The Tay Bridge Disaster Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Tay Bridge Disaster - Essay Example Also, the paper will discuss how modern engineering project management should prevent these from occurring and how the construction safeguards could prevent accidents like this. The collapse of the bridge brought into the picture the failure to maintain, optimum Engineering standards or practices by Thomas Bouch and his team. The first standard that has been not followed is the lack of strong cross bracing and fastening. That is, there is an insufficiency in cross bracing and its fastenings through out the bridge, which is very insufficient to sustain the force of strong gale. The next standard that has been missed is not testing the bridge for wind pressure according to appropriate levels. That is, Bouch used a wind pressure of just 10 lbsf/sq ft to test the design of the Tay Bridge. On the other hand, the well known fact is, Bouch, after completing Tay Bridge worked on the Forth Bridge and while working on the design of a proposed Forth bridge, he had used wind pressure up to 30 lbsf/sq ft. Another standard that have been given a go by, is the practice of moulding lugs into the wrought iron, when lugs are attached to it. Because of this mistake, the lugs were proved to break at loads of only 20 tons, while it is expected to withstand loads up to 60 tonnes (taybridgedisaster.co.uk). From the ethical perspective, Bouch, being the person in-charge, seems to have not shown great interest in the successful and foolproof completion of the project. That is, Bouch as well as the contractor appears to have not regularly visited the on-site foundry, where the iron scrap retrieved from the previously half-built bridge was recycled and remade into new structures. Because of this lack of commitment and ethical responsibility from Bouch’s side, the cylindrical cast iron columns, which supported the bridge, were of bad quality. All these inefficiencies only contributed to the collapse of the bridge, leading to many repercussions. The main result is that, the

MIS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

MIS - Essay Example Each of these ERPs have their own unique infrastructure of the operating system, interfaces and databases hence making the modification of new inter-organizational systems to suit with the available ERPs expensive and time consuming. This leads to reluctance of the business partners in integrating with these inter-organizational system. (Chuo & Vincent, 2008, p.117-118) The second challenge facing inter-organizational systems is heterogeneity of the IT environments, technical skills, and financial resources of its trading partners. Most companies in an extended supply chain have the ability to some type of electronic transmission e.g. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), file transfer etc. but with varied specific capabilities. Many small suppliers, may not have the internal infrastructure required to adopt the IOS. Therefore, each of the business partners will, have to incur cost of converting their infrastructure to comply with the new inter-organizational system. With the partners a dopting the new infrastructure, they would benefit from the ability to use the same approach to connect to any other business partner or even to disparate internal systems. However the implementation of these new architecture will require time, money, and technical knowledge that not all partners might be able or willing to commit to. (Chuo & Vincent, 2008, p.117-118) Solutions to the Challenges For the organization to succeed in encouraging its business partners for an electronic integration with its heterogeneous IT architecture, there has to be way of insulating these partners from the complexity and dynamism of its enterprise IT architecture. Therefore, the solution here is to create a reusable middle-ware platform to enable passing of standardized information between its backend systems and those of the business partners. This platform will also ensure that the initiator is also insulated from its business partners’ changing technologies which they use to connect to the initiator. (Chen &Chin, 2006, p.87) The solution to heterogeneity of the infrastructure of the business partners will be to not requiring each of the business partners’ upgrade to the new architecture but give them a range of options of electronic transmission to choose from i.e. EDI, File transfer and any other suite for web-based transactions. The development of a platform for managing these IOS will requires outsourcing so as to help in standardization on a single technology e.g. web-based service hence reducing the costs associated with developing and running the platform by themselves. (Chen &Chin, 2006, p.87) Advantages of Inter-organizational systems Adoption of IOS can create new ways of achieving vertical integration apart from merging the firms. IOS reduces the transaction cost between the buyer and the seller and when this occurs, technology could be a catalyst in altering the optimal size of the firm hence allowing it to focus on its main core business without wor ry on the high transactions costs with the partners. The IOS has advantage of promoting highly coupled relationships between the trading partners in the supply chain. This is driven by the need for total quality management where manufacturers and retailer must develop close relationships with the suppliers and realize their importance. This is necessitated by intense foreign competition that has resulted in a shrinking market hence need for close relationshi