The objective of this thesis was to upgrade an Enterprise Resource planning system that was outdated into a new age Enterprise resource planning system based centered on a scheduling algorithm. This was a key change that needed to be made to transform the company from old thinking to new. Primarily the testing of this implementation was done through mapping of processes, followed by trial and error, and finally improving and sustaining the processes it took to use the system correctly. The mapping of the processes was completed by the Process Manager as well as the Lead, Supervisor, or Manager of the area being revamped. When processes were originally mapped for the flow of the implementation, the chart was five pages. After implementation, the same processes streamlined using the new Enterprise resource planning system is now only two pages. After all implementations were complete, more than $150,000 in salaries was saved, as well as many unnecessary and tedious job functions. While continuous improvement must follow, the original objective of this thesis was met with great success.

Modelling dialogue management as a reinforcement learning task enables a system to learn to act optimally by maximising a reward function. This reward function is designed to induce the system behaviour required for goal-oriented applications, which usually means fulfilling the user’s goal as efficiently as possible. However, in real-world spoken dialogue systems, the reward is hard to measure, because the goal of the conversation is often known only to the user. Certainly, the system can ask the user if the goal has been satisfied, but this can be intrusive. Furthermore, in practice, the reliability of the user’s response has been found to be highly variable. In addition, due to the sparsity of the reward signal and the large search space, reinforcement learning-based dialogue policy optimisation is often slow. This thesis presents several approaches to address these problems. To better evaluate a dialogue for policy optimisation, two methods are proposed. First, a recurrent neural network-based predictor pre-trained from off-line data is proposed to estimate task success during subsequent on-line dialogue policy learning to avoid noisy user ratings and problems related to not knowing the user’s goal. Second, an on-line learning framework is described where a dialogue policy is jointly trained alongside a reward function modelled as a Gaussian process with active learning. This mitigates the noisiness of user ratings and minimises user intrusion. It is shown that both off-line and on-line methods achieve practical policy learning in real-world applications, while the latter provides a more general joint learning system directly from users. To enhance the policy learning speed, the use of reward shaping is explored and shown to be effective and complementary to the core policy learning algorithm. Furthermore, as deep reinforcement learning methods have the potential to scale to very large tasks, this thesis also investigates the application to dialogue systems. Two sample-efficient algorithms, trust region actor-critic with experience replay (TRACER) and episodic natural actor-critic with experience replay (eNACER), are introduced. In addition, a corpus of demonstration data is utilised to pre-train the models prior to on-line reinforcement learning to handle the cold start problem. Combining these two methods, a practical approach is demonstrated to effectively learn deep reinforcement learning-based dialogue policies in a task-oriented information seeking domain. Overall, this thesis provides solutions which allow truly on-line and continuous policy learning in spoken dialogue systems.

This thesis deals with theme of Human Resources information systems, sub domain of information systems. Focus of theoretical part of this work is to familiarize reader with term HRIS, its history and evolution, define importance for organization and its environment. Define and critically evaluate its benefits for organization, typical users of HRIS and architecture models, find, evaluate and discus present and future trends. Practical part is focused on solving present situation in real organization that has issues with its HRIS and IT/IS support of HR processes. Main goal of thesis is critically evaluate status of firm and recommend best solution. Findings from theoretical part are applied to analyze and evaluate needs of organization. At the end, recommendation is stated.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans l'étude des systèmes de particules en interaction et plus précisément dans celle des modèles de croissance aléatoire qui représentent un quantité qui grandit au cours du temps et s'étend sur un réseau. Ce type de processus apparaît naturellement quand on regarde la croissance d'un cristal ou bien la propagation d'une épidémie. Cette dernière est bien modélisée par le processus de contact introduit en 1974 par Harris. Le processus de contact est un des plus simples systèmes de particules en interaction présentant une transition de phase et l'on connaît maintenant bien son comportement sur ses phases. De nombreuses questions ouvertes sur ses extensions, notamment celles de formes asymptotiques, ont motivé ce travail. Après la présentation de ce processus et de certaines de ses extensions, nous introduisons et étudions une nouvelle variante: le processus de contact avec vieillissement où les particules ont un âge qui influence leur capacité à donner naissance à leurs voisines. Nous effectuerons pour ce modèle un couplage avec une percolation orientée inspiré de celui de Bezuidenhout-Grimmett et nous montrerons la croissance d'ordre linéaire de ce processus. Dans la dernière partie de la thèse, nous nous intéressons à la preuve d'un théorème de forme asymptotique pour des modèles généraux de croissance aléatoire grâce à des techniques sous-Additives, parfois complexes à mettre en place à cause de la non 'survie presque sûre' de nos modèles. Nous en concluons en particulier que le processus de contact avec vieillissement, le processus de contact en environnement dynamique, la percolation orientée avec immigration hostile, et le processus de contact avec sensibilisation vérifient des résultats de forme asymptotique / This thesis is a contribution to the mathematical study of interacting particles systems which include random growth models representing a spreading shape over time in the cubic lattice. These processes are used to model the crystal growth or the spread of an infection. In particular, Harris introduced in 1974 the contact process to represent such a spread. It is one of the simplest interacting particles systems which exhibits a critical phenomenon and today, its behaviour is well-Known on each phase. Many questions about its extensions remain open and motivated our work, especially the one on the asymptotic shape. After the presentation of the contact process and its extensions, we introduce a new one: the contact process with aging where each particle has an age age that influences its ability to give birth to its neighbours. We build a coupling between our process and a supercritical oriented percolation adapted from Bezuidenhout-Grimmett's construction and we establish the 'at most linear' growth of our process. In the last part of this work, we prove an asymptotic shape theorem for general random growth models thanks to subadditive techniques, which can be complicated in the case of non-Permanent models conditioned to survive. We conclude that the process with aging, the contact process in randomly evolving environment, the oriented percolation with hostile immigration and the bounded modified contact process satisfy asymptotic shape results

Les systèmes de stockage de chaleur par sorption (SSCS) ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives dans l'exploitation de l'énergie solaire pour le chauffage des bâtiments résidentiels. En effet, ces systèmes sont très prometteurs dans la mesure où ils permettent un stockage de chaleur sur de longues périodes (le stockage est réalisé sous forme de potentiel chimique) et offrent des densités énergétiques importantes (jusqu'à 230 kWh/m3 de matériau en moyenne) en comparaison aux systèmes classiques comme le stockage par chaleur sensible (qui, pour le cas de l'eau, dispose d'une densité énergétique moyenne d'environ 81 kWh/m3 de matériau pour une variation de 70°C) et le stockage par chaleur latente (qui atteint des densités énergétiques de 90 kWh/m3 de matériau).La présente thèse vise à étudier les performances d'un système de stockage de chaleur par sorption à base de zéolithe 13X intégré à un bâtiment type basse consommation. Des modèles mathématiques de transferts couplés de masse et de chaleur des différents composants du système sont développés et validés par le biais de l'expérimentation. La simulation numérique dynamique, comme outil de dimensionnement, permet, à partir des résultats d'analyses de sensibilité paramétrique sur les différents composants du système, l'étude de son fonctionnement et les critères de sa faisabilité. / Sorption heat storage systems (SHSS) open new perspectives for solar heating of residential buildings. These systems allow long term heat storage (storage is done in the form of chemical potential) and offer high energy densities (up to 230 kWh/m3 of material on average) compared to conventional heat storage systems such as sensible heat storage (which, for the case of water, has an average energy density of approximately 81 kWh/m3 of material for a temperature change of 70 °C) and latent heat storage (nearly reaching energy densities of 90 kWh/m3 of material on average).This thesis aims to study the performance of a sorption solar heat storage system on zeolite 13X, integrated to low-energy building. Mathematical models of coupled heat and mass transfer of various components of the system are developed and validated through experimentation. Numerical dynamic simulations allow to study the functioning of the SHSS in specific conditions, and its design with the results from the parametric sensitivity analysis on its components.

Data warehouses (DWs) have traditionally been loaded with data at regular time intervals, e.g., monthly, weekly, or daily, using fast bulk loading techniques. Recently, the trend is to insert all (or only some) new source data very quickly into DWs, called near-realtime DWs (right-time DWs). This is done using regular INSERT statements, resulting in too low insert speeds. There is thus a great need for a solution that makes inserted data available quickly, while still providing bulk-load insert speeds. This paper presents RiTE ('Right-Time ETL'), a middleware system that provides exactly that. A data producer (ETL) can insert data that becomes available to data consumers on demand. RiTE includes an innovative main-memory based catalyst that provides fast storage and offers concurrency control. A number of policies controlling the bulk movement of data based on user requirements for persistency, availability, freshness, etc. are supported. The system works transparently to both producer and consumers. The system is integrated with an open source DBMS, and experiments show that it provides 'the best of both worlds', i.e., INSERT-like data availability, but with bulk-load speeds (up to 10 times faster).

Für Offshore-Windenergieanlagen (OWEA) wird die Überwachung mittels Monitoringsystemen immer wichtiger für den effizienten Betrieb. Problematisch ist, dass nicht nur die OWEA selbst, sondern auch die Monitoringsysteme altern. Für verlässliche Monitoringsysteme müssen daher auch deren Alterungsprozesse analysiert werden, damit das System lebensdauerumfassend an der OWEA verwendbar ist. Hierfür wurden Laser-Triangulationssensoren untersucht, die unterschiedlichen Temperaturen und Luftfeuchten ausgesetzt wurden. Das Messsignal wurde temperaturkompensiert und hinsichtlich seiner Messunsicherheit bewertet. Ferner ergaben erste Alterungsversuche, dass noch keine signifikanten Alterungserscheinungen aufgetreten sind.

A student-based university environment for engineering design and development is much different from a product development environment within the aerospace industry. Therefore, a different approach to systems engineering should be considered. By its very nature, a university product development laboratory thrives on creativity and rejects bureaucracy. Experience shows that continuity and discipline within a project is crucial for success. The practice of systems engineering enables technical project discipline. Systems engineering is the art and science of developing an operable system that meets requirements within imposed constraints. The purpose of this thesis is to describe the systems engineering processes and techniques necessary for a student-based project, and explicitly show how to implement these processes. Although attempts have been made to utilize a few systems engineering techniques in past projects, many students did not properly and consistently apply those techniques to the technical design work. The goal of the thesis is to tailor the NASA systems engineering processes to a student-based design laboratory environment and to apply the methodologies to the mission design of Paradox. The Picosatellite for Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking on-Orbit eXperiment, or Paradox, is the second of four missions to demonstrate autonomous rendezvous and docking with a picosatellite-class satellite. A strong technical contribution highlighted within the thesis involves developing an open architecture rendezvous targeting algorithm for the Paradox mission in the face of large mission architecture uncertainties. The robust targeting algorithm builds from previous work utilizing an optimizer based on the Clohessey-Wiltshire equations and an iterative Lambert targeter. The contribution extends the rendezvous transfer times by including a multi-revolution Lambert targeter. The rendezvous algorithm will perform successfully given any launch vehicle and target spacecraft vehicle supporting the notion of an open architecture to satisfy the mission. The development of the algorithm is embedded within the context of the systems engineering processes to clearly showcase the intimate connection between systems engineering processes and the technical engineering design of a mission. / text