Kysynnän hallinnan vaikutukset päivittäistavararyhmän kustannustehokkuuteen

Tutkielman konkreettisena tavoitteena oli rakentaa kauppaketjulle kysynnän hallinnan pohjalta malli, jonka avulla ketju voi parantaa asiakaslähtöisyyttään ja samalla tehostaa toimintaansa. Tutkielman teoriaosassa muodostetun viitekehyksen pitävyyttä kokeiltiin TOKMANNI-ketjun makeistuoteryhmään. Tutkielman teoriaosassa seurattiin päivittäistavarakauppaan suunnatun ECR-toiminnan teoreettista viitekehystä, josta saatiin tietoa kirjallisuudesta, konsulttiraporteista sekä artikkeleista. Empiirinen osa toteutettiin kvantitatiivisilla kohdeyrityksen tuottamilla dokumenteilla, joita täydennettiin kvalitatiivisilla haastattelututkimuksilla. Tutkielman pohjalta ketjun makeistuoteryhmään rakennettiin uudelleen määritelty ja yhtenäinen valikoima sekä esillepano. Valikoiman selkiyttämisellä ja yhtenäistämisellä parannettiin tuoteryhmän hallittavuutta sekä helpotettiin henkilökunnan työskentelyä tilaustoiminnassa, esillepanossa ja kampanjoinnissa. Lisäksi tuoteryhmän selkiytymisen ja kulutuskysynnän mukaisen valikoiman nähtiin parantavan myös tuoteryhmän kannattavuutta ja asiakaslähtöisyyttä siisteinä, selkeinä hyllyinä sekä kulutuskysynnän mukaisena valikoimana. Teoreettinen malli tuntui toimivan myös käytännössä.

Mapping out customer segments and marketing channels in the Finnish Homelift market

Työn tavoitteena oli saada selville ketkä ovat uuden tuotteen, eli kotihissin asiakkaat. Mitkä ovat tuotteen mahdollisuudet Suomen markkinoilla ja onko markkinoilla odotettavissa kasvua, sekä miten tähän mahdolliseen kasvuun päästäisiin käsiksi. Kotihissin ominaisuudet vaikuttavat siihen, että se on tarkoitettu asennettavaksi yksityisiin pientaloihin. Uuden tuotteen ansiosta KONE voi liittää nykyiseen vahvaan toimialaansa, eli kerrostaloihin, uuden aluevaltauksen; Pientalot. Tämä 'laajentuminen' tuo mukanaan kuluttajamarkkinoiden haasteet. Markkinatilanteen selvittämiseen käyttin jo olemassa olevaa tietoa hyväkseni; sanomalehdistä markkinatutkimuksiin. Asiakasryhmät kartoitin tutustumalla messutapahtumissa saatuihin kontakteihin. Päätutkimusmenetelmänä käytin haastatteluja. Niihin osallistui kaikkiaan 14 vastaajaa. He vasatsivat kysymyksiin ostomotiiveista ja tuotteesta. Eräs haastattelujen tärkeimmistä teemoista liittyi yhteydenpito- ja jakelukanaviin, joista 12 vastaajaa antoivat mielipiteitään. Työni tulokset viittaavat siihen, että markkinatilanne näyttää positiiviselta KONEen kannalta. Tutkimuksesta sain selville kotihissin asiakassegmentit ja myös miten nämä potentiaaliset asiakkaat saadaan tehokkaimmin tavoitettua.

On the Reversed Brayton Cycle with High Speed Machinery

This work was carried out in the laboratory of Fluid Dynamics, at Lappeenranta University of Technology during the years 1991-1996. The research was a part of larger high speed technology development research. First, there was the idea of making high speed machinery applications with the Brayton cycle. There was a clear need to deepen theknowledge of the cycle itself and to make a new approach in the field of the research. Also, the removal of water from the humid air seemed very interesting. The goal of this work was to study methods of designing high speed machinery to the reversed Brayton cycle, from theoretical principles to practical applications. The reversed Brayton cycle can be employed as an air dryer, a heat pump or a refrigerating machine. In this research the use of humid air as a working fluid has an environmental advantage, as well. A new calculation method for the Braytoncycle is developed. In this method especially the expansion process in the turbine is important because of the condensation of the water vapour in the humid air. This physical phenomena can have significant effects on the level of performance of the application. Also, the influence of calculating the process with actual, achievable process equipment efficiencies is essential for the development of the future machinery. The above theoretical calculations are confirmed with two different laboratory prototypes. The high speed machinery concept allows one to build an application with only one rotating shaft including all the major parts: the high speed motor, the compressor and the turbine wheel. The use of oil free bearings and high rotational speed outlines give several advantages compared to conventional machineries: light weight, compact structure, safe operation andhigher efficiency at a large operational region. There are always problems whentheory is applied to practice. The calibrations of pressure, temperature and humidity probes were made with care but still measurable errors were not negligible. Several different separators were examined and in all cases the content of the separated water was not exact. Due to the compact sizes and structures of the prototypes, the process measurement was slightly difficult. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical calculations. These experiments prove the operation of the process and lay a ground for the further development. The results of this work give very promising possibilities for the design of new, commercially competitive applications that use high speed machinery and the reversed Brayton cycle.

Validation of plant dynamic model by online and laboratory measurements – a tool to predict online COD loads out of production of mechanical printing papers

COD discharges out of processes have increased in line with elevating brightness demands for mechanical pulp and papers. The share of lignin-like substances in COD discharges is on average 75%. In this thesis, a plant dynamic model was created and validated as a means to predict COD loading and discharges out of a mill. The assays were carried out in one paper mill integrate producing mechanical printing papers. The objective in the modeling of plant dynamics was to predict day averages of COD load and discharges out of mills. This means that online data, like 1) the level of large storage towers of pulp and white water 2) pulp dosages, 3) production rates and 4) internal white water flows and discharges were used to create transients into the balances of solids and white water, referred to as “plant dynamics”. A conversion coefficient was verified between TOC and COD. The conversion coefficient was used for predicting the flows from TOC to COD to the waste water treatment plant. The COD load was modeled with similar uncertainty as in reference TOC sampling. The water balance of waste water treatment was validated by the reference concentration of COD. The difference of COD predictions against references was within the same deviation of TOC-predictions. The modeled yield losses and retention values of TOC in pulping and bleaching processes and the modeled fixing of colloidal TOC to solids between the pulping plant and the aeration basin in the waste water treatment plant were similar to references presented in literature. The valid water balances of the waste water treatment plant and the reduction model of lignin-like substances produced a valid prediction of COD discharges out of the mill. A 30% increase in the release of lignin-like substances in the form of production problems was observed in pulping and bleaching processes. The same increase was observed in COD discharges out of waste water treatment. In the prediction of annual COD discharge, it was noticed that the reduction of lignin has a wide deviation from year to year and from one mill to another. This made it difficult to compare the parameters of COD discharges validated in plant dynamic simulation with another mill producing mechanical printing papers. However, a trend of moving from unbleached towards high-brightness TMP in COD discharges was valid.

Palveluiden hankintaprosessin tehostaminen

Tämän pro gradu- tutkielman tavoitteena on löytää keinoja Yleisradio Oy:n palveluiden hankintaprosessiin tehostamiseen. Tarkastelussa huomioitiin hankintojen nykytila ja sen sisältämät ongelmat. Isona osana analysointia oli julkisten hankintojen sääntöjen ja säännösten peilaaminen hankintaprosessiin. Tutkimuksessa hyödynnetään kvalitatiivista tutkimusmenetelmää sekä case – tutkimusta. Tutkielman teoriaosa luo pohjan empiirisen osan analysoinnille, jossa nostetaan esiin julkisen hankinnan sääntöjen noudattamisen haasteet hankintaprosessissa. Tutkimuksessa ilmeni, että palveluiden hankinnan tehostaminen vaatii kaikilta sidosryhmiltä panostusta jokaiseen prosessin vaiheeseen. Tulevaisuudessa menestyksekkääseen palveluiden hankintaan tarvitaan selkeät pelisäännöt, joiden toteutumisessa jokaisella on vastuu

Novel Robot Solutions for Carrying out Field Joint Welding and Machining in the Assembly of the Vacuum Vessel of ITER

It is necessary to use highly specialized robots in ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) both in the manufacturing and maintenance of the reactor due to a demanding environment. The sectors of the ITER vacuum vessel (VV) require more stringent tolerances than normally expected for the size of the structure involved. VV consists of nine sectors that are to be welded together. The vacuum vessel has a toroidal chamber structure. The task of the designed robot is to carry the welding apparatus along a path with a stringent tolerance during the assembly operation. In addition to the initial vacuum vessel assembly, after a limited running period, sectors need to be replaced for repair. Mechanisms with closed-loop kinematic chains are used in the design of robots in this work. One version is a purely parallel manipulator and another is a hybrid manipulator where the parallel and serial structures are combined. Traditional industrial robots that generally have the links actuated in series are inherently not very rigid and have poor dynamic performance in high speed and high dynamic loading conditions. Compared with open chain manipulators, parallel manipulators have high stiffness, high accuracy and a high force/torque capacity in a reduced workspace. Parallel manipulators have a mechanical architecture where all of the links are connected to the base and to the end-effector of the robot. The purpose of this thesis is to develop special parallel robots for the assembly, machining and repairing of the VV of the ITER. The process of the assembly and machining of the vacuum vessel needs a special robot. By studying the structure of the vacuum vessel, two novel parallel robots were designed and built; they have six and ten degrees of freedom driven by hydraulic cylinders and electrical servo motors. Kinematic models for the proposed robots were defined and two prototypes built. Experiments for machine cutting and laser welding with the 6-DOF robot were carried out. It was demonstrated that the parallel robots are capable of holding all necessary machining tools and welding end-effectors in all positions accurately and stably inside the vacuum vessel sector. The kinematic models appeared to be complex especially in the case of the 10-DOF robot because of its redundant structure. Multibody dynamics simulations were carried out, ensuring sufficient stiffness during the robot motion. The entire design and testing processes of the robots appeared to be complex tasks due to the high specialization of the manufacturing technology needed in the ITER reactor, while the results demonstrate the applicability of the proposed solutions quite well. The results offer not only devices but also a methodology for the assembly and repair of ITER by means of parallel robots.

Peter Pan never goes out of style : nuorisotutkijat ymmällään

Kirjallisuusarvostelu

Making the impact on research and society : a case study: crowdsourcing solutions developed for the linguistic research and citizen science

Can crowdsourcing solutions serve many masters? Can they be beneficial for both, for the layman or native speakers of minority languages on the one hand and serious linguistic research on the other? How did an infrastructure that was designed to support linguistics turn out to be a solution for raising awareness of native languages? Since 2012 the National Library of Finland has been developing the Digitisation Project for Kindred Languages, in which the key objective is to support a culture of openness and interaction in linguistic research, but also to promote crowdsourcing as a tool for participation of the language community in research. In the course of the project, over 1,200 monographs and nearly 111,000 pages of newspapers in Finno-Ugric languages will be digitised and made available in the Fenno-Ugrica digital collection. This material was published in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, and users have had only sporadic access to the material. The publication of open-access and searchable materials from this period is a goldmine for researchers. Historians, social scientists and laymen with an interest in specific local publications can now find text materials pertinent to their studies. The linguistically-oriented population can also find writings to delight them: (1) lexical items specific to a given publication, and (2) orthographically-documented specifics of phonetics. In addition to the open access collection, we developed an open source code OCR editor that enables the editing of machine-encoded text for the benefit of linguistic research. This tool was necessary since these rare and peripheral prints often include already archaic characters, which are neglected by modern OCR software developers but belong to the historical context of kindred languages, and are thus an essential part of the linguistic heritage. When modelling the OCR editor, it was essential to consider both the needs of researchers and the capabilities of lay citizens, and to have them participate in the planning and execution of the project from the very beginning. By implementing the feedback iteratively from both groups, it was possible to transform the requested changes as tools for research that not only supported the work of linguistics but also encouraged the citizen scientists to face the challenge and work with the crowdsourcing tools for the benefit of research. This presentation will not only deal with the technical aspects, developments and achievements of the infrastructure but will highlight the way in which user groups, researchers and lay citizens were engaged in a process as an active and communicative group of users and how their contributions were made to mutual benefit.

Investointiprojektien markkinoinnin ja myynnin kehitystyö

Työssä selvitetään projektimarkkinoinnissa esiintyviä haasteita projektiyrityksen näkökulmasta ja esitellään kokonaisvaltainen projektimarkkinointistrategia Caverion Industrialle. Työ toteutettiin laadullisia tutkimusmenetelmiä käyttäen, ja osana tutkimusta suoritettiin haastattelututkimus sekä sisäisesti että asiakasyrityksille. Sisäisiin haastatteluihin osallistui Caverion Industrialta 5 henkilöä, ja asiakashaastattelu suoritettiin 6:lle Caverion Industrian tärkeimmistä asiakkaista. Haastattelun tuloksia käytettiin ensisijaisena aineistona selvittämään projektimarkkinoinnin haasteita, mutta tuloksia verrattiin sisällönanalyysiä käyttäen projektimarkkinoinnista kirjoitettuun tutkimuskirjallisuuteen. Aineistojen vertailun tuloksena tutkimuksessa luotiin uusi kokonaisvaltainen projektimarkkinointistrategiamalli. Yleisesti ottaen projektiyrityksissä projektien myynnin ratkaisevana tekijänä on pidetty hintaa, eli asiakas valitsee useimmiten halvimman toimittajan. Projektimarkkinoinnissa on kuitenkin useita muita tekijöitä, joilla pystytään vaikuttamaan asiakkaan valintaprosessiin. Tutkimuksen perusteella systemaattisemmalla ja laaja-alaisemmalla projektimarkkinointistrategialla voidaan lisätä myyntiä projektitoimittajayrityksessä, mikäli strategia otetaan osaksi projektiyrityksen jokapäiväistä toimintaa.

Fundraising and investor relations in social enterprise: Marketing your way out of the pioneer gap in African off-grid renewable energy

Social enterprises apply the best of business for the pursuit of social or environmental mission while also generating revenues. Globally, nearly 1,3 billion people lack access to electricity, as well as another billion having access to only low quality and infrequent electricity. Off-grid renewable energy, like solar, will increasingly have a key role in the solution of the energy access issue. The pioneer gap in off-grid renewable energy consists of financing (or funding) gaps and capacity gaps, to do with both the early stage of the enterprises in question, as well as the early stage of the whole industry. The gaps are emphasised by specific characteristics of off-grid renewable energy business models and the requirements of operating in bottom-of-the-pyramid markets. The marketing perspective to fundraising is chosen to uncover the possible role enterprises themselves have in bridging the pioneer gap. The purpose of this thesis is to study how social enterprises operating in off-grid renewable energy in Africa utilise marketing activities in their investor relations in bridging the pioneer gap. This main research question is divided into the following sub-questions:  How does the pioneer gap affect fundraising for these enterprises?  How are the funding needs for these enterprises characterised?  How do these enterprises build trust in their investor relations? The theoretic framework is built on relationship marketing and investor relations, with an emphasis on creation of trust. The research is conducted as a thematical case study. Primary data is gathered via semi-structured interviews with six solar energy companies and two accelerators. According to the findings, the main components affecting trust-creation are diminished information asymmetry and perceived risk, mission alignment as well as a personal fit or relationship with the investor. Therefore, an enterprise can utilise e.g. the following marketing activities in their investor relations to bridge the pioneer gap: ensuring investor material, the enterprise story and presenting of them is clear, concise and complete to “package” the enterprise as an investment; taking investor needs and motivations into account as well as utilising existing investors as ambassadors.

De nova stella mobili

Painovuosi nimekkeestä.

Industria philosophiae, quâ cujusvis sectae adversarijs sive status per compendium iri obviam potest, ac multae difficultates unà in disceptationibus felicitèr superari

Invokaatio: I.N.D.O.M.