Cloud computing, mobile computing, Service-Oriented Computing (SOC), and Software as a Service (SaaS) indicate that the Internet emerges to an anonymous service market where service functionality can be dynamically and ubiquitously consumed. Among functionally similar services, service consumers are interested in the consumption of the services which perform best towards their optimization preferences. The experienced performance of a service at consumer side is expressed in its non-functional properties (NFPs). Selecting the best-fit service is an individual challenge as the preferences of consumers vary. Furthermore, service markets such as the Internet are characterized by perpetual change and complexity. The complex collaboration of system environments and networks as well as expected and unexpected incidents may result in various performance experiences of a specific service at consumer side. The consideration of certain call side aspects that may distinguish such differences in the experience of NFPs is reflected in various call contexts. Service optimization based on a collaborative knowledge base of previous experiences of other, similar consumers with similar preferences is a desirable foundation. The research work described in this dissertation aims at an individually optimized selection of services considering the individual call contexts that have an impact on the performance, or NFPs in general, of a service as well as the various consumer preferences. The presented approach exploits shared measurement information about the NFP behavior of a service gained from former service calls of previous consumptions. Gaining selection/recommendation knowledge from shared experience benefits existing as well as new consumers of a service before its (initial) consumption. Our approach solely focuses on the optimization and collaborative information exchange among service consumers. It does not require the contribution of service providers or other non-consuming entities. As a result, the contribution among the participating entities also contributes to their own overall optimization benefit. With the initial focus on a single-tier optimization, we additionally provide a conceptual solution to a multi-tier optimization approach for which our recommendation framework is prepared in general. For a consumer-sided optimization, we conducted a literature study of conference papers of the last decade in order to find out what NFPs are relevant for the selection and consumption of services. The ranked results of this study represent what a broad scientific community determined to be relevant NFPs for service selection. We analyzed two general approaches for the employment of machine learning methods within our recommendation framework as part of the preparation of the actual recommendation knowledge. Addressing a future service market that has not fully developed yet and due to the fact that it seems to be impossible to be aware of the actual NFP data of different Web services at identical call contexts, a real-world validation is a challenge. In order to conduct an evaluation and also validation that can be considered to be close approximations to reality with the flexibility to challenge the machine learning approaches and methods as well as the overall recommendation approach, we used generated NFP data whose characteristics are influenced by measurement data gained from real-world Web services. For the general approach with the better evaluation results and benefits ratio, we furthermore analyzed, implemented, and validated machine learning methods that can be employed for service recommendation. Within the validation, we could achieve up to 95% of the overall achievable performance (utility) gain with a machine learning method that is focused on drift detection, which in turn, tackles the change characteristic of the Internet being an anonymous service market.

In this study, value of demand information and the importance of option contracts are investigated for a supply chain consisting of a buyer and two suppliers in a single period setting. One supplier is cheap but prone to disruptions whereas the other one is perfectly reliable but expensive. At the beginning of the period, buyer orders from the unreliable supplier and reserves from the reliable supplier through a contract that gives buyer an option to use reserved units after getting disruption information of first supplier. We introduce three models which differ in terms of the level of information available when the ordering decisions are made. In the full information model, the options are exercised after getting disruption and demand information / in the partial information model, the options are exercised after getting disruption information before demand information. In the no information model, there is no options contract and units are ordered from the reliable supplier when buyer has no information about demand and disruption. Through the analysis of these models, we explore the value of advance demand and disruption information in the presence of an options contract.

In this study we address a periodic review capacitated inventory system with supply uncertainty where advance demand information is available. A stochastic dynamic programming formulation is applied with the objective of minimizing the expected inventory related costs over a finite horizon. Three different supply processes are assumed. Under the all-or-nothing type supply process and partially available supply process, the structure of optimal policy is proved to be a base stock policy and numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effects of system parameters. Under Binomially distributed supply process it is shown that a simple base stock policy is not optimal.

Similar to a product supply chain, an information supply chain is a dynamic environment where networks of information-sharing agents gather data from many sources and utilize the same data for different tasks. Unfortunately, raw data arriving from a variety of sources are often plagued by errors (Ballou et al. 1998), which can lead to poor decision making. Supporting decision making in this challenging environment demands a proactive approach to data quality management, since the decision maker has no control over these data sources (Shankaranarayan et al. 2003). This is true in health care, and in particular in health planning, where health care resource allocation is often based on summarized data from a myriad of sources such as hospital admissions, vital statistic records, and specific disease registries. This work investigates issues of data quality in the information supply chain. It proposes three result-driven data quality metrics that inform and aid decision makers with incomplete and inconsistent data and help mitigate insensitivity to sample size, a well known decision bias. To design and evaluate the result-driven data quality metrics this thesis utilizes the design science paradigm (Simon 1996; Hevner, March et al. 2004). The metrics are implemented within a simple OLAP interface, utilizing data aggregated from several healthcare data sources, and presented to decision makers in four focus groups. This research is one of the first to propose and outline the use of focus groups as a technique to demonstrate utility and efficacy of design science artifacts. Results from the focus groups demonstrate that the proposed metrics are useful, and that the metrics are efficient in altering a decision maker's data analytic strategies. Additionally, results indicate that comparative techniques, such as benchmarking or scenario based approaches, are promising approaches in data quality. Finally, results from this research reveal that decision making literature needs to be considered in the design of BI tools. Participants of the focus groups confirmed that people are insensitive to sample size, but when attention was drawn to small sample sizes, this bias was mitigated.

Supply chain is a network of companies involved in products and services distribution ranging from the raw materials acquisition on one side to the customers satisfaction on the other side. It concerns a whole system composed from producers, processors, distributors, sellers (retailers or wholesalers) and customers. The main focus of this thesis is a quest for general relations and differences between logistic chain of books and that of magazines. At first the books supply and distribution chain ranging from the author to the final customer is analysed. In this supply chain no redundant links or no distribution channels are found. In the other part of the work the supply and distribution chain of periodicals ranging from the author to the final customer is analysed. Neither in this chain are redundant links, we can even say that this chain is more elaborate and more simple in the distribution of the press to sellers than the preceding one. Both of these chains work on similar basis. From the very beginning to the very end they use almost the same links of the chain. The principal difference between these two chains is the nature of the goods to which all the distribution and sales operations are related. Another important difference is a durability of magazines and books on the shop counters. The books are delivered to bookshops continuously during several months, on the contrary, magazines issues depend on their periodicity. This difference leads to the varied use of warehouses. One of the aims of the thesis is also the analysis of the information, material and finance flow among the links of the chain.

We developed a prototype information system with an integrated expert system for headache patients. The FITT (fit between individual, task and technology) framework was used to evaluate the prototype health information system and to determine which deltas to work on in future developments. We positively evaluated the system in all FITT dimensions. The framework provided a proper tool for evaluating the prototype health information system and determining which deltas to work on in future developments.

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Syfte – Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilka problem den offentliga organisationen har vad gäller informationsflödet inom organisationen samt föreslå en lösning på detta. För att uppnå syftet kommer följande frågeställningar att besvaras: Vilka problem har en offentlig organisation med informationsflödet? Hur kan en kravspecifikation bidra till en effektivisering av informationsflödet inom en offentlig organisation? Metod – För att uppnå studiens syfte och besvara frågeställningarna har en kvalitativ studie utförts på en offentlig organisation. Först utförs semistrukturerade intervjuer, efter det har det teoretiska ramverket skapats ur litteraturstudier för att ge en kunskapsgrund inom området. Ur detta framkommer riktlinjer för skapandet av en kravspecifikation, som ligger till grund för ett mer effektivt informationsflöde inom en offentlig organisation. Den empiri som insamlats på beskrivet sätt har sedan analyserats och jämförts med den insamlade teorin. Detta för att jämföra verkliga det arbetslivet med teorin. Även litteraturstudier har genomförts eftersom det är viktigt att få en stabil bakgrund gällande metoder, teorier och verktyg. Med sin grund i kravspecifikationen skapandes ett lösningsförslag efter att ett val har gjort vilken typ av lösning som är lämplig för ändamålet. Detta gjordes i samrådande med den berörda organisationen. Kravspecifikationen har analyserats mot empirin och teorierna samt skett i samrådande med den berörda organisationen. En demonstration av den slutliga lösningen och uppföljningsintervju utfördes även för att få feedback lösningsförslaget effektiviserade den berörda organisationen informationsflöde. Resultat – Studiens resultat bygger på den insamlade empirin och den utförda litteraturstudien. Resultatet visar att utvecklandet av en artefakt i form riktlinjer för en kravspecifikation som ligger till grund för en vidareutveckling för att effektivisera informationsflödet, har resulterat i en förbättring av informationsflödet inom en offentlig organisation. Kraven som framkom genom semistrukturerade intervjuer har använts vid skapandet av kravspecifikationen. Detta för att få ett bra resultat som löser den berörda organisationen krav och behov, vad det gäller att effektivisera informationsflödet inom en offentlig organisation. Implikationer – Ambitionen i denna studie är att skapa riktlinjer för en kravspecifikation som ligger till grund för en effektivisering av informationsflödet inom en offentlig organisation. Genom studiens resultat fås riktlinjer fram som borde användas av andra utvecklare eller studenter vid liknade projekt. Blomkvist och Hallin (2015) menar att vissa exjobb ger ett metodologiskt bidrag till forskningen detta genom att på ett nytt sätt lösa en organisations praktiska problem. Detta är denna studies kunskapsbidrag. Kunskapsbidraget vad det gäller forskningen inom ämnet informatik, bidrar den till en förbättring av förmedling av information. Detta genom att ta fram och använda riktlinjer för en kravspecifikation som ligger till grund detta. Studien ges stöd genom att ta fram ett riktlinjer för en kravspecifikation i form av en artefakt som ligger till grund vid utvecklingsarbetet. Ytterligare studier kan ses som önskvärt då denna studie endast har inriktat sig på en organisation och för att forskningen ska bli optimal och behöver ytterligare studier inom området utföras. Begränsningar – En studie utfördes på en offentlig organisation och därför blir studien relevant för denna organisation samt för liknade organisationer. Studiens ämnesområden är av varierande djup, eftersom det inte tidsmässigt varit möjligt att gå lika djupt inom alla ämnen. / Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of problems a public organization has with their information flow and suggest a solution to the identified problems.To achieve the purpose, will the report answer the following questions: What problems do a public organization have with the information flow? How can a specification contribute to efficiency the flow of information within a public organization? Method – In order to achieve the objectives of the study and answer the research questions, a qualitative study is conducted in a public organization. First, semi-structured interviews have been conducted, and then a literature search is performed to provide a knowledge base in this field. From this emerges a specification that forms the basis for a more efficient flow of information within a public organization. The empirical data, which is collected in the manner described, is then analysed and compared with the collected theory. This is to compare the real working life with the theory. Even literature studies have been carried out because it is important to have a stable background current methods, theories and tools. With its basis in the specification, the proposed solutions was developed after an election has made the kind of solution that is fit for purpose. This was done in consultation with the organization concerned. The requirement specification has been analysed by the empirical data and theories, and occurred in consulting with the organization concerned. A demonstration of the final solution and follow-up interviews were also conducted, to get feedback about the solution improvement of the information flow within the public organization. Findings – The study results are based on the collected empirical data and the conducted literature review. The result shows that development of an artefact in the form of guidelines for a set of requirements that form the basis, for further development solution improvement of the information flow has resulted in an improvement of the information flow within a public organization. The requirements that have been identified; with semi-structured interview have been used to create the specification demands. This is done to get a good result that solves the organizations requirements and needs, in terms of information flow in a public organization. Implications – Blomkvist and Hallin (2015) argues that some thesis provides a methodological contribution to research this, a new way to solve an organization's practical problems. This is this study knowledge contribution. Knowledge contribution in terms of research in informatics, it contributes to an improvement in the distribution of information. This is through the development and use guidelines for a set of requirements that underpin it. The study provides support by producing a guidance on a specification in the form of an artefact that is the basis for development. Further studies may be seen as desirable as this study has only focused on the organization and for research to be optimal and needs further studies in the field carried out. Limitations – The study was conducted in a public organization and therefore the results of the study are specifically relevant for this kind of organizations.

We developed a prototype information system with an integrated expert system for headache patients. The FITT (fit between individual, task and technology) framework was used to evaluate the prototype health information system and to determine which deltas to work on in future developments. We positively evaluated the system in all FITT dimensions. The framework provided a proper tool for evaluating the prototype health information system and determining which deltas to work on in future developments.