This study had two main objectives. First, to identify and operationalize the key variables required to assess the strategic alignment of Inter-Organizational Information Systems (IOISs) in the context of dyadic relationships between manufacturers and suppliers. Second, to use a subset of these variables to test two alignment perspectives: fit as moderation and fit as gestalt. More precisely, four key dimensions tied to the study of IOISs alignment in the context of interorganizational relationship (relationship structure, antecedents, outcomes and IOISs usage) and the twenty-five variables that characterize them were identified. Results, from the gestalt and moderation alignment perspective's test show that when aligned together, joint actions (relationship structure), idiosyncratic investments (antecedents), diversity (IOISs usage) and internal integration (IOISs usage) become adequate predictors of the manufacturers' operational performance (outcomes). Thus, demonstrating the primordial role of IOISs alignment in manufacturer-supplier relationship and supporting the contingency theory and its underlying concept of fit.

As product complexity increases and markets become more global, companies tend to collaborate with customers, suppliers and partners in business process activities previously carried out within a single firm. This is observed notably also in product development. Product development is an information and communication intense activity, and collaborative product development requires efficient communication between the participating firms, both during an ongoing project and afterwards when the product is in service. When more than one firm is involved, questions linked to business aspects regarding what information to share and how to communicate the information between the firms become important. With changing partners and competing supply chains this is a delicate management issue. The objective of this dissertation is to assess characteristics of communication in collaborative product development, in order to identify requirements for supporting IT tools. Empirically, the research was conducted in two parts. Part I was conducted in the aircraft industry, where a systems integrator firm’s relationship to its major suppliers was investigated. In Part II, collaborative product development between a buyer and several suppliers organized in networks was investigated. These studies were complemented with studies of IS/IT development and implementation projects. Theoretically, it is based on the literature on product development, supply chain management, and IT support for business relationships. Concerning the buyer-supplier dyad it was found that there was not one collaborative product development process in common between the firms, but rather coordination between the firms’ processes. Concerning the relationship between buyer and supplier network, it was found that one of the suppliers represents the network in a dyadic buyer-supplier relationship. Within the supplier network, the firms conducted interorganizational integrated product development, which means that the functions were represented by several firms. This implied that management practices must respect the special characteristic of small and medium-sized firms in collaboration. The investigation of information and communication in collaborative product development in dyads and networks led to a list of requirements on IOIS. The findings were concluded in a matrix that presents characteristics of product development in general, product development in dyads, and product development in supplier networks, and a mapping of the requirements on IOIS. Since the business relationship is the major difference between product development in-house and collaborative product development, it was considered appropriate to take a supply chain view on the requirements for an IOIS. It was found that support is needed both for the procurement and the product development process. Moreover, it was found that project management support can significantly improve the efficiency of the development process. Improvements of the effectiveness regard support for the product life cycle, and for the long-term relationship between the parties. It was concluded that an IOIS for collaborative product development should be based on standard technology and support standard formats, in order to make it possible for a firm to simultaneously manage its own systems and proprietary information, and exchange information with partners when needed. / LARP - Lean Aircraft Research Program / NISAM - Ny industriell samverkan

Radiofrequenz-Identifikation (RFID) ermöglicht eine automatische Erfassung von verschiedenen Objekten ohne Sichtkontakt und verspricht durch diese Eigenschaften eine maßgebliche Verbesserung der Effizienz in Wertschöpfungsketten. Die Verbreitung der RFID-Technologie hat in den letzten Jahren verstärkt zugenommen. Doch obwohl das größte Potenzial von RFID in unternehmensübergreifenden Anwendungen gesehen wird, konzentriert sich der heutige Einsatz meist auf innerbetriebliche Anwendungen oder Pilotprojekte. Als Gründe für dieses Phänomen werden hohe Investitions- und Betriebskosten sowie eine fehlende Standardisierung angeführt. Während unternehmensübergreifende Anwendungen die Notwendigkeit an Standards noch vergrößern, liegt in ihnen eine Chance zur Überwindung des Kostenproblems. Die Nutzung einer kollaborativen RFID-Anwendung und die Wiederverwendung eines RFID-Transponders auf verschiedenen Stufen der Wertschöpfungskette eröffnet die Möglichkeit, die Kosten für jeden einzelnen Teilnehmer durch eine Kostenaufteilung zwischen allen anderen zu reduzieren. Aus diesem Grund wird ein Modell zur Kosten-Nutzen-Aufteilung entwickelt, welches eine Kategorisierung von Kompensationsformen sowie zeitliche Abhängigkeiten in dem Lebenszyklus der Anwendung umfasst. Neben diesen organisatorischen Dimensionen bilden technische Dimensionen einen weiteren Schwerpunkt der Arbeit, da fehlende Standardisierung nach wie vor als ein Hindernis für eine größere Verbreitung betrachtet wird. Die vorliegende Arbeit löst diesbezüglich drei Probleme: (1) Die Generierung von RFID-Ereignissen benötigt nicht nur die Daten von RFID-Lesegeräten, sondern zusätzliche Kontextdaten; (2) das EPCglobal-Netzwerk stellt die technische Grundlage für das Internet der Dinge, aber beschreibt nicht die Anwendungen, die auf dessen Basis realisiert werden können; (3) und es besteht bislang kein standardisierter Ansatz um neben dem EPC weitere Daten auf dem RFID-Transponder zu speichern. / Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which allows for the simultaneous identification of several objects without line of sight or human interaction, promises to significantly improve supply chain efficiency. The attention researchers and practitioners are giving it, as well as the spread of RFID technology, has increased substantially in the last few years. Although the highest potential to take advantage of this spread is expected to be realized in cross-company applications, the status quo in the RFID project landscape is dominated by local solutions within companies or pilot projects. Reasons for this phenomenon include high investment and operational costs as well as missing standards. While cross-company applications exacerbate the need for standards, they make it possible to overcome the cost problems. In the course of using a collaborative RFID application, it is possible to reduce the costs for the individual player by distributing them between a larger number of participants and repeatedly using the same tag across multiple supply chain steps. For this reason, a model for cost-benefit sharing – including different categories of compensation as well as temporal dependencies during the life cycle of an application – is developed. Apart from these organizational dimensions of cross-company RFID applications, the technical dimension has to be investigated because missing technical standards are still an obstacle for the wider adoption of RFID. Three remaining problems are solved in this thesis: (1) generating RFID events does not only require the data that is provided by the RFID readers, but also corresponding context data; (2) the EPCglobal network provides the technical basis for the Internet of Things, but not the applications that might profit from using this architecture; and (3) there is no standardized approach for storing user generated content besides the EPC on the RFID tags.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T20:15:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 166831.pdf: 1389320 bytes, checksum: e2c928f913844c7ae94080cb89a5c179 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-11-09T00:00:00Z / As administrações públicas contemporâneas vêm sofrendo diversas formas de pressão para que promovam a modernização de suas estruturas e serviços, provenientes não somente da própria sociedade, mas também derivadas das crises fiscais que assolaram diversos países nas últimas décadas. Uma das opções dos governos a fim de atender a essa demanda está no uso do potencial das tecnologias de informação e de comunicação em prol de melhores serviços ao cidadão e numa maior eficiência do aparato estatal. Esse movimento contemporâneo, associado principalmente ao advento da computação pessoal e da Internet, tem sido chamado Governo Eletrônico (e-Gov). Uma das suas ações relaciona-se à construção de serviços eletrônicos que integrem diversas agências governamentais em formato colaborativo. Entretanto, projetos de e-Gov que demandam esse grau de integração possuem complexidade de implementação aparentemente maior que projetos tradicionais, o que se reflete nos baixos índices de sucesso encontrados mundialmente. Existem hoje metodologias e frameworks de gestão de projetos disponíveis e consolidados no mercado, tal como o provido pelo Project Management Institute – PMI, por meio do Project Management Body of Knowledge – PMBOK, publicação que representa uma agregação dos conhecimentos dos mais de 230.000 profissionais associados ao PMI, principalmente nos aspectos conhecidos como 'boas práticas'. Ele é aceito como um padrão de gestão de projetos pelo ANSI – American National Standards Institute e pelo Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – IEEE (PMI, 2007). A questão que esta pesquisa procura explorar é a identificação das boas práticas na gestão de projetos de e-Gov multi-agências. Para isso, baseou-se no modelo proposto pelo PMBOK, considerado pela literatura como um framework abrangente e de grande reconhecimento (LEITE, 2004). A partir dessa análise, procurou-se identificar quais foram os fatores mais relevantes para o sucesso do projeto e como foram geridos pela equipe participante. Com esse intuito, essa pesquisa apresenta um estudo em profundidade do projeto Nota Fiscal Eletrônica – NF-e do Governo do Estado de São Paulo, projeto de e-Gov que possui integração nacional entre múltiplas agências (seis Administrações Tributárias Estaduais, Receita Federal e dezenove grandes empresas) e grande complexidade técnica e de gestão. Os resultados encontrados sugerem que o apoio da alta administração, a criação de um relacionamento de confiança, a participação de empresas no projeto, a alta capacidade das equipes envolvidas, a definição de um escopo viável e a utilização de padrões abertos são fatores que colaboram significativamente para o sucesso de projetos como a NF-e. / Contemporary public administrations have been suffering several ways of pressure to promote their structures and services modernization, and such pressures arise not only from society itself, but also derive from fiscal crisis that have ravaged several countries in the last few decades. One of governments options to meet that demand lies in the potential use of information and communication technology for the benefit of better service to citizens and greater state apparatus efficiency. This contemporary movement, particularly connected with personal computing and the Internet arrival, has been called Electronic Government (e-Gov). One of its actions relates to building government electronic services that integrate several government agencies in a collaborative format. However, e-Gov projects demanding integration to this degree have an implementation complexity that is greater than traditional projects, which reflects on low success rates worldwide. Nowadays there are project management methodologies and frameworks available and consolidated in the market, such as the one provided by the Project Management Institute – PMI, through the Project Management Body of Knowledge – PMBOK. PMBOK is a publication that represents the collected knowledge from over 230,000 PMI-associate professionals, mainly in those aspects known as 'good practices'. PMBOK is accepted as a project management standard by ANSI – American National Standards Institute and by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – IEEE (PMI, 2007). The issue this research tries to explore is good practices identification in multi-agency e-Gov project management. To this end, it was based on the model proposed by PMBOK, which literature considers to be a comprehensive and largely recognized framework (LEITE, 2004). From that analysis, the present work sought to identify which factors were most relevant to project success and how such factors were managed by the team involved. For this purpose, the present research presents an in-depth study of Nota Fiscal Eletrônica - NF-e (Electronic Invoice) project, developed by São Paulo’s state government in Brazil, a project with a nationwide integration of multiple agencies (six State Tax Administrations, the Brazilian Federal Revenue Service and nineteen large companies) and a major technical and management complexity. The results that were found suggest that support from high administration, the creation of a trust relationship, companies participation in the project, involved teams’ high capacity, a viable goal definition and open standards utilization are critical success factors that create very positive impacts in projects such as NF-e.