Master data quality management in a global enterprise

In a networked business environment the visibility requirements towards the supply operations and customer interface has become tighter. In order to meet those requirements the master data of case company is seen as an enabler. However the current state of master data and its quality are not seen good enough to meet those requirements. In this thesis the target of research was to develop a process for managing master data quality as a continuous process and find solutions to cleanse the current customer and supplier data to meet the quality requirements defined in that process. Based on the theory of Master Data Management and data cleansing, small amount of master data was analyzed and cleansed using one commercial data cleansing solution available on the market. This was conducted in cooperation with the vendor as a proof of concept. In the proof of concept the cleansing solution’s applicability to improve the quality of current master data was proved. Based on those findings and the theory of data management the recommendations and proposals for improving the quality of data were given. In the results was also discovered that the biggest reasons for poor data quality is the lack of data governance in the company, and the current master data solutions and its restrictions.

Innovativeness in an industrial enterprise

Innovativeness is one of the most important factors of a successful and competitive company, and because of this every company wants to be more and more innovative. The purpose of this study is to clarify the current state of the case company’s innovativeness with the help of a questionnaire survey based on characteristics of an innovative company presented in the literature. In addition, an action plan for improving the case company’s innovativeness is formulated. Based on theoretical background the components of an innovative company can be divided in six classes. These classes are innovation strategy, innovation management, cooperation and communication, idea management, support mechanisms and innovative organizational culture. The empirical study proves that there are notable differences between and inside these previously mentioned classes within the case company. The study indicates also that although systematic innovation activities are rather new issues to the case company, the prerequisites for innovation and innovativeness exist. In order to be able to develop its innovativeness, the case company should invest resources in aligning its innovation operations towards a more systematic approach. However, perceivable results in the company’s innovativeness can be achieved by proper communication.

Environmental policy instruments concerning industrial end-use energy efficiency

Energy efficiency and saving energy are the main question marks when thinking of reducing carbon dioxide emissions or cutting costs. The objective of thesis is to evaluate policy instruments concerning end-use energy efficiency of heavy industry in European Union. These policy instruments may be divided in various ways, but in this thesis the division is to administrative, financial, informative and voluntary instruments. Administrative instruments introduced in this thesis are Directive on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, Directive on Energy End-use Efficiency and Energy Services, and Climate and Energy Package. Financial means include energy and emission taxation, EU Emission Trading Scheme and diverse support systems. Informative instruments consist of horizontal BAT Reference Document for Energy Efficiency, as well as substantial EU documents including Green Paper on Energy Efficiency, Action Plan for Energy Efficiency and An Energy Policy for Europe. And finally, voluntary instruments include environmental managements systems like ISO 14001 and EMAS, energy auditing and benchmarking. The efficiency of different policy instruments vary quite a lot. Informative instruments lack the commitment from industry and are thus almost ineffective, contrary to EU Emission Trading Scheme, which is said to be the solution to climate problems. The efficiency of administrative means can be placed between those mentioned and voluntary instruments are still quite fresh to be examined fruitfully. However, each instrument has their potential and challenges. Cases from corporate world strengthen the results from theoretical part. Cases were written mainly on the basis of interviews. The interviewees praised the energy efficiency contract of Finnish industry, but the EU ETS takes the leading role of policy instruments. However, for industry the reductions do not come easily.

Financial and Environmental Impacts of a Dry Port to Facilitate Competitiveness of Two Major Transit Seaports of Finland

Environmental problems and issues have received more and more attention during the last decades. Reasons for this are different increased external costs such as congestion, CO2 emission, noise and accident costs. Transportation sector is the only sector with increasing external costs. The EU will increase its attention in decreasing the external costs of transport. Aim of this research was to find out if a dry port solution could decrease costs of transport, especially external costs. Dry port concept is an intermodal transport system, where inland transport between port and dry port is performed by rail transport instead of traditional road transport. In addition, dry ports offer similar services as ports. Research is conducted by performing a literature review about dry port concept and costs of transport, especially external costs of transport. Financial and environmental impacts of the dry port concept are studied by comparing costs of road and rail transport by cost accounting and with a simulation model. Location of dry port is researched with gravitational models. Results of the literature review are that rail transport is environmentally friendlier mode of transport than road transport. Cost model and simulation model show that if only costs of freight movement are considered, rail transport is more inexpensive transport mode than road transport in terms of internal and external costs. Because of that dry port concept could decrease costs of transport, especially external costs. Results of gravitational models are that city of Kouvola is in a good position to be a dry port. Russian transit traffic through Finland improves location of Kouvola to be a dry port.

Carbon footprint as part of a company’s external environmental communication

The aim of this thesis was to find out how the carbon footprint calculations can be utilized in the company’s external environmental communication, what is the demand for carbon footprint from the market, and how the other actors in the forest industry have approached the issue. The aim was to recognize the best practises to communicate carbon footprints and to find possibilities to extend the UPM-Kymmene Wood Oy’s mill specific carbon footprints. This research included a literature review, an inquiry to the UPM-Kymmene Wood Oy’s sales offices, and Internet survey concerning the external environmental communication in the forest industry and three small case studies based on mill specific parameters. The inquiry to the sales offices showed that the carbon footprint is not yet a common demand from the customers in the wood product sector. In addition, the Internet survey showed that generally in the forest industry, not much has been done concerning carbon footprint communication so far. The biggest challenge in carbon footprint communication is the variation in the knowledge level of the receivers. In addition btob and btoc communication situations demand a different approach to the issue. Carbon profile brochures developed in the company can be seen as suitable for btob communication situations. Case studies have shown that the contribution of final product transport to the overall carbon footprint was significant. It was recommended to include post mill transport in the carbon footprint information supplied to the btob customers. When discussing environmental communication on a general level it can be stated that a good external environmental communication is based on facts, is open and proactive and takes into account the needs of the receiver. However, the openness and the quality of external environmental communication are essentially strategic decisions. The significance of internal communication as well as the knowhow in the communication and marketing networks play a major role in achieving success in external environmental communication. Carbon footprints are only one part of good balanced external environmental communication. One specific environmental feature like carbon footprint should not be over emphasized to the detriment of other important environmental aspects.

Implementing a change management process into enterprise performance management applications

Information technology service management has become an important task in delivering information for management purposes. Especially applications containing information for decision making need to be agile and ready for changes. The aim of this study was to find a solution for successful implementation of an ITIL based change management process to enterprise resource management applications managed by the target organization. Literature review of the study introduces frameworks that are important for success of an IT project implementation. In addition an overview of ITIL and ITIL based change management process is presented. The result of the study was a framework of actions that are needed to accomplish to be successful in change management process implementation. It was noticed that defining success criterions, critical success factors and success measures is important for achieving the goals of the implementation project.

Integrating environmental education in primary school education in Tanzania : teachers’ perceptions and teaching practices

The study focuses on primary school teachers’ perceptions of environmental education, its integration into primary school education and teachers’ teaching practices in Tanzania. The thesis is based on empirical research. The theoretical underpinnings of the study are based on Palmer’s (1998) model of environmental education. According to the model, meaningful environmental education should include education about, in or through and for the environment. The study is supported by national and international literature from research done on environmental education and education for sustainable development and policy statements. The study is qualitative in nature, adopting phenomenography and phenomenology as points of departure. The empirical data was collected from four primary schools in Morogoro region in Tanzania. The study sample consisted of 31 primary school teachers. Data was collected through interviews and lesson observations. According to the results of the study, primary school teachers expressed variations in their perceptions of environmental education and education for sustainable development. Most of the teachers focused on the aspect of knowledge acquisition. According to Tanzanian education and training policy, environmental education has to be integrated into all subjects. Although there is environmental education in the primary school curriculum, it is not integrated on an equal footing in all subjects. Some subjects like science, social studies and geography have more environmental content than other subjects. Teachers claim that the approach used to integrate environmental education into the school curriculum was not favoured because many claimed that what is to be taught as environmental education in the various subjects is not shown clearly. As a result, many teachers suggested that to ensure that it is taught properly it should be included in the curriculum as an independent subject or as specific topics. The study revealed that teachers’ teaching practices in integrating environmental education varied from one subject to another. Although most of the teachers said that they used participatory methods, lesson observations showed that they limited themselves to question and answer and group discussion. However, the teachers faced a number of barriers in the teaching of environmental education, some of which include lack of teaching and learning resources, time and large class size. The role of teachers in the implementation of environmental education in developing an environmentally literate citizenry is of great significance. The responsibility of the government in developing a curriculum with clear goals and content, developing teachers’ capacity in the teaching of environmental education and provision of teaching and learning materials needs to be taken seriously by the government in educational plans and programs.

The Process of Greening Cycle as Method of Operative Environmental

The structural change of society from product-based business to service- and further to need-based business has caused the fact that work for environmental issues has spread from conventional factories and environmentally harmful production to concern services and offices as well. Almost every company has an office, so a relatively small environmental burden caused by an individual office grows remarkable already at the state level and globally even more. Motivation to work for environmental issues in an individual office could be challenging even without the fact that wasted environmental impacts bound also wasted costs. Besides cost savings, a concretely greener image of a company has its value in the B2Cas well as in the B2B-field. Consumers and clients are more and more conscious of environmental issues and demand concrete actions instead of speeches, good thoughts and meaningless certifications. Internal work for environmental issues at a strategy level is not sufficient, so operational environmental management is needed for changing old practices. This research is about the effects of operative environmental management on the greening process of an office-based business. The research is outlined to concern the operative work in the office including field sales. Target was to concretely lower the environmental impacts of Lyreco Finland and to find cost savings directly by changing the operative practices in the office and also indirectly by affecting the level of environmental knowledge of the personnel. During the greening process, the aim was also to create concrete arguments for marketing as well. The circle of greening process, which was especially created for this diploma work, was used as a method. The circle divides a year to themes and sections separated by factors of environmental impacts. Separation is based on Brett Wills’ thoughts of seven green wastes (Wills, Brett. The Green Intensions. 2009) and follows it uneasily. The circle aimed at ensuring evolutionary growth of knowledge instead of being revolutionary in the changing process. Committing personnel to the process from its start by asking ideas from them and giving them clear directions was an important part of the research of operative management. Because of working from distance, communication with personnel was operated by frequent training days and weekly greening notes via emails and intranet. Also availability for communication was an important task because of the telecommuting. Research results of this work show that operative environmental management in an officebased business today is mostly management of change. When the strategic environmental friendliness is taken into a concrete level, the most important individual factor is motivating the operating personnel. Research shows that evolutionary change is found being an efficient way to make a change. Also understanding one´s own impact on the environmental burden and on the whole greening process clearly motivates the personnel. Results show that in the operative realization of the greening process, clear directions of new working practices, being as concrete as possible, and committing personnel to follow them make the process more effective. The operative environmental management and the cycle of the greening process decrease the environmental burden and save costs. The concrete results could be used as believable arguments in marketing and therefore exploited in communication with interest groups. Commitment of the management is also one of the key factors of success in the greening process. In this research, changes in the business field by a company trade took the focus of the management away from the greening process and made the process more inefficient by decreasing the amount of training days. The circle of greening process will be used as a tool in the future, as well, and therefore it will help observe environmental impacts of a company and increase sustainable development. Commitment of management to the evolutionary environmental work helps the operating personnel lower environmental impacts, decrease costs and build a concretely greener image.

Environmental inFluences on the Adoption of Open Innovation: Analysis of Structural, Institutional and Cultural Impacts

The concept of open innovation has recently gained widespread attention, and is particularly relevant now as many firms endeavouring to implement open innovation, face different sets of challenges associated with managing it. Prior research on open innovation has focused on the internal processes dealing with open innovation implementation and the organizational changes, already taking place or yet required in companies order to succeed in the global open innovation market. Despite the intensive research on open innovation, the question of what influences its adoption by companies in different contexts has not received much attention in studies. To fill this gap, this thesis contribute to the discussion on open innovation influencing factors by bringing in the perspective of environmental impacts, i.e. gathering data on possible sources of external influences, classifying them and testing their systemic impact through conceptual system dynamics simulation model. The insights from data collection and conceptualization in modelling are used to answer the question of how the external environment affects the adoption of open innovation. The thesis research is presented through five research papers reflecting the method triangulation based study (conducted at initial stage as case study, later as quantitative analysis and finally as system dynamics simulation). This multitude of methods was used to collect the possible external influence factors and to assess their impact (on positive/negative scale rather than numerical). The results obtained throughout the thesis research bring valuable insights into understanding of open innovation influencing factors inside a firm’s operating environment, point out the balance required in the system for successful open innovation performance and discover the existence of tipping point of open innovation success when driven by market dynamics and structures. The practical implications on how firms and policy-makers can leverage environment for their potential benefits are offered in the conclusions.

Integrating environmental aspects into product development process

Various regulations and customer requirements have made it necessary for Vacon Oyj to pay more attention to the environmental aspects in its processes. The main purpose of this master’s thesis project is to define how environmental aspects could be integrated into Vacon’s product development process. The aim is to find out the most important environmental aspects for the company to address, to examine how these could be taken into account during the development process and to map the critical factors that need consideration in order to ensure the successful integration of environmental aspects into the design process. Based on the customer requirements and evolving regulations the most important aspects for Vacon include minimizing the amount of harmful substances, improving the recyclability and energy efficiency of the product and moreover providing meaningful information related to these aspects. To tackle these issues, a new DfE process was developed, tasks in each phase were described and responsibilities were indicated. To ensure the success of the DfE process, management commitment, support of other processes and significant improvements in ways the information is managed are required. The developers should be provided with training and support. Environmental expertise and knowledge in-house should be developed and establishing meaningful environmental indicators is suggested.

Enterprise architecture – the foundation for a strategy

This artcle describes work done with enterprise architecture of the National Digital Library. The National Digital Library is an initiative of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. Its purpose is to promote the availability of the digital information resources of archives, libraries and museums, and to develope the long-term preservation of digital cultural heritage materials. Enterprise architectures are a tool for strategic management and planning. An enterprise architecture also functions as an aid at a more practical level. It shows, for example, what kind of changes and improvements may be made in one system without overlap or conflict with other systems.

Liiketoimintamahdollisuudet sähköisessä liikkumisessa

Tässä työssä tarkastellaan pk-yrityksen kohtaamaa monimutkaista ja alati muuttuvaa toimintaympäristöä. Ympäristöään tarkkailemalla yritys pystyy varautumaan ja vastaamaan muutoksiin nopeasti ja toimintakykyään heikentämättä. Työssä käydään läpi tapoja, joilla toimintaympäristöä ja tulevaisuudessa mahdollisti tapahtuvia muutoksia tarkkaillaan sekä miten yritys voi strategiallaan vaikuttaa omaan ketteryyteensä. Työssä tutustutaan myös sähköisen liikkumisen toimialaan ja siinä odotettavissa oleviin muutoksiin. Liikkumisen sähköistymiseen on useita syitä. Sähköenergiaa voidaan tuottaa kulloinkin parhaasta käytettävissä olevasta vaihtoehdosta, eikä liikenteen energian käyttö ole enää vain öljystä riippuvainen. Sähköajoneuvoja käytettäessä energian kulutus myös pienenee, sillä energiaketjun kokonaishyötysuhde paranee sähkömoottoreiden paremman hyötysuhteen ansiosta. Lisäksi sähköajoneuvot eivät tuota käytössä lainkaan paikallisia ilmapäästöjä ja niissä on polttomoottoreita huomattavasti alhaisempi melutaso. Palvelusektorilla on entistä merkittävämpi rooli yhteiskunnassa, sillä jopa kaksi kolmasosaa Euroopan työpaikoista ja bruttokansantuotteesta tulee erilaisista palveluista. Palvelut ovat enenevästi muodostumassa tuottavuuden ja kasvun tekijäksi, lisäksi se on ainoa osa-alue Euroopan taloudessa, jolla on onnistuttu luomaan uusia työpaikkoja kahden viime vuosikymmenen aikana. Elmotion Oy onkin tarttumassa vapaa-ajalla tapahtuvaan palveluliiketoimintaan. Työssä tutustutaan muutamiin vaihtoehtoihin, joissa yritys voi tuottaa mielenkiintoista ja hauskaa tekemistä ympäristömyönteisellä teknologialla.

Metsäsääntely Suomessa ja Venäjällä. Näkökulmia kestävään metsätalouteen

Sustainability is the aim of forest management and forest regulation in many countries. Accordingly, forest management has been steered towards more environmentally friendly methods and new regulatory instruments have been introduced. At the same time, wood trade and forest industry have become a global business. Even if the importance of national forest legislation has not decreased, it has been widely acknowledged that national regulation of forest management is no longer sufficient. The movement of goods does not acknowledge boundaries, even though most negative environmental and social consequences stay in the country of origin of wood and other raw materials. As a partial solution to this dilemma, different kinds of regulations have been developed. Various forest certification schemes and wood trade regulation in the EU (995/2010) are examples of efforts to prevent illegal logging and unsustainable forestry. The Finland-based forest industry is to a varying extent dependent on wood trade from Russia. Especially in the 1990‟s, ethical questions concerning import of wood from Russian old growth forests near the Finnish border were widely discussed. Consequently, forest industry enterprises have developed systems to trace the origin of wood and to buy certified wood from Russia. The aim of the research has been to evaluate Finnish and Russian forest regulations in order to investigate what kind of forest management these regulations enhance, and to what extent ecologically sustainable forest management has been integrated into different forms of regulation. I have examined Finnish and Russian forest regulation in four separate articles based on the topics of the Russian Forest Code, forest certification and other voluntary forest protection measures in Russia, Finnish forest certification and Finnish forest legislation. One objective has been to analyse the roles voluntary forest certification plays in promoting sustainable forest management in different countries. In my research, I have mainly concentrated on ecological sustainability and protection of biodiversity, although other aspects of sustainable forest management have been touched upon in different articles. In the following I shall conclude the findings of my research. When the current Russian Forest Code (2006) was being adopted, the main emphasis was not on ecological issues, but on reorganizing forest governance. The role of ecological requirements was even slightly diminished during the legislative reform. There are, nevertheless, still stipulations aiming at ecological sustainability, such as the division of forests into different forest management categories and various protection zones. In 2000, FSC forest certification arrived in Russia, at present covering already 28 million hectares of forests. The PEFC scheme is now in use as well, but to a much lesser extent. If properly implemented, Russian forest certification schemes clearly improve the level of ecological and social sustainability of forestry in Russia. Certification criteria, however, are partly in conflict with the Russian forest legislation and certified enterprises have been forced to pay fines or to negotiate with forest authorities. This clearly indicates that even if Russian forest legislation has otherwise been liberalized to a certain extent, some significant paternalism still exists. Voluntary, hands-on biodiversity protection measures are not valued, and they are not part of the official protection policies as in many other countries. However, there have been some regional solutions to this dilemma. In the Republic of Karelia forest authorities have approved a set of forest biodiversity protection rules created by a local NGO and a forest industry enterprise. By following these local rules, an enterprise can avoid fines for protection measures. The current Finnish Forest Act was adopted in 1996. It brought forest legislation into a new era as some ecological aspects were integrated into forest legislation. The various soft-law forest management recommendations further increased the level of biodiversity protection. My evaluation of the overall legitimacy of the Finnish forest legislation and forest management paradigm revealed, however, several problematic issues. As part of this study I analysed the history of the current forest management paradigm. This analysis revealed the path dependency which still hinders the protection of biodiversity and clearly decreases the general legitimacy of forest management. Due to several historical reasons only even-structured forest management based on clear cuts has for decades been officially approved in Finland. Due to increasing demands of forest owners the legislation is finally being revised. Yet, the official approval of uneven-structured forest management would not be enough to fully improve ecological, social and cultural legitimacy. The latest ecological theories and knowledge of endangered species should be taken into account in the on-going reform of forest legislation as well as the modernisation. Forest legislation is one of the very few spheres of Finnish environmental legislation where openness and participation are still considered a threat. The first Finnish forest certification scheme, PEFC, was established in 2000. It now covers more than 20 million hectares, about 95% of the forests in Finland. PEFC Finland does not require a higher level of biodiversity protection than the recommendations by Tapio (the Development Centre for Forestry), but certification has unified forest management practices and requires more protection measures than mere forest legislation. The study suggests that in Finland PEFC has not functioned as an instrument which would substantially improve the level of forest management. Rather it has supported the status quo of the forest sector. While the ecological and social responsibility of Finland-based forest corporations was one impetus for this research, I want to conclude that there are problems related to forest legislation and non-state regulation in both Finland and Russia. If an enterprise buying wood from Russia buys only certified wood, and carefully avoids wood coming from high conservation value forests that are either ecologically or socially valuable, it can be claimed to be as sustainably produced as in Finland. However, there must be continuous scrutiny of the circumstances. In Russia, the level of the compliance of certification criteria varies considerably, and there are vast unprotected invaluable forest areas. The utilisation of these areas should not be based on short-sighted decisions or lack of consensus among stakeholders.