Denna rapport är resultatet av ett examensarbete på kandidatnivå, utfört på uppdrag av Meritor HVS AB i Lindesberg. Arbetet genomfördes under våren 2018 som ett examinationsmoment på högskoleingenjörsprogrammet inom innovativ produktion/logistik vid Mälardalens Högskolas akademi för innovation, design och teknik. Studiens syfte presenteras som ”Att generera konceptidéer för automatiserad materialhantering som bidrar till ökad konkurrenskraft”. För att skapa underlag till utveckling av konceptidéer genomfördes en studie med frågeställningarna; <ul type="disc">Vilka faktorer behöver förbättras i det nuvarande systemet för materialhantering? Vilken/Vilka funktioner beror de identifierade faktorerna av? Hur kan de identifierade funktionerna utvecklas genom automation för att förbättra och effektivisera materialhanteringssystemet?   En fallstudie konstruerades och avgränsades till materialflödet av gallerstaplar inom uppdragsgivarens fabrik. Relevant data har inhämtats genom observationer av hanteringsprocesser samt studerandet av marknaden för applicerbar teknologi. Data har analyserats, med stöd från bland annat aktuell forskning vid Mälardalens Högskola samt andra tryckta och elektroniska källor rörande logistik och materialhantering. Resultat är ett koncept som visualiserats med hjälp av CAD-modellering. Studien stödjer konceptet som ett alternativ för att skapa en säkrare arbetsmiljö för operatörerna på berörda avdelningar samt reducera ergonomisk överbelastning. Ytterligare visar studien att förbrukningen av fysiskt utrymme i fabriken och operatörers arbetstid kan reduceras, samt att tillgängligheten i bearbetningsceller kan förbättras. Avslutningsvis diskuteras och kritiseras studiens omfattning. Rapporten bör inte ses som ett underlag för beslutsfattande utan snarare en utgångspunkt för vidareutveckling. Med stöd från relevant teori, föreslås att leverantörer av teknologi involveras i detaljutvecklingsprocessen samt att frågor rörande arbetsrutiner och användargränssnitt behandlas i vidare efterforskningar.

Over the past two decades, technology has developed tremendously, at an almost exponential rate. While this development has served the nation in numerous different positive ways, negatives have also emerged. One such negative is that of computer crime. This criminality has even grown so fast as to leave current digital forensic tools lagging behind in terms of development, and capabilities to manage such increasing and sophisticated types of crime. In essence the time taken to analyse a case is huge and increasing, and cases are not fully or properly investigated. This results in an ever-increasing number of pending and unsolved cases pertaining to computer crime. Digital forensics has become an essential tool in the fight against computer crime, providing both procedures and tools for the acquisition, examination and analysis of digital evidence. However, the use of technology is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, with the number of devices a single user might engage with increasing from a single device to 3 or more, the data capacity of those devices reaching far into the Terabytes, and the nature of the underlying technology evolving (for example, the use of cloud services). This results in an incredible challenge for forensic examiners to process and analyse cases in an efficient and effective manner. This thesis focuses upon the examination and analysis phases of the investigative process and considers whether automation of the process is possible. The investigation begins with researching the current state of the art, and illustrates a wide range of challenges that are facing the digital forensics investigators when analysing a case. Supported by a survey of forensic researchers and practitioners, key challenges were identified and prioritised. It was found that 95% of participants believed that the number of forensic investigations would increase in the coming times, with 75% of participants believing that the time consumed in such cases would increase. With regards to the digital forensic sophistication, 95% of the participants expected a rise in the complexity level and sophistication of digital forensics. To this end, an automated intelligent system that could be used to reduce the investigator’s time and cognitive load was found to be a promising solution. A series of experiments are devised around the use of Self-Organising Maps (SOMs) – a technique well known for unsupervised clustering of objects. The analysis is performed on a range of file system and application-level objects (e.g. email, internet activity) across four forensic cases. Experiment evaluations revealed SOMs are able to successfully cluster forensic artefacts from the remaining files. Having established SOMs are capable of clustering wanted artefacts from the case, a novel algorithm referred to as the Automated Evidence Profiler (AEP), is proposed to encapsulate the process and provide further refinement of the artefact identification process. The algorithm led to achieving identification rates in examined cases of 100% in two cases and 94% in a third. A novel architecture is proposed to support the algorithm in an operational capacity – considering standard forensic techniques such as hashing for known files, file signature analysis, application-level analysis. This provides a mechanism that is capable of utilising the A E P with several other components that are able to filter, prioritise and visualise artefacts of interest to investigator. The approach, known as Automated Forensic Examiner (AFE), is capable of identifying potential evidence in a more efficient and effective manner. The approach was evaluated by a number of experts in the field, and it was unanimously agreed that the chosen research problem was one with great validity. Further to this, the experts all showed support for the Automated Forensic Examiner based on the results of cases analysed.

Titel: ”Man vs. Robot” - En studie om hur organisationer hanterar anställdas kompetens i allt mer automatiserade verksamheter. Författare: Michelle Bredhammar och Amanda Färm Handledare: Olle Duhlin Examinator: Hans Wessblad Kurs: Företagsekonomi III – organisation, examensarbete, Human Resource Management, Linnéuniversitetet, VT 2018 Syfte och forskningsfrågor Syftet med studien är att identifiera hur organisationer hanterar kompetensen hos sina anställda i allt mer automatiserade verksamheter. Vi ämnar med den här studien att skapa förståelse för de utmaningar som personer i ledande positioner står inför med att hantera kompetens vid implementering av automation. Utifrån det här syftet skapades en forskningsfråga: • Hur hanterar organisationer anställdas kompetens i allt mer automatiserade verksamheter? Metod Studien är genomförd utifrån en kvalitativ forskningsmetod med en deduktiv ansats. Den empiriska datainsamlingen har skett i form av åtta semi-strukturerade intervjuer varav en skedde i form av en telefonintervju. Slutsatser Vi har kunnat identifiera flera olika tillvägagångssätt och även utmaningar som personer i ledande positioner kommer få ta del av när det ny teknik implementeras. De här tillvägagångssätten och utmaningarna är avgörande för hur organisationer kommer hantera anställdas kompetens i allt mer automatiserade verksamheter. Vidare har vi kunnat utläsa att mycket av den automation vi har fått ta del av i den här studien har varit lovande för att kunna göra tillverkningsprocessen helt automatiserad. Däremot upplever vi att på grund av att den mänskliga faktorn som fortfarande saknas i dagens teknik, går det inte att använda automatisering fullt ut. Automatisering kan exempelvis inte i dagsläget utföra kvalitetskontroller och liknande på produkter, utan det kräver en mänsklig kreativitet och flexibilitet. Vi ser därför i dagsläget ingen nära framtid som påvisar att anställda kommer bli ersatta av maskiner eller robotar. Nyckelord Automation, Kompetens, Konkurrensstrategier. / Purpose and research questions The purpose of the study is to identify how organizations handle their employee’s skills in increasingly automated activities. With this essay, we aim to create an understanding of the challenges facing people in leading positions with regards to managing skills in implementing automation. Based on this objective, a research question was created: • How do organizations manage employees' competence in increasingly automated activities? Method The study is conducted on the basis of a qualitative research method with a deductive approach. The empirical data collection has taken the form of eight semi-structured interviews, one of which took place in the form of a telephone interview. Conclusions We have been able to identify several different approaches and even challenges that people in leading positions will get acquainted with when new technology is implemented. These approaches and challenges are crucial for how organizations will handle employee skills in increasingly automated businesses. Furthermore, we have been able to read that much of the automation we have examined in this study has been promising to make the manufacturing process fully automated. However, we cannot fully use automation because the human factor is still lacking in today's technology. For example, automation cannot currently perform quality controls and such on products, it requires human creativity and flexibility. Therefore, we currently do not see a close future demonstrating that employees will be replaced by machines or robots. Keywords Automation, Competence, Competition Strategies

A implantação de sistemas informatizados é uma necessidade em todos os campos de atuação, considerando a velocidade em que informações e fatos ocorrem no mundo atual. Todavia, tal implantação envolve mudanças e situações de custobenefício. O presente trabalho apresenta uma avaliação sobre as possibilidades ou não de avanços, quanto à agilidade e eficiência nos processos e tarefas executados pelas empresas de serviços contábeis. Inicialmente, o trabalho traz um histórico sobre as organizações contábeis, segmento econômico que está presente desde a criação da profissão do contabilista. Num segundo momento, este instrumento aborda a necessidade de inovações nos métodos de trabalho, geradas pelas mudanças no panorama econômico nacional, principalmente pela estabilização da moeda. Também são fatores de relevante interferência nesse processo as fortes mudanças na legislação movidas pelo Fisco, que passou a criar um número excessivo de obrigações assessórias para alimentar seus bancos de dados. Por fim, uma análise das inovações nos métodos de trabalho das atuais empresas prestadoras de serviços contábeis, mais especificamente dentro da Aprove Consultorias Ltda, possibilita avaliar a extensão complexa da validade ou não desses empreendimentos frente a todas essas mudanças. / The implementation of information systems is a necessity in all fields, considering the speed with which information and data are transmitted in today’s world. However, such implementation requires changes and ‘value-for-money’ analysis. The hereby essay presents an evaluation of the possibilities for advancements, with regard to agility and efficiency in the processes and tasks executed by accounting services companies, economy segment that is present since the creation of the accountant position. Secondly, this instrument approaches the necessity for innovations in the work methods generated by changes in the national economy scene, mainly destabilization of currency. There are also points of relevant interference in this process such as the big changes made by the Revenue Service that has started to yield an excessive number of obligations to feed their data base. Finally, an analysis of the innovations of the current accounting services companies’ work methods, more specifically at Aprove Consultorias, Ltd, allows us to evaluate the complex extension of the possible validity of these ventures when facing all these changes.

Currently process industry faces a paradoxical situation. On the one hand there is the urgent need to optimise the performance of processes by increasing throughput, decreasing operating costs while increasing the product quality. On the other hand there are only few specialists in industry who are able to develop and apply appropriate control strategies for the increasingly complex processes in the process industry. Generally, these specialists work in research and development departments necessitating a considerable amount of time to develop sophisticated solutions for specific processes. However, in the process industry control design and fine-tuning are mostly done by practitioners more than by specialists, directly at the process and in a minimum of time. Within this commissioning phase the process is assembled and set into operation, often with suboptimally turned controllers. Efforts have been undertaken to support these commissioners doing their tasks, and for single variable processes practically applicable methods have been developed. Nevertheless, for more complex processes the generation of mathematical process models as an appropriate base for control system design still is a major problem in practice. The subject of this work is the development of a structured approach to identification techniques for the analysis of industrial processes that enables industrial users with limited control engineering knowledge to design process models suitable for the design of industrial controllers. This latter aspect has been addressed within the collaborative research project between the University of Glamorgan and the Fachhochschule Hannover, of which the work presented in this thesis is a substantial part. Therefore, an industrially suitable scheme for computer aided control system design (CACSD) has firstly been developed in agreement with industrial users in order to set the frame for the research project. This scheme has been based on simple block-oriented model structures composed from nonlinear static and linear dynamic characteristics. The scheme is simple in use and intuitive to understand and follow. Therefore, it can be directly applied also by inexperienced engineers, who look for quick and efficient solutions as a basis even for nonlinear controller design. Beyond this a standardised identification procedure for nonlinear processes has been elaborated in order to provide process models fitting to the CACSD scheme. This standardised identification procedure has been equipped with two improved algorithms. For the approximation of even multidimensional static characteristics a capable method has been developed necessitating neither apriori information nor user interaction. For the identification of discrete-time linear dynamic models a two-step identification method has been improved by a numerically efficient least squares estimator that allows the parallel estimation of a set of model structures, which is evaluated automatically. For the validation of the proposed approach and the developed methods a prototype identification tool has been programmed, which also lays the ground for the integration of the whole CACSD scheme into a block-oriented simulation environment.

Automating the identification of biological specimens from 2D image data poses difficult problems given the natural variation, specimen damage and background clutter that can exist. The tools used by taxonomists tend to be manual or semi-automated, where the operator locates salient image features from which the system automatically derives taxonomic measurements for identification. Fully automating the extraction of taxonomic features and the subsequent identification task would allow for more robust and accurate identification and provide tools for users in the field who do not possess expert knowledge. This work focuses on the automatic localisation of taxonomic landmark points and the identification of species of parasitic wasps of the order Hymenoptera using SEM images of their heads. These images present significant analysis problems. Image feature extraction techniques investigated to solve this problem include deformable contour models, texture analysis and the Mallat wavelet transform. Deformable contour models perform poorly given the textural clutter in the images while texture analysis techniques introduce correlated noise into the segmented image, which can reduce landmark localisation accuracy to 25%. The wavelet transform overcomes this problem by filtering textural clutter at larger scales of analysis. A novel technique is presented which recombines the wavelet transform to create a single contour map where textural clutter is filtered out. This is based on the interaction between edge events which is calculated within a region of interest (ROI) that expands as the scale decreases. In configuring the ROI, a balance must be achieved between filtering textural clutter and eroding salient contours. The landmark localisation accuracy is directly related to this ROI expansion. This represents the main contribution to knowledge. A fast expansion at the high end of the scale range results in a landmark localisation accuracy of 95%. Applying these landmarks to a neural network classifier results in a 91% correct identification rate. This represents a significant improvement over the 65% identification rate obtained by taxonomists and is robust to landmark displacement as a result of contour erosion.

This thesis describes a doctoral project which has addressed some of the problems of automatically performing cartographic generalization in a holistic manner, that is, processing the map features in the context of the whole map rather than individual features in isolation. The approach is based on two key ideas: firstly, that the map surface can be represented by a structure based on simplicial complexes which provides useful relationships for topology and proximity and facilitates many of the fundamental generalization operations. Secondly, that the epistemological structures needed for generalization can be represented by a hierarchy of "context" frames, each of which encapsulate the knowledge required to recognize, generalize and resolve a cartographic situation. A data structure that uses simplicial complexes to represent map objects has been designed and implemented. Each object is described by a set of two-dimensional simplices (triangles) that are maintained in the form of a constrained Delaunay triangulation. This structure gives a fully connected two-dimensional plenum that stores important spatial relationships such as "enclosed", "adjacent" and "between" explicitly. This simplicial data structure (SDS), as it is called, can be used directly to perform several types of operations necessary for automatic generalization, for example, automatic overlap detection, displacement, merging, enlargement, simplification of building outlines and skeletonization. Algorithms for many of these operators have been implemented while others are proposed. Pseudo-code and descriptions are used to document many of these operators, results are given and discussed. A frame-based architecture is proposed which provides a framework for the representation and application of knowledge for generalization. The project was funded by an EPSRC CASE studentship in collaboration with the Ordnance Survey.

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A implantação de sistemas informatizados é uma necessidade em todos os campos de atuação, considerando a velocidade em que informações e fatos ocorrem no mundo atual. Todavia, tal implantação envolve mudanças e situações de custobenefício. O presente trabalho apresenta uma avaliação sobre as possibilidades ou não de avanços, quanto à agilidade e eficiência nos processos e tarefas executados pelas empresas de serviços contábeis. Inicialmente, o trabalho traz um histórico sobre as organizações contábeis, segmento econômico que está presente desde a criação da profissão do contabilista. Num segundo momento, este instrumento aborda a necessidade de inovações nos métodos de trabalho, geradas pelas mudanças no panorama econômico nacional, principalmente pela estabilização da moeda. Também são fatores de relevante interferência nesse processo as fortes mudanças na legislação movidas pelo Fisco, que passou a criar um número excessivo de obrigações assessórias para alimentar seus bancos de dados. Por fim, uma análise das inovações nos métodos de trabalho das atuais empresas prestadoras de serviços contábeis, mais especificamente dentro da Aprove Consultorias Ltda, possibilita avaliar a extensão complexa da validade ou não desses empreendimentos frente a todas essas mudanças. / The implementation of information systems is a necessity in all fields, considering the speed with which information and data are transmitted in today’s world. However, such implementation requires changes and ‘value-for-money’ analysis. The hereby essay presents an evaluation of the possibilities for advancements, with regard to agility and efficiency in the processes and tasks executed by accounting services companies, economy segment that is present since the creation of the accountant position. Secondly, this instrument approaches the necessity for innovations in the work methods generated by changes in the national economy scene, mainly destabilization of currency. There are also points of relevant interference in this process such as the big changes made by the Revenue Service that has started to yield an excessive number of obligations to feed their data base. Finally, an analysis of the innovations of the current accounting services companies’ work methods, more specifically at Aprove Consultorias, Ltd, allows us to evaluate the complex extension of the possible validity of these ventures when facing all these changes.

In manufacturing, automation has replaced many dangerous, mundane, arduous and routine manual operations, for example, transportation of heavy parts, stamping of large parts, repetitive welding and bolt fastening. However, skilled operators still carry out critical manual processes in various industries such as aerospace, automotive and heavy-machinery. As automation technology progresses through more flexible and intelligent systems, the potential for these processes to be automated increases. However, the decision to undertake automation is a complex one, involving consideration of many factors such as return of investment, health and safety, life cycle impact, competitive advantage, and resources and technology availability. A key challenge to manufacturing automation is the ability to adapt to process variability. In manufacturing processes, human operators apply their skills to adapt to variability, in order to meet the product and process specifications or requirements. This thesis is focussed on understanding the 'variability involved in these manual processes, and how it may influence the automation solution'. Two manual industrial processes in polishing and de-burring of high-value components were observed to evaluate the extent of the variability and how the operators applied their skills to overcome it. Based on the findings from the literature and process studies, a framework was developed to categorise variability in manual manufacturing processes and to suggest a level of automation for the tasks in the processes, based on scores and weights given to the parameters by the user. The novelty of this research lies in the creation of a framework to categorise and evaluate process variability, suggesting an appropriate level of automation. The framework uses five attributes of processes; inputs, outputs, strategy, time and requirements and twelve parameters (quantity, range or interval of variability, interdependency, diversification, number of alternatives, number of actions, patterned actions, concurrency, time restriction, sensorial domain, cognitive requisite and physical requisites) to evaluate variability inherent in the process. The level of automation suggested is obtained through a system of scores and weights for each parameter. The weights were calculated using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) with the help of three experts in manufacturing processes. Finally, this framework was validated through its application to two processes consisting of a lab-based peg-in-a-hole manual process and an industrial process on welding. In addition, the framework was further applied to three processes (two industrial processes and one process simulated in the laboratory) by two subjects for each process to verify the consistency of the results obtained. The results suggest that the framework is robust when applied by different subjects, presenting high similarity in outputs. Moreover, the framework was found to be effective when characterising variability present in the processes where it was applied. The framework was developed and tested in manufacturing of high value components, with high potential to be applied to processes in other industries, for instance, automotive, heavy machinery, pharmaceutical or electronic components, although this would need further investigation. Thus, future work would include the application of the framework in processes in other industries, hence enhancing its robustness and widening its scope of applicability. Additionally, a database would be created to assess the correlation between process variability and the level of automation.