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The use of computers is becoming increasingly prevalent in business. They are used, not only to store vast amounts of information, but also to carry out record keeping procedures for assets, equities and expenses that may each involve large dollar amounts. There are a variety of factors which make the computer more complex than any of the preceding innovations in the field of data processing. Perhaps the most important of these factors is the non-readable form of records that could previously be read. In their new form they are readable only when a specific effort is made to put them into readable form. Such complexities, it is suggested, mean that a new system of internal control must be prepared and maintained to ensure the protection of the records and hence the assets of the organization, especially the monetary assets. How can internal control be maintained? This is a very important problem that needs to be solved by every firm contemplating the acquisition of a computer. Failure to solve this problem prior to the time when a computerized system becomes operational, could have very serious repercussions. Retailers offering customer credit, for example, have accounts receivable that constitute a large percentage of total assets. The loss of all, or part, of the subsidiary ledger could precipitate financial ruin. The question of internal control must, therefore, be faced and procedures devised to achieve and maintain control. But how? Obviously the drastic changes in a system employing a computer leave some of the old methods of control out of date and completely inadequate. Moreover, the complexity of the new system and its machinery creates new situations requiring controls heretofore never required or visualized. It is the purpose of this thesis to identify and outline some of the internal control problems that arise with the introduction and operation of a computerized system. An attempt is made to provide solutions to these new problems as they are presented in this thesis. The problems and their solutions have been identified and organized using two main sources of information: a) the specialized literature in the field. b) case histories available to the writer, as an internal auditor significantly involved in the internal control of computerized systems. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

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Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Automatisering av arbetsprocesser har varit ett aktuellt tema för många verksamheter i många år. Ofta är dessa automatiseringar relaterade till fysisk automation som exempelvis robotar vid produktionslinjer. Men med dagens teknik finns det potential för att automatisera arbetsprocesser i verksamheters back-office processer. Robotic process automation, eller förkortat som RPA, är en teknik som har förmågan att imitera användarens steg i en arbetsprocess och återskapa arbetsprocessen utan den mänskliga resursen.   Denna studie har som syfte att fastställa utmaningar och möjligheter som är relaterade vid införande av RPA i verksamheter. Genom intervjuer och tidigare publicerat material om RPA, skall denna studie erbjuda en djupare förståelse kring utmaningar och möjligheter för den stigande trenden robotic process automation. / Automation has been a hot topic for many businesses for a number of years now. The term is usually related to automation of physical machinery like robots to speed up production and assembling of cars.  But with currently technology, the automation has taken a step further. Automation is now capable of automating back-office processes. Robotic Process Automation, also known as RPA, is a technology that is capable of imitating the users step in a business process and replicate it automatically, without human intervention.   The purpose of this study is to determine the challenges and opportunities related to the implementation of RPA in businesses. By performing interviews and examining existing material about RPA, this study aims to deliver a deeper and wider understanding of the rising technology that is Robotic Process Automation.

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<p>Manufacturing is becoming a crucial part of now-a-days fast growing economies and increase of earth’s population. Recently manufacturing is changing rapidly, different manufacturing strategies are being implemented, the conceptual understanding for manufacturing is changed, and new ways of producing products are showing up. Automation has been the essential term regarding the modern manufacturing processes. The humanmachine sharing is playing a major role in the production systems, and the most elegant thing is to create and design the appropriate level for interaction between them depending on the desired outcome in the production area. Technological innovation is the implementation of new more efficient production method by achieving qualitative improvements of the goods and services in a specific area in this paper’s case is a production system. This paper is regarding the importance of the correct production system being chosen for an organization regarding the right level of automation (LoA) being used, which is a way of controlling the overall effectiveness of the system.  Different approaches and methods are going to be used for demonstrating the choice of  the exact and right level of automation and the possibility of changing it by introducing and implementing the ongoing DYNAMO research on a different conceptual solutions for a foundry application in Factory-in-a-Box. The main objective of the research is to develop a method and system for supporting sustainable flexible and reconfigurable production system providing competitive industrial characteristics in the fast developing world.</p> / ProViking, Factory-in-a-box, Dynamo

The purpose of this thesis is the design of the software necessary for teleoperation of a fluid handling laboratory. It does not include the implementation of this software. The laboratory for which it is designed is being developed at the University of Arizona, and is a model of the fluid handling laboratory aboard Space Station. The software includes man/machine, machine/machine, and machine/instrument interfaces. The man/machine interface is menu driven and consists of high level commands which are independent of the devices in the laboratory. The machine/machine interface is also device independent. It consists of intermediary commands and maps the commands of the man/machine interface into the low level, device dependent, commands and programs of the machine/instrument interface. Although the software is primarily designed for the model laboratory, the needs of a remotely operated fluid handling laboratory aboard Space Station have been considered.

This thesis analyses the background of the kinematics and control of an articulated robotic arm in order to control it’s motor controllers with a custom controller using PLC programming. The goal was to create a MATLAB simulation of a manipulator and then establish a working configuration. This would then later be used by the division of Signals and Systems at LTU to educate students in PLC programming for autonomous setups with the robotic manipulator. The thesis was successful following the schedule established at the beginning and most of the objectives were accomplished. The results were a functioning control framework of Siemens PLC that could control the manipulators motor controllers to preform pickand place tasks in conjunction with a conveyor belt.

In this research, an analytical model for analyzing a production line consisting of a series of automated workstations with infinite buffers is developed. Automated workstations are assumed to have deterministic processing times, and independent exponentially distributed operating time between failures and repair times. The analytical model starts with existing results from a Markov chain model of two automated workstations in series, where analytical expressions are developed for the average number of jobs in the second workstation and its queue. This research focuses on the development of a set of linking equations that can be used to analyze larger systems using a two workstation decomposition approach. These linking equations utilize probabilities computed in the two-workstation Markov chain model to compute workstation parameters for a single workstation such that the first two moments of the inter-departure process from the two-workstation system and the single workstation are the same. Simulations of a number of different 3-workstation and 10-workstation systems were carried out employing a range of workstation utilizations and processing time coefficients of variation. The results from these simulations were compared with those calculated with the analytical model and various two-parameter GI/G/1 approximations and linking equations present in the literature. The analytical model resulted in an average absolute percentage difference of less than 5% in the systems studied, and performed much better than general two parameter G/G/1 approximations. The analytical model was also robust in ranking the queues in the order of the average number of jobs present in the queues. / Graduation date: 2004