The objective of the research was to understand how customer knowledge was used in an organization and the role knowledge management systems (KMS) played in this use. Traditionally, organizations have relied on internal knowledge to shape their corporate strategy. Recently however they are tapping new sources of knowledge that are external to the firm. One important source of organizational knowledge is a company’s customers, as they present a source of knowledge that may provide new insights, innovations and ideas that are not necessarily found within the organization. The study examined the perceptions and beliefs of customer knowledge held by an organization’s employees, the types of customer knowledge available to the firm, the use of a KMS, and its impact on an organization’s use of knowledge. We posed the question of how these perceptions and beliefs influenced the types of customer knowledge available and the design and implementation of a KMS. Furthermore, we investigated the impact of customer knowledge types and knowledge management systems on how an organization uses customer knowledge in its regular operational routines. To answer these questions, a case study was conducted in a Canadian health care systems organization. By taking the approach that individuals in an organization are the key to sharing knowledge with customers, this research was able to gain an in-depth understanding of how employees view customer knowledge, including both positive and negative attitudes towards this new source of knowledge. The types of customer knowledge available to the study organization were identified, as were the ways that the newly implemented KMS helped and hindered knowledge sharing. The results of the research demonstrate how the types of customer knowledge available to an organization can be categorized by the perceived quality and the perceived accessibility of the knowledge. These findings contribute to the field of knowledge management by moving towards a theory of how customer knowledge is used by an organization, and how internal and external factors affect this use. Furthermore, this study raises awareness of the importance of a KMS in managing customer knowledge, including key aspects of its design and implementation.

In new cars of today there are several electronically controlled systems that seek to aid the driver and make the journey as safe as possible. This include not only systems that directly control the vehicle such as ABS and ESP, but also systems that might make driving easier such as navigation systems, cruise control and even seat adjustments. It is important that the effects on the driver from the use of such systems do not lead to an environment that diverts the attention of the driver from the main task, i.e. driving safely. In this thesis a possible way of modeling the driver distractedness level due to the operation of these systems is discussed. This is done in Simulink with vehicle CAN data as inputs. An expert field test is done with 6 drivers over 18 trial runs with 31 secondary tasks on a highway. Two criteria are used to measure the distractedness, one objective based on the attributes of an element and one subjective, based on the use of the elements while driving during the trials. A lane monitoring system is evaluated and the offset from the lane center over time is used as an external criteria to the distractedness level. There is however no significant correlation between the external criteria and the subjective distractedness level. The results of the subjective distractedness level are used in the model and possible future extensions to it are discussed.

With the big improvement of wireless technology, people can get their desired information at any time and any place. Due to communication asymmetry - physical asymmetry and/or information ow asymmetry, broadcast data deliv- ery is rapidly becoming the method of choice for disseminating information from server to clients. The main advantage of broadcast delivery is its scalability: it is independent of the number of users the system is serving. Acharya et al. have proposed the use of a periodic dissemination architecture in the context of mobile systems, called Broadcast Disks. Broadcast Disks can construct a mem- ory hierarchy in which the highest level contains a few items and broadcasts them with high frequency while subsequent levels contain more and more items and broadcast them with less and less frequency. However, based on Acharya et al.'s approach, some broadcast slots may be unused, which resulting in the waste of bandwidth and the increase of access time. Yang has presented a com- plementary approach to solve the empty slots problem, which also reduces the mean access time. However, based on the complementary approach, the dis- tances between slots containing the same page may not be a constant, resulting in an increase of the mean access time. Therefore, in this thesis, we propose two eÆcient broadcast programs to mitigate the above phenomenon and also to solve the empty slots problem. The rst one is a revised version of the com- plementary approach, and the second one is an adaptive approach. Most of the previous approaches assume that each mobile client needs only one data page. However, in many situations, a mobile client might need data of more than one page. Ke has proposed the SNV strategy for query set broadcast scheduling in multiple channels. In the SNV strategy, the data pages of the same query set are put as together as possible and it tries to avoid scheduling two or more pages of one query set at the same time slot of di erent channels. However, there are two disadvantages in the SNV strategy: (1) a data page with high access frequency may be scheduled at a time slot near the end of the broad- cast cycle, which results in the longer access time for requiring the whole query sets; (2) it may extend the number of slots in a certain chain, which results in the wasteness of bandwidth of the other channels. Therefore, we propose an eÆcient broadcast scheduling strategy, the Hybrid Version of the Set-based strategy ( HVS ) to improve these two disadvantages. From our performance analysis and simulation, we show that both our revised version of the com- plementary approach and adaptive approach create smaller number of slots in one broadcast cycle than Acharya et al.'s algorithm and require shorter mean access time than Acharya et al.'s algorithm and the complementary approach. Moreover,from our performance analysis and simulation, we also show that our HVS strategy requires shorter total expected delay access time, and creates smaller number of slots and smaller number of empty slots in one broadcast cycle than the SNV strategy.

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 87 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 81-85).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-129).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2009. / Adviser: William C. Bozeman. Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-321).

Thesis (M.S.)--Middle East Technical University, 2003. / Keywords: GIS, geophysics, geology, galatean volcanic province.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1980.

Thesis (M.U.D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.

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