Multichannel distribution strategy for electrical equipment marketing

The thesis examines System Integration and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) channel in the St. Petersburg drives market. The aim of the study was to increase understanding the relationship between OEM and SI and producers, problems and ongoing trends. The collected data was analyzed in order to find out which features of a power electronic drive product exercise a significant influence for the Russian companies decision. An essential part of this study was interviews as primary information sources, organized with SI and OEM companies which represented the basic SPb industry segments. The wholesalers and end users are left out from the analysis. The collected data was analyzed in order to find out which features of a power electronic drive product exercise a significant influence for the Russian companies decision.

Vaneritehtaan kustannustehokkuuden arvioimiseen käytettävän simulaatiojärjestelmän kehittäminen

Tämän työn tarkoituksena oli luoda kokonaisvaltainen tuotannollinen simulaatiomalli vaneritehtaasta sekä tutkia kustannuslaskennan mahdollisuuksia mallin yhteydessä. Perusolettamuksena on, että jos tuotannollinen malli toimii esikuvansa mukaisesti, myös sillä laskettuun kustannustietoon voidaan luottaa. Johdantona on tarkasteltu työn perustana olevia teorialähteitä. Ensimmäisenä asiana on esitetty vanerin valmistusprosessia ja siinä käytettyjä linja- ja laitetyyppejä. Toisena asiana on esitetty simulaatiotutkimuksen periaatteita, lainalaisuuksia ja mahdollisuuksia. Lisäksi on tarkasteltu kustannuslaskentaa, sen eri periaatteita ja muotoja sekä tuotannon- ja varastonohjausta. Aineistona ja menetelminä työssä on esitetty simulaatiomallin luomiseen tarvittavan pohjatiedon kerääminen sekä soveltaminen. Sitten on kuvattu tehdasmallin muodostavat eri tuotantolinjoja kuvaavat komponentit ja mallin käyttöliittymä. Lopuksi on kuvattu teoreettisen tehdasmallin soveltaminen todellisen vaneritehtaan mukaiseksi. Sovelletulla mallilla on ajettu kolme erilaista vuorokausituotantoa ja niistä saatua kustannustietoa on vertailtu optimitilannetta kuvaavaan taulukkoon.

Chelating Adsorbents in Purification of Hydrometallurgical Solutions

In this thesis, equilibrium and dynamic sorption properties of weakly basic chelating adsorbents were studied to explain removal of copper, nickel from a concentrated zinc sulfate solution in a hydrometallurgical process. Silica-supported chelating composites containing either branched poly(ethyleneimine) (BPEI) or 2-(aminomethyl)pyridine (AMP) as a functional group were used. The adsorbents are commercially available from Purity Systems Inc, USA as WP-1® and CuWRAM®, respectively. The fundamental interactions between the adsorbents, sulfuric acid and metal sulfates were studied in detail and the results were used to find the best conditions for removal of copper and nickel from an authentic ZnSO4 process solution. In particular, the effect of acid concentration and temperature on the separation efficiency was considered. Both experimental and modeling aspectswere covered in all cases. Metal sorption is considerably affected by the chemical properties of the studied adsorbents and by the separation conditions. In the case of WP-1, acid affinity is so high that column separation of copper, nickel and zinc has to be done using the adsorbent in base-form. On the other hand, the basicity of CuWRAM is significantly lower and protonated adsorbent can be used. Increasing temperature decreases the basicity and the metals affinity of both adsorbents, but the uptake capacities remain practically unchanged. Moreover, increasing temperature substantially enhances intra-particle mass transport and decreases viscosities thus allowing significantly higher feed flow rates in the fixed-bed separation. The copper selectivity of both adsorbents is very high even in the presence of a 250-fold excess of zinc. However, because of the basicity of WP-1, metal precipitation is a serious problem and therefore only CuWRAM is suitable for the practical industrial application. The optimum temperature for copper removal appears to be around 60 oC and an alternative solution purification method is proposed. The Ni/Zn selectivity of both WP-1 and CuWRAM is insufficient for removal of the very small amounts of nickel present in the concentrated ZnSO4 solution.

Conversioni al cattolicesimo a Roma tra Sei e Settecento. La presenza degli scandinavi nell’Ospizio dei Convertendi.

In my PhD dissertation, I have examined a group of people of Scandinavian origin received by Ospizio dei Convertendi. This group has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The Ospizio was an institute founded by the Oratorian Congregation in Rome in 1673 to provide religious instruction and material aid to both recent and aspirant converts to Roman Catholicism. My research traces the profile of converts and a typology of motives, examining different factors which influenced the conversion process. I show that the key factors were often of a social rather than a religious nature. Moreover, I have analyzed the hospice in the context of Counter-Reformation charity as well. In terms of numbers, the Scandinavians formed a somewhat marginal yet not insignificant group within the Roman hospice. Out of a total of 2203 guests received between 1673 and 1706, 4.6 % were Scandinavians: 74 Swedes (including Finland and Livonia) and 27 Danes (including Norway). They came from a rigorously Protestant region which reacted to Catholicism with severe legislative measures. Converts to Catholicism risked confiscation of their goods, expulsion or even capital punishment. Since both Sweden and Denmark were practically impenetrable to Catholicism at the time and clandestine missionary attempts often failed before they had even properly started, the Roman Catholic Church shifted its interest towards Northerners arriving in Rome, a preferred destination for young noblemen, artists and migrant craftsmen. The material related to Ospizio dei Convertendi, conserved in the Vatican archives, is a scarcely known yet unusually rich source, not only for the religious history of our continent, but also for social history and the study of migration in early modern Europe. It contains a wealth of information about members of the subordinate classes, of their travels and lives in Europe. The profile delineated in these documents is of individuals who had a wide range of different professions and different aspirations. These documents encompass a vast social spectrum that was highly mobile on a continent which by that time had become pluriconfessional. Therefore, these migrants faced the complex religious reality in their everyday life. The principal corpus of my research consists of two types of manuscript sources created for administrative and in a way also for apologetic purposes of the Roman Catholic Church. My starting point is the Primo registro generale of Ospizio dei Convertendi. This is a volume in which the following information about each guest was registered: name, nationality, city of origin, age, sex, profession, confession professed before converting, date of arrival, departure, abjuration and baptism. Typically, the convert was male, originating from Stockholm or Copenhagen, from 21 to 30 years of age. The biggest occupational groups in descending order were soldiers, noblemen, craftsmen and sailors. Thus the data reflects a multiform reality of interurban and long distance migration, ideals regarding the education of young noblemen and gentry as well as the need of European armies to hire foreign mercenaries in their various campaigns. Against this background the almost total absence of women is hardly surprising: there is only one woman in the material I have studied. The second main source, Nota degl’ospiti ricevuti e spese fatte per essi, sheds more light on the choices of the converts, their motivations and their lives outside Scandinavia before reaching Rome. This narrative material permits an analysis which completes but also goes far beyond the columns of the Institute’s general register. This material consists of reports written by Catholic priests based on an interview conducted upon each guest’s arrival. The material frequently includes information on what the converts would do following their departure from the Institute as well. These sources have a specific narrative form and contain short biographies, list reasons for converting and information about the journey from the North to the Mediterranean - a journey which in many cases took several years. Moreover, they show that certain unorthodox practices such as calling on the saints and pleading for help from them were not uncommon in the Protestant popular religion. The recording of information on conversions from Protestantism to Catholicism reflects both religious and social interest on the part of the receiving institute. The information obtained was used for the purposes of religious teaching, for finding adequate ways of inserting the convert into Italian society so that he could earn a living, and to find effective methods to convert others with a similar cultural and geographical background. The stories recorded were based on interviews with the newly-arrived, information obtained from a travel companion or fellow countrymen, or from written documents the aspirant converts carried with them. These sources illustrate, although sometimes in rather simplified ways, the circumstances and motivations which were relevant to the choice of changing one’s confession. In addition, I have examined petitions addressed to the hospice and other Roman authorities in order to get financial aid. These petitions were written by Italian scrittori, and they contain certain conventions and topoi of presenting the conversion with the purpose of improving the chances of obtaining financial aid. It is through these filters, which may seem initially almost invisible, that the remote voice of the converts reaches us. The results of the analysis are particularly interesting because they disagree with some of the principal conclusions of previous work on the subject. First, earlier research has focused almost exclusively on the conversions of noblemen, and has argued, second, that the Queen Christina of Sweden was the driving force behind their change of confession. The sources examined for this dissertation present a profile of long-distance migrants, many of them members of the subordinate classes, who were looking for ways to make their living in Europe. These people had in many cases left their country of origin several years earlier and not for religious reasons, so, crucially, we are not dealing with confessional migration in these cases. Rather, conversion was a complex process, intricately tied up with strategies of survival, integration and upward social mobility. At the same time, while these components are significant on their own right, they do not necessarily point to the absence of motivations of a more clearly religious nature.

Evaluating End-User Training Effectiveness in ERP System Implementation

Today’s business world demands more and more internal and external integration and transparency among companies at all fields. Integrated ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems offer a possibility to improve business practices and procedures by providing a unified view on the business including all functions and departments. Due to the obvious benefits, the popularity of integrated ERP systems keeps growing. The implementation of ERP systems has however proven risky. The implementation projects tend to be long, extensive, and costly – and often they end up in a failure. Due to the significant task and role changes ERP implementation brings to almost everybody in the company, training has been identified as one of the most critical success factors of an ERP implementation. To ensure that the training is conducted in the most effective and successful manner, the training outcomes should be evaluated. So far, training evaluation has however gained only limited attention at most companies investing in different training programs. Uponor corporation has initiated a large ERP implementation and process harmonization program in 2004. Thousands of end-users have been trained during this project so far, and the work still continues until the project is completed in 2010. In this thesis, the evaluation of end-user training in Uponor’s ERP program is brought further from the current state of performing the basic participant satisfaction survey in the end of each class. The results show that in order to reach reliable training effectiveness evaluation results, not only the reaction towards training but also transfer of skills and attitudes and the final results of the training program should be evaluated.

Tuotteen elinkaarenaikainen tiedonhallinta palvelukeskeisen arkkitehtuurin avulla

Palvelukeskeistä arkkitehtuuria (SOA) sovelletaan nykyään varsinkin suurten yritysten tietojärjestelmien suunnittelussa ja toteutuksessa. Siinä toiminnot suunnitellaan palveluina, mikä lisää erityisesti palveluiden uudelleen-käytettävyyttä ja mahdollisuutta hyödyntää jo tehtyjä järjestelmäinvestointeja. Tuotteen elinkaarenaikaisen tiedonhallinnan (PLM) pyrkimyksenä on saada elinkaarelle hajaantunut tieto käyttöön oikeassa paikassa oikeaan aikaan sekä parantaa tuotetiedon luotettavuutta ja ajantasaisuutta. Tämä on yksi tärkeimmistä tekijöistä tavoiteltaessa kilpailuetuja verkottuneessa liiketoiminnassa. Tämän diplomityön tavoitteena oli selvittää, kuinka tuotteen elinkaarenaikainen tiedonhallinta voidaan toteuttaa palvelukeskeisen arkkitehtuurin avulla sekä, mitä haasteita ja hyötyjä tästä seuraa organisaatiolle. Tutkimus tehtiin kirjallisuustutkimuksena. Työ tarjoaa tietoa PLM:n ja SOA:n integroinnista sekä integroinnin haasteista ja hyödyistä. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittavat palvelukeskeisen PLM:n tuovan oikein suunniteltuna ja toteutettuna merkittäviä hyötyjä verkostoituneessa ympäristössä toimiville yrityksille. Lisäksi työ antaa käsityksen siitä, kuinka laaja projekti palvelukeskeisen PLM:n implementointi on.