The shift in mindset of decision makers, from maintenance being a “necessary evil” and “cost centre” to a “profit contributor” in manufacturing companies has driven outsourced maintenance suppliers to employ value-centric approaches in order to design more effective maintenance programs. A value assessment for maintenance outsourcing must facilitate the trade-off between cost-centric and value-centric approaches to enable the maintenance service providers to design more effective maintenance organizations. This assessment should also help the customers in a well informed decision making in outsourcing their maintenance function in order to add value to their businesses. Therefore the aim of this research is to develop a decision making framework for maintenance outsourcing based on the assessed customer-value of outsourced maintenance services. Cont/d.

The shift in mindset of decision makers, from maintenance being a “necessary evil” and “cost centre” to a “profit contributor” in manufacturing companies has driven outsourced maintenance suppliers to employ value-centric approaches in order to design more effective maintenance programs. A value assessment for maintenance outsourcing must facilitate the trade-off between cost-centric and value-centric approaches to enable the maintenance service providers to design more effective maintenance organizations. This assessment should also help the customers in a well informed decision making in outsourcing their maintenance function in order to add value to their businesses. Therefore the aim of this research is to develop a decision making framework for maintenance outsourcing based on the assessed customer-value of outsourced maintenance services. Cont/d.

This Master thesis analyzes diversification strategies, diversification possibilities establishment and realization theoretical aspects with reference to Lithuanian and foreign sources. Having applied the method of structurized poll in writing, the behaviour of construction and maintenance services consumers was evaluated, the factors which influence it were determined, the level of construction and maintenance services consumers satisfaction was determined, demands and expectations of unsatisfied consumers were ascertained. With a regard to the situation in the market and its changing tendencies and the results of consumers poll, the diversification possibilities of construction and maintenance services enterprises were estimated, the diversification alternatives prospects of construction and maintenance services enterprises were evaluated. The results of empirical research confirmed a hypothesis and allowed a statement that not fully satisfied demands of consumers, existing in the market, show diversification possibilities of construction services enterprises.

Software Maintenance is becoming more and more challenging due to rapidly changing customer needs, technologies and need for highly skilled labor. Many problems that existed a decade ago continue to exist or have even grown. In this context organizations find it difficult to match engineer interest, skill to particular customer problem. Thus making it difficult for organization to keep the selfish and rational engineers motivated and productive. In this thesis we have used game theory and mechanism design to model the interactions among such selfish engineers to motivate truth revelation using incentive based allocation schemes for software maintenance problems, especially Ticket Allocation Problem. Ticket allocation or problem allocation is a key problem in the software maintenance process.Tickets are usually allocated by the manager or the technical lead. In allocating a ticket, the manager or technical lead is normally guided by the complexity assessment of the ticket as provided by the maintenance engineers, who are entrusted with the responsibility of fixing the problem.The rationality of the maintenance engineers could induce them to report the complexity in an untruthfulway so as to increase their payoffs.This leads to non-optimal ticket allocation. In this thesis we first address the problem of eliciting ticket complexities in a truthfulway from each individual maintenance engineer, using a mechanism design approach. In particular, we model the problem as that of designing an incentive compatible mechanism and we offer two possible solutions.The first one, TA-DSIC, a Dominant Strategy Incentive Compatible (DSIC) solution and the second solution, TA-BIC, is a Bayesian Incentive Compatible mechanism. We show that the proposed mechanisms outperform conventional allocation protocols in the context of a representative software maintenance organization. In this thesis,we next address the incentive compatibility issue for group ticket allocation problem .Many times a ticket is also allocated to more than one engineers. This may be due to a quick customer delivery(time)deadline. The decision of such allocation is generally taken by the lead, based on customer deadlines and a guided complexity assessment from each maintenance engineer.The decision of allocation in such case should ensure that every individual reveals truth in the proposed group(or coalition) and has incentive to participate in the game as individual and in the coalition. We formulate this problem as Normal form game and propose three mechanisms, (1)Division of Labor, (2)Extended Second Price and (3)Greedy Division of Labor. We show that the proposed mechanisms are DSIC and we discuss their rationality properties.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-08-05T13:25:31Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação Bruno Nunes_FINAL.pdf: 1523588 bytes, checksum: feea1e49f7dc0fcebbcf54602098e8e1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-05T13:25:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação Bruno Nunes_FINAL.pdf: 1523588 bytes, checksum: feea1e49f7dc0fcebbcf54602098e8e1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-19 / CNPq / A growing trend in hiring maintenance services has been observed in companies in general in order to enhance competition and reduce costs. This practice becomes even more evident in the context of health institutions, as they strongly employ technology-intensive equipment that must follow tight quality standards that intend to ensure the continuity of the service and the safety of patients. These characteristics contribute in allowing the maintenance to be executed by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), since several pre-established procedures must be attended during maintenance. Thus, it becomes relevant to analyze the interaction among customers (hospitals) and the equipment manufacturer in this particular maintenance services market. In the developed model the customers are divided into 2 classes, great size hospitals belong to class 1 and small hospitals belong to class 2 and class 1 customers have priority over class 2 customers. Class 1 customers have the option of hiring an Extended Warranty (EW) with priority or of paying for each maintenance intervention on demand, while class 2 customers have the option of hiring an standard EW (with no priority) or of paying for each maintenance intervention on demand. To model such dynamics a 2-class priority queuing system is implemented. The customers select the option that maximize their expected utilities, as they are risk averse, while the manufacturer needs to set the EW and maintenance intervention prices and select the optimal number of customers of each class to service in order to maximize their expected profit. A Stackelberg Game is used to model the interaction among players, in which the OEM is the leader and the customer is the follower. In the numerical example it has been found that the customers of class 1 decide to hire EW with priority, while class 2 customers decide to pay for maintenance services on demand. Also the OEM decides to service 3 customers of class 1 and 100 customers of class 2, which yields an expected profit of $ 3,204,450. A sensitivity analysis is also performed to analyze how the optimal solution changes due to parameters variations. / Uma tendência crescente para a contratação de serviços de manutenção tem sido observada em empresas em geral com o objetivo de aumentar sua competitividade e reduzir custos. Tal prática se torna ainda mais evidente no contexto de instituições de saúde, já que elas utilizam diversos equipamentos intensivos em tecnologia que precisam se adequar a rígidos padrões de qualidade de forma a garantir a continuidade do serviço e a segurança dos pacientes. Essas características contribuem para que os serviços de manutenção sejam executados pelo fabricante do equipamento, já que diversos procedimentos específicos precisam ser seguidos durante a manutenção. Assim, torna-se relevante analisar a interação entre clientes (hospitais) e o fabricante do equipamento neste mercado particular. No modelo desenvolvido, os clientes foram divididos em 2 classes, hospitais de grande porte pertencem à classe 1 e hospitais pequenos pertencem à classe 2 e os clientes da classe 1 têm prioridade em relação aos clientes da classe 2. Os clientes da classe 1 têm a opção de contratar uma garantia estendida com prioridade ou de pagar por cada intervenção de manutenção sob demanda, já os clientes da classe 2 têm a opção de contratar uma garantia estendida padrão (sem prioridade) ou de pagar por cada intervenção de manutenção sob demanda. Para modelar esta dinâmica um sistema de filas com 2 classes de prioridade foi implementado. Os clientes escolhem a opção que maximiza suas utilidades esperadas, já que são avessos ao risco, enquanto o fabricante deve determinar os preços das garantias estendidas e das intervenções avulsas além do número ótimo de clientes que ele deve atender de forma a maximizar o seu lucro esperado. Para modelar a interação entre os jogadores foi utilizado um Jogo de Stackelberg em que o fabricante é o líder e o cliente, o seguidor. O exemplo numérico apresentado mostra que a decisão ótima para os clientes da classe 1 é adquirir a garantia estendida com prioridade, enquanto para os clientes da classe 2 a decisão-ótima é pagar pelos serviços de manutenção sob demanda. O fabricante decide atender 3 clientes da classe 1 e 100 clientes da classe 2, o que lhe gera um lucro de $ 3,204,450. Uma análise de sensibilidade é apresentada em seguida para investigar como a solução ótima muda em decorrência de variações nos parâmetros.