Calculations of Rare Earth (Y, La and Ce) Diffusivities

Calculations of Rare Earth (Y, La and Ce) Diffusivities First-principles calculations of rare earth (Y, La and Ce) diffusivities in bcc Fe Xueyun Gaoa,b,[*], Huiping Rena, Chunlong Lia,c, Haiyan Wanga, Yunping Jia, Huijie Tan a ABSTRACT: The impurity diffusivities of rare earth elements, Y, La and Ce, in bcc Fe have been investigated by the first-principles calculations within nine-frequency model. The microscopic parameters in the pre-factor and activation energies have been calculated. For the three elements, the first nearest-neighbor solute-vacancy interactions are all attractive, in which Y and La solute atoms more favorably bond to the vacancy. The solute-vacancy binding energy can be explained in terms of the combination of the distortion binding energy and the electronic binding energy, and the decomposition results of the total solute-vacancy binding energy suggest that the strain-relief effect accounts for larger portion of the binding energy for Y and La than that for Ce. The diffusion coefficients of Y are one order of magnitude larger than that of La, and predicted to be comparable to that of Fe self-diffusion. Compared with Y and La, Ce shows large migration energy and small solute-vacancy att ractive interaction, which accounts for the lowest diffusivity of this element. Keywords: Diffusion; Rare earth; Bcc Fe; First-principles calculations 1. Introduction In the past years, the addition of rare earth (RE) elements has been regarded promising in steels. A series of beneficial research for the development of rare earth addition have been focused on the purification and modification of inclusion, since RE elements are characterized by significant negative free energy changes for compound formations [1-3]. RE doping also improve the high-temperature oxidation resistance and the corrosion resistance of steels due to the reactive-element effect (REE) [4,5].In addition, the solidification, phase transformations, recrystallization behavior, of steel can be improved by adding RE [6, 7]. Knowledge of the above mentioned mechanism is essential to understand the influence of RE additions on the physical, chemical and various properties of steels. In spite of the progress so far in RE application, it is apparent that many questions still remain rather controversial. A thorough theoretical study on the diffusivities of RE elements in Fe-based alloy is still lacking, which is essential for understanding the effects of RE on the structure and properties of steel, and is also helpful for designing and preparing RE doped steels [8]. For the three commonly used RE elements, Y, La and Ce, to our knowledge, only the diffusion coefficient of Y has been reported [9]. The diffusion of substitutional-type solute is mainly controlled by vacancy mechanism. In this case, the interaction of solute atom with vacancy plays significant roles in understanding of the diffusion properties of solutes. To understand the microstructure evolution in bcc Fe alloy, DFT method has been applied in calculations of the binding energies of solute atom with vacancy [10]. Based on the nine-frequency model of Le Claire, Ding and Huang et al. [11,12] developed a computational framework to calculate the solute diffusion coefficients in bcc Fe, which presents an effective method in investigation of the diffusion properties in bcc Fe alloy. The purpose of this work is to investigate the impurity diffusivities of rare earth elements, Y, La and Ce, in bcc Fe by the first-principles calculations within nine-frequency model and the semi-empirical corrections for magnetization[11,13], calculate the associated solute-vacancy binding energies, migration energies, pre-factors and activation energies for these impurity diffusivities, as well as the self-diffusion coefficient of Fe, thus discuss the related factors of the diffusion coefficients. 2. Methodology The temperature dependence of diffusion coefficient D is expressed in the Arrhenius form D=D0exp(-Q/kBT), where D0 and Q are the pre-factor and activation energy, respectively. Below the Curie temperature, the self-diffusion and solute diffusion coefficients in bcc Fe deviate downward from the Arrhenius type relationship extrapolated from the paramagnetic state [14]. These deviations are attributed to the change of magnetization which affects the diffusion activation energy. To investigate the effect of magnetic disorder on the diffusion activation energy of spin-polarized metals, Ding et al. [15] reported a first-principles approach based on the spin-wave DFT method for studying the self-diffusion of bcc Fe and fcc Co, and the calculated values of ÃŽÂ ± agree well with the experimental data. More recently, by combination of the first-principle calculations and Heisenberg Monte Carlo simulations, Sandberg et al. [16] presented a quasi-empirical model to study the magnetic contribu tion to the self-diffusion activation energy of bcc Fe. Murali et al. [17] conducted a systematic study of the effects of phonon and electron excitations on the free formation energy of vacancy, the solute-vacancy binding energy, and the vacancy migration energy in bcc Fe. The authors then calculated the Fe self-diffusion coefficient based on the computed free energies, by employing the semi-empirical model presented in Ref. [18]. The diffusion associated data yielded by these methods are in good agreement with experiments. We employ the semi-empirical model to describe the dependence of the diffusion activation energy on the magnetization in the ferromagnetic state [18]: QF(T)=QP[1+ÃŽÂ ±s(T)2] (1) where QP is the activation energy in the paramagnetic state; s(T) is the ratio of the magnetization of bcc Fe at a certain temperature T to that at 0K, and has been experimentally measured [19,20]; the constant ÃŽÂ ± quantifies the extent of the influence of magnetic on activation energy, the measured value of ÃŽÂ ± for Fe self-diffusion is 0.156 [11].In the case of the solute species investigated in this context that have no measured ÃŽÂ ± values available, the values can be estimated from a linear correlation with the induced changes in local magnetization on Fe atoms in the first and second neighbor shells of a solute atom [21]. The first-principles calculations give direct access to the magnitude of the activation energies for self- and solute diffusion in the fully ordered ferromagnetic state (T=0K). Given the values of ÃŽÂ ± and s(T), we can compute QP through the relation , and QF(T) from Eq. (1). We based the diffusion calculations on the assumption that the mechanism of diffusion is primarily monovacancy mediated. The self-diffusion and solute diffusion coefficients on a bcc lattice can be expressed as following [11,22]: Dself=a2f0Cvw0 (2) Dsolute=a2f2Cvw2(-ΆGb/kBT) (3) where a is the bcc lattice constant, f0=0.727 is the self-diffusion correlation factor, f2 is the correlation factor for solute diffusion which depends on the relative vacancy jump frequencies around the solute atom. Cv denotes the equilibrium vacancy concentration, can be written as Cv=exp(ΆSf /kB)exp(-ΆHf /kBT), where ΆSf and ΆHf are the vacancy formation enthalpy and entropy, respectively, the harmonic approximation makes these two become temperature-independent constants. and kB is Boltzmanns constant. w0 and w2 are the vacancy hopping frequencies for Fe and solute atoms to exchange with a nearest-neighbor vacancy, respectively. Based on transition state theory (TST), the vacancy hopping frequency w is written as , where and are the phonon frequencies in the initial state and transition state, and the product in the denominator ignores the unstable mode; ΆHmig is the migration energy, gives the energy difference for the diffusin g atom located at its initial equilibrium lattice position and the saddle-point position. The solute-vacancy binding free energy ΆGb can be expressed as ΆGb =ΆHbTΆSb, where ΆHb and ΆSb are the binding enthalpy and entropy, respectively. The correlation factor f2 can be calculated using the nine-frequency model developed by Le Claire [13] which involves different jump frequencies of vacancies to their first neighbor position in the presence of the solute atoms, as illustrated in Fig. 1. In this model, the interaction of solute-vacancy is assumed up to second neighbor distance. The nine frequencies shown in Fig. 1 illustrate all of the distinct vacancy jumps in a bcc system with a dilute solute concentration, including the host Fe atom jump w0 without impurity. The detailed calculation procedures could be found in Ref. [11]. Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of the nine-frequency model for the bcc Fe crystalline with a solute atom. The arrows denote the jump directions of the vacancy. The numbers in the circle represent the neighboring site of the solute atom. For convenience, we can represent the self- and solute diffusion equations (Eqs.(2) and (3)) in Arrhenius form to obtain the pre-factor and activation energy of diffusion. By combining the above Eqs., the diffusion coefficient for Fe self-diffusion and solute diffusion can be expressed as: (4) For self-diffusion, the pre-factor is, and the activation energy given as . Also, the solute diffusion coefficient can be expressed in an Arrhenius form with the pre-factor is, and. The first-principles calculations presented here are carried out using the Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package(VASP) with the projector augmented wave(PAW) method and the generalized gradient approximation of Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof functional(GGA-PBE) [23]. All calculations were performed in spin polarized. The computations performed within a 4à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´4à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´4 supercell including 128 atoms. The binding, vacancy formation and migration energies were calculated with 300eV plane-wave cutoff and 12à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´12à ¯Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ´12 k-point meshes. The residual atomic forces in the relaxed configurations were lower than 0.01eV/Ã…. The transition states with the saddle point along the minimum energy diffusion path for vacancy migration were determined using nudged elastic band (NEB) method [24] as implemented in VASP. We adopt the harmonic approximation (HA) to consider the contribution of normal phonon frequencies to free energy. The normal phonon frequencies were calcu lated using the direct force-constant approach as implemented in the Alloy Theoretic Automated Toolkit (ATAT) [25] package. Similar cutoff energy, k-point mesh size and supercell size used for the total energies were used for the vibrational calculations. 3. Result and discussion Table 1 illustrates our calculated energies for vacancy formation, migration and binding, as well as the constant ÃŽÂ ± for solute species, the associated paramagnetic activation energies and fully ordered ferromagnetic activation energies for both self- and solute-diffusion. For pure bcc Fe, the vacancy formation energy and migration energy obtained here are consistent with the reported range of values, ΆHf=2.16-2.23 eV and ΆHmig=0.55-0.64 eV [11,26,27]. For Y impurity in bcc Fe, the calculated vacancy binding energy in full ordered ferromagnetic state also compare well with the previous first principles work [28], in which ΆHb=-0.73 eV. It can be seen that Y and La have smaller activation energy than that for Fe self-diffusion, while Ce is predicted to have a lager value of activation energy than that for Fe self-diffusion, in both the ordered ferromagnetic and paramagnetic state. Table 1 Vacancy formation energy ΆHf , solute-vacancy binding energy ΆHb, migration energy ΆHmig, the ferromagnetic activation energy and the paramagnetic activation energy QP; the variable dependence parameter of activation energy on magnetization ÃŽÂ ±. Fe Y La Ce ΆHf(eV) 2.31 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ ΆHb (eV) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ -0.69 -0.66 -0.43 ΆHmig (eV) 0.54 0.09 0.17 1.09 ÃŽÂ ± 0.156 0.088 0.038 0.125 (eV) 2.85 1.71 1.82 2.97 QP (eV) 2.47 1.57 1.75 2.64 Solute-vacancy binding energy plays a crucial role in understanding solute diffusion kinetics. Table 2 presents the binding energies of Y, La and Ce atoms with vacancy in their 1nn, 2nn and 3nn coordinate shells. From Table 2 it can be seen that referring to the first nearest-neighbor solute-vacancy pairs, the binding energies are all negative, which implies the solute-vacancy pairs are favorable. Specifically, Y and La impurities are computed to have higher values of solute-vacancy binding energies -0.69 eV and -0.66 eV in 1nn configuration, respectively, while that for Ce is -0.43 eV. Correspondingly, we found that Y, La and Ce atoms relax towards the 1nn vacancy by 22.3%, 19.6% and 12.2% of the initial 1nn distance (2.488 Ã…) after the structure optimization. The interactions of the solute-vacancy pair at the 2nn shells tend to be smaller in magnitude than that of 1nn, and that of Ce-vacancy predicted to be repulsive. The interactions of the 3nn solute-vacancy are relatively we ak, indicating that the interactions of the solute-vacancy are local. According to Le Clair model [13], in the situation that the interactions of the first and second nearest solute-vacancy neighbors are appreciable, the nine different jump frequencies should be considered. To obtain information on the origin of these attractive behaviors, we decompose the total binding energy into the distortion binding energyand the electronic binding energy as [29] . The distortion binding energy can be obtained by the distortion reducing of the bcc Fe matrix when a solute atom and a vacancy combine to form a solute-vacancy pair, and can be expressed as: (5) where and can be calculated as follows: after the supercell containing a solute-vacancy pair (or a substitutional atom) has been fully relaxed, the solute-vacancy pair (or the substitutional atom) is removed from the system, then the total energy can be calculated. denotes the total energy of the pure bcc Fe supercell, and denotes the total energy of the supercell containing a vacancy. Then can be calculated from . The calculated solute-vacancy binding energies of 1nn, 2nn and 3nn are shown in Table 2, along with the energy decomposition for 1nn solute-vacancy binding. The distortion energies (-0.31 to -0.65 eV) for all solute elements(Y, La and Ce) are negative, and much bigger than their corresponding electronic binding energies (-0.04 to -0.12 eV). This implies that the distortion energy accounts for a major part of the total solute-vacancy binding energy, i.e. the strain relief effect contributes significantly to the interaction between the impurity atom and the vacancy, esp ecially for the solute Y and La, which accounted for 94.2% and 97.0% of the total binding energy, respectively. Furthermore, there is a strong correlation between the binding energy and the distance of the solute-vacancy, and the lattice relaxation around the vacancy is local. For the case of Ce-vacancy , specifically, we found that Ce atom relax away from the 2nn vacancy by 4.3% of the initial 2nn distance, which leads to the positive binding energy. Table 2 Decomposition of the total solute-vacancy binding energy into distortion binding energy and electronic binding energy. Units are eV. Solute element Y La Ce ΆHb (1nn) -0.69 -0.66 -0.43 (1nn) -0.65 -0.64 -0.31 (1nn) -0.04 -0.02 -0.12 ΆHb (2nn) -0.16 -0.21 0.10 ΆHb (3nn) -0.06 0.09 -0.05 The calculated migration energies of the different vacancy jumps corresponding to the paths in Fig. 1 are listed in Table 3. The migration energies of w2 jump for Y and La are lower than that of w0 jump for host Fe atom (0.54 eV), while the migration barrier of Ce in bcc Fe is higher than that of Fe self-diffusion. The migration barrier of w2 jump for Y is 0.09 eV, comparable to the reported value of 0.03 eV and 0.02 eV [9, 30]. The results indicate that there is a correlation between the binding energy of solute-vacancy and the migration energy, i.e. the strong attraction of solute-vacancy in 1nn configuration gives rise the low migration energy of the corresponding vacancy jump. For the three solute atoms, because of the strong attraction of 1nn solute-vacancy, the migration barriers of which the 1nn vacancy jump away from the solute atom, i.e. w3, w3, and w3, are higher than that of the opposite jumps, i.e. w4, w4, and w4, as well as that of Fe self-diffusion in pure bcc Fe. And t he same tendency can be found in the results of jump w5 and w6. Table 3 Migration energies for different jumps in the presence of Y, La and Ce in bcc Fe matrix. Units are eV. Jump Y La Ce w2 0.09 0.17 1.08 w3 1.81 1.84 1.55 w4 0.91 0.99 0.92 w3 0.93 1.23 1.07 w4 0.04 0.03 0.08 w3 0.86 0.92 0.87 w4 0.12 0.05 0.11 w5 0.94 0.98 0.89 w6 0.69 0.67 0.82 The correlation factor f2 is related to the probability of the reverse jump of a solute atom to its previous position [31]. Table 4 lists the calculated values of correlation factors for Y, La and Ce at representative temperatures of 850, 1000 and 1150K. The correlation factor of Y is 3.3ÃÆ'-10-5 at 1000K, close to the value of 1ÃÆ'-106 obtained by Murali [9]. For the three elements, the correlation factors of Ce have the highest values, and the correlation factors of La are one order of magnitude lower than that of Y. Therefore, Ce atom is the most difficult to return back to its original position in the temperature range of our investigation. Including the smallest binding energy, highest migration energy and correlation factor, provides an explanation for the low diffusivity of Ce atom. Table 4 Correlation factors (f2) for Y, La and Ce solute-diffusion at representative temperatures of 850, 1000 and 1150K. T(K) Y La Ce f2 f2/ f0 f2 f2/ f0 f2 f2/ f0 850 6.4ÃÆ'-106 1.111 2.9ÃÆ'-107 1.264 0.379 1.373 1000 3.3ÃÆ'-10-5 1.070 2.4ÃÆ'-106 1.223 0.381 1.370 1150 1.2ÃÆ'-104 1.034 1.4ÃÆ'-10-5 1.188 0.383 1.367 Table 5 lists the calculated diffusion activation energies and pre-factors for Fe self-diffusion and Y, La and Ce impurity diffusion. For pure bcc Fe, we find our calculated results are in good agreement with the published values. For Y impurity in bcc Fe, the calculated activation energy in full ordered ferromagnetic state is lower than the previous first principles work, and the pre-factor is as much as two orders of magnitude lager than the reported value. The experimental or calculated diffusion coefficients of La and Ce are not available to the best of our knowledge. For the case of experimental investigation, due to the very small solubilities of La and Ce in iron, the measured data may be affected by segregation of solutes, grain boundary, other impurities and the method of detection. Besides, the theory calculations, e.g. molecular dynamics (MD), first-principles etc. have not been applied widely in the study of RE contained steel yet, so the fundamental data of RE elements i n iron, such as the potential functions of Fe-La and Fe-Ce, is lacking. Table 5 Activation energies in the fully ordered ferromagnetic state () and paramagnetic state (QP), along with diffusion pre-factors for Fe self-diffusion and impurity diffusion of Y, La and Ce in bcc Fe. Reference (kJ mol-1) QP(kJ mol-1) D0(m2/s) Fe Present work 275.3 238.1 2.99ÃÆ'-10-5 Huang et al. [11] 277 239 6.7ÃÆ'-10-5 Nitta et al. [32] 289.7 ±5.1 250.6 ±3.8 2.76ÃÆ'-10-4 Seeger[33] 280.7 242.8 6.0ÃÆ'-10-4 Y Present work 165.9 159.9 1.09ÃÆ'-109 Murali et al. [9] 218.1 à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ 8.0ÃÆ'-107 La Present work 175.6 169.2 2.88ÃÆ'-1010 Ce Present work 286.3 275.8 7.66ÃÆ'-106 Fig. 2 presents a direct comparison between the calculated and published temperature dependent diffusion coefficients for Fe self-diffusion and Y solute diffusion. For Fe self-diffusion, the calculated values are in good agreement with Huang et al. [11] and Nitta et al. [29], but smaller than the measured d

Starting Up a Cookie Company

Starting up a cookie company on-campus You and your roommate are preparing to start a company producing cookies in your oncampus apartment. By starting up this business, you want to provide fresh cookies to starving fellow students late at night. However, you still have to figure out some aspects of the business model such as the price to charge, whether you will be able to make profit and how many orders you can accept. The business concept You have an extraordinary idea: to bake fresh cookies on delivery, using a customer chosen combination of ingredients.The cookies can be picked up at your apartment within one hour. Several factors will enable you to be different from your competitors such as store-bought cookies. First, the cookies will be fresh since they will only be produced after the order is received. Therefore, the buyer will be getting cookies that are literally hot out of the oven. Second, you will have a variety of ingredients available to add to the basic dough, includ ing chocolate chips, M&M’s, chopped Heath bars, coconut, walnuts, and raisins. Buyers will telephone in their orders and specify which of these ingredients they want in their cookies.Consequently, you will have the freshest, most exotic cookies anywhere, available to your fellow students next to campus. The production process Baking cookies is simple: mix all the ingredients in a food processor, spoon out the cookie dough onto a tray, put the cookies into the oven, bake the cookies, take the tray of cookies out of the oven, let the cookies cool and finally, take them of the tray and pack them in a box. You and your roommate already own all the necessary capital equipment: a food processor, cookie trays and spoons. Your apartment is equipped with a small oven that is able to hold one tray at a time.Your landlord pays your electricity. As such, the variable costs are merely the cost of the ingredients (estimated to be 1 Euro/dozen), the cost of the box in which the cookies are packed (0,30 Euro/box, each box holds a dozen cookies), and your time (what value do you place on your time? ) A more detailed description of the production process is described below. The first step of the whole process is to take the order. Your roommate has figured out how to do this quickly and This case is an adapted version of the Kristen Cookie case, Harvard Business Review. ith 100% accuracy: by using electronic mail to accept orders and to inform customers when the order will be ready. Since this process runs automatically, it does not take any of your time. Therefore, this step will be ignored in further analysis of the process. You and your roommate have timed the necessary physical operations. The first physical production step is to wash out the mixing bowl from the previous batch, add all of the ingredients, and mix them in your food processor. The mixing bowls hold ingredients for up to three dozen cookies.You then dish up the cookies, one dozen at a time onto a cooki e try. These activities take about six minutes for the washing and mixing steps, regardless of how many cookies (i. e. , one or more dozens). However, dishing up the cookies onto the tray takes two minutes per tray per dozen. The next step, performed by your roommate, is to put the cookies in the oven and set the thermostat and timer, which takes about one minute. The cookies bake for the next nine minutes. So the total baking time is 10 minutes, during which your roommate is busy setting the oven during the first minute.Since the oven only holds one tray, a second dozen takes an additional 10 minutes to bake. Your roommate also performs the last steps of the process by first removing the cookies from the oven and putting them aside to cool for 5 minutes, then carefully packing them in a box and accepting payment. Removing the cookies from the oven takes only a negligible amount of time, since it must be done promptly. Furthermore, it takes two minutes to pack each dozen and about o ne minute to accept payment for the order.As experienced bakers know, the description above contains some simplifications. For example, the first batch of cookies for the night requires preheating the oven. However, such complexities will be put aside for now. Please begin your analysis by developing a process flow diagram of the cookiemaking process. Question before starting up your business To launch your business, you need to set prices and rules for accepting orders. Some issues will only be resolved after you get started and try out different ways of producing the cookies.Before you start, however, you at least want a preliminary plan, which as much a This case is an adapted version of the Kristen Cookie case, Harvard Business Review. possible specifies, so that you can do a careful calculation of how much time you will have to devote to this business each night, and how much money you can expect to make. For example, when you conduct a market survey to determine the likely dem and, you will want to specify exactly what your order policies will be. Therefore, you will have to answer the following operational questions: How long will it take you to fill a rush order? -How many orders can you fill in a night, assuming you are open four hours each night? -How much of your own and your roommate’s valuable time will it take to fill each order? -Because your baking trays can hold exactly one dozen cookies, you will produce and sell cookies by the dozen. Should you give any discount for people who order two dozen cookies, three dozen cookies, or more? If so, how much? Will it take you any longer to fill a twodozen cookie order than a one-dozen cookie order? How many food processors and baking trays will you need? -Are there any changes you can make in your production plans that will also allow you to make better cookies or more cookies in less time or at lower cost? For example, is there bottleneck operation in your production process that you can expand c heaply? What is the effect of adding another oven? How much would you be willing to pay to rent an additional oven? This case is an adapted version of the Kristen Cookie case, Harvard Business Review.

Management of Organisation Essay

Change management may be defined as the planning, initiation, realization, control and the stabilization of change processes both at the corporate and personal level. Change usually may occur at the strategic level of the organization or involve the personal development of the personnel. Change is a powerful force which is often resisted by most individuals whether it occurs at the corporate or personal level. Despite the resistance, change is a good thing. In fact it is a . livelihood of business in any organization. This is so because any possible failure to see and adjust to change may lead to a spiral downward fall that may lead to reduced efficiency, productivity, band productivity. Therefore the effects of change on personalities need to be resolved effectively but the change process must go on. At no point should the change process should be stopped because of its effects on the human component of the organization (Burke, 2002: pp. 55-7). Change may be described by a number of adjectives such as confusing, fulfilling, challenging, liberating, disorienting, empowering frustrating etc depending on the magnitude of the impact it has on an individual. Employees will always view change negatively. They have a negative perception and attitude towards change. The negative attitude of employees toward change is as a result of their fear of losing their jobs, positions, statuses social security and fear of the resulting higher workload. The employees may or may not be justified to view change that way but generally, the effects of change on employees are negative but the interests of the organization should always remain higher than those of personalities. Even those who survive retrenchment that comes with change will still view change negatively because of two reasons. First, they feel guilty because retaining their jobs makes others jobless and second, the high workload that is likely to come with the change. The remnants can only be willing to the resulting workload if they are given a pay rise. These emotions that result from change may put considerable stress on the changing organization. The stress though is short-lived and after some time the employees tend to forget and move on (Kaufman,1995: p. 12). Based on the employees general view of change, implementation of change in an organization, division, department, project etc may not be easy but the management need to be strong to see the organization through the change process. There will always be casualties of change. Change should start with the managers. It is often said that leadership is a message. Whatever the manager says or doesn’t say is a message. Therefore the message needs to be clear, consistent and repetitive. This is so because it takes time for people to hear, understand and believe the change carrying message especially if they don’t like what they hear. It is human nature to resist change and this is precisely the reason why they should be prepared beforehand. Prior communication may make the transition exciting or at least satisfactory. Change implementation is a foursome affair. First, there is need for the establishment and maintenance of the organization’s vision. When you know where you are going it is rare that you can get lost. Second, there is need to establish and maintain a realistic business plan which ought to be in sync with the vision. Third, communication needs to come in time to pass the synchronized organizational vision and business plan to the organization’s personnel. Finally, there is need for action so as to put into practice what has been communicated in the bid to exercise what is in the business plan which is in sync with the organization’s ultimate vision. Successful implementation of change can thus be seen to be represented by the following equation: Leadership + Vision + Communication + Action = Successful Change. The actions need to be measured and evaluated with the results being compared and deliberated upon. It is common knowledge that what gets measured gets done and anything rewarded gets repeated over and over again (Spector etal, 2007: pp. 156-8). Change can be discerned through finding out what people out there say about the organization. What is the organizational ranking out there? Does the organization need to do something to gain a competitive edge in the market? All these questions test the inevitability of change. Another way involves the challenging of all the organization’s products, services and policies in a bid to question their relevance to the present corporate, personal and market context. It is through questioning that you get to understand when change is necessary, how it can be communicated and implemented and how can the favourable results of the change on the organization’s performance measured. Change is often expensive especially when it involves technology. Technology changes fast and thus if any organization that needs to adapt needs to learn rapidly so as to keep up with the pace. Change is often triggered fro without the organization. Linkspan for instance needs to improve technology to keep up with the changing technology. The effect of technology in market enhancement can no longer be ignored. Further, most people have become technology oriented and are likely to choose a service provider who is technologically compliant that the one who is still struggling with indecision whether to embrace technology or not (Martel,1986: pp 45-54). As stated earlier, the first step in the implementation of change is the detailed review of the organization’s vision. Linkspan management needs to question the direction they are taking whether they are in line with the company’s vision. I believe that any company will have its vision focussing somewhere close to having an advantageous edge in the market. No organization sets a vision to make losses. The target is always making huge profits that will lead to the expansion of the organization. Once the vision has been internalized, the management needs to ask itself one very important question; is the intended change necessary? If so, how is the change likely to supplement the organization’s efficiency and performance? Is the change in sync with Linkspan’s ultimate vision, objectives and goals? Once all these issues are established, then it should be officially declared that the change is inevitable and the reasons warranting the change. These reasons and the inevitability of the change need to be recorded. The next step will be an in-depth study on how the change is likely to affect both the strategic corporate and personal components of Linkspan. Study how the change is going to affect the market, the employees, the organization’s expenditure and income, the shareholders, the customers etc. In short measure and evaluate the effects of the change on every party. Once the measurement and evaluation of the effects of the change has been made, it is necessary to carry out the speculation of the cost of the change. The speculation must factor the costs of employee layoffs, the cost of pay increments for those that remain based on the skills that they will be trained on and the market rates, the cost of training and professional development processes, the cost of the technological component of the change such as the new cranes, integrated bridge systems, autopilot, refurbishments, the cost of other loading and unloading equipment updates etc. In general, the full cost of the change process need to be speculated and this needs the involvement of professionals to carry out the speculations in each sector of the change. These professional speculators need time to carry out a detailed research. Once they have all submitted there reports i. e. he personnel pay rise and lay off speculation report ( featuring effects of the change on each class of employees rating them from the most affected to the least affected by the change, the number of personnel to be laid off, and those to be retained, lay off packages based on positions of employees, pay rise for the remaining staff based on additional training and responsibilities, criteria for the layoff and retention process and its legality and the time frame for the layoffs) , the technological investment plan report (featuring the cost of the new technology equipment and the labour for the installation of new and overhaul of the old technology, refurbishments etc, the best service provider and their charges and the time the process is likely to take), projection report on how the change is likely to add the company’s profitability and efficiency and how it is likely to enhance the company’s market position. This should feature a comparative approach where the major competitors are studied and analyzed to determine the market advantage the change is likely to offer the organization (Drucker,1995: pp. 96-103). Once all the reports have been submitted, the management of Linkspan need to take time, study them and the recommendations and thus determine the total cost, legality and time span of the change process. The company’s capability of funding and sustaining the change process shall also need to be evaluated to establish a conclusive decision of whether to carry out the change or not. If the decision is yes then the management needs to go ahead and start communicating the lurking change to all the stakeholders. As stated earlier, the communication needs to be repetitive consistent and above all very clear. After a blanket communication, the specific phase of communication phase follows. This phase involves communication of the change effects to specific groups of personnel. Start with the most hit and tell them the possible effects the change is likely to have on them. The company’s plan to compensate them, train them, motivate them e. g. through pay rise etc. Give each group time to respond and let the emotions run. Change is emotional. The management needs to be keen to give convincing reasons for the inevitability of the change. State that the company’s interests are higher than any personality. State examples of other companies that have done so and the legality of the process based on the reports. Note the acceptance or denial of the layoff or pay rise packages and consider the victims proposals offered immediately or later. They might not offer the proposals immediately because the message may still be devastating especially for those to be laid off. There is need for professional counselling to enhance speed acceptance of the change process. Remember to communicate to these employees the time span of the change process to enable them feature this into their personal financial, social or even psychological schedules (Sanderson, 1995: pp. 178-190). The end of communication to all stake holders marks another session of review of all the recommendations with a committee whose members are drawn from each division of the organization harmonizing the paperwork of the change process and briefing all the stake holders of the status of the change process. The committee has the mandate of identifying the changes noted between the reports recommendations and the actual status. Harmony is then established through deliberative meetings between the management and the affected parties. The committee has to be time conscious because agreements may take time to be reached and in case agreements are not forthcoming, the management should exercise its discretionary powers (Beitler, 2006: pp. 156-9). The review ushers in the actual implementations at the expiry of the notice offered. Actions should be carried out in such a way that the organizations activities don’t grind into a halt. For example, the layoff needs strategy. Do not yet layoff personnel required before the change process is over. Start with those that are not needed immediately the change implementations start. The refurbishments and fitting of the technological equipment should start with tendering process considering the service providers recommended in the report. Consider their quotations and compare with those quoted in the reports. Consider the quality even though it is still important for the process to be cost effective quality inclusive. The tender winner needs to start working immediately. The winner needs to understand that link span need not stop operations and thus should work within the schedule given by Linkspan. The carriers need to be refurbished and fitted with the technological equipments in shifts say maybe four at a time (Spruyt, 1990: pp 200-7). Those employees belonging to the first batch of the carriers that need to be laid off, trained etc need to be subjected to the appropriate exercise as their carriers get to be worked on. After all the batches have been worked on, then Linkspan needs to communicate to the customers for the second time the completion of the upgrading process. For the second time because it is necessary that they are alerted first before the upgrading of the carriers (through a press release) about the limited services to be rendered due to the lurking upgrading. Launch the new fleet and newly trained and new packages together with a farewell party for those laid off. It is important to consider a possible increment of prices of the new services to be offered and if tenable, then communicate them at the launching party and later through a press release The workability of the change needs to be reviewed from time to time say annually. This is specifically important as a way of noting the parts of the process that are not working and the possible remedial measures to be taken. Remember that, always, the most successful companies thrive on change and Linkspan need not be an exception.

Serial Killer and Baby Killer, Janie Lou Gibbs

Janie Lou Gibbs murdered her husband, three children, and a grandson by poisoning them with arsenic so she could collect on the life insurance policies she had on each victim. Good Home Cooking Janie Lou Gibbs, from Cordele Georgia, was a devoted wife and mother who spent much of her free time giving to her church. In 1965, her husband, Marvin Gibbs died suddenly at home after enjoying one of Janies good home cooked meals. Doctors concluded an undiagnosed liver disease caused his death. An Act of Giving The show of sympathy to Janie Lou and her three children from the church was overwhelming. So much so, that Ms. Gibbs decided to give part of Marvins life insurance money to the church to show her appreciation for their stellar support. Marvin, Jr. With Marvin gone, Gibbs and her children pulled together but within a year tragedy struck again. Marvin, Jr. age 13 seemed to have inherited his fathers liver disease and after collapsing with severe cramps, he too died. Again, the church community came to support Gibbs through the painful death of her young son. Janie, overwhelmed with appreciation gave a portion of Marvin, Jr.s life insurance payment to the congregation. A Family Plagued How so much could go wrong with one family was hard to understand, but one could not help to admire Gibbs inner strength especially when just a few months later, 16-year-old Lester Gibbs began complaining of dizziness, headaches and severe cramping. He died before ever getting to the hospital. Doctors decided the cause of death was hepatitis. To Give Is To Receive With disbelief but with the usual sympathy and support, the church helped Gibbs through her terrible loss. Gibbs, now broken hearted with all that she had to endure in two years, knew she could never have made it without the support of the church, and again, offered a portion of young Lesters life insurance payment to them to help show her undying gratitude. Grandmother Janie Her last and oldest son, Roger, was married and the birth of his son, Raymond seemed to lift Janie out of despair. However, within a month both Roger and his perfectly healthy newborn son were dead. This time the attending physician asked for an investigation into the deaths. When the tests came back showing that Roger and Raymond had been given arsenic poisoning, Gibbs was arrested. Goodbye Janie Janie Lou Gibbs was found guilty of poisoning her family May 9, 1976, and received a life sentence for each of the five murders she committed. In 1999, at age 66, she received a medical release from prison because she was suffering from the advanced stages of Parkinsons disease. Source Murder Most Rare The Female Serial Killer by Michael D. Kelleher and C.L. Kelleher Schechter, Harold. The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Paperback, Revised, Updated edition, Gallery Books, July 4, 2006. Deadly Women - Discovery Channelï » ¿