Making good supply management decisions is essential to competing in the global market, as these decisions often account for more than 60% of the average company's total costs. The purpose for this single case study was to explore the strategy that a large manufacturing firm in northeast Ohio used to identify costs when making effective purchasing decisions. The total cost of ownership (TCO) theory was the conceptual framework for the study. The data collection included a semistructured interview with a senior level supply manager and a focus group consisting of mid-level supply managers. Member checking provided verification of the interpreted participants' responses. Methodological triangulation included 2 company documents pertinent to the supply management department that resulted in 4 emerging themes: identifying total costs, tools for implementing TCO, supplier rating and management, and detailed recordkeeping. The findings of this study revealed a simpler approach to capturing and organizing data than was acknowledged in the literature reviewed. The findings showed TCO supported purchasing decisions that often resulted in domestically or regionally purchased products rather than offshore buys. Therefore, reassessment of true total costs by senior manufacturing supply managers might impact social change as more procurement decisions forego sourcing offshore and bring manufacturing of products back to local communities.

Bibliography: leaves 61-64. This thesis reviews the sustainability of water resource management in Singapore and adequacy of the water conservation efforts put up by its government, population and industries. The write-up deliberates on the various trans-national water issues faced by the small Republic, interactions within its water sector and with the rest of the economy, management of its water supply and demand, as well as the various problems and challenges confronted by the country. This study is intended to highlight the relative wisdom of reducing water demand over pursuing supply solutions.

Women are increasingly being recognised internationally as essential actors in successful water supply management. Despite this, women are nevertheless still being excluded from water management activities which have proved to frequently result in water project failure. This has great consequences for water supply and water distribution capacity and efficiency. Women‟s exclusion often stems from traditional and deeply rooted gender differences where women, compared to men, are not given the same rights and opportunities. Therefore, in particular focuses in this study are cultural barriers and socio-economic obstacles and challenges that may hinder female participation. Although Ghana is considered to have rich water resources, the production, distribution and use of water is not efficient, sufficient, or sustainable. This impedes the country‟s socio-economic development. Most affected are women and children as they are often directly linked to the water source through their role as water collectors. In relation to this, the study investigates the importance of women‟s participation in water management within the Republic of Ghana. Furthermore, the study examines the efficiency and adequacy of measures and actions implemented to improve female participation in water supply management.  For data collection, a case study approach was adopted including an in-depth literature review, interviews with essential actors in Ghana and document analysis of Ghana‟s National Water Policy and National Gender and Children Policy. Interviews and documents were analysed with a content analysis and a comparative analysis approach.  The study found that women in Ghana, despite acknowledging their important role in Ghanaian water „society‟, experience great limitations in their participation in water management. Traditional norms and practices constitute a major obstacle together with a strongly male-dominated society that often prevents women from participating in the public sphere. The study indicates that there is a need to reform the legal system and the procedures of enforcement to encourage female participation in the water management. Furthermore, the Government of Ghana ought to improve financial, human, and material support within its agencies and associates to facilitate and enable female involvement. Moreover, there is a great need to improve women‟s rights to, and attendance in, education. Additionally, raising the awareness of gender and women‟s issues in general is crucial in order to initiate changes of traditional norms and practices and consequently improve their participation in the water management. By reforming Ghanaian women‟s situation, their role and status will be strengthened, not only within water management, but as well in the wider society.

O objetivo deste trabalho é o de avaliar a gestão da terceirização de serviços de tecnologia da informação (TI) baseados nas práticas de governança de TI (GTI) por meio de revisão bibliográfica e pesquisa quantitativa em organizações brasileiras. Diversas organizações enfrentam dificuldades na gestão dos serviços terceirizados e por essa razão adotam práticas recomendadas por diversos modelos de GTI. O estudo sobre a natureza da relação entre as práticas recomendadas de gestão de TI e seus resultados partiu da análise de 37 modelos de governança, sendo 15 específicos de GTI, dos quais três modelos foram escolhidos – CObIT vs.4.1, eSCM-CL vs.1.1 e ITIL vs.3 – por representarem quase que a totalidade de processos e ações práticas de todos os outros modelos relacionados à GTI. O instrumento foi aplicado junto a 299 gestores de TI de empresas de grande e médio porte dos setores industrial, comercial e de serviços da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo, sendo realizadas análise fatorial exploratória e análise confirmatória por meio de modelagem de equações estruturais estimados por PLS (Partial Least Square). O instrumento final contém 43 itens que ficaram distribuídos em sete fatores, a saber: estratégias de serviços, operações de serviços, monitoramentos de serviços, desenvolvimento do fornecedor, trabalho tecnológico, satisfação e melhoria nos processos de negócio. Esses fatores agrupam-se em duas dimensões – práticas recomendadas e resultados esperados. A pesquisa evidencia que grande parte das organizações utiliza modelos de GTI, sendo as de grande porte sua maior parte e com predominância do modelo ITIL. Podê-se observar ainda, que os melhores resultados obtidos pelas organizações, estão associados à adoção de contratos formais detalhados com uso de service level agreement, aumentando seu foco na área de atuação em função da terceirização de serviços de TI. A expectativa era a de que a adoção de práticas recomendadas de modelos de GTI contribuísse significativamente no resultado da terceirização de serviços de TI, entretanto, isto não ficou caracterizado. A complexidade que envolve a adoção de práticas recomendadas e seus resultados leva-nos a refletir e a apontar outros aspectos que podem estar relacionados a fim de se obter resultados mais significativos da gestão da terceirização de serviços de TI. / The objective of this research is evaluate the management of the outsourcing of information technology (IT) practices based on IT governance (GTI) through a review and quantitative research in Brazilian organizations. Several organizations are facing difficulties in managing outsourced services and therefore adopting practices recommended derived from the various models of GTI. The study on the nature of the relationship between best practices for IT management and its results came from analysis of 37 models of governance, 15 GTI-specific, including three models were chosen - COBIT vs.4.1, eSCM CL-vs. 1.1 and ITIL vs.3 - because they represent almost the entire process and practicalities of all other models related to the GTI. The instrument was applied to 299 IT managers at large and medium-sized companies in the industrial, commercial and service sectors within São Paulo Metropolitan Region and was conducted exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory analysis using structural equation modeling estimated by PLS (Partial Least Square). The final instrument contained 43 items that were distributed in seven factors, namely: service strategies, service operations, monitoring of services, supplier development, technological work, satisfaction and business processes improvement. These factors were grouped into two dimensions - best practices and results. The research shows that most organizations use models of GTI, and the large and mostly with a predominance of ITIL. It can also be observed, is that the best results obtained by the organizations, are associated with adoption of formal contracts with detailed use of service level agreement, increasing its focus on the scope depending on the outsourcing of IT services. The expectation was that the adoption of best practices models GTI contributed significantly in the outcome of outsourcing of IT services, however, this has not been characterized. The complexity surrounding the adoption of best practices and their results leads us to reflect and point to other aspects that may be related to be the most significant results of the management of outsourcing IT services.

This thesis is a combination of two separate studies which examine hydrologic data assimilation techniques: 1) to determine the applicability of assimilation of remotely sensed data in operational models and 2) to compare the effectiveness of assimilation and other calibration techniques. The first study examines the ability of Data Assimilation of remotely sensed microwave radiance data to improve snow water equivalent prediction, and ultimately operational streamflow forecasts. Operational streamflow forecasts in the National Weather Service River Forecast Center are produced with a coupled SNOW17 (snow model) and SACramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) model. A comparison of two assimilation techniques, the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) and the Particle Filter (PF), is made using a coupled SNOW17 and the Microwave Emission Model for Layered Snowpack model to assimilate microwave radiance data. Microwave radiance data, in the form of brightness temperature (TB), is gathered from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System at the 36.5GHz channel. SWE prediction is validated in a synthetic experiment. The distribution of snowmelt from an experiment with real data is then used to run the SAC-SMA model. Several scenarios on state or joint state-parameter updating with TB data assimilation to SNOW-17 and SAC-SMA models were analyzed, and the results show potential benefit for operational streamflow forecasting. The second study compares the effectiveness of different calibration techniques in hydrologic modeling. Currently, the most commonly used methods for hydrologic model calibration are global optimization techniques. While these techniques have become very efficient and effective in optimizing the complicated parameter space of hydrologic models, the uncertainty with respect to parameters is ignored. This has led to recent research looking into Bayesian Inference through Monte Carlo methods to analyze the ability to calibrate models and represent the uncertainty in relation to the parameters. Research has recently been performed in filtering and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques for optimization of hydrologic models. At this point, a comparison of the effectiveness of global optimization, filtering and MCMC techniques has yet to be reported in the hydrologic modeling community. This study compares global optimization, MCMC, the PF, the Particle Smoother, the EnKF and the Ensemble Kalman Smoother for the purpose of parameter estimation in both the HyMod and SAC-SMA hydrologic models.

No description available.

The ability to effectively match supply and demand can lead to significant revenue benefits in the airline industry. Airline supply management deals with assigning the right resources (i.e., aircraft and crew) to the right routes in the flight network. Due to certain crew regulations, operating characteristics, and constraints of the airline companies, these supply management decisions need to be made well in advance of departures, at a time when demand is highly uncertain. However, demand forecasts improve markedly over time, as more information on demand patterns is gathered. Thus, exploiting the flexibilities in the system that allows the partial postponement of supply decisions to a later time, when more accurate demand information is obtained, can significantly improve the airline's revenue. In this thesis, we propose and analyze the Demand Driven Swapping (DDS) approach that aims at improving the airline's revenue by reducing the supply-demand mismatches through dynamically swapping aircraft as departures approach. This research has been done in collaboration with our industrial partner, the United Airlines Research and Development Division. Due to the proximity to departures, the DDS problem is restricted by two main constraints: 1) the initial crew schedule needs to be kept intact (due to certain union contracts); and 2) airport services and operations need to be preserved to the greatest extent possible. As a result, only a limited number of simple swaps can be performed between aircraft types of the same family (i.e. crew-compatible aircraft types). However, the swaps can be potentially performed on a daily basis given the initial fleet assignments. Clearly, the swapping criteria, frequency, and timing will highly impact the revenue benefits of the DDS approach. When the swapping decisions are made several weeks prior to departures (i.e., 4-6 weeks before departures), they will not cause much disturbance to the operations, but will be performed under highly uncertain demand information. On the other hand, swapping decisions that are delayed to a time later (i.e., 1-3 weeks before departures) will decrease the possibility of bad swaps, but will result in larger costs due to the higher disruptions to airport services and operations. Thus our research objective is to provide guidelines and principles on how the flexible capacity should be managed in the system. For this purpose, we study the effectiveness of different swapping strategies, characterized in terms of their frequency and timing, for hedging against the demand uncertainty. We first study stylized analytical models to gain insights into the critical parameters that affect these benefits. Simulation models are then conducted to test the validity of our analytical findings as well as to analyze more complex strategies and assess the dynamic performance of these strategies. The analytical results indicate that strategies that make the swapping decision early in time (in order to minimize disturbances to the operations) perform very well on routes, where the demand uncertainty is low and the expected demands on the legs are well-balanced. Otherwise, a swapping strategy, which revises the swapping decision over time, should be implemented. Our simulation results, based on real data obtained from United Airlines, confirm the analytical findings. / Master of Science

This dissertation explores the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on critical infrastructures as defined by US Department of Homeland Security. The focus is on two important critical infrastructure systems – Water and Transportation. Critical infrastructures are always under the risk of threats such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, faulty management practices, regulatory policies, and defective technologies and system designs. Measuring the performance and risks of critical infrastructures is complex due to its network, geographic and dynamic characteristics and multiplicity of stakeholders associated with them. Critical infrastructure systems in crowded urban and suburban areas like the Washington Metropolitan Area (WMA) are subject to increased risk from geographic proximity. Moreover, climate is challenging the assumption of stationary (the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability) that is the foundation of water resource engineering and planning. Within this context, this research uses concepts of systems engineering such as 'systems thinking' and 'system dynamics' to understand, analyze, model, simulate, and critically assess a critical infrastructure system's vulnerability to extreme natural events and climate change. In most cases, transportation infrastructure is designed to withstand either the most extreme or close to the most extreme event that will add abnormal stresses on a physical structure. The system may fail to perform as intended if the physical structure faces an event larger than what it is designed for. The results of the transportation study demonstrate that all categories of roadways are vulnerable to climate change and that the magnitude of bridge vulnerability to future climate change is variable depending on which climate model projection is used. Results also show that urbanization and land use patterns affects the susceptibility of the bridge to failures. Similarly, results of the water study indicate that the WMA water supply system may suffer from water shortages accruing due to future droughts but climate change is expected to improve water supply reliability due to an upward trend in precipitation and streamflow. / Ph. D.

Submitted by Silvana Teresinha Dornelles Studzinski (sstudzinski) on 2015-10-06T16:48:29Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ROSELEI HAAG_.pdf: 1169810 bytes, checksum: 1591d24df570168350007209b0cb307d (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-10-06T16:48:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ROSELEI HAAG_.pdf: 1169810 bytes, checksum: 1591d24df570168350007209b0cb307d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-03-30 / Nenhuma / O objetivo deste trabalho foi identificar a relação entre o desempenho ambiental com a terceirização, a colaboração ambiental com os fornecedores e a multinacionalidade. A pesquisa propôs três hipóteses derivadas da literatura, e as testou a partir de dados de survey em plantas de manufatura. Para tal, os construtos utilizados foram extraídos do projeto de pesquisa internacional denominado High Performance Manufacturing (HPM). A amostra consiste em empresas do banco de dados da quarta rodada do projeto, coletado em três setores (eletroeletrônico, veículos automotores e máquinas e equipamentos). Após o tratamento dos dados, obteve-se o total de 257 pesquisas válidas. Os dados foram analisados estatisticamente através de Modelagem de Equações Estruturais. Como resultado, a pesquisa identifica que a colaboração ambiental com fornecedores influencia positivamente o desempenho ambiental nas plantas da amostra. No entanto, não foi encontrada relação significativa entre a multinacionalidade e a terceirização com o desempenho ambiental. Este trabalho contribui às discussões teóricas e práticas para os estudos de estratégia em manufatura, ao demonstrar empiricamente que as práticas de colaboração ambiental com os fornecedores podem resultar em uma melhoria do desempenho ambiental. / The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between the environmental performance with outsourcing, environmental cooperation with suppliers and multi-nationality. The research proposed three hypotheses derived from the literature, and tested from by a database survey on manufacturing plants. To this end, the constructs used have been taken from the international research project called High Performance Manufacturing (HPM). The sample consists of companies out of a database in the fourth round of the project, collected in three sectors (electronics, motor vehicles and machinery and equipment). After processing the data, we obtained a total of 257 valid surveys. The data have been statistically analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling. As for the results, this identifies that the environmental cooperation with suppliers has a positively influence to the environmental performance in the plants. However, there was no significant relationship between multinationality and outsourcing with environmental performance. This present work contributes to the theoretical and practical discussions for manufacturing strategy in studies to empirically demonstrate that the environmental practices of collaboration with suppliers may result in an improvement of environmental performance.

This thesis forms part of the emerging studies on the backlogs in municipal services delivery and the attendant emergence of the new social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. It examines four areas. These are: the backlogs in water services delivery; the consequent politicisation of the water services struggles; the breakdown of social citizenship; and the nature, forms and the repertoire of the collective action of the new social movements. The thesis is based on fieldwork research I undertook in 2002 on the water services struggles in Mpumalanga, an African township located outside the small town of Hammarsdale in Durban. The fieldwork research results reveal the demographic characteristics of Mpumalanga and, more crucially, the extent of the water services crisis. The results evaluate the nature and the gravity of the water services delivery backlogs. More importantly, they gauge the depth of their involvement in the water services struggles in Mpumalanga and the extent of their success. These are weighed against the reports of the new social movements' involvement in the township by the leftist-cum-intellectual activists in Durban and by the leftist and mainstream media reports. They also revealed a detailed picture of the state of collective action in Durban, unearthing the nature and functioning of the Concerned Citizens' Forum (CCF), an umbrella-body of Durban-based social movements. The study questions the hallowed standing of the CCF, by claiming, through detailed study and fieldwork observation, that the CCF is given to 'crowd renting', lack of transparency, disorderly decision-making, racial and leadership crises. The thesis also contextualises the collective action programmes of the CCF by situating them in Mpumalanga's neighbourhood politics. By doing so, the reader encounters ruling party local councillors, opposition party local councillors, CCF leaders and intellectual-cum-activists, youth activists and local council officials and bureaucrats. The collusion and conflicts between these parties and stakeholders bring into the equation political opportunism, careerism, and the ruthless pursuit of financial gains. All these parties and variables reveal a complex and ever-shifting picture of collective action and the contentious politics of the new social movements in Mpumalanga and Durban, amidst the looming crisis of the breakdown of social citizenship, cost recovery and the water services struggles.