Inventory management is a complex system which involves different stakeholders from multiple areas in a company which creates a limitation when seeking information between involved staff. Having the right procedure of tracking regular and critical spare parts will give a better control and efficiency in the production process. It is important to have the right classification method to facilitate critical spare parts. The incorrect criteria classification can be achieved in case inventory management have the wrong systematic procedure. Classification methods have different purposes and achieve the highest utilization by combining a variety of methods. By integrating classification methods, set limits and combination of multiple criteria decision analysis can be performed. The study has conducted a case study to compare and evaluate the performance of inventory management in a trustworthy and efficient way. A theoretical framework is constructed with the intention on identify which classification methods can be combined and applied to a production factors criterion. Based on interviews with stakeholders from maintenance, warehouse, and production area related to spare parts and the company’s software system. Two perspectives were used to map the qualitative and quantitative measures. The results show 14 criteria were defined as parameters that measure the performance of criticality in spare parts. The conclusion of both perspectives suggests combining and implement an integration of AHP and ABC classification methods. A proof of concept is demonstrated on AHP analysis and ABC analysis to identify the critical spare parts and the criteria.

The increasing global deficit of healthcare resources makes efficiency improvements in the healthcare industry a complete necessity to assure safe and available healthcare for everyone. Digitalization is expected to play a fundamental role in this transition and digital primary healthcare providers have in recent years developed into a substantial part of the Swedishprimary care sector. Several of those have built solutions for automated triage, where the role of a triage officer in traditional primary care is replaced by an automated process, in which an triage algorithm directly refers the patient to the appropriate level of care. Despite the rise of digital healthcare providers and automated primary care triage systems in particular, research on the implications of automating the triage process in primary healthcare is scarce. This study aims to assess the potential of using MCDM models for automated triage in digital primary care, by conducting a single case study at one of the leading digital healthcare providers. The study is separated into two phases. In phase one, interviews are conducted to qualitatively determine what set of factors to include in an automated MCDM triage model.In phase two, the resulting model is simulated to evaluate the performance compared to the traditional triage model in which all patient journeys start with an initial nurse meeting. The study shows that an automated MCDM triage model can improve cost efficiency in terms of clinician salary costs and productivity in terms of fewer consultations per patient, compared to the traditional triage model. However, the traditional triage model is shown to be more efficient in terms of only utilizing doctor resources for patients in absolute need of doctor care. / Det ökande underskottet av sjukvårdsresurser gör effektivitetsförbättringar i sjukvårdsbranschen nödvändigt för att säkerställa säker och tillgänglig sjukvård för alla. Digitalisering förväntas fylla en fundamental roll i denna transformation och digitala vårdgivare i primärvården har under de senaste åren växt till en betydande del av den svenska primärvårdssektorn. Flertalet av dessa har byggt lösningar för automatiserat triage, där triagefunktionärens roll ersätts av en automatiserad process där en triagealgoritm direkt hänvisar patienten till den lämpliga vårdnivån. Trots tillväxten av digitala vårdgivare i primärvården och deras automatiserade triagesystem i primärvården är forskning kring effekterna av att automatisera triageprocessen i primärvården begränsad. Denna studie strävar efter att utvärdera potentialen i att använda MCDM-modeller för automatiserat triage i den digitala primärvården genom en casestudie på en av de ledande digitala vårdgivarna i primärvården. Studien är uppdelad i två delar. I del ett genomförs intervjuer för att kvalitativt fastställa vilka faktorer som bör inkluderas i en automatiserad MCDM-modell för triage. I del två simuleras den resulterande MCDM-modellen för att utvärdera dess resultat jämfört med den traditionella triagemodellen i vilken alla patienter har ett inledande möte med en sjuksköterska. Studien visar att en automatiserad MCDM-modell för triage kan förbättra kostnadseffektiviteten i termer av lönekostnader och produktivitet i termer av färre konsultationer per patient, jämfört med den traditionella triagemodellen. Däremot visar den traditionella triagemodellen högre effektivitet i termer av att enbart utnyttja läkarresurser för patienter i absolut behov av läkarvård.

Utah and the majority of states have adopted mandatory standards for visual arts, yet no accountability measures have been established. Consequently, it is impossible to determine if standards are being addressed in the art classroom and aggregate grades are subjective. Queensland, Australia instituted a system of moderated school-based assessment (moderation) in 1971, whereby assessment is accomplished locally, then verified by peer experts. Queensland ensures that standards are addressed in curricula and assessment and that exit grades are reliable and comparable. Research has shown that Utah and Queensland share comparable visual arts standards and similar demographics. Queensland moderation has been extensively studied for solutions to Utah and U.S. accountability problems. Queensland teachers submit curricula, assessment tasks, and assessed student work to the Queensland Studies Authority (QSA), which is responsible for moderation. QSA suggests modifications where appropriate, thus ensuring accuracy. Schools are then compared according to group performance on a standardized core skills test and aggregate grades are scaled, resulting in student rankings. Research has revealed that Queensland visual arts teachers widely approve of moderation. Accountability validates good teaching and promotes diligence. Teachers also appreciate QSA curriculum and assessment guidelines. Because these are regulated, QSA has been able to promote progressive directives effectively, including integrated authentic assessment and student-directed conceptual approaches to art. Queensland has constantly striven for improvement through research and teacher feedback. Consequently, Queensland is considered a global leader in school-based assessment. Art education literature implies that accountability for visual arts education is inevitable. Arts educators strongly oppose traditional external testing. Moderation is the proven alternative to traditional testing. While other models of moderation exist, the QSA model is similar in theory to the predominant Utah and U.S. philosophy of standards-based assessment. At the same time, the QSA model offers flexible options that allow emerging theories to be embraced. The research, then, suggests that Utah and other states should consider implementing versions of moderated school-based assessment based on the success of QSA. The thesis concludes with recommendations for the U.S., and a practical curriculum guide that embraces curriculum and assessment merits of Queensland visual arts education.

<p dir="ltr">Conservation conflicts, commonly defined as “situations that occur when two or more parties with strongly held opinions clash over conservation objectives, and when one party is perceived to assert its interests at the expense of another” (Redpath et al., 2013) are expected within the realm of public land management. Conservation conflicts have been an increasing issue worldwide as the consumption of natural resources can directly oppose conservation efforts. Quantitative and qualitative approaches have been adopted in similar studies to mitigate or resolve conservation conflicts. This thesis focuses on a 2017 conflict over logging in Yellowwood State Forest in Indiana. The Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) framework was applied in this thesis to examine economic, ecological, and recreational criteria from multiple stakeholders' perspectives and understand how a retrospective assessment can contribute to improved conflict resolution. The study follows four steps: conducting an institutional analysis, defining criteria and potential alternative scenarios, generating an impact matrix through surveys and interviews, and aggregating results for cross-scenario comparison. The design of these steps attempts to engage stakeholders in the decision-making process and increase transparency. The ranking results reveal a clear preference for the “Shelterwood Cuts” alternative, indicating that different actions may have been a better solution. Although the methodology alone cannot make decisions, it can aid the decision-maker in creating a solution to a conservation conflict by providing guidance and bringing attention to the aspects of a conflict that require change.</p>

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<p dir="ltr">Highway safety continues to pose a serious challenge to the social sustainability of transportation systems, and initiatives are being pursued at all levels of government to reduce the high fatality count of 42,000. At the same time, it is sought to ensure higher travel efficiency in order to increase economic productivity. The emergence of automated transportation provides great promise to mitigate these ills of the transportation sector that have persisted for so many decades. With regards to safety, such promise is rooted in the capability of autonomous vehicles to self-drive some or all of the time, thus reducing the impact of inherently errant human driving to which 95% of all crashes have been attributed. With regards to mobility, such promise is guided by the capability of the autonomous vehicle to carry out path planning, navigation, and vehicle controls in ways that are far more efficient than the human brain, thereby facilitating mobility and reducing congestion-related issues such as delay, emissions, driver frustration, and so on.</p><p dir="ltr">Unfortunately, the two key outcomes (safety and mobility) are reciprocal in the sense that navigation solutions that enhance safety generally tend to reduce mobility, and vice versa. As such, there is a need to assign values explicit to these performance criteria in order to develop balanced solutions for AV decisions. Most existing machine-learning-based path planning algorithms derive these weights using a learning approach. Unfortunately, the stability of these weights across time, individuals, and trip types, is not guaranteed. It is necessary to develop weights and processes that are trip situation-specific. Secondly, user trust in automation remains a key issue, given the relatively recent emergence of this technology and a few highly-publicized crashes, which has led to reservations among potential users.</p><p dir="ltr">To address these research questions, this thesis identifies various situational contexts of the problem, identifies the alternatives (the viable trajectories by fitting curves between the vehicle maneuver’s initial and final positions), develops the decision criteria (safety, mobility, comfort), carries out weighting of the criteria to reflect their relative significance, and scales the criteria to develop dimensionless equivalents of their raw values. Finally, a process for amalgamating the overall impacts of each driving decision alternative is developed based on the weighted and scaled criteria, to identify the best decision (optimal trajectory path). This multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem involves the collection of data through questionnaire surveys.</p><p dir="ltr">The weights obtained early in the MCDM process could be integrated into any one of two types of planning algorithms. First, they could be incorporated into interpolating curve-based planning algorithms, to identify the optimal trajectory based on human preferences. Additionally, they can be integrated into optimization-based planning algorithms to allocate weights to the various functions used.</p><p dir="ltr">Overall, this research aims to align the behavior of autonomous vehicles closely with human-driven vehicles, serving two primary purposes: first, facilitating their seamless coexistence on mixed-traffic roads and second, enhancing public acceptance of autonomous vehicles.</p>

In today’s digital society where all daily actions are performed over the internet, there is an ever increasing need to ensure security when dealing with sensitive information. The default standard for securing communications over the internet,the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, was used for over 90 % of all traffic communication in 2020. TLS has also in recent years received an upgrade, with the new version being 1.3, which introduced substantial changes in its communication protocol. As such, it is of vital importance to ensure that its current standard manages to ensure continued security when using encrypted communications over the internet in accordance with international standards, such as the Common Criteria (CC) standard. This leads us to the problem of how to ensure that evaluation of TLS implementations are done efficiently while ensuring the quality of the evaluation. More, specifically we aim to see how we can automate parts of the evaluation process by creating tests according to the requirements of the Supporting Document (SD) of the CC standard. In this paper we create various tests according to the CC standard for TLS 1.3 implementations that can be automatically run in order. We then use the OpenSSL command line tool as an implementation and run it against our created tests. This was done by using the TLS-Attacker testing framework to not only establish TLS handshakes as either server or client, but also edit which parameters are accepted and the created data packets themselves to test how the implementation handles specific changes in the handshake. The result of the experiment are a series of tests which evaluates whether or not a TLS 1.3 implementation fulfills the requirements set by the CC standard. Our subset of tests covers client and server tests and evaluates an implementation’s use of ciphersuites, named groups, curves, and session resumption. Our results provide a base for creating the remaining tests for TLS 1.3 which is readily extendable through the use of the testing framework, TLS-Attacker. Remaining tests include the use of certificates, as well as Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) for server and client, which could be the focus for future work. / I dagens samhälle där mer och mer handlingar och transaktioner sker digitalt finns det ett stigande behov av att säkerställa säkerheten när känslig information hanteras. Den vanligaste standarden för att säkra kommunikation över internet, TLS, användes i över 90% av all trafikkommunikation år 20202. TLS har också under de senaste åren uppgraderats till version 1.3, vilket introducerade betydande ändringar i dess kommunikationsprotokoll. Det är därför av avgörande vikt att säkerställa att den nuvarande standarden klarar att säkerställa säkra krypterade kommunikationer över internet enligt internationella standarder, såsom CC standarden. Detta leder oss till problemet med hur vi ska säkerställa att utvärderingar av TLS utförs på ett effektivt och smidigt sätt och samtidigt upprätthåller kvaliteten på utvärderingen. Mer specifikt ämnar vi att se hur vi kan automatisera delar av utvärderingsprocessen genom att skapa tester enligt kraven i SD för CC standarden. I denna avhandling skapar vi olika tester enligt CC standarden för TLS 1.3 implementationer som kan köras automatiskt i ordning. Vi använder sedan OpenSSL kommandotolken som en TLS implementation och kör den mot våra skapade tester. Detta utfördes med hjälp av TLS-Attackers testramverk för att inte endast etablera TLS-handskakningar som antingen server eller klient, utan även redigera vilka parametrar som accepteras samt vilka datapaket som sänds, och hur implementationen hanterar ändringar under handskakningen. Resultatet av experimentet är en serie tester som utvärderar huruvida en TLS 1.3 implementation uppfyller kraven som ställs av CC standarden. Vår delmängd av tester täcker klient- och servertester, och utvärderar en implementations användning av chiffersviter, grupper, kurvor och återupptagande av sessioner. Våra resultat ger en bas för att skapa återstående tester för TLS 1.3 vilka kan utökas genom användning av testramverket, TLS-Attacker. Återstående tester inkluderar användning av certifikat, samt DTLS för server och klient, vilket kan vara fokus för framtida arbete.

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Published Article / The Council on Higher Education (CHE) (2004) states that graduation rates across all provider types of MBA qualifications in South Africa are not very high. Various studies have reported that, in order to address poor throughput rates, one of the important aspects that needs to be addressed, is the criteria used to select students. The purpose of this study was to identify valid predictors and measures of the academic performance of MBA students. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the significance of different competencies and aptitudes in predicting academic success. The sample consisted of 135 MBA students from a South African School of Management. The results show that certain aptitudes and competencies, namely numerical aptitude, personal motivation, verbal aptitude, and resilience, contributed statistically significant to academic success.

Published Article / In today's highly competitive business environment service delivery has become a key issue. Providing quality service could enhance an organisation's competitive advantage with beneficial financial implications. Service delivery requires the full cooperation and commitment of all the employees in the organisation, including management. The culture of the organisation supports this by eliciting a unified response from employees that supports the quality of service rendered to customers. In this regard the paper provides a statistical analysis of the impact of organisational culture on service delivery in a major South African private security company. Due to its applicability the Competing Values Framework (CVF) was instrumental in measuring the culture of the organisation and the award winning Baldrige Award Criteria in ascertaining its levels of service delivery.