With the development of the economy in today’s business world, competitiveness became more important than ever before in every sector. How to keep advantages during global trade and survive the strong competitive environment has become an issue which multinational enterprises also have to face. Outsourcing occurred under these circumstances. This study has integrated outsourcing theories and the empirical study aims to analyses the method and strategy to combining sustainable quality with cost reduction through outsourcing. This study was done in the context of outsourcing  from Sweden to China. Ergorapido of Electrolux is the example-case study used to investigate methods in both cost reduction and quality control. The data was collected by questionnaires, interviews and tele-conference interviews. The paper found that outsourcing has three stages. The first stage is the assessment of the motivations and risks associated with the process of outsourcing. The second stage is the decision making process involved in outsourcing and the arrangement of the outsourcing. The third stage is the management of the relationship with suppliers. Furthermore, both of the participants can benefit from outsourcing no matter whether it is the OEM supplier or the outsourced supply company. Electrolux is a famous company which is successful as a result of outsourcing. All Swedish share enterprises, whether small, medium or large, share the same domestic and international trade climate. If Electrolux can successfully outsource on a global basis,  so can they.

Many articles have been written on the effect and potential benefit of cost reduction, downsizing and expense management. Most of these articles have conflicting messages, some even internally within the same article.The objective of this research was to critically evaluate these articles and to see if there was any evidence of the economic effects of cost reduction from the South African experience. The evaluation of the articles was done by a process of deductive reasoning with some help from the principles found within the application of the Theory of Constraints. The research further used a quantitative design to analyse the effect of a cost reduction event on certain ratios and the share price performance relative to an appropriate index over a period of six years after the event.The research has shown that at least some of the academic articles on this subject made different implicit assumptions during the research process. The results from the quantitative research have shown that there were no significant evidence of any effect on the ratios and share price performance from the South African market experience. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

No Abstract Provided

Energy cost-reduction projects implemented on complex industrial systems present several challenges. The involvement of multiple project stakeholders associated with programmes such as demand side management (DSM) further increases potential risks. The process of determining project impacts is especially important due to the direct financial impact on stakeholders. A good understanding of the independent measurement and verification (M&V) process is therefore vital to ensure an unbiased process. A review of existing M&V frameworks and guidelines found that M&V protocols and templates are well developed and widely implemented. Unfortunately, the official literature provides little guidance on the practical M&V of industrial DSM projects. This prompted a detailed literature analysis of numerous publications to ascertain the industry norm. The diverse results obtained are categorised, normalised and graphically presented to highlight shortcomings in present M&V processes. This thesis develops several practical methodologies and guidelines to address the needs highlighted by the literature analysis. Three chapters are dedicated to the development and verification of these solutions. The first entails the evaluation of data quality with the aim of producing an accurate and error-free dataset. The second develops, evaluates and ultimately selects a baseline model representative of normal system operations. The final chapter presents project performance and uses existing methods to monitor system changes and project performance over the long term. The new methodologies are designed to simplify the practical implementation of different processes. Results are graphically presented thereby enabling quick and intuitive evaluation whilst adhering to present M&V requirements. This makes the M&V process accessible to all stakeholders and enables the transparent development and improvement of all processes. The practical application of the new methodologies is verified by using 25 industrial case studies. The results obtained are validated using data obtained from independent third parties. This proves the functionality of the methodologies and highlights trends that can be evaluated in future studies. The new methodologies improve the accuracy and efficiency of the evaluation process. The potential annual impacts amount to R27 million for DSM stakeholders and R19 million for M&V teams. The extrapolation of these results indicates a massive potential impact on international projects. These results, albeit estimates, confirm the significant contribution of the new methodologies. I would like to officially thank Prof. Eddie Mathews and Prof. Marius Kleingeld for granting me the opportunity to work under their guidance. Thanks to all the staff at the Centre for Research and Continued Engineering Development Pretoria, who created the ideal environment for working and learning. I would also like to thank TEMM International (Pty) Ltd for the bursary without which my studies would not be possible. Finally, I would like to thank my fellow students as well as all the industry professionals whom I had the privilege of working with. On a personal note, I would like to thank God for making all things possible. Thank you my dearest family, friends and all who had a profound impact on my life. For you I quote Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist: “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”. Thank you for your love, sacrifice, support and being part of my universe. I dedicate this work to you. / PhD (Electrical Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Energy cost-reduction projects implemented on complex industrial systems present several challenges. The involvement of multiple project stakeholders associated with programmes such as demand side management (DSM) further increases potential risks. The process of determining project impacts is especially important due to the direct financial impact on stakeholders. A good understanding of the independent measurement and verification (M&V) process is therefore vital to ensure an unbiased process. A review of existing M&V frameworks and guidelines found that M&V protocols and templates are well developed and widely implemented. Unfortunately, the official literature provides little guidance on the practical M&V of industrial DSM projects. This prompted a detailed literature analysis of numerous publications to ascertain the industry norm. The diverse results obtained are categorised, normalised and graphically presented to highlight shortcomings in present M&V processes. This thesis develops several practical methodologies and guidelines to address the needs highlighted by the literature analysis. Three chapters are dedicated to the development and verification of these solutions. The first entails the evaluation of data quality with the aim of producing an accurate and error-free dataset. The second develops, evaluates and ultimately selects a baseline model representative of normal system operations. The final chapter presents project performance and uses existing methods to monitor system changes and project performance over the long term. The new methodologies are designed to simplify the practical implementation of different processes. Results are graphically presented thereby enabling quick and intuitive evaluation whilst adhering to present M&V requirements. This makes the M&V process accessible to all stakeholders and enables the transparent development and improvement of all processes. The practical application of the new methodologies is verified by using 25 industrial case studies. The results obtained are validated using data obtained from independent third parties. This proves the functionality of the methodologies and highlights trends that can be evaluated in future studies. The new methodologies improve the accuracy and efficiency of the evaluation process. The potential annual impacts amount to R27 million for DSM stakeholders and R19 million for M&V teams. The extrapolation of these results indicates a massive potential impact on international projects. These results, albeit estimates, confirm the significant contribution of the new methodologies. I would like to officially thank Prof. Eddie Mathews and Prof. Marius Kleingeld for granting me the opportunity to work under their guidance. Thanks to all the staff at the Centre for Research and Continued Engineering Development Pretoria, who created the ideal environment for working and learning. I would also like to thank TEMM International (Pty) Ltd for the bursary without which my studies would not be possible. Finally, I would like to thank my fellow students as well as all the industry professionals whom I had the privilege of working with. On a personal note, I would like to thank God for making all things possible. Thank you my dearest family, friends and all who had a profound impact on my life. For you I quote Paulo Coelho’s Alchemist: “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”. Thank you for your love, sacrifice, support and being part of my universe. I dedicate this work to you. / PhD (Electrical Engineering), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / New Norwegian anti-ship missile program (NSM) has evaluated both the fixed format and the packet telemetry for its log/telemetry system. It is important that the NSM log system is easy to reconfigure, since the system shall be used during debugging, lab testing, system testing, test firings, and later on for operational evaluation firings. The packet telemetry standard has been selected because the packet telemetry provides dynamics and flexibility for changes, which are not easy to achieve with fixed format. Test results and system experience will be available before October and a summary will be presented at the ITC 2000 conference.

The purpose of this study is to examine single facility warehouse location models. The need for such a study is primarily two-fold. First, single facility warehouse location models which determine an alleged optimum location through a coordinate system have been developed. Secondly, the need for additional research is necessary because the approaches involving linear programming, simulation, or heuristic programming do not by definition generate an optimal location.

This research proposes the use of electric energy storage (EES) in conjunction with a power generation unit organic Rankine cycle system (PGU-ORC). The EES is used when available so that continuous operation of the PGU is not required. The potential of the PGU-ORC-EES system’s performance is evaluated in terms of operational cost, primary energy consumption (PEC), and carbon dioxide emissions (CDE) from simulations of a restaurant building in twelve U.S. locations with different climate conditions. The performance of the proposed system is compared to a conventional system. Results indicate that the EES addition to the PGU-ORC system is beneficial for most locations. Ratios between electricity and fuel cost, CDE conversion factors, and PEC conversion factors are used to estimate potential performance benefits. The effect of the EES size and the capital cost available are also analyzed.

El presente proyecto de tesis tiene como finalidad proporcionar a las empresas del sector servicios un modelo basado en distintas estrategias de recursos humanos para disminuir el costo de rotación. El modelo contiene: Employer Branding, Talent Management y Entrenamientos alineados a los procesos de recursos humanos. El desarrollo del modelo empieza con el análisis de la problemática de la empresa con la definición del problema y las causas, para luego establecer objetivos y plantear el plan de acción con las mejoras que serán implementadas. El modelo se prueba en una empresa de comida rápida. Luego de asegurar cuál es el problema se procede a ejecutar el plan de acción y con ello las mejoras al modelo. / The purpose of this thesis project is to provide companies in the service sector with a model based on different human resources strategies to reduce the cost of rotation. The model contains: Employer Branding, Talent Management and Training aligned to human resources processes. The development of the model begins with the analysis of the problems of the company with the definition of the problem and the causes, to then establish objectives and propose the action plan with the improvements that will be implemented. The model is tested in a fast food company. After ensuring what the problem is, we proceed to execute the action plan and with it the improvements to the model. / Tesis

Ensuring the resilience of self-adaptive systems used in critical infrastructure systems is a concern as their failure has severe societal and financial consequences. The current trends in the growth of the scale and complexity of society's workload demands and the systems built to cope with these demands increases the anxiety surrounding service disruptions. Self-adaptive mechanisms instill dynamic behavior to systems in an effort to improve their resilience to runtime changes that would otherwise result in service disruption or failure, such as faults, errors, and attacks. Thus, the evaluation of a self-adaptive system's resilience is critical to ensure expected operational qualities and elicit trust in their services. However, resilience benchmarking is often overlooked or avoided due to the high cost associated with evaluating the runtime behavior of large and complex self-adaptive systems against an almost infinite number of possible runtime changes. Researchers have focused on techniques to reduce the overall costs of benchmarking while ensuring the comprehensiveness of the evaluation as testing costs have been found to account for 50 to 80% of total system costs. These test suite minimization techniques include the removal of irrelevant, redundant, and repetitive test cases to ensure that only relevant tests that adequately elicit the expected system responses are enumerated. However, these approaches require an exhaustive test suite be defined first and then the irrelevant tests are filtered out, potentially negating any cost savings. This dissertation provides a new approach of defining a resilience changeload for self-adaptive systems by incorporating goal-oriented requirements engineering techniques to extract system information and guide the identification of relevant runtime changes. The approach constructs a goal refinement graph consisting of the system's refined goals, runtime actions, self-adaptive agents, and underlying runtime assumptions that is used to identify obstructing conditions to runtime goal attainment. Graph theory is then used to gauge the impact of obstacles on runtime goal attainment and those that exceed the relevance requirement are included in the resilience changeload for enumeration. The use of system knowledge to guide the changeload definition process increased the relevance of the resilience changeload while minimizing the test suite, resulting in a reduction of overall benchmarking costs. Analysis of case study results confirmed that the new approach was more cost effective on the same subject system over previous work. The new approach was shown to reduce the overall costs by 79.65%, increase the relevance of the defined test suite, reduce the amount of wasted effort, and provide a greater return on investment over previous work by a factor of two.