本研究以2000至2012年台灣地區26間人壽保險公司的不平衡縱橫資料，運用網絡隨機邊界分析法將壽險業的生產過程分為行銷與投資兩階段進行效率評估，並利用估計結果計算規模彈性與成本彈性探討台灣壽險業的生產特性，附帶分析跨期技術變動率，最後比較不同分組的壽險公司間經營效率是否存在差異。 實證結果發現壽險公司在行銷活動過程投入較少的內勤員工與較多的固定資產，在投資階段則相反，投入較多的內勤員工與較少的固定資產，與壽險公司實際運作情況相符；此外，投資階段的效率優於第一階段的行銷效率。整體台灣壽險業受到2008年金融風暴影響導致經營效率下降，國內壽險公司在經營效率上優於外商壽險分公司，金控壽險公司生產技術效率優於非金控壽險公司，1993年後成立的新壽險公司生產技術效率平均優於傳統舊壽險公司。 / This paper uses the copula-based network SFA model developed by Huang et al. (2013) to estimate the technical efficiency of Taiwan’s life insurance companies over the period 2000-2012. Under this framework, life insurance companies produce premium income as intermediate product which is one of input factors to produce investment income. The empirical analysis concluded: (a) life insurers use little internal staff in first stage, (b) domestic life insurers have both high technical efficiency and cost efficiency in comparison with foreign life insurers, (c) financial holding life insurers have greater technical efficiency than those of not from financial holding insurers, and (d) new life insurers have higher technical efficiency than old life insurers.

Evaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper argues that heterogeneity among universities as well as persistent inefficiency hinder the institutions to achieve full efficiency - at least in the short run. Two standard and one novel specification of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis are applied to a new, comprehensive set of panel data to show how the standard efficiency evaluation changes when both aspects are taken into account. It is the first time that the idea of persistent inefficiency is considered in the analysis of the German Higher Education Sector. The comparison reveals that the disregard of heterogeneity distorts the estimation results towards lower efficiency values. The newly introduced specification improves the accuracy of the heterogeneity assumption and exposes that inefficiency tends to be long term and persistent rather than short term and residual. This implies that increasing efficiency requires a comprehensive change of the university structure.

The following report consists of a master thesis (30 credits) within product development. The thesis is written by Philip Ragnartz and Axel Staffanson, both studying mechanical engineering at Mälardalens University. Developing new components for a production line is costly and time consuming as they must be made from manual measurements and must go through all the conventional manufacturing (CM) steps. Eventual design mistakes will be discovered after the component have been manufactured and tested. To fix the design a completely new component must be designed and therefore double the overall lead time. The purpose of this thesis is to establish how additive manufacturing (AM) can best be used to minimize the cost and lead time in the development of new components. The study was performed by looking at the current product development process in the automotive industry at a large company, here by referred to as company A. 56 components already manufactured at company A´s own tools department was examined and compared to different AM methods. The aim of this was to get a larger pool of data to get an average on production time and cost and see how this differ to the different AM methods. Additionally, two work holders were more closely examined in a case study. Work holder one is a component in the production line that occasionally must be remanufactured. It was examined if this problem could be solved with a desktop plastic printer to hold up for a production batch. Work holder two was the development of a new component, this was to examine the use of printing the component in an early stage impact the development process. The findings from this study is that AM can today not be used in a cost efficient way in manufacturing or development of simple components. This is due to the cost of a metal 3D-printer is still very high, and the building material even higher. This results in components that gets very expensive to make compared to producing them with CM. For design evaluation to be cost efficient there will have to be a design fault in over 12 % of the newly design components for it to be cost effective to print the design for validation before sending it to be manufactured. There are however a lot bigger potential savings in the lead time. Producing the end product with a metal 3D-printer can cut down the lead time up to 85 %. This is thanks to the fact that the printer will produce the component all in one step and therefore not get stuck in between different manufacturing processes. The same goes for design evaluation with printing the component in plastic to confirm the design and not risk having to wait for the component to be manufactured twice. Despite the facts that it is not cost efficient to use AM there are other factors that play an important role. To know that the designed components will work will create a certainty and allow the development process to continue. In some cases it will also allow the designer to improve the design to function better even if the first design would have worked. As AM is expanding machines and build materials will become cheaper. Eventually it will become cheaper to 3D-print even simple components compared to CM. When this occurs, a company cannot simply buy a 3D-printer and make it profitable. There is a learning curve with AM that will take time for the designers to adapt to. Therefore, it is good to start implementing it as soon as possible as it allows for more intricate designs and require experience to do so.

The performance of small businesses contribute substantially to the South African economy. In recent years the South African Government has prioritised the development of township retail industries by implementing numerous initiatives. The primary objective of this study was to determine how formal independent small retail businesses in Soweto manage their logistical supply chain drivers, namely facilities, inventory and transportation, in terms of responsiveness and cost-efficiency in order to survive. The logistical supply chain drivers should not only be managed as a cohesive unit, but also be aligned with the orientation of the selected supply chain strategy, in terms of responsiveness and cost-efficiency. During 2014, a quantitative survey was conducted among 650 formal independent small Sowetan businesses of which the responses of 556 retailers were analysed in terms of responsiveness and cost-efficiency. The study also investigated the role of the relevant industry group in the management of the logistical supply chain drivers by the business owners. The data was analysed and tested by the Kruskal-Wallis test, the Pearson Chi-square test and factor analyses were performed. Two binary logistic regression models were developed to determine the influence of the management of the logistical supply chain drivers on the small retailers’ odds of survival. The results showed that the small retailers manage facilities and inventory focused more towards responsiveness, whereas transportation is managed focused on either cost-efficiency or responsiveness. The study concluded that age and growth in income can predict the odds of survival for small businesses. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

INTRODUÇÃO: O presente trabalho teve como objetivo elaborar análise custoefetividade do esquema de quimiorradioterapia com cisplatina (estratégia 2) comparado ao tratamento radioterápico (estratégia 1) para pacientes portadores de CECCP localmente avançado não elegíveis para tratamento cirúrgico. MÉTODOS: levantamos dados prospectivos de 33 pacientes na estratégia 2 e dados retrospectivos de 29 pacientes tratados no HC-FMUSP e Hospital A.C. Camargo, (estratégia 1). Consideramos a tabela de reembolso do Sistema Único de Saúde (perspectiva SUS) e custos do HC-FMUSP com honorários profissionais, medicamentos, demais insumos e depreciação de equipamentos (perspectiva Institucional). A medida de efetividade foi 1 ano de vida ganho, livre de progressão da doença (SLPD). Calculamos a Razão Incremental Custo Efetividade (RICE). RESULTADOS: 31% dos pacientes da estratégia 1 e 58% na estratégia 2) tiveram 1 ano de SLPD. Na perspectiva SUS o custo total por paciente na estratégia 1 foi de R$ 2.798,52 e R$ 4.938,11 na estratégia 2. Na perspectiva institucional os custos foram R$ 26.798,52 e R$ 5.040,79, respectivamente. A RICE na perspectiva SUS foi de R$ 7.924,00 reais por ano de vida ganho e R$ 8.912,71 na perspectiva institucional. CONCLUSÃO: nas duas perspectivas a estratégia 2 se mostrou custo-efetiva, sendo o custo incremental considerado aceitável, segundo diretrizes do Banco Mundial. / INTRODUCTION: The present study aims to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis comparing chemoradiotherapy with cisplatine and radiotherapy alone, to treat inoperative advanced head and neck cancer. METHODS: we collected data from 29 patients in a prospective study on chemoradiotherapy with cisplatin, conducted at Hospital das Clínicas HC-FMUSP,(strategy 2). For strategy 1, we collected retrospective data of 33 patients treated with radiotherapy at HC-FMUSP and Hospital A.C. Camargo. We considered only direct costs (personnel, drugs, material and equipment depreciation). We considered, the National Health Service (SUS) reimbursement parameters as the National Security System perspective, and HC-FMUSP costs as the institutional perspectives. We measured effectiveness as one year of diseasefree life gained. We collected costs and effectiveness data and calculated the cost-effectiveness incremental ratio ICER, which expresses additional costs per life year gained, in strategy 2, compared to strategy 1 RESULTS: 31.0% of the patients treated in strategy 1 lived more than 12 months, without disease progression, compared to 58.0% of the patients in strategy 2. According to SUS perspective, the total cost per patient in strategy 1) is R$ 2.798,52 and R$ 4.938,11 in strategy 2. Considering the institutional perspective, total costs are R$ 2.634,36, and R$ 5.040,79 respectively. In SUS perspective, the ICER ratio of strategy 2 compared to 1 is R$ 7.924,00 per lifes year gained. In the institutional perspective, ICER is R$ 8.912,71. We conducted a one way sensitivity analysis to verify our calculations. CONCLUSION: Chemoradioterapy with cisplatin proved more cost-effective than radiotherapy. Using the World Bank guidelines, wich considers the countries GDP per capita an acceptable cost per additional year of life (R$ 12.491,00 in 2006), the incremental cost of both is acceptable.

Denna uppsats undersöker genom en fallstudie av hemtjänsten hur organisering och styrning enligt principerna för New Public Management påverkar omsorgspersonalens möjlighet att medvetandegöra, utveckla, föra vidare samt tillämpa sin praktiska yrkeskunskap. Materialet till studien baseras på semistrukturerade intervjuer av vårdbiträden med lång yrkeserfarenhet som upplevt de förändringar av verksamheten som genomförts sedan början på 1990-talet. Studiens syfte är att med hjälp av organisations- och managementteori, med fokus på rationalitet och effektivitet, samt teorin om praktisk kunskap analysera om organiseringen påverkar villkoren för utövandet av den praktiska kunskapen i verksamheten. Resultaten visar att organisations- och styrningsmodellen som manifesterats genom en utpräglad tids- och detaljstyrning av omsorgsarbetet påverkat verksamhetens praktiska kunskap negativt då den inneburit att vårdbiträdenas handlingsutrymme begränsats. En slutsats som kan dras av studiens resultat är att den utpräglade strävan efter kostnadseffektivitet kommit i konflikt med vårdbiträdenas möjlighet att tillämpa sin praktiska yrkeskunskap. Dagens organisering av verksamheten präglas med andra ord av motstridiga logiker då jakten efter kostnadseffektivitet sker på bekostnad av den praktiska kunskapen och omsorgsrationaliteten. / The thesis investigates through a case study of the home care service how organisation and management by the principles of New Public Management influences the home care staff´s possibilities to awareness rising, to develop, to communicate and to practice their practical knowledge. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with home care personnel of long professional experience who have experienced the organisational chances that begun in beginning of the 1990:s. The aim of the study is to analys whether the model of organization and mangement influences the conditions of the personnels work practise. The analytical tool of the study is a theoretical framework of organizational theories, with the fokus on rationality and efficiency, and the theory of practical knowledge. The findings show that the organizational- and management modell that is displayed through a distinct exemplary of time- and detail-mangement have had a negative influence on the practical knowledge of the sphere of activities. It is so because of the limitations the organizational model put on the home care staffs possibility to act in accordance with their experience acquired practical knowledge. In other words the current organization of the work in the home care service constitutes of contradictory logics by the fact that the aspiration for cost efficiency takes place on the expence of the practical knowledge and the rationality of care.

Evaluations of the Higher Education Sector are receiving increased attention, due to the rising expenditures and the absence of efficiency enhancing market pressure. To what extent universities are able to eliminate inefficiency is a question that has only partially been answered. This paper argues that heterogeneity among universities as well as persistent inefficiency hinder the institutions to achieve full efficiency - at least in the short run. Two standard and one novel specification of the Stochastic Frontier Analysis are applied to a new, comprehensive set of panel data to show how the standard efficiency evaluation changes when both aspects are taken into account. It is the first time that the idea of persistent inefficiency is considered in the analysis of the German Higher Education Sector. The comparison reveals that the disregard of heterogeneity distorts the estimation results towards lower efficiency values. The newly introduced specification improves the accuracy of the heterogeneity assumption and exposes that inefficiency tends to be long term and persistent rather than short term and residual. This implies that increasing efficiency requires a comprehensive change of the university structure.

Abstract In the year 2019 the vehicle workshops services returned to the Swedish Armed Forces. For six years they had been an integrated part of the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration and the business was set up in a corporate fashion. When returning to the Swedish Armed Forces the workshops will continue to use that corporate business model, and at the same time adjust to military setting and logic. Among other things, the workshops will be organized into military units, under the same conditions as all other parts of the Armed Forces. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and understand the meaning and consequences of the corporate and the military logic coexisting within the Vehicle Workshop Services units. A typology made specifically for this reason is used to depict the different configurations that occur when those two logic structures coexist. The study draws the conclusions that the dualistic relationship between the corporate and the military logic ends up in compromises that makes the goal and purpose of the organisation vague and the personnel involved experience a difference between how it is supposed to be functioning and how it actually does. Furthermore, the study states that the conditions for developing the Vehicle Workshop Services units into a strong and resilient organisation from a HR and symbolic perspective is less favourable. The Swedish Armed Forces need to address this actively to create a common understanding of the factors that are in play by all personnel involved in the matter. The study gives five hands on suggestions to mitigate those problems. Finally, some suggestions are given how to re-use the typology that was created for the study in other contexts.

Under de senaste åren har stora datamängder blivit allt vanligare för beslutsfattande och analys. Maskininlärning och matematiska beräkningar är två avgörande metoder som används för detta. Dessa beräkningar kan dock vara tidskrävande, och de kräver högpresterande datorer som är utmanande att skala upp. Raspberry Pi är en liten, kraftfull och billig dator som lämpar sig för parallella beräkningar. Kubernetes är en öppen källkodsplattform för att hantera containerbaserade applikationer som tillåter automatisk skalning av mjukvaruapplikationer. Genom att kombinera Raspberry Pi med Kubernetes kan ett kostnadseffektivt och skalbart system för matematiska beräkningar och maskininlärning skapas. I denna studie undersöks möjligheten att bygga ett kostnadseffektivt och skalbart system för matematiska beräkningar och maskininlärning med hjälp av Raspberry Pi och Kubernetes. Det kommer att göras teoretisk forskning kring Kubernetes och Raspberry Pi, designa ett system för matematiska beräkningar och maskininlärning, implementera systemet genom att installera och konfigurera Kubernetes på flera Raspberry Pi:s, mäta och utvärdera systemets prestanda och skalbarhet samt presentera studiens resultat. Resultatet visade att användningen av Raspberry Pi i kombination med Kubernetes för att utföra matematiska beräkningar är både kostnadseffektiv och skalbar. När det gäller prestanda kunde systemet hantera intensiva beräkningsuppgifter på ett tillfredsställande sätt, vilket visar sin potential som en lösning för storskalig dataanalys. Förbättringar i systemdesign och mjukvaruoptimering kan ytterligare öka effektiviteten och prestanda / In the recent years, large data sets have become more often used for decision-making and analysis. Machine learning and mathematical calculations are two crucial methods employed for this. However, these computations may be time-consuming, and they require highperformance computers that are challenging to scale up. Raspberry Pi is a small, powerful, and cheap computer suitable for parallel calculations. Kubernetes is an open-source platform for managing container-based applications that allows automatic scaling of software applications. By combining Raspberry Pi with Kubernetes, a cost-effective and scalable system for mathematical calculations and machine learning can be created. In this study, the possibility of building a cost-effective and scalable system for mathematical calculations and machine learning using Raspberry Pi and Kubernetes is investigated. There will be theoretical research on Kubernetes and Raspberry Pi, design a system for mathematical calculations and machine learning, implement the system by installing and configuring Kubernetes on multiple Raspberry Pi's, measure and evaluate the system's performance and scalability, and present the study's results. The result showed that the use of Raspberry Pi in combination with Kubernetes to perform mathematical calculations is both cost-effective and scalable. In terms of performance, the system was able to handle intensive computational tasks satisfactorily, demonstrating its potential as a solution for large-scale data analysis. Improvements in system design and software optimization can further increase efficiency and performance.

In this work we study two problems motivated by Risk Management: the optimal design of financial products from an investor's point of view and the calculation of bounds and approximations for sums involving non-independent random variables. The element that interconnects these two topics is the notion of conditioning, a fundamental concept in probability and statistics which appears to be a useful device in finance. In the first part of the dissertation, we analyse structured products that are now widespread in the banking and insurance industry. These products typically protect the investor against bearish stock markets while offering upside participation when the markets are bullish. Examples of these products include capital guaranteed funds commercialised by banks, and equity linked contracts sold by insurers. The design of these products is complex in general and it is vital to examine to which extent they are actually interesting from the investor's point of view and whether they cannot be dominated by other strategies. In the academic literature on structured products the focus has been almost exclusively on the pricing and hedging of these instruments and less on their performance from an investor's point of view. In this work we analyse the attractiveness of these products. We assess the theoretical cost of inefficiency when buying a structured product and describe the optimal strategy explicitly if possible. Moreover we examine the cost of the inefficiency in practice. We extend the results of Dybvig (1988a, 1988b) and Cox & Leland (1982, 2000) who in the context of a complete, one-dimensional market investigated the inefficiency of path-dependent pay-offs. In the dissertation we consider this problem in one-dimensional Levy and multidimensional Black-Scholes financial markets and we provide evidence that path-dependent pay-offs should not be preferred by decision makers with a fixed investment horizon, and they should buy path-independent structures instead. In these market settings we also demonstrate the optimal contract that provides the given distribution to the consumer, and in the case of risk- averse investors we are able to propose two ways of improving the design of financial products. Finally we illustrate the theory with a few well-known securities and strategies e.g. dollar cost averaging, buy-and-hold investments and widely used portfolio insurance strategies. The second part of the dissertation considers the problem of finding the distribution of a sum of non- independent random variables. Such dependent sums appear quite often in insurance and finance, for instance in case of the aggregate claim distribution or loss distribution of an investment portfolio. An interesting avenue to cope with this problem consists in using so-called convex bounds, studied by Dhaene et al. (2002a, 2002b), who applied these to sums of log-normal random variables. In their papers they have shown how these convex bounds can be used to derive closed-form approximations for several of the risk measures of such a sum. In the dissertation we prove that unlike the log-normal case the construction of a convex lower bound in explicit form appears to be out of reach for general sums of log-elliptical risks and we show how we can construct stop-loss bounds and we use these to construct mean preserving approximations for general sums of log-elliptical distributions in explicit form. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished