The purpose of this thesis is to examine which factors are the most important to successfully implementing an improvement process, and to examine if subcontracting companies differ from the rest of the companies in the study. Increasing the quality of products and at the same time lowering the costs is often necessary with the pressure from the external environment that many companies are facing today. Many companies are active on a global scale with competitors all over the planet. It is easy to understand that companies need to have an innovative approach, and improve their products, but it is hard to know how and what to change. Upon completion of the initial research phase, a form with questions was created. The composed question sheet was used in an internet based survey. The same question sheet was later used in interviews with 3 different companies. The interview phase provided a chance to ask follow up questions to increase the understanding and help with the analysis. The results from the study were compared with leading literature and similarities were highlighted. The results from the study demonstrate that soft values are the most important factors when implementing an improvement process. Engaged leadership, clear goals and participation from leaders and personnel are the most prominent factors. The differences between subcontracting companies and the other companies in the study are not significant.

The power sector needs to be decarbonised by 2050 to meet the global target for greenhouse gas emission reduction and prevent climate change. With fossil fuels expected to play a vital role in the future energy portfolio and high efficiency penalties related to mature CO2 capture technologies, this research aimed at evaluating the efficiency improvements and alternate operating modes of the coal-fired power plants (CFPP) retrofitted with post-combustion CO2 capture. To meet this aim, process models of the CFPPs, chilled ammonia process (CAP) and calcium looping (CaL) were developed in Aspen Plus® and benchmarked against data available in the literature. Also, the process model of chemical solvent scrubbing using monoethanolamine (MEA) was adapted from previous studies. Base-load analysis of the 580 MWel CFPP retrofits revealed that if novel CAP retrofit configurations were employed, in which a new auxiliary steam turbine was coupled with the boiler feedwater pump for extracted steam pressure control, the net efficiency penalty was 8.7–8.8% points. This was close to the 9.5% points in the MEA retrofit scenario. Conversely, CaL retrofit resulted in a net efficiency penalty of 6.7–7.9% points, depending on the fuel used in the calciner. Importantly, when the optimised supercritical CO2 cycle was used instead of the steam cycle for heat recovery, this figure was reduced to 5.8% points. Considering part-load operation of the 660 MWel CFPP and uncertainty in the process model inputs, the most probable net efficiency penalties of the CaL and MEA retrofits were 9.5% and 11.5% points, respectively. Importantly, in the CaL retrofit scenarios, the net power output was found to be around 40% higher than that of the CFPP without CO2 capture and double than that for the MEA retrofit scenario. Such performance of the CaL retrofit scenario led to higher profit than that of the 660 MWel CFPP without CO2 capture, especially if its inherent energy storage capability was utilised. Hence, this study revealed that CaL has the potential to significantly reduce the efficiency and economic penalties associated with mature CO2 capture technologies.

El uso de la tecnología en la administración pública permite mejorar significativamente los servicios que el Estado proporciona a la ciudadanía. En ese ámbito, el presente proyecto consiste en diseñar la arquitectura de un Sistema de Información para la Gerencia de Supervisión y Fiscalización (GSF) del Indecopi. La propuesta se basa en un sistema web para la gestión administrativa del proceso de Ejecución de Encargos de Inspección y una aplicación móvil para la ejecución de encargos de inspección (trabajo de campo). De manera integral, la propuesta tiene como objetivo reducir en un 20% el tiempo promedio de atención de los encargos de inspección (de 10 a 8 días hábiles) delegados por los Órganos Resolutivos o Secretarías Técnicas del Indecopi a la GSF. La primera fase se orienta al análisis de la organización y el proceso aplicando los marcos de trabajo de Zachman y TOGAF, para conocer la situación actual (AS-IS) del proceso de Ejecución de Encargos de Inspección y poder analizar la situación problemática. Luego, se identifican las brechas tecnológicas para posteriormente definir la propuesta de solución. La segunda fase comprende el diseño de la propuesta tecnológica, en la cual se identifican los requerimientos de software y los respectivos drivers arquitectónicos. Además, se establecen los estilos y conceptos arquitectónicos que serán considerados en el diseño de la arquitectura de software. Finalmente, se utilizarán los diagramas del Modelo C4 para describir y comunicar la arquitectura a los interesados del proyecto. / The use of technology in public administration significantly improve the services that the State provides to citizens. In this field, this project consists of designing the architecture of an Information System for the Gerencia de Supervisión y Fiscalización (GSF) of Indecopi. The proposal is based on a web system for the administrative management of the Inspection Order Execution process and a mobile application for the execution of inspection orders (field work). In a comprehensive manner, the objective of the proposal is to reduce by 20% the average service time of inspection orders (from 10 to 8 business days), delegated by the Resolutory Bodies or the Technical Secretary of Indecopi to the GSF. The first phase is oriented to the analysis of the organization and the process applying the frameworks of Zachman and TOGAF, to know the current situation (AS-IS) of the process of Execution of Inspection Orders and to be able to analyze the problematic situation. Then the technological gaps are identified to later define the solution proposal. The second phase comprises the design of the technological proposal, in which the software requirements and the respective architectural drivers are identified. In addition, the architectural styles and concepts that will be considered in the design of the software architecture are established. Finally, the C4 model diagrams will be used to describe and communicate the architecture to project stakeholders. / Tesis

Nuestra investigación aborda el fenómeno de la eficiencia en el servicio de reparación de averías de vehículos ligeros en un concesionario automotriz dedicado a la venta y la postventa de este tipo de vehículos en Perú, de forma consistente con la aplicación de herramientas específicas de mejora; a saber, se usaron los presupuestos de la metodología Lean Manufacturing. El objetivo medular que cumple nuestro estudio es el planteamiento de procedimientos de mejora del cumplimiento de plazos de entrega en el servicio postventa de reparación de averías de vehículos a los clientes, mediante marco procedimental acorde con las exigencias del sector automotriz. La determinación del método se realizó en el marco de un diagnóstico situacional de la empresa automotriz en la que se efectuó el estudio con base en los lineamientos específicos del ciclo PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Action), que se define como un modelo de resolución de problemas que utiliza insumos o herramientas de ingeniería como el Diagrama de Pareto, árbol de Problema y Objetivos, entre otras, de manera que la consecución de resultados se sustenta en la jerarquización cuantitativa de los problemas más apremiantes en el servicio, además de la medición de factores que posibilitan la determinación de causas-raíces de los diferentes problemas que se suscitan en la ejecución del servicio de reparación. En rigor, se trata de un trabajo con sustento empírico, dado que el análisis se realizó con información real derivada de la empresa, además de mediciones que se realizaron en el área de reparaciones, de las cuales se obtuvo como escollo principal la baja eficiencia en el servicio de reparación. La evaluación de la problemática derivó en la propuesta de un modelo acorde con las necesidades y exigencias del servicio de reparación, cuyo eje es el conjunto de herramientas Lean Manufacturing, el cual permitió generar procedimientos de mejora de los diferentes procesos. En cuanto a los instrumentos de solución asumidos, estos se sustentan en la determinación de las causas específicas que derivan del problema principal, esto es, la baja eficiencia en la ejecución de las reparaciones de la empresa. Así, en cuanto al procedimiento inadecuado usado en el servicio se planteó una herramienta de estandarización; en lo concerniente a la carencia de planificación de trabajos en el taller de servicios, se propuso un conjunto de herramientas como el Heijunka, Sistema Pull-Tack Time, Jidoka y Control Visual; entre otros. Estas fueron aplicadas como instrumentos de mejora de la eficiencia en el área de reparaciones. Producto de las evidentes mejoras, se presenta también una validación técnica y económica que orienta la toma de decisiones en cuanto a la ejecución de procedimientos idóneos para la consecución de un servicio eficaz; de esta manera, el costo de la implementación de las mejoras es de 101,843 soles y el valor actual neto (VAN) obtenido es de 129,488 soles, los cuales respaldan la rentabilidad como producto derivado de nuestra investigación. / Our research addresses the phenomenon of efficiency in the repair services of light vehicle breakdowns within an automotive dealership dedicated to the sale and after-sale services of this type of vehicles located in Peru, in a consistent way with the application of specific improvement techniques; namely, the Lean Manufacturing methodology budgets were used. The core objective achieved by our study is to set procedures for improving compliance with the delivery deadlines in the after-sales repair services of vehicles breakdowns to customers, within the procedural framework in accordance with the requirements of the automotive industry. The method was determined within the situational diagnosis framework of the automotive company, in which the study was carried out based in the specific guidelines of the PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check and Action), which its defined as a problem solving model that uses inputs or engineering tools and techniques such as Pareto Chart, Problem Tree and Objective Tree methods, among others, so that the achievement of results is based in the quantitative hierarchy of the most pressing problems within the service, in addition to the factors measurement that allows the identification of root causes of the different problems that appears in the execution of the repair services. Strictly speaking, it is an empirical work, since the analysis was done with real information derived from the company, in addition to the measurements that were taken within the repair service area, from which was obtain, as a the main obstacle, the low efficiency of the repair service. The evaluation of the problem resulted in the proposal of a model in accordance with the necessities and demands of the repair service, whose axis is the Lean Manufacturing tools set, which allowed the generation of improvement procedures in different processes. As for the solution instruments used in the study, these are based on the identification of the specific causes that result from the main problem, that is, the low efficiency in the execution of the repairs of the company. Thus, regarding the inadequate procedures used in the service, a standardization tool was proposed; regarding the lack of work planning within the services workshop, a set of tools such as Heijunka, Pull-Tack Time System, Jidoka and a visual control, among others, was proposed. These tools were used as efficiency improvement instruments within the repair service area. As a result of the evident improvements, there are also technical and economic proof that sets the decision-making regarding the execution of suitable procedures for the achievement of an effective service; So, the cost of implementing these improvements is 101,843 soles and the net present value (NPV) obtained is 129,488 soles, which supports the profitability, derived product of our research work. / Trabajo de Suficiencia Profesional

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Yes / Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a key indicator to measure the effectiveness of production systems. This paper aims to evaluate and improve a plastic production line based on OEE evaluation. An integrated framework is proposed to enhance the production system efficiency. This paper presents the data for a Plastic production line in Jordan under real working conditions. The data covers three months. A framework process to improve the OEE of the Plastic production system was proposed. Six major stoppage losses were inspected with the help of Pareto analysis. Furthermore, the actual availability, efficiency, and quality rate measures, together with the whole OEE for each working day, week, and month of the production line were shown. The methodology is based on determining the OEE of a Plastic production line after determining the causes of failures. The fishbone diagram tool is used to determine the root causes of failures. To improve the OEE measure, several losses are identified. The results reveal that the company should improve its policy to improve the production line’s performance and reduce losses. Top management should also pay attention to reducing the speed losses, which consist of 58.1%, and eliminate the planned and unscheduled disruptions covering 12.73% of all losses. This can be achieved by establishing a proper operation management procedure and strategy. This, in turn, optimized the equipment’s effectiveness. The quality procedure should include the changeover program that may be executed every day. Similarly, all preventive maintenance procedures for the six machines should be properly executed in predetermined intervals. There are several limitations in the research. Firstly, the research case study is only the plastic production system. Secondly, the research is related to the downtime or stoppage by analyzing it using fishbone diagram. Further, supported by other techniques such as the Pareto chart, six big losses analyses and CED. This research conducted on a Plastic industry. However, similar studies can be carried out in future in other manufacturing industries like electronic, pharmaceutical, textile industries, etc., and service industry. However, as future research work the contributions of this paper with other lean manufacturing concept like six sigma, quality function deployment, TQM, and just-in-time manu-facturing, can also be conducting to assess the overall production line efficiency. On the other hand, several statistical tests can be implemented based on data collected of TPM performance indicators. The proposed method supports policymakers in their decision-making process on the operations management line. Further-more, it improves the production systems’ productivity quality, and performance, reducing unplanned stop-pages and breakdowns, and reducing maintenance costs.

The Business Process Management (BPM) lifecycle consists of four phases: design and analysis, configuration, enactment, and evaluation - also known as performance analysis and improvement. Performance analysis and improvement of business processes, one of the core phases in the BPM life cycle, is becoming on top of the agenda for many enterprises. An emerging approach to that is to use the business intelligence approaches that attempt to facilitate the analytical capabilities of business process management systems by implementing process-oriented data warehouse and mining techniques. However, little work has been has done on developing core methods and tools for performance analysis and improvement of business processes. In particular, adequate methods, clearly defined steps or instructions that can guide process managers for analyzing and improving processes using process warehouse (PW) are not available. In the absence of such methods, guidelines or clearly defined steps, important steps may be ignored and credible improvements steps cannot be taken. This research addresses the described limitations by developing a method for performance analysis and improvement of business processes. The key feature of the developed method is, it employs business-orientation in the design and utilization of a PW. The method is composed of three steps, building goal-structure, integrating goal-structure with PW, and analyzing and improving business processes. During the first step, a set of top-level performance goals are identified for the process of interest. Subsequently, the identified  goals are decomposed to generate a goal-structure that is aligned with the functional decomposition of the process of interest. The second step describes a technique for integrating the generated goal-structure with PW. The third step describes, a performance estimation model, a decision model and a step by step approach that focuses on utilizing PW for analysis and improvement of business processes. In order to facilitate the use of the proposed method a prototype is developed. The prototype offers a graphical user interface for defining goal structure, integrating goals with PW, and goal-based navigation of PW. In order to evaluate the proposed method, we first develop an evaluation framework and subsequently use it for the evaluation of the proposed method. The framework consists of three components, each representing a type of evaluation. The components are, methodological-structure evaluation, performance-based evaluation and perception-based evaluation. The results of the evaluation show partial support for the methodological structure. However, the results of performance and perception evaluation show promising results of the proposed method. / <p>QC 20121217</p>