The Analysis of The Logistics Process between Finland and Russia in An EMS Company

Työn tavoitteena oli selventää Elcoteqin Suomen ja Venäjän välisten yksiköiden logistista prosessia ja erityisesti siihen liittyviä ongelmia. Työ on tehty Elcoteqin Engineering Services yksikköön, jossa ei tyypillisesti ole ollut asiaan liittyvää tietoa. Pääasiallisena työmenetelmänä olivat haastattelut sekä tutustuminen logistiseen putkeen käytännössä. Myös kirjallisuudella oli oma osansa, sekä tullaukseen että asiaan liittyvien teorioiden osalta. Teorioita ja käytännön kokemuksia yhdistäen edettiin analysointiin ja vertailuun, jonka perusteella annettiin suosituksia tulevia projekteja silmällä pitäen. Myös tulevaisuuden odotuksia on käsitelty yleisellä tasolla, lähinnä liittyen erilaisten kehitysohjelmien tarjoamiin mahdollisuuksiin. Logistiikka Suomen ja Venäjän välillä on huomattavasti monimutkaisempaa kuin ensisilmäyksellä näyttää. Ongelmia on niin rajanylityksen, tullauksen kuin lisenssiprosessinkin kanssa. Asioiden kehittämiseksi on kuitenkin paljon tehtävissä, kehityspotentiaali on valtava. Vahvaa panostusta liiketoiminnan kehittämiseksi Venäjällä on jatkettava, vaikka siihen liittyvät ongelmat välillä tuntuvatkin ylivoimaisen suurilta. Erityisen turhauttavia ovat asiat, joihin ei pystytä vaikuttamaan. Työn edetessä tuli kuitenkin esiin uusia näkökulmia, joita ei aiemmin ole otettu huomioon. Tuotteiden valintaan on jatkossa kiinnitettävä enemmän huomiota. Silti myös kuljetuksen ja rajanylityksen nopeuttamisen tutkimista on edelleen jatkettava.

Preface: Forecast and projection in climate scenario of Mediterranean intense events: uncertainties and propagation on environment (the MEDUP project)

The Mediterranean basin is a particularly vulnerable region to climate change, partly due to its quite unique character that results both from physiographic conditions and societal development. The region features indeed a near-closed sea surrounded by very urbanised littorals and mountains from which numerous rivers originate. This results in a lot of interactions and feedbacks between oceanic-atmospheric-hydrological processes that play a predominant role on climate and extreme events that frequently cause heavy dam- ages and human losses in the Mediterranean ...

Designing a modular, open and expandable Bluetooth-platform

Lähitulevaisuudessa langattomien järjestelmien kaupalliset mahdollisuudet tulevat olemaan valtavia. Tutkiaksemme tulevia tarpeita, tässä diplomityössä esitellään kuinka voidaan suunnitella ja toteuttaa avoin langaton asiakas-palvelin järjestelmä. Järjestelmänä päätettiin käyttää Bluetooth:ia. Tutkituista langattomista standardeista Bluetooth sopii parhaiten akkukäyttöiselle laitteelle, jonka tulee olla monipuolinen. Lisäksi Bluetooth:iin on liitetty suuria kaupallisia odotuksia ja yksi työn tavoitteista olikin tutkia, ovatko nämä odotukset realistisia. Bluetooth:iin havaittiin liittyvän paljon ylimainontaa ja, sen todettiin olevan monimutkainen. Sillä on kuitenkin paljon ominaisuuksia ja erilaisten käyttöprofiilien avulla sitä voidaan käyttää monenlaisiin tehtäviin. Suunniteltu järjestelmä ajaa socket-palvelinta Bluetooth-yhteyden päällä. Tietyntyyppiseen liikenteeseen erikoistuneet socket:t tarjoavat vaaditun laajennattavuuden. Palvelin toteutetiin Linux-säikeenä ja se hallitsee Bluetooth protokollapinoa sekä sovelluksia, joita suoritetaan palvelimella. Näiden sovelluksien palvelut ovat muiden käytössä Bluetooth:n kautta.

Description and implementation of cut calculation-method in a sawmill

Työn tavoitteena oli kuvata ja ottaa käyttöön sahauseräkohtaisen kannattavuuden laskentamenetelmä sahalle, sekä tehdä laskentamalli menetelmän tueksi. Sahauksen peruskäsitteiden jälkeen työssä on esitelty sahan tuotantoprosessi. Tuotantoprosessi on kuvattu kirjallisuuden ja asiantuntijoiden haastattelujen perusteella. Seuraavaksi kartoitettiin hyötyjä ja vaikutuksia, mitä laskentamenetelmältä odotetaan.. Kustannuslaskennan teoriaa selvitettiin kirjallisuuslähteitä käyttäen silmälläpitäen juuri tätä kehitettävää laskentamenetelmää. Lisäksi esiteltiin Uimaharjun sahalla käytettävät ja laskentaan liittyvät laskenta- ja tietojärjestelmät.Nykyisin sahalla ei ole minkäänlaista menetelmää sahauseräkohtaisen tuloksen laskemiseksi. Pienillä muutoksilla sahan tietojärjestelmään ja prosessikoneisiin voidaan sahauserä kuljettaa prosessin läpi niin, että jokaisessa prosessin vaiheessa sille saadaan kohdistettua tuotantotietoa. Eri vaiheista saatua tietoa käyttämällä saadaan tarkasti määritettyä tuotteet, joita sahauserä tuotti ja paljonko tuotantoresursseja tuottamiseen kului. Laskentamalliin syötetään tuotantotietoja ja kustannustietoa ja saadaan vastaukseksi sahauserän taloudellinen tulos.Toimenpide ehdotuksena esitetään lisätutkimusta tuotantotietojen automaattisesta keräämisestä manuaalisen työn ja virheiden poistamiseksi. Suhteellisen pienillä panoksilla voidaan jokaiselle sahauserälle kerätä tuotantotiedot täysin automaattisesti. Lisäksi kehittämäni laskentamallin tilalle tulisi hankkia sovellus, joka käyttäisi paremmin hyväksi nykyisiä tietojärjestelmiä ja poistaisi manuaalisen työvaiheen laskennassa.

IAS 14 - Segment Reporting; The Requirements and Implementation

The principal aim of this study is to clarify the requirements of segment reporting and compare the requirements with the actual! implementation on different business lines. The empirical part was concluded by interviewing randomly selected companies that are publicly listed on the Helsinki Exchanges. The theoretical part of the study (chapters 2 and 3) will give basic information about shifting to IAS -standards and the requirements of IAS -standards. In order to meet the principal aim, a pre-empiric research was conducted by studying the annual accounts (year 2002) of randomly selected companies that already follow the IAS -standards of reporting. The companies in the pre-empiric research consist of both domestic and foreign companies. The aim of the pre-empiric study was to give a basis for the interview process on the empiric part of the study. The study indicates that implementing segment reporting has not brought any major concerns or problems. This is due to the fact that most companies that were examined - being publicly listed companies - have traditionally had a clear division between their geographical and commercial segments, and also been obliged to give reports according to these segments. In case of changes in corporate structure, shifting on new lines of businesses or downsizing of operations, the problems in reporting according to IAS -standards, may arise. Such changes will also require changes on information systems, providing the essential information for segment reporting. According to this study, most companies choose the commercial segment as their primary segment for reporting. The pre-empiric study indicates, that most of the companies already following the IAS -standards, still have a lot of improvement to do, in order to meet all the IAS requirements.

Means and challenges in international operations for a Finnish mobile application provider

Master’s Thesis concentrates to means and challenges in international operations for a Finnish mobile application provider Small Planet Oy during its various company stages from founding till maturing and during macro economical phases between year 1998 and 2008. Small Planet has just celebrated its 10 year anniversary and is therefore quite an extraordinary company which has survived all the highs and lows during past ten years and which has operated in the market as long as the whole mobile application industry has existed. Master’s Thesis describes possibilities for a company’s internationalization with different entry modes like exporting, licensing, investment entry and co-operative operations which are suitable for a mobile application provider. Unsuitable entry modes like franchising or contract manufacturing are not explained. The goal has been to analyze Small Planet’s international operations and to make conclusions from the practical experiences. Analysis and conclusions shall help Small Planet in its international operations in the future and should give insight to other mobile application companies and their managers who are in the situation of planning their own international operations. Results show that the best ways for Small Planet to internationalize its operations has been the co-operation with a big domestic client and the co-operation with Finnish operator infrastructure providers which have complementary products with Small Planet. Through these co-operations Small Planet has got lot of new international clients. Same time financial risks and investment need for international operations have been low. Co-operative international sales can be the most efficient international entry mode for a mobile application provider.

Detection and transmission of Drechslera avenae from oat seed

Detection, symptoms and symptomless transmission of Drechslera avenae (teleomorph Pyrenophora avenae) from seed were investigated. The present study reported that the D. avenae is frequently found in oat (Avena sativa) seed in Argentina. The prevalence of the seed lot infected was 54%. The incidence of seeds infected by D. avenae in the various seed lots from different regions ranged from 0 to 52% (overall mean of 7%). Besides conidia on conidiophore and immature pseudothecia, D. avenae produced small, spherical to pear-shape picnidia containing tiny conidia, on the seed surface. The pathogen was efficiently transmitted at a rate of 55% from seed to coleoptile tips in symptomless seedlings and at 12.5% to plumules. The importance of the infected seed and its epidemiological role are discussed.

Effect of Fusarium graminearum and infection index on germination and vigor of maize seeds

Pathogens in maize (Zea mays) seeds cause serious problems, such as the loss of their capacity to germinative. The objectives of this study were to identify the optimal period for infection of maize seeds on agar colonized by Fusarium graminearum, when incubated for 4, 8, 16 and 32 h, and to evaluate the effect of the fungus on the germination and vigor of seeds with different infection levels. After the respective incubation periods, the seeds were removed from the culture medium and submitted to the blotter test for 3 min with and without superficial disinfection with 1% solution of sodium hypochlorite. Once the optimal period for seed incubation was identified, seeds from the same sample were again placed on the colonized agar for infection. Germination and vigor tests (accelerated aging and cold test) were performed with a mixture of healthy seeds (placed on PDA medium) and inoculated seeds, resulting in seeds with 0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% rates of infection. The results showed that a period of 32 h was long enough to obtain seeds infected by the pathogen. There were no significant effects of fungal infection on seed germination at any of the infection levels, probably due to the high vigor of the maize seed lot tested. Regarding vigor tests, infection levels differed significantly from the control (0% infection), but there were no significant differences among the infection levels.

The oxygenation in biological wastewater treatment of pulp and paper industry

The UPM-Kymmene Oyj Pietarsaari pulp and paper Mill biological wastewater treatment plant was built in the 1980's and the plant has been in use ever since. During the past years there have been problems with deviations. The wastewater treatment plant needs update, especially the aeration basin, where the old surface aerators cannot produce enough mixing and indroduce oxygen enough to the wastewater. In this thesis how extra aeration with oxygen affects the wastewater treatment plant effluent was studied. In the literature part the main focus is in aeration devices, which can be used in biological wastewater treatment. The target is to compare different kind of aerators, which are suitable for pulp and paper wastewater treatment. Studies show, that EDI-aerators are commonly used and also most suitable. In the experimental part, the focus is on the Pietarsaari Mills wastewater treatment plant and oxygen aeration during autumn 2008. This thesis presents the results of the trial run. Studies show, that extra oxygen devices can produce lot a of mixing and the oxygenation capacity was more than what the micro-organisms needed. The effect on sludge quality could not been seen during the trial runs.

Quality and analysis of administration processes in server operations

IT outsourcing refers to the way companies focus on their core competencies and buy the supporting functions from other companies specialized in that area. Service is the total outcome of numerous of activities by employees and other resources to provide solutions to customers' problems. Outsourcing and service business have their unique characteristics. Service Level Agreements quantify the minimum acceptable service to the user. The service quality has to be objectively quantified so that its achievement or non-achievement of it can be monitored. Usually offshoring refers to the transferring of tasks to low-cost nations. Offshoring presents a lot of challenges that require special attention and they need to be assessed thoroughly. IT Infrastructure management refers to installation and basic usability assistance of operating systems, network and server tools and utilities. ITIL defines the industry best practices for organizing IT processes. This thesis did an analysis of server operations service and the customers’ perception of the quality of daily operations. The agreed workflows and processes should be followed better. Service providers’ processes are thoroughly defined but both the customer and the service provider might disobey them. Service provider should review the workflows regarding customer functions. Customer facing functions require persistent skill development, as they communicate the quality to the customer. Service provider needs to provide better organized communication and knowledge exchange methods between the specialists in different geographical locations.

The relationship between a virtual leader’s communication practices and a virtual team’s performance

A lot of research has been carried out into virtual teams and virtual leadership, yet there is hardly any research available on the communication behaviour of virtual leaders within a real business context. This research assessed the communication practices of virtual leaders and analysed the relationship between these practices and the performance of virtual teams. The objective of this research was to examine the distinctions of virtual teams, to study the leader’s role in a virtual team and its performance, and to examine the leader’s communication practices within virtual teams. The research involves a case study in which interviews have been carried out within an international technology company headquartered in Finland. Qualitative research methods were applied in the research. Based on the results of the study it can be said that there is a strong relationship between a virtual leader’s communication practices and a virtual team member’s job satisfaction. Through their communication practices, activities and message contents, leaders can affect the job satisfaction of virtual team members. In virtual leadership the focus is not in virtual but in leadership. It does not matter if the context is virtual or face-to-face; similar communication practices are good in both cases. As the global economic crisis strongly affected the sales results of the between a leader’s communication practices and a virtual team’s objective performance cannot be made.

Designing and Implementing Mouse Emulation to Touchscreen Operated Mobile Web Browsers

Browsing the web has become one of the most important features in high end mobile phones and in the future more and more people will be using mobile phone for web browsing. Large touchscreens improve browsing experience but many web sites are designed to be used with a mouse. A touchscreen differs substantially from a mouse as a pointing device and therefore mouse emulation logic is required in the browsers to make more web sites usable. This Master's thesis lists the most significant cases where the differences of a mouse and a touchscreen affect web browsing. Five touchscreen mobile phones and their web browsers were evaluated to find out if and how these cases are handled in them. Also as a part of this thesis, a simple QtWebKit based mobile web browser with advanced mouse emulation model was implemented, aiming to solve all the problematic cases. The conclusion of this work is that it is feasible to emulate a mouse with a touchscreen and thus deliver good user experience in mobile web browsing. However, current highend touchscreen mobile phones have relatively underdeveloped mouse emulations in their web browsers and there is a lot to improve.

Phase voltage control and filtering in a converter-fed single-phase customer-end system of the LVDC distribution network

In recent years, the network vulnerability to natural hazards has been noticed. Moreover, operating on the limits of the network transmission capabilities have resulted in major outages during the past decade. One of the reasons for operating on these limits is that the network has become outdated. Therefore, new technical solutions are studied that could provide more reliable and more energy efficient power distributionand also a better profitability for the network owner. It is the development and price of power electronics that have made the DC distribution an attractive alternative again. In this doctoral thesis, one type of a low-voltage DC distribution system is investigated. Morespecifically, it is studied which current technological solutions, used at the customer-end, could provide better power quality for the customer when compared with the current system. To study the effect of a DC network on the customer-end power quality, a bipolar DC network model is derived. The model can also be used to identify the supply parameters when the V/kW ratio is approximately known. Although the model provides knowledge of the average behavior, it is shown that the instantaneous DC voltage ripple should be limited. The guidelines to choose an appropriate capacitance value for the capacitor located at the input DC terminals of the customer-end are given. Also the structure of the customer-end is considered. A comparison between the most common solutions is made based on their cost, energy efficiency, and reliability. In the comparison, special attention is paid to the passive filtering solutions since the filter is considered a crucial element when the lifetime expenses are determined. It is found out that the filter topology most commonly used today, namely the LC filter, does not provide economical advantage over the hybrid filter structure. Finally, some of the typical control system solutions are introduced and their shortcomings are presented. As a solution to the customer-end voltage regulation problem, an observer-based control scheme is proposed. It is shown how different control system structures affect the performance. The performance meeting the requirements is achieved by using only one output measurement, when operating in a rigid network. Similar performance can be achieved in a weak grid by DC voltage measurement. An additional improvement can be achieved when an adaptive gain scheduling-based control is introduced. As a conclusion, the final power quality is determined by a sum of various factors, and the thesis provides the guidelines for designing the system that improves the power quality experienced by the customer.

Germination of Caesalpinia leiostachya (benth.) ducke seeds classified by size and shape

Caesalpinia leiostachya (Benth.) Ducke (Caesalpiniaceae) is a Brazilian legumenous tree whose seeds present different sizes and shapes, with dormancy imposed by a waterproof coat. In order to improve that quality of lot, seeds were classified by width in sieves of circular meshes (13, 14, 15, 16 and 17) and manually separated by shape in elongate, round and angular. Masses of 1000 seeds were determined and the thickness of each width and shape seedclass was measured, and coat permeability of the seeds classified by the width was investigated. Seeds were scarified in concentrated sulphuric acid and submitted to the germination test. Both final percentage and speed of germination index were evaluated. The classification of the seeds improved the quality of the lot, and the coat permeability was not affected by seed width. Elongated-flat seeds are of low physiological quality and should be discarded. Masses of 1000 seeds, percentage final and speed of germination increased with the width of the seeds. Both elongated and angular seeds had similar germinative behavior, and round seeds are of greater thickness and of superior physiological quality.

Solving Challenging Real-World Scheduling Problems

This work contains a series of studies on the optimization of three real-world scheduling problems, school timetabling, sports scheduling and staff scheduling. These challenging problems are solved to customer satisfaction using the proposed PEAST algorithm. The customer satisfaction refers to the fact that implementations of the algorithm are in industry use. The PEAST algorithm is a product of long-term research and development. The first version of it was introduced in 1998. This thesis is a result of a five-year development of the algorithm. One of the most valuable characteristics of the algorithm has proven to be the ability to solve a wide range of scheduling problems. It is likely that it can be tuned to tackle also a range of other combinatorial problems. The algorithm uses features from numerous different metaheuristics which is the main reason for its success. In addition, the implementation of the algorithm is fast enough for real-world use.