The Strategic Planning and Deployment Excellence System (SPADES) provides a path to long-term success in the environment of rapidly changing technology and business systems. It combines the best of Hoshin Kanri, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), and other proven management and leadership tools and techniques. This book presents a set of tools and techniques for developing and deploying a long-term plan for achieving sustained success. These concepts ensure graphically tracing the strategic planning process from the foundation of organizational principles to the enterprise vision and to the organization's long-term goals. The Scientific Method is the foundation upon which the tools and techniques of SPADES are applied. The Scientific Method begins with an observation of a phenomenon which leads to development of a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon. The hypothesis is then tested and, based on the analysis of the results, then accepted or adjusted as necessary. The testing may then be repeated to verify conclusions. The Deming-Shewhart Cycle of plan-do-check-act (PDCA) is the application of the Scientific Method for control and continual improvement of processes and products. SPADES is the integrated evolution of the PDCA Cycle and QFD to answer the challenges of how to stay competitive, year after year, in a dynamic environment of rapidly changing customer requirements and technology.

From the twelfth century onwards the legends of King Arthur and his knights, including the Tristan legend, spread across Europe, producing a vast range of adaptations and new stories. German and Dutch literature were of central importance in this expansion of Arthurian material from the 12th to 16th century. This title deals with this topic.

New essays on the first flowering of German literature, in the High Middle Ages and especially during the period 1180-1230. The High Middle Ages, and particularly the period from 1180 to 1230, saw the beginnings of a vibrant literary culture in the German vernacular. While significant literary achievements in German had already been made in earlier centuries, they were a somewhat precarious vernacular extension of Christian Latin culture. But the vernacular literary culture of the High Middle Ages was an integral part of broader cultural developments in which the unquestioned validity of traditional authoritative models began to lose its hold. A secular culture began to emerge in which positive value began to be attached to the -- however transitory -- allegiances, pleasures, and loves of life. In new essays dealing with the most significant literary genres (the heroic epics, the romances, the love lyrics, and political poetry) and with broader political, social, and cultural issues (control of aggression, territorialization), this third volume of the Camden House History of German Literature demonstrates how the emergence of a vernacular literary culture in Germany was an important part of a broader cultural transformation in which medieval people began to redefine themselves, their relationships to one another, and the position of humanity in the scheme of things. Contributors: Albrecht Classen, Nicola McLelland, Rodney Fisher, Neil Thomas, Marion Gibbs and Sidney Johnson, Rudiger Krohn, Will Hasty, Nigel Harris, Susann Samples, Sara Poor, Michael Resler, Rudiger Brandt, Elizabeth A. Andersen, Ulrich Muller and Franz Viktor Spechtler, Ruth Weichselbaumer, W. H. Jackson, Charles Bowlus. Will Hasty is Professor of German Studies and co-founder and co-director of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger PublishingA AcentsAcentsa A-Acentsa Acentss Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of intere