Validation and Selection of Transportation Cost Drivers with Advanced Methods

In today's logistics environment, there is a tremendous need for accurate cost information and cost allocation. Companies searching for the proper solution often come across with activity-based costing (ABC) or one of its variations which utilizes cost drivers to allocate the costs of activities to cost objects. In order to allocate the costs accurately and reliably, the selection of appropriate cost drivers is essential in order to get the benefits of the costing system. The purpose of this study is to validate the transportation cost drivers of a Finnish wholesaler company and ultimately select the best possible driver alternatives for the company. The use of cost driver combinations as an alternative is also studied. The study is conducted as a part of case company's applied ABC-project using the statistical research as the main research method supported by a theoretical, literature based method. The main research tools featured in the study include simple and multiple regression analyses, which together with the literature and observations based practicality analysis forms the basis for the advanced methods. The results suggest that the most appropriate cost driver alternatives are the delivery drops and internal delivery weight. The possibility of using cost driver combinations is not suggested as their use doesn't provide substantially better results while increasing the measurement costs, complexity and load of use at the same time. The use of internal freight cost drivers is also questionable as the results indicate weakening trend in the cost allocation capabilities towards the end of the period. Therefore more research towards internal freight cost drivers should be conducted before taking them in use.

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.

European luxury brands made in China: the effect of low-cost country manufacturing on brand image and purchase decisions

European luxury brands have an image of manufacturing their products in the same country where the brands originate. However, in the past years many luxury brands have shifted their manufacturing to countries outside Europe. China is now a common manufacturing country for European luxury brands despite the country’s poor image as a manufacturer. Chinese manufacturing is often associated with bad quality, bad labour conditions, mass production, and counterfeits. The image of China does not quite match the image luxury brands enjoy including characteristics such as high end quality, craftsmanship, details, design, or premium price. A negatively perceived country-of-manufacture may have an effect on a brand’s image and consumers’ purchase decisions. This thesis is focused on European luxury brands manufacturing in China, and how this effects the brand image and purchase decisions among luxury consumers. The empirical part of this thesis is based on focus group research, which is a popular method in the field of qualitative research. The main focus group is female luxury consumers in Finland. This main group has been divided into three categories: 1) the university students, 2) the young career women, 3) the experienced luxury consumers. This categorization has been done based on their different stages in luxury consumption. All in all, the empirical research consisted of 11 interviews and 29 participants. The main contribution of this thesis was that there is a difference between the opinions of the younger groups (university students and young career women) and the experienced luxury consumers when discussing the effect of country-of-manufacture on brand image and purchase decisions of luxury brands. The younger participants thought that manufacturing luxury products in China might affect the brand image, but their purchase decisions would not be that much affected by the country-of-origin. The experienced luxury consumers had quite a different view on the country-of-origin of luxury brands – they found it an important decisive factor prior making purchases. The majority of experienced luxury consumers would not buy luxury products made in China, and they would always check where these products are made in.

Rising to the impossible challenge: the storage of all research data, forever?

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

B2SHARE – Storing and Sharing Research Data

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

B2SHARE – Storing and Sharing Research Data

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

Breaking down the boundaries to storing, sharing and publishing research data

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

Culture change in academia: Making sharing the new norm

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

Fly pollination and pollinator sharing in two synchronopatric species: Cordia multispicata (Boraginaceae) and Borreria alata (Rubiaceae)

The floral biology of Cordia multispicata (Boraginaceae) and Borreria alata (Rubiaceae) was studied in natural populations in a fragment of the Atlantic forest in Pernambuco, northeastern Brazil. Both species flower during almost the whole year. Cordia multispicata is a shrubby species with white, distylous and tubular flowers. Borreria alata is a herbaceous species. Its flowers are whitish, tubular and have a polymorphism in relation to the size of their style. Floral anthesis in both species begins at 6:00 a.m. Sugar concentration in the nectar was about 16% in C. multispicata and 30% in B. alata. Nine species of flies, mainly of the genus Palpada (Syrphidae), were observed visiting flowers of the two species. Seven of them were observed visiting and pollinating flowers of both C. multispicata and B. alata. Two species visited only flowers of C. multispicata, whereas no fly was exclusive to B. alata flowers. Both species have similar flower morphology, flowering time, habitats in the forest and establish populations very close to each other. These facts can favour the pollinators’ sharing and increase pollinator attraction.

Cost-efficient virtual machine management : provisioning, admission control, and consolidation

One of the main challenges in Software Engineering is to cope with the transition from an industry based on software as a product to software as a service. The field of Software Engineering should provide the necessary methods and tools to develop and deploy new cost-efficient and scalable digital services. In this thesis, we focus on deployment platforms to ensure cost-efficient scalability of multi-tier web applications and on-demand video transcoding service for different types of load conditions. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds provide Virtual Machines (VMs) under the pay-per-use business model. Dynamically provisioning VMs on demand allows service providers to cope with fluctuations on the number of service users. However, VM provisioning must be done carefully, because over-provisioning results in an increased operational cost, while underprovisioning leads to a subpar service. Therefore, our main focus in this thesis is on cost-efficient VM provisioning for multi-tier web applications and on-demand video transcoding. Moreover, to prevent provisioned VMs from becoming overloaded, we augment VM provisioning with an admission control mechanism. Similarly, to ensure efficient use of provisioned VMs, web applications on the under-utilized VMs are consolidated periodically. Thus, the main problem that we address is cost-efficient VM provisioning augmented with server consolidation and admission control on the provisioned VMs. We seek solutions for two types of applications: multi-tier web applications that follow the request-response paradigm and on-demand video transcoding that is based on video streams with soft realtime constraints. Our first contribution is a cost-efficient VM provisioning approach for multi-tier web applications. The proposed approach comprises two subapproaches: a reactive VM provisioning approach called ARVUE and a hybrid reactive-proactive VM provisioning approach called Cost-efficient Resource Allocation for Multiple web applications with Proactive scaling. Our second contribution is a prediction-based VM provisioning approach for on-demand video transcoding in the cloud. Moreover, to prevent virtualized servers from becoming overloaded, the proposed VM provisioning approaches are augmented with admission control approaches. Therefore, our third contribution is a session-based admission control approach for multi-tier web applications called adaptive Admission Control for Virtualized Application Servers. Similarly, the fourth contribution in this thesis is a stream-based admission control and scheduling approach for on-demand video transcoding called Stream-Based Admission Control and Scheduling. Our fifth contribution is a computation and storage trade-o strategy for cost-efficient video transcoding in cloud computing. Finally, the sixth and the last contribution is a web application consolidation approach, which uses Ant Colony System to minimize the under-utilization of the virtualized application servers.

User-generated experiences: how automated platforms for content creation and sharing has transformed information access

Esitys KDK-käytettävyystyöryhmän järjestämässä seminaarissa: Miten käyttäjien toiveet haastavat metatietokäytäntöjämme? / How users' expectations challenge our metadata practices? 30.9.2014.

Low-cost automatic activity data recording system

We describe a low-cost, high quality device capable of monitoring indirect activity by detecting touch-release events on a conducting surface, i.e., the animal's cage cover. In addition to the detecting sensor itself, the system includes an IBM PC interface for prompt data storage. The hardware/software design, while serving for other purposes, is used to record the circadian activity rhythm pattern of rats with time in an automated computerized fashion using minimal cost computer equipment (IBM PC XT). Once the sensor detects a touch-release action of the rat in the upper portion of the cage, the interface sends a command to the PC which records the time (hours-minutes-seconds) when the activity occurred. As a result, the computer builds up several files (one per detector/sensor) containing a time list of all recorded events. Data can be visualized in terms of actograms, indicating the number of detections per hour, and analyzed by mathematical tools such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) or cosinor. In order to demonstrate method validation, an experiment was conducted on 8 Wistar rats under 12/12-h light/dark cycle conditions (lights on at 7:00 a.m.). Results show a biological validation of the method since it detected the presence of circadian activity rhythm patterns in the behavior of the rats

Evidencing and Sharing Value with Decision Making Models in an Industrial Maintenance Network

The objective of this thesis is to concretize the potential benefits that the industrial maintenance case network could achieve through using the value-based life-cycle model and the flexible asset management model. It is also inspected what factors prevent value creation and sharing in the maintenance contract practices of the case network. This thesis is a case study which utilizes modelling. Four scenarios were developed to demonstrate value creation in the future. The data was partly provided by the collaborating company, partly gathered from public financial statement information. The results indicate that value has been created through the past maintenance of the collaborating company’s rod mill and that profitability of the collaborating company has been mostly on satisfactory level during the past few years. Potential value might be created by increasing the share of proactive maintenance of the rod mill in the future. Profitability of the network could be improved in the future through flexible asset management operations. The main obstacle for value creation and sharing seems to be the lack of sufficient trust between the network members.

“Why share in uncertain conditions?” Factors of individual level knowledge sharing in offshoring cases

The objective of this Master’s Thesis was to research factors influencing and enhancing individual level knowledge sharing in offshore projects which often involve uncertainty of the knowledge provider’s own future. The purpose was to understand why individuals are willing to share their knowledge under these kinds of circumstances. In addition the goal was to identify obstacles to interpersonal knowledge sharing in order to understand how to mitigate their influence. The research was conducted as a qualitative multiple case study in a global IT company, and the data was gathered using semi-structured personal theme interviews within two different offshore projects. In order to a gain a wider perspective on the matter, some management representatives were interviewed as well. Data was analysed with the inductive content analysis method. Results of the study indicate that individuals are willing to share their knowledge despite of uncertainty if they are motivated, if they are provided with opportunities to do so, and if they have skills, competence and experience to share their knowledge. A strong knowledge sharing culture in the organization or team also works as a strong incentive for individual level knowledge sharing. The findings suggest that even under uncertain conditions it is possible to encourage people to share their knowledge if uncertainty can be decreased to a bearable level, a robust and personal connection and relationship between the knowledge provider and acquirer can be created and suitable opportunities for knowledge sharing are provided. In addition, based on the results the support and commitment of management and HR in addition to favourable environmental circumstances play an essential role in building a bridge between the knowledge provider and acquirer in order to create a virtual environment and space for knowledge sharing: Ba.

Plasma metanephrines: a novel and cost-effective test for pheochromocytoma

Pheochromocytomas are rare chromaffin cell tumors that nevertheless must be excluded in large numbers of patients who develop sustained or episodic hypertension as well as in many others with suggestive symptoms or with a familial history of pheochromocytoma. Diagnosis of pheochromocytoma depends importantly on biochemical evidence of excess catecholamine production by a tumor. Imperfect sensitivity and specificity of commonly available biochemical tests and the low incidence of the tumor among the tested population mean that considerable time and effort can be expended in confirming or ruling out pheochromocytoma in patients where the tumor is suspected. Measurements of plasma free metanephrines provide a superior test compared to other available tests for diagnosis of pheochromocytoma. In particular, the high sensitivity of plasma free metanephrines means that a normal test result reliably excludes all but the smallest of pheochromocytomas so that no other tests are necessary. Measurements of plasma free metanephrines, when systematically combined with other diagnostic procedures outlined in this review, provide a more efficient, reliable and cost-effective approach for diagnosis of pheochromocytoma than offered by previously available approaches.