Business model design: an evaluation of paper-based and computer-aided canvases

In recent years, Business Model Canvas design has evolved from being a paper-based activity to one that involves the use of dedicated computer-aided business model design tools. We propose a set of guidelines to help design more coherent business models. When combined with functionalities offered by CAD tools, they show great potential to improve business model design as an ongoing activity. However, in order to create complex solutions, it is necessary to compare basic business model design tasks, using a CAD system over its paper-based counterpart. To this end, we carried out an experiment to measure user perceptions of both solutions. Performance was evaluated by applying our guidelines to both solutions and then carrying out a comparison of business model designs. Although CAD did not outperform paper-based design, the results are very encouraging for the future of computer-aided business model design.

Product information management system design framework for production oriented company

Diplomityössä luodaan viitekehys tuotetiedonhallintajärjestelmän esisuunnittelua varten. Siinä on kolme ulottuvuutta: lisäarvontuotto-, toiminnallisuus- ja ohjelmistoulottuvuus. Viitekehys auttaa- tunnistamaan lisäarvontuottokomponentit, joihin voidaan vaikuttaa tiettyjen ohjelmistoluokkien tarjoamilla tuotetiedonhallintatoiminnallisuuksilla. Viitekehyksen järjestelmäsuunnittelullista näkökulmaa hyödynnetään tutkittavissa yritystapauksissa perustuen laskentamatriisin muotoon mallinnettuihin ulottuvuuksien välisiin suhteisiin. Matriisiin syötetään lisäarvontuotto- ja toiminnallisuuskomponenttien saamat tärkeydet kohdeyrityksessä suoritetussa haastattelututkimuksessa. Matriisin tuotos on tietyn ohjelmiston soveltuvuus kyseisen yrityksen tapauksessa. Soveltuvuus on joukko tunnuslukuja, jotka analysoidaan tulostenkäsittelyvaiheessa. Soveltuvuustulokset avustavat kohdeyritystä sen valitessa lähestymistapaansa tuotetiedonhallintaan - ja kuvaavat esisuunnitellun tuotetiedonhallintajärjestelmän. Viitekehyksen rakentaminen vaatii perinpohjaisen lähestymistavan merkityksellisten lisäarvontuotto- ja toiminnallisuuskomponenttien sekä ohjelmistoluokkien määrittämiseen. Määritystyö perustuu työssä yksityiskohtaisesti laadittujen menetelmien ja komponenttiryhmitysten hyödyntämiselle. Kunkin alueen analysointi mahdollistaa viitekehyksen ja laskentamatriisin rakentamisen yhdenmukaisten määritysten perusteella. Viitekehykselle on ominaista sen muunneltavuus. Nykymuodossaan se soveltuu elektroniikka- ja high-tech yrityksille. Viitekehystä voidaan hyödyntää myös muilla toimialoilla muokkaamalla lisäarvontuottokomponentteja kunkin toimialan intressien mukaisesti. Vastaavasti analysoitava ohjelmisto voidaan valita tapauskohtaisesti. Laskentamatriisi on kuitenkin ensin päivitettävä valitun ohjelmiston kyvykkyyksillä, minkä jälkeen viitekehys voi tuottaa soveltuvuustuloksia kyseiseen yritystapaukseen perustuen

Software testing design and implementation in a small software company

Monet ohjelmistoyritykset ovat alkaneet kiinnittää yhä enemmän huomiota ohjelmistotuotteidensa laatuun. Tämä on johtanut siihen, että useimmat niistä ovat valinneet ohjelmistotestauksen välineeksi, jolla tätä laatua voidaan parantaa. Testausta ei pidä rajoittaa ainoastaan ohjelmistotuotteeseen itseensä, vaan sen tulisi kattaa koko ohjelmiston kehitysprosessi. Validaatiotestauksessa keskitytään varmistamaan, että lopputuote täyttää sille asetetut vaatimukset, kun taas verifikaatiotestausta käytetään ennaltaehkäisevänä testauksena, jolla pyritään poistamaan virheitä jo ennenkuin ne pääsevät lähdekoodiin asti. Työ, johon tämä diplomityö perustuu, tehtiin alkukevään ja kesän aikana vuonna 2003 Necsom Oy:n toimeksiannosta. Necsom on pieni suomalainen ohjelmistoyritys, jonka tutkimus- ja kehitysyksikkö toimii Lappeenrannassa.Tässä diplomityössä tutustutaan aluksi ohjelmistotestaukseen sekä eri tapoihin sen organisoimiseksi. Tämän lisäksi annetaan yleisiä ohjeita testisuunnitelmien ja testaustapausten tekoon, joita onnistunut ja tehokas testaus edellyttää. Kun tämä teoria on käyty läpi, esitetään esimerkkinä kuinka sisäinen ohjelmistotestaus toteutettiin Necsomilla. Lopuksi esitetään johtopäätökset, joihin päädyttiin käytännön testausprosessin seuraamisen jälkeen ja annetaan jatkotoimenpide-ehdotuksia.

Problems of the architecture design in the system integration

This thesis studies the problems and their reasons a software architect faces in his work. The purpose of the study is to search and identify potential factors causing problens in system integration and software engineering. Under a special interest are non-technical factors causing different kinds of problems. Thesis was executed by interviewing professionals that took part in e-commerce project in some corporation. Interviewed professionals consisted of architects from technical implementation projects, corporation's architect team leader, different kind of project managers and CRM manager. A specific theme list was used as an guidance of the interviews. Recorded interviews were transcribed and then classified using ATLAS.ti software. Basics of e-commerce, software engineering and system integration is described too. Differences between e-commerce and e-business as well as traditional business are represented as are basic types of e-commerce. Software's life span, general problems of software engineering and software design are covered concerning software engineering. In addition, general problems of the system integration and the special requirements set by e-commerce are described in the thesis. In the ending there is a part where the problems founded in study are described and some areas of software engineering where some development could be done so that same kind of problems could be avoided in the future.

Statistical Optimum Design of Heat Exchangers

The optimal design of a heat exchanger system is based on given model parameters together with given standard ranges for machine design variables. The goals set for minimizing the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) function which represents the price of the saved energy, for maximizing the momentary heat recovery output with given constraints satisfied and taking into account the uncertainty in the models were successfully done. Nondominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGA-II) for the design optimization of a system is presented and implemented inMatlab environment. Markov ChainMonte Carlo (MCMC) methods are also used to take into account the uncertainty in themodels. Results show that the price of saved energy can be optimized. A wet heat exchanger is found to be more efficient and beneficial than a dry heat exchanger even though its construction is expensive (160 EUR/m2) compared to the construction of a dry heat exchanger (50 EUR/m2). It has been found that the longer lifetime weights higher CAPEX and lower OPEX and vice versa, and the effect of the uncertainty in the models has been identified in a simplified case of minimizing the area of a dry heat exchanger.

The Design of a Software Lifecycle Management Framework to a Configuration Management System

Keeping track of software assets and managing software installations in IT environments can be a hard endeavor, especially when the size and diversity of the environment grows. How to install and uninstall software efficiently and cost effectively? Are there too few or too many software licenses purchased? If installed, is the software actually in use? Software Asset Management (SAM) is a process that involves managing and optimizing the purchase, deployment, maintenance, utilization, and disposal of software applications within an organization. This master’s thesis describes a special Software Lifecycle Management Framework to provide solutions to the multitude of challenges within SAM. The main objectives when designing the framework was to provide a set of tools to control the software assets during their entire lifecycle while trying to minimize the costs related to owning and managing them.

Design of an Event Based Messaging System

B2B document handling is moving from paper to electronic networks and electronic domain very rapidly. Moving, handling and transforming large electronic business documents requires a lot from the systems handling them. This paper explores new technologies such as SOA, event-driven systems and ESB and a scalable, event-driven enterprise service bus is created to demonstrate these new approaches to message handling. As an end result, we have a small but fully functional messaging system with several different components. This is the first larger Java-project done in-house, so on the side we developed our own set of best practices of Java development, setting up configurations, tools, code repositories and class naming and much more.

Study of ligand-based virtual screening tools in computer-aided drug design

Virtual screening is a central technique in drug discovery today. Millions of molecules can be tested in silico with the aim to only select the most promising and test them experimentally. The topic of this thesis is ligand-based virtual screening tools which take existing active molecules as starting point for finding new drug candidates. One goal of this thesis was to build a model that gives the probability that two molecules are biologically similar as function of one or more chemical similarity scores. Another important goal was to evaluate how well different ligand-based virtual screening tools are able to distinguish active molecules from inactives. One more criterion set for the virtual screening tools was their applicability in scaffold-hopping, i.e. finding new active chemotypes. In the first part of the work, a link was defined between the abstract chemical similarity score given by a screening tool and the probability that the two molecules are biologically similar. These results help to decide objectively which virtual screening hits to test experimentally. The work also resulted in a new type of data fusion method when using two or more tools. In the second part, five ligand-based virtual screening tools were evaluated and their performance was found to be generally poor. Three reasons for this were proposed: false negatives in the benchmark sets, active molecules that do not share the binding mode, and activity cliffs. In the third part of the study, a novel visualization and quantification method is presented for evaluation of the scaffold-hopping ability of virtual screening tools.

Optimization of wind blade design including its energetic characteristics

The goal of the Master’s thesis is to develop and to analyze the optimization method for finding a geometry shape of classical horizontal wind turbine blades based on set of criteria. The thesis develops a technique that allows the designer to determine the weight of such factors as power coefficient, sound pressure level and the cost function in the overall process of blade shape optimization. The optimization technique applies the Desirability function. It was never used before in that kind of technical problems, and in this sense it can claim to originality of research. To do the analysis and the optimization processes more convenient the software application was developed.

Modeling and Analysis of Noise and Interconnects for On-Chip Communication Link Design

This thesis considers modeling and analysis of noise and interconnects in onchip communication. Besides transistor count and speed, the capabilities of a modern design are often limited by on-chip communication links. These links typically consist of multiple interconnects that run parallel to each other for long distances between functional or memory blocks. Due to the scaling of technology, the interconnects have considerable electrical parasitics that affect their performance, power dissipation and signal integrity. Furthermore, because of electromagnetic coupling, the interconnects in the link need to be considered as an interacting group instead of as isolated signal paths. There is a need for accurate and computationally effective models in the early stages of the chip design process to assess or optimize issues affecting these interconnects. For this purpose, a set of analytical models is developed for on-chip data links in this thesis. First, a model is proposed for modeling crosstalk and intersymbol interference. The model takes into account the effects of inductance, initial states and bit sequences. Intersymbol interference is shown to affect crosstalk voltage and propagation delay depending on bus throughput and the amount of inductance. Next, a model is proposed for the switching current of a coupled bus. The model is combined with an existing model to evaluate power supply noise. The model is then applied to reduce both functional crosstalk and power supply noise caused by a bus as a trade-off with time. The proposed reduction method is shown to be effective in reducing long-range crosstalk noise. The effects of process variation on encoded signaling are then modeled. In encoded signaling, the input signals to a bus are encoded using additional signaling circuitry. The proposed model includes variation in both the signaling circuitry and in the wires to calculate the total delay variation of a bus. The model is applied to study level-encoded dual-rail and 1-of-4 signaling. In addition to regular voltage-mode and encoded voltage-mode signaling, current-mode signaling is a promising technique for global communication. A model for energy dissipation in RLC current-mode signaling is proposed in the thesis. The energy is derived separately for the driver, wire and receiver termination.

Design Aspects of Megawatt-Range Direct-Driven Permanent MagnetWind Generators

Direct-driven permanent magnet synchronous generator is one of the most promising topologies for megawatt-range wind power applications. The rotational speed of the direct-driven generator is very low compared with the traditional electrical machines. The low rotational speed requires high torque to produce megawatt-range power. The special features of the direct-driven generators caused by the low speed and high torque are discussed in this doctoral thesis. Low speed and high torque set high demands on the torque quality. The cogging torque and the load torque ripple must be as low as possible to prevent mechanical failures. In this doctoral thesis, various methods to improve the torque quality are compared with each other. The rotor surface shaping, magnet skew, magnet shaping, and the asymmetrical placement of magnets and stator slots are studied not only by means of torque quality, but also the effects on the electromagnetic performance and manufacturability of the machine are discussed. The heat transfer of the direct-driven generator must be designed to handle the copper losses of the stator winding carrying high current density and to keep the temperature of the magnets low enough. The cooling system of the direct-driven generator applying the doubly radial air cooling with numerous radial cooling ducts was modeled with a lumped-parameter-based thermal network. The performance of the cooling system was discussed during the steady and transient states. The effect of the number and width of radial cooling ducts was explored. The large number of radial cooling ducts drastically increases the impact of the stack end area effects, because the stator stack consists of numerous substacks. The effects of the radial cooling ducts on the effective axial length of the machine were studied by analyzing the crosssection of the machine in the axial direction. The method to compensate the magnet end area leakage was considered. The effect of the cooling ducts and the stack end area effects on the no-load voltages and inductances of the machine were explored by using numerical analysis tools based on the three-dimensional finite element method. The electrical efficiency of the permanent magnet machine with different control methods was estimated analytically over the whole speed and torque range. The electrical efficiencies achieved with the most common control methods were compared with each other. The stator voltage increase caused by the armature reaction was analyzed. The effect of inductance saturation as a function of load current was implemented to the analytical efficiency calculation.

Water application uniformity and fertigation in a dripping irrigation set

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the uniformity of distribution coefficient (UDC) and coefficient of variation (CV) of a familiar set of irrigation, classifying it the ASAE standard. The irrigation and fertigation are determined by two methods the KELLER & KARMELI and DENÍCULI . The two experiments were subjected to varying pressures: 12, 14, 16 and 18 kPa, in a completely randomized design of twenty samples composed of flows with three replications. Urea, potassium chloride (KCl) and ammonium phosphate (MAP) were the elements used for fertigation. The system consisted of a 200 L tank, which supplied another container of 30 L, it was moved vertically to control the pressure. The data was statistically compared between treatments for each methodology. In fertigation the best pressure was 16 kPa and was classified as "excellent" for UDC (91.03%) and "marginal" for C.V. (7.47%). For the irrigation treatment, the best pressure was 16 kPa rated "excellent" for UDC (91.2%) and "marginal" for C.V. (7.68%). The DENÍCULI et al. (1980) methodology proved more reliable for the evaluation of drip systems. It was observed that this set has good uniformity of distribution, but with great variability in flows.

Yrittäjyyskasvatuksen arvoja etsimässä. Design-tutkimus opettajankoulutuksen opetussuunnitelmien kehittämisessä

This research is a survey on values related to entrepreneurship education and a participatory action research on entrepreneurship education curricula in teacher education. Research problems, rising from the practical development work, were solved by several methods, following the principles of design-based research. Values related to entrepreneurship education were studied among teachers, headmasters, teacher educators, researchers and officers in the field of entrepreneurship education in 16 European Union countries. Fifteen most important values related to entrepreneurship education were listed based on two qualitative surveys (N 124 and N 66). Values were also surveyed among Finnish teacher trainees (N 71). Results of the surveys show that the values given by the teacher trainees did not differ much from the ones given by the professionals already working in the field. Subsequently, emergence of these values was studied in documents that steer education. The values gathered in the surveys did not occur in the documents to a substantial degree. Development of entrepreneurship education curricula in teacher education was conducted by means of participatory action research. The development project gathered 55 teacher trainers from 15 teacher education organisations in Finland. The starting point of the phenomenon based project (see Annala and Mäkinen 2011) was the activity plan created for developing entrepreneurship education curricula. During the project, the learning of the teacher educators proceeded in a balanced way as brightening visions, stronger motivation, increasing understanding and new practices, following Shulman and Shulman’s model (2004). Goals of the development project were set to each teacher educator acquiring basic knowledge on entrepreneurship education, organization of obligatory courses on entrepreneurship education, and making entrepreneurship education a cross-curricular theme in teacher education. The process increased the understanding and motivation of teacher educators to develop and teach entrepreneurship education. It also facilitated collaboration as well as creating visions on entrepreneurship education. Based on the results, the concept of enterprisingness was defined, and recommendations were given for developing curricula in entrepreneurship education.

Design and testing of an armature-reaction-compensated permanent magnet synchronous generator for island operation

At present, permanent magnet synchronous generators (PMSGs) are of great interest. Since they do not have electrical excitation losses, the highly efficient, lightweight and compact PMSGs equipped with damper windings work perfectly when connected to a network. However, in island operation, the generator (or parallel generators) alone is responsible for the building up of the network and maintaining its voltage and reactive power level. Thus, in island operation, a PMSG faces very tight constraints, which are difficult to meet, because the flux produced by the permanent magnets (PMs) is constant and the voltage of the generator cannot be controlled. Traditional electrically excited synchronous generators (EESGs) can easily meet these constraints, because the field winding current is controllable. The main drawback of the conventional EESG is the relatively high excitation loss. This doctoral thesis presents a study of an alternative solution termed as a hybrid excitation synchronous generator (HESG). HESGs are a special class of electrical machines, where the total rotor current linkage is produced by the simultaneous action of two different excitation sources: the electrical and permanent magnet (PM) excitation. An overview of the existing HESGs is given. Several HESGs are introduced and compared with the conventional EESG from technical and economic points of view. In the study, the armature-reaction-compensated permanent magnet synchronous generator with alternated current linkages (ARC-PMSG with ACL) showed a better performance than the other options. Therefore, this machine type is studied in more detail. An electromagnetic design and a thermal analysis are presented. To verify the operation principle and the electromagnetic design, a down-sized prototype of 69 kVA apparent power was built. The experimental results are demonstrated and compared with the predicted ones. A prerequisite for an ARC-PMSG with ACL is an even number of pole pairs (p = 2, 4, 6, …) in the machine. Naturally, the HESG technology is not limited to even-pole-pair machines. However, the analysis of machines with p = 3, 5, 7, … becomes more complicated, especially if analytical tools are used, and is outside the scope of this thesis. The contribution of this study is to propose a solution where an ARC-PMSG replaces an EESG in electrical power generation while meeting all the requirements set for generators given for instance by ship classification societies, particularly as regards island operation. The maximum power level when applying the technology studied here is mainly limited by the economy of the machine. The larger the machine is, the smaller is the efficiency benefit. However, it seems that machines up to ten megawatts of power could benefit from the technology. However, in low-power applications, for instance in the 500 kW range, the efficiency increase can be significant.

Effects of mineral sorting on concentrator design and economics

Ore sorting after crushing is an effective way to enhance the feed quality of a concentrator. Sorting by hand is the oldest way of concentrating minerals but it has become outdated because of low capacities. Older methods of sorting have also been difficult to use in large scale productions due to low capacities of sorters. Data transfer and processing and the speed of rejection mechanisms have been the bottlenecks for effective use of sorters. A fictive chalcopyrite ore body was created for this thesis. The properties of the ore were typical of chalcopyrite ores and economical limit was set for design. Concentrator capacity was determined by the size of ore body and the planned mine life. Two concentrator scenarios were compared, one with the sorting facility and the other without sorting. Comparison was made for quality and amount of feed, size of equipment and economics. Concentrator with sorting had lower investment and operational cost but also lower incomes due to the ore loss in sorting. Net cash flow, net present value and internal rate of interest were calculated for comparison of the two scenarios.