Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-61). / by Thomas P. Courtney. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2009. / "December 2008." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-2 [i.e. 105]). / Electronic waste (e-waste) is a rapidly growing problem as well as a business opportunity given the huge volume that is generated. While there are a number policies and philosophies that guide end-of-life handling of electronic waste, currently there is no holistic framework or model that can be applied as a policy development and management tool. Mauritius is a small island located off the coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean with a population of 1.2 million people and an area of about 787 sq. miles. According to a recent survey it is estimated that each Mauritian generates about 0.9 kilogram of waste par day, which represents about 375,000 tons of waste annually. The Government of Mauritius recently declared one of its medium term goals for the country is to make Mauritius a sustainable island. It is observed that by developing the capability to handle electronic waste, the general capability of a waste management system is significantly increased. This work, funded by grants from the MIT Public Service Center, aims to address the problem of electronic waste in general and in the context of Mauritius in particular by: - Developing a cradle-to-grave model of material and financial flows of electronic products based on extensive literature review. This model is used to conduct an in-depth analysis of the policy, practices and material and financial flows in various countries. - Providing analytical tools to visualize activities and formulate effective policy and actions to address this problem. - Conducting a household level e-waste survey to characterize its nature and content in Mauritius. / (cont.) - Recommending changes to existing infrastructure in Mauritius to enable them to be upgraded to Material Recovery Facilities to help in recovery activities on the island. / by Hrishikesh Ballal. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-81). / When geographers study the world and its features, distance is one of the basic measures they use to describe the patterns they observe. Distance is, however, an elastic concept. Physical distance has played the dominant role in the world's geo-politics, global economy and international trade in last centuries. But in recent times - the impact of physical distance has been diminished and transformed by the effect and advancement of IT & Telecommunication technology. Physical distance has been transformed into virtual distance. Communication from one end of the world to other has become - "Just a click away in a computer or a few finger tips in our cell phone." The focus of this thesis is on two closely related sets of questions. - (I) "How is the state of telecommunication technology in emerging countries changing? How does this technological advancement affect the productivity and international competitiveness of these economies? (II) How does this telecommunication industry development in emerging economies shifting the overall global business paradigm of the telecommunication industry and is this shift permanent or temporary? In this thesis, I will first focus on the background of world telecommunication industry and the market segmentation based on: (I) Key Economic Indicator of Telecom industry (ARPU - Average revenue per user) and (II) Technology. I will then analyze the recent development of world telecommunication industry and conduct case studies on eight global telecom operators (Vodafone, AT&T, Telenor, SingTel, China Mobile, Orascom, America Movil, and Reliance). This analysis will focus on the present situation of global telecom industry, worldwide investment in this sector, market tier & user segments, and buying power of the emerging economies. At this point, I will introduce and examine whether the business models being developed in these emerging economies are likely to impact the global economy. / (cont.) To do so, I will apply Porter's competitive advantage of nation analysis and Lessard's Globalization RAT's (Relevant, Appropriable & Transferable) test. Finally, I will conclude my research by illustrating - the evolving global telecom user triangle model and highlight a few key issues for global telecom operators to consider for their future business growth and sustainability. / by Rehan A. Asad. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Leaf 96 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-95). / Introduction: Corporations all across the globe and of various sizes rely on their IT systems for business processes, reduction of process lifecycle and management of resources. These systems house several applications for internal sales, purchasing, finance, HR and so on. In any such typical organization, IT systems are a heterogeneous mix of hardware, operating systems and applications. Many of these applications run on different operating systems like Windows systems, Linux and Unix systems, etc. Oftentimes there is a need to consolidate data or access data from several such systems. The diversity among systems and applications makes these tasks difficult, time consuming and tedious. Furthermore, there is also a need for synchronization of data across systems and applications to ensure that the data is accurate and up-to-date. The heterogeneous nature of systems and applications lead to high levels of redundancy of data, making data maintenance a huge overhead for organizations. Today's organizations must also adapt to changes in environments both external and internal to them. Such changes could be changing market conditions, reorganization, change in business strategies within a company, addition or changing suppliers, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions and so on. There is also a growing need for integration across enterprise boundaries to facilitate fast and seamless collaboration between partners, customers and suppliers. All such needs entail changes to existing IT systems within an organization in a timely manner. There is thus a growing need for integration of such systems for consolidated decision making, accurate, up-to-date system information, better performance and system monitoring. IT Systems must also be flexible to respond to changes in the environments of their organization. Enterprise Application Integration is a process that aims to bring about such integration. The need for integration goes beyond the boundaries of an enterprise. Further, to successfully compete today, businesses need to be flexible. This means that their IT systems need to be able to keep pace with dynamic business conditions. It is evident that any solution for multiple IT systems to integrate with each other and to provide flexibility, they must be able to communicate and coordinate activities in a standard way. For almost two decades, many companies have tried to use CORBA, DCOM and similar technologies but have had little success. None of these technologies, for many reasons have become global technologies. The arrival of standards like HTTP and HTML helped linking together millions of humans across the internet but proved inadequate to link together computer systems. Moreover, internal and cross enterprise integration and coordination bring with them, security implications as both involve information exchange between organizational entities. As we will see later, the traditional methods of securing applications with firewalls prove inadequate for application security. One insight that has come from failed attempts to consolidate and coordinate IT systems is that such efforts cannot be limited to IT alone. Decision making on how interdepartmental and inter-enterprise data must data must be exchanged must be made by leaders and opinion shapers at each level or division of the organization. It is the goals of internal and external enterprise integration, flexibility of business processes, and enterprise data security that has led more and more organizations to adopt to Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). The adoption, implementation and running of a SOA does not simply involve IT department heads to design and create a new architecture for the enterprise. It involves a holistic understanding of the nature of the entire enterprise, its business and internal processes, the corporate strategy for the enterprise, an understanding of the business processes of the enterprise, its partners, suppliers, subsidiaries, etc. Such an undertaking is beyond the scope of a single department or division of the enterprise. The creation and running SOA architecture thus involves the coordination of all parts of the enterprise. / by Rajiv Ramaratnam. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 54). / Warranty is an important part of many organizations. Warranty costs take money directly away from corporations' bottom line. General Motors Corporations warranty liability costs its shareholders upwards of billion dollars annually. General Motors currently uses RedX, a systematic design of experiments methodology, to try to reduce warranty costs. Although this approach has reduced warranty costs, it has not done so neither fast nor sufficiently as high costs remains. The General Motors' warranty system was mapped and diagnosed. Interviews were conducted with all involved parties with the warranty system. Competitors warranty systems were compared and contrast to General Motors' warranty system. Other factors considered were new quality methods. The major factors limiting General Motors goals to reducing warranty are time to discover the failure and the time the fix the failure once it is discovered. Another factor is the culture and the lack of team environment within the warranty organization. General Motors should use telematics, onboard diagnostics, signature analysis, and a systemic approach which involves integrating the design and warranty organizations to predict and quickly eliminate defects from its manufacturing facilities. This approach will either eliminate failures quickly or prevent them from even becoming failures in the first place. / by Jelani H. Ellington. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-57). / by David G. Bancroft. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 71). / Climate Change has become a Major issue beginning with our generation. Governments the world over are now recognizing that industry cannot continue to pollute in a business-as-usual manner. Emitting Greenhouse gases has a global impact, unlike pollutants that are released into soil or water. Global warming created by the Greenhouse effect, amongst other things is causing an increase in the ambient global temperature, causing glaciers to melt and global weather patterns to change. At the same time the world population is increasing, the standard of living for an increasing percentage of the population is improving, and with that the global energy usage is going up and up. Currently, a large portion of the global energy is derived from fossil fuels. Combusting fossil fuels are the primary source of Greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge for governments then is two-fold. One is how to cap and/or reduce the Greenhouse gases from industry, and second, how to achieve this first goal without being detrimental to the industry in a large way, or as some say with the least cost. In the USA, due to lack of a federal standard, several states have either banded together or gone it alone, in defining their own attempt to address the Greenhouse gas problem. The state of California is one such state that has put together a committee of experts, to advise the state on how best to design a system with the two afore-said challenges in mind. A model has been put together to model Option A, Program Design 1 of the California Cap-and-Trade system. / (cont.) The goal of the model is to give the regulator an understanding of how by varying the main lever, which is the cap set, the regulator can influence the covered Electric entities in optimally meeting the cap, based on the headroom they have for abatement, and their actual ability to act and the degree to which they can act in abatement; and secondly how this main lever, can create a thriving market for trading allowances, by trying to have almost an equal number of players that want to buy the requisite number of allowances to meet the cap, or sell their excess allowances. / by Chester Fernandes. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-73). / by Shu-Chieh Chang. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 124-126). / by David Anthony Hinton. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 115-116). / by Rocco Paduano. / S.M.