Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-22T22:11:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Germano Bessa Lopes.pdf: 6504580 bytes, checksum: e2d4c2023f1f6acac26fb6dc66bc6e83 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-12-14 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Na Universidade Federal do Amazonas, a exemplo de outras instituições federais, o Departamento de Licitações ainda necessita aprimorar-se no que tange a maximização de sua produtividade, uma vez que não há um plano de gestão adequado para alcançar resultados ainda mais satisfatórios de seus certames. Frente a este problema, esta dissertação tem como objetivo principal propor um plano de gestão que vise garantir a eficiência das aquisições de bens e serviços na UFAM, bem como propor sugestões de melhorias para a gestão administrativa da Universidade. Para tanto, pesquisas bibliográficas foram realizadas acerca do planejamento em licitações nos órgãos públicos e, em seguida, foi elaborado e testado um plano de gestão adaptado a realidade da UFAM, bem como foi feita uma pesquisa de satisfação junto aos executores dos processos licitatórios. O instrumento de coleta de dados foi um questionário composto de dezenove asserções. Após a análise dos dados coletados foi possível diagnosticar os aspectos positivos e negativos do sistema de aquisições da instituição. O plano de gestão permitiu a melhora quali-quantitativa da realização dos pregões sem ferir a legislação vigente.

Relationship Marketing is relatively unknown in construction, but is widely researched in non project disciplines and applied similarly. Relationship marketing as a sub-component of marketing provides valuable and reliable tools that a manager can use to enhance a service that is being provided to a range of clients. It provides a better solution to client interaction than traditional marketing due to its focus on mutual attainment of common goals. The purpose of relationship marketing is to attract new clients and ensure that existing clients are looked after in a collaborative engagement where objectives are identified and mutual goals set. Overall collective aims of venture participants are identified and achieved. The aim of the research is to identify key relationship factors that should be considered when selecting a construction service. This is achieved through a number of steps that include: examining the principles of marketing and its association with RM; examining alliance principles and construction RM principles, supply chain and service selection issues and relationship development constructs; interviewing a number of construction actors to theorise issues that are important to construction, its connections and relationships. Other activities include interviewing a substantial body of construction actors that have experience of Alliance projects and are able to comment on the relationship development process and observe activities undertaken at a number of alliance development and alliance lessons learned (outcome) workshops. The research identifies methods that enable relationships to be developed and a model that gives buyers the ability to pre-qualify and select contractors that are committed to providing value is provided. The main findings from the research show that RM has many attributes that should be applied to construction; indeed several aspects of RM are currently being applied in alliance projects. The particular form that RM takes in alliance projects is in the relationship development of the stakeholders. These stakeholders eventually become the virtual team who manage the project. In particular the development of trust, commitment and mutual goals in alliance projects form a close parallel with similar constructs in RM. Four themes were discovered to make a difference in relationship development in construction. They were the process of the relationship development workshop; the underlying attributes associated with the development process, in particular trust, trust building, commitment and communication; the outcome for the team; and organisational issues associated with individuals in the relationship development workshops. The particular contribution that the research identifies is in the various models of relationship development that have been constructed throughout the research period. The first, an interim model, identifies a marketing continuum that forms a framework and provides an insight into the ways in which RM may reduce stress and reasons for conflict in a construction project team. At the same time the model shows how increased trust, commitment and satisfaction for the stakeholders, together with value adding potential in the supply chain, may be attained with the use and application of RM principles. The second interim model builds on the first model and applies an organisational focus to the original project based model described earlier. Ongoing relationships based on project success are identified. A third and final interim model identifies the association between process (project) and product success with transactional and relationship marketing. The model identifies how a RM approach provides a long term project success that may be translated to marketing success in a particular industry sector through ongoing relationships. Finally, building on the aforementioned interim models a construction relationship development model is proposed. It is suggested that these models develop and contribute to emerging theory on RM in a project environment and its application to construction. The models also contribute to relationship development theory applied to project driven and temporary organisations. These temporary organisations are particular to the construction industry and they stand to benefit greatly from this research.

<p>The public sector in Norway purchases products and services for more then 300 billion NOK per year.</p><p>This purchasing power can play an important role in leveraging the market share of environmentally</p><p>sound products by increasing the level of environmental requirements in public contracts.</p><p>Environmental considerations in public procurement have been on the international agenda since</p><p>the 1992 conference in Rio, and the OECD, the EU and the Nordic Council of Ministers have also</p><p>placed Green Public Procurement (GPP) on their agendas. Together with statements from the 2002</p><p>World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, they all underline GPP as a tool for</p><p>making a shift to more sustainable production and consumption practices.</p><p>In Norway, the Government launched a Norwegian Action Plan on Environmental and Social</p><p>Responsibility in Public Procurement in 2007. The aim of the plan was to encourage the public sector</p><p>to demand environmentally sound products and services. However, several previous studies that</p><p>have assessed the status of GPP show that, despite efforts to promote environmental considerations,</p><p>there is a long way to go before these are fully integrated into public procurement practice</p><p>The aim of this study was to produce information about how widespread the use of environmental</p><p>criteria are in Norway, and to identify what drivers and barriers are seen to influence the GPP status.</p><p>Based on experiences from other studies, the method design chosen was an analysis of tender</p><p>documents complemented by case studies with interviews. Using both methods provided a way of</p><p>balancing the results so as to get the most objective status scores on GPP together with more</p><p>detailed answers on perceived drivers and barriers.</p><p>The results revealed that almost 60% of all tender documents included some kind of environmental</p><p>criteria, but 1/3 of these were so unclear that it was doubtful as to whether or not they would result</p><p>in any green procurement. Of the product groups that were in focus, the one that included paper and</p><p>print was by far the “greenest” of the groups, with the others both containing less GPP and more</p><p>unclear criteria. Compared to other studies this puts Norway at the same level as Sweden, and shows</p><p>a slight improvement in total GPP compared to previous assessments. Still, taking the high amount of</p><p>unclear criteria into account may lower the overall GPP score.</p><p>The interview results indicated that lack of knowledge, focus on economic considerations and</p><p>product functionality, lack of support and management focus and work pressure were the five main</p><p>barriers preventing GPP. Increased co-operation, increased focus from management, simplification of</p><p>criteria and more available products with environmental labels were identified as drivers. The drivers</p><p>and barriers identified correspond to those of previous studies, with some new finding such as</p><p>identifying the lack of product specific knowledge, where previous studies have focused more on lack</p><p>of procurement knowledge.</p><p>The findings are all important when it comes to working out a strategy to follow up the Norwegian</p><p>Action Plan. They give information about the needs identified by the procurement officers</p><p>themselves, thus giving an indication of what initiatives to prioritise.</p>

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>In the past decade, the construction industry has been identified to be among the industries that are lagging in the application of modern information and communication technology as tools to enhance project performance. Where this technology has been applied, little has been done to meet up with the pace of advancements in information and communication technology.</p><p>This research looks at the extent to which information and communication technology (ICT) tools have being integrated for project enhancement in a major railway construction project. Most precisely, it looks at how ICT tools have affected communication and collaborative processes in the context of the soft skills processes and the hard skills processes. Enormous literature in this field of study was reviewed to set the base upon which to make the investigation. Findings show that ICT tools have been integrated just to a limited extent on the project which still used traditional management and project communication methods.; and there was room for integration of better tools as project participants were aware of some of these ICT tools that can enhance the performance of the project. Finally, an ICT infrastructure that encompasses all aspects of the project environment and the entire project lifecycle is proposed. This infrastructure enhances project performance by integrating all project stakeholders in the process of knowledge sharing and use in the project. The research also determines that most project organisations would refrain from integrating certain kinds of project enhancement tools because of he cost obtaining them as well as the cost to train employees on their usage.</p>

What role has sourcing for the logistical outcome when Swedish Armed Forces (FM) plan for and conduct Peace Support Operations (PSOs)? What are the logistic needs to support the operating units? Can logistics in itself contribute to the overall goals with the PSOs? It depends of course on how the logistics are organised and what is required in order to support the military operations. The research on military logistics in general is limited and within the conduct of small nations forces almost non-existent. The role of sourcing depends on the military supply chain and FM decisions on make or buy, choice of market, number of suppliers and relations with the supplier. Therefore this thesis addresses how the sourcing decisions impact the military logistics in FM PSOs and the achievement of short-term and/or long-term objectives. The short term objectives represent the operational needs and the long term objectives represent the overall goals for PSOs. In order to understand the military logistics in PSOs a thorough review of the literature in the field was conducted. A second review was done with the focus on the four sourcing decisions. FM PSOs during the period 2002-2010 were studied. The case focused on  two on-going operations, in Liberia and in the Bay of Aden, and complementary information was collected from a third operation, in Afghanistan. Also the central processes in the headquarters and the connections upstream to the Swedish government and the international relations were studied. The case was built up by interviews, field visits and secondary data. For military logistics in PSOs, three areas on different levels, with in total twelve constructs of importance were developed. Of special importance is the logistic tier structure. The sourcing was one of four logistic key decisions. The sourcing decisions turned out to change between different logistic phases. One of the findings was that the decisions proved to be of importance for the logistic outcome. The make or buy decision enabled responsiveness in the logistics system in a hostile environment. Proximity between customer and supplier showed to be important for all phases in an on-going Peace support operation. Due to the security situation in PSOs, dual sourcing showed to be important in order to create redundancy in the supply chain. The supplier relations changed from arm’s length to partnership when an operation was initiated, which improved the responsiveness. The Swedish Public Procurement Act placed limitations on the procuring organisations to utilise the possibilities to be efficient and effective.

The dissertation is an investigation of the Swedish engineering company AGA’s inventive activity during the years 1904-1959. Inventive activity denotes the company’s efforts in rying to develop innovations. Operations such as patents, experiments, business methods, business co-operations, technical development and other related activities have been studied. Through its lighting system for beacons, which emanated from the international gas industry, AGA had a strong economic base, and could thus go through periods of strong diversification. This led to the growth of more branches on the company’s product tree, and the aim of this dissertation has been to map out and understand how this AGA tree developed. One point of departure for this study has been to investigate how the inventive activity at AGA reacted to changes in the demand side of the economy. According to the American economist Jacob Schmookler the demand determines the development of innovative activity. The American economic historian Nathan Rosenberg has criticised Schmookler, however, arguing that it is the resources of knowledge which dictate the innovative course, since technology transfers are costly to put into economic practice. A third perspective, partly bridging these differences of opinions, is the discussion on the influence of technology procurement, which, among others, the Swedish innovation researcher Charles Edquist has presented. These perspectives frame my study, which maps AGA through two major changes in technology during the first half of the twentieth century. The AGA product tree consists of path dependent shifts in technology; possibilities to develop new technology opened up in the interaction between the company and the market. Among other things, the main innovation, the AGA flasher, originally developed for the lighting in beacons, proved to be functional for railway signalling devices and respirators. Through general market changes outside the company, similar opportunities arose for AGA to develop already existing technique for new markets. During the period of research the inventive activity was characterized by a constant experimenting, where the company’s success to a large extent rested on the engineers’ ingenuity. AGA, being product diversified, had little room to act independently on the market. Thus, to a high degree the company had to adjust its inventive activity to market demand. By cooperating with initiated customers, above all public ones, AGA had the opportunity to continuously develop products in demand, despite limited resources.

Problem: There has been a limited amount of study in procurement within SMEs (Quayle, 2002). In general, for all sizes of organizations, the procurement function has often been regarded as a transactional based function and plays a supporting department to the value-adding process. These organizations view procurement as a simple function of the entire firm (Hutchins, 1992). It is more commonly found that procurement in SMEs tend to be fragmented and non-strategic (Zheng et al., 2007). Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate innovation in procurement in small and medium-sized enterprises Method: A qualitative research method with an abductive approach was used to conduct this research. A primary and secondary material was gathered from Sensys Traffic AB which was used as a case study in investigating into the innovation in procurement within small and medium-sized enterprises. Theories: The theoretical framework that was utilized in this investigation consisted of procurement processes, strategies, roles, and innovation. Conclusion: An organization can compete for the present and the future by placing more emphasis and priority within procurement in SMEs, developing the procurement department and employment skills, coordinating and collaborating within both internal and external members, forming 'win-win' relationships with suppliers, and proactively looking for ways to innovate. Furthermore, by specifically looking to innovate within these areas the procurement function can leverage itself and its firm to be able to achieve reduced total cost of ownership and higher quality products/services. These special areas which were outlined by Spray (2009) are new sourcing ideas, new insights, new partnerships and new technologies.

<p>This dissertation collects work concerning the way individuals deal with imperfect information, both related to their knowledge of themselves and of others. The second chapter shows that bounded rationality, in the form of limited knowledge of utility, is an explanation for common stylized facts of prospect theory like loss aversion, status quo bias and non-linear probability weighting. Locally limited utility knowledge is considered within a classical demand model framework, suggesting that costs of inefficient search for optimal consumption will produce a value function that obeys the loss aversion axiom of Tversky and Kahneman (1991). Moreover, since this adjustment happens over time, new predictions are made that explain why the status quo bias is reinforced over time. This search can also describe the behavior of a consumer facing an uncertain future wealth level. The search cost justifies non-linear forms of probability weighting. The effects that have been observed in experiments will follow as a consequence.</p><p>The third chapter looks to understand how firms create and maintain long term relationships with consumers, or how procurement relations evolve over time, by studying a dynamic variant of the classical two-type-buyer contract in mechanism design. It is less trivial and more interesting if the utility determinant (or utility type) is not fixed or completely random, and fair assumptions are that it is either stochastic, or given by a distribution whose parameters are common knowledge. The first approach is that of Battaglini (2005), while the second is pursued in this paper. With two possible types of buyers, the buyer more likely to have a high utility type will receive the first-best allocations, while the other will receive the first best only if he has the high utility type. </p><p>The last chapter analyzes a dynamic procurement setting with promise keeping, where two firms (agents) with private information on their costs contract competitively with a principal. To this end, two models are proposed and the optimal allocations are determined. The agents face liquidity constraints, which induce distortions when high marginal costs are reported. We deduce that the principal uses promised utilities to incentivize the agents, which act as state variables in the recursive maximization problem. High cost types are allocated less than efficient quantities and the inefficiency of the allocation is relieved as the promised utilities increase.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis describes how lean procurement can be implemented in a medium sized enterprise, focusing on opportunities in the process, methods to achieve the opportunities, and hinders that need to be handled. A literature study has been conducted to identify these aspects, organized by six implied implementation stages of lean procurement. To challenge the findings, an empirical study was conducted at Isaberg Rapid, in order to confirm or discard identified important concepts. In order to conduct a credible study, the choice of a qualitative method has been chosen to contribute to the studied area, with a main emphasis of providing an insider’s view of the case company by semi- and unstructured interview questions. Further, an abductive research process can explain the work order, where an iterative approach has been used between theoretical and empirical studies to create an understanding of the studied area. Isaberg Rapid as a case company was chosen because of their successful lean work and their current aim of implementing lean procurement. A starting point for the study was a theoretical review to decide how and what data that needed to be collected. This led to the choice of interviews, documents analysis and observations at the case company, where interviews were the main contributor with participants connected to lean and procurement. Collected data was interpreted and conceptualized, in order to function as a base for the analysis, together with the theoretical study. The theoretical study describes the opportunities, methods and hinders of lean procurement in the implied implementation stages of Internal lean, Understanding the supply, Establish lean suppliers, Efficient inbound logistics, Joint improvements and development, and finally An extended enterprise. The analysis compares these findings with the empirical study, to depict main concepts of lean procurement, related to medium sized enterprises. The study shows the importance of creating a lean culture that is manifested internally, that can support the development of the procurement function, and further motivate and influence suppliers to adapt the lean work. Main opportunities identified in the study are increased inventory turnover, capable suppliers and reduced waste in the supply chain. Important methods to enable the opportunities are assigned lean roles, education and training, kaizen events, kanbans, milk runs and knowledge sharing. Main hinders for the methods and opportunities are resistance, commitment and trust, resources, power circumstances, and distant suppliers.

ABSTRACT In the past decade, the construction industry has been identified to be among the industries that are lagging in the application of modern information and communication technology as tools to enhance project performance. Where this technology has been applied, little has been done to meet up with the pace of advancements in information and communication technology. This research looks at the extent to which information and communication technology (ICT) tools have being integrated for project enhancement in a major railway construction project. Most precisely, it looks at how ICT tools have affected communication and collaborative processes in the context of the soft skills processes and the hard skills processes. Enormous literature in this field of study was reviewed to set the base upon which to make the investigation. Findings show that ICT tools have been integrated just to a limited extent on the project which still used traditional management and project communication methods.; and there was room for integration of better tools as project participants were aware of some of these ICT tools that can enhance the performance of the project. Finally, an ICT infrastructure that encompasses all aspects of the project environment and the entire project lifecycle is proposed. This infrastructure enhances project performance by integrating all project stakeholders in the process of knowledge sharing and use in the project. The research also determines that most project organisations would refrain from integrating certain kinds of project enhancement tools because of he cost obtaining them as well as the cost to train employees on their usage.