Improper grants payments stemming from weaknesses in business processes have been a focus of the U.S. president, Congress, and federal and state governments since 2009. Researchers have demonstrated that the internal control weakness at the federal, state, and local government level has contributed to the problem of compliance. The Office of Management and Budget issued federal rules effective in December 2014 to address the problem of federal award compliance. Despite these measures, there is a gap in the literature on strategies for recipients of federal grants to meet compliance requirements. The purpose of the qualitative descriptive study was to explore how recipients can satisfy compliance requirements across the full life cycle of their grants. Systems thinking and compliance theories were selected to analyze data. Participants were 20 certified grants management specialists. The research questions included inquiry on the strategies for federal award compliance. Described were participants' strategies to improve business processes for grant compliance. Emergent thematic findings included staff and leadership training- as participants' main strategy for complying with uniform requirements, while written policies and procedures and use of grant management software- emerged as secondary strategies. Grant managers may benefit from learning about the strategies described in this study by implementing business process improvements in their organizations. Compliant recipients of grants may have a positive effect on social change with more grant funds becoming available to states, local governments, higher education, and nonprofit organizations for the public good.

When the special moments of life and death are imminent, where do you want to be? My thesis seeks to create an eco-sensitive, sustainable building that celebrates the time and place of two of life s most amazing events: birth and death. Rather than a conventional singular center, my thesis proposes a combined program for a new architectural project type: a Birthing and Hospice Center. Although the concept may be surprising, once people fully understand that we live in a closed system and embrace the cyclical nature of life, it is an appropriate program that represents another aspect of sustainability. The project site is located in an urban area of Old Town Alexandria, Virginia along the Potomac River. The Birthing and Hospice Center integrates both the human life cycle and the material life cycle of the building s materials, water, and site for a holistic experience and celebration. It explores how to heighten our environmental experience of place, light, air, water, and time. My thesis seeks to create a beautiful place where people can celebrate their own special event, while at the same time, understand and celebrate the larger realm of the natural life cycle. / Master of Architecture

Product lifecycles are complex heterogeneous systems. Applying control methods to lifecycles requires significant human capital. Additionally, measuring lifecycles relies primarily on domain expertise and estimates. Presented in this dissertation is a way to semantically represent a product lifecycle as a cyber-physical system for enabling the application of control methods to the lifecycle. Control requires a model and no models exist currently that integrate each phase of lifecycles. The contribution is an integration framework that brings all phases and systems of a lifecycle together. First presented is a conceptual framework and technology innovation. Next, linking product lifecycle data dynamical is described and then how that linked data could be certified and traced for trustworthiness. After that, discussion is focused how the trusted linked data could be combined with machine learning to drive applications throughout the product lifecycle. Last, a case study is provided that integrates the framework and technology. Integrating all of this would enable efficient and effective measurements of the lifecycle to support prognostic and diagnostic control of that lifecycle and related decisions. / Ph. D. / The manufacturing sector is on a precipice to disruptive change that will signifcantly alter the way industrial organizations think, communicate, and interact. Industry has been chasing the dream of integrating and linking data across the product lifecycle and enterprises for decades. However, inexpensive and easy to implement technologies to integrate the people, processes, and things across various enterprises are still not available to the entire value stream. Industry needs technologies that use cyber-physical infrastructures efectively and efciently to collect and analyze data and information across an enterprise instead of a single domain of expertise. Meeting key technical needs would save over $100 billion annually in emerging advanced manufacturing sectors in the US. By enabling a systems-thinking approach, signifcant economic opportunities can be achieved through an industrial shift from paper-based processes to a digitally enabled model-based enterprise via the digital thread. The novel contribution of this dissertation is a verifed and validated integration framework, using trusted linked-data, that brings all phases and systems of the product lifecycle together. A technology agnostic approach was pursued for dynamically generating links. A demonstration is presented as a reference implementation using currently available technology. Requirements, models, and policies were explored for enabling product-data trustworthiness. All methods were developed around open, consensus-based standards to increase the likelihood of scalability. The expected outcome of this work is efcient and efective measurements of the lifecycle to support data-driven methods, specifcally related to knowledge building, decision support, requirements management, and control of the entire product lifecycle.

To facilitate collaborative design in vocational education institutions, we have conducted a project to establish a nationwide PDM platform for four different schools spread all over the country. The particular aim of a follow up project introduced in this paper is to sensitize the participating students to sustainable design and lifecycle assessment (LCA) and provide them with hands-on tools through the PDM platform to accomplish these tasks. As a collaborative case study project, a cordless drill driver was chosen to be re-designed with respect to Ecodesign aspects. Since LCA is truly a holistic task, we focused on the ecological aspects of material and production stage. Distribution, usage and end-of-life stages were left out as well as economic and social aspects. The drill driver was divided into housing, drill chuck, gear and power unit. Each component was assigned to one of the schools and had to be designed with respect to reduced environmental impacts. Since different CAD systems are used the decision to provide the needed tools and environmental information within the PDM platform rather than CAD environment was easy. Some of the PDM systems on the market do also provide lifecycle analysis modules but it is rather a black box approach than a transparent data and reporting source. Because LCA heavily relies on the method itself and the way analysis is conducted we decided to develop our own tools. Therefore, a new, adapted interface was developed using open source business intelligence software called Pentaho to facilitate on the fly reporting and analytics of the work in progress by the users. Furthermore, the Ecoinvent database was connected to the PDM system to provide required information on carbon footprint and cumulated energy demand. The paper discusses strength and weaknesses of tools and methods with respect to the introduced case study and gives an outlook on ontology representation for the data model for better analysis capabilities.

No description available.

Context. Application Lifecycle Management refers to the coordination of all aspects of software engineering, through a collection of integrated software development tools. More and more organizations are heavily relying on the ALM tools nowadays. Objectives. In this study we research ALM first as a business strategy, its roots, its advantages and disadvantages. As well as making a theoretical research, we seek out the setbacks of the practical side of ALM in order to find the areas needed for improvement, by investigating the ALM’s existing tools, interviewing ALM’s users, and using gained statistical data to derive practical facts about ALM. The goal of the thesis is to find out how ALM can be improved. Methods. The vast amount of sources, including articles, books, and journals is used to support our arguments and conclusions. A long online survey was carried with many participants to understand the practical side of ALM, as well as gain access to information about ALM’s setbacks. Results. The problems of ALM are recognized and named. Proposals are made in respect of how to deal with these problems. A list of what options need to be studied in the future, in order to improve the overall ALM design, and make it a powerful tool, is presented. A detailed plan for further research regarding this highly important issue is presented. Conclusions. We conclude that there are several ALM tool options on the market, all having their strengths and weaknesses. But in order for ALM to become an industrial solution and to be truly successful and effective in supporting the broader goals of the different organizations using it, the requests of the stakeholders towards deeper semantic integration between the various tool involved in the ALM processes need to be embodied in the current ALM offerings. We conclude that further research is needed in order to assess the proposals, and test the design ideas that are presented in the last chapter of this thesis. / This thesis concerns the authors and stakeholders of ALM. With the technological achievements taking place every day, and competition being very high, it is important to get the software product ready for release on time and of good quality. The current tools for managing of the application’s lifecycle are incoherent in terms of tool integration. In this thesis we describe the setbacks of ALM, according to interviewed stakeholders and authors of journals, articles and books. We conclude our thesis with the several proposed design options that may succeed in making ALM strong and consistent in the future. The proposed design mainly concerns the integration problems, and provides several potential solutions, aiming at easy to use and integrate tools. Further research areas are explained, and stated.

Traditional manufacturing firms today are on the way to extend their product portfolio with services in order to broaden their offering and to strengthen the relation to their customers. New services are being developed, old services are substituted and replaced and existing services adapted, while the amount of services tends to increase in total. As the number of services increases, so does the administrative work and complexity that comes along with services. This thesis aims at investigating how to handle the rising amount of data internally created around services and which service data need to be managed to describe a service. The objective is to find a way that allows Volvo to focus on the development and adaptation of services and not being distracted with work on administration of data around services, but rather focus on value-creating work. Different types of metadata are identified that describe a service along its lifecycle, e.g. versions, lifecycle stages, dependencies to other services, etc. The way is summarized in a framework that illustrates which data are needed and how this information can be managed. Besides the literature study, a benchmarking study is conducted within three other, global operating companies that have made their way from a manufacturer to a service provider or are still on the way to become one. The objective is to analyze their way on handling service data and to compare those to the one of Volvo and use the gathered information to provide a recommendation that suits Volvo’s way of working. The benchmarking study aimed at investigating the current status and future objectives of the firms through interviews with service experts. The results show that there is a great variation among the firms, including Volvo. While the third benchmarking firm has a mature way of dealing with services in their administration, Volvo and the benchmarking firm 2 are at an early stage in the servitization process. However, benchmarking firm 1 has an intermediate state that is strongly supported by an existing ERP system that is capable of registering service data. The Volvo Group acts in a strong competitive market that demands fleet management services, maintenance agreements and repair contracts in addition to the product offering. A lean way of service data management with high efficiency allows Volvo to compete in this market successfully. Services can be developed quicker by reuse of existing modules, a tracking of changes allows users to see the evolution of a particular service and the impact of a change can be estimated with the right system that considers dependencies among services. A solution to improve in the service data management is presented in the developed framework of this thesis. It is one way to account for the growing number of data and services and to simplify the daily work with services with a software-based solution. It can help to approach the growing number of services and to structure them in a daily work environment as well as from a more holistic portfolio management perspective.

Today there is a lack of official environmental labels for mobile phones. In addition, at the moment it does not necessarily mean that a product is more sustainable because it is marketed as green or as environmentally friendly. It has to be easier for consumers to evaluate and pit “green” products against each other, as well as create a picture of which model is the most environmentally adopted and within which issues the biggest environmental benefits lay. The aim of this study is to analyse a selection of smartphones, which are sold by TDC SE, through a lifecycle perspective. The selection will be limited to the major suppliers and their most commonly sold phones by TDC. The purpose of the analysis is to classify the selected models based on their environmental and social impacts in their different lifecycle stages, and to present the results to the customers so they can consider that in their decisions. The following models were assessed in the study: iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s from Apple; Lumia 550, Lumia 650 and Lumia 950 from Microsoft; Galaxy A3 2016, Galaxy Xcover3 and Galaxy S6 from Samsung; as well as Xperia Z5, Xperia M4 Aqua and Xperia M5 from Sony. The study has developed a tool for analysing and characterizing the Smartphones’ sustainability performance. Several sustainability categories was developed, which each consists of a set of sustainability criterions, in order to analyse the models sustainability performances. The analysis has considered key issues, problem areas and impacts reading the smartphones sustainability performance. The characterization applies a scoring system in regards to how the models perform within the selected criteria compared to the industry’s average performance level (representing industry standard) as well as best practice examples. The assessed sustainability criterions are then additionally analysed through a multi-criteria analysis (MCA). In the MCA the criterions relevance are weighted and combined to an overall sustainability score of the models performance in each category. The study also examines the possibility for consumers to weight the different sustainability categories into an overall sustainability score for each model. This enable the customers to rank the models sustainability performance based on their preference (which categories that is more or less important to them). Regarding the models characterised sustainability performance it is clear that Samsung Galaxy S6 overall performs the highest of the studied models. In addition, all the Samsung models preformed high in general (except that Galaxy Xcover3 and A3 preformed the lowest of all the models in regards to environmentally preferable alternatives). Microsoft generally performed quite high and especially high in regards to life prolonging features and the use phase (were Lumia 950 scored especially high). Although, Microsoft performed quite low in regards to environmentally preferable alternatives as well as lifecycle thinking. Apple preformed high (scored higher than the other suppliers) in regards to environmentally preferable alternatives. However, in general Apple performed quite low, especially regarding life prolonging features and iPhone 5s also scored the lowest of all models in regards to substances of concern. Sony preformed very high in regards to I lifecycle thinking and the use phase and in general quite high in most categories (expect that the Xperia M5 model preformed among the lowest in regards to transportation). The result of the study has been highly affected by the degree of available information concerning the different models and suppliers. It is also interesting that models from different suppliers (with similar degree of available information) ranked differently relative to each other depending on the weighting (preference) between the different sustainability categories. Moreover, the study had to consider and find a balance between available information and desirable information. This mainly refers to the development and definition of industry standards and best practice levels. The study had to consider and decide what could be expected and measured/evaluated in regards to the independent demands, criticism and issues which the industry face. After concluding the study it is clear that the result has been greatly affected by the degree of available information for the studied models. It is also clear that today there is a great lack of model specific information and data. The study also found that it is important with feedback and follow-up communication with the suppliers, in order to correct misunderstandings and provide clarifications. In conclusion, the result of the study can be used as a decision basis for customers who wish to consider the smartphones’ sustainability performance is their choice. / Pris och funktion är fortfarande de avgörande faktorerna vid köp, men miljön håller mer och mer på att bli ett avgörande kriterium och intresset för ”grön” IT ökar. De officiella miljömärkningarna och oberoende granskningarna av elektronikföretag kan hjälpa konsumenter att göra bra val bland butikernas utbud. I Sverige finns det dock endast en officiell miljömörkning för mobiltelefoner, TCO certifieringen. Det blir dock mer och mer vanligt med eco-ratings, till exempel Eco Rating 2.0 och certifiering enligt UL 110 standarden för mobiltelefoner. Idag finns det alltså en brist på officiella miljömärkningar för mobiltelefoner och för tillfället så betyder det inte nödvändigtvis att en produkt är mer miljövänlig bara för att den marknadsförs som grön eller som miljöanpassad. Därför måste det bli enklare för konsumenter att utvärdera och ställa gröna produkter mot varandra samt att bilda sig en bild över vilken modell som tar mest hänsyn till miljön och inom vilka frågor som den största miljönyttan ligger. Målet med studien har varit att analysera ett urval av smartelefoner som säljs av TDC utifrån ett livscykelperspektiv. Urvalet har begränsats till de största leverantörerna och deras telefoner som vanligtvis säljs mest av TDC. Syftet med analysen har varit att klassificera de utvalda modellerna baserat på deras miljömässiga och sociala påverkan i deras olika livscykelfaser, samt att presentera resultatet till kunderna så de kan ta hänsyn till detta i deras val. De följande modellerna utvärderade i studien: iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 och iPhone 6s från Apple; Lumia 550, Lumia 650 och Lumia 950 från Microsoft; Galaxy A3 2016, Galaxy Xcover3 and Galaxy S6 from Samsung; samt Xperia Z5, Xperia M4 Aqua och Xperia M5 från Sony. Studien har utvecklat ett verktyg för att analysera och karakterisera smarttelefonernas hållbarhetsprestanda. Flera hållbarhetskategorier utvecklade och tog fram, som i sin tur består av ett flertal hållbarhetskriterier, för att kunna analysera modellernas hållbarhetsprestanda. Analysen har tagit hänsyn till nyckelfrågor, problemområden och påverkan rörande smarttelefonernas hållbarhetsprestanda. Hållbarhetskriterierna har valts ut baserat på informationen som samlats in i screeningen, käraktaren hos de data som erhållits från leverantörerna samt tillgängliga mått och möjligheten att utvärdera de valda kriterierna. I karakteriseringen så tillämpas ett betygsystem relaterat till hur modellerna presterar inom de vala kriterierna jämfört med industrins genomsnittliga prestationsnivå (representerar industristandard) och best praxis exempels. Där den högsta nivån innebär att hållbarhetskriteriet behandlas utöver industristandard (representerar best practice). Den mellersta nivån innebär att hållbarhetskriteriet behandlas på samma nivå som industristandarden. Och den lägsta nivån innebär att hållbarhetskriteriet inte finns tillgänglig för allmänheten. De utvärderade hållbarhetskriterierna blir sen ytterligare analyserade med hjälp av en Multi- kriterium analys (MCA), där kriterierna viktas baserats på deras relevans och kombineras till ett övergripande poäng av modellens prestation i varje kategori. Viktningen tar även hänsyn till hur (progressiv) svårt det är att uppnå best practice nivån jämfört med industristandarden samt att uppnå industristandarden. Studien undersöker även möjligheten för kunderna att vikta de olika hållbarhetskategorierna till ett övergripande poäng för varje modell. Detta görs för att kunna ranka modellernas hållbarhetsprestanda basrat på kundernas preferens (vilka kategoriers som är mer eller mindre viktiga för dem). <img src="file:///page6image25648" /> Baserat på modellernas karakteriserade hållbarhetsprestanda är det klart att Samsung Galaxy S6 på det hela taget presterade högst av alla de studerade modellerna. Alla Samsungs modeller presterar också generellt väldigt högt (bortsett från att Galaxy Xcover3 and A3 presterade lägst III av alla modeller med hänsyn till miljövänliga alternativ). Mikrosoft presterade generellt ganska högt och speciellt högt med hänseende till livsförlängande funktioner och användarfasen (där Lumia 950 presterade speciellt högt). Dock så presterade Microsoft ganska lågt inom miljövänliga alternativ samt livscykeltänkande. Apple presterade högt (fick högre poäng än de andra leverantörerna) inom miljövänliga alternativ. Dock så presterade Apple generellt ganska lågt, speciellt med hänsyn till livsförlängande funktioner och iPhone 5s presterade också lägst av alla modeller inom potentiellt farliga ämnen. Sony presterade väldigt högt med hänsyn till livscykeltänkande och användarfasen, samt ganska högt in de flesta kategorierna (förutom att Xperia M5 modellen presterade bland de lägst inom transporter). Studiens resultat har till stor del påverkats av de olika graderna av tillgänglig information för de olika modellerna. Det är också väldigt intressant att modeller från olika leverantörer (med liknande grad av tillgänglig information) rankades olika relaterat till varandra beroende på viktningen (preferensen) mellan de olika hållbarhetskategorierna. Studien har också till stor del behövt ta hänsyn till och hitta en balans mellan tillgänglig information och önskad information. Detta referera främst till framtagningen och definitionen av industristandards och best practice nivåerna. Studien har behövt betrakta och bestämma vad som kan förväntas, mätas och utvärderas relaterat till de oberoende krav, kritik och frågor som industrin står inför. Efter att studien slutförts är det klart att resultatet till stor del har påverkats av de olika graderna av tillgänglig information för de studerade modellerna. Det är även klart att der finns en stor brist på modellspecifik information för de studerade modellerna. Studien kom fram till att det är viktigt med återkoppling och uppföljande kommunikation med leverantörerna, för att rätta till missförstånd och tillhandahålla klargöranden. Avslutningsvis så kan studiens resultat användas som beslutsunderlagg för kunder som vill ta hänsyns till smarttelefonernas hållbarhetsprestanda i sitt val.

Information Systems (IS’s) have provided organisations with huge efficiency gains and benefits over the years; however an outstanding problem that is yet to be successfully tackled is that of the troublesome maintenance phase. Consuming vast resources and thwarting business progression in a competitive global market place, system maintenance has been recognised as one of the key areas where IS is failing organisations. Organisations are too often faced with the dilemma of either replacement or the continual upkeep of an unwieldy system. The ability for IS’s to be able to adapt to exogenous influences is even more acute today than at any time in the past. This is due to IS’s namely, Web Information Systems (WIS’s) increasingly and continually having to accommodate the needs of organisations to interconnect with a plethora of additional systems as well as supporting evolving business models. The richness of the interconnectivity, functionalities and services WIS’s now offer are shaping social, cultural and economic behaviour on a truly global scale, making the maintenance of such systems and evermore pertinent issue. The growth and proliferation of WIS’s shows no sign of abating which leads to the conclusion that what some have termed as the ‘maintenance iceberg’ should not be ignored. The quandary that commercial organisations face is typically driven by two key aspects; firstly, systems are built on the cultural premise of using fixed requirements, with not enough thought or attention being paid to systems abilities to deviate from these requirements. Secondly, systems do not generally cope well with adapting to unpredictable change arising from outside of the organisations environment. Over the recent past, different paradigms, approaches and methods have attempted to make software development more predictable, controllable and adaptable, however, the benefits of such measures in relation to the maintenance dilemma have been limited. The concept of flexible systems that are able to cope with such change in an efficient manner is currently an objective that few can claim to have realised successfully. The primary focus of the thesis was to examine WIS post-development change in order to empirically substantiate and understand the nature of the maintenance phase. This was done with the intention to determine exactly ‘where’ and ‘how’ flexibility could be targeted to address these changes. This study uses an emergent analytical approach to identify and catalogue the nature of change occurring within WIS maintenance. However, the research framework design underwent a significant revision as the initial results indicated that a greater emphasis and refocus was required to achieve the research objective. To study WIS’s in an appropriate and detailed context, a single case study was conducted in a web development software house. In total the case study approach was used to collect empirical evidence from four projects that investigated post-development change requests in order to identify areas of the system susceptible to change. The maintenance phases of three WIS projects were considered in-depth, resulting in the collection of over four hundred change requests. The fourth project served as a validation case. The results are presented and the findings are used to identify key trends and characteristics that depict WIS maintenance change. The analytical information derived from the change requests is consolidated and shown diagrammatically for the key areas of change using profile models developed in this thesis. Based on the results, the thesis concludes and contributes to the ongoing debate that there is a discernable difference when considering WIS maintenance change compared to that of traditional IS maintenance. The detailed characteristics displayed in the profile models are then used to map specific flexibility criteria that ultimately are required to facilitate change. This is achieved using the Flexibility Matrix of Change (FMoC) tool which was developed within the remit of this research. This tool is a qualitative measurement scheme that aligns WIS maintenance changes to a reciprocal flexibility attribute. Thus, the wider aim of this thesis is to also expand the awareness of flexibility and its importance as a key component of the WIS lifecycle.

Polycrystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) modules have the advantage of lower manufacturing cost as compared to their monocrystalline counterparts, but generally exhibit both lower initial module efficiencies and more significant early-stage efficiency degradation than do similar monocrystalline PV modules. For both technologies, noticeable deterioration in power conversion efficiency typically occurs over the first two years of usage. Estimating PV lifetime by examining the performance degradation behavior under given environmental conditions is, therefore, one of continual goals for experimental research and economic analysis. In the present work, accelerated lifecycle testing (ALT) on three polycrystalline PV technologies was performed in a full-scale, industrial-standard environmental chamber equipped with single-sun irradiance capability, providing an illumination uniformity of 98% over a 2 x 1.6m area. In order to investigate environmental aging effects, time-dependent PV performance (I-V characteristic) was evaluated over a recurring, compressed day-night cycle, which simulated local daily solar insolation for the southwestern United States, followed by dark (night) periods. During a total test time of just under 4 months that corresponded to a year equivalent exposure on a fielded module, the temperature and humidity varied in ranges from 3 degrees C to 40 degrees C and 5% to 85% based on annual weather profiles for Tucson, AZ. Removing the temperature de-rating effect that was clearly seen in the data enabled the computation of normalized efficiency degradation with time and environmental exposure. Results confirm the impact of environmental conditions on the module long-term performance. Overall, more than 2% efficiency degradation in the first year of usage was observed for all thee polycrystalline Si solar modules. The average 5-year degradation of each PV technology was estimated based on their determined degradation rates.