Knowledge integration within Japanese firms : the Fujitsu way

The paper analyses knowledge integration processes at Fujitsu from a multi-level and systemic perspective. The focus is on team-building capability, capturing and utilising individual tacit knowledge, and communication networks for integrating dispersed specialist knowledge required in the development of new products and services. The analysis shows how knowledge integration is performed by Fujitsu at different layers of the company.

Organisational knowledge integration: towards a conceptual framework

This study analyses organisational knowledge integration processes from a multi-level and systemic perspective, with particular reference to the case of Fujitsu. A conceptual framework for knowledge integration is suggested focusing on team-building capability, capturing and utilising individual tacit knowledge, and communication networks for integrating dispersed specialist knowledge required in the development of new products and services. The research highlights that knowledge integration occurring in the innovation process is a result of knowledge exposure, its distribution and embodiment and finally its transfer, which leads to innovation capability and competitive advantage in firm.

A flexible bandwidth resource provisioning system with agent-enhanced SLA negotiation

Paper describes an effcicient approach for provisioning of network resources based on SLAs and a range of negotiating agents. The work arose from direct collboration with Fujitsu research and invlolved a worldwide press reslease of their agent brokering system which was based on this; also, a plenary address: A.Marshall (QUB) & A.Campbell (Columbia, USA) at 4th IFIP/IEEE International conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services' 2001 (MMNS'01). ISSN: 0926-6801

SLA Brokering and Bandwidth Reservation Negotiation Schemes for QoS-aware Internet

We present a novel Service Level Agreement (SLA)-driven service provisioning architecture, which enables dynamic and flexible bandwidth reservation schemes on a per-user or per-application basis. Various session level SLA negotiation schemes involving bandwidth allocation, service start time and service duration parameters are introduced and analyzed. The results show that these negotiation schemes can be utilized for the benefit of both end users and network providers in achieving the highest individual SLA optimization in terms of key Quality of Service (QoS) metrics and price. The inherent characteristics of software agents such as autonomy, adaptability and social abilities offer many advantages in this dynamic, complex, and distributed network environment especially when performing Service Level Agreements (SLA) definition negotiations and brokering tasks. This article also presents a service broker prototype based on Fujitsu's Phoenix Open Agent Mediator (OAM) agent technology, which was used to demonstrate a range of SLA brokering scenarios.

Situación actual de la Educación Básica de Adultos en la Comunidad Autónoma Vasca y establecimiento de bases para su promoción desde la perspectiva de la Educación Permanente.

Analizar la situacion actual de la Educación de Adultos en la Comunidad Autónoma Vasca y su evolución desde la Ley de Educación de 1970. 281 profesores de la Comunidad Autónoma Vasca pertenecientes tanto al ámbito público como privado, y 789 alumnos que asisten a centros de EPA de dicha Comunidad en el año 1984-85. Estudio descriptivo dividido en cinco grandes apartados: el primer capítulo está dedicado a aclaraciones conceptuales, en el segundo capítulo se lleva a cabo un estudio de la Educación de Adultos tanto en lo relativo a los centros y alumnado, como al desarrollo legislativo, en el tercer capítulo se expone la tipología psicosocial del alumnmo-adulto y las funciones a desarrollar por el formador de adultos, el cuarto capítulo integra el proceso y resultados de una investigación entorno a los motivos, proceso instructivo, intereses y expectativas tanto de los profesores como de los alumnos, siendo las variables estudiadas similares, con el fin de comparar los resultados aportados por dos perspectivas diferenciadas -profesor/alumno-, y el último capítulo responde al intento de marcar líneas abiertas al futuro a corto y largo plazo en materia de adultos. Dos inventarios: uno para los profesores y otro para los alumnos. Tablas de contingencia, análisis de correspondencias, Cluster jerárquico. El tratamiento de datos fué realizado por un ordenador Fujitsu 400-M3, utilizándose el paquete Estin. De un total de 281 profesores pertenecientes a las tres provincias, se observa que el 53,3 por ciento -150- son profesores definitivos en Educación Permanente de Adultos, un 27 por ciento -76- son interinos, un 5,3 por ciento -15- son contratados y un 6 por ciento -17- se encuentran en otras situaciones. De un total de 789 alumnos, el 63,9 por ciento cursan sus estudios en Vizcaya, el 21,3 por ciento en Álava y el 14,8 por ciento en Guipúzcoa. Sobre los estudios que realizan actualmente los alumnos se observa que un 60,3 por ciento se encuentra en graduado, un 1 por ciento en alfabetización, un 8,7 por ciento en neolectura, un 14,6 por ciento en certificado y un 13,7 por ciento en pregraduado. Mencionar algunos temas que a lo largo del trabajo han ido surgiendo, no pudiendo abordarlos por exceder de los objetivos preestablecidos, pero que sería interesante trabajar sobre ellos: propuestas curriculares para los distintos niveles de la Educación de Adultos, análisis cuantitativo y cualitativo del éxito y/o fracaso de los adultos en los niveles de Enseñanza Media, etc.. Fecha finalización tomada del código del documento.

Measuring Application Availability,Usage and Performance : Implementation of EnView System

The main objective for this degree project is to implement an Application Availability Monitoring (AAM) system named Softek EnView for Fujitsu Services. The aim of implementing the AAM system is to proactively identify end user performance problems, such as application and site performance, before the actual end users experience them. No matter how well applications and sites are designed and nomatter how well they meet business requirements, they are useless to the end users if the performance is slow and/or unreliable. It is important for the customers to find out whether the end user problems are caused by the network or application malfunction. The Softek EnView was comprised of the following EnView components: Robot, Monitor, Reporter, Collector and Repository. The implemented system, however, is designed to use only some of these EnView elements: Robot, Reporter and depository. Robots can be placed at any key user location and are dedicated to customers, which means that when the number of customers increases, at the sametime the amount of Robots will increase. To make the AAM system ideal for the company to use, it was integrated with Fujitsu Services’ centralised monitoring system, BMC PATROL Enterprise Manager (PEM). That was actually the reason for deciding to drop the EnView Monitor element. After the system was fully implemented, the AAM system was ready for production. Transactions were (and are) written and deployed on Robots to simulate typical end user actions. These transactions are configured to run with certain intervals, which are defined collectively with customers. While they are driven against customers’ applicationsautomatically, transactions collect availability data and response time data all the time. In case of a failure in transactions, the robot immediately quits the transactionand writes detailed information to a log file about what went wrong and which element failed while going through an application. Then an alert is generated by a BMC PATROL Agent based on this data and is sent to the BMC PEM. Fujitsu Services’ monitoring room receives the alert, reacts to it according to the incident management process in ITIL and by alerting system specialists on critical incidents to resolve problems. As a result of the data gathered by the Robots, weekly reports, which contain detailed statistics and trend analyses of ongoing quality of IT services, is provided for the Customers.

Junction Field Effect on the Retention Time for One-Transistor Floating-Body RAM

One-transistor floating-body random access memory retention time distribution is investigated on silicon-on-insulator UTBOX devices. It is shown that the average retention time can be improved by two to three orders of magnitude by reducing the body-junction electric field. However, the retention time distribution, which is mainly caused by the generation-recombination center density variation, remains similar.

Design and synthesis of potential antimicrobial agents

Chorismate mutase is one of the essential enzymes in the shikimate pathway and is key to the survival of the organism Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The x-ray crystal structure of this enzyme from Mycobacterium tuberculosis was manipulated to prepare an initial set of in silico protein models of the active site. Known inhibitors of the enzyme were docked into the active site using the flexible ligand / flexible active site side chains approach implemented in CAChe Worksystem (Fujitsu Ltd). The resulting complexes were refined by molecular dynamics studies in explicit water using Amber 9. This yielded a further set of protein models that were used for additional rounds of ligand docking. A binding hypothesis was established for the enzyme and this was used to screen a database of commercially available drug-like compounds. From these results new potential ligands were designed that fitted appropriately into the active site and matched the functional groups and binding motifs founds therein. Some of these compounds and close analogues were then synthesized and submitted for biological evaluation. As a separate part of this thesis, analogues of very active anti-tuberculosis pyridylcarboxamidrazone were also prepared. This was carried out by the addition and the deletion of the substitutions from the lead compound thereby preparing heteroaryl carboxamidrazone derivatives and related compounds. All these compounds were initially evaluated for biological activity against various gram positive organisms and then sent to the TAACF (USA) for screening against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Some of the new compounds proved to be at least as potent as the original lead compound but less toxic.