Business Administration, Business Process & Supply Chain Management, Degree Project (master), 15 higher education credits, 4FE06E, Spring 2013 Authors: Doruntina Pacarizi and Ya-Hui Hsu Tutor: Petra Andersson Title: Conflicting Goal and its Impact on the Level of Supply Chain Integration between Supply Chain Partners in the Automotive Industry – From Manufacturing SME’s Perspective Background: Supply chain integration assists SMEs to improve their operational performance, however the existing theories in supply chain integration are mostly from the LEs perspective. Therefore this thesis chose to focus on the level of supply chain integration from manufacturing SMEs perspective. Nevertheless supply chain integration is not simple due to conflicting goal, which exists between supply chain partners. Based on previous knowledge, the level of supply chain integration is affected by conflicting goal, which exits between supply chain partners. We believe that this is based on how the conflicting goal has been managed. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to obtain an understanding if the level of integration in the automotive industry between the manufacturing SME and its customer is affected by how the conflicting has been managed. Method: This thesis is a multiple case study and was conducted with a deductive approach. The empirical findings were gathered through qualitative interviews with semi-structured interview guides. Conclusions: The conclusions of this thesis are that the level of supply chain integration, which exists between manufacturing SME and its customer, is low/medium. Furthermore, the conflicting goal, which exists between these partners, are that the demand of delivery and volume flexibility, storage flexibility, demand of quality level and the relatively high manufacturing complexity as well as downstream complexity. Finally, the result of this thesis shows that the level of supply chain integration is affected by how the conflicting goal has been managed.

Manufacturing today has become a matter of the effective and efficient application of information technology and knowledge engineering. Manufacturing firms success depends to a great extent on information technology, which emphasizes the integration of the information systems used by a manufacturing enterprise. This integration is also called enterprise application integration (here the term application means information systems or software systems). The methodology for enterprise application integration, in particular enterprise application integration automation, has been studied for at least a decade; however, no satisfactory solution has been found. Enterprise application integration is becoming even more difficult due to the explosive growth of various information systems as a result of ever increasing competition in the software market. This thesis aims to provide a novel solution to enterprise application integration. The semantic data model concept that evolved in database technology is revisited and applied to enterprise application integration. This has led to two novel ideas developed in this thesis. First, an ontology of an enterprise with five levels (following the data abstraction: generalization/specialization) is proposed and represented using unified modeling language. Second, both the ontology for the enterprise functions and the ontology for the enterprise applications are modeled to allow automatic processing of information back and forth between these two domains. The approach with these novel ideas is called the enterprise semantic model approach. The thesis presents a detailed description of the enterprise semantic model approach, including the fundamental rationale behind the enterprise semantic model, the ontology of enterprises with levels, and a systematic way towards the construction of a particular enterprise semantic model for a company. A case study is provided to illustrate how the approach works and to show the high potential of solving the existing problems within enterprise application integration.

Manufacturing today has become a matter of the effective and efficient application of information technology and knowledge engineering. Manufacturing firms success depends to a great extent on information technology, which emphasizes the integration of the information systems used by a manufacturing enterprise. This integration is also called enterprise application integration (here the term application means information systems or software systems). The methodology for enterprise application integration, in particular enterprise application integration automation, has been studied for at least a decade; however, no satisfactory solution has been found. Enterprise application integration is becoming even more difficult due to the explosive growth of various information systems as a result of ever increasing competition in the software market. This thesis aims to provide a novel solution to enterprise application integration. The semantic data model concept that evolved in database technology is revisited and applied to enterprise application integration. This has led to two novel ideas developed in this thesis. First, an ontology of an enterprise with five levels (following the data abstraction: generalization/specialization) is proposed and represented using unified modeling language. Second, both the ontology for the enterprise functions and the ontology for the enterprise applications are modeled to allow automatic processing of information back and forth between these two domains. The approach with these novel ideas is called the enterprise semantic model approach. The thesis presents a detailed description of the enterprise semantic model approach, including the fundamental rationale behind the enterprise semantic model, the ontology of enterprises with levels, and a systematic way towards the construction of a particular enterprise semantic model for a company. A case study is provided to illustrate how the approach works and to show the high potential of solving the existing problems within enterprise application integration.

E-commerce applications generate and consume tremendous amount of online information that is typically available as textual documents. Observations of textual document management practices by organizations or individuals suggest the popularity of using categories (or category hierarchies) to organize, archive and access documents. On the other hand, an organization (or individual) also constantly acquires new documents from various Internet sources. Consequently, integration of relevant categorized documents into existent categories of the organization (or individual) becomes an important issue in the e-commerce era. Existing categorization-based approach for document-category integration (specifically, the Enhanced Naïve Bayes classifier) incurs several limitations, including homogeneous assumption on categorization schemes used by master and source catalogs and requirement for a large-sized master categories as training data. In this study, we developed a Clustering-based Category Integration (CCI) technique to deal with integrating two document catalogs each of which is organized non-hierarchically (i.e., in a flat set). Using the Enhanced Naïve Bayes classifier as benchmarks, the empirical evaluation results showed that the proposed CCI technique appeared to improve the effectiveness of document-category integration accuracy in different integration scenarios and seemed to be less sensitive to the size of master categories than the categorization-based approach. Furthermore, to integrate the document categories that are organized hierarchically, we proposed a Clustering-based category-Hierarchy Integration (referred to as CHI) technique extended the CCI technique and for category-hierarchy integration. The empirical evaluation results showed that the CHI technique appeared to improve the effectiveness of hierarchical document-category integration than that attained by CCI under homogeneous and comparable scenarios.

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p>The purpose of this essay is to compare the integration policy between Socialdemokraterna, Moderaterna and Sverigedemokraterna with focus on labor-market integration, housing segregation and language knowledge. The international immigration has in recent years increased significantly and this has also enriched the receiving countries and still the numbers of extreme right parties have increased. In Sweden a racist populist party, Sverigedemokraterna, are only a few steps away from entering the parliament.</p><p> </p><p>The question in focus is: <em>What differences or similarities are there between the integration politics between Moderaterna, Socialdemokraterna and Sverigedemokraterna with focus on the areas housing, work and language? </em></p><p><em> </em></p><p>By applying the theoretical framework to the data, I have been able to present answers and build up an analysis. The study concludes that there are more similarities than differences in the integration policy between Moderaterna and Socialdemokraterna. Sverigedemokraterna on the other hand have very radical integration politics in comparison to the two other parties.</p>

Tyrimo aktualumas. Valstybinės švietimo strategijos 2003-2012 m. nuostatose keliamas tikslas suartinti bendrojo lavinimo ir profesinio mokymo kryptis, sukurti lanksčią ir atvirą švietimo struktūrą, sujungiančią bendrąjį lavinimą ir profesinį mokymą. Lietuvoje per pastaruosius du dešimtmečius, siekiant suartinti profesinio mokymo ir bendrojo lavinimo kryptis vidurinio ugdymo lygmeniu, įgyvendinta nemažai priemonių ir šiuo metu tęsiama daug įvairių veiklų: profesinėse mokyklose yra sudaryta galimybė kartu su profesine kvalifikacija įgyti vidurinį išsilavinimą, jose steigiami gimnazijų skyriai, bendrojo lavinimo mokykloms numatyta galimybė į vidurinio ugdymo programą įtraukti profesinio mokymo programų modulius, įvestas technologijų egzaminas, plėtojama nacionalinė kvalifikacijų sistema ir kt. Profesinio mokymo prestižą galima padidinti profesinį mokymą ir bendrąjį lavinimą integruojant – t. y., kurti įvairius ryšius tarp šių sistemų (Koditz ir kt., 2009). Tyrimo problema. Integruotas ugdymas, sudarantis galimybes pasireikšti intelekto daugialypiškumui, kartu sukuria prielaidas visiems dalykams tapti jungiamąja ugdymo grandimi. Kadangi tiek bendrojo lavinimo, tiek profesinio rengimo dalykus galima priskirti tam tikroms mokslo sritims, tai galima atrasti tarp jų bendrų ryšių ir tuos ryšius panaudoti ugdyme, dalykus integruojant. Tačiau kol kas nėra nustatyta, kokie integracijos ryšiai, integracijos raiškos lygmenys ir integravimo modeliai yra įmanomi tarp bendrojo lavinimo ir... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Relevance of the research. National Education Strategy for period of 2003-2012 aims to bring the provisions of general education and vocational training policies, a flexible and open structure of education, integrating general education and vocational training. During the past two decades aiming to bring together the training and direction of general education at upper secondary level in Lithuania is implemented a wide variety of measures and activities: vocational schools are given the opportunity, together with the professional qualification of secondary education, to set up gymnasiums, schools for general education provided access to secondary education curriculum to include vocational training programs, modules, introduced in test technology, the development of a national qualifications framework and others. The prestige of vocational training can be raised by integrating vocational training and general education – that is to create links between these various systems (Koditz and others., 2009). The problem of the research. Integrated education, allowing opportunities for intellectual multiplicity, also creates the presumption for all subjects to become a coupling link of education. As both general education and vocational training issues can be attributed to certain areas of science, it is possible to find common links between them and those links can be used in education by integrating subjects. But there are no studies accomplished which integration, integration... [to full text]

Univ., Diss.--Potsdam, 1998. / Literaturangaben.

Zugl.: Köln, Universiẗat, Diss., 2005 u.d.T.: Trunk, Achim: Ausweg Europa.

Supply Chain Integration (SCI) has been found by previous research to be correlated withincreased business performance. However, the rate of implementation of the concept isdependent on the industry, implying that this is determined by industry-specific factors. Thepurpose of this study was therefore to investigate how the Swedish wooden house industryapproaches SCI, and thereby identify industry-specific factors that influence integration. Toaccomplish this, an exploratory multiple case study was conducted, in which Swedish woodenhouse manufacturers and associated actors were interviewed. The study confirmed that thewooden house industry is affected by factors limiting SCI implementation, and that companiesin the industry are not integrated to any significant degree. Further, two industry-specificfactors were discovered to be inhibiting integration. First, the degree of product customizationgranted to customers by house manufacturers determines how much control over procurementdecisions is retained, and thereby potential for integration with suppliers. Customer orientationwas found to inhibit SCI in the wooden house industry due to its effect on productcustomization, in spite of previous literature classifying it as a driver. Secondly, thefragmentation of the contractor market was found to force house manufacturers to deal with amultitude of small actors to perform the on-site construction function, limiting investments inrelationships for any one given actor. The study also found that levels of internal integrationwas generally not at a level at which the benefits of SCI can be fully realized.

Children who have sensory integration disorders face many physical, social and emotional challenges. Unusual emotional and behavioural reactions to sensory stimuli are often displayed. These children are referred to professionals including Gestalt play therapists, although formal training in sensory integration is limited to the scope of occupational therapy. Gestalt play therapists routinely utilize sensory rich activities during therapy. This study sought to explore and describe how Gestalt play therapists establish sensory contact with children who have sensory integration disorders. A combined qualitative and quantitative approach was utilized. A questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to gain rich descriptive data. Participants felt that the therapeutic process with these children was markedly different than with other children. Participants who were aware of their own sensory difficulties demonstrated an increased ability to accommodate these children in therapy. A need for increased knowledge and/ or training in sensory integration was strongly expressed. / Social Work / M. Diac. (Play Therapy)