Improving Transportation and Warehousing Efficiency with Simulation-Based Decision Support Systems

Transportation and warehousing are large and growing sectors in the society, and their efficiency is of high importance. Transportation also has a large share of global carbondioxide emissions, which are one the leading causes of anthropogenic climate warming. Various countries have agreed to decrease their carbon emissions according to the Kyoto protocol. Transportation is the only sector where emissions have steadily increased since the 1990s, which highlights the importance of transportation efficiency. The efficiency of transportation and warehousing can be improved with the help of simulations, but models alone are not sufficient. This research concentrates on the use of simulations in decision support systems. Three main simulation approaches are used in logistics: discrete-event simulation, systems dynamics, and agent-based modeling. However, individual simulation approaches have weaknesses of their own. Hybridization (combining two or more approaches) can improve the quality of the models, as it allows using a different method to overcome the weakness of one method. It is important to choose the correct approach (or a combination of approaches) when modeling transportation and warehousing issues. If an inappropriate method is chosen (this can occur if the modeler is proficient in only one approach or the model specification is not conducted thoroughly), the simulation model will have an inaccurate structure, which in turn will lead to misleading results. This issue can further escalate, as the decision-maker may assume that the presented simulation model gives the most useful results available, even though the whole model can be based on a poorly chosen structure. In this research it is argued that simulation- based decision support systems need to take various issues into account to make a functioning decision support system. The actual simulation model can be constructed using any (or multiple) approach, it can be combined with different optimization modules, and there needs to be a proper interface between the model and the user. These issues are presented in a framework, which simulation modelers can use when creating decision support systems. In order for decision-makers to fully benefit from the simulations, the user interface needs to clearly separate the model and the user, but at the same time, the user needs to be able to run the appropriate runs in order to analyze the problems correctly. This study recommends that simulation modelers should start to transfer their tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. This would greatly benefit the whole simulation community and improve the quality of simulation-based decision support systems as well. More studies should also be conducted by using hybrid models and integrating simulations with Graphical Information Systems.

Application of social media and ICT-tools in new and small business ventures.

The current research emphasizes on various questions raised and deliberated upon by different entrepreneurs. It provides a valuable contribution to comprehend the importance of social media and ICT-applications. Furthermore, it demonstrates how to support and implement the management consulting and business coaching start-ups with the help of social media and ICT-tools. The thesis presents a literary review from different information systems science, SME and e-business journals, web articles, as well as, survey analysis reports on social media applications. The methodology incorporated into a qualitative research method in which social anthropological approaches were used to oversee the case study activities in order to collect data. The collaborative social research approach was used to shelter the action research method. The research discovered that new business start-ups, as well as small businesses do not use social media and ICT-tools, unlike most of the large corporations use. At present, the current open-source ICT-technologies and social media applications are equally available for new and small businesses as they are available for larger companies. Successful implementation of social media and ICT-applications can easily enhance start-up performance and overcome business hassles. The thesis sheds some light on effective and innovative implementation of social media and ICT-applications for new business risk takers and small business birds. Key words

The Application of Enterprise Architecture Approach to Military Concept Development–Case Study

Abstract—Concept development and experimentation (CD&E) plays an important role in driving strategic transformation in the military community. Defence architecture frameworks, such as the NATO architecture framework, are considered excellent means to support CD&E. There is not much empirical evidence, however, to indicate how enterprise architectures (EA) are applied in the military community or particularly in military CD&E. Consequently, this paper describes and discusses empirical application of the EA approach in CD&E. The research method in the paper is a case study. Situational method engineering (SiME) is used as a framework to adapt the EA approach to the case project of the paper. The findings of the paper suggest that the EA is applicable to CD&E work, although all aspects of the original concept could not be expressed in the EA model of the case project. The results also show that the SiME method can support in applying the EA framework to the CD&E in the case project.

Cell Model Systems in Characterizing Alpha2-Adrenoceptors as Drug Targets.

The three alpha2-adrenoceptor (alpha2-AR) subtypes belong to the G protein-coupled receptor superfamily and represent potential drug targets. These receptors have many vital physiological functions, but their actions are complex and often oppose each other. Current research is therefore driven towards discovering drugs that selectively interact with a specific subtype. Cell model systems can be used to evaluate a chemical compound's activity in complex biological systems. The aim of this thesis was to optimize and validate cell-based model systems and assays to investigate alpha2-ARs as drug targets. The use of immortalized cell lines as model systems is firmly established but poses several problems, since the protein of interest is expressed in a foreign environment, and thus essential components of receptor regulation or signaling cascades might be missing. Careful cell model validation is thus required; this was exemplified by three different approaches. In cells heterologously expressing alpha2A-ARs, it was noted that the transfection technique affected the test outcome; false negative adenylyl cyclase test results were produced unless a cell population expressing receptors in a homogenous fashion was used. Recombinant alpha2C-ARs in non-neuronal cells were retained inside the cells, and not expressed in the cell membrane, complicating investigation of this receptor subtype. Receptor expression enhancing proteins (REEPs) were found to be neuronalspecific adapter proteins that regulate the processing of the alpha2C-AR, resulting in an increased level of total receptor expression. Current trends call for the use of primary cells endogenously expressing the receptor of interest; therefore, primary human vascular smooth muscle cells (SMC) expressing alpha2-ARs were tested in a functional assay monitoring contractility with a myosin light chain phosphorylation assay. However, these cells were not compatible with this assay due to the loss of differentiation. A rat aortic SMC cell line transfected to express the human alpha2B-AR was adapted for the assay, and it was found that the alpha2-AR agonist, dexmedetomidine, evoked myosin light chain phosphorylation in this model.

Integration of JINR Information Resources

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

ORCIDs in the Wild: Implementing ORCIDs into Research Support and Repository Systems

Panel at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

GIS in Digital Repositories

Workshop at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

On advancing business intelligence in the electricity retail market

In recent decades, business intelligence (BI) has gained momentum in real-world practice. At the same time, business intelligence has evolved as an important research subject of Information Systems (IS) within the decision support domain. Today’s growing competitive pressure in business has led to increased needs for real-time analytics, i.e., so called real-time BI or operational BI. This is especially true with respect to the electricity production, transmission, distribution, and retail business since the law of physics determines that electricity as a commodity is nearly impossible to be stored economically, and therefore demand-supply needs to be constantly in balance. The current power sector is subject to complex changes, innovation opportunities, and technical and regulatory constraints. These range from low carbon transition, renewable energy sources (RES) development, market design to new technologies (e.g., smart metering, smart grids, electric vehicles, etc.), and new independent power producers (e.g., commercial buildings or households with rooftop solar panel installments, a.k.a. Distributed Generation). Among them, the ongoing deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) has profound impacts on the electricity retail market. From the view point of BI research, the AMI is enabling real-time or near real-time analytics in the electricity retail business. Following Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm in the IS field, this research presents four aspects of BI for efficient pricing in a competitive electricity retail market: (i) visual data-mining based descriptive analytics, namely electricity consumption profiling, for pricing decision-making support; (ii) real-time BI enterprise architecture for enhancing management’s capacity on real-time decision-making; (iii) prescriptive analytics through agent-based modeling for price-responsive demand simulation; (iv) visual data-mining application for electricity distribution benchmarking. Even though this study is from the perspective of the European electricity industry, particularly focused on Finland and Estonia, the BI approaches investigated can: (i) provide managerial implications to support the utility’s pricing decision-making; (ii) add empirical knowledge to the landscape of BI research; (iii) be transferred to a wide body of practice in the power sector and BI research community.

Parasitic Order Machine. A Sociology and Ontology of Information Securing

This study examines information security as a process (information securing) in terms of what it does, especially beyond its obvious role of protector. It investigates concepts related to ‘ontology of becoming’, and examines what it is that information securing produces. The research is theory driven and draws upon three fields: sociology (especially actor-network theory), philosophy (especially Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of ‘machine’, ‘territory’ and ‘becoming’, and Michel Serres’s concept of ‘parasite’), and information systems science (the subject of information security). Social engineering (used here in the sense of breaking into systems through non-technical means) and software cracker groups (groups which remove copy protection systems from software) are analysed as examples of breaches of information security. Firstly, the study finds that information securing is always interruptive: every entity (regardless of whether or not it is malicious) that becomes connected to information security is interrupted. Furthermore, every entity changes, becomes different, as it makes a connection with information security (ontology of becoming). Moreover, information security organizes entities into different territories. However, the territories – the insides and outsides of information systems – are ontologically similar; the only difference is in the order of the territories, not in the ontological status of entities that inhabit the territories. In other words, malicious software is ontologically similar to benign software; they both are users in terms of a system. The difference is based on the order of the system and users: who uses the system and what the system is used for. Secondly, the research shows that information security is always external (in the terms of this study it is a ‘parasite’) to the information system that it protects. Information securing creates and maintains order while simultaneously disrupting the existing order of the system that it protects. For example, in terms of software itself, the implementation of a copy protection system is an entirely external addition. In fact, this parasitic addition makes software different. Thus, information security disrupts that which it is supposed to defend from disruption. Finally, it is asserted that, in its interruption, information security is a connector that creates passages; it connects users to systems while also creating its own threats. For example, copy protection systems invite crackers and information security policies entice social engineers to use and exploit information security techniques in a novel manner.

Puunjalostuskonsernin tehtaiden käyttäjäkunnossapidon nykytilanteen selvitys- ja kehitystyö

Tässä diplomityössä selvitettiin kohdeorganisaation tehtaiden käyttäjäkunnossapidon nykytilannetta ja kehityskohteita konelinjoittain. Käyttäjäkunnossapito otettiin käyttöön vain vähän aikaa sitten entisen vuorohuollon tilalle. Tutkimus toteutettiin haastattelututkimuksena ja tietoa kerättiin kyselylomakkeiden avulla. Kyselyn otanta oli 200 henkilöä, joista 89,5 % vastasi kyselyyn. Haastateltavia oli seitsemästä eri henkilöryhmästä. Haastateltavat henkilöryhmät olivat käyttäjäkunnossapidon kanssa päivittäin työskenteleviä ryhmiä. Tuloksia analysoitiin konelinjoittain, tehtastasolla ja henkilöryhmittäin. Analysoinnissa käytettiin apuna tehtaan järjestelmistä löytyviä tilastoja ja kyselyn teettämisen jälkeisiä keskusteluja. Suurin haaste käyttäjäkunnossapidon nykytilanteessa oli kunnossapito-osaamisen säilyttäminen, sillä käyttäjäkunnossapitäjien työ on suurimmaksi osaksi tuotantotyötä. Käyttäjäkunnossapitäjien osaamistasot vaihtelivat suuresti. Joidenkin konelinjojen käyttäjäkunnossapitäjillä osaamistasot eivät olleet vielä työn vaatimalla tasolla. Toimintamallin käytännön toteutuksessa oli parannettavaa useilla konelinjoilla. Käyttäjäkunnossapito ei ole pystynyt tekemään kunnossapitoa yhtä suuressa mittakaavassa kuin vuorohuolto. Jatkotoimenpiteinä ehdotettiin käyttäjäkunnossapitäjien kunnossapitotyön määrän lisäämistä tarkastuskierrosten ja ennakkohuoltojen muodossa, sekä linjakunnossapidon ja käyttäjäkunnossapidon yhteistyömallin kehittämistä.

Yrityksen vaihto-omaisuustavoitteet kunnossapidon näkökulmasta

Varaosavarastoihin kohdistuu entistä enemmän samoja vaihto-omaisuuden hallinnan vaatimuksia kuin raaka-aine ja lopputuotevarastoihin. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli selvittää, miten kunnossapito-organisaatio voi vastata näihin tavoitteisiin heikentämättä koneiden ja laitteiden teknistä käytettävyyttä ja lisäämättä riskiä tuotannon menetyksille. Kirjallisuudessa on esitetty suuri joukko eri lähtökohdista kehitettyjä analysointimalleja ja varastonpitopolitiikoita. Niiden avulla varaosia voidaan jakaa eri luokkiin ja niiden muodostamaa kokonaisuutta hallita. Teoriaosiossa on suoritettu kirjallisuuskatsaus käytetyimpiin menetelmiin ja tapaustutkimuksiin. Empiiriaosiossa menetelmien soveltuvuutta tutkittiin käytännössä. Tiedonkeruussa käytettiin case-yrityksen dokumentteja ja tietojärjestelmistä saatavaa tietoa, sekä havainnointia ja avoimia haastatteluita. Tutkimuksen tuloksena havaittiin merkittävä kehityspotentiaali, jonka hyödyntämiseksi saatiin määriteltyä tarpeisiin ja tutkimuksen lähtökohtana olleeseen viitekehykseen sopivat analysointi- ja varastonhallintamenetelmät. Varastokokonaisuuden hallintapolitiikka ehdotettiin lisättäväksi osaksi laatujärjestelmää. Sen avulla menetelmien johdonmukainen noudattaminen ja ohjeiden ajan tasalla pitäminen toteutuvat myös käytännössä.

Structural dynamics in the global pulp and paper industry

The pulp and paper industry is currently facing broad structural changes due to global shifts in demand and supply. These changes have significant impacts on national economies worldwide. Planted forests (especially eucalyptus) and recovered paper have quickly increased their importance as raw material for paper and paperboard production. Although advances in information and communication technologies could reduce the demand for communication papers, and the growth of paper consumption has indeed flattened in developed economies, particularly in North America and Western Europe, the consumption is increasing on a global scale. Moreover, the focal point of production and consumption is moving from the Western world to the rapidly growing markets of Southeast Asia. This study analyzes how the so-called megatrends (globalization, technological development, and increasing environmental awareness) affect the pulp and paper industry’s external environment, and seeks reliable ways to incorporate the impact of the megatrends on the models concerning the demand, trade, and use of paper and pulp. The study expands current research in several directions and points of view, for example, by applying and incorporating several quantitative methods and different models. As a result, the thesis makes a significant contribution to better understand and measure the impacts of structural changes on the pulp and paper industry. It also provides some managerial and policy implications.

Improving productivity by developing knowledge management practices for a consulting company

The objective of the research was to identify knowledge conversion states in consultancy sales and delivery processes for the company’s one business unit, to know where to store certain types of information and knowledge, and to create best practices for the company’s knowledge management activities in the selected business processes. The used research methodology was action research. The current business processes were analyzed by interviewing people involved in them. The results were documented and catego- rized, and based on them the target states of the processes were developed. Knowledge man- agement activities were integrated to the business processes. The main findings of the research were that roles and responsibilities in the processes were not clear to people, information systems did not fully support individuals and time was wasted searching for information and knowledge. There were also many variations of how the processes actually realized, which affected the overall quality of the process. The conclusions of the research were that knowledge management activities should be high- lighted in businesses where knowledge workers are the main assets of the company. Knowledge management practices can be supported by company culture, leadership and in- formation systems. However, one main factor is each individual’s willingness to share knowledge. By integrating knowledge management activities to business processes and hav- ing information systems supporting knowledge management, individual productivity can be improved.

Lappeenrannan ulkovalaistusverkon verkkotietojärjestelmän modernisointi

Sähköisen verkon täsmällinen tunteminen on edellytys verkon tehokkaalle suunnittelulle ja käytölle. Lappeenrannassa ulkovalaistusverkon dokumentointi oli lähtökohtaisestei hyvin hajanaista. Tämän tutkimuksen tärkein anti oli tarjota Lappeenrannan kaupungille dokumentointiratkaisu, jolla ulkovalaistusverkon dokumentaatio ja topologia saatetaan moderniin sähköiseen muotoon. Tutkimus jakaantui neljään eri pääkohtaan: Lappeenrannan ulkovalaistusverkon tutkimustyöhön, verkkotietojärjestelmien tutkimustyöhön, dokumentointiprosessin määrittelyyn ja verkkotietojärjestelmien ylläpitoprosessin määrittelyyn. Näissä on käytetty merkittävissä määrin asiantuntijoiden lausuntoja, erityisesti ulkovalaistusverkon rakenteesta ja eri verkkotietojärjestelmien ominaisuuksista sekä käytöstä. Näihin perustuen on muodostettu kuva uuden verkkotietojärjestelmän vaatimuksista ja dokumentoinnin lähtötasosta, joiden avulla on määritelty itse dokumentointiprosessi, sen potentiaaliset ongelmat ja arvioitu työmäärää. Ylläpitoprosessien määrittelyssä on käytetty lähtökohtana Lappeenrannan Energiaverkot Oy:n nykyisiä ylläpitoprosesseja ja -menetelmiä. Tutkimuksen tuloksena syntyi määrittelyt kolmelle eri verkkotietojärjestelmälle, joilla ongelma saadaan ratkaistua. Näistä kaksi täytti vaatimukset täysin: Trimble NIS ja Keypron KeyLight.

Involving employees in six sigma

Six sigma is a quality improvement philosophy with systematic and formal approach. In order to successfully implement and utilize six sigma the basic disciplines of it should be adopted by the entire organization. Furthermore, employee involvement is crucial in six sigma implementation. This thesis addresses the challenges of long-lasting involvement in the case company. It focuses on gaps of involving six sigma trained employees, Black Belts. Theoretical framework of the thesis illustrates different factors influencing employee involvement. Influencing factors can be divided into ten categories: organizational culture, managerial commitment, leadership style, employee empowerment, employees’ perceptions, communication, training, goals, performance measurement and incentives. Factors and categories overlap and are related to each other. The framework provides holistic view of employee involvement in six sigma context but can be used also with other quality management philosophies. This thesis was conducted as a case study and written on an assignment to a power and automation technology company. Due to the nature of research problem, the data collection was conducted by interviewing case company personnel. In order to study involvement from employees’ point of view interview questions were designed to be open-ended and to allow the interviewees to tell freely about the phenomenon. This thesis provides empirical support on previous studies in organizational support, management commitment and employee empowerment. In addition, it indicates the importance of separate function for Black Belts in the organization. The gaps in Black Belt involvement can be categorized under two categories: Management driven gaps are related to management commitment, organizational structure and culture and information systems. Black Belt driven gaps are related to practice and effort of using six sigma. This thesis finds solutions for bridging these gaps in the case company by applying findings from literature research and suggestions given by the interviewees. For each gap, actions are suggested for bridging the discrepancy between current and desired situations. The thesis states that in order to embed six sigma in the organization the most crucial gaps, lack of management commitment, six sigma vision and possibilities to use six sigma, should be diminished.