Seit 2002 wird das Standardkosten-Modell (SKM) als Ansatz zur Messung von Bürokratiekosten in einer Vielzahl von OECD-Ländern, darunter Deutschland und Großbritannien, angewendet. Im Zentrum dieser Arbeit steht die Frage, warum im Regulierungsreform-Nachzüglerland Deutschland die Ausweitung des Ansatzes auf den Bereich Bürger seit Jahren auf der politischen Agenda steht und bereits erste Schritte zur Umsetzung unternommen wurden, während SKM Bürger im Regulierungsreform-Vorreiterland Großbritannien scheinbar nie auf der Agenda stand. In Anlehnung an einen von Kingdon entwickelten Agenda-Setting-Ansatz werden Unterschiede im Bereich der Problemwahrnehmung, in der Bewertung der Policy SKM sowie im politischen Entstehungsprozess untersucht. Hierbei zeigt sich, dass hinsichtlich der Wahrnehmung des Problems der Bürokratiebelastung signifikante Unterschiede zwischen Deutschland und Großbritannien bestehen, die sich vor allem auf die in Deutschland höhere Intensität der Problemwahrnehmung beziehen. Weitere Unterschiede bestehen bezüglich der Bewertung der Policy SKM, die in Deutschland eine höhere Medienaufmerksamkeit erhält und allgemein positiver bewertet wird. Auch der Entstehungsprozess des SKM, der in Deutschland wesentlich stärker politisiert war als in Großbritannien, trägt zur Erklärung der beobachteten Unterschiede im Agenda-Setting bei. / Since 2002 the Standard Cost Model (SCM) has been used for the measurement of administrative burdens in several OECD countries, among them Germany and the UK. The central question explored in this article is why in the regulatory reform “laggard country” Germany the application of the SCM at the citizen level has been on the political agenda for several years, with the first steps already taken towards implementation, while in the regulatory reform “leader country” UK, the use of the SCM for the measurement of citizens’ administrative burdens has apparently never been on the agenda. Using an agenda setting model developed by Kingdon, differences in the areas of problem perception, assessment of the SCM as a policy, and the political introduction process of the policy are investigated. It is shown that regarding the perception of the problem of bureaucracy significant differences between Germany and the UK exist, in particular relating to the higher intensity of problem perception in Germany. Additional differences are identified regarding the assessment of the SCM policy which has received more media coverage in Germany and is also generally more positively received there. Differences identified in the introduction process, which in Germany has been much more politicised than in the UK, constitute additional explanatory factors.

Nachdem die deutsche Ministerialverwaltung seit nunmehr zwei Jahrzehnten die Anwendung von Folgenabschätzungen weitestgehend ignoriert hat, beschloss das Bundeskabinett im April 2006 ein neues Instrument der better regulation einzuführen: das Standardkosten-Modell (SKM). Ziel der vorliegenden Studie ist es, die Wirksamkeit dieses Instruments zu untersuchen. Dazu wird ein qualitativer Bewertungsmaßstab deduktiv hergeleitet, operationalisiert und empirisch getestet. Das SKM wird demzufolge dann als wirksam erachtet, wenn es 1.) das Kräfteverhältnis zwischen Regulierungsbefürwortern und Regulierungsskeptikern zu Gunsten Letzterer verschiebt und 2.) mit der Einführung des Instruments die Weichen für einen Wandel der Regulierungskultur in der Ministerialverwaltung gestellt werden. Es zeigt sich, dass das Instrument gemäß Annahme 1 als Erfolg bewertet werden kann. Allerdings relativiert sich das Ergebnis, da Annahme 2 nicht erfüllt wird. / After the ministries in Germany have kept ignoring the appliance of impact assessments for more than two decades, the German government decided in April 2006 to introduce a new ‘better regulation’ tool: the Standard Cost Model (SCM). This paper is going to evaluate the SCM’s effectiveness. For this purpose, a qualitative “measure” of success is going to be deductively developed, operationalized, and empirically tested. Hence, the SCM is regarded to be effective if it 1.) shifts the balance of power between regulation supporters and regulation skeptics in favor of the latter and if the SCM 2.) introduces a change of the regulatory culture within public administration. As a result, it turns out that the instrument with respect to hypothesis 1 can be evaluated as a success. However, this success has to be put into perspective because hypothesis 2 does not apply.

Cost models are an essential part of database systems, as they are the basis of query performance optimization. Based on predictions made by cost models, the fastest query execution plan can be chosen and executed or algorithms can be tuned and optimised. In-memory databases shifts the focus from disk to main memory accesses and CPU costs, compared to disk based systems where input and output costs dominate the overall costs and other processing costs are often neglected. However, modelling memory accesses is fundamentally different and common models do not apply anymore. This work presents a detailed parameter evaluation for the plan operators scan with equality selection, scan with range selection, positional lookup and insert in in-memory column stores. Based on this evaluation, a cost model based on cache misses for estimating the runtime of the considered plan operators using different data structures is developed. Considered are uncompressed columns, bit compressed and dictionary encoded columns with sorted and unsorted dictionaries. Furthermore, tree indices on the columns and dictionaries are discussed. Finally, partitioned columns consisting of one partition with a sorted and one with an unsorted dictionary are investigated. New values are inserted in the unsorted dictionary partition and moved periodically by a merge process to the sorted partition. An efficient attribute merge algorithm is described, supporting the update performance required to run enterprise applications on read-optimised databases. Further, a memory traffic based cost model for the merge process is provided. / Kostenmodelle sind ein essentieller Teil von Datenbanksystemen und bilden die Basis für Optimierungen von Ausführungsplänen. Durch Abschätzungen der Kosten können die entsprechend schnellsten Operatoren und Algorithmen zur Abarbeitung einer Anfrage ausgewählt und ausgeführt werden. Hauptspeicherresidente Datenbanken verschieben den Fokus von I/O Operationen hin zu Zugriffen auf den Hauptspeicher und CPU Kosten, verglichen zu Datenbanken deren primäre Kopie der Daten auf Sekundärspeicher liegt und deren Kostenmodelle sich in der Regel auf die kostendominierenden Zugriffe auf das Sekundärmedium beschränken. Kostenmodelle für Zugriffe auf Hauptspeicher unterscheiden sich jedoch fundamental von Kostenmodellen für Systeme basierend auf Festplatten, so dass alte Modelle nicht mehr greifen. Diese Arbeit präsentiert eine detaillierte Parameterdiskussion, sowie ein Kostenmodell basierend auf Cache-Zugriffen zum Abschätzen der Laufzeit von Datenbankoperatoren in spaltenorientierten und hauptspeicherresidenten Datenbanken wie das Selektieren von Werten einer Spalte mittels einer Gleichheitsbedingung oder eines Wertebereichs, das Nachschlagen der Werte einzelner Positionen oder dem Hinzufügen neuer Werte. Dabei werden Kostenfunktionen für die Operatoren erstellt, welche auf unkomprimierten Spalten, mittels Substitutionskompression komprimierten Spalten sowie bit-komprimierten Spalten operieren. Des Weiteren werden Baumstrukturen als Index Strukturen auf Spalten und Wörterbüchern in die Betrachtung gezogen. Abschließend werden partitionierte Spalten eingeführt, welche aus einer lese- und einer schreib-optimierten Partition bestehen. Neu Werte werden in die schreiboptimierte Partition eingefügt und periodisch von einem Attribut-Merge-Prozess mit der leseoptimierten Partition zusammengeführt. Beschrieben wird eine Effiziente Implementierung für den Attribut-Merge-Prozess und ein Hauptspeicher-bandbreitenbasiertes Kostenmodell aufgestellt.

Energy is increasingly becoming more important in today&rsquo / s world. Ascending of energy consumption due to development of technology and dense population of earth causes greenhouse effect. One of the most valuable energy sources is hydro energy. Because of limited energy sources and excessive energy usage, cost of energy is rising. There are many ways to generate electricity. Among the electricity generation units, hydroelectric power plants are very important, since they are renewable energy sources and they have no fuel cost. Electricity is one of the most expensive input in production. Every hydro energy potential should be considered when making investment on this hydro energy potential. To decide whether a hydroelectric power plant investment is feasible or not, project cost and amount of electricity generation of the investment should be precisely estimated. This study is about cost estimation of hydroelectric power plant projects. Many design parameters and complexity of construction affect the cost of hydroelectric power plant projects. In this thesis fifty four hydroelectric power plant projects are analyzed. The data set is analyzed by using regression analysis and artificial neural network tools. As a result, two cost estimation models have been developed to determine the hydroelectric power plant project cost in early stage of the project.

Geschäftsanwendungen wie Supply Chain Management (SCM) oder Customer Relationship Management (CRM) werden repliziert, um eine hohe Skalierbarkeit und schnellen lokalen Zugriff zu erreichen. Die Geschäftsobjekte als Datencontainer der Anwendungen müssen infolge von Änderungen synchronisiert werden. Diese Arbeit leistet einen Beitrag zur Effizienzsteigerung des Synchronisationsprozesses durch die Reduzierung der Anzahl der Synchronisationsnachrichten sowie der zu übertragenden Datenmenge - auch unter Berücksichtigung des entstehenden Mehraufwands durch zusätzliche Verarbeitungsprozesse. / Business applications such as supply chain management (SCM) or customer relationship management (CRM) are replicated in order to reach high scalability and fast local access. The business objects representing the data containers have to be synchronized to stay consistent across the application servers. This thesis provides a contribution to reach more efficiency during the synchronization process by reducing the amount of synchronization messages and the amount of data to be transmitted. The additional effort due to further processing steps is taken into account via a proper cost model.

We consider cache replacement algorithms at a shared cache in a multicore system which receives an arbitrary interleaving of requests from processes that have full knowledge about their individual request sequences. We establish tight bounds on the competitive ratio of deterministic and randomized cache replacement strategies when processes share memory blocks. Our main result for this case is a deterministic algorithm called GLOBAL-MAXIMA which is optimum up to a constant factor when processes share memory blocks. Our framework is a generalization of the application controlled caching framework in which processes access disjoint sets of memory blocks. We also present a deterministic algorithm called RR-PROC-MARK which exactly matches the lower bound on the competitive ratio of deterministic cache replacement algorithms when processes access disjoint sets of memory blocks. We extend our results to multiple levels of caches and prove that an exclusive cache is better than both inclusive and non-inclusive caches; this validates the experimental findings in the literature. Our results could be applied to shared caches in multicore systems in which processes work together on multithreaded computations like Gaussian elimination paradigm, fast Fourier transform, matrix multiplication, etc. In these computations, processes have full knowledge about their individual request sequences and can share memory blocks. / text

Thesis (MScEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In a move towards cleaner and more sustainable energy systems, hydrogen as an energy carrier and hydrogen fuel cells as energy converters are receiving increasing global attention. Considering the vital role that platinum plays in the operation of hydrogen fuels cells, South Africa stands to gain enormously as the world’s leading platinum group metals supplier. Therefore, in order to benefit across the whole value chain, it is imperative to develop the capability to manufacture hydrogen fuel cell stacks locally. This project addresses this imperative, in part, by building a framework to evaluate the manufacturing performance of one of the more costly components of the hydrogen fuel cell stack. More specifically, this project builds a cost evaluation model (or cost model) for the manufacture of bipolar plates using micro milling. In essence, the model characterises manufacturing cost (and time) as a function of relevant inputs. The model endeavours to be flexible in accommodating relevant contributing cost drivers such as tool life and manufacturing time. Moreover, the model lays the groundwork, from a micro milling perspective, for a comparison of different manufacturing methods for bipolar plates. The approach taken in building the cost model is a fundamental one, owing to the lack of historical cost data for this particular process. As such, manufacturing knowledge and experimentation are used to build the cost model in a structured way. The process followed in building the cost model begins with the formulation of the cost components by reviewing relevant examples from literature. Thereafter, two main cost drivers are comprehensively addressed. Tool life is characterised experimentally as a function of cutting parameters and manufacturing time is characterised as a function of relevant inputs. The work is then synthesized into a coherent cost model. Following the completion of the cost model, analysis is done to find the near-optimal combination of machine cutting parameters. Further, analysis is done to quantify the sensitivity of manufacturing cost to design changes and production volumes. This attempts to demonstrate how typical managerial issues can be addressed using the cost model format. The value of this work must be seen in terms of its practical contribution. That is, its contribution to the development of the capability to manufacture hydrogen fuel cells locally. By understanding the effect of relevant input factors on manufacturing cost, ‘upstream’ design and development activities can be integrated with ‘downstream’ manufacturing activities. Therefore, this project supports the development of manufacturing capability by providing a mechanism to control cost throughout the process. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In die soeke na skoner, meer volhoubare energie bronne word die fokus op waterstof, as energie draer, en waterstof brandstofselle, as energie omskakelaars, al meer verskerp. Deur die sleutelrol van platinum in die werking van waterstof brandstofselle in ag te neem, word Suid-Afrika, as die wêreld se grootste platinum verskaffer, in `n uitstekende posisie geplaas om voordeel te trek uit hierdie geleentheid. Om dus as land voordeel te trek uit die proses in geheel, is dit van kardinale belang om die vermoë te ontwikkel om waterstof brandstofsel stapels op eie bodem te vervaardig. Hierdie projek adresseer gedeeltelik hierdie noodsaaklikheid, deur `n raamwerk te bou wat die vervaardigingsoptrede van een van die meer duursame komponente van die waterstof brandstofsel stapel evalueer. Meer spesifiek, bou hierdie projek `n koste evaluerings model (of koste model) vir die vervaardiging van bipolêre plate deur die gebruik van mikro-masjienering. In wese kenmerk hierdie model vervaardigings kostes (en tyd) as `n funksie van relevante insette. Hierdie model poog om buigsaam te wees met die in ag neming van relevante bydraende kostedrywers soos buitelleeftyd en vervaardigingstyd. Daarbenewens lê hierdie model die grondwerk, vanuit `n mikro masjienerings oogpunt, vir die vergelyking van verskillende vervaardingings metodes vir bipolêre plate. Die benadering wat gevolg word in die bou van die koste model is fundamenteel as gevolg van die gebrek van historiese data vir hierdie spesifieke proses. As sodanig word vervaardigings kennis en eksperimentering gebruik om die koste model in `n gestruktueerde wyse te bou. Die proses gevolg in die bou van die koste model begin met die formulering van die koste komponente deur die hersiening van relevante voorbeelde vanuit die literatuur. Daarna word twee hoof koste drywers deeglik geadresseer. Buitelleeftyd word ekperimenteel gekenmerk as funksie van masjieneringsparameters en vervaardigingstyd word gekenmerk as `n funksie van relevante insette. Die werk word dan gesintetiseer in `n samehangende koste model. Wat volg op die voltooiing van die koste model is `n analise om die optimale kombinasie masjieneringsparameters te vind. Daaropvolgens word analises gedoen om die sensitiwiteit van vervaardigingskoste onderworpe aan ontwerpsveranderings en produksie volumes te kwantisfiseer. Dit poog om te demostreer hoe tipiese bestuursproblem geadresseer kan word deur die koste model formaat te gebruik. Die waarde van hierdie werk moet in die lig van die praktiese bydrae daarvan gesien word, menende, die bydrae tot die ontwikkeling van die vermoë om waterstof brandstofselle in Suid-Afrika te vervaardig. Deur die effek van relevante inset faktore op vervaardigingskoste te verstaan, kan ‘stroom-op’ ontwerp en ontwikkelings aktiwiteite geïntegreer word met ‘stroom-af’ vervaardigings aktiwiteite. Dus, hierdie projek ondersteun die ontwikkeling van vervaardigingsvermoëns deur `n meganisme te voorsien om kostes oor die omvang van die proses te beheer.

PostNord Logistics TPL AB (PostNord) är en av de största aktörerna inom tredjepartslogistik i Norden. Vid däcklagret i Norrköping står PostNord för logistikaktiviteter i samband med inleveranser, lagring, förädling och utleveranser åt flera återförsäljare. Personalkostnader är den överlägset största kostnadsposten och därför fokuserar ledningen på produktivitet, exempelvis genom effektivisering och högre precision vid bemanningsplanering. Studiens syfte var därför att utveckla en kostnadsmodell baserat på tidsdriven ABC-kalkylering för den operativa verksamheten i däcklagret, som kan tillämpas för att stödja PostNords arbete med att driva produktivitet. Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) är en metodik för att uppskatta åtgången av resurser som personal och maskiner för olika transaktioner, produkter eller kunder. Genom att modellera aktiviteter i tidsekvationer som bygger på tidsuppskattningar är det möjligt att visa vad som påverkar tidsåtgång. Tidsekvationer för de tre aktiviteterna montering, lossning och inlagring utvecklades. Tillvägagångsättet bestod av avstämningar och bearbetning av data, regressionsanalyser, tidsstudier, intervjuer, observationer samt färdigställande och verifiering av kostnadsmodeller i Excel. De färdiga kostnadsmodellerna uppvisade både rimlighet och lovande precision dag-för-dag. Därefter utvecklades fyra användargränssnitt; what-if analyser för montering, lossning och inlagring samt bemanningsplanering för montering. Via användbarhetstester inspirerade av tänka-högt-metoden visades att verktygen var användbara och att de förväntas kunna stödja arbetet med att driva produktivitet i form av effektivisering och bemanningsplanering. I litteraturen finns ett uttalat behov av vidare studier av metodiken TDABC, inklusive designprocessen för TDABC och specifikt framtagning av tidsuppskattningar för tidsekvationerna. Den här studien bidrar till metodiken på följande fyra sätt. 1) En övergripande metod (process) för tidsdriven ABC-kalkylering som framtida studier kan använda. 2) Lärdomar kring specifika aspekter av den övergripande metoden som intervjuer, avstämningar och bearbetning av data samt användning av regressionsanalyser och tidsstudier. 3) Exempel på egenskaper hos den färdiga kostnadsmodellen och implikationer av dem. 4) Anvisningar gällande viktiga val (ställningstaganden) för modelleringen av tidsekvationer och implikationer av dem. / PostNord Logistics TPL AB (PostNord) is one of the largest third-party logistics providers in the Nordics. At the tire warehouse in Norrköping, PostNord performs logistics activities within inbound, storage, production and outbound for several retailers/distributors. Labor is by far the largest cost and hence the management focuses on productivity, for example by efficiency and improving precision in workforce management. The purpose of this study was therefore to develop a cost model based on Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) for the warehouse operations, which can be applied to support PostNord’s efforts to drive productivity. TDABC is a methodology to estimate the consumption of resources such as personnel and equipment caused by different transactions, products or customers. By modelling activities in time equations which are based on time estimates it is possible to show what impacts time consumption (man-hours required). Time equations for the three activities assembly, receiving and putaway were developed. The approach included verifying and processing data, regression analyses, time studies, interviews, observations and finalization and validation of the cost models in Excel. The finalized models proved to be reasonable and to offer promising precision day-to-day. Next, four user interfaces were developed; what-if analyses for assembly, receiving and putaway as well as staff scheduling for assembly. Via usability tests inspired by the think-aloud method it was shown that the applications were usable and expected to support the efforts to drive productivity by efficiency and precision in staffing. In the literature, there is an articulated need for further studies of the TDABC methodology, including the design process for TDABC and specifically the development of time estimates for the time equations. This study contributes to the methodology in the following four ways. 1) An overall method (process) for TDABC which future studies may utilize. 2) Learnings about specific aspects of the overall method regarding interviews, verifying and processing data, as well as the use of regression analysis and time study. 3) Examples of characteristics of the finalized cost models and implications of them. 4) Guidance regarding important choices for the modelling of time equations and implications of them.

The application offloading problem for Mobile Cloud Computing aims at improving the mobile user experience by leveraging the resources of the cloud. The execution of the mobile application is offloaded to the cloud, saving energy at the mobile device or speeding up the execution of the application. We improve the accuracy and performance of application offloading solutions in three main directions. First, we propose a novel fine-grained application model that supports complex module dependencies such as sequential, conditional and parallel module executions. The model also allows for multiple offloading decisions that are tailored towards the current application, network, or user contexts. As a result, the model is more precise in capturing the structure of the application and supports more complex offloading solutions. Second, we propose three cost models, namely, average-based, statistics-based and interval-based cost models, defined for the proposed application model. The average-based approach models each module cost by the expected cost value, and the expected cost of the entire application is estimated considering each of the three module dependencies. The novel statistics-based cost model employs Cumulative Distribution Function (CDFs) to represent the costs of the modules and of the mobile application, which is estimated considering the cost and dependencies of the modules. This cost model opens the doors for new statistics-based optimization functions and constraints whereas the state of the art only support optimizations based on the average running cost of the application. Furthermore, this cost model can be used to perform statistical analysis of the performance of the application in different scenarios such as varying network data rates. The last cost model, the interval-based, represents the module costs via intervals in order to addresses the cost uncertainty while having lower requirements and computational complexity than the statistics-based model. The cost of the application is estimated as an expected maximum cost via a linear optimization function. Finally, we present offloading decision algorithms for each cost model. For the average-based model, we present a fast optimal dynamic programming algorithm. For the statistics-based model, we present another fast optimal dynamic programming algorithm for the scenario where the optimization function meets specific properties. Finally, for the interval-based cost model, we present a robust formulation that solves a linear number of linear optimization problems. Our evaluations verify the accuracy of the models and show higher cost savings for our solutions when compared to the state of the art.

El presente trabajo de investigación, presenta una propuesta de Caso de Negocio para el proyecto: Implementar IEC 61850 en una Subestación Existente del Tipo Convencional en Operación, el cual permitirá contar con tecnologías actualizadas para dar mayor eficiencia y rentabilidad al negocio. En ese sentido para poder determinar la viabilidad de la implementación del proyecto, hemos aplicando las buenas prácticas de la Guía PMBOK®, el cual describe elementos de Dirección de Proyectos para definir el alcance, cronograma y costos (Capex), así como también el desarrollo de un caso de negocio determinando los indicadores financieros para evaluar la viabilidad del Proyecto. Como resultado de ello, obtenemos TIR: 14.36%, PRI: 6.75 Años, IR: 1.16, ROI: 16.06%, VAN: 153,100.55 USD, Finalmente, los resultados a los que llegamos nos hacen mostrar que nuestro proyecto es altamente factible de ponerse en marcha, por el impacto en los costos de operación (Opex), operatividad de la subestación, reducción del impacto ambiental, incremento de seguridad, disponibilidad del servicio y flexibilidad. / This research paper presents a Business Case proposal for the implement IEC 61850 project in an already existing thus conventional substation throughout its operation. Therefore this will grant having updated technologies to provide greater efficiency and profitability to the business. In this scenario, in order to determine the feasibility of the project implementation, the good practices of the PMBOK®️ Guide, were applied, in which it is described the elements of Project Management to define the scope, schedule and costs (Capex), as well as the development of a business case determining the financial indicators to assess the feasibility of the Project. As a result, we obtained IRR: 14.36%, PRI: 6.75 Years, IR: 1.16, ROI: 16.06%, NPV: 153,100.55 USD, Eventually, the results show that our project is highly achievable to implement, due to the impact on operating costs (Opex), optimization of substation operation, reduction of environmental impact, increased safety, greater service availability and flexibility. / Trabajo de investigación