Postal service : labor-management relations and customer services at the Simi Valley, California, post office : report to the Chairman, Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, House of Representatives /

"B-226092"--P. 1.

A Guide to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (Foreign Service Labor-Management Relations Program).

Mode of access: Internet.

A co-ordinated business object approach for supporting tactical level management decisions

The proliferation of data throughout the strategic, tactical and operational areas within many organisations, has provided a need for the decision maker to be presented with structured information that is appropriate for achieving allocated tasks. However, despite this abundance of data, managers at all levels in the organisation commonly encounter a condition of ‘information overload’, that results in a paucity of the correct information. Specifically, this thesis will focus upon the tactical domain within the organisation and the information needs of management who reside at this level. In doing so, it will argue that the link between decision making at the tactical level in the organisation, and low-level transaction processing data, should be through a common object model that used a framework based upon knowledge leveraged from co-ordination theory. In order to achieve this, the Co-ordinated Business Object Model (CBOM) was created. Detailing a two-tier framework, the first tier models data based upon four interactive object models, namely, processes, activities, resources and actors. The second tier analyses the data captured by the four object models, and returns information that can be used to support tactical decision making. In addition, the Co-ordinated Business Object Support System (CBOSS), is a prototype tool that has been developed in order to both support the CBOM implementation, and to also demonstrate the functionality of the CBOM as a modelling approach for supporting tactical management decision making. Containing a graphical user interface, the system’s functionality allows the user to create and explore alternative implementations of an identified tactical level process. In order to validate the CBOM, three verification tests have been completed. The results provide evidence that the CBOM framework helps bridge the gap between low level transaction data, and the information that is used to support tactical level decision making.

Non-stationary stochastic inventory lot-sizing with emission and service level constraints in a carbon cap-and-trade system

Firms worldwide are taking major initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of their supply chains in response to the growing governmental and consumer pressures. In real life, these supply chains face stochastic and non-stationary demand but most of the studies on inventory lot-sizing problem with emission concerns consider deterministic demand. In this paper, we study the inventory lot-sizing problem under non-stationary stochastic demand condition with emission and cycle service level constraints considering carbon cap-and-trade regulatory mechanism. Using a mixed integer linear programming model, this paper aims to investigate the effects of emission parameters, product- and system-related features on the supply chain performance through extensive computational experiments to cover general type business settings and not a specific scenario. Results show that cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation have significant impacts on total cost and emission irrespective of level of demand variability while the impact of product's demand pattern is significant only at lower level of demand variability. Finally, results also show that increasing value of carbon price reduces total cost, total emission and total inventory and the scope of emission reduction by increasing carbon price is greater at higher levels of cycle service level and demand coefficient of variation. The analysis of results helps supply chain managers to take right decision in different demand and service level situations.

Enhancing Cloud Security and Privacy: Broadening the Service Level Agreement

Postprint

Unifying Services Marketing and Operations with Service Experience Management

One of the pioneer firms in the leisure cruise industry embarked on a bold idea in 2000 to offer an unregimented experience unlike most cruises. Despite the appeal of the concept from a marketing perspective, the service innovation posed operational challenges, many of which continue to undermine the firm’s competitive position. Using a multi-method empirical approach and interdisciplinary views that draw on research from marketing and operations management, the authors analyze this business case to identify challenges that service firms face when services are developed and managed from siloed functional perspectives. Based on their research findings and guided by the literature, the authors derive a service-systems model to aid service planning and management. The authors further highlight a new organizational form and function for services under the domain of service experience management that is positioned as a means to unify service operations and marketing for delivering on service promises. The authors offer direction for further research on service operations systems and service experience management.

Palvelutasosopimus toimittajan hallinnnan työkaluna Case: IT-käyttötukipalvelu

Työn tavoitteena on selvittää palvelutasosopimuksella ja sen hallinnalla saatavaa hyötyä toimittajan hallinnassa. Tutkimusongelmaa on lähdetty selvittämään tutustumalla ensin lyhyesti toimittajan hallintaan ja laajemmin palvelutasosopimuksista ja niiden hallinnasta olemassa olevaan teoria-aineistoon. Tämän teoriapohjan perusteella palvelutasosopimuksia ja niiden hallintaa on tutkittu käytännössä case-yrityksen valossa, mahdollisimman realistiseen lopputulokseen pääsemiseksi. Palvelujen ulkoistaminen tulee tulevaisuudessa lisääntymään ja tätä kautta yritysten onnistuminen markkinoilla on yhä riippuvaisempaa niiden kyvystä hallita toimittajiaan. Palvelutasosopimukset ja prosessit niiden ympärillä ovat hyödyllisiä työkaluja toimittajan suorituksen valvonnassa ja kehittämisessä sekä toimittajasuhteen luotsaamisessa kohti kumppanuussuhdetta. Tämä edellyttää kuitenkin, että kauppakumppanit sisäistävät palvelutasosopimusten kautta saavutettavat hyödyt ja sitoutuvat koko palvelutason hallintaprosessiin.

IT:n ja liiketoiminnan välisen palvelutason hallinta ulkoistetussa IT- palvelumallissa

Knowledge and competence are in important role in today’s demanding business environment where hard competition forces everyone to specialize and concentrate more to core competencies. Companies are outsourcing services, making processes more efficient and utilizing better their staff and available knowledge capital. It requires good strategic planning, process measuring and management and motivated staff, who is willing to continuously learn and absorb new information. This Thesis examines almost total IT service outsourcing to international service provider in situation where company previously had own IT. Work contains problematic situations during the change and suggestions how to improve services and understand the new model in a better way.

Design and Development of a Performance Evaluation Prototype for IT Organizations in the Context of Outsourcing

The present study shows design and development of a performance evaluation prototype for IT organizations in the context of outsourcing. The main objective of this research is to help an IT organization in the context of outsourcing to realize its current standing, so it can take corrective steps where ever necessary and strive for continuous improvement. Service level management (SLM) process plays a crucial role in controlling the quality provision for IT service. Out sourcing is the process of entrusting the responsibility of providing certain goods and services to an external party. We have tried to identify as many as twenty complexities and categorized in to four headings. Complexities associated with contracts and SLAs,SLM process,SLM organization and complexities due to intrinsic characteristics. In this study it is possible to measure the quality of the performance of an IT organization in an outsourcing environment effectively

O impacto das práticas ITIL na flexibilidade organizacional - evidências empíricas em uma empresa multinacional de TI

The present work has as main objective the identification and impact analysis for the practice ITIL in the organizational flexibility of a multinational IT company, being this study of quali-quantitative and exploratory nature. To achieve this objective, some theoretical studies on bureaucracy, organization flexibility, control, IT governance and ITIL were done, as a form to better understand the research problem. For analysis effect a set of eleven ITIL process was considered in this research ¿ service desk, incident management, problem management, change management, configuration management, release management, service level management, availability management, capacity management, continuity management and finally IT financial services management ¿ grouped in its two core areas ¿ service support and service delivery. Then a scale was constructed and validated, on the basis of theoretical models developed by Volberda (1997), Tenório (2002) and Golden and Powell (1999), to measure the flexibility related to each process comprising the ITIL core. The dimensions adopted to measure flexibility were: organization design task, managerial task, IT impact on work force, HR management, efficiency impact, sensitivity, versatility and robustness. The instrument used in research was a semi-structured interview, which was divided in two parts. The data collection was performed with ten interviewed people from an IT multinational company, based on convenience, some were managers and there were users, some were ITIL certified and others not. The statistic tests of t student and Wilcoxon non-parametric were adopted. The result of the research indicated that the ITIL service support area, for possessing greater operational focus, presents flexibility trend. The opposite was found for the service delivery area, which has greater tactical focus. The results also suggest that the change management discipline was the one that contributed for the most flexibility inside the company, followed by incident management discipline and the service desk function.

3D TerraFly: Quality of service management for online interactive 3D geographic information system

3D geographic information system (GIS) is data and computation intensive in nature. Internet users are usually equipped with low-end personal computers and network connections of limited bandwidth. Data reduction and performance optimization techniques are of critical importance in quality of service (QoS) management for online 3D GIS. In this research, QoS management issues regarding distributed 3D GIS presentation were studied to develop 3D TerraFly, an interactive 3D GIS that supports high quality online terrain visualization and navigation. ^ To tackle the QoS management challenges, multi-resolution rendering model, adaptive level of detail (LOD) control and mesh simplification algorithms were proposed to effectively reduce the terrain model complexity. The rendering model is adaptively decomposed into sub-regions of up-to-three detail levels according to viewing distance and other dynamic quality measurements. The mesh simplification algorithm was designed as a hybrid algorithm that combines edge straightening and quad-tree compression to reduce the mesh complexity by removing geometrically redundant vertices. The main advantage of this mesh simplification algorithm is that grid mesh can be directly processed in parallel without triangulation overhead. Algorithms facilitating remote accessing and distributed processing of volumetric GIS data, such as data replication, directory service, request scheduling, predictive data retrieving and caching were also proposed. ^ A prototype of the proposed 3D TerraFly implemented in this research demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposed QoS management framework in handling interactive online 3D GIS. The system implementation details and future directions of this research are also addressed in this thesis. ^

A simulation model for lean, agile, resilient and green supply chain management: practices and interoperability assessment

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial

Logistics Management in China's Development Zones - Finnish Metal Industry Perspective

Alikehittynyt infrastruktuuri, tiukat säädökset ja säädösten tulkitseminen, sekä monimutkaiset verotuskäytännöt ovat aiheuttaneet ongelmia suomalaisille Alikehittynyt infrastruktuuri, tiukat säädökset ja säädösten tulkitseminen, sekä monimutkaiset verotuskäytännöt ovat aiheuttaneet ongelmia suomalaisille yrityksille Kiinassa. Tutkimuksen perusteella yritykset eivät pysty vaikuttamaan infrastruktuurin kehittymiseen tai säädösten implementointiin, mutta ylläpitämällä suhteita ja valitsemalla oikeat partnerit yritykset pystyvät hallitsemaan ongelma-alueitaan. Etenkin ulkomaalaisille yrityksille oikean logistiikkaoperaattorin valinta on tärkeätä ja huomioon ottaen palvelutason, kulttuuritaustan sekä kansainväliset operaatiot on ulkomaalaisten yritysten tehokkaampaa käyttää kansainvälisiä operaattoreita kuin paikallisia toimijoita, jotkaovat usein halvempia, mutta eivät pysty toimimaan kansainvälisellä tasolla. Vientiin keskittyneiden yritysten tulisi sijoittua vapaakauppa-alueille tai vientiin painottuneille teollisuusalueille. Kyseisillä alueilla liiketoiminta mannermaahan on rajoitettu, eivätkä alueet täten sovellu yrityksille, jotka ovat keskittyneet Kiinan markkinoille. Paikallisesti operoivien yritysten tulisi sijoittua normaaleihin teollisuuspuistoihin ja käyttää tullin valvomia varastoja tukemaan kansainvälisiä toimintojaan.Tulisi myös muistaa etteivät kiinalaiset teollisuuspuistot täytä kansainvälisiä kriteerejä, joten säädöksiin on tärkeätä tutustua huolella jamielipiteitä kerätä toisilta yrityksiltä. Kiinassa merkittävimmät logistiikkaongelmat ilmenevät tuonnin ja viennin yhteydessä, jolloin säädökset ja toimintamallit ovat kontrolloidumpia. Etenkin tullaus- ja arvonlisävero ongelmat liittyvät kiinteästi tuonti- ja vientiprosessiin. Tutkimuksen tulokset osoittivat, että tullausprosessi tehostuu yhteistyön ja koulutuksen kautta, mutta arvonlisäverosta aiheutuvien kustannusten minimointi vaatii logistiikkapuistojen käyttöä. Mikäli asiakas haluaa tehdä tullauksen kotiprovinssissaan tai yritys tekee kauppaa ALV -vapautettujen yritysten kanssa, tulisi logistiikkapuistojen käyttöä lisätä. Käytettäessä logistiikkapuistoja yritykset välttävät tuotteiden kuljetukset Hongkongiin jatakaisin säästäen huomattavasti kustannuksissa ja toimitusajoissa. Logistiikkapuistoja on myös mahdollista käyttää ratkaisuna kasvaviin ja viivästyviin ALV palautuksiin. Tutkimuksen tulosten mukaan toimintaympäristö ja vientipainotteinen valmistus ohjaavat 3PL yritysten valintaa ja vaihtoehtoisten logistiikkapalvelujen implementointia. Etabloiduttaessavapaakauppa-alueille vientiin ja tuontiin liittyvät ongelmatekijät vahvistuvat sekä rajoitukset kiinan liiketoimintaan kasvavat, mikä tekee yhteistyönkansainvälisten logistiikkaoperaattoreiden kanssa välttämättömäksi ja kannustaa hyödyntämään logistiikkapuistoja.

Value added logistics in supply and demand chain. Smile. Part 2. eBusiness in a service business. Case: A maintenance and operations network in forest industry

VVALOSADE is a research project of professor Anita Lukka's VALORE research team in the Lappeenranta University of Technology. The VALOSADE includes the ELO technology program of Tekes. SMILE is one of four subprojects of the VALOSADE. The SMILE study focuses on the case of the company network that is composed of small and micro-sized mechanical maintenance service providers and forest industry as large-scale customers. The basic principle of the SMILE study is the communication and ebusiness in supply and demand networks. The aim of the study is to develop ebusiness strategy, ebusiness model and e-processes among the SME local service providers, and onthe other hand, between the local service provider network and the forest industry customers in a maintenance and operations service business. A literature review, interviews and benchmarking are used as research methods in this qualitative case study. The first SMILE report, 'Ebusiness between Global Company and Its Local SME Supplier Network', concentrated on creating background for the SMILE study by studying general trends of ebusiness in supply chains and networks of different industries. This second phase of the study concentrates on case network background, such as business relationships, information systems and business objectives; core processes in maintenance and operations service network; development needs in communication among the network participants; and ICT solutions to respond needs in changing environment. In the theory part of the report, different ebusiness models and frameworks are introduced. Those models and frameworks are compared to empirical case data. From that analysis of the empirical data, therecommendations for the development of the network information system are derived. In process industry such as the forest industry, it is crucial to achieve a high level of operational efficiency and reliability, which sets up great requirements for maintenance and operations. Therefore, partnerships or strategic alliances are needed between the network participants. In partnerships and alliances, deep communication is important, and therefore the information systems in the network also are critical. Communication, coordination and collaboration will increase in the case network in the future, because network resources must be optimised to improve competitive capability of the forest industry customers and theefficiency of their service providers. At present, ebusiness systems are not usual in this maintenance network. A network information system among the forest industry customers and their local service providers actually is the only genuinenetwork information system in this total network. However, the utilisation of that system has been quite insignificant. The current system does not add value enough either to the customers or to the local service providers. At present, thenetwork information system is the infomediary that share static information forthe network partners. The network information system should be the transaction intermediary, which integrates internal processes of the network companies; the network information system, which provides common standardised processes for thelocal service providers; and the infomediary, which share static and dynamic information on right time, on right partner, on right costs, on right format and on right quality. This study provides recommendations how to develop this system in the future to add value to the network companies. Ebusiness scenarios, vision, objectives, strategies, application architecture, ebusiness model, core processes and development strategy must be considered when the network information system will be developed in the next development step. The core processes in the case network are demand/capacity management, customer/supplier relationship management, service delivery management, knowledge management and cash flow management. Most benefits from ebusiness solutions come from the electrifying of operational level processes, such as service delivery management and cash flow management.