The promotion and disruption of community service delivery systems

In this paper, we report data drawn from a larger project on the functioning of the Queensland community service delivery system, particularly that providing services to people with disabilities. Our reasoning for focusing at this level is that, from the service user's perspective, support is derived from the service delivery system, not just individual service providers. Defining the service delivery system as formal services and informal support networks, we undertook interviews and focus groups with service providers in six areas in Queensland: inner urban, outer urban, rural and remote. The period on which we report is one in which considerable reform activity had been undertaken by funding bodies of the Commonwealth and State governments. We report on those factors we identified which promote the integrated functioning of the service delivery system, as well as those factors that disrupt it. We conclude with a brief evaluative analysis of the current status of the system.

Fixing the system? The experience of service users of the quasi-market in disability services in Australia

A qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with 31 people with disabilities and 32 carers in the state of Queensland, Australia, found that their experience of supportive service delivery had not improved despite reforms of the service delivery system driven by a version of the quasi-market model. Instead of delivering increased consumer choice and improved efficiency in service delivery, service users experienced inadequate service supply, service cutbacks, and an increased emphasis on cost subsidisation and assessment processes. Additionally, few consumers felt that individualised funding arrangements had personally delivered the benefits which the quasi-market model and associated policy paradigm had indicated that they should receive. For many consumers, the notion of consumer 'choice' around service provision was fictitious and they felt that any efficiency gains were at the agency level, largely at the consumers' cost. It is concluded that there appears to be no particular benefit to service users of quasi-market reforms, particularly in policy contexts where service delivery systems are historically under-funded.

Quality of service in flexible workflows through process constraints

Workflow technology has delivered effectively for a large class of business processes, providing the requisite control and monitoring functions. At the same time, this technology has been the target of much criticism due to its limited ability to cope with dynamically changing business conditions which require business processes to be adapted frequently, and/or its limited ability to model business processes which cannot be entirely predefined. Requirements indicate the need for generic solutions where a balance between process control and flexibility may be achieved. In this paper we present a framework that allows the workflow to execute on the basis of a partially specified model where the full specification of the model is made at runtime, and may be unique to each instance. This framework is based on the notion of process constraints. Where as process constraints may be specified for any aspect of the workflow, such as structural, temporal, etc. our focus in this paper is on a constraint which allows dynamic selection of activities for inclusion in a given instance. We call these cardinality constraints, and this paper will discuss their specification and validation requirements.

Searching the world wide web for local services and facilities: A review on the patterns of location-based queries

Many queries sent to search engines refer to specific locations in the world. Location-based queries try to find local services and facilities around the user’s environment or in a particular area. This paper reviews the specifications of geospatial queries and discusses the similarities and differences between location-based queries and other queries. We introduce nine patterns for location-based queries containing either a service name alone or a service name accompanied by a location name. Our survey indicates that at least 22% of the Web queries have a geospatial dimension and most of these can be considered as location-based queries. We propose that location-based queries should be treated different from general queries to produce more relevant results.

Reconfigurable service-oriented architecture for autonomic computing

Almost a decade has passed since the objectives and benefits of autonomic computing were stated, yet even the latest system designs and deployments exhibit only limited and isolated elements of autonomic functionality. In previous work, we identified several of the key challenges behind this delay in the adoption of autonomic solutions, and proposed a generic framework for the development of autonomic computing systems that overcomes these challenges. In this article, we describe how existing technologies and standards can be used to realise our autonomic computing framework, and present its implementation as a service-oriented architecture. We show how this implementation employs a combination of automated code generation, model-based and object-oriented development techniques to ensure that the framework can be used to add autonomic capabilities to systems whose characteristics are unknown until runtime. We then use our framework to develop two autonomic solutions for the allocation of server capacity to services of different priorities and variable workloads, thus illustrating its application in the context of a typical data-centre resource management problem.

Systems development of data retrieval for an engineering company's after-sales service

DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR CONSULTATION AT ASTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICES WITH PRIOR ARRANGEMENT

State-of-the-art in product-service systems

A Product-Service System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This Western concept embraces a service-led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarizes available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges.

Product-service systems revisited

There is a growing interest around the potential value of service-led competitive strategies to UK based manufacturers. A Product Service-System (PSS) is one form of such a strategy and is based on integrated combination of products and services. This concept also embraces environmental sustainability. This paper aims to summarise the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature search is described and the major outcomes of the study are presented. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features.

Changing career models and capacity for innovation in professional services

A number of professional sectors have recently moved away from their longstanding career model of up-or-out promotion and embraced innovative alternatives. Professional labor is a critical resource in professional service firms. Therefore, changes to these internal labor markets are likely to trigger other innovations, for example in knowledge management, incentive schemes and team composition. In this chapter we look at how new career models affect the core organizing model of professional firms and, in turn, their capacity for and processes of innovation. We consider how professional firms link the development of human capital and the division of professional labor to distinctive demands for innovation and how novel career systems help them respond to these demands.

Satisfying requirements for pervasive service compositions

Pervasive environments are characterised by highly heterogeneous services and mobile devices with dynamic availability. Approaches such as that proposed by the Connect project provide means to enable such systems to be discovered and composed, through mediation where necessary. As services appear and disappear, the set of feasible compositions changes. In such a pervasive environment, a designer encounters two related challenges: what goals it is reasonable to pursue in the current context and how to use the services presently available to achieve his goals. This paper proposes an approach to design service compositions, facilitating an interactive process to find the trade-off between the possible and the desirable. Following our approach, the system finds at runtime, where possible, compositions related to the developer's requirements. This process can realise the intent the developer specifies at design time, taking into account the services available at runtime, without a prohibitive level of pre-specification, inappropriate for such dynamic environments. © 2012 ACM.

Services on Application Level in Grid for Scientific Calculations

AMS Subj. Classification: 00-02, (General)

Enabling adaptability in service aggregates using transparent shaping techniques

Distributed applications are exposed as reusable components that are dynamically discovered and integrated to create new applications. These new applications, in the form of aggregate services, are vulnerable to failure due to the autonomous and distributed nature of their integrated components. This vulnerability creates the need for adaptability in aggregate services. The need for adaptation is accentuated for complex long-running applications as is found in scientific Grid computing, where distributed computing nodes may participate to solve computation and data-intensive problems. Such applications integrate services for coordinated problem solving in areas such as Bioinformatics. For such applications, when a constituent service fails, the application fails, even though there are other nodes that can substitute for the failed service. This concern is not addressed in the specification of high-level composition languages such as that of the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). We propose an approach to transparently autonomizing existing BPEL processes in order to make them modifiable at runtime and more resilient to the failures in their execution environment. By transparent introduction of adaptive behavior, adaptation preserves the original business logic of the aggregate service and does not tangle the code for adaptive behavior with that of the aggregate service. The major contributions of this dissertation are: first, we assessed the effectiveness of BPEL language support in developing adaptive mechanisms. As a result, we identified the strengths and limitations of BPEL and came up with strategies to address those limitations. Second, we developed a technique to enhance existing BPEL processes transparently in order to support dynamic adaptation. We proposed a framework which uses transparent shaping and generative programming to make BPEL processes adaptive. Third, we developed a technique to dynamically discover and bind to substitute services. Our technique was evaluated and the result showed that dynamic utilization of components improves the flexibility of adaptive BPEL processes. Fourth, we developed an extensible policy-based technique to specify how to handle exceptional behavior. We developed a generic component that introduces adaptive behavior for multiple BPEL processes. Fifth, we identify ways to apply our work to facilitate adaptability in composite Grid services.

A theory of constraints service systems improvement method: Case of the airline turnaround problem

This dissertation develops a process improvement method for service operations based on the Theory of Constraints (TOC), a management philosophy that has been shown to be effective in manufacturing for decreasing WIP and improving throughput. While TOC has enjoyed much attention and success in the manufacturing arena, its application to services in general has been limited. The contribution to industry and knowledge is a method for improving global performance measures based on TOC principles. The method proposed in this dissertation will be tested using discrete event simulation based on the scenario of the service factory of airline turnaround operations. To evaluate the method, a simulation model of aircraft turn operations of a U.S. based carrier was made and validated using actual data from airline operations. The model was then adjusted to reflect an application of the Theory of Constraints for determining how to deploy the scarce resource of ramp workers. The results indicate that, given slight modifications to TOC terminology and the development of a method for constraint identification, the Theory of Constraints can be applied with success to services. Bottlenecks in services must be defined as those processes for which the process rates and amount of work remaining are such that completing the process will not be possible without an increase in the process rate. The bottleneck ratio is used to determine to what degree a process is a constraint. Simulation results also suggest that redefining performance measures to reflect a global business perspective of reducing costs related to specific flights versus the operational local optimum approach of turning all aircraft quickly results in significant savings to the company. Savings to the annual operating costs of the airline were simulated to equal 30% of possible current expenses for misconnecting passengers with a modest increase in utilization of the workers through a more efficient heuristic of deploying them to the highest priority tasks. This dissertation contributes to the literature on service operations by describing a dynamic, adaptive dispatch approach to manage service factory operations similar to airline turnaround operations using the management philosophy of the Theory of Constraints.