The Key Features of Knowledge and Knowledge Management in Product Development Process

Tutkimusongelmana oli kuinka tiedon johtamisella voidaan edesauttaa tuotekehitysprosessia. Mitkä ovat ne avaintekijät tietoympäristössä kuin myös itse tiedossa, joilla on merkitystä erityisesti tuotekehitysprosessin arvon muodostumiseen ja prosessien kehittämiseen? Tutkimus on laadullinen Case-tutkimus. Tutkimusongelmat on ensin selvitetty kirjallisuuden avulla, jonka jälkeen teoreettinen viitekehys on rakennettu tutkimaan rajattua ongelma-aluetta case-yrityksestä. Empiirisen tutkimuksen materiaali koostuu pääasiallisesti henkilökohtaisten teemahaastattelujen aineistosta. Tulokset merkittävimmistä tiedon hyväksikäytön haittatekijöistä, kuten myös parannusehdotukset on lajiteltu teoreettisessa viitekehyksessä esitettyjen oletustekijöiden mukaan. Haastatteluissa saadut vastaukset tukevat kirjallisuudesta ja alan ammattilaiselta saatua käsitystä tärkeimmistä vaikuttavista tekijöistä. Tärkeimmät toimenpiteet ja aloitteet joilla parannettaisiin tiedon muodostumista, koskivat ennnen kaikkea työnteon ulkoisia olosuhteita, eikä niinkään tiedon muodostumisen prosessia itseään. Merkittävimpiä haittatekijöitä olivat kultturiin, fyysiseen ja henkiseen tilaan ja henkilöstöresursseihin liittyvät ongelmat. Ratkaisuja ongelmiin odotettiin saatavan lähinnä tietotekniikan, henkilöstöresurssien ja itse tiedon muokkaamisen avulla. Tuotekehitysprosessin ydin tietovirtojen ja –pääomien luokittelu ja tulkitseminen tiedon muodostusta kuvaavan Learning Spiralin avulla antoi lähinnä teoreettisia viitteitä siitä millaisia keinoja on olemassa tiedon lisäämiseen ja jakamiseen eri tietotyypeittäin. Tulosten perusteella caseyrityksessä pitäisi kiinnittää erityistä huomiota tiedon dokumentointiin ja jakamiseen erityisesti sen tiedon osalta, joka on organisaatiossa vain harvalla ja/tai luonteeltaan hyvin tacitia.

Retrieval of kinetic rates in reactions with semi batch liquid phase using ill-posed inverse problem theory

A neural network procedure to solve inverse chemical kinetic problems is discussed in this work. Rate constants are calculated from the product concentration of an irreversible consecutive reaction: the hydrogenation of Citral molecule, a process with industrial interest. Simulated and experimental data are considered. Errors in the simulated data, up to 7% in the concentrations, were assumed to investigate the robustness of the inverse procedure. Also, the proposed method is compared with two common methods in nonlinear analysis; the Simplex and Levenberg-Marquardt approaches. In all situations investigated, the neural network approach was numerically stable and robust with respect to deviations in the initial conditions or experimental noises.

Service product internationalisation : market selection for new service products in a multinational financial service firm

The significance and impact of services in the modern global economy has become greater and there has been more demand for decades in the academic community of international business for further research into better understanding internationalisation of services. Theories based on the internationalisation of manufacturing firms have been long questioned for their applicability to services. This study aims at contributing to understanding internationalisation of services by examining how market selection decisions are made for new service products within the existing markets of a multinational financial service provider. The study focused on the factors influencing market selection and the study was conducted as a case study on a multinational financial service firm and two of its new service products. Two directors responsible for the development and internationalisation of the case service products were interviewed in guided semi-structured interviews based on themes adopted from the literature review and the outcome theoretical framework. The main empirical findings of the study suggest that the most significant factors influencing the market selection for new service products within a multinational financial service firm’s existing markets are: commitment to the new service products by both the management and the rest of the product related organisation; capability and competence by the local country organisations to adopt new services; market potential which combines market size, market structure and competitive environment; product fit to the market requirements; and enabling partnerships. Based on the empirical findings, this study suggests a framework of factors influencing market selection for new service products, and proposes further research issues and methods to test and extend the findings of this research.

Fostering product innovation by learning through exporting in Eastern Europe

This study discusses the importance of learning through the process of exporting, and more specifically how such a process can enhance the product innovativeness of a company. The purpose of this study is to investigate the appropriate sources of learning and to suggest an interactive framework for how new knowledge from exporting markets can materialize itself into product innovation. The theoretical background of the study was constructed from academic literature, which is related to concepts of learning by exporting, along with sources for learning in the market and new product development. The empirical research in the form of a qualitative case study was based on four semi-structured interviews and secondary data from the case company official site. The interview data was collected between March and April 2015 from case company employees who directly work in the department of exporting and product development. The method of thematic analysis was used to categorize and interpret the collected data. What was conclusively discovered, was that the knowledge from an exporting market can be an incentive for product innovation, especially an incremental one. Foreign customers and competitors as important sources for new knowledge contribute to the innovative process. Foreign market competitors’ influence on product improvements was high only when the competitor was a market leader or held a colossal market share, while the customers’ influence is always high. Therefore, involving a foreign customer in the development of a new product is vital to a company that is interested in benefiting from what is learned through exporting. The interactive framework, which is based on the theoretical background and findings of the study, suggests that exporting companies can raise their product innovativeness by utilizing newly gained knowledge from exporting markets. Except for input, in the form of sources of learning, and product innovation as an output, the framework contains a process of knowledge transfer, the absorptive capacity of a firm and a new product development process. In addition, the framework and the findings enhance the understanding of the disputed relationship between an exporting experience and product innovation. However, future research is needed in order to fully understand all the elements of the framework, such as the absorptive capacity of a firm as well as more case companies to be processed in order to increase the generalization of the framework

Size invariant measures of association: characterization and difficulties

A measure of association is row-size invariant if it is unaffected by the multiplication of all entries in a row of a cross-classification table by a same positive number. It is class-size invariant if it is unaffected by the multiplication of all entries in a class (i.e., a row or a column). We prove that every class-size invariant measure of association as-signs to each m x n cross-classification table a number which depends only on the cross-product ratios of its 2 x 2 subtables. We propose a monotonicity axiom requiring that the degree of association should increase after shifting mass from cells of a table where this mass is below its expected value to cells where it is above .provided that total mass in each class remains constant. We prove that no continuous row-size invariant measure of association is monotonic if m ≥ 4. Keywords: association, contingency tables, margin-free measures, size invariance, monotonicity, transfer principle.

Effects of cultural system (organic and conventional) on growth, photosynthesis and yield components of sweet corn (zea mays L.) under semi-arid environment

Organic sweet maize consists of a new industrial crop product. Field experiment was conducted to determine the effects of cultural systems on growth, photosynthesis and yield components of sweet maize crop (Zea mays L. F-1 hybrid 'Midas'). A randomized complete block design was employed with four replicates per treatment (organic fertilization: cow manure (5, 10 and 20 t ha(-1)), poultry manure (5, 10 and 20 t ha(-1)) and barley mulch (5, 10 and 20 t ha(-1)), synthetic fertilizer (240 kg N ha(-1)): 21-0-0 and control). The lowest dry weight, height and leaf area index and sod organic matter were measured in the control treatment. Organic matter content was proportionate to the amount of manure applied. The control plots had the lowest yield (1593 kg ha(-1)) and the double rate cow manure plots the had,greatest one. (6104 kg ha(-1)). High correlation between sweet corn yield and organic matter was registered. Moreover, the lowest values of 1000-grain weight were obtained with control plot. The fertilizer plot gave values which were similar to the full rate cow manure treatment. The photosynthetic race of the untreated control was significantly lower than that of the other treatments. The phorosynthetic rate increased as poultry manure and barley mulch ram decreased and as cow manure increased. Furthermore the untreated control had the lowest stomatal conductance and chlorophyll content. Our results indicated that sweet corn growth and yield in the organic plots was significantly higher than those in the conventional plots.

Wave-activity conservation laws and stability theorems for semi-geostrophic dynamics: part 2. pseudoenergy-based theory

This paper represents the second part of a study of semi-geostrophic (SG) geophysical fluid dynamics. SG dynamics shares certain attractive properties with the better known and more widely used quasi-geostrophic (QG) model, but is also a good prototype for balanced models that are more accurate than QG dynamics. The development of such balanced models is an area of great current interest. The goal of the present work is to extend a central body of QG theory, concerning the evolution of disturbances to prescribed basic states, to SG dynamics. Part 1 was based on the pseudomomentum; Part 2 is based on the pseudoenergy. A pseudoenergy invariant is a conserved quantity, of second order in disturbance amplitude relative to a prescribed steady basic state, which is related to the time symmetry of the system. We derive such an invariant for the semi-geostrophic equations, and use it to obtain: (i) a linear stability theorem analogous to Arnol'd's ‘first theorem’; and (ii) a small-amplitude local conservation law for the invariant, obeying the group-velocity property in the WKB limit. The results are analogous to their quasi-geostrophic forms, and reduce to those forms in the limit of small Rossby number. The results are derived for both the f-plane Boussinesq form of semi-geostrophic dynamics, and its extension to β-plane compressible flow by Magnusdottir & Schubert. Novel features particular to semi-geostrophic dynamics include apparently unnoticed lateral boundary stability criteria. Unlike the boundary stability criteria found in the first part of this study, however, these boundary criteria do not necessarily preclude the construction of provably stable basic states. The interior semi-geostrophic dynamics has an underlying Hamiltonian structure, which guarantees that symmetries in the system correspond naturally to the system's invariants. This is an important motivation for the theoretical approach used in this study. The connection between symmetries and conservation laws is made explicit using Noether's theorem applied to the Eulerian form of the Hamiltonian description of the interior dynamics.

Wave-activity conservation laws and stability theorems for semi-geostrophic dynamics: part 1. pseudomomentum-based theory

There exists a well-developed body of theory based on quasi-geostrophic (QG) dynamics that is central to our present understanding of large-scale atmospheric and oceanic dynamics. An important question is the extent to which this body of theory may generalize to more accurate dynamical models. As a first step in this process, we here generalize a set of theoretical results, concerning the evolution of disturbances to prescribed basic states, to semi-geostrophic (SG) dynamics. SG dynamics, like QG dynamics, is a Hamiltonian balanced model whose evolution is described by the material conservation of potential vorticity, together with an invertibility principle relating the potential vorticity to the advecting fields. SG dynamics has features that make it a good prototype for balanced models that are more accurate than QG dynamics. In the first part of this two-part study, we derive a pseudomomentum invariant for the SG equations, and use it to obtain: (i) linear and nonlinear generalized Charney–Stern theorems for disturbances to parallel flows; (ii) a finite-amplitude local conservation law for the invariant, obeying the group-velocity property in the WKB limit; and (iii) a wave-mean-flow interaction theorem consisting of generalized Eliassen–Palm flux diagnostics, an elliptic equation for the stream-function tendency, and a non-acceleration theorem. All these results are analogous to their QG forms. The pseudomomentum invariant – a conserved second-order disturbance quantity that is associated with zonal symmetry – is constructed using a variational principle in a similar manner to the QG calculations. Such an approach is possible when the equations of motion under the geostrophic momentum approximation are transformed to isentropic and geostrophic coordinates, in which the ageostrophic advection terms are no longer explicit. Symmetry-related wave-activity invariants such as the pseudomomentum then arise naturally from the Hamiltonian structure of the SG equations. We avoid use of the so-called ‘massless layer’ approach to the modelling of isentropic gradients at the lower boundary, preferring instead to incorporate explicitly those boundary contributions into the wave-activity and stability results. This makes the analogy with QG dynamics most transparent. This paper treats the f-plane Boussinesq form of SG dynamics, and its recent extension to β-plane, compressible flow by Magnusdottir & Schubert. In the limit of small Rossby number, the results reduce to their respective QG forms. Novel features particular to SG dynamics include apparently unnoticed lateral boundary stability criteria in (i), and the necessity of including additional zonal-mean eddy correlation terms besides the zonal-mean potential vorticity fluxes in the wave-mean-flow balance in (iii). In the companion paper, wave-activity conservation laws and stability theorems based on the SG form of the pseudoenergy are presented.

The importance of dietary calcium consumption in two species of semi-terrestrial grapsoid crabs

Calcium (Ca) is essential for crustaceans, due to calcium carbonate (CaCO(3)) deposition in the new exoskeleton to harden it. The purpose of this work was to study short term Ca balance in terms of dietary Ca ingestion in two phylogenetically related crabs (Superfamily Grapsoidea) showing different degrees of terrestrial adaptations: Sesarma rectum Randall, 1840 and Neohelice granulata (Dana, 1851). Dietary Ca ingestion was studied using purified diets with different Ca concentrations (0, 2.2 and 6.66% Ca), together with measurements of Ca excretion and Ca hemolymph levels. The results showed that both crabs had the same response to foods containing different levels of Ca, with both species eating more of the high Ca diet. However, S. rectum consumed more per mg body mass at all Ca concentrations (6 mg.g(-1) for S. rectum against 3 mg.g(-1) for N. granulata). Both species excreted/egested Ca differently: S. rectum excreted Ca proportionally to ingestion, whereas N. granulata maintained constant faecal Ca output at all dietary Ca levels. Moreover, Ca hemolymph levels for crabs fed the different diets were independent of dietary Ca. In conclusion, both S. rectum and N. granulata seem to regulate the consumption of diets containing more Ca, which suggests a fine balance for Ca intake.

Topological interactions in warped extra dimensions

Topological interactions will be generated in theories with compact extra dimensions where fermionic chiral zero modes have different localizations. This is the case in many warped extra dimension models where the right-handed top quark is typically localized away from the left-handed one. Using deconstruction techniques, we study the topological interactions in these models. These interactions appear as trilinear and quadrilinear gauge boson couplings in low energy effective theories with three or more sites, as well as in the continuum limit. We derive the form of these interactions for various cases, including examples of Abelian, non-Abelian and product gauge groups of phenomenological interest. The topological interactions provide a window into the more fundamental aspects of these theories and could result in unique signatures at the Large Hadron Collider, some of which we explore.

NEW CHARACTERIZATIONS OF COMPLETE SPACELIKE SUBMANIFOLDS IN SEMI-RIEMANNIAN SPACE FORMS

In this paper we study n-dimensional complete spacelike submanifolds with constant normalized scalar curvature immersed in semi-Riemannian space forms. By extending Cheng-Yau`s technique to these ambients, we obtain results to such submanifolds satisfying certain conditions on both the squared norm of the second fundamental form and the mean curvature. We also characterize compact non-negatively curved submanifolds in De Sitter space of index p.

Associated Family of G-Structure Preserving Minimal Immersions in Semi-Riemannian Manifolds

We prove the existence of an associated family of G-structure preserving minimal immersions into semi-Riemannian manifolds endowed with a compatible infinitesimally homogeneous G-structure. We will study in more details minimal embeddings into product of space forms.

COMPARISON RESULTS FOR CONJUGATE AND FOCAL POINTS IN SEMI-RIEMANNIAN GEOMETRY VIA MASLOV INDEX

We prove an estimate on the difference of Maslov indices relative to the choice of two distinct reference Lagrangians of a continuous path in the Lagrangian Grassmannian of a symplectic space. We discuss some applications to the study of conjugate and focal points along a geodesic in a semi-Riemannian manifold.

Integrated Product Development in Truck Industry - A Case Study on Product Development Processes

This paper presents the result from a case study at Scania on product development processes. The objective with the case study was to gather information on Scania’s product development process (PDP) including the use of CAD and simulation tools, and project work. The objective was also to find any deviations or different interpretations among the employees on the PDP. To gather the information, semi-structured tape-recorded interviews have been used to ensure that individual interpretations from the interviewees could be gathered. Scania uses a defined and structured PDP which facilitates concurrent and cross-functional work. The PDP is implemented and followed to various degrees. The newly employed personnel may have difficulties with communication, both to find and to give information. Although, newly graduated personnel may find it easier to adapt to changes, and also to use a structured process which they have studied at universities. It was also known during the case study that the PDP is a major support for the newly employed personnel, which in turn decreases the time to get into the same working process as the more experienced personnel. Employees with decades of experience know the right sources from which to both give and gather information. Also, the terminology and definitions in the product development process may not be used as intended. This makes it difficult for other project members or teams who need to interpret the information received. At the same time, the routines among the more experienced personnel, which have been set-up throughout the years, make them more inflexible in adapting changes. The findings in the case study as well as challenges with implementing the PDP are known to Scania and are a part of the continuing work with improvement.

Relações de poder, fragmentação e gestão do território no semi-árido nordestinho: um outro olhar sobre o Cariri paraibano

This study aims to analize the Cariri Paraibano territory, as a product of relations of power that were being established along its historic process of territory formation. In this process, the fragmentation and the territory management are fundamental elements to socioterritorial reality comprehension. The theoretical-conceptual basis is based on notions of territory, region, power and territory management, which are articulated to the opinions and empiric confirmations origined from interviews made with several social actions. They also were made photographical records and researches on books, newspapers and magazines, as well on other information sources related to the object of studying. Obtained data confirm the pressuposement on which the relations of dominations and the used methods by the power s owners in the region created a little fruitful political practice and little adequate to the process of active participation of the local population on the territory management, even being on disagreement with the new political-institutional mechanisms, which take to political-administrative more democratic and participative in the country