DHL, the international air express service provider, set up its first branch in Taiwan in 1973. UPS and FedEx, followed in the forerunner¡¦s footsteps, and joined the market as well. Together with the Chunghwa Post Corporation, these four major international express service providers have made the international express marketplace in Taiwan a very competitive environment. Until now, the competition is pretty much settled with DHL having a majority of the market share in both B2B and B2C markets. The main reason why DHL dominants the industry is due to its cooperative relationship with 7-ELEVEN, the largest convenient chain store in Taiwan. DHL customers can drop-off their shipment or packages at any 7-Eleven in Taiwan. Nevertheless, there are still underlining problems and concerns in regard to the business relationship with 7-Eleven which the company needs to pay attention to. First of all, are the 7-Eleven service personnel receiving professional training needed for DHL distribution channels? Second, is the image of 7-ELEVEN stores consistent with that of DHL? Third, is there strong connections and bonding between DHL express operations and 7-Eleven? These are some questions that are often omitted in the B2C market for the international express enterprises; and yet, these questions are the sources of the company¡¦s internal competitive advantages. This study aims to provide an in-depth interview with international express corporations in the B2C market, channel providers that cooperates with the international express corporations, and the international express customers in Kaohsiung. In terms of international express corporations, the question focuses mostly on the company¡¦s marketing strategies including marketing target, product, price, promotion and channels. In terms of channel providers, the center of attention focuses on marketing channels, cooperation strategies, receiving status, and store locations. In terms of customer impressions, the interview focuses mainly on the issues of user experiences, delivery process, package tracking systems, attitudes of service personnel, prices, service satisfactions and whether recommendations are made to other people. The research findings suggested that DHL is still the leader of the B2C marketplace in Taiwan. Those companies that are closer to their customers win the market share. As for 7-Eleven, by providing product and service diversity, the company actually becomes a concern for DHL for being ¡§unprofessional¡¨. It is found that DHL distribution channels often lose packages during the delivery process. FedEx decided on its distribution channel locations based on the channels¡¦ profit incomes. In terms of employee training for distribution channels, FedEx provides a more complete program than DHL. If a comparison is made with these express companies¡¦ advantages, the Chunghwa Post Corporation provides cheap services; DHL has the most distribution channels in Taiwan; FedEx provides the fastest international express services; and UPS has the most complete distribution channels around the world. The key factor to international express success is the degree of professionalism. The distribution channel personnel must be able to provide clear and precise answers and services in order to gain customer satisfaction or even recommendations to potential new customers. In conclusion, this paper will provide some suggestions and future study suggestions for both the researchers and international express companies. And hopefully provide some valuable information and suggestions to international express companies for their future competitive developments.

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The task assignment problem is one of the fundamental combinatorial optimization problems. It has been extensively studied in operation research, management science, computer science and robotics. Task assignment problems arise in various applications of multi-robot systems (MRS), such as environmental monitoring, disaster response, extraterrestrial exploration, sensing data collection and collaborative autonomous manufacturing. In these MRS applications, there are realistic constraints on robots and tasks that must be taken into account both from the modeling perspective and the algorithmic perspective. From the modeling aspect, such constraints include (a) Task group constraints: where tasks form disjoint groups and each robot can be assigned to at most one task in each group. One example of the group constraints comes from tightly-coupled tasks, where multiple micro tasks form one tightly-coupled macro task and need multiple robots to perform each simultaneously. (b) Task deadline constraints: where tasks must be assigned to meet their deadlines. (c) Dynamically-arising tasks: where tasks arrive dynamically and the payoffs of future tasks are unknown. Such tasks arise in scenarios like searchrescue, where new victims are found dynamically. (d) Robot budget constraints: where the number of tasks each robot can perform is bounded according to the resource it possesses (e.g., energy). From the solution aspect, there is often a need for decentralized solution that are implemented on individual robots, especially when no powerful centralized controller exists or when the system needs to avoid single-point failure or be adaptive to environmental changes. Most existing algorithms either do not consider the above constraints in problem modeling, are centralized or do not provide formal performance guarantees. In this thesis, I propose methods to address these issues for two classes of problems, namely, the constrained linear assignment problem and constrained generalized assignment problem. Constrained linear assignment problem belongs to P, while constrained generalized assignment problem is NP-hard. I develop decomposition-based distributed auction algorithms with performance guarantees for both problem classes. The multi-robot assignment problem is decomposed into an optimization problem for each robot and each robot iteratively solving its own optimization problem leads to a provably good solution to the overall problem. For constrained linear assignment problem, my approaches provides an almost optimal solution. For constrained generalized assignment problem, I present a distributed algorithm that provides a solution within a constant factor of the optimal solution. I also study the online version of the task allocation problem with task group constraints. For the online problem, I prove that a repeated greedy version of my algorithm gives solution with constant factor competitive ratio. I include simulation results to evaluate the average-case performance of the proposed algorithms. I also include results on multi-robot cooperative package transport to illustrate the approach.

University, Diss., 2004--Saarbrücken.

O presente estudo, de abordagem qualitativa e descritiva, investiga as relações entre as teorias sobre Economia Criativa, Vantagem Competitiva, Cadeia de Valor e Qualidade no Mercado de Luxo objetivando identificar a contribuição do Programa do Polo de Joias do Pará para a criação de valor na indústria de joias do referido estado brasileiro. O método de pesquisa utilizado abrangeu a construção de proposições a partir da literatura revisada e reduzida, a realização de entrevistas com profissionais do setor joalheiro brasileiro, análise de conteúdo das entrevistas e análise da cadeia de valor do Polo de Joias do Pará com base na observação participante. Os resultados apontam que as estruturas teóricas empregadas neste estudo estão presentes na Cadeia de Valor do Programa do Polo de Joias do Pará, destacando a criação de valor por meio do benefício percebido pelo consumidor. O incipiente estudo cria oportunidade para a realização de novas relações com outros clusters criativos ou para a identificação de atitudes e intenções de compra dos clientes do Polo. / This qualitative and descriptive study investigate the relationship between theories about Creative Economy, Competitive Advantage, Value Chain and Quality in Luxury Market aiming to identify the contribution of the Pará Jewelry Cluster Program for creating value in jewelry industry of that Brazilian state. The research method included the construction of propositions from the literature reviewed and reduced, conducting interviews with professionals in the Brazilian Jewelry Industry, content analysis of the interviews and analysis of value chain of Pará Jewelry Cluster based on observation participant. The results show that the theoretical frameworks used in this study are present in the Value Chain of the Pará Jewelry Cluster Program, highlighting the creation of value through benefit perceived by consumers. The study creates opportunity for the realization of new relationships with other creative clusters or to identify attitudes and purchase intentions of customers from Polo.

Test management tools are used to structure and manage test processes in software and hardware development. The purpose of this project was to design a test report template editor for a test management tool with a focus on usability. Requirements analysis was made using domain analysis and stakeholder interviews. In the design phase, usage scenarios were developed as well as two paper prototypes. A final paper prototype was created based on feedback from the stakeholders. TDR reports is a WYSIWYG editor that provides a set of features that allow users to choose which information to include in their test reports. A basic usability evaluation was performed at the end of the study that indicated that the initial requirements were fulfilled.

The objective of this thesis project focuses on designing and implementing a game portal for web-based motion games whilst achieving high usability. Many systems lack the creativ- ity to design web-usability with all the technical requirements and this study addresses this problem by implementing a front-end system that uses agile methodology with competitive analysis and consumes the back-end system with RESTful architecture by using AngularJS web application framework. Users were involved in the implementation process repetitively and the usability test was done with think aloud protocol and System Usability Scale which involves a questionnaire on paper. It was concluded that a clear and interactive navigation bar made it very useful for users to hover through the website. Having the notifications fixed on the upper right side of the navigation bar made them easily perceived by the users and including all user-related functions under username helped the user reach them easily. It was also concluded that modal view prevented page reloading by gathering users, attention at one point. Adding visual feedback functions such as highlighting the hovered or clicked link were appreciated by the users.

This diploma deals with strategic analysis in a company DK OPEN Ltd. I elaborated an external and an internal analysis in the diploma. I proposed possibilities how to improve a position of the company on the market, to eliminate weaknesses.

This thesis focuses on measuring company´s communication and behaviour on social networks. To capture the interaction between the company and its users the thesis uses web analytics tools. Therefore, the main objective of the thesis is analysis of these tools. To achieve this goal, the thesis characterizes social networks and their marketing opportunities for business promotion. Thanks to this, needs of using these tools is identified. The needs are: competitive analysis, optimizing communication, measuring achievement of objectives or detection competitive viral content. Research questions were determined and then analysis tools found answers to research questions. It was found that the tools provide various views of data and create a complete system for measuring and analysing behaviour and communication companies on social networks. The results were validated in a case study focused on the Facebook profile of the University of Economics in Prague. The study analysed the interaction profile of the school and its users and compared with others schools. In the results the analysis tools are validated and it is designed recommendation for improve engagement. This thesis revealed strengths and weaknesses of tools for measuring company´s communication and behaviour on social networks. It was found that these tools have wide range of use. They can be used for understanding the company's profile, its users, for purposes of competitive analysis, monitor corporate goals and optimize communications on social networks.