Saturday, January 25, 2020

BMWs Managing Information Systems

BMWs Managing Information Systems Management information systems (MIS) pertain to those systems that enable company leaders to make choices for the effective functioning of businesses. Management information systems are composed of computer resources, individuals, and processes utilized in the current business enterprise. MIS also pertains to the company that establishes and manages majority or the entirety of the computer systems in the company in order that leaders can make choices. The objective of the MIS based company is to provide information systems to the different levels of corporate leaders. MIS experts establish and aid the computer system all over the organization. Trained and knowledgeable to deal with company computer systems, these experts are in charge in some manner for almost the entire computers, from the biggest mainframe to the portable computers. Company Overview BMW is a German vehicle and engine producing organization established in 1916. It also manages and creates the MINI brand, and is the mother organization of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. Mainly, BMW Group Brands are MINI, BMW and Rolls-Royce (BMW Education Programme 2009a). BMW is famous for its efficient and durable cars. And its mission statement is being a leader in the world as premium product provider and also premium service provider( BMW Education Programme, 2009b) BMW has established a reputation as both an engine producer and the manufacturer of luxury vehicles. They built the 3, 5 and 7 series, the M5, which represents sheer power, or the Z8, an innovative car. BMW has also proven its capability to resurrect legendary cars, reviving the legendary Mini and its acquisition of the Rolls-Royce brand (BMW Official Website, 2009). While the companys main office is still based in Munich in Germany, it has ten manufacturing plants all over the globe seven in Germany, one in Austria, one in South Africa and one in America, and sales units in sixteen nations where the vehicles are transported (The BMW Group, 2009). Aside from the vehicle segment, it stays as one of the important European producers of engines for civil aviation, through its partnership with Rolls Royce. Power merged with innovation is what BMW stands for. Overview of MIS of BMW The present automotive industry is classified by increasing product diversity and brief development periods. One of the important activities is to enter the market quicker by organizing the product development and production start-up procedures. One can attain this streamlining by doing a huge number of effectively coordinated procedures in parallel, utilizing a data structure that has all the data regarding the product and its types and is available at each phase to all people included in production planning (Clarke, 2007). This process, pertained to as integrated product and process engineering, is at available when one utilizes mySAP Automotive. mySAP Automotive integrates SAP Business Suite programs with customized operations to aid BMW- as well as other manufacturers, vendors, sales, and service companies attain substantial benefits by merging the whole engineering, production, marketing and service business sector. With mySAP Automotive merged within the operations of BMW, the company is able to improve important business procedures and attain important company objectives: * Competent staff and talent with effective procedures for workforce and talent acquisition * Financial stability with improved procedures for financial performance control * Operational effectiveness with improved procedures for operations control * Product and service dominance with improved procedures for product control * Excellent client value with improved procedures for sales and service mySAP Automotive is particularly created to address the needs and challenges of the BMW and the automotive industry. It is a comprehensive and effective solution for BMW that encompasses business procedures from engineering design, preparation, manufacturing, purchasing, sales and service (SAP for Automotive Website, 2010). Created to be a comprehensive and holistic management information system, mySAP Automotive is organized based on various market sectors that create the foundations of automotive industry. Roles of mySAP Automotive in BMW Provide information across various departments a) Operations More than any operational aspect, operations of BMW have been affected by significant developments in technology. As a consequence, production processes have evolved. For example, inventories are given just in time in order that huge sums of funds are not used for storing large inventories (Kiley, 2004). mySAP Automotive offers solutions for BMW in terms of vehicle and procedure modeling, preparation and manufacturing implementation. mySAP Automotive helps BMW ins terms of the improvement of the planning of the manufacturing process. Consolidated product and process modeling is attained within BMW through mySAP Automotive, where the modeling of every vehicular model and production procedures from the initial prototyping stage to the manufacturing stage is accomplished in one framework (Kidd, 2000). This minimizes information redundancy and the necessity for interfaces as information is saved in a solitary system. Cooperative engineering with suppliers provides new opportunities for more effective and quicker product development with suppliers online. Versatility and effectiveness in manufacturing within BMW is attained through the Model-mix preparation and immediate needs preparation feature of mySAP Automotive. Model-mix preparation enables BMW to improve the manufacturing sequence particularly essential for the company. Immediate needs preparation allows quicker processing of assembly and parts requirements of make-to-order setting as against the basic MRP. b) Accounting In BMW, all accounting documents are managed by all accounting managers (Laudon, 2007). In this case, mySAP Automotive offers solutions that improve the accounting procedures and policies of BMW. mySAP Automotive offers solutions that improve the accounting activities of the company, enabling them to respond more quickly and effectively to the industry demands. c) Finance mySAP Automotive offers financial data to all financial managers within BMW including the head of the finance department. The head of the finance department of BMW studies historical and present financial outputs, predicts long term financial necessities, and tracks and manages the usage of money over time utilizing the data produced by the mySAP Automotive (Buxmann, 2004). mySAP Automotive offers solutions that allow sales and pricing of cars through configuration, status monitoring of cars, sales and allocation of available components. Car customization and pricing online improved car sales of BMW by providing clients with the alternative of customizing their cars (Seese, 2008). Once the car is customized, car customization and pricing will identify the price of the car according to the customization. Car search and locator allows BMW to look and find cars that satisfy the particular configurations, attaining quicker delivery to clients. d) Marketing mySAP Automotive aids the marketing initiatives of BMW in the aspect of product development, dissemination, pricing choices, advertising, and sales prediction (Forquer, 2005). More than any other operational aspect, mySAP Automotive depends on outer sources of information. These references include rivalry and clients, for instance. e) Human Resource mySAP Automotive also helps with BMWs initiatives connected to employees, leaders, and other staff working within the company. Due to the fact that the role of the human resources is important to all other aspects of the operations of BMW, mySAP Automotive has an important responsibility in guaranteeing company development for BMW (Sankar, 2006). 2) Facilitate decision making at the three tiers of management a) Operational Level Systems To make the operational level decision making within BMW very simple and effective, mySAP Automotive helps in offering and disseminating updated data to proper users. mySAP Automotive is created to improve the reporting of data that will be critical in the correct decision making within the operational level of BMW. mySAP Automotive is able to immediately gather and edit information, summarize outcomes, and able to cope and correct mistakes immediately. b) Management Level Systems mySAP Automotive has automated and manual internal controls that help in the management level decision making activities in BMW (Kogent, 2009). Data is obtained through proper editing and inner control checks. A detailed inner and outer audit program is used within BMW through mySAP Automotive. c) Strategic Level Systems To have an improved strategic level decision making, information within BMW is analyzed and organized effectively and uniformly through mySAP Automotive. Gaps in the manner data is gathered and documented can alter data and trend analysis. Aside from this, since information gathering and documentation procedures will alter over time, so BMW management has created effective processes to enable systems developments through mySAP Automotive. These processes are always well defined and noted, effectively communicated to proper workers and has a monitoring system that aids in the strategic level decision making of BMW. 3) Serve as efficient means for managing business processes The establishment of mySAP Automotive within BMW is the consequence of the implementation of an environment of system management. The owners are the users of mySAP Automotive who understand current client needs and also have budget authority to finance new projects. In order to manage its business processes efficiently, BMW has strived in establishing ownership that advocates pride in its business procedures and aids guarantee accountability. Even though mySAP Automotive does not really completely minimize costs, the establishment of this important system, and its effective usage, minimizes the chances that erratic choices in business processes are done due to unreliable data (Dickersbach, 2005). Erratic business decisions essentially waste resources. This may lead in a detrimental impact on profits and/or capital. Management always guarantees that mySAP Automotive is established on a logical process that includes the following stages: †¢ Proper investigation of system options, approval areas as the system is established or obtained, and task management. †¢ Program establishment and negotiation of deals with suppliers. †¢ Systems integration and management. Management always takes into account the usage of business management processes to track development as mySAP Automotive is being integrated. Inner controls are created into the procedures and periodically assessed by auditors. Application of mySAP Automotive in BMW mySAP Automotive obtains customized production orders from BMWs planning system. The orders involve the components necessary to manufacture every vehicle; the X5, for instance, has lots of parts included in the car list of materials. mySAP Automotive produces the delivery timeframes for every component to match BMWs assembly-line preparation and organizing policies. BMW sends these comprehensive analyses and accurate JIT delivery timeframes to its suppliers. Major suppliers get the data through electronic data interchange (EDI). Other suppliers enter the mySAP Automotive official site, where BMW states the requisites to offer the latest data on its delivery necessities (Kuhlin, 2005). By logging online, suppliers can check this data in actual time, including release time frames, procurement files, receipts, and engineering files. When they send components, the suppliers send BMW forward transport notifications to give BMW with accurate data on component figures and delivery schedules. Components entering at the BMW premises are then obtained and shipped immediately to the line. There, BMW utilizes mySAP Automotive to check manufacturing status in actual time (Dickersbach, 2007). mySAP Automotive takes note of the manufacturing validation and components consumption data every three minutes. Components used during manufacturing are eliminated from the inventory list, and expenses are posted to compute the value of work in process. Client demand for BMWs new X5 sports car and its famous Z3 models needed a solution that would effectively increase and assist streamlined manufacturing. mySAP Automotive aids the company to minimize order-to delivery time, improves its supply chain initiatives in the aspects of demand planning and monitoring and locating of material deliveries, and enhances inventory precisions all over its production facilities- allowing BMW to tremendously minimize time to client for its efficient cars. Benefits of MIS for BMW Effective Solution BMW had been utilizing a customized data solution to handle its supplier and logistics needs. The organized was able to finish its integration of mySAP Automotive only a month after this management information system became accessible. mySAP Automotive provides BMW an effective, measurable structure that can be widened and changes to consider new functionality or developments in business procedures. mySAP Automotive offers BMW with top notch Internet operations and the commonly utilized business procedures from production preparations and purchasing to sales and allocation- for a total supply chain management remedy. The effective coordination between BMW and its business partners aids the engineering and massive manufacturing of customized products (Woods, 2006). BMW takes advantage of actual coordination on the Internet and instant pipeline visibility, enabling them to track developments in the midst of the development and manufacturing stages. Immediate Access to Data Important BMW business procedures are merged with mySAP Automotive so data stored in BMW systems can be readily viewed, including prediction requisites on a component stage, sales orders, and car bills of material. Since mySAP Automotive is not that hard to integrate, BMW is able to connect it with its modernized warehouse. The information systems transparent setting and expandability have also allowed BMW to immediately merge its own programs into the enterprise site for suppliers in mySAP Enterprise Portals. Aside from industry-based solution, BMW is utilizing mySAP Automotive for logistics, financing, and workforce improvement tasks. The organization has also established Internet programs for supplier quote establishment and investigation for manufacturing components, which have been integrated to the mySAP Automotive. Enhanced efficiency mySAP Automotive enables BMW to optimize profit opportunity, handle and limit expenses, enhance quality, and speed up time to delivery. Minimized risk Updated data regarding projects, procedures, functional performance, and markets provide BMW initial signs of changes in demand, client needs, and financial situations. Improved visibility and management Improved analytics enable BMW to determine accurately where theyre getting product and manufacturing expenses, allowing them to maximize efficiency in all of its resources (Knolmayer, 2009). Quicker time to market mySAP Automotive speed up the period to market by improving interaction, enhancing coordination, and managing consistent information in the whole procedures. Widened reach With mySAP Automotive, BMW is able to control the whole value chain, interacting through enterprise sites and allowing holistic coordination among workers, suppliers, and clients. Increased sales mySAP Automotive allow BMW to predict and cope up to market demands, determine new business trends, and exploit new ways to increase market share and profits. Assistance for business management allows procedures like car sales, car service, components management and finance to be effectively monitored by BMW (Missbach, 2000). Enhanced supply chain management Locate-to-order and make-to-stock procedures offer perspectives into the client needs, inventory, and capability allowing BMW to address client demands. Improved aftermarket service With mySAP Automotive, BMW is able to know client demands, improve customer service, and offer excellent assistance to improve revenues in the top end aftermarket business. Reduced overall expenses of ownership mySAP Automotive minimizes overall expenses of ownership by offering high end features and removing the necessity for the expensive interfaces needed by other information systems. Easy integration mySAP Automotive effectively mergers important aspects of BMWs operations, including supply chain management, product life-cycle management and business management (Stanford-Smith, 2001). mySAP Automotive offers BMW a centralized, merged foundation, so the company doesnt have to manage an information base of various systems. Conclusion The structure of mass manufacturing was initially introduced by Automobile industry a long time ago. But at present the industry is confront world competition and the demands of the industry have completely evolved. The clients are not anymore contented with limited options. They say what they need, the time they need it at the proper place. Clients are always perceived as an important resource for automotive companies. To address the demands, make-to-order manufacturing is essential rather than mass production. Here the effectiveness relies on speed; the pace of acknowledging market needs, the pace of establishing new frameworks, the pace of purchasing raw materials, the pace of manufacturing and the pace of shipping the products to the proper environments. Coordination the whole industry stakeholders-providers, dealers, and clients is important. The mySAP information system of BMW is offering seamless flow of data to organizing the operations. mySAP Automotive is more than a mere Supply Chain Management information system. mySAP Automotive provides a centralized information structure for engineering, supply chain management, purchasing and business management. Regardless of whether the organization is a car manufacturer like BMW, a provider of car parts or dealer, mySAP Automotive aids these organizations to concentrate on their clients. Important strengths of the mySAP Automotive information system lies in offering established processes, improved program tools, and open technology to obtain their mySAP Automotive information system up and running immediately and helping to attain their business objectives.

Friday, January 17, 2020

Course Project: Leadership and Organizational Behavior

My course project is based on organization of Creative Images, Inc. Creative Images is a California based company in computer graphic design studio who’s affiliated with Hollywood movie production companies. Creative Images work very closely with their clients and well known clients are Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Company, and many other animation movie makers. Numbers of intelligent computer graphic designers are working hard to meet the status quo on current animated production movies and projects for the customers in night and weekends. The company is all about providing highest quality of work to world giant animated movie production companies and its well getting recognized by their customers. But only problem is that employees’ at Creative Images are not satisfied with their current benefits of their job since many people are subject to provide the project status and meeting deadlines which it requires for them to work nights and weekends without getting over-time paid. I am a Human Resource analysis just recently got hired by Creative Images to provide the best quality assurance to employees so that all employees are satisfy with their jobs and benefits so that it increases employee’s morale. I will be reviewing current job duties and functionalities so that their compensation and benefits are competitive with current market as well as provide them with incentives and rewards so that it increases employee’s morale and reduce number of high turnovers. Problem Statement The problem that Creative Images faces employee’s compensation and benefits package which it makes the company is not competitive and enjoyable work place. According to Human Resource’s firm wide hiring analysis, they have been showing increases of job turnovers in the past 2-3 years. During their exit interview, number of employee reported complains of their stressful working hours and have not been compensated for their amount of work that they provided in after working hours. After working excessive hours, their team or department did not recognized their showmanship for delivering high quality work and company did not award them or no creases in bonuses either. Since Creative Images are known for proving highest quality of work to their customers, in seldom, several other design studios who’s competition to Creative Images are trying to offer a job to elite and talented individuals from Creative Images to get the best people of for them. It’s causing the huge headache to the firm since many of them who left company are key employees who bring revenue to the company. To avoid any high turnovers, we need to provide very competitive salaries, incentives as well as reward programs to keep the Creative Images employees and bring higher standards and morale.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Moral And Religious Questions Arise - 955 Words

Many moral and religious questions arise in Elie Wiesel’s Night regarding faith in God during crisis, obligation to others over oneself, familial bonds, etc. However, the one with the most dramatic impact on the narrative and arguably the most important one in Night questions God’s role in the Holocaust. Was God absent during the Holocaust? If so, why did he abandon the Jewish people? If not, how could he permit such a terrible atrocity to be committed against His chosen people? Wiesel’s character Eliezer experiences his own faith in God’s existence be extinguished while he endures the Holocaust. While watching a child hang to death in front of a massive crowd in one of the camps, Eliezer even claims that God is dead, having been murdered with the child. Many people think that God was not present during the Holocaust, with the thinking that it would never have happened if He had been. This, however, makes the assumption that God just abandons his people wh enever He feels like it. The books of the Old Testament show a vengeful God, but not one that casually steps out for a smoke break and lets the world fall to pieces. So, to me it seems unlikely that God was merely missing in action and that is why the Holocaust was able to occur. Some survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants view it as God’s punishment towards the Jewish people for turning away from him and towards secularism and materialism. From this perspective, it is easy to read the first section of Night asShow MoreRelatedA Critic Of Dr. Schelessingean839 Words   |  4 Pageshell, are their deeds truly moral? Can it not be argued that the intent behind an actor’s actions is as important as the actions themselves? A further problem arises out of Dr. Schlessingean’s belief that morality can only be attained if individuals accept scripture and fear God. According to that logic, God can never punish an individual for being immoral if that person was ignorant of, in this instance, the Christian God or his teachings. A person can only be moral if they know the steps requiredRead MoreDivine Command And Natural Law Theory869 Words   |  4 Pagesare many flaws that come with them. Divine command is an ethical system that derives heavily from a religious background. This system believes that since God is the creator and ruler of all, he is the one who decides the ethical and moral principles. It can be simply put as â€Å"â€Å"morally right† means â€Å"commanded by God† and â€Å"morally wrong† means â€Å"forbidden by God†Ã¢â‚¬  (Rachel, 2002). Because of this, moral correctness can only be found through religion. 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(10) B) Outline two solutions to these problems and comment on their success (10) A) The problem of suffering has been around since the dawn of time, or as religious philosophers believe; since Adam and Eve first sinned in the Garden of Eden. The first problem that arises from evil is that we believe that the God of classical theism has certain attributes. These Read MoreThe Moral Life Written By Louis P. Pojman And Lewis Vaughn983 Words   |  4 Pageseveryday lives. According to the book The Moral Life written by Louis P. Pojman and Lewis Vaughn, ethics is defined as the study of morality using the methods of philosophy, and morality concerns beliefs about right and wrong actions and good and bad persons or characters (pg.1, 2014). There will be times when our personal ethics and believes will be challenged by others who have different views and believes than ourselves. Ethics is used when a problem arises and we need to solved that problem based

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Relation Between the Structure of Power and Poverty Essay

Through several texts to include Bell Hooks’ articles Narratives of Struggle and Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor, Natasha Tretheway’s memoir High Rollers, and the film Trouble the Water directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal illustrate how the poor are often dehumanized by a higher dominating structure of power that belittles the poor because of preconceived notions from several forms of media and experiences. Many of the underclass were overlooked for service and stability because of the idea of civilians having preset ranks of class and agency or even the treatment, depiction, and resistance of poverty that was branded as impoverishment and acts of dehumanizing the ones most in need. Each of the sources express their†¦show more content†¦Hooks argues that people can struggle to survive, struggle to govern their own lives, or even struggle against dominating structures of power. She conforms that the government has classified the poor into a cat egory that defines them as being uneducated and automatically adapting to the idea of what poverty is that society has put out. The government ignores the poor because of their own misconceptions of reality and their own lifestyle. Hooks explains that these underclass members are set to have a colonized mind which means that they are going to follow in the steps of the government or a higher power due to a lack of intelligences. Hooks stated, â€Å"All too often the colonized mind thinks of the imagination as the realm of the psyche that, if fully explored, will lead one into madness, away from reality.† (Hooks 55) In relation to her other text, Hooks’ article Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor discusses how impoverished people are dehumanized by media which leads them into thinking the way that they do through a colonized mind. Due to the lack of resources and educational needs, less fortunate people only believe and function on what they see or know through the media. With regards to being dehumanized by society and the government, Hooks introduces the idea that contemporary popular culture rarely represents the poor in ways that display integrity and dignity. One canShow MoreRelatedDiscrimination On The Workplace And Can Result On Psychological Trauma1615 Words   |  7 Pages For centuries, society has been shaped following a structure that might have slightly changed over time, however not in a radical way. As stated by Giddens, structure could be defined by a set of rules, laws and resources that societies follow, by producing and reproducing social practices. 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This focuses mainly on how the individual interacts with others, and how others influence the individual behaviors that impact society in a micro or macro way. The second theoretical framework is the conflict theory, it examines the rift between the rich and the poor and how it affects the quality of education, health care, and living condition of said group. 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Monday, December 16, 2019

Inital Interview Free Essays

Which of these roles, within these statuses, do you find to be the easiest to play? Hahn? Find being a mother to be the easiest because it’s natural. Its instinct to nurture and care for your children. Which roles in your life would you like to perform less often? I would like to perform the employee and student roll less often, this way I have more time to spend with my children, husband, family, and friends. We will write a custom essay sample on Inital Interview or any similar topic only for you Order Now Which roles would you like to play more often? Would like to perform the mother, wife, sister, and friend roll more often. I usually don’t have much time to do this because I am either at work, or at school. Conflicting Statuses and roles Can you give any examples of how the social statuses you play throughout a typical day may come into conflict with each other? (For example, if the person you are interviewing is a parent, how do they balance the roles of being a parent with the roles of being an economic provider to their children? ) I think it’s difficult to be employed full time, keep up with homework, and try to balance my home, it’s really difficult. Sometimes, something has to come last. How to cite Inital Interview, Papers

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Anticommunism in the 1950s free essay sample

In 1950, fewer than 50,000 Americans out of a total US population of 150 million were members of the Communist Party. Yet in the late 1940s and early 1950s, American fears of internal communist subversion reached a nearly hysterical pitch. Government loyalty boards investigated millions of federal employees, asking what books and magazines they read, what unions and civic organizations they belonged to, and whether they went to church. Hundreds of screenwriters, actors, and directors were blacklisted because of their alleged political beliefs, while teachers, steelworkers, sailors, lawyers, and social workers lost their jobs for similar reasons. More than thirty-nine states required teachers and other public employees to take loyalty oaths. Meanwhile, some libraries pulled books that were considered too leftist from their shelves. The banned volumes included such classics as Robin Hood, Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The post-war Red Scare is often called â€Å"McCarthyism,† a name derived from one of the era’s most notorious anti-Communists, Senator Joseph McCarthy. Yet the anti-Communist crusade of the late 1940s and 1950s extended both in time and scope well beyond the activities of the junior senator from Wisconsin. Its roots can be traced to the mid-nineteenth century. As far back as 1848, when Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto, many Americans viewed communism as an alien ideology. The Bolshevik Revolution only added to such anxieties, fuelling an earlier Red Scare in 1919. Post-war anti-Communism was rooted even more directly in the political culture of the 1930s. During the Depression, many Americans became disillusioned with capitalism and some found communist ideology appealing. Others were attracted by the visible activism of American Communists on behalf of a wide range of social and economic causes, including the rights of African Americans, workers, and the unemployed. Still others, alarmed by the rise of the Nationalists in Spain and the Nazis in Germany, admired the Soviet Union’s early and staunch opposition to fascism. In 1935, Joseph Stalin announced that he would allow Communists around the globe to ally with liberals and non-communist leftists in a broad anti-fascist coalition. All of these developments swelled the membership of the US Communist Party from some 7,500 at the start of the decade to an estimated 55,000 by its end. More importantly, many Americans who did not join the party sympathized with what they saw as its goals. They joined dozens of other groups with tangential connections to the Communists: unions, theatrical troupes, lawyer’s guilds, ethnic organizations, and political committees devoted to causes ranging from anti-fascism to civil rights. Many victims of the postwar Red Scare were hounded for activities they had engaged in a decade or more before. If the Depression decade boosted the profile of international communism in the United States, it also sparked an anti-Communist backlash. Some of those who warned of a growing â€Å"red menace† during the 1930s feared Soviet influence in the US, but most hoped to use anti-communist language to discredit labor and social activism and New Deal policies. Ironically, anti-Communists were sometimes aided by liberals and leftists whose primary fear was fascist subversion. In any case, nearly all of the tactics deployed by anti-Communists in the decade after World War II had a trial run in the late 1930s. This period saw the renewal of FBI spying, the adoption of loyalty oaths for teachers and a political litmus test for federal employees, and passage of the first peacetime sedition law since 1798. In 1938, anti-Communists and anti-fascists in Congress joined forces to create the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which would become one of the key institutional centres of post-war anti-Communism. Hitler’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 turned Washington and Moscow into wartime allies, and for a time domestic anti-Communism waned. But as the war ended and the alliance frayed, a series of events fanned the banked embers of anti-Communism into flames. In the spring of 1945, acting on orders from Moscow, US Communists reversed their policy of reconciliation with the West and adopted a militantly anti-capitalist stance. Meanwhile, authorities in the United States and Canada uncovered evidence of Soviet espionage, evidence that suggested Americans had been involved in passing classified secrets. Finally, Republicans and some conservative Democrats saw in anti-Communism a powerful campaign issue and a weapon that could be used to curb union and civil rights activism and New Deal policies. During the 1946 mid-term elections, for instance, Senator Robert Taft accused President Truman of seeking a Congress â€Å"dominated by a policy of appeasing the Russians abroad and of fostering communism at home. † To fend off such attacks from the right—and to build domestic support for his Cold War foreign policy—President Truman in March 1947 issued an executive order creating a Federal Loyalty-Security Program. A greatly enlarged version of a program originally instituted in 1939, the program gave loyalty review boards the power to fire federal employees when â€Å"reasonable grounds† existed for belief that they were disloyal. Evidence of disloyalty included not only treasonous activities, but â€Å"sympathetic association† with a long list of organizations deemed by the Attorney General to be â€Å"Communist, fascist, or totalitarian. † These organizations ranged from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to the National Negro Congress. In practice, people could lose their jobs for being on the wrong mailing list, owning suspect books or phonograph records, or associating with relatives or friends who were politically suspect. Those accused almost never learned the source of the allegations against them, and the criteria for dismissal were expanded in 1951 and again in 1953. Tens of thousands of federal employees—including disproportionate numbers of civil rights activists and gays—were fully investigated under the loyalty-security program, and some 2700 were dismissed between 1947 and 1956. Thousands more resigned â€Å"voluntarily† before the program’s demise in the early 1960s. By legitimizing the use of political litmus tests for employment, the federal loyalty-security program paved the way for the use of similar political tests by state and local governments and private employers. Between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, school systems, universities, movie studios, social welfare agencies, ports, companies with defence contracts, and many other employers used background checks, loyalty oaths, and other means to weed out employees deemed politically undesirable. If 1947 marked the start of the Federal Loyalty-Security program, it also saw the resuscitation of HUAC. In October of that year, the committee was catapulted back into the headlines after years in obscurity when it launched an investigation of communist influences in the film industry. HUAC summoned a dazzling array of actors, screenwriters, and directors to testify at public hearings, asking them about their own involvement with the party and pressing them to name others with Communist ties. Ten witnesses—including the famous director Edward Dmytryk and Oscar-winning screenwriters Dalton Trumbo and Ring Lardner, Jr. —refused to cooperate on the grounds that answering the committee’s questions would legitimize inquiry into political beliefs and associations. The â€Å"Hollywood Ten† were convicted for contempt of Congress and served short prison terms. HUAC’s investigation led to the development of extensive entertainment industry â€Å"blacklists,† which made it difficult or impossible for those suspected of leftist sympathies to find work. These blacklists persisted into the early 1960s. Meanwhile, HUAC went on the road, holding hearings in cities across the US over the course of the next decade and investigating teachers, musicians, union organizers, and other groups. HUAC also inspired others. By the 1950s, two Senate subcommittees and dozens of committees at the state and local levels were also investigating â€Å"un-American activities. † The Red Scare was well underway by the end of 1947, but a series of events in late 1949 and 1950 fed the anti-communist frenzy. In September 1949 Americans learned that the Soviet Union had successfully tested an atomic bomb, years earlier than most experts had thought possible. In December, Mao’s Communist army captured mainland China, prompting headlines about the â€Å"loss† of China. In June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, and the resulting Korean War soon devolved into a prolonged stalemate. Many Americans thought that only a fifth column working to undermine the US from within could explain this series of setbacks. Such fears were reinforced by several high-profile spy cases. In 1949, Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, was accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union during the 1930s; the statute of limitations for treason had run out, but a jury convicted Hiss of perjury. The following year, Britain revealed that a high-ranking physicist named Klaus Fuchs had spied for the Soviets while working on the Manhattan Project. Finally, in 1951 a federal judge found Julius and Ethel Rosenberg guilty of passing atomic secrets to Soviet agents, and both were eventually sent to the electric chair. Hiss and the Rosenbergs maintained their innocence and their cases became cause celebres for many liberals. Evidence obtained since the collapse of the Soviet Union has strengthened the case against Hiss and Julius Rosenberg, while suggesting that Ethel’s participation was minimal. Still, scholars continue to debate the guilt of all three. One of those who took advantage of the rising hysteria was a young senator from Wisconsin named Joseph McCarthy. Seizing an opportunity to improve his political fortune, McCarthy gave a speech to the Women’s Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950 in which he claimed to hold in his hand a list of 205 Communists in the State Department. (In later versions of the speech, he changed the number to 81 and then 57. The very concreteness of this charge—and the many others McCarthy hurled over the next few years—set the Wisconsin senator apart from other red baiters and he quickly captured headlines. McCarthy cared little about the accuracy of his accusations, and he made heavy use of intimidation and innuendo. Nevertheless, his complete disregard for the truth only made him more powerful and frightening. Few dared to challenge McCarthy directly, and many Republicans who despised him found him useful. (President Eisenhower told aides that he would not â€Å"get into the gutter with that guy. After Republicans won control of Congress in 1952, McCarthy took over a Senate subcommittee and he used this perch to investigate federal agencies like Voice of America and the Army Signal Corps. McCarthy, like members of HUAC and many other red baiters, greatly exaggerated the domestic communist threat. Still, the party’s policy of secrecy, its top-down control, its attempt to win converts, and its ties to the Soviet Union alarmed even many liberals. â€Å"Cold War liberals† like Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey, union leader Walter Reuther, and historian and presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger Jr.  deplored the excesses of anti-Communism, but agreed with many of its basic tenets. Such liberals generally supported New Deal policies and an array of social reforms, but also believed that the best way to protect the nation from both Communists and anti-Communist zealots was to purge schools, unions, reform groups, and professional organizations of those with ties to the party. Thus, while their language was more restrained than that of McCarthy and others they decried, Cold War liberals frequently supported some anti-Communist sanctions. Anti-Communism continued into the 1960s, but after 1954 it lost much of its fevered pitch. The turning point came when Senator McCarthy began to investigate Communists in the Army, and powerful Republicans (including the President) decided he had finally gone too far. A special Senate subcommittee was formed to investigate McCarthy’s tactics and ABC broadcast the hearings live, the first time political hearings had been televised nationally. The Army-McCarthy hearings dominated national television for three months and exposed McCarthy’s bullying tactics. Much of the credit for this goes to Joseph Welch, the feisty and folksy Boston lawyer hired by the Army. When McCarthy red-baited one of Welch’s young associates, Welch responded: â€Å"Until this moment, Senator, I think I had never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. . . . Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? † The question resonated with Americans. A few months later the Senate voted overwhelmingly to censure McCarthy and his influence evaporated. The worst of the Red Scare was over. Wendy Wall is an associate professor of history at Binghamton University and the author of Inventing the â€Å"American Way†: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (2007).