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This final thesis analyzes the most represented complex software products for management of law offices on the Czech market. At the beginning of this paper are described specifics of law offices with their classification applicable for the Czech Republic and facts that distinguish the advocacy from other fields. The next part follows with characterization of particular law office, activities of this office and software products which are used there. Other part of this work is focused on a process analysis of the mentioned law office which is introduced by a theoretical base of process modeling. Defined key processes were modeled and then options for their software support were specified. Criteria for evaluating software products were identified based on the information obtained during the preparation phase. After selection of the three most represented products these products were described and evaluated. Other chapters of this work are focused on the software which is called Acta Safe and which was developed by AiP Safe, s.r.o. Strengths and weaknesses of this software were specified in comparison to selected products of competition and then modifications and improvements were proposed. At the end of this paper are presented results of the survey. This survey was attended by lawyers and articled clerks from various sized law offices. The aim of this questionnaire survey was to determine if there is a connection between focus of the law offices and the need of using a software solution for a law office. How such software is selected, what implementation of the software brings and why there are some law offices that do not use such software. Answers to these questions are provided at the end of this thesis.

This master’s thesis focusing on design of technological workplaces layout in the workshop of trading and manufacturing company, which offers range of industrial gaskets. The main part of thesis is a detailed analysis, which includes description of the production processes and system in workshop of surface finishes that is scheduled for modernization of spaces. On the basis of this analysis will be using selected methods recommended solutions, which will help decide what types of production equipment purchase and how to deploy technology work in new premises.

The aim of this thesis was to develop a methodology to systematically investigate the effect of different procurement options on the outcome of a construction project. This methodology combined the qualitative analysis based on experts' performance assessment of each procurement option with quantitative analyses of generic process models for each option, in order to perform a comprehensive analysis of different procurement alternatives. This methodology was further applied to the specific problem of this research which was to assess the performance of Commissioning Delivery Systems (CDS). The goal was to use the findings from the study to provide a comparison between CDS, and assist Construction Owners in identifying the appropriate commissioning delivery option for their project. The process of each CDS was modeled, and systematic differences between different options were analyzed. Five major internal performance aspects of the commissioning process were identified based on literature: PAi1: Communication; PAi2: Validation; PAi3: Collaboration; PAi4: Integration; and PAi5: Integrity. These performance aspects were used as a basis for a Delphi study to obtain commissioning experts assessment of each CDS. Fourteen experts, representing different disciplines in the construction industry, participated in three phases of the Delphi study. A statistical measure was used to validate the expert performance assessments by measuring their level of consensus. Experts did not show any agreement on two performance aspects of Communication and Integration. These aspects were further investigated through quantitative analyses of process models. The developed methodology proved to be a valuable technique in analyzing the effect of procurement options on the outcome of a construction project. Based on the findings of the study, Owner-led Commissioning presented a higher performance rating than Designer-led Commissioning in four out of five performance aspects. Hence, Owner-led Commissioning is identified as a better alternative for procuring commissioning services on construction projects. Designer-led Commissioning presented a higher Communication performance than Owner-led Commissioning. At the same time, the Communication performance of both delivery options was very poor, which further indicates communication difficulties in current commissioning practices. Therefore, this study suggests a more-thorough investigation of the Communication aspect of commissioning process as a follow-up investigation.

Business Process (BP) design reflects managerial needs and may directly influence business performance. A good design could substantially increase managerial performance, while a bad one would be inefficient, lack of flexibility, mess cost effective and eventually miss the business strategy. The widespread of information technology has raised the need to redesign or modify business processes in order to fit the trend of automation and computerization. As a result, business process reengineering (BPR) has gained much attention in 1990s. In recent years, a new paradigm, called Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME), becomes a new management innovation. Service process design becomes a new science that can be applied to support service innovation and management. Previous research on BPR includes two major directions: one focuses on managerial aspects of business processes, including the planning, implementation, and critical factors of BPR; the other focuses on the design aspects pf business processes with a target of making processes more efficient. For research on process design, most deal with the syntactic structure of the process. They analyze the syntax structure of a process. This can help find design errors such as deadlocks, livelocks, and even infinite loops in a process. Not many studies have investigated whether a process design meets its managerial goals. This research presents a knowledge-based approach to dealing with the managerial issue of whether a process design matches specific managerial goals. This thesis contains a new business process modeling method that allows a business process to be diagnosed by knowledge-based rules. We have defined three managerial goals in process design: effectiveness, efficiency, and flexibility. Each activity in a business process has its goal. Through the analysis of activities and their associated goals, we can determine whether a business process is properly designed. In order to show the feasibility of the proposed approach, we have implemented a JAVA-based prototype expert system and used it to check two sample business processes. The contributions of the study are two-fold. Academically, it proposed a new approach for business process diagnosis, which can help determine whether a process meets its managerial goal. In practice, businesses can use the concepts developed in the thesis to make their business processes more effective by matching activities with intended managerial goals.

Web developers are confronted with evaluating the usability of Web interfaces. Automatic Web usability evaluation tools are available, but they are limited in the types of problems they can handle. Tool support for manual usability evaluation is needed. Accordingly, this research focuses on developing a tool for supporting manual processes in Heuristic Evaluation inspection. The research was conveyed in three phases. First, an observational study was conducted in order to characterize the inspection process in Heuristic Evaluation. The videos of evaluators applying a Heuristic Evaluation on a non-interactive, paper-based Web interface were analyzed to dissect the inspection process. Second, based on the study, a tool for annotating Web interfaces when applying Heuristic Evaluations was developed. Finally, a survey is conducted to evaluate the tool and learn the role of annotations in inspection. Recommendations for improving the use of annotations in problem reporting are outlined. Overall, users were satisfied with the tool. The goal of this research, designing and developing an inspection tool, is achieved.

Despite the federal government’s $1.5 billion investment between 1993 and 2010 to fund 164 separate community-based systems of care, there has been an extremely limited attempt to measure the impact of system of care. The impetus for this research is the struggle for how the value based concept of system of care is communicated within a community. While child mental health services researchers have published a number of randomized control trials to explore individual level supports for youth served in a system of care community, researchers have struggled to devise a way to measure system of care philosophy diffusion. While system of care is a system level intervention, this study explored the role of the system of care value: family voice as it pertains to direct practice for children and families. The goal was to assess whether specific direct practices regularly associated with system of care (i.e., wraparound or home-based services) lead to greater family voice or if the mere presence of a high-functioning system of care community leads to equal family voice for all receiving community-based services. The primary finding was a relationship between the perception of family functioning and perceived empowerment/self-efficacy. This finding suggests that as functioning improves, so does a caregiver’s perception of their personal empowerment/ self-efficacy. While the framing of this study was to “unpack” the system of care value of family voice, the findings do not support any clear cut explanation for how family voice is promoted or communicated to families. Based on the findings, it appears as if families feel more empowered as their child improves. Additional research needs to be done on the application of family voice within the practice setting to better understand how to best instruct staff to infuse family voice in their daily practice.

Presented thesis entitled “Cleanliness of components management implementation” with analysis of the currently applied cleanliness management system in the organization, identification of the root causes of contamination in production, suggestion of the possible solution and recommendation of actions. All material presented in this thesis were collected in Mann+Hummel (CZ) s.r.o., a producer of filters and fluid circuits for automotive industry.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Chemistry / unrestricted

The thesis is concerned with the implementation of a document management system (DMS) in a small firm where I've been working for almost 4 years as an information technician. The aim of the thesis is to implement the particular DMS product that is in this case an open system Alfresco. The project of the implementation itself is preceded by the firm analysis phase that includes a process analysis, an analysis of relevant documents as well as an economic analysis. Through this analysis series of inadequacies in work activities of individual employees were recognized and these are aimed to be minimized or eliminated with the help of the Alfresco system implementation. Within the scope of project stages description concerning the implementation of the Alfresco the thesis is focused especially on the analysis phases and solution design, the implementation, the customization and finally the operation. Throughout the above mentioned stages a new structure of some processes is suggested, including a change of the firm organization structure, furthermore basic functions of Alfresco system are described and a fundamental rules framework is defined to know how to use the Alfresco system in concrete cases. The end of the thesis contains an evaluation whether to apply the Alfresco system in a small firm or not and further a three-month's testing period and its influence on the firm is being discussed.