As transformações na sociedade contemporânea mundial levam as empresas a diminuírem seus ciclos de projeto-desenvolvimento-produto, com o objetivo de se manterem flexíveis, dinâmicas e, por conseguinte, competitivas no mercado. Nesse novo cenário surgem as redes, que são alianças constituídas por entidades geograficamente distribuídas e heterogêneas, e que por meio do trabalho colaborativo, compartilham recursos, riscos e competências, visando o alcance de metas comuns. Entre as diversas manifestações de redes colaborativas presentes na literatura, a rede denominada Ambiente de Criação de Organizações Virtuais (Virtual Breeding Environment - VBE) tem um destaque no cenário econômico mundial, uma vez que ela pode propiciar a criação de organizações virtuais. O objetivo desta pesquisa é propor um modelo de referência para operacionalização de ambientes para a criação de organizações virtuais, sob o recorte analítico de redes colaborativas. O método de pesquisa empregado foi o de estudo de múltiplos casos, por meio da análise de oito VBEs. A metodologia que deu suporte à criação do modelo de referência denomina-se EKD (Enterprise Knowledge Development), a qual possui os modelos de objetivos, de conceitos, de regras de negócio, de atores e recursos, de processos de negócios e de componentes e requisitos técnicos. A pesquisa permitiu identificar que apesar dos VBEs manterem o foco na criação de organizações virtuais, a maioria das práticas recomendadas pela literatura sobre o assunto, ainda não são seguidas, não sendo práticas correntes do trabalho colaborativo. Nesse sentido a pesquisa contribuiu para a melhoria do referencial teórico sobre redes colaborativas, permitindo uma visão mais ampla e integrada dos diferentes elementos que compõem a criação de organizações virtuais. Essa contribuição foi possível por meio das visões que cada modelo da metodologia EKD trouxe à pesquisa. O modelo de referência permitiu apresentar os objetivos, os conceitos, as regras de negócios, os processos, os atores, os recursos, os requisitos e os componentes técnicos, relativos à criação de organizações virtuais. / The transformations in contemporary society worldwide lead companies to lower their design cycles-product-development in order to remain flexible, dynamic and therefore competitive in market. In this new scenario arise networks, alliances that are formed by entities geographically distributed, heterogeneous, and through collaborative work, share resources, risks and responsibilities, in order to reach common goals. Among the various manifestations of collaborative networks in the literature, the network called Virtual Breeding Environment-VBE is a highlight in the global economy, since its operation enables the creation of virtual organizations. The objective of this research is to propose a reference model for operationalizing environments to create virtual organizations, under the analytical approach of collaborative networks. The research method used was the study of multiple cases by analyzing eight VBEs. The methodology that supported the creation of reference model called EKD (Enterprise Knowledge Development), which has models of goals, concepts, business rules, actors and resources, business processes and components and technical requirements. The research identified that despite VBEs keep the focus on the creation of virtual organizations, most of the practices recommended in the literature on the subject, are not followed, it is not a current practice of collaborative work. In this sense the research contributed to the improvement of the theoretical referential on collaborative networks, enabling a broader and integrated of the different elements that make up the creation of virtual organizations. This contribution was made possible by the visions that each model of the EKD methodology brought to the research The reference model presents the objectives, concepts, business rules, processes, actors, resources, requirements and technical components, on the creation of virtual organizations.

As organizações virtuais (OVs) se apresentam como uma forma promissora de cooperação entre empresas. Tal forma de organização permite criar um ambiente propício às pequenas e médias empresas que almejam obter acesso a novos mercados e a novas oportunidades de negócios. A função principal das OVs é tornar possível a rápida formação de Empresas Virtuais, que são alianças temporárias entre os componentes de uma OV. O objetivo dessas alianças é explorar oportunidades de negócios específicas, compartilhando habilidades, custos, riscos, infra-estrutura, pesquisa e desenvolvimento. Como toda organização, uma OV necessita formar estratégias que estabeleçam caminhos para atingir seus objetivos organizacionais. No entanto, existe uma carência de métodos e processos de formação de estratégias, adequados à estrutura e às características desse tipo não tradicional de organização. O objetivo deste trabalho é propor um modelo de referência para a formação de estratégias em Organizações Virtuais. Para elaborar o modelo são expostas as várias abordagens relacionadas à formação de estratégias nas organizações tradicionais e determinadas suas adequações à estrutura e às características das OVs. Por fim, o modelo proposto é validado e uma OV real. / The Virtual Organizations (VOs) are presented as a promising way of cooperation between companies. Such a forma of organization allows building a favorable environment to small-medium enterprises that wish to have access to new markets and new business opportunities. The main function of a VO is to make the quick configuration of Virtual Enterprises (VEs), which are temporary alliances between VO partners. The objective of these alliances is to exploit specific opportunities sharing skills, costs, risks, infrastructure, research and development. As all organizations, VOs need to form strategies to establish ways to reach their organizational goals. However, there is a lack of proper methods and processes related to the formation of stategies that adapt to the structure and features of this non-tradicional kind of organization. The goal of this work is to propose a reference model of strategies formation in Virtual Organizations. To elaborate the model, various approaches related to strategy formation in traditional organizations are exposed and established their adequacy to the structure and features of VOs. At last, the model proposed is validated in a real VO.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology. / Over the last few years Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems have emerged as highly attractive systems supporting many useful large-scale applications and services. They allow the exploitation of enormous untapped resources (such as idle processing cycles, storage, and bandwidth) available at Internet-connected devices, which were previously considered incapable of providing services to others. Participating nodes (peers) form an overlay network and communicate with each other without being controlled by a central authority. The structures and routing decisions of the most current P2P networks often do not correlate with the Internet infrastructure. In doing so, the tasks of overlay construction and routing become less complicated however, this results in high end-to-end delay for the P2P applications. As a consequence, the P2P networks may not be able to provide stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for a new generation of P2P applications, and thus limit their benefits for the end users. Moreover, the infrastructure ignorance means P2P systems waste Internet resources by adding more than they should to the Internet traffic. This leads to the increase in Internet access costs substantially, and in turn the P2P systems do not scale well. The thesis presents a novel architecture for developing efficient P2P systems, and new schemes for constructing infrastructure-aware overlay networks. The main objective is first, to overcome the disparity between the overlay and Internet structures in order to maximize the use of network resources and reduce the overlay delay to the P2P applications; second, to provide efficient communication for P2P systems enabling deployment of any P2P applications while preserving decentralized, self-organizing and self-maintaining characteristics for the systems. To achieve these goals, we firstly developed Geographically Longest Prefix Matching (Geo-LPM) and Geographical Partitioning (Geo-Partitioning) schemes to cluster nodes that are close to each other in terms of network latency and network membership, and to determine links between neighboring clusters respectively. The developed schemes are efficient, generate low overhead, and help to produce excellent physically/infrastructure-aware overlay networks. Their distinctive features are self-organization, self-maintenance, and decentralization, which make them suitable to work in a P2P environment. Secondly we propose a novel architecture, called a physically-aware reference model (PARM) that captures desirable features for P2P systems by resolving major functional P2P system problems efficiently in a layered structure. For example, the application routing layer of PARM deals with routing inefficiency, meanwhile the infrastructure unawareness is resolved at the overlay network layer. We develop a useful P2P application, called a Peer Name Service (PNS) that interprets node names into their current IP addresses for any Internet-connected devices. Using the overlay networks, the PNS can support devices, which could be unreachable via the Domain Name Server (DNS), and mobile devices on-the-move without prior setup requirement in a distributed and timely fashion. Finally, to validate the whole concept of PARM, we simulate the PNS and a file transfer to a mobile node at the top layer of PARM, the P2P application layer. Since the PNS is sensitive to delay, it would be useful to evaluate the impacts of overlay delay factor and PARM on the performance of P2P applications. The simulation results show that the performance of the PARM-based applications is significantly improved while achieving decentralized and self-organizing features. The results also indicate that PARM can be a recommended reference model for developing scalable and efficient P2P systems.

Today, discrete event simulation is the only reliable tool for detailed analysis of complex behaviors of modern manufacturing systems. However, building high fidelity simulation models is expensive. Hence, it is important to improve the simulation modeling productivity. In this research, we explore two approaches for the improvement of simulation modeling productivity. One approach is the Virtual Factory Approach, using a general-purpose model for a system to achieve various simulation objectives with a single high fidelity model through abstraction. The other approach is the Reference Model Approach, which is to build fundamental building blocks for simulation models of any system in a domain with formal descriptions and domain knowledge. In the Virtual Factory Approach, the challenge is to show the validity of the methodology. We develop a formal framework for the relationships between higher fidelity and lower fidelity models, and provide justification that the models abstracted from a higher fidelity model are interchangeable with various abstract simulation models for a target system. For the Reference Model Approach, we attempt to overcome the weak points inherited from ad-hoc modeling and develop a formal reference model and a model generation procedure for discrete part manufacturing systems, which covers most modern manufacturing systems.

The rapidly increasing expansion of the Internet has brought dramatic impact to our life and education alike. The major feature differentiates e-learning from the traditional learning is its ability to train anyone, anytime, and anywhere attributed to the Internet. Many experts tell us that e-learning will plays the key-enabling role in knowledge management for individual, schools, and enterprise. Nevertheless, the lack of standard in courseware and learning management system (LMSs) makes courseware in different LMS platforms can not be exchanged directly, and there is no way to monitor and evaluate learner¡¦s behavior from one platform to another. And there are LMS platforms do not provide the effective protection mechanism for courseware in the LMS platforms; this will let an unauthorized user can retrieve courseware as well as he knows the correct URL in the LMS. In this thesis, in order to overcome those hurdles, we refer to the e-learning standard, called Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), to enhance this feature on our existing LMS platform. And we propose an effective courseware access control mechanism which implement at the kernel of the web server.

The e-Learning issues have been discussed and investigated recent years. People can learn on the Internet and feel more comfortable. But in the e-Learning environment, we discovered the learners might have some troubles in learning. They may encounter disorientation, cognitive overloading and learner control. Using some teaching methods or strategies from teachers can reduce these problems. So the Learning Management System (LMS) must have some mechanisms to accomplish these purposes. This thesis is trying to design a learning path control mechanisms that can help teachers to achieve their teaching goals and help learner to build their learning paths. The learning path control mechanisms are designed with Pre_Condition and Post_Condition. By using these mechanisms, teachers can control the learner¡¦s studying progress and guide learners to the suitable ways. And solving the issues of designing the learning path control mechanisms and user navigation. These mechanisms proposed conform to the e-Learning specification: The Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) and used the Learning Object and the Run-Time Environment. Finally, this thesis developed a system not only provide the mechanisms but also help teachers to achieve their teaching goals and learners to establish their learning path.

The new age, the "Information Age" (Davenport and Prusak 1997) has increased society's and businesses' reliance on Information Technology (IT). Hence, there is an increasing focus on the management of IT, not only from a technological perspective but also from a business perspective. This research, sponsored by REALTECH and the Australian Research Council, applies one of the modern management approaches, business process management (Hammer 1990), to the domain IT service provision, by designing a business process reference model for IT Service Provision. A reference model is an abstracted depiction of reality that serves as a standardised or suggestive conceptual basis for the design of enterprise specific models, usually within a like domain. They are one method of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of enterprise modelling and can also be used to standardise communication or capture knowledge. There is a general lack of theory regarding the classification, design and quality of reference models. The first part of this thesis attempts to fill these gaps, by presenting a reference model classification scheme, outlining 7 philosophies for the design of reference models and detailing 2 case studies on the user-perceived quality of business process reference models. Reference models and the Business Process Management Lifecycle (Rosemann 2000) are integrated to show how reference models can be applied to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business process improvement projects. This reference model theory was then applied to produce a model for domain of IT Service Provision. Investment in IT has increased to become the largest single element of capital expenditure (Thorp 1998). Gartner predicted that organisations will spend over 10% of revenue on IT by 2005 (Haines 2000). A major input for this model is the ITIL best practice documents (CCTA 2000). The reference model focuses on Incident Management and used focus groups with participants from several large IT service providers to validate the models. The designed reference model is then tested in two case studies to determine its accuracy and usefulness. The thesis finishes with a discussion of the designed model, the effectiveness of the procedural model and provides suggestions for the design of other reference models. The final chapter provides a summary and an outlook for further research into the area.

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Information Technology. / Over the last few years Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems have emerged as highly attractive systems supporting many useful large-scale applications and services. They allow the exploitation of enormous untapped resources (such as idle processing cycles, storage, and bandwidth) available at Internet-connected devices, which were previously considered incapable of providing services to others. Participating nodes (peers) form an overlay network and communicate with each other without being controlled by a central authority. The structures and routing decisions of the most current P2P networks often do not correlate with the Internet infrastructure. In doing so, the tasks of overlay construction and routing become less complicated however, this results in high end-to-end delay for the P2P applications. As a consequence, the P2P networks may not be able to provide stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for a new generation of P2P applications, and thus limit their benefits for the end users. Moreover, the infrastructure ignorance means P2P systems waste Internet resources by adding more than they should to the Internet traffic. This leads to the increase in Internet access costs substantially, and in turn the P2P systems do not scale well. The thesis presents a novel architecture for developing efficient P2P systems, and new schemes for constructing infrastructure-aware overlay networks. The main objective is first, to overcome the disparity between the overlay and Internet structures in order to maximize the use of network resources and reduce the overlay delay to the P2P applications; second, to provide efficient communication for P2P systems enabling deployment of any P2P applications while preserving decentralized, self-organizing and self-maintaining characteristics for the systems. To achieve these goals, we firstly developed Geographically Longest Prefix Matching (Geo-LPM) and Geographical Partitioning (Geo-Partitioning) schemes to cluster nodes that are close to each other in terms of network latency and network membership, and to determine links between neighboring clusters respectively. The developed schemes are efficient, generate low overhead, and help to produce excellent physically/infrastructure-aware overlay networks. Their distinctive features are self-organization, self-maintenance, and decentralization, which make them suitable to work in a P2P environment. Secondly we propose a novel architecture, called a physically-aware reference model (PARM) that captures desirable features for P2P systems by resolving major functional P2P system problems efficiently in a layered structure. For example, the application routing layer of PARM deals with routing inefficiency, meanwhile the infrastructure unawareness is resolved at the overlay network layer. We develop a useful P2P application, called a Peer Name Service (PNS) that interprets node names into their current IP addresses for any Internet-connected devices. Using the overlay networks, the PNS can support devices, which could be unreachable via the Domain Name Server (DNS), and mobile devices on-the-move without prior setup requirement in a distributed and timely fashion. Finally, to validate the whole concept of PARM, we simulate the PNS and a file transfer to a mobile node at the top layer of PARM, the P2P application layer. Since the PNS is sensitive to delay, it would be useful to evaluate the impacts of overlay delay factor and PARM on the performance of P2P applications. The simulation results show that the performance of the PARM-based applications is significantly improved while achieving decentralized and self-organizing features. The results also indicate that PARM can be a recommended reference model for developing scalable and efficient P2P systems.

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo propor um modelo de referência para o design de produto digital educacional interativo para a televisão digital. Para isso, a revisão de literatura aborda os aspectos que caracterizam a linguagem televisual. Em um segundo momento, apresenta as características técnicas de funcionamento do Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão Digital. Logo após, expõe as possibilidades de interatividade desse meio. Também estudam-se os aspectos que caracterizam um objeto de aprendizagem, a classificação dos objetos e a metodologia do design instrucional. Ainda são tratadas as metodologias utilizadas para o desenvolvimento de audiovisual, o desenvolvimento para televisão interativa. Com base na pesquisa bibliográfica, buscou-se identificar as fases do processo de produção com o design de informação. A partir dessa análise e da comparação das metodologias utilizadas para a produção de conteúdo televisivo, elaborou-se um modelo de referência que apoia o processo de projeto para o desenvolvimento de produtos educacionais interativos para a televisão digital de uma maneira mais formal e sistemática. Utilizando esse modelo, desenvolveu-se um produto educacional voltado ao ensino de design e verificou-se que a principal contribuição dessa proposta é o desenvolvimento integrado para a televisão interativa, considerando todas as equipes envolvidas desde o início do projeto. / This research aims at proposing a reference model to design a digital interactive educational product for digital television. In order to achieve this goal, the literature review addresses the aspects that characterize the televisual language. Secondly, it presents the technical operatio- nal characteristics of the Brazilian Digital Television System. Soon after, the possibilities of interactivity in this medium are exposed. Aspects that characterize an object of learning, the classification of educational objectives and the instructional design are also studied. The methodologies used for audiovisual development and the development for interactive television are also addressed . Based on the bibliographical research, we sought to identify the stages of the production process and its relationship with information design. From this analysis and from the comparison of the methodologies used for the production of television content, we created a reference model that supports the process to develop interactive educational products for digital television more formally and systematically. Using this model, we developed an educational product geared towards teaching design. It was found that the main contribution of this proposal is the integrated development for interactive television, considering all the teams involved since the beginning of the project.

Le développement de la maturité supply chain est une préoccupation croissante des entreprises évoluant dans un environnement qui se transforme profondément et simultanément dans plusieurs domaines. S’adossant à plusieurs initiatives proposées sous forme de référentiels, les entreprises progresser quelque peu avec difficulté. S’inscrivant dans un paradigme post-positiviste, cette recherche se concentre sur la conception d’un modèle qui permet d’évaluer la maturité, sur plusieurs dimensions, de la supply chain. Ces objectifs ont été atteints à partir d’une revue approfondie de la littérature, mais également à partir de la réalisation d’une étude empirique. D’une part, les concepts de supply chain, de supply chain management, de maturité supply chain, ainsi que des capacités relatives ont été revus en profondeur, et d’autre part, les référentiels d’évaluation dans le domaine de la logistique, de la gestion des opérations et du supply chain management ont été étudiés et confrontés aux capacités de maturité supply chain établies. Cela a donné lieu à la conception d’un modèle qui s’appuie sur les modèles antérieurs pour proposer des critères qui les complètent. Ce modèle a été validé auprès d’un échantillon de 115 répondants (Directeurs logistique, supply chain managers, etc.). L’analyse des données collectées s’est appuyée sur les modèles d’équations structurelles, en l’occurrence PLS-PM (régressions aux moindres carrées partiels). Cette analyse, précédée d’une analyse univariée et d’une analyse en composantes principales a permis de constater la validité convergente ainsi que la validité discriminante des échelles de mesures, mais également de l’existence de liens d’impacts variables entre les différentes dimensions et la maturité supply chain. Les résultats de cette recherche montrent que la maturité est principalement constituée par les dimensions opérationnelles et stratégiques, suivies par les dimensions informationnelles, structurelles, organisationnelles et humaines. La thèse établit le constat selon lequel la dimension de risques et de résilience, la dimension relationnelle et la dimension de développement durable et de responsabilité sociale ont le moins d’impact dans la structuration de la maturité supply chain. Une fois le modèle validé, la maturité effective des entreprises de l’échantillon a été évaluée en utilisant l’analyse Importance/Maturité. Les résultats émanant de cette analyse montrent une forte maturité supply chain des entreprises par rapport aux dimensions stratégiques, structurelles, organisationnelles, de risques et de résilience, ce qui n’est pas le cas par rapport aux autres dimensions, où l’analyse a décelé une maturité moyenne à faible.Cela suggère aux entreprises de concentrer leurs efforts sur les aspects opérationnels, relationnels, informationnels et relatifs au développement durable et à la responsabilité sociale. / Supply chain maturity development is a growing concern for companies operating in an environment that is changing profoundly and simultaneously in several areas. Teaming up with several initiatives proposed as standards, companies make some progress with difficulty. As part of a post-positivist paradigm, this research focuses on the design of a model, which assesses the maturity of several dimensions of the supply chain. These objectives have been achieved from a thorough review of the literature, but also from the realization of an empirical study. On the one hand, the concepts of supply chain, supply chain management, supply chain maturity, as well as related capacity were reviewed in depth.On the other hand, assessment reference models in logistics, operations management and supply chain management have been studied and compared to capabilities of supply chain maturity established. This led to the design of a model based on earlier ones to propose criteria that complement them. This model was validated with a sample of 115 respondents (Directors logistics, supply chain managers, etc.). The analysis of the data collected was based on structural equation models, namely PLS-PM (Partial Least Squares -Path Modeling). This analysis was preceded by univariate analysis and principal component analysis, showed convergent validity and discriminant validity of measurement scales, but also the existence of links with variable impact between dimensions and supply chain maturity. Results of this research show that maturity is mainly constituted by the operational and strategic dimensions, followed by informational, structural, organizational and human resourcesdimensions. The thesis establishes that the maturity level of risk and resilience, relational and sustainable development and social responsibility dimensions have the least impact on the structuring of the supply chain maturity. Once validated, the effective maturity of the firms in the sample was evaluated using the Importance/Maturity analysis. Results from this analysis show a strong supply chain maturity of the company in relation to strategic dimensions, structural, organizational, risk and resilience, which is not the case with respect to other dimensions, where the analysis has identified low average maturity. This suggests that companies focus their efforts on the operational, relational, informational aspects and those related to sustainable development and social responsibility.