by the company’s audit firm.As stated in the case several of Waste Management accounting personnel use to work for Arthur Andersen as an auditors. This led to many problems for both companies. The auditor needs to remain independent because of two main reasons. One is to make sure the audit is done unbiased and to make sure the client is unable to trick the auditor. If the client knows what the auditor is looking for than they can manipulate the numbers in order to trick the auditor from catching these manipulations. The main risk with this practice is fraud. This can take place by the auditor or the client.If the client use to work for the auditor, just like in this place, the client will know exactly how the audits are done and exactly what the auditor is looking for. This can cause a client to post fraudulent numbers to numerous documents. The client will be able to insert these fraudulent numbers in to documents that the auditor will not look at. Also, the auditor can cook the books as well so to speak. The auditor cannot check all of the documents due to being friends with the client, due to some of the fo rmer auditors working for the client now.Also, the auditor can get a little lazy when it comes to doing the audit. What is meant by this is that the auditor might not do such a thorough job due to the fact that that a former auditor is doing the financial statements and they know exactly how to do them. According to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Section 206, the SEC has placed restrictions on former auditors working for a public company as accounting personnel. The section talks about conflict of interest in regards to this issue. SEC. 206. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.Section 10A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U. S. C. 78j–1), as amended by this Act, is amended by adding at the end the following: ‘‘(l) CONFLICTS OF INTEREST. —It shall be unlawful for a registered public accounting firm to perform for an issuer any audit service required by this title, if a chief executive officer, controller, chief financial officer, chief accounting officer, or any person serving in an equivalent position for the issuer, was employed by that registered independent public accounting firm and participated in H. R. 3763—31 ny capacity in the audit of that issuer during the 1-year period preceding the date of the initiation of the audit. ’’ (Sarbanes Oxley: 2002). Basically, section 206 states, that any public accounting firm cannot hire a CEO, Controller, CFO, Chief Accounting Officer that was a formerly employed by the auditor that is performing the audit for that publically traded company. That is the only restriction that is placed by section 206. As you can see on this case there are many risks and problems that are involved when a public traded company has formed audit members on their staff. 7.Discuss possible reasons why the Andersen partners allegedly allowed Waste Management executives to avoid recording the identified accounting errors. How could accounting firms ensure that auditors do not succumb to similar pressu res on other audit engagements? Waste Management was a â€Å"crown jewel† client, and Arthur Andersen had been their auditor since before the company went public in 1971. Andersen and Waste Management had a long history of working together. Management officials at Waste Management were previous employees of Andersen and Anderson did not want to lose one of their most important clients.From 1991 to 1997, Anderson received $7. 5 million in audit fees and $11. 8 million in fees for tax, attest work, regulatory issues, and consulting services. In addition, $6 million was billed to Waste Management’s headquarters for non-audit fees. In order to please the client, and avoid losing them, certain fraudulent events occurred. Andersen advised Management to make â€Å"Proposed Adjusting Journal Entries (PAJEs) to adjust expense and income accounts in the financial statements. Management failed to comply with Andersen’s advice and they entered into a secret agreement to wr ite off the errors.The agreement â€Å"Summary of Action Steps,† contained incorrect accounting practices and listed 32 steps that the company must perform to correct the practices. It would allow Waste Management to cover up past frauds by committing future frauds. Andersen was hoping that this would benefit the company. However, the auditors did seem to ignore that refused to correct known accounting misstatements. Company auditors and management had personal relationships, so management was able to pressure auditors. Management knew what they were doing because they were former auditors.Forcing the changes in accounting practices could result in an end to Waste Management as a company and Andersen would lose that income. In order to avoid these situations, Sarbanes Oxley introduced Section 203 that helps with issues that a firm might face. Section 203 includes partner rotation, which forces the audit partner on the assignment to rotate after 5 years. However, the rule has an exception to partner rotation for firms with no more than five public company audit clients and fewer than ten partners. These rules apply as of the first day of a company's first fiscal year beginning after May 6, 2003, with time served as the lead and concurring partners prior to May 6, 2003 being included in determining rotation periods† (Alali ; Romero: 2012). Audit firms can also give employee training on ethics so they are aware of company values. Bibliography Alali, F. , ; Romero, S. (2012). Auditor changes before, during, and post-section 203 of sarbanes-oxley act. Internal Auditing, 27(1), 25-30. Retrieved from http://bluehawk. monmouth. edu:2048/? url=/docview/1009737322? accountid=12532Arens, Elder, Beasley, Auditing And Assurance Services: An Integrated Approach- 14th Edition. Chapter 4. Congress, United States. Sarbanes Oxley 2002. 2002. fl1. findlaw. com/news. findlaw. com/cnn/†¦ /sarbanesoxley072302. pdf (accessed March 2, 2013). PCAOB US. 1989. â€Å"P CAOB AU Section 342 Auditing Accounting Estimates. † PCAOB. Accessed March 2, 2013. http://pcaobus. org/Standards/Auditing/Pages/AU342. aspx. Securities and Exchange Commission, Waste Management Founder, Five Other Former Top Officers Sued for Massive Fraud, http://www. sec. gov/news/headlines/wastemgmt6. htm (March 2002).

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Acknowledgements The author gratefully acknowledges those people who helped in the research and writing of Bloodsucking Fiends: Mark Joseph and Mark Anderson for help with research in the Bay Area. Rachelle Stambal, Jean Brody, Liz Ziemska, and Dee Dee Leichtfuss for their careful reads and thoughtful suggestions. My editors, Michael Korda and Chuck Adams, for their clean hands and composure. And my agent, Nick Ellison, for his patience, guidance, friendship, and hard work. In memory of my father: Jack Davis Moore Part I Fledgling Chapter 1 Death Sundown painted purple across the great Pyramid while the Emperor enjoyed a steaming whiz against a dumpster in the alley below. A low fog worked its way up from the bay, snaked around columns and over concrete lions to wash against the towers where the West's money was moved. The financial district: an hour ago it ran with rivers of men in gray wool and women in heels; now the streets, built on sunken ships and gold-rush garbage, were deserted – quiet except for a foghorn that lowed across the bay like a lonesome cow. The Emperor shook his scepter to clear the last few drops, shivered, then zipped up and turned to the royal hounds who waited at his heels. â€Å"The foghorn sounds especially sad this evening, don't you think?† The smaller of the dogs, a Boston terrier, dipped his head and licked his chops. â€Å"Bummer, you are so simple. My city is decaying before your eyes. The air is thick with poison, the children are shooting each other in the street, and now this plague, this horrible plague is killing my people by the thousands, and all you think about is food.† The Emperor nodded to the larger dog, a golden retriever. â€Å"Lazarus knows the weight of our responsibility. Does one have to die to find dignity? I wonder.† Lazarus lowered his ears and growled. â€Å"Have I offended you, my friend?† Bummer began growling and backing away from the dumpster. The Emperor turned to see the lid of the dumpster being slowly lifted by a pale hand. Bummer barked a warning. A figure stood up in the dumpster, his hair dark and wild and speckled with trash, skin white as bone. He vaulted out of the dumpster and hissed at the little dog, showing long white fangs. Bummer yelped and cowered behind the Emperor's leg. â€Å"That will be quite enough of that,† the Emperor commanded, puffing himself up and tucking his thumbs under the lapels of his worn overcoat. The vampire brushed a bit of rotted lettuce from his black shirt and grinned. â€Å"I'll let you live,† he said, his voice like a file on ancient rusted metal. â€Å"That's your punishment.† The Emperor's eyes went wide with terror, but he held his ground. The vampire laughed, then turned and walked away. The Emperor felt a chill run up his neck as the vampire disappeared into the fog. He hung his head and thought, Not this. My city is dying of poison and plague and now this – this creature – stalks the streets. The responsibility is suffocating. Emperor or not, I am only a man. I am weak as water: an entire empire to save and right now I would sell my soul for a bucket of the Colonel's crispy-fried chicken. Ah, but I must be strong for the troops. It could be worse, I suppose. I could be the Emperor of Oakland. â€Å"Chins up, boys,† the Emperor said to his hounds. â€Å"If we are to battle this monster, we will need our strength. There is a bakery in North Beach that will presently be dumping the day-old. Let's be off.† He shuffled away thinking, Nero fiddled while his empire went to ashes; I shall eat leathery pastries. As the Emperor trudged up California Street, trying to balance the impotence of power with the promise of a powdered-sugar doughnut, Jody was leaving the Pyramid. She was twenty-six and pretty in a way that made men want to tuck her into flannel sheets and kiss her on the forehead before leaving the room; cute but not beautiful. As she passed under the Pyramid's massive concrete buttresses she caught herself limping from a panty-hose injury. It didn't hurt, exactly, the run that striped the back of her leg from heel to knee, the result of a surly metal file drawer (Claims, X-Y-Z) that had leaped out and snagged her ankle; but she was limping nonetheless, from the psychological damage. She thought, My closet is starting to look like an ostrich hatchery. I've either got to start throwing out L'eggs eggs or get a tan on my legs and quit wearing nylons. She'd never had a tan, couldn't get one, really. She was a milk-white, green-eyed redhead who burned and freckled with sun. When she was half a block from her bus stop, the wind-driven fog won and Jody experienced total hair-spray failure. Neat waist-length waves frizzed to a wild red cape of curl and tangle. Great, she thought, once again I'll get home looking like Death eating a cracker. Kurt will be so pleased. She pulled her jacket closer around her shoulders against the chill, tucked her briefcase under her breasts like a schoolgirl carrying books, and limped on. Ahead of her on the sidewalk she saw someone standing by the glass door of a brokerage office. Green light from the CRTs inside silhouetted him in the fog. She thought about crossing the street to avoid him, but she'd have to cross back again in a few feet to catch her bus. She thought, I'm done working late. It's not worth it. No eye contact, that's the plan. As she passed the man, she looked down at her running shoes (her heels were in her briefcase). That's it. Just a couple more steps†¦ A hand caught in her hair and jerked her off her feet, her briefcase went skittering across the sidewalk and she started to scream. Another hand clamped over her mouth and she was dragged off the street into an alley. She kicked and flailed, but he was too strong, immovable. The smell of rotten meat filled her nostrils and she gagged even while trying to scream. Her attacker spun her around and yanked on her hair, pulling her head back until she thought her neck would snap. Then she felt a sharp pain on the side of her throat and the strength to fight seemed to evaporate. Across the alley she could see a soda can and an old Wall Street Journal, a wad of bubble gum stuck to the bricks, a â€Å"No Parking† sign: details, strangely slowed down and significant. Her vision began to tunnel dark, like an iris closing, and she thought, These will be the last things I see. The voice in her head was calm, resolved. As everything went dark, her attacker slapped her across the face and she opened her eyes and saw the thin white face before her. He was speaking to her. â€Å"Drink,† he said. Something warm and wet was shoved into her mouth. She tasted warm iron and salt and gagged again. It's his arm. He's shoved his arm in my mouth and my teeth have broken. I'm tasting blood. â€Å"Drink!† A hand clamped over her nose. She struggled, tried to breathe, tried to pull his arm out of her mouth to get air, sucked for air and nearly choked on blood. Suddenly she found herself sucking, drinking hungrily. When he tried to pull his arm away she clutched at it. He tore it from her mouth, twisted her around and bit her throat again. After a moment, she felt herself fall. The attacker was tearing at her clothes, but she had nothing left to fight with. She felt a roughness against the skin of her breasts and belly, then he was off her. â€Å"You'll need that,† he said, and his voice echoed in her head as if he had shouted down a canyon. â€Å"Now you can die.† Jody felt a remote sense of gratitude. With his permission, she gave up. Her heart slowed, lugged, and stopped.

Case study Of Fairview Distribution Centre

Supply Chain and Logistics Management forms one of the most integral parts of any business organization whereby the company manages its resources and sees to it that all the resources are utilized effectively and the organization incurs the minimum amount of cost. In the given report, such a case relating to the Fairview School Board has been presented (Christopher, 2016).   The company presently holds a distribution center whereby it distributes all the stationery to the different organizations from one center. This has led to extremely high costs for the company and hence, it has been advised to give away the distribution centre and manage on its own. The given case explores all available ideas and then roots for one of them. At the distribution center, an area of 30000 square foot was used which has to purposes. Various school`s inventories were kept at the warehouse for the supply given to the schools. This stock included office supplies, papers and other stationery items. Such a large stock was kept in order to see to it that the bulk purchases could be made which would lead to decreased costs and also balance the lead time in case of deliveries (Islam et al., 2013). The inventory levels fluctuated to a great extent throughout the year. At the warehouse, various equipment of the board house was also kept which consisted of special teaching supplies and could be loaned by the various schools on different time period basis (Wang et al., 2016). The delivery system of the board was also taken care of by the authorities in the distribution centre which comprised of an interdepartmental mail, supplies and other educational services. The deliveries were made to various schools and offices as and when required . According to Jim Knox, that the board had forecasted certain deficits and thus, certain adjustments had to be made to various units in order to overcome the deficit problem. He suggested that along with giving away early retirement to various staffs and cuts, the distribution centre could be done away with (Mangan, Lalwani & Lalwani, 2016). The schools should be allowed to handle their own supplies and the center could be sold away along with selling the vehicles owned. The reason why closing the distribution centre was taken in as a more attractive than cutting down other program budgets was because the schools could manage their supplies on their own. According to him salaries of around $500000 would be saved if the distribution centre was given away. Along with the same rent could also be saved. The alternative option to the given scenarios cold is as follows: The distribution centre is a huge warehouse where all the equipment fit in adequately. Hence, due to this the area of the distribution centre could be reduced considerably and the entire excess inventory could somehow be reduced by keeping lower levels of stock (Stadtler, 2015).When the case comes up of the discounts which would be received then, the purchase of stocks can be made at once but the delivery can be made later. Adding to this, the staff could work on rotational basis and the teachers could also contribute some of their help in order to manage the supplies. Various other adjustments could be made which would help in altering the problem of the budget and even not hamper the distribution system aspect. The most suitable scenario in the given situation would be taking up the alternative path. This given path would follow the `avoidance of wastage idea` an idea similar to that of the Kaizen Distribution, where all unnecessary costs and wastes would be avoided in order to see to it that the distribution centre does not incur the huge amount of costs that it is incurring at the moment (Jacobs, Chase & Lummus, 2014). The alternative plan has been elaborated in detail: In terms of ethicality, the stakeholder’s need also needs to be considered while any particular decision is being made. When the distribution centre would have been given away, it would have caused inconvenience to various stakeholders. These stakeholders include various stakeholders like teachers, staff, the personnel working at the centre, and the maintenance staff. The staff has been working in the distribution centre since a very long time and therefore, it is extremely important that the people who are working there are also considered before any rash decision is made. Hence, it can be clearly stated that the benefits of following this idea is much more than the costs which are incurred. This also serves to be a middle path and helps in removal of any consequences for the board as well as the stakeholders involved in the board Therefore, it can be stated that there were two clear alternatives available to the company which was giving away the distribution board or keeping it. The third was an additional alternative which would have helped the board to reduce certain costs. All the ideas were well explained and then the case for an alternative idea was built which was reducing excess wastage and keeping the distribution center but decreasing it in size and operations. The reduced operations will not only help in saving the costs but also help in saving the interests of the various stakeholders involved. Christopher, M. (2016).  Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK. Coyle, J. J., Langley, C. J., Novack, R. A., & Gibson, B. (2016).  Supply chain management: a logistics perspective. Nelson Education. Islam, D. M. Z., Meier, J. F., Aditjandra, P. T., Zunder, T. H., & Pace, G. (2013). Logistics and supply chain management.  Research in Transportation Economics,  41(1), 3-16. Jacobs, F. R., Chase, R. B., & Lummus, R. R. (2014).  Operations and supply chain management  (pp. 533-535). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Mentzer, J. T., DeWitt, W., Keebler, J. S., Min, S., Nix, N. W., Smith, C. D., & Zacharia, Z. G. (2013). Defining supply chain management.  Journal of Business logistics,  22(2), 1-25. Mangan, J., Lalwani, C., & Lalwani, C. L. (2016).  Global logistics and supply chain management. John Wiley & Sons. Rushton, A., Croucher, P., & Baker, P. (2014).  The handbook of logistics and distribution management: Understanding the supply chain. Kogan Page Publishers. Stadtler, H. (2015). Supply chain management: An overview. In  Supply chain management and advanced planning  (pp. 3-28). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Simchi-Levi, D., Simchi-Levi, E., & Kaminsky, P. (2016).  Designing and managing the supply chain: Concepts, strategies, and cases. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wang, G., Gunasekaran, A., Ngai, E. W., & Papadopoulos, T. (2016). Big data analytics in logistics and supply chain management: Certain investigations for research and applications.  International Journal of Production Economics,  176, 98-110.

Dantes Inferno Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Dantes Inferno - Essay Example .." subordinator, and ending with main clauses that open with "so..." Rendered by a single translator, these similes tie together disparate styles encountered between analogies; codified by a recurring language of analogy, they give us a dark comfort just as Homer's tropes of analogy--"Wine dark sea," "Rose fingered dawn"--comfort us. If we can safely assume that what we have accomplished sounds better than prose, can we also believe that we have dislodged Dante's sense little enough to justify the effort It all comes down to no more and no less than that. It seems fair to conclude with a test case. Here is the lovely simile, a mixture of Virgilian pastoral and everyday Tuscan agricultural elements that opens Inferno 24, first in John Sinclair's prose, and then in our free verse. The situation is this: Virgil has been irritated by the mocking of his intelligence by the shade of a Jovial Friar from Bologna, since he had been tricked by a devil and almost gotten Dante killed in an ambush: Dante's style changes with different speakers and settings, and the translator must adjust his style to suit that variety. Francesca's mode in telling of the love that brought her to hell, is very different from the tone Ulysses uses in recalling how he inspired his men to follow him to the ends of the earth. Bertran de Born, holding his head up like a lantern as he tells his sin, has a voice very different from Ugolino's expression of pain and vicious fury. Language and mood shift with the shifting canvas. The simile of the arsenal in Venice as the workmen caulk their unsound ships' with viscous pitch' which introduces the scene devoted to the devils of barratry is different in language and mood from the hoarfrost' image of a country scene evoked to describe the protagonist's feelings of relief at seeing Virgil smile again. Dante succeeds in commemorating not only the paramount movement from visual to verbal levels but the contrary movement from the verbal surface to the picture or vision that lies behind it. The acrostics are something between writing and picture. They have neither the differentiated articulation of a discursive argument nor the representative density of a picture, nor are they as schematic as a diagram, although their numerological distribution has diagrammatic elements. They instantiate rather the locus of a contest among the arts. On the side of vision is the immediacy that places as a picture in "logical space" the Dantean message of man's connection with pride--the fundamental sin. Vision, not discourse, is that toward which the power of the poet

Legal enviroment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Legal enviroment - Essay Example Furthermore, the essay also intends to explore if an individual is capable of self-regulation and how ethics can influence the regulation process. Issue The main concern in the context of government regulations in business area is that whether such regulations are necessary. The problem with respect to regulations is that thorough imposing them, the activities of people become delimited and thus managed by the government, thereby violating the rights of individuals. By regulations, the choices of people to conduct certain commercial activities are also restricted. Besides, it has also been argued that low regulations in business and low government intrusion can facilitate people and businesses to earn more revenue and thus they can spend more on economic development. However, to a certain extent government regulations in business is necessary in order to support productive business practices. Reasoning According to Jefferson (2012), human beings are able to live in a society, govern themselves by self-imposed regulations and secure the pleasure of life, freedom, property and peace. The basic reasoning behind self-regulation is that people have absolute rights regarding life and liberty to pursue happiness. Government regulations, if considered necessary, are introduced to secure the sanctification of these rights. The main reasoning behind regulations is that government has a responsibility to oversee the activities of people, because they cannot be trusted for making the proper choices. In the context of business, government regulations are used to control such activities which can otherwise result in business and ultimately market failure. For certain individuals, self-regulation is a contradictory element of business, but it also provides several advantages in the field of business. The five potential benefits of self-regulation are immediacy, flexibility, obedience, cooperative interests of industry and resources. On the other hand, self-regulation also has several disadvantages which comprise conflict of interest, insufficient consents, under enforcement, international competition and inadequate resources. Evidently, self-regulations comprise both benefits and limitations. Thus, it is neither an integrally effective nor an ineffective way to govern business conducts. The key challenge is to derive the condition in which self-regulation can be regarded as the proper strategy to encourage ethical behavior and also to find ideal methods of planning self-regulatory organizations. In reaction to corporate frauds, it is reasonable to decide who should regulate the behavior of business organizations and business transactions. In this context, it can be stated that it is not a simple choice to follow either government regulation or self-regulation, rather it is a query of how self-regulation can be utilized (Coglianese et al., 2004). Even if self-regulations have received blame from public due to corporate frauds, it cannot be uninhibited co mpletely. As an alternative, the solution would be to change the inner governance system of the self-regulatory organizations by permitting them new power or altering the level of government observation (Coglianese et al., 2004). Analysis Several sectors of businesses have long complained regarding government regulations and their restrictive characteristics. Government regulat

Illustrating Notoriety Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Illustrating Notoriety - Essay Example To further illustrate notoriety, this paper will first look at the baseball which is regarded to have a long history of notoriety. The popularity of this sport in the United States takes its players in the limelight and gives the public the chance to closely scrutinize and form a collective opinion on their actions. During 2005, it can be recalled that Rafael Palmiero's was suspended due to his violation of the league's steroid policy. Before him, other players have already given a record of notoriety to the public. Thus, the audience has somehow taken it for granted that baseball players, famous as they are in the playing field are also famous because of their delinquency. It is also irrefutable that Al Qaeda, which was an unpopular Sunni Islamist organization, has become infamous because of the 9-11 tragedy in 2003. This group has aroused the rage of the global population by attacking the World Trade Center and The Pentagon. It can be recalled that this event left thousands of people died and while their families suffered. The popularity and the global sentiment stimulated by this event labeled Al-Qaeda as one of the most notorious terrorists in the world. Thus, Al-Qaeda embodies the essence and characteristics of being notorious. After illustrating notoriety by the use of two examples, it is also worthwhile to portray this concept by separating the two aspects necessary to c

The Fraud Factor by Mathias K. Kopetzky Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Fraud Factor by Mathias K. Kopetzky - Essay Example Leary, on the other hand, had a shy personality. These two future business associates met at an organization referred to as CCC Computer Corp, where Leary was the manager at the technical support and assembling center and Kearns was a noteworthy and store computer. These two were very proficient salespeople who often delivered more sales that the company would really be able to sale. The two worked for CCC for many years, but later Kearns quit the job due to low pay, and he decided to start his own business ventures. His planned to call his new business ‘Gamma Computer Inc.’ and with the help of Simon, he hoped to draw all customers to his new founded business (Wells 115). From the author, we learn that this new business showed tremendous growth in quite a short time interval. This was extremely easy for it to achieve since Herbert had learned enough while at CCC Company, hence he would easily apply business practices for all clients. Second Savings Bank, one of the larg est financial corporations in the country supported Gamma in this corporation. Such help is also important as it enhances the market segment of the weaker company since people are always pulled towards a company that has noteworthy performance. From the author, we learn that Second Saving supported Gamma in a variety of ways. ... The article reveals that the Netherlands Holding Company, an Amsterdam based company proposed to purchase 100% of the stock of Gamma. At this time, gamma had sales of about $100million. This made Herbert Kearns a very ecstatic man since this had been his lifelong dream; to be wealthy at aged 45. The deal required that Herbert and Simon had to stay on with the new buyers for a period of three years after the sale, and they would be able to cash in if at all a third of their acquisition proceeded, and the remainder was to be earned through a three year period of business success. We are told that Simon resigned a few weeks later due to ‘family reasons’, which as the author reveals later was a farce. This was astonishing since it went against the requirements of the deal they had made i.e. he forfeited two-thirds of sales of the company’s price since he did not remain for the stipulated period. Later, we see that receivables of the company being sold in unclear circu mstances, albeit the opposition of Jim Muller, the account representative of Gamma. However, eight weeks after, Gamma again bought all receivables and it pledged these receivables to Second savings for purposes of financing. Therefore, the situation reverted to normal in that Second savings exhibited outstanding credit that had receivables of Gamma Computer. This happened in March, and by October of that year, Gamma was declared bankrupt due to its inability to clear its invoices within the required time despite the company has increased sales. The collapse of Gamma shocked Second Savings bank as it was always unaware of the financial difficulties of its client.  

Compound helicopter Literature review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Compound helicopter - Literature review Example The Nelson Speed Limit holds true for helicopters even today. 3 Although helicopters have achieved what is considered the â€Å"Holy Grails of powered flight,†4 because of their ability to fly vertically, their limited capacity in speed and maneuverability have led aircraft builders to explore ways to augment performance metrics. One of the solutions offered by research is the compounding of the basic design of conventional helicopters with additional components to help achieve better speed and efficiency. Background: Compound Helicopters A compound helicopter is a conventional helicopter that has undergone modification with the addition of several components for the purpose of augmenting and enhancing basic performance metrics such as lift-to-drag ratio, propulsive efficiency and maneuverability.5 The most overt additions in a compound helicopter are fixed wings.6 Compound helicopters are often called hybrids because they are a combination of conventional helicopters, which a re powered by rotors, and fixed wing aircrafts like planes, although some compound helicopters do not have wings. Compound helicopters have the important capability of conventional helicopters - VTOL (vertical take-off and landing).7 What additional features precisely make a helicopter compound has not been unanimously agreed however. John Watkinson, for example, described a compound helicopter as one in which the production of forward thrust in cruise is not up to the rotor but by some other device while Ray Prouty depicted them as having wings and a propulsion device, which could be a jet engine, ducted fan, or propellers for the purpose of alleviating the rotors from lifting or propelling tasks.8 Leishman simply defined it as one in which additional parts are appended for the purpose of enhancing and augmenting basic performance metrics.9 Figure 1 shows a diagram of a compound helicopter with a four-blade main rotor atop its body as is commonly found in conventional helicopters. However, fixed wings or flaperons can also be observed attached to its fuselage. Fixed wings function to off-load most, if not all, of the rotor’s duty to lift the helicopter at high speed. The presence of a ducted propeller at the rear can also be observed, which likewise serves the function of taking away from the main rotor the task of driving the helicopter forward. Some compound helicopters may or may not have either fixed wings or a propulsion mechanism other than the main rotor, but all additional appendages in a compound helicopter serve the purpose of driving it at speed not available to conventional helicopters.10 Fig 2 Diagram of a Compound Helicopter11 2.0 History of Compound Helicopters The first known compound helicopter was developed in Germany in the 1930s by Anton Flettner, but two other models were also developed in that part of the world. The Fl 184 had two airscrews, fitted with propellers at each end facing at opposite directions, and attached to either s ide of the helicopter fuselage. The airscrews functioned to counter the torque effect of the three-blade rotor and helped the aircraft propel forward. The Wn

MKT DB1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

MKT DB1 - Essay Example One of the functions of the marketers drawn from these departments is to help customers and potential customers know about the product. This paper will discuss the role of a marketer in light of helping customers and potential customers know about the product. Helping customers is one of the major roles of a marketer in today’s business. In this regard, a marketer ensures that the existing and potential customers of the organization understand the product they are buying by demonstrating to them why they need to buy the product. It starts by identifying the needs of these customers and developing a marketing strategy that is most suitable in meeting the needs and wants of these customers. To be able to meet the needs of these customers, a marketer must come up with an appropriate marketing mix. This entails developing products to satisfy their needs, charge the right price, makes goods available at the right place and use promotion as a means of making known the existence of the products. For instance, the marketer must ensure that the company’s products meet the needs of the customers. This implies that the marketer must ensure that the product offered to the customers is of the right quality, quantity and branding as this will make customers identify with the product and the business easily (Pride and Ferrell, 2006). Promotion is another element of the marketing mix that marketers may use to create an awareness of the company’s products to its customers. For customers who can be reached directly through face to face communication, it will be very advisable that the marketer does this as this gives an opportunity to explain to the customers every aspect of the company’s product, location of the company and the reasons why they should purchase the products(Pride and Ferrell, 2006). Branding is also a marketing tool use in marketing products. This is because branding creates a distinctive image and

Questions for Case at the Dimensional Fund Advisors (The Size Effect Study

Questions for at the Dimensional Fund Advisors (The Size Effect and The Value Effect) - Case Study Example DFAs business practices of trying of avoid the lemons problem while not doing any fundamental analysis suggest that they believe strong form of market efficiency but worried that semi-strong form of market efficiency might fail (Cohen 4). These sentiments can be illustrated by the dedication to the principle of market efficiency where over any given time frame; no investor has the ability to pick stocks that would beat the market in its performance. Its main concern was the presence of negative private information known to the seller but not to the market. According to Cohen, the Fama-French -three factor type of efficient market brings into consideration three products; size, value, and market risk factor in the capital asset pricing model (13). With the deterioration of the small stocks in the 1980s and 1990s, these small stocks managed to outperform small stock indexes and small cap funds due to purchase discounts which were combined with the avoidance of adverse selection. It is true to say that due to the size effect, smaller stocks tend to do better than large stocks as in the case of LinkedIn and Google where the former has higher returns than the latter. Conversely, according to the value effect, since Google has a higher book to market ratio as compared to LinkedIn, this means that in this case, Google gunners more returns (Cohen 19). In consistence to the hypothesis that market price is efficient, we can conclude that small firms and value firms on average have high returns. However, investors are not crazily excited about the small and value investment products that DFA recently offered, which exactly focus on earning the high returns of small and value

E-Business strategy Essay Example for Free

E-Business strategy Essay Grandmas Treats, a newly owned family business dedicated in selling bakery items and wishes to go online for achieving awareness and catering its services to a large group of consumers. The various reasons for which it would derive online benefits can be summarized as follows: †¢ Visibility is the largest accomplishment one aims in an online business. †¢ Its local brand can be promoted internationally to achieve a strategy for business continuity. †¢ Networking with several international brands and suppliers would create international links and would generate large scale opportunities for various upcoming suppliers and vendors. Consumers and customers would be able to access the store at their free will. †¢ Secure payment options would entail greater compliance on the part of the company to arrange online purchase options and security associated with it. †¢ Competitiveness with the online established brands would take them to reengineer their products better so that one is able to focus more on quality. †¢ The enhanced marketing for the website would make them sell to a large number of other businesses and consumers enabling their B2B and B2C models. The customers would be able to compare the products and services with others so that they are able to decide upon the choices provided. Technology: The technology required to get online and take care of the display of products and services would be focused on three aspects namely front end design, middle level architecture and database. The front end design would compose setting up the website and would require HTML and client side technology for getting the job done. The creation of the static pages would take HTML and JavaScript or VBScript must be used to validate the web site and its form entries and data storage requirements. The advanced technologies would make sure that data is represented well and connected for getting the usability right for the website. The usability features must be taken care so that one is able to acknowledge the look and feel, consistency of content, navigation patterns, anytime-anywhere traveling within the website and many more (Usability. gov, 2007). It also allows user to understand and reciprocate information, their current path and content for the website. The client side features enables the user to take the correct action and guide them all along. The middle level architecture takes into account the business logic that is driving the front end and all the operations that the user is supposed to perform to accomplish a certain amount of their job. The business processes are the payment modules, generating the online dynamic content, tracking one’s order, tracking the online cart or basket requirements, handling the database operations and making sure that they get everything they want. Several application severs like IBM Websphere, JBOSS can be used for the purpose. The database for the website is composed of several tables which record data and information from the users of the system which comprise of several individuals, institutions and several other businesses. The data is stored and fetched when required to view the information. Databases of RDBMS nature such as Oracle, DB2 and others can be used for widespread storage of data and information. Privacy and security measures: The privacy of the customer information and the transactions that are required to be made must be safe in all respects so as to prevent eavesdropping and tapping of the message. The use of TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocols can be used to facilitate transmission and transfer across a secured channel to prevent the misuse of customer’s personal and financial data for their wide applicability and to perform online purchases IETF (2007). It takes care of the privacy of the information and makes sure that all communication is completely safe and abides by the privacy laws of the organization. The use of security measures like firewalls and antivirus software’s can help a long way to facilitate preventing of websites from intruders and malicious content and programs. The firewalls would prevent the website from any malicious programs and take care of the safety of the website.

Business Communication Essay Example for Free

Business Communication Essay His vision to give young, fashion forward men and women a unique way to express their individuality through style resulted in millions of customers worldwide and propelled his designs to the forefront of the fashion industry. It all started in 1990, with a mere $1,100 in his bank account, Madden started crafting shoe designs from his Queens-based factory and the  Steve Madden  brand was born. With a lot of courage, years of experience in the footwear industry, and unique creative designs,  Steve Madden  formed his own successful enterprise. A year later, Madden introduced a redefined version of platform shoes, resulting in one of the most spectacular success stories in the early 1990s. Inspired by his favorite rock and roll stars of the 1970s, the thick, chunky heel became  Steve Maddens  signature and a phenomenon in womens shoes. Maddens footwear vision is continuously evolving. Steve once said, What inspires me is what I see people wearing on the streets of the world from New York to London and beyond. I get my ideas and inspiration from pounding the pavement all over the world. Today, fashion is dictated by individual style. To me, the fashion of the future is anything that a young guy or girl feels good wearing as long as  its put together in the right way. (www. stevemadden . com) Today, the  Steve Madden  brand represents a lifestyle. It is about embracing fashion while still maintaining that funky independence that first defined the brand 20 years ago. Expanding now into apparel and other accessories such as dresses, handbags, belts, sunwear, cold weather, outerwear and hosiery,  Steve Madden  is always looking toward to the future. As 2013 begins, more exciting opportunities are on the horizon including re-packaging, new store design rollout and expansion in global markets. The days when the future did not seem so bright In April 2002, Mr. Madden found that neither his investors nor federal judges take too kindly to stock manipulation and securities fraud. Steve Maddens talents as a shoe designer helped him build a 240 million dollar empire in his own name. But by his own admission, that wasnt enough he was greedy for more. His greed cost him about eight million dollars and control of the very company that brought him such riches. Madden was sentenced in 2002 to 41 months in prison for his role in a stock swindle scheme coordinated by the now-closed brokerage, Stratton Oakmont. His wrongdoings include conspiring to manipulate the stock prices of more than 20 companies, including his own. And, he did it at the expense not only of the public but his own investors who lost more than 100 million. Besides paying restitution, Madden had to resign as CEO of Steve Madden Ltd and leave the board of directors. He is also barred from holding a position as officer for seven years. However, he did retain a creative position until his prison sentence began that fall and will likely fill that capacity upon release later this spring. Meanwhile, those left to keep the company going in his absence quickly started their damage control efforts. A new board of directors was quickly assembled. Among those elected were Maddens brother and a corporate accounting guru. Once their former leader began repaying his debt to society, company heads began cleaning Steve Madden Limiteds financial house; making sure stock prices accurately reflected the health of the business. The company fully cooperated with the SECs investigation and hired an independent auditing company to keep watch over the process. Those days and even today, the companys financial practices are an open and well-kept book. Anyone could get the latest financial news from the same site by loging on to for the latest shoe designs. After heading off anymore potential legal woes, management began to focus on keeping the business itself walking tall. If the companys sales reports were any indication, not having Steve hasnt really hurt Steve Madden Limited. While the founder has been in a Florida prison, the companys management built on his vision by expanding into other areas. Steve by Steve Madden moved the company from the trendy 16 to 24 year old demographic into upscale footwear for a more mature crowd. The company licensed Candies and Unionbay footwear for men. Rather than try and replace or substitute Maddens design eye, they took what they had and introduced it to new markets. It worked. According to company reports, nearly all of the brands have increased profit margins and inventory levels. In a press release, management expressed hope that their profits would have increased in 2005 as compared 2004 (which actually happened). 2. Corporate Communication after the Bad Publicity But prison didnt break Steve Madden—or his company. Like so many of todays celebrity convicts, from Martha Stewart to Paris Hilton, Madden says he emerged a changed person. He served out his sentence, doing yardwork, teaching business classes to other inmates, reading four books a week (from The Devil Wears Prada to David McCulloughs Truman) and pumping iron obsessively. I used to wear this tank top in prison, he says. And Id stare at myself and flex. I never did that before. He even got married, to a Madden employee who came for regular visits. And when he was released in April 2005, Madden says, he was stronger physically, mentally, spiritually than hed ever been. After the return of Steve Madden from prison, he decided not to shy away from the imminent release of its namesake founder fro m prison. The company was promoting the return of its creative leader in a series of eye-catching posters and print advertisements, and is having some fun with it in the process. While the ads do not say where Madden has been, one suggests, in a wink-wink kind of way, that Mr. Madden has not been on a sabbatical, a secret mission or up the  Amazon  collecting snakes: A new meaning for the word spring time. Steve returns. Spring 2005. The company had launched a rather interesting press campaign celebrating Steve Maddens upcoming release from prison. One features a girl wearing an ankle bracelet and another features an empty pair of shoes with the words, Theres one pair of shoes thats been impossible to fill. Steve returns Spring 2005. Others allude to Madden getting sprung in Spring 2005. Financial Dynamics, the shoe retailers investor relations agency, says the campaign is a positive way of dealing with the prison sentence. It makes light of the companys troubles, sending a message that the board is over it and customers should feel the same way. Its also a sure fire way to get people talking about the brand. When it comes to sales, the only bad publicit y is no publicity. Once upon a time, a company, particularly one that sold products to the public, would shun publicity if it possibly could when a senior executive encountered legal woes. The idea that a company especially one like Steve Madden, which sells shoes mostly to teenage girls and women in their 20s would actually run ads calling attention to its leaders prison past would have flabbergasted experts in fields like brand identity, advertising and public relations. I love controversy; I love pushing the envelope, but when you have a younger customer you have a responsibility to take the law and authority seriously, said James LaForce, partner at LaForce Stevens in New York, a marketing communications agency specializing in fashion and entertainment clients. That was of course before Martha Stewart, whose public image has, by initial measures, seemingly gained in stature after her release from federal prison. A colorful paper flap decorated with a photograph of her cradling a chicken, declaring Welcome home, Martha, was attached to the cover of Aprils Martha Stewart Living magazine, published by  Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Companies like Mr. Maddens and Ms. Stewarts may also be more likely to embrace their convicted executives, since those executives have plenty of influence in the boardroom. Reticence about an executives past also predates a world in which rappers can find the sales of their music increasing in seeming lock step with the severity of their scrapes with the law. Its in now to be out, out of prison, that is, said Paul Cappelli, chief executive at the Ad Store in New York, an advertising agency that creates campaigns for brands like  JetBlue. I could see myself suggesting something like this to a client, Cappelli said, that instead of ignoring the 5,000-pound elephant in the corner, you might as well bring it out into the open and make hay of it. Robert Passikoff, who has been tracking consumer response to the Martha Stewart brand as president of Brand Keys in New York, a brand and customer-loyalty consultant, said that his index of its value had recently risen. The index has climbed to 96, Mr. Passikoff said, compared with a bottom of 62 lower than  Enron, he said before she entered prison. (The peak was 122 in May 2002. ) Is the new badge of honor, I served my time? We are not sure it doesnt ultimately hurt, even if the American public is largely forgiving when people serve their time. The campaign is trying to make him the face of the brand but who wants the face with numbers under it? Steve Madden is different from Martha Stewart, because unlike her, he was never the brand. He was the label, so a lot of people dont know who the guy was and didnt know he went to jail. That has worked to Steve Maddens advantage so far,, citing the history of the Madden brand index: It was 110 before Madden went to prison and fell only slightly, to 106. However, it is worth mentioning that consumers seem to be more forgiving about men than women. Brian Russak, a senior editor at Footwear News in New York who covers Madden, said: It seems like an obvious play to Martha Stewart, but I have to wonder whether that resonates with Maddens consumers. We often say here the target consumer doesnt know there is a Steve Madden. Trey Laird, president and executive creative director at Laird Partners in New York, an advertising agency that creates campaigns for fashion and apparel brands like DKNY and Gap, also drew distinctions between Madden and Stewart. The Madden ads are kind of cute and clever, but this is not a Martha Stewart situation, when the whole country is watching because shes a cultural icon. I dont feel most consumers know about Steve Maddens sentence, he added, or if they knew, they forgot about it. The Madden campaign can be perceived as a parody of Ms. Stewarts story meant to get people talking about the brand, Laird said, particularly because the Madden brand has never been a brand that has taken itself seriously. For instance, a recent Madden campaign featured caricatures of its customers with comically oversized heads. A statement by Financial Dynamics read: Steven Madden Ltd. looks forward to the much anticipated return of the unique talent and creative design expertise of Steve Madden in the spring of 2005. Further, the company believes the current advertising campaign embodies and enhances the Steve Madden brand. If the rise in Martha Stewart stock is any indication, getting out of prison seems to be in. The publicity generated by Maddens return could translate into increased exposure and, in turn, increase sales in the future. Plus, having him back at the head of the creative team will bring his company something it hasnt had in a while his ability to give the millions of women who buy his shoes what they want. So, If theres one thing Americans enjoy more than watching the mighty fall, its granting them forgiveness. You have to go through a process. You made your mistake, you did your time, Madden says. You have to be a little contrite to get redemption. To judge from the recent performance of his company, Maddens been forgiven—at least by that segment of the population that favors shoes with animal prints, polka dots and four-inch heels. Sales were $475. 2 million in 2006, up from $375. 8 million the year he was released, while net income more than doubled to $46. 3 million. Madden is quick to admit that hes made mistakes. But he says he wouldnt change a thing about his life. Everything Ive done has gotten me to where I am today, he says. His prison experience has clearly had an impact on his designs. The next offering from the prison groom: wedding shoes, called I Do. Its a huge market, he says. Marriage is sort of back on track. And so is Steve Madden. . The Crisis 3. 1. Chain of events In summer 2004, Maddens luck turned when he was indicted for stock fraud and money laundering in both the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York. According to the charges, Madden secretly purchased stock on behalf of the principals of two corrupt penny-stock brokerage firms Stratton Oakmont Securities of Lake Success, Long Island, and Monroe Parker, of Purchase, Westchester helping them manipulate 29 initial public offerings, including that of his own company. That same day, the Securities and Exchange Commission came after him with a civil suit alleging Madden had employed devices, schemes, and artifices to defraud. If convicted in either of the criminal cases, Madden would face up to more than twenty years in prison and several million dollars in fines. If he were to lose the SEC case, which was put on hold until the criminal cases were completed, he could be forced to pay millions more. Even worse, he ran the risk of being barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company, including his own. On the day of his arrest, while Madden was busy pleading not guilty to all charges and pledging his East Hampton country house and the Long Island homes of two friends in order to make bail, shares of Steve Madden Limited fell almost 15 percent to $11. 85 before nasdaq halted trading. Two days later, when the stock (which trades under the ticker SHOO) reopened, it fell to $6. 88. Though the stock has traded up as high as $13. 88 due to a recent rally in the footwear sector, it has yet to regain its pre-indictment momentum. The storys sad. Its a great story. Its a real American story. My old friends took me public, they turned out to be crooks, and Im innocent†, Madden has been quoted to say. While the indictment has severely damaged Steve Madden Limiteds standing on Wall Street – there was a consolidated class-action shareholder lawsuit pending against the company, and it has hired Bear Stearns to explore all possible strategic options, including an outright sale it hasnt tarnished Steve Maddens reputation as a design and marketing genius. He has some special knack at figuring out what teen girls want to wear, says Sanford Bernstein analyst Faye Landes. According to teen-market consultant Irma Zandl, who ranks Madden with Nike and Adidas in the top five brands that girls favor, his shoes are popular because they are fabulously over-the-top. Steve Maddens are not for the conservative girl, she says. If hes going to add leopard skin, hell do it ten times more outrageously than anybody else. Its for people who think less is less. Every week following his indictment, Madden used to get more than a thousand e-mails from his customers, only a handful of which referred to his legal predicament. In fact, the company not only refused to retrench, instead it was aggressively expanding. At that year’s Grammy Awards, the company made a bid for high-profile customers by giving out fluffy leopard-print slippers to special guests. Three days later, at the Western Shoe Association show in Las Vegas, Madden introduced his newest product line at the time: Steve Madden Mens. 3. 2. The players While Madden was working his way up in the shoe industry, his best friend, Danny Porush, was stuck in a rut. After five years at Boston University, he left without getting a degree and bounced from job to job, working for, and starting up, a variety of small businesses, including an ambulance company called SureRide Ambulette. In 1988, while watching his son in the playground of his Bayside, Queens, apartment complex, he met an unlikely mentor: a dental-school dropout and former door-to-door meat and seafood salesman named Jordan Belfort. A short, brash, young Jewish guy, Belfort boasted he was making $50,000 a month selling penny stocks out of a boiler room in Great Neck. As Porush would later testify, Belfort confided the business was half a scam, but the chance to increase his income tenfold was a siren call Porush couldnt resist. Two days after they met, he closed down SureRide and joined the firm. Using fanciful scripts, the brokers Belforts childhood friends from Queens, Porushs golf buddies, money-crazed kids recruited from Long Island college campuses sold and manipulated tiny, high-risk IPOs, according to testimony, by grossly exaggerating their prospects, boasting that they had inside information, and generally saying whatever was necessary to make a sale. Their underwritings encompassed a vast array of low-rent businesses and all had the same trading pattern the stocks would soar when they touted them but then come crashing down when the brokers unloaded their stakes. In 1992, Steve Madden made a decision that at the time seemed natural enough: He hired his best friends firm to be his banker. While Madden knew that the SEC had already accused Stratton of engaging in price manipulation and employing high-pressure sales tactics, he considered it a legitimate company. They cleared through Bear Stearns, Madden recalls, pointing out that Strattons link to the giant firm gave it an aura of respectability. Besides, Stratton was not only willing to raise capital for Steve Madden Limited in the private markets, it wanted to take the tiny, unproven company public. Like his friend Porush, Madden was going to enter the big leagues. On December 13, 1993, only seven months after the first (and, at that time, only) Steve Madden shoe store had opened on Broadway in SoHo, Stratton Oakmont took the company public at $4 a share. The most active stock on the nasdaq on the day of its offering, SHOO closed at $8 a share, a huge gain in the pre-Internet era. Just a few months later, it sunk to $3. With only $5. 3 million in sales, a net loss of $900,000, and a boom-bust trading history, the company simply seemed to be nother one of Strattons overhyped IPOs. But it wasnt. In 1994, Madden surprised his critics. With hardly any advertising, Madden increased sales by almost 40 percent. The next year, sales tripled to $39 million, prompting Madden to hire Rhonda Brown, the former merchandise president of Macys East, to become his chief of operations. Soon, Madden had celebrity customers Carmen Electra, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Neve Campbell, Alyssa Milano, Mary J. Blige. By 1997, the company was generating $59 million in total sales, operating seventeen stores, and introducing a clothing line designed for a customer who doesnt break the law but does break the rules. That spring, in a lengthy profile in  Footwear News,  Madden compared his company to an underground rock-and-roll band that gets its first hit single. Meanwhile, over in lake success, Porush and Belfort were struggling to stave off failure. While they were still raking in tens of millions a year from stock manipulations, regulators were working to put Stratton out of business. In March 1994, they nearly did: As part of a settlement with the SEC, Belfort was barred from the securities industry for life. But Porush managed to garner a lighter sanction, barred for just one year from supervising other brokers. In the wake of the ruling, Belfort continued to control the firm through Porush. Inevitably, though, the relationship between the partners soured. In January 1997, the company eventually filed for bankruptcy. By that time, Gregory Coleman, an agent in the FBIs securities-fraud squad at 26 Federal Plaza, had been investigating Stratton for several years. In 1995, under instructions from federal prosecutors, Coleman sent out a flurry of subpoenas to some of Strattons clients, including Madden, in an effort to create a panic that would culminate in a race to the governments door. One year later, U. S. Customs officers in Miami arrested a young French private banker who worked for Union Banquaire Privee in Switzerland. The arrest was made as part of an unrelated money-laundering sting operation, but hoping to win a lighter sentence, the banker began to talk. By sheer coincidence, he had two clients who were of particular interest to the government: Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush. On September 2, 1998, just a few minutes after pulling out of the driveway of his Old Brookville mansion to take his 5-year-old daughter to the video store, 36-year-old Jordan Ross Belfort was arrested for conspiracy to commit money laundering and securities fraud. The next day, 41-year-old Daniel Mark Porush was nabbed down in Boca Raton. Faced with maximum sentences of twenty years in prison, both men came to the same conclusion: After only a week in jail, they decided to flip. It was like taking down the heads of a major crime family, says former assistant U. S. ttorney Joel Cohen, the prosecutor in the indictment. But in this case, the organized crime was the brokerage business. Porush and Belfort secretly wore wires to record their friends and dragged down dozens in their wake: lawyers and accountants, bankers and brokers. 3. 3. Effects For the government, Steve Madden was one of the biggest catches in the dragnet. The shoe mogul had been a focus of the investigation for some t ime; the SEC had cited his companys IPO as one of those that had been manipulated, and believed that Madden was routinely getting, and flipping, stock in other Stratton deals. Although some of Strattons IPOs had grown into profitable businesses, only Maddens company had become a significant success. But according to Belfort, the celebrity CEO was also a rat hole, a place to hide stock. Porush, his P. S. 1 buddy, didnt hesitate to give him up either. Madden, as he recently testified at the trial of Strattons former auditor, was deep into the fraud with us. According to the Madden indictments, the designers personal connection to Stratton began in 1991, when Madden agreed to secretly buy and sell stock in Stratton deals on Porushs behalf with the understanding that he would incur no risk. (Porush, as a principal of the firm, was restricted in his ability to trade stock in these companies. ) The deal was that Madden would earn a predetermined profit on each transaction, then kick back to Porush a significant portion of the proceeds, either in cash or by purchasing stock from Stratton that was deliberately overpriced. Once Belfort was barred from the securiti es industry in 1994, Madden allegedly entered a similar agreement with him regarding the Stratton spinoff Monroe Parker. But according to the SEC, Madden wasnt only ripping off the general investing public, he was ripping off his own shareholders as well. In early 1993, the SEC alleges, Madden agreed that the IPO of his company would be a manipulation similar to previous Stratton IPO manipulations . . . such as Master Glaziers Karate International. In exchange for his agreement to follow Porush and Belforts instructions, they allegedly promised that even if SHOO . . . went bankrupt, Madden would make money on the SHOO IPO. In addition, as Belfort recently testified at the Stratton auditors trial, Belfort had a secret deal with Steve Madden to maintain control of his company after it went public. Because Belfort and his partners had financed Steve Madden Limiteds early development, they owned a majority stake in the company before it went public. But the National Association of Securities Dealers refused to list SHOO unless Belfort then under investigation for securities fraud dramatically reduced his stake. As Belfort testified, he agreed to sell his shares to a corporation controlled by Madden to placate the NASD, but it was a bo gus transaction. Under the secret deal which we had written down and legally signed, says Belfort, he was the true owner. Belfort exerted an extraordinary influence over the company. Strattons auditor, who was a friend of Belforts, also became Maddens auditor. In 1994, after Belfort was kicked out of the securities industry, he even joined SHOO as a consultant. In addition, according to Porushs testimony, key Madden employees were given stock in Stratton IPOs as part of their compensation. (A Madden spokesperson denies such an arrangement existed. ) As Porush explained, Part of the package when we recruited people for Steve Madden was . . . because youre in with us, youll make money on every new issue. In 1997, the Belfort-Madden friendship ended abruptly around the time Belfort asked Madden to sell some of the SHOO stock he secretly owned. Madden refused, and the dispute quickly turned into a bitter lawsuit, during which Belfort produced the deal they had signed. Madden admitted the signature was his but insisted he had been manipulated and tricked into signing by someone he had trusted as my friend, business associate, underwriter, and confidant. According to Madden, the demise of the friendship actually preceded the lawsuit, when Belfort started showing up stoned for work. I have no intention of allowing Jordan Belfort to ruin SMLs bright future by threatening me or by tarnishing the companys reputation, Madden vowed at the time. Ultimately, he settled the suit for $4. 3 million in cash, an outcome that favored his adversary. In the fall of 1999, around the time the government went public with the news that Porush and Belfort had been secretly cooperating, the U. S. Attorneys Office approached Maddens personal attorney, Joel Winograd, to discuss its case against his client. Soon, rumors that Madden might be indicted began wending their way around Wall Street. . Assessment As many people saw it, the fact that Madden had an account at Stratt on doesnt mean he knew what Porush and Belfort were doing, let alone that he was in any way involved. Madden was buying stock and making money, buying stock and losing money. He made more than he lost, but he didnt know what improprieties they were involved in. As Madden himself put it in the course of his lawsuit with Jordan Belfort: My strengths as a businessman lie in the design and sale of womens shoes, and I have never been comfortable with complicated or technical legal or business documents . . . I have always relied on the people around me. When asked why Madden employed Belfort as a consultant at Steve Madden Limited in 1994, after he was barred from the securities industry, his lawyer replies, Steve Madden is a loyal friend and a devoted human being. He didnt turn his back on Jordan Belfort in his time of need. And what about the $80,000 cash kickback Madden allegedly gave to a Stratton golf buddy in the locker room of the Engineers Country Club in Roslyn, Long Island? Its totally ridiculous, says Winograd. Cash? The government can explain from here to kingdom come. There is no way Steve would have had that amount of cash, and he wouldnt have had that in a bag walking around a country club. I think these fellows have watched too many spy thrillers. Lets say Steve was fooled, Mr. Madden’s lawyer summarizes. You can be savvy in business, but you may not be savvy in love and friendship. In any case, Steve will overcome, he vows. His company will continue to have record quarters of sales and earnings, and this will have a fairy-tale ending. Perhaps. But even if Madden was acquitted in both of his criminal trials, he still lost the civil case and, control of his company. For Steve Madden Limited, such an outcome might be manageable. Mr. Madden is extremely talented and a tremendous business partner, and hes wonderful, says the companys president, Rhonda Brown. But we could continue to grow our business profitably . . . whether hes on the golf course, or whatever. For Steve Madden the man, it could be devastating. My life, he says, is my company. 5. Conclusions Throughout the paper, we have researched and debated both sides of the issue and conversely presented both approaches by those involved or ever taking interest in the matter. Some say that the fashion mogul got what he deserved, bashing him for being a fraud under a publicly endearing persona, while others, close friends and devoted customers alike, stood behind him and helped if not the man, the company itself from disaster. Should a great visionary not content himself with being the image upfront and the genius behind the empire he built and instead take charge of other key areas that make a business successful rather than trusting others, trusted friends or proven experts with managing them? That may be true and perhaps this was where Mr. Madden made the biggest mistake of all. While the case was and still is controversial, the company succeeded in overcoming the crisis and continues to be among the most profitable and booming shoe fashion business in the States.

Factors for the Development of Trigger Points

Factors for the Development of Trigger Points Introduction The primary mean of locomotion which enables human and other animals to move on their foot is running. There are some regular points the gait cycle during which both the feet are not on the ground in running. Running has aflightphase during which neither limb is in ground contact. Running gait can be divided into two phases in context to the lower extremity which is  absorption, propulsion, initial swing and terminal swing. As per electromyographic data suggests: as speed increases, ilio-psoas, gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, hamstring and rectus femoris all developed larger peak forces throughout the stride cycle. The peak force exerted by gastrocnemius increases as speed increased from 3.5 to 7m/sec but showed no significant changes thereafter. The peak force exerted by soleus also increased from 3.5 to7m/sec, but furthermore t decreases till 9m/sec. soleus, gastrocnemius and vastus provides approximately 75% of the total vertical support impulse needs to accelerate where soleus alone contributes 50% of all. The vertical ground reaction force increases for speeds up to 7 m/sec is almost entirely of soleus whereas vastus to the vertical ground reaction force does not affect with increase in running speed. The rate of ankle plantar flexors shortening increases with the running speed and solus and gastrocnemius contracts at37% and 23% of their maximum shortening velocities respectively.as a result, onl y 30 and 40% of their peak potentially developed by soleus and gastrocnemius respectively during sprinting.inspite of producing significant and large amount of forces whetreas they did not contribute in knee-hip joint accelerations during swing phase. if we compare sprinters with non sprinters;the previous one has greater thickness with longer fascicles of their gastrocnemius and vastus lateralis muscles on ultrasound imaging,than later one.(abe et al.,2001) The plantar flexion moment arms were 25% smaller of sprinters than those of non-sprinters and this difference was highly significant. garth and miller examined 17 athletes who presented for treatment of incapacitating pain and soreness located posteromedially along the middle two thirds of the Symptoms were aggravated by repetitive wt.bearing which was referred to as shin splints. Due to excessively pronation caused by hyper mobile midfoot flexible pes valgus, muscular imbalance etc, the flexor digitorumlongus and flexor hallucislongus can become overloaded and vulnerable to develop trigger points in these muscles. The lateral compartment syndrome is likely to develop in runners with excessive pronation and abnormally mobile subtalar joints can also be overloaded in high arched supinated foot with triceps surae weakness as well as can be suggestive of peroneus longus and brevis trigger points. Myofascial trigger points:-Travell and Simons defined it as a hyperirritable contraction knot usually present within muscles or its fascia which produces pain on compression and can give rise to specific referred pain ,motor dysfunction ,and autonomic phenomena in a specified referred zone which rarely coincides entirely with dermatomal segment. Trigger points are manually palpated with following characteristics including local twitch response, jump in sign, referred pain zones and autonomic phenomenal changes. As suggested by Travell and simons in 1999 in their trigger point manual book,the etiology of trigger points involves all three factors that includes biomechanical,CNS,and local myofascial tissues. As per microscopic and biopsy studies, which has been done of local myofascial tissue where there is presence of trigger points revealed and explained these contraction knots as round,large and,darkly staining fibers.presence of these knots causes significant increases in average diameter of muscles. spontaneous electrical activity (SEA) in TrPs have also seen and studied through electromyographic studies while adjacent muscle tissues were electrically silent which suggested and implicated neuromuscular junction and motor end plates interchangeable, nevertheless the motor end plates describes structure and the neuromuscular junction reflects function. Gunn and Milbrandt in 1977 was first explicated and find correlation between motor end plates and trigger points also known as myalgic spots . As stated by Travell and Simons in context to motor end plate dysfunction that due to  excessively release of Ach from presynaptic nerve terminal leads to rapid activation of the  nicotinic Ach receptors on the post synaptic terminal which results in muscle action potential and muscle contraction. Since this hypothesis of travell and simons was one way to interpret EMG results but EMG for post synaptic fibers ,there is increase in SEA in trigger points that could be a characteristics to the result of presynaptic,synaptic or post synaptic dysfunction and can be inherited or acquired. As a general rule, factors for the development of trigger points includes muscle overuse or direct/ indirect trauma which may be the results of sustained low level or repetitive muscle contractions,eccentric/concentric,submaximal/maximal muscle contractions. Although muscular damage is not necessary all the time for development of trigger points there may be injuries at the microlevel which includes damage of cell membrane ,sarcoplasmic reticulum with release of high amounts of ca2+ ions,and disruption of proteins like desmin,titin or dystrophin. Mechanical muscle contractions exceeding respective muscles capacity is defined as overuse.as we know that arterial capillary beds blood pressures approx 35mm hg at the beginning and venous capillary beds pressure at the end is 15mm Hg which used to be obstructed during muscle contractions and recovers with relaxation;known as muscular pump. However,Muscular metabolism is maintained by oxygen and glucose which faces crisis during sustained muscle contractions.Even contractions performed at only 10 % and 25 % of maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) may alter and produce impairment in blood circulation of muscles, As per Otten ;pain and trigger points may be developed by increased or alterations in the pressure gradients during low level exertions(personal communications 2005). During submaximal concentric contractions, ATP is utilized for 4-6 seconds initially from muscle’s storage and subsequentally it shifts to direct phosphorylation of ADP through creatinine phosphate. Stored ATP and CP provides enough energy and power for approx 14-16 sec but thereafter physiologically a short span of rest is needed to replenish the exhausted reserves of intracellular ATP and CP. As a general rule if ATP demands are within the capacity of the aerobic pathway muscles  can continue its activities for hours but as demand exceeds;anaerobic glycolysis will start contributing of the total generated ATP. This further leads to crisis of ATP and sustained sarcomere contractions starts the progression of trigger points. The Eccentric contractions are commonly used to control the rate of movement in our body. although there is no solid correlations between eccentric loading and development of trigger points. Itoh et al found in their study in which middle finger extensor muscle was being eccentrically loaded. After 3 sets of exercise ,one day and two days after exercises ,findings were similar encapsulating tender taut bands which were painful on compression;suggests that eccentric  loading may be correlated with development of trigger points. There are biopsy studies also who confirms and suggest the role of eccentric contractions in disruption of cytoskeletal structures especially desmin , and titin (largest in our body);a protein which interconnects the adjacent myofibrils and connects myosin filaments to the z-bands with a linkage to actin filaments ;respectively. Prolonged ecentric exercises enlarge the muscle fibers microscopically and all these enlarged fibers are exclusively fast glycolytic type(typeII) which considered as highly fatiguable and unable to regenerate ATP in early exercise period It results a high stiffness state of fibers which on stretch disrupts leading to cytoskeletal and myofibrillar damage. Apart from this in eccentric exercised muscles there is increase concentration of calcium due to sarcoplasmic reticulum disruption that keep actin and myosin molecules together an activates several mechanisms which may further damage cell membrane and cytoskeletal disruption and again the same results that is development of trigger points. Jump in sign is an response to pressure applied on a trigger point which may leads to wincing, crying, or withdrawing by patients. Local twitch response is a fleeting response or contraction of tense muscle fibers or group that traverse a trigger point on response to stimulation via snapping palpation or needling of trigger point or its surrounding area. Referred autonomic phenomena: vasoconstriction (blanching), coldness sweating, pilomotor response, ptosis, and/or, hyper secretion that occur in a same region or area where trigger points refers pain and its sensations. Referred pain zones: an area of pain which is entirely remote from its source. Generally  in case of trigger points ,specifically activated and central trigger points and sporadically  infrequently,conjoin entirely with the peripheral nerve distribution or dermatomal segments. The lower extremity functional scale (LEFS) is a functional status questionnaire that aims to investigate the degree of difficulty a patient experiences in performing everyday tasks, due to disorders of his/her lower extremity.The LEFS consists of twenty items, each of which is scored on a 5-point scale (0 to 4) (appendix 1). Beck depression inventory-ii is a depression measurement scale or an instrument to measure the emotional, motivational,somatic and cognitive symptoms observed in patients.this scale consist of 21 questions which is symptom related to quantify degree of depression in subjects usually it covers adolescents and adults and given in appendix 2. VAS is a psychometric response scale and a measurement instrument for subjective characteristics or attitudes that cannot be directly measured. Respondents specify their  level of agreement to a statement by indicating a position along a continuous line between  two end-points. Pressure algometer is force gauze with a rubber disk of 1 cm surface which is very helpful in clinical setup for diagnosing trigger points ,fibrositis,myalgic spots as well as it helps in quantification of pressure pain threshold and Pressure pain threshold for measurement of  normal and abnormal surfaces are given in appendix 3.