Internationalization of SMEs in the Finnish Food Industry

Food industry in Finland has a long tradition and the new trends and the future of Finnish food industry is going towards functional and healthy food for the consumers in and outside Finland. Small companies operating in this industry face many difficulties in trying to compete and expand to new markets, that is why these companies are the key of innovation and they have done many breakthroughs in the food industry as well. It is therefore important to understand the internationalization process these companies follow and entry strategies they use, and moreover how they use their limited resources in order to be successful in international markets. This thesis via a case study approach deals with the issue of internationalization of SMEs and Finnish food industry. This study supports earlier theories of internationalization, primarily the Uppsala model and acknowledges internationalization as an incremental process. Meaning that psychic distance is indeed the major barrier of internationalization, and acquisition of international knowledge requires significant amount of time which influences the level of resource-commitment in foreign markets. It follows that due to the risks involved in foreign markets, the least resource-intensive modes of market entry such as direct and indirect exports are generally preferred at the start of internationalization process. As of what explains the non-conventional rapid internationalization process, we conclude that in an internationalized industry and country with established trade flows like Finland, the context in which firms operate may be less significant than the varying level of entrepreneurial skills and confidence present therein.

Stock Price Reactions on M&A, Dividends and Game Releases. Evidence from Gaming Industry.

A rapidly growing gaming industry, which specializes on PC, console, online and other games, attracts attention of investors and analysts, who try to understand what drives changes of the gaming industry companies’ stock prices. This master thesis shows the evidence that, besides long-established types of events (M&A and dividend payments), the companies’ stock price changes depend on industry-specific events. I analyzed specific for gaming industry events - game releases with respect to its subdivisions: new games-sequels, games ratings and subdivision according to a developer of a game (self-developed by publisher or outsourced). The master thesis analyzes stock prices of 55 companies from gaming industry from all over the world. The research period covers 5 year, spreading from April 2008 to April 2013. Executed with an event study method, results of the research show that all the analyzed events types have significant influence on the stock prices of the gaming industry companies. The current master thesis suggests that acquisitions in the industry affect positively bidders’ and targets’ stock prices. Mergers events cause positive stock price reactions as well. But dividends payments and game releases events influence negatively on the stock prices. Game releases’ effect is up to -2.2% of cumulative average abnormal return (CAAR) drop during the first ten days after the game releases. Having researched different kinds of events and identified the direction of their impact, the current paper can be of high value for investors, seeking profits in the gaming industry, and other interested parties.

Supplier Segmentation for Nordic Petrochemical Industry

Objective of this thesis was to map possibilities for systematic supplier management in field of chemical process industry. Through this study it was aimed to develop a tool for supplier management that could be integrated with operations in business unit. With developed tool suppliers should be able to be segmented based on their willingness and capability, and segmentation could be applied in purchasing decisions. In this thesis there was made a survey of methods that are recognized in literature to manage and allocate suppliers. This thesis recognizes segmentation as a method to group and select suppliers in procurement. Based on literature, a proposal for segmentation framework and evaluation criteria factors will be constituted. Based on theoretical proposal, in an expertise workshop a final segmentation framework was constituted, which covers segments with descriptions and evaluation part. Evaluation part includes an evaluation framework which helps to score suppliers with selected factors and leads to total grades in willingness and capability. These total grades will be the coordinates and they determine the segment where the supplier under evaluation belongs. In this thesis segments definitions, objectives, and road maps will be described.

m-Equine : IS support for the horse industry

The horse industry is in many ways still operating the same way as it did in the beginning of the 20th century. At the same time the role of the horse has changed dramatically, from a beast of burden to a top athlete, a production animal or a beloved pet. A racehorse or an equestrian sport horse is trained and taken care of like any other athlete, but unlike its human counterpart, it might end up on our plate. According to European and many other countries’ laws, a horse is a production animal. The medical data of a horse should be known if it is to be slaughtered, to ensure that the meat is safe for human consumption. Today this vital medical information should be noted in the horse’s passport, but this paperbased system is not reliable. If a horse gets sold, depending on the country’s laws, the medical records might not be transferred to the new owner, the horse’s passport might get lost etc. Thus the system is not fool proof. It is not only the horse owners who have to struggle with paperwork; veterinarians as well as other officials often use much time on redundant paperwork. The main research question of this thesis is if IS could be used to help the different stakeholders within the horse industry? Veterinarians in particular who travel to stables to treat horses cannot always take with them their computers, since the somewhat unsanitary environment is not suitable for a sensitive technological device. Currently there is no common medical database developed for horses, although such a database with a support system could help with many problems. These include vaccination and disease control, food-safety, as well as export and import problems. The main stakeholders within the horse industry, including equine veterinarians and horse owners, were studied to find out their daily routines and needs for a possible support system. The research showed that there are different aspects within the horse industry where IS could be used to support the stakeholders daily routines. Thus a support system including web and mobile accessibility for the main stakeholders is under development. Since veterinarians will be the main users of this support system, it is very important to make sure that they find it useful and beneficial in their daily work. To ensure a desired result, the research and development of the system has been done iteratively with the stakeholders following the Action Design Research methodology.

Effects of obtained benefits on willingness to pay and word-of-mouth behavior in newspaper industry

The purpose of this master’s thesis was to investigate the effects which benefits obtained from reading a newspaper and using its website have on behavioral outcomes such as word-of-mouth behavior and willingness to pay. Several other antecedents of willingness to pay have been used as the control variables. However, their interrelations haven’t been hypothesized. The empirical part focused on a case company – Finnish regional newspaper. Empirical research has been conducted using a quantitative method and data was collected via online survey placed on newspaper’s website during 2010. 1001 responses have been collected. The results showed that benefits obtained both from traditional printed newspaper and from online one have positive effects on the word-of-mouth about this newspaper and its website. However, it has been revealed that benefits obtained from reading the newspaper don’t have effect on the willingness to pay for this newspaper. Additionally, only interpersonal and convenience benefits obtained from using the newspaper’s website influence on the willingness to pay for it. Finally, willingness to pay for the bundle of printed newspaper and its website access is affected positively only by the information/learning benefits obtained from reading the newspaper and by the interpersonal benefits obtained from using the newspaper’s website.

Risk Assessment of a Supplier in the Pharmaceutical Industry

The topic of this Master’s Thesis is risk assessment in the supply chain, and the work was done for a company operating in the pharmaceutical industry. The unique features of the industry bring additional challenges to risk management, due to high regulatory, docu-mentation and traceability requirements. The objective of the thesis was to generate a template for assessing the risks in the supply chain of current and potential suppliers of the case company. Risks pertaining to the case setting were sought mainly from in-house expertise of this specific product and supply chain as well as academic research papers and theory on risk management. A questionnaire was set up to assess the found risks on impact, occurrence and possibility of detection. Through this classification of the severity of the risks, the supplier assessment template was formed. A questionnaire template, comprised of the top 10 risks affecting the flow of information and materials in this setting, was formulated to serve as a generic tool for assessing risks in the supply chain of a pharmaceutical company. The template was tested on another supplier for usability and accuracy of found risks, and it demonstrated functioning in a differing supply chain and product setting.

Brand Identity and Image in B2B Factory Automation Context

The goal of this thesis is to study how a solution-oriented business-to-business company can utilize its brand as a strategic asset by using the concepts of brand identity and brand image. The study analyses the intended brand message (identity) contrasting it with the customer perceptions (image) to reveal points of parity and congruence. The study uses a case company as an example and discusses the benefits of brand management as well. Internally, brands can be studied by performing a set of interviews amongst top and middle management. The interviews need to consider the various elements of branding from associations to differentiation and value creation. Customers’ perceptions can be reliably studied via online survey designed to compare the intended brand message with customers’ experiences. From the perspective of industrial management the incentive for brand development lies in both monetary and managerial benefits. In literature the four essential benefits of B2B branding are risk dilution, efficiency of communications, strategic direction and price premiums. As a result, suggestive models for brand identity and image were devised and compared. The Case Company perceives itself as a technically oriented open-integrator, with a strong focus on reliability and customer service. Customers agree with the picture in general, but there are some points of parity as well: they are quite satisfied with the company and perceive it as reliable and providing the promised value. The problematic areas revolve around customer interaction and maintaining the leadership position. The results confirm previous findings in B2B branding theory, where the reliability and credibility of the supplier are in major role. The results also suggest a holistic, corporate approach on branding.

Comparison between dSPACE and NI systems based on real-time intelligent control of a teleoperated hydraulic servo system

The Laboratory of Intelligent Machine researches and develops energy-efficient power transmissions and automation for mobile construction machines and industrial processes. The laboratory's particular areas of expertise include mechatronic machine design using virtual technologies and simulators and demanding industrial robotics. The laboratory has collaborated extensively with industrial actors and it has participated in significant international research projects, particularly in the field of robotics. For years, dSPACE tools were the lonely hardware which was used in the lab to develop different control algorithms in real-time. dSPACE's hardware systems are in widespread use in the automotive industry and are also employed in drives, aerospace, and industrial automation. But new competitors are developing new sophisticated systems and their features convinced the laboratory to test new products. One of these competitors is National Instrument (NI). In order to get to know the specifications and capabilities of NI tools, an agreement was made to test a NI evolutionary system. This system is used to control a 1-D hydraulic slider. The objective of this research project is to develop a control scheme for the teleoperation of a hydraulically driven manipulator, and to implement a control algorithm between human and machine interaction, and machine and task environment interaction both on NI and dSPACE systems simultaneously and to compare the results.

Design and validation of stateful composite RESTful web services

A web service is a software system that provides a machine-processable interface to the other machines over the network using different Internet protocols. They are being increasingly used in the industry in order to automate different tasks and offer services to a wider audience. The REST architectural style aims at producing scalable and extensible web services using technologies that play well with the existing tools and infrastructure of the web. It provides a uniform set of operation that can be used to invoke a CRUD interface (create, retrieve, update and delete) of a web service. The stateless behavior of the service interface requires that every request to a resource is independent of the previous ones facilitating scalability. Automated systems, e.g., hotel reservation systems, provide advanced scenarios for stateful services that require a certain sequence of requests that must be followed in order to fulfill the service goals. Designing and developing such services for advanced scenarios with REST constraints require rigorous approaches that are capable of creating web services that can be trusted for their behavior. Systems that can be trusted for their behavior can be termed as dependable systems. This thesis presents an integrated design, analysis and validation approach that facilitates the service developer to create dependable and stateful REST web services. The main contribution of this thesis is that we provide a novel model-driven methodology to design behavioral REST web service interfaces and their compositions. The behavioral interfaces provide information on what methods can be invoked on a service and the pre- and post-conditions of these methods. The methodology uses Unified Modeling Language (UML), as the modeling language, which has a wide user base and has mature tools that are continuously evolving. We have used UML class diagram and UML state machine diagram with additional design constraints to provide resource and behavioral models, respectively, for designing REST web service interfaces. These service design models serve as a specification document and the information presented in them have manifold applications. The service design models also contain information about the time and domain requirements of the service that can help in requirement traceability which is an important part of our approach. Requirement traceability helps in capturing faults in the design models and other elements of software development environment by tracing back and forth the unfulfilled requirements of the service. The information about service actors is also included in the design models which is required for authenticating the service requests by authorized actors since not all types of users have access to all the resources. In addition, following our design approach, the service developer can ensure that the designed web service interfaces will be REST compliant. The second contribution of this thesis is consistency analysis of the behavioral REST interfaces. To overcome the inconsistency problem and design errors in our service models, we have used semantic technologies. The REST interfaces are represented in web ontology language, OWL2, that can be part of the semantic web. These interfaces are used with OWL 2 reasoners to check unsatisfiable concepts which result in implementations that fail. This work is fully automated thanks to the implemented translation tool and the existing OWL 2 reasoners. The third contribution of this thesis is the verification and validation of REST web services. We have used model checking techniques with UPPAAL model checker for this purpose. The timed automata of UML based service design models are generated with our transformation tool that are verified for their basic characteristics like deadlock freedom, liveness, reachability and safety. The implementation of a web service is tested using a black-box testing approach. Test cases are generated from the UPPAAL timed automata and using the online testing tool, UPPAAL TRON, the service implementation is validated at runtime against its specifications. Requirement traceability is also addressed in our validation approach with which we can see what service goals are met and trace back the unfulfilled service goals to detect the faults in the design models. A final contribution of the thesis is an implementation of behavioral REST interfaces and service monitors from the service design models. The partial code generation tool creates code skeletons of REST web services with method pre and post-conditions. The preconditions of methods constrain the user to invoke the stateful REST service under the right conditions and the post condition constraint the service developer to implement the right functionality. The details of the methods can be manually inserted by the developer as required. We do not target complete automation because we focus only on the interface aspects of the web service. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated with a pedagogical example of a hotel room booking service and a relatively complex worked example of holiday booking service taken from the industrial context. The former example presents a simple explanation of the approach and the later worked example shows how stateful and timed web services offering complex scenarios and involving other web services can be constructed using our approach.

Cost-benefit analysis of using test automation in the development of embedded software

The goal of this thesis is to make a case study of test automation’s profitability in the development of embedded software in a real industrial setting. The cost-benefit analysis is done by considering the costs and benefits test automation causes to software development, before the software is released to customers. The potential benefits of test automation regarding software quality after customer release were not estimated. Test automation is a significant investment which often requires dedicated resources. When done accordingly, the investment in test automation can produce major cost savings by reducing the need for manual testing effort, especially if the software is developed with an agile development framework. It can reduce the cost of avoidable rework of software development, as test automation enables the detection of construction time defects in the earliest possible moment. Test automation also has many pitfalls such as test maintainability and testability of the software, and if those areas are neglected, the investment in test automation may become worthless or it may even produce negative results. The results of this thesis suggest that test automation is very profitable at the company under study.

Value co-creation in gaming the industry: A qualitative research on virtual discussion forums

This study discusses the procedures of value co-creation that persist in gaming industry. The purpose of this study was to identify the procedures that persist in current video gaming industry which answers the main research problem how value is co-created in video gaming industry followed by three sub questions: (i) What is value co-creation in gaming industry? (ii) Who participates in value co-creation in gaming industry? (iii) What are the procedures that are involved in value co-creation in gaming industry? The theoretical background of the study consists of literature relating to the theory of marketing i.e., notion of value, conventional understanding of value creation, value chain, co-creation approach, co-production approach. The research adopted qualitative research approach. As a platform of relationship researcher used web 2.0 tool interface. Data were collected from the social networks and netnography method was applied for analyzing them. Findings show that customer and company both co-create optimum level of value while they interact with each other and within the customers as well. However mostly the C2C interaction, discussions and dialogues threads that emerged around the main discussion facilitated to co-create value. In this manner, companies require exploiting and further motivating, developing and supporting the interactions between customers participating in value creation. Hierarchy of value co-creation processes is the result derived from the identified challenges of value co-creation approach and discussion forums data analysis. Overall three general sets and seven topics were found that explored the phenomenon of customer to customer (C2C) and business to customer (B2C) interaction/debating for value co-creation through user generated contents. These topics describe how gamer contributes and interacts in co-creating value along with companies. A methodical quest in current research literature acknowledged numerous evolving flows of value in this study. These are general management perspective, new product development and innovation, virtual customer environment, service science and service dominant logic. Overall the topics deliver various realistic and conceptual implications for using and handling gamers in social networks for augmenting customers’ value co-creation process.

Developing sustainable value proposition: A case study from manufacturing industry

Increasing pressures to reduce costs, inprove productivity, and lower the environmental impact are forcing suppliers to present evidences of the monetary and societal value they create for the customers and society around. The extant academic literature on the practical activities related to topic is still sparse and this study addresses the gap by developing sustainable customer value proposition for Valmet’s recycled fibre line solution for the Chinese market. The research is based on literature review and single case study method. Theoretically the study is connected to the emerging literature of customer value and life cycle engineering, and to the research of sustainable development in the field of marketing. For exloiting empirical evidences, in-depth supplier interviews and customer survey were conducted. The results suggest that selling of recycled fibre line solution requires tangible and credible evidence of the value and utility which is delivered for the customer. In addition to the economic benefits also societal benefits should be included in the value proposition that are the focus of attention in China. Still, the role of discovered benefits may be contradictory until they are communicated to appropriate decision makers. Managerially the study contributes to the customer value management and quantification knowledge and practices in Valmet’s organization.

Interfirm Information System for Supply Chain Management from the Cloud: An Exploratory Case Study from the Telecom Industry

This study examines the practice of supply chain management problems and the perceived demand information distortion’s (the bullwhip effect) reduction with the interfirm information system, which is delivered as a cloud service to a company operating in the telecommunications industry. The purpose is to shed light in practice that do the interfirm information system have impact on the performance of the supply chain and in particularly the reduction of bullwhip effect. In addition, a holistic case study of the global telecommunications company's supply chain is presented and also the challenges it’s facing, and this study also proposes some measures to improve the situation. The theoretical part consists of the supply chain and its management, as well as increasing the efficiency and introducing the theories and related previous research. In addition, study presents performance metrics for the bullwhip effect detection and tracking. The theoretical part ends in presenting cloud -based business intelligence theoretical framework used in the background of this study. The research strategy is a qualitative case study, supported by quantitative data, which is collected from a telecommunication sector company's databases. Qualitative data were gathered mainly with two open interviews and the e-mail exchange during the development project. In addition, other materials from the company were collected during the project and the company's web site information was also used as the source. The data was collected to a specific case study database in order to increase reliability. The results show that the bullwhip effect can be reduced with the interfirm information system and with the use of CPFR and S&OP models and in particularly combining them to an integrated business planning. According to this study the interfirm information system does not, however, solve all of the supply chain and their effectiveness -related problems, because also the company’s processes and human activities have a major impact.

Employees’ continuous learning and job satisfaction - effects on productivity

In today’s knowledge intense economy the human capital is a source for competitive advantage for organizations. Continuous learning and sharing the knowledge within the organization are important to enhance and utilize this human capital in order to maximize the productivity. The new generation with different views and expectations of work is coming to work life giving its own characteristics on learning and sharing. Work should offer satisfaction so that the new generation employees would commit to organizations. At the same time organizations have to be able to focus on productivity to survive in the competitive market. The objective of this thesis is to construct a theory based framework of productivity, continuous learning and job satisfaction and further examine this framework and its applications in a global organization operating in process industry. Suggestions for future actions are presented for this case organization. The research is a qualitative case study and the empiric material was gathered by personal interviews concluding 15 employee and one supervisor interview. Results showed that more face to face interaction is needed between employees for learning because much of the knowledge of the process is tacit and so difficult to share in other ways. Offering these sharing possibilities can also impact positively to job satisfaction because they will increase the sense of community among employees which was found to be lacking. New employees demand more feedback to improve their learning and confidence. According to the literature continuous learning and job satisfaction have a relative strong relationship on productivity. The employee’s job description in the case organization has moved towards knowledge work due to continuous automation and expansion of the production process. This emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and means that productivity can be seen also from quality perspective. The normal productivity output in the case organization is stable and by focusing on the quality of work by improving continuous learning and job satisfaction the upsets in production can be handled and prevented more effectively. Continuous learning increases also the free human capital input and utilization of it and this can breed output increasing innovations that can increase productivity in long term. Also job satisfaction can increase productivity output in the end because employees will work more efficiently, not doing only the minimum tasks required. Satisfied employees are also found participating more in learning activities.