E-PORT. Improving efficiency of Finnish port community by intelligent systems Final report of the Mobile Port project

The management of port-related supply chains is challenging due to the complex and heterogeneous operations of the ports with several actors and processes. That is why the importance of information sharing is emphasised in the ports. However, the information exchange between different port-related actors is often cumbersome and it still involves a lot of manual work and paper. Major ports and port-related actors usually have advanced information systems in daily use but these systems are seldom interoperable with each other, which prevents economies of scale to be reached. Smaller ports and companies might not be equipped with electronic data transmission at all. This is the final report of the Mobile port (MOPO) project, which has sought ways to improve the management and control of port-related sea and inland traffic with the aid of ICT technologies. The project has studied port community systems (PCS) used worldwide, evaluated the suitability of a PCS for the Finnish port operating environment and created a pilot solution of a Finnish PCS in the port of HaminaKotka. Further, the dry port concept and its influences on the transportation system have been explored. The Mobile Port project comprised of several literature reviews, interviews of over 50 port-related logistics and/or ICT professionals, two different kinds of simulation models as well as designing and implementing of the pilot solution of the Finnish PCS. The results of these multiple studies are summarised in this report. Furthermore, recommendations for future actions and the topics for further studies are addressed in the report. The study revealed that the information sharing in a typical Finnish port-related supply chain contains several bottlenecks that cause delays in shipments and waste resources. The study showed that many of these bottlenecks could be solved by building a port community system for the Finnish port community. Almost 30 different kinds of potential services or service entities of a Finnish PCS were found out during the study. The basic requirements, structure, interfaces and operation model of the Finnish PCS were also defined in the study. On the basis of the results of the study, a pilot solution of the Finnish PCS was implemented in the port of HaminaKotka. The pilot solution includes a Portconnect portal for the Finnish port community system (available at https://www.portconnect.fi) and two pilot applications, which are a service for handling the information flows concerning the movements of railway wagons and a service for handling the information flows between Finnish ports and Finland-Russian border. The study also showed that port community systems can be used to improve the environmental aspects of logistics in two different ways: 1) PCSs can bring direct environmental benefits and 2) PCSs can be used as an environmental tool in a port community. On the basis of the study, the development of the Finnish port community system should be continued by surveying other potential applications for the Finnish PCS. It is also important to study if there is need and resources to extend the Finnish PCS to operate in several ports or even on a national level. In the long run, it could be reasonable to clarify whether there would be possibilities to connect the Finnish PCS as a part of Baltic Sea wide, European-wide or even worldwide maritime and port-related network in order to get the best benefit from the system

Project Master Document adaption in order fulfillment process

This thesis discusses adaption of new project management tool at ABB Oy Motors and Generators business unit, Synchronous Machines profit centre. Thesis studies project modeling in general and buries in the Gate Model used at ABB Synchronous Machines. It is essential to understand Gate Model because this new project management tool, called Project Master Document, is created on the base of the existing project model. Thesis also analyzes goals and structure of Project Master Document in order to ease implementation of this new tool. Project Master Document aims to improved customer order fulfillment by clearing order handover interface. Office process, especially responsibilities and target dates, become also clearer after Master Document implementation. The document is built to be frame for whole order fulfillment process including check points for each gate of project model and updated memos from all project meetings. Furthermore, project progress will be clearly stated by status markings and visualized with colors.

Working capital management in the small and medium-sized enterprises Case: Project-based business environment in Flowrox Oy

This Master´s thesis illustrates how growing a business ties up the company´s working capital and what the cost of committed capital. In order to manage a company´s working capital in rapid business growth phase, the thesis suggests that by monitoring and managing the operating and cash conversion cycles of customers´ projects, a company can find ways to secure the required amount of capital. The research method of this thesis was based on literature reviews and case study research. The theoretical review presents the concepts of working capital and provides the background for understanding how to improve working capital management. The company in subject is a global small and medium-sized enterprise that manufactures pumps and valves for demanding process conditions. The company is expanding, which creates lots of challenges. This thesis concentrates to the company´s working capital management and its efficiency through the supply chain and value chain perspective. The main elements of working capital management are inventory management, accounts receivable management and accounts payable management. Prepayments also play a significant role, particularly in project-based businesses. Developing companies´ working capital management requires knowledge from different kind of key operations´ in the company, like purchasing, production, sales, logistics and financing. The perspective to develop and describe working capital management is an operational. After literature reviews the thesis present pilot projects that formed the basis of a model to monitor working capital in the case company. Based on analysis and pilot projects, the thesis introduces a rough model for monitoring capital commitments in short time period. With the model the company can more efficiently monitor and manage their customer projects.

De-escalation of commitment management strategy in IT project management methodology: case of ERP implementation project by IT consulting company

According to several surveys and observations, the percentage of successfully conducted IT projects without over-budgeting and delays in time schedule are extremely low. Many projects also are evaluated as failures in terms of delivered functionality. Nuldén (1996) compares IT projects with bad movies; after watching for 2 hours, one still tries to finish it even though one understands that it is a complete waste of time. The argument for that is 'I've already invested too much time to terminate it now'. The same happens with IT projects: sometimes the company continues wasting money on these projects for a long time, even though there are no expected benefits from these projects. Eventually these projects are terminated anyway, but until this moment, the company spends a lot. The situation described above is a consequence of “escalation of commitment” - project continuation even after a manager receives negative feedback of the project’s success probability. According to Keil and Mähring (2010), even though escalation can occur in any type of project, it is more common among complex technological projects, such as IT projects. Escalation of commitment very often results in runaway projects. In order to avoid it, managers use de-escalation strategies, which allow the resources to be used in more effective. These strategies lead to project termination or turning around, which stops the flow of wasted investments. Numbers of researches explore escalation of commitment phenomena based on experiments and business cases. Moreover, during the last decade several frameworks were proposed for de-escalation strategy. However, there is no evidence of successful implementation of the de-escalation of commitment strategy in the literature. In addition, despite that fact that IT project management methodologies are widely used in the companies, none of them cover the topic of escalation of commitment risks. At the same time, there are no researches proposing the way to implement de-escalation of commitment strategy into the existing project management methodology The research is focused on a single case of large ERP implementation project by the consulting company. Hence, the main deliverables of the study include suggestions of improvement in de-escalation methods and techniques in the project and in the company. Moreover, the way to implement these methods into existing project management methodology and into the company general policies is found.

Innovation Project Portfolio Management

Companies today are forced to innovate in order to remain within business. Such innovation projects undertaken by the companies are defined in this study as creative ideas which have been managed through “Stage-Gate” innovation process. This process is used to manage innovation projects as they proceed from being newly created to ready for launching/implementing. This has ensured that the companies manage the innovation project right. However, with so many new creative ideas the companies can come up within limited resources, the companies must rely on Innovation Project Portfolio Management (IPPM) to ensure that they are managing only the right innovation projects. Although, there are many tools and techniques available for use within Project Portfolio Management, there is still no consensus on which are the most effective and no standard framework has been established especially for IPPM. Thus, this study proposes a practical framework for which individual innovative organization can follow as a guideline to manage its innovation project portfolio. The study theoretically first addresses the key differences between project portfolio management of innovation projects and other traditional projects - one of which is the stage nature of innovation projects due to their unclear objectives from the beginning compare to clearly established objectives of traditional projects. Secondly, different tools and techniques which can be used are examined based on the three goals of IPPM: (1) Maximizing the Value of Innovation Project Portfolio: Financial Methods, Decision Trees, Scoring Models and Checklists; (2) Balancing Innovation Project Portfolio: Visual Representations; and (3) Aligning Innovation Project Portfolio with Strategy: Bottom-Up (Scoring Models with Strategic Criteria) and Top-Down (Strategic Buckets). Finally, the two approaches in which IPPM can be integrated with Stage-Gate innovation process are discussed: (1) Gates- Dominated; and (2) Portfolio Reviews-Dominated. Practically, this study investigates IPPM of a case organization, and through analysis of the case study results proposes a practical framework for case organization to improve its current management of innovation project portfolio. This framework is then generalized to propose a final practical framework or guideline for which an innovative organization can follow to manage its innovation project portfolio.

Application of the scrum framework in non-software project management

Scrum is an agile project management approach that has been widely practiced in the software development projects. It has proven to increase quality, productivity, customer satisfaction, transparency and team morale among other benefits from its implementation. The concept of scrum is based on the concepts of incremental innovation strategies, lean manufacturing, kaizen, iterative development and so on and is usually contrasted with the linear development models such as the waterfall method in the software industry. The traditional approaches to project management such as the waterfall method imply intensive upfront planning and approval of the entire project. These sort of approaches work well in the well-defined stable environments where all the specifications of the project are known in the beginning. However, in the uncertain environments when a project requires continuous development and incorporation of new requirements, they do not tend to work well. The scrum framework was inspiraed by Nonaka’s article about new product developement and was later adopted by software development practitioners. This research explores conditions for and benefits of the application of scrum framework beyond software development projects. There are currently a few case studies on the scrum implementation in non-software projects, but there is a noticeable trend of it in the scrum practitioners’ community. The research is based on the real-life context multiple case study analysis of three different non-software projects. The results of the research showed that in order to succeed within scrum projects need to satisfy certain conditions – necessary and sufficient. Among them the key factors are uncertainty of the project environment, not well defined outcomes, commitment of the scrum teams and management support. The top advantages of scrum implementation identified in the present research include improved transparency, accountability, team morale, communications, cooperation and collaboration. Further researches are advised to be carried out in order to validate these findings on a larger sample and to focus on more specific areas of scrum project management implementation.

The Present State and Future Prospects of a Manpower Pool as Part of Project Business

This research focused on operation of a manpower pool within a service business unit in Company X and aimed to identify how the operation should be improved in order to get most out of it concerning the future prospects of the service business unit. This was done by analyzing the current state of the manpower pool related operations in means of project business, project management and business models. The objective was to deepen the understanding and to highlight possible areas of improvement. The research was conducted as a qualitative single-case study utilizing also an action research method; the research approach was a combination of conceptual, action-oriented and constructive approaches. The primary data was collected with executing a comprehensive literature review and semi-structured theme interviews. The main results described how the manpower pool operates as part of the service business unit in project business by participating in different types of delivery projects; process flows for the project types were mapped. Project management was analyzed especially from the resource management point of view, and an Excel-based skills analysis model was constructed for this purpose. Utilization of operational business models was also studied to define strategic direction for development activities. The results were benchmarked against two competitors in order to specify lessons to be learnt from their use of operational business models.

Key success factors and process for IT project portfolio management

The importance of Information Technology (IT) in the business environment is continuously growing. This stimulates the increase of size, complexity and number of IT projects and raises the need for IT Project Portfolio Management (IT PPM). While being actively discussed for the last few decades, IT PPM has a short history of practical implementation. This creates inconsistency in the views of different authors and provides an opportunity for additional research. As a first step, this research explores the existing studies and brings together the views of different authors on IT PPM. As a result, a high-level IT PPM Process Cycle and a set of Key Success Factors for IT PPM are proposed. IT PPM Process Cycle gives an overview of the main elements of IT PPM process, while the set of Key Success Factors provides a number of factors that should be considered during the implementation. As a second step, both theoretical deliverables are empirically tested by a case study and a survey conducted in a big multinational company. The case study is used to analyze process framework of the studied company towards the developed IT PPM Process Cycle. Subsequently, a survey was conducted among subject matter experts of the same company to evaluate the importance and relevance of the proposed Key Success Factors. Finally, this thesis concludes with findings made during the case study and provides an empirically tested selection of factors to be taken into account. These two deliverables can be used by both academics and practitioners to close the gaps in existing literature and assist in IT PPM implementation.

Interaction with industrial customers from a project selling company's perspective

This thesis studied the issue of interaction in industrial buyer-seller relationships. The aim of the thesis was to study the interaction from the seller’s perspective, especially from a project selling company’s perspective. The purpose of the thesis was to offer suggestions for the case company on how to improve interaction. The theoretical part of the study introduced the interaction framework of buyer-seller interaction, and the concept of interaction mechanisms. The focus was on studying the seller’s ways and means to utilize the interaction mechanisms. A case study research was conducted in the empirical part of the study, in which interaction in the case company was observed at a general level and through three different projects. The case company of the study was a project selling company. The case study data was gathered through individual interviews. Content Analysis was used as a research method for analyzing the case study data. Based on the case study findings, the results were drawn. The results indicated what should be done, in order to develop interaction in the case company. Finally, suggestions were provided for the case company on how to improve interaction, and a suggested interaction model was established for the case company. Although the thesis studied the topic from the viewpoint of only one specific company, it also offers outlook for other seller companies to improve their interaction.

Improving Product Information Management in Global Project Based Manufacturing

The transition of project based manufacturing business, even more into global networks, sets up challenges for companies to manage their business in this new operating environment. One way to tackle these challenges is the successful management of product information through an extended product’s lifecycle. Thus, one objective of this research is to find ways how product information management in global project based manufacturing can be improved. Another objective is to find a solution how the target company can improve its product information management in the offer-to-procurement business process. Due to the nature of the topic, the study follows constructive research methodology with qualitative methods. By combining literature related to this topic a framework is created to improve product information management in global project based manufacturing. The improvement process in this framework is based on a systematic approach from the current state towards target state. A general aim for improvements should be the integrated product and project lifecycle information management through Lean approach. This introduced framework is applied to the target company through two case projects. Data for building view of current state and analysis is collected mostly by theme interviews and also utilizing other material from the target company. Used tools help to analyzing was the BPMN and the Trace matrix for business chains. Results of the improvement process are collected in a solution proposal which contain the strategic target state as well as long and short term objectives. The strategic target state is defined as controlled customization. Also during the improvement process are created the Information requirements chart in the offer-to-procurement business process, and the Project related initial information questionnaire to customer.

A systematic literature review on agile project

In the 21st century, agile project management (APM) has emerged as a major evolutionary step in the area of software project management. APM is defined as a conceptual framework, consisting of various methods such as Scrum, quick respond to change, better customer collaboration, minimum coverage of documentation and extreme programming (XP) that facilitates to produce working software in multiple iterations with team work. Because agile project management has become more popular in the software industry in recent years, it constitutes an interesting and comprehensive research topic. This thesis presents a systematic literature review (SLR) of published research articles concerning agile project management. Based on a predefined search strategy, 273 such articles were identified, of which 44 were included in the review. The selected 44 articles were published between years 2005 and 2012. The thesis defines a review process by developing a review protocol and presenting the results of the review. The results are expected to provide researchers, software man

Profitability planning of the ski resort project

Objective of this master’s thesis is to create an investment calculation model, which makes it possible to determine if the ski resort business can be profitable. The ultimate goal is to create a description with the help of theoretical knowledge, interviews and investment calculation model, how the operation of ski resort is possible to be profitable and what are the critical success factors for achieving this goal. Thesis is carried out as qualitative research, which is supported by the necessary constructive information utilizing calculations. The client company has provided valuable insights and material for this thesis. Theoretical report examines the steps of developing a business plan, investment components and methods as well as sensitivity analysis. The theoretical part is based on the articles, textbooks, interviews and researches. The empirical part of the thesis is assembled by benchmarking other same size Finnish ski resorts, conducting interviews and using investment calculation model. The empirical part provides comprehensive information about ski resort industry, the future of the project, the business plan and the profitability calculations. As the result of this thesis the investment calculation model, which makes it possible to simulate different scenarios for ski resort project, was formed. The model was used to create a picture in which kind of scenario the ski resort business would be profitable and what are the critical success factors in achieving this aim.

Data management as a part of performance management: Case study about production reporting development project

Because of the increased availability of different kind of business intelligence technologies and tools it can be easy to fall in illusion that new technologies will automatically solve the problems of data management and reporting of the company. The management is not only about management of technology but also the management of processes and people. This thesis is focusing more into traditional data management and performance management of production processes which both can be seen as a requirement for long lasting development. Also some of the operative BI solutions are considered in the ideal state of reporting system. The objectives of this study are to examine what requirements effective performance management of production processes have for data management and reporting of the company and to see how they are effecting on the efficiency of it. The research is executed as a theoretical literary research about the subjects and as a qualitative case study about reporting development project of Finnsugar Ltd. The case study is examined through theoretical frameworks and by the active participant observation. To get a better picture about the ideal state of reporting system simple investment calculations are performed. According to the results of the research, requirements for effective performance management of production processes are automation in the collection of data, integration of operative databases, usage of efficient data management technologies like ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) processes, data warehouse (DW) and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and efficient management of processes, data and roles.

Forest contractors entrepreneurial skills development in Finland by Forest Expertise and Innovation Network : project in 2009 - 2013

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