Integrating Financial Perspective to Quality Orientated Management System. Case: ALSTOM Finland Oy

Tutkimuksen päätavoitteena on tutkia taloudellisen näkökulman integroimista laatuajatteluun pohjautuvaan johtamisjärjestelmään esimerkkiyrityksessä. Johtamisjärjestelmän tulee tuottaa tietoa johdon strategiselle päätöksenteolle ja lisäksi täyttää laatujärjestelmän (ISO 9001:2000) asettamat vaatimukset. Tutkimuksen kohteena oleva työkalu on balanced scorecard (tasapainotettu tuloskortti). Työn tarkoituksena on ehdottaa balanced scorecard- talouden tunnuslukuja esimerkkiyritykselle. Tutkimuksen tavoitteisiin päästään empiiristä tutkimusta varten tehdyn teoreettisen viitekehyksen avulla. Empiiristä tutkimustietoa kerätään osallistuvan havainnoinnin, haastattelujen ja keskustelujen avulla. Tutkimusmenetelmänä on laadullinen case -tutkimus. Balanced scorecardin eri näkökulmille ehdotettiin tunnuslukuja empiirisen tutkimuksen pohjalta. Lisäksi talouden näkökulmaa tutkittiin tarkemmin. Tutkimuksen johtopäätöksenä esitettiin, että taloudelliset tunnusluvut mittaavat ensisijaisesti strategiaa eivätkä laatua. Lisäksi huomioitiin, että tuloskorttien tulisi olla koekäytössä ennen bonuspalkkauksen ja balanced scorecardin yhdistämistä.

Corporate Social Responsibility in the Oil and Gas Industry: Environmental Management Systems as a Source of Sustainable Development

The environmental aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) expressed through the process of the EMS implementation in the oil and gas companies is identified as the main subject of this research. In the theoretical part, the basic attention is paid to justification of a link between CSR and environmental management. The achievement of sustainable competitive advantage as a result of environmental capital growth and inclusion of the socially responsible activities in the corporate strategy is another issue that is of special significance here. Besides, two basic forms of environmental management systems (environmental decision support systems and environmental information management systems) are explored and their role in effective stakeholder interaction is tackled. The most crucial benefits of EMS are also analyzed to underline its importance as a source of sustainable development. Further research is based on the survey of 51 sampled oil and gas companies (both publicly owned and state owned ones) originated from different countries all over the world and providing reports on sustainability issues in the open access. To analyze their approach to sustainable development, a specifically designed evaluation matrix with 37 indicators developed in accordance with the General Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines for non-financial reporting was prepared. Additionally, the quality of environmental information disclosure was measured on the basis of a quality – quantity matrix. According to results of research, oil and gas companies prefer implementing reactive measures to the costly and knowledge-intensive proactive techniques for elimination of the negative environmental impacts. Besides, it was identified that the environmental performance disclosure is mostly rather limited, so that the quality of non-financial reporting can be judged as quite insufficient. In spite of the fact that most of the oil and gas companies in the sample claim the EMS to be embedded currently in their structure, they often do not provide any details for the process of their implementation. As a potential for the further development of EMS, author mentions possible integration of their different forms in a single entity, extension of existing structure on the basis of consolidation of the structural and strategic precautions as well as development of a unified certification standard instead of several ones that exist today in order to enhance control on the EMS implementation.

Improving reporting management with relational database management system

Data management consists of collecting, storing, and processing the data into the format which provides value-adding information for decision-making process. The development of data management has enabled of designing increasingly effective database management systems to support business needs. Therefore as well as advanced systems are designed for reporting purposes, also operational systems allow reporting and data analyzing. The used research method in the theory part is qualitative research and the research type in the empirical part is case study. Objective of this paper is to examine database management system requirements from reporting managements and data managements perspectives. In the theory part these requirements are identified and the appropriateness of the relational data model is evaluated. In addition key performance indicators applied to the operational monitoring of production are studied. The study has revealed that the appropriate operational key performance indicators of production takes into account time, quality, flexibility and cost aspects. Especially manufacturing efficiency has been highlighted. In this paper, reporting management is defined as a continuous monitoring of given performance measures. According to the literature review, the data management tool should cover performance, usability, reliability, scalability, and data privacy aspects in order to fulfill reporting managements demands. A framework is created for the system development phase based on requirements, and is used in the empirical part of the thesis where such a system is designed and created for reporting management purposes for a company which operates in the manufacturing industry. Relational data modeling and database architectures are utilized when the system is built for relational database platform.

Expanding a Global Company Management System to An Integrated Coverage of Several Standards

This Master’s thesis examines the implementation of management system standard requirements as integrated in the organization. The aim is to determine how requirements from management system standards ISO 14001:2015 and ISO 9001:2015 can be integrated and implemented into the existing ISO 9001:2008 compliant management system. Research was executed as action research by utilizing an operating model about the integrated use of management system standards created by the International Organization for Standardization. Phases of the operating model were applied to the target organization. The similarity and integration potential of relevant standards were assessed by using comparative matrices. Allocation of the requirements and conformity assessment of the processes was executed by gap analysis. The main results indicate that the requirements of the relevant standards are principally equivalent or have the same kind of purpose. The results also show the most important processes of the target organization in terms of requirement compliance, as well as the requirements which affect the process the most. Prioritizing the compliance achievement of the most important processes and implementation of those requirements that have the most effect create an opportunity for organizations to implement the integrated requirements effectively.

PHC Production Management System Based on RFID

At present, in large precast concrete enterprises, the management over precast concrete component has been chaotic. Most enterprises take labor-intensive manual input method, which is time consuming and laborious, and error-prone. Some other slightly better enterprises choose to manage through bar-code or printing serial number manually. However, on one hand, this is also labor-intensive, on the other hand, this method is limited by external environment, making the serial number blur or even lost, and also causes a big problem on production traceability and quality accountability. Therefore, to realize the enterprise’s own rapid development and cater to the needs of the time, to achieve the automated production management has been a big problem for a modern enterprise. In order to solve the problem, inefficiency in production and traceability of the products, this thesis try to introduce RFID technology into the production of PHC tubular pile. By designing a production management system of precast concrete components, the enterprise will achieve the control of the entire production process, and realize the informatization of enterprise production management. RFID technology has been widely used in many fields like entrance control, charge management, logistics and so on. RFID technology will adopt passive RFID tag, which is waterproof, shockproof, anti-interference, so it’s suitable for the actual working environment. The tag will be bound to the precast component steel cage (the structure of the PHC tubular pile before the concrete placement), which means each PHC tubular pile will have a unique ID number. Then according to the production procedure, the precast component will be performed with a series of actions, put the steel cage into the mold, mold clamping, pouring concrete (feed), stretching, centrifugalizing, maintenance, mold removing, welding splice. In every session of the procedure, the information of the precast components can be read through a RFID reader. Using a portable smart device connected to the database, the user can check, inquire and management the production information conveniently. Also, the system can trace the production parameter and the person in charge, realize the traceability of the information. This system can overcome the disadvantages in precast components manufacturers, like inefficiency, error-prone, time consuming, labor intensity, low information relevance and so on. This system can help to improve the production management efficiency, and can produce a good economic and social benefits, so, this system has a certain practical value.

A Belief rule-based environmental responsibility assessment system for small and medium-sized enterprises

Various environmental management systems, standards and tools are being created to assist companies to become more environmental friendly. However, not all the enterprises have adopted environmental policies in the same scale and range. Additionally, there is no existing guide to help them determine their level of environmental responsibility and subsequently, provide support to enable them to move forward towards environmental responsibility excellence. This research proposes the use of a Belief Rule-Based approach to assess an enterprise’s level commitment to environmental issues. The Environmental Responsibility BRB assessment system has been developed for this research. Participating companies will have to complete a structured questionnaire. An automated analysis of their responses (using the Belief Rule-Based approach) will determine their environmental responsibility level. This is followed by a recommendation on how to progress to the next level. The recommended best practices will help promote understanding, increase awareness, and make the organization greener. BRB systems consist of two parts: Knowledge Base and Inference Engine. The knowledge base in this research is constructed after an in-depth literature review, critical analyses of existing environmental performance assessment models and primarily guided by the EU Draft Background Report on "Best Environmental Management Practice in the Telecommunications and ICT Services Sector". The reasoning algorithm of a selected Drools JBoss BRB inference engine is forward chaining, where an inference starts iteratively searching for a pattern-match of the input and if-then clause. However, the forward chaining mechanism is not equipped with uncertainty handling. Therefore, a decision is made to deploy an evidential reasoning and forward chaining with a hybrid knowledge representation inference scheme to accommodate imprecision, ambiguity and fuzzy types of uncertainties. It is believed that such a system generates well balanced, sensible and Green ICT readiness adapted results, to help enterprises focus on making improvements on more sustainable business operations.