Rapporten avser att undersöka vilka olika lösningar det finns att tillgå då Windows Vista skall rullas ut till ett antal klientdatorer. Information om de olika produkterna presenteras samt praktiska laborationer med resultat. Slutligen görs en bedömning av vilken produkt eller lösning som lämpar sig bäst för ett litet företag med få klienter respektive ett stort företag med många klienter. Slutsatsen innehåller våra rekommendationer för hur utrullningen bör ske. Arbetet resulterade i att vi kunde utefter våra laborationer fatta beslutet att Ghost Solution Suite passar bäst för ett mindre företag medan Microsofts lösningar lämpar sig mer när företagen kommer upp i många klienter. Detta grundas främst på priset för produkterna samt hur svåra de är att använda men även hur mycket tid som sparas per installation.

The Pre-Project Phase of building construction manages the communication between client organization, user groups and designers. Disconnects and miscommunication in this phase may result in a product that does not fulfill the expectations of the parties involved. It is expected that the adoption of more formal methods can streamline the communication and improve its precision. Based on a literature review, a triage of methods is introduced: (a) a method for initial criteria management, supported by the EcoProP software (developed by VTT in Finland); (b) a method to rationalize and manage criteria in relation to the design organizational instruments, supported by the QFD ProP software (developed by VTT in Finland); (c) a method that supports multi criteria decision making, supported by a range of commercially available software tools. In order to assess the effectiveness of these tools they have been applied in the specific case of Pre-Project Phase of a healthcare facility. A Case Study on a concrete discrete decision problem is dealt with. It concerns the choice between a central medication room and patient room dispenser closets (also known as Nurservers). The Nurservers Case Study is used to evaluate the applicability of the proposed criteria gathering, ranking and decision methods in the Pre-Project Phases daily practices. The claim that these rational methods increase efficiency, precision and satisfaction of the parties involved in this phase is investigated. The thesis evaluates how the introduction of rational methods benefits the communication between stakeholders.

As the introduction of semiconductor¡Bcomputer¡Bnetwork communcation¡Bmulti-media technology¡K¡Ketc. and the development and application of relevant automotive electronics, the car has becoming a high technological product instead of a traditional and machnical conveyance. Based on IC Insights, over 40% of vehicles will be equipped with automotive electronics and the automotive electronics market will reach the scale of US$192 billion in 2010. The scale of market is expected to reach the record of US$400 billion that represented over 50% of vehicles will be equiped with automotive electronics in 2015. The automotive electronics was divided to six functional field including ¡§Powertrain¡¨¡B¡¨Body¡¨¡B¡¨Chassis¡BSecurity¡¨¡B¡¨Safety¡¨ and ¡§Driver information¡¨. According to the research of IEK, ¡§Tire Pressure Monitoring System¡¨ is the most potential product in ¡§Safety¡¨ field for Taiwan manufacturers of IT industry to invest their resource. Based on Strategy Analytics, the global market of Tire Pressure Monitoring System reaches the scale of US$200 million in 2004 and the growth is expected to reach the record of US$1,279 million in 2008 and 63.6% annual compound growth. Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a systematical tool with customer orientated concept. Adopting QFD method to product design efficiently is able to shorten development time¡Breduce cost and improve quality to satisfy customer¡¦s needs in his or her mind. This research is completed by case study of Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) which is developed by certain Taiwan company with potentials that is chosen by specialists. In this research we try to collect related information about certain company and explore customer¡¦s real-life needs by conducting questionnaire surveys. Kano¡¦s two-dimensional quality model is applied to identify customer¡¦s critical quality requirements. Quality factor¡Bsub-system/component and process are deployed by the matrix method of QFD to recognize key items for improving product design.

This thesis proposes a framework for controlling mobile robot networks based on a fluid dynamics paradigm. The approach is inspired by natural behaviors of fluids demonstrating desirable characteristics for collective robots. The underlying mathematical formalism is developed through establishing analogies between fluid bodies and multi-robot systems such that robots are modeled as fluid elements that constitute a fluid body. The governing equations of fluid dynamics are adapted to multi-robot systems and applied on control of robots. The model governs flow of a robot based on its local interactions with neighboring robots and surrounding environment. Therefore, it provides a layer of decentralized reactive control on low level behaviors, such as obstacle avoidance, deployment, and flow. These behaviors are inherent to the nature of fluids and provide emergent coordination among robots. The framework also introduces a high-level control layer that can be designed according to requirements of the particular task. Emergence of cooperation and collective behavior can be controlled in this layer via a set of parameters obtained from the mathematical description of the system in the lower layer. Validity and potential of the approach have been experimented through simulations primarily on two common collective robotic tasks / deployment and navigation. It is shown that gas-like mobile sensor networks can provide effective coverage in unknown, unstructured, and dynamically changing environments through self-spreading. On the other hand, robots can also demonstrate directional flow in navigation or path following tasks, showing that a wide range of multi-robot applications can potentially be developed using the framework.

Abstract In this thesis, I attempt to examine Jamaica Kincaid¡¦s re-negotiation with the politics of power relations in her novels. Kncaid¡¦s novels, through the strategic deployment of autobiographical writing, redress the power dimension in the notions of self and history. The fact that Kincaid frames the field of power relations within the thematic recurrence of mother-daughter relations structures her novels in a way that conflates her personal stories with her group history. Moreover, such a structure emphatically registers the self-positioning act of Kincaid¡¦s writing as a strategy for survival. The first chapter explores how Kincaid mobilizes her self-writing as an act of political resistance. On the one hand, Kincaid opposes her writing which is delivered in the name of herself or her culture to the poststructuralist pronouncements of the general demise of a writing subject. On the other hand, Kincaid, through implicating the poststructuralist fracture of self in the protocol of decolonization, attempts to strategically inhabit in what Homi Bhabha calls the in-between space to define herself. The second chapter deals with the inscription of historical forces on the body. Foucault¡¦s genealogical unpacking of history in the body here helps to investigate how Kincaid¡¦s fictional alter egos bear and, more importantly, act out against the inscription of power. The third chapter focuses on the politics of Kincaid¡¦s autobiographical writing. At first, I unpack the relations between history and the politics of women¡¦s writing in the West Indies, and borrow the poststructuralist interrogation of Western historical knowledge to contradict the West¡¦s epistemological claims to West Indian history. And then I turn to the analysis of Kincaid¡¦s autobiographical writing, which, through its thematic deployment of mother-daughter relations, turns on the political empowerment in her strategic integration of her personal and collective history.

The most studies on ad hoc network mainly focus on TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) of transport layer, the routing of network layer, multi-hop of Data-link layer, and the integration of WWAN and WLAN to increase the load balancing, coverage, and power savings. Nevertheless, in this dissertation, the system performances of four schemes proposed are improved with respect to data-link and network layers. One purpose of the data link layer is to perform error correction or detection. The other is responsible for the way in which different users share the transmission medium. The Medium Access Control (MAC) sublayer is responsible for allowing frames to be sent over the shared media without undue interference with other users. This aspect is referred to as multi-access communications. In the first and third schemes, the FDMA (Frequently-division multiple access) is employed to improve system performance, while in the fourth scheme the CDMA (Code-division multiple access) is used to enhance performance. Network layer has several functions, first is to determine the routing information. A second function is to determine the quality of service. A third function is flow control to avoid network to become congested. In the third scheme, the data-link and network layers have been used to increase system performance. Furthermore, the second scheme mainly concentrates on power savings under wireless sensor network. In ad hoc wireless networks, most data delivery is accomplished through multi-hop routing (hop by hop). This approach may leads to long delay and routing overhead regardless of which routing protocol is used. To overcome this inherent characteristic, this work presents a novel idea adopting dual-card-mode and performing self-organization process with specific IP naming and channel assignment to form a hierarchical star-graph ad hoc network (HSG-ad hoc) which can not only expedite the data transmission but also eliminate the route discovery procedure during data transmission. Therefore, the overall network reliability and stability can be significantly improved. Simulation results show that the proposed approach achieves substantial improvements in terms of average end-to-end delay, throughput, and packet delivery ratio. In a large-scale wireless sensor network, a topology is needed to gather state-based data from sensor network and efficiently aggregate the data given the requirements of balanced load, minimal energy consumption and prolonged network lifetime. In this study, we proposed a ring-based hierarchical clustering scheme (RHC) consisting of four phases: pre-deployment, parent-child relationship building, deployment, and member join phases. Two node types are distributed throughout the network: cluster head nodes (type 1 node) and general sensor nodes (type 2 node). The type 1 node has better battery life, software capability and hardware features than the type 2 node does; therefore, the type 1 node is a better cluster head than type 2 node. Most routing protocols focus mainly on obtaining a workable route without considering network traffic conditions for a mobile ad hoc network. Consequently, real time and multimedia applications do not achieve adequate quality of service (QoS). To support QoS, this work proposes a QoS-aware routing protocol, i.e. QUality of service with Admission control RouTing (QUART), that incorporates an admission control scheme into route discovery and route setup procedures. One variant of QUART, called, QUART-DD, adopts a dual-card dual-signal mechanism to increase system performance. Simulation results indicate that QUART-DD can significantly improve packet delivery ratio and throughput, while having a lower average end-to-end delay than routing protocols without QoS support. The performance of ad hoc wireless network suffers from problems in multi-hop transmission. This study adopts code division to modulate the frame header and the frame payload separately. A common spreading code modulates the frame header, and a special spreading code is negotiated and to modulate the frame payload. A field in the frame header indicates the spreading code used to modulate the successive frame payload. The modulated frame is transparent for every node, enabling many frames to be transmitted simultaneously. To allow the special spreading code negotiation, the RTS/CTS command is modified as ERTS/ECTS, and a spreading code table (SCT) is maintained in every node. Due to the space reuse, the proposed scheme has superior performance in latency and bandwidth utilization, as revealed by the simulation results.

Recent studies have reported that African American couples in the military are less likely to divorce than their civilian counterparts. This dissertation was designed to document the experiences of African American military couples in order to understand the challenges they face while serving in the armed forces and the strategies they have used to maintain their marriages. A grounded theory approach was utilized to produce 12 main themes that categorize experiences of both the individual and the couple within the context of their respective military branch. Photo-elicitation was incorporated into semi-structured interviews with 10 couples to identify what they consider to be the important aspects of their marriage, the ways in which their relationships were impacted by the demands of duty, and their perspectives on the role that race plays in an institution that has been characterized as relatively race-neutral.

Construction has a higher injury and fatality rate than most of the other industries. Given this situation, existing research has studied various issues and factors affecting construction safety management and has attempted to use all available methods to improve the construction safety performance. However, the construction accident rate remains among the highest in the United States and the world. The primary objective of this research is to advance autonomous proximity monitoring and hence provide a safer environment for construction workers. In particular, I seek to advance current evaluations of proximity warning technologies to a more robust engineering approach to the design and deployment of autonomous safety monitoring systems. The contributions of the research are demonstrated through specifications, deployments, and testing of proximity monitoring systems for crane loads and falling from height. My research advances current knowledge in three areas. First, I develop specifications for proximity safety monitoring in a sensed environment, built from existing guidelines and expert interviews. Second, I translate the specifications to computer interpretable rules and deploy them in a distributed computing environment. This demonstrates the feasibility of a systems approach and reusability of components to speed deployment. Third, I evaluate the accuracy of the specifications and systems under imperfect data. I further evaluate some approaches to dealing with imperfect data. Collectively, these advances move existing proximity warning research from evaluation of specific systems to an engineering approach to development and deployment of distributed systems with reusable components that explicitly treats imperfect data. / text

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία εκπονήθηκε στα πλαίσια του μεταπτυχιακού προγράμματος MBA «Νέες αρχές Διοίκησης Επιχειρήσεων» του τμήματος Διοίκησης Επιχειρήσεων του Πανεπιστημίου Πατρών, κατά το έτος 2013. Αντικείμενο της εργασίας είναι η παρουσίαση μιας μεθοδολογίας που μπορεί να αξιοποιηθεί για τον σχεδιασμό καλύτερων υπηρεσιών. Η εφαρμογή πραγματοποιείται για την διερεύνηση της αποδοτικότητας των υπηρεσιών μιας τράπεζας. Για τον σκοπό αυτό χρησιμοποιήθηκαν προκαθορισμένα κριτήρια (πρόταση από φίλο, φήμη, έξοδα λογαριασμών, τοποθεσία, επιτόκια δανείων, πάρκινγκ, πιστωτική πολιτική) τα οποία διαδραματίζουν σημαντικό ρόλο στην απόφαση των πελατών για την τράπεζα που θα επιλέξουν. Τα κριτήρια αυτά εξετάζονται ξεχωριστά για κάθε τμήμα της τραπεζικής αγοράς (στεγαστικά δάνεια, καταναλωτικά δάνεια, πιστωτικές κάρτες, άλλα δάνεια, λογαριασμοί ταμιευτηρίου, λογαριασμοί προθεσμιακών καταθέσεων και μερίδια αμοιβαίων κεφαλαίων) και υπολογίζονται οι συντελεστές στάθμισης που αντιστοιχούν στο καθένα. Οι συντελεστές αυτοί, έχουν ιδιαίτερη αξία για τα στελέχη της τράπεζας γιατί δείχνουν την αξία που έχει κάθε κριτήριο για τον πελάτη. Με αυτό τον τρόπο, τα στελέχη έχουν την δυνατότητα να σχεδιάσουν τις τραπεζικές υπηρεσίες δίνοντας μεγαλύτερη έμφαση στα κριτήρια με τη μεγαλύτερη βαρύτητα έτσι ώστε να επιτυγχάνεται καλύτερη ικανοποίηση των αναγκών των πελατών. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, στην παρούσα εργασία μελετάται η περίπτωση μιας ελληνικής τράπεζας, που κατέχει υψηλό μερίδιο αγοράς και για καθεμία από τις υπηρεσίες της υπολογίζονται οι συντελεστές στάθμισης. Η τράπεζα αυτή αναφέρεται ως Τράπεζα Χ στην υπόλοιπη εργασία για ευνόητους λόγους. Η επίλυση του προβλήματος πραγματοποιείται με δύο τρόπους: 1) με την χρήση της μεθοδολογίας AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) σε συνδυασμό με τη μέθοδο QFD (Quality Function Deployment) για την συμπλήρωση του πίνακα HOQ (House of Quality) και 2) την χρήση της μεθοδολογίας DEAHP (Data Envelopment Analytic Hierarchy Process) σε συνδυασμό με το QFD για την συμπλήρωση του HOQ. Τα αποτελέσματα της παρούσας μελέτης δείχνουν ότι και στις δύο μεθοδολογίες η κατάταξη των κριτηρίων βάσει των προτιμήσεων των πελατών είναι σχεδόν η ίδια. Συγκεκριμένα, τα δύο πρώτα κριτήρια στα οποία οι πελάτες δίνουν μεγαλύτερη βαρύτητα είναι τα έξοδα λογαριασμών και τα επιτόκια δανείων. Ακολουθούν τα κριτήρια φήμη, πρόταση από φίλο, πάρκινγκ κατά φθίνουσα σειρά κατάταξης και τελευταία είναι τα κριτήρια τοποθεσία και πιστωτική πολιτική. Ωστόσο, οι συντελεστές βαρύτητας των κριτηρίων που υπολογίστηκαν είναι διαφορετικοί στο συνδυασμό των μεθοδολογιών QFD-AHP σε σχέση με QFD-DEAHP. Αυτό συμβαίνει λόγω των διαφορετικών τρόπων επίλυσης και διαφορετικών υποθέσεων που χρησιμοποιούνται σε καθεμία μεθοδολογία. / This study was conducted at the Department of the Postgraduate program “New principles of Business Administration” in department of Business Administration of the University of Patras. The objective of this study is to present a methodology which can be used to design better services. This methodology is applied in order to investigate the efficiency of the services of a bank. For this purpose we used pre-defined criteria (recommendation by friends, reputation, expense accounts, location, interest charges on loans, parking, credit policy) which play an important role when the customers select a bank. These criteria are examined separately for each segment for the banking market (housing loans, consumer loans, credit cards, other loans, direct access deposits, time deposit accounts, matual funds shares) and we calculate the relative weight of each criterion. The relative weights above are important for the bank executives because they show the impact of each criterion in the opinion of customers. In this way, executives are able to design their banking services placing emphasis on the criteria with the highest preference in order to satisfy customer needs. Specifically, in this study we examine the case of a Greek bank with high market share and we calculate the weights for each service of the bank. This bank is called Bank X in the remaining study for obvious reasons. The problem was solved with two different ways: 1) by using the combination of AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) with QFD (Quality Function Deployment) methodology in order to complete the matrix of HOQ (House of Quality) and 2) by using DEAHP (Data Envelopment Analytic Hierarchy Process) methodology and QFD in order to complete the HOQ. The results of this study show that the ranking of bank selection criteria is almost the same for both methodologies. Specifically the first two criteria which customers seems to prefer are the expenses accounts and interest charges on loans. The rest of criteria are reputation, recommendation by friends, parking in descending order of priority and finally are the criteria location and credit policy. However, the weights which calculated for each criterion are different in combination of methodologies QFD-AHP compared with QFD-DEAHP. This happens because of the different ways of solving and different assumptions which are used in each methodology.

The sacrifices required of Navy families are substantial. In order to maintain readiness, the Navy must maintain high standards and retain well trained people. To retain experienced and productive service members, family life must be supported and enhanced as much as possible. This study examined deployment related stress as experienced by deployed staff of the SAS SCORPION and their spouses and the Command's responses in terms of alleviating such stresses. A qualitative research methodology was used employing an exploratory, descriptive strategy. The study made use of non-probability purposive sampling for all three samples. To ensure rich data semi-structured interviews were used for samples one and two. Data was collected by means of a workshop for sample three. Respondents from sample one and two indicated dissatisfaction in the areas of military support, crime, medical problems, military housing, crisis periods, unplanned trips, and prolonged sea service. Sample three responded by acknowledging hardships experienced by samples one and two. They agreed in principle that a deployment seminar be made compulsory for military families and an incumbent be employed as a Naval liaison officer to coordinate problems experienced by deployed members and their families. The findings of this research, indicated the need for support structures and preventative programmes. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sci.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1999.