Comm 101 in the Sauder School of Business has been a truly eye-opening class. It has given me fascinating perspectives on matters that I had hardly considered prior to the beginning of this term. We have covered all of the areas of business succinctly, and I am entering my second semester of university life much more confident in a professional, business environment. Throughout the semester I have amassed several quotes that I believe to be eye opening, that I would like to share with you. Please excuse the lack of the authors names.

“In practise the doctrine of Social Responsibility is frequently a cloak for actions that are justified on other grounds.”

“If you just focus on Financiers, you miss what makes Capitalism tick.” – Ed Freeman

“The taxation a company receives is their form of Social Responsibility.”

Marketing: “Try positioning the product in the mind of the consumer with something that is consistent with what is already known.”

“Companies must innovate. Take Kodak for example; they got left behind.”

And as a certain Paul Cubbon described the purpose of Comm 101: “To learn, practise riding the bike. not by studying the bike all day.”

Thank you.

Rupert Peers

Operations issues are hounding Volkswagen in their biggest recall yet. Due to faulty electrical circuits and leaky fuel lines, this enormous recall is taking place. Some of the key categories of Operations are to blame for this flaw in design. Too much variability, or risk, and poor measurement of quality are key principles of operations that were clearly not implemented to their best ability. From an engineering standpoint, components of higher quality could have been used, but nonetheless these key principles of operations failed to produce a flawless car.

In 2011 Toyota recalled over 10 million cars because of a sticky foot pedal and an unstable floor mat. Similar issues in operations allowed this to occur.  As it is pretty well known, Toyota has one of the most efficient car manufacturing procedures, with their engineers on site observing any processes that could be improved upon. This sub-category of operations was not to blame, but much like Volkswagen it was the measurement of quality that performed below quality standards, resulting in so many cars being recalled.

Had the measurement of quality and amount of risk been better managed by Toyota and Volkswagen, this issue of recalled cars would never have arisen.

UBC has a $2 billion annual operating budget, a faculty consisting of 10,186 workers, and 57,706 students. Considering these stats, I find it striking that an institution, not only the size of UBC, but also with its prestige, can operate an “Online Learning Management System” that crashes on a weekly basis.

The Business Technology Management (BTM) team controlling Connect is providing a poor example of how to deal with Management Information Systems (MIS) when, ironically, inside the doors of Sauder students are learning how these two groups can work together efficiently. It appears that UBC has been conned into paying an unknown but expectedly large sum of money for something that is simply poorly constructed, and even more poorly managed.