<p>  </p> <p>Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is a well-known strategy used to improve business and manufacturing operations. Even with the attractive benefits it can provide, many companies struggle to successfully implement PLM solutions. This study proposes that this is due to a lack of knowledge on the critical barriers that affect the implementation of PLM solutions, and that reliance on the opinions of PLM professionals alone are not enough to create a successful implementation plan. This study addresses these issues with following research questions, what are the barriers to PLM implementation and is there a difference between those identified in literature and those confirmed by professionals, is there a difference between barrier impact rankings, based on professional opinion and those determined utilizing the DEMATEL method, and what are the critical barriers determined using the DEMATEL method supplemented by the MMDE algorithm? To answer these questions a series of two surveys were sent out to professionals in the PLM space with experience working on PLM implementation projects. The first of the two surveys was used to confirm the barriers that exist within the PLM implementation process. The second of the two surveys was used to gather information on the perceived impact of barriers and the causal relationships between barriers in the form of relationship matrices. To analyze these matrices the DEMATEL method supplemented by the MMDE algorithm was used.</p> <p>This study did not intend to provide absolute solutions to the critical barriers identified in this study, rather it intended to increase the success rate of PLM implementations by, confirming the barriers identified in the literature, providing information on the relationships between the barriers to PLM solution implementation and determine which of the barriers can be considered critical. Following these results of this study, the DEMATEL analysis method may supplement existing PLM implementation frameworks allowing companies to identify the critical barriers to implementation, allowing for better allocation of resources and ultimately a more successful PLM implementation. </p>

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Despite the lifecycle of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) being extensively investigated and described, there remains a significant gap in our knowledge of arguably one of the most crucial steps in the HBV lifecycle, the formation and maintenance of a covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) reservoir. Advancements in our understanding of host factors and pathways involved in cccDNA formation have been made through hypothesis driven studies and shRNA/siRNA screenings. We sought to create a targeted-unbiased assay to directly observe host factor-rcDNA interactions. This was achieved through an rcDNA Co-Immunoprecipitation paired Mass Spectrometry (rcDNA-CoIP/MS) assay. We created a DNA oligo complimentary to the open portion of the HBV rcDNA, labeled with biotin, to facilitate easy precipitation of nuclear rcDNA and complexed proteins. Proteins precipitated were analyzed through liquid chromatography paired mass spectrometry (LC/MS). Along with previously reported host factors, several factors of DNA damage repair pathways/complexes were also identified. A component of the UV-DDB complex, DDB1, surfaced as a hit. UV-DDB/rcDNA binding was confirmed through ChIP-qPCR. DDB2, the DNA damage binding component of the UV-DDB complex was knocked out in HepG2-NTCP and HepAD38 cells. This resulted in a significant decrease in the formation of cccDNA in DDB2 knockout cell lines following infection or induction. The subsequent reduction of downstream indicators of cccDNA formation such as viral RNA and proteins, HBcAg and HBeAg, showed a consistent decrease with cccDNA levels. Ectopic expression of DDB2 in the knockout cell lines rescued HBV phenotypes of cccDNA levels and its downstream indicators. Inactive mutant DDB2 plasmids were also transfected into the DDB2 K/O cell lines and failed to rescue cccDNA indicators. We therefore showed through a novel assay that we can discover novel viral rcDNA-host interactions, such as the UV-DDB complex recruiting DNA repair pathways to “repair” rcDNA to cccDNA.

Automating the deployment, security risk minimization, scaling, maintenance and development processes is highly critical, as it enables unleashing the potential of cloud computing. The flexibility and reliability advantages of cloud computing are not fully disclosed without automation of lifecycle processes. The flexibility of the automation solution is directly proportional to the quality of performed lifecycle processes for the entire infrastructure. Nowadays, a lot of companies are in constant search forflexible decisions for their infrastructure for further growth and decrease the usage exploitation of resources when they have a non-use state to avoid additional financial costs. Orchestrator techniques to automate configuration, coordination, and management of computer systems and software are used to meet such infrastructure's demand. Infrastructure as a Code took a large part in automation processes from the beginning of the growing demand for Cloud Computing, but now the new era of orchestration and demand on flexibility capabilities has come, which IaC has to cover. Last decade, multiple IaC solutions appeared. Each of them has a different performance as orchestrators. Flexibility of the orchestrator is measured by configuration capabilities and workflow control of operations via internal features. Nevertheless, time and required computational resources are an important part of orchestrator performance as well. Protracted delays between lifecycle processes and extra-high computational resource demand lead to high financial costs and high service downtime. Computational resource consumption and time metrics, configuration capabilities are the core of orchestrator performance

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly used to address pressing infrastructure demands. PPPs typically involve a long-term contract between governments and private firms for design, construction, operation, and maintenance of infrastructure where private finance is put at risk throughout the contract's duration. By bundling these key tasks in the hands of the private sector, PPPs are expected to address certain limitations of traditional delivery approaches by capitalizing on private sector expertise and capabilities. Yet, while studies have shown the feasibility of PPPs in many cases, key challenges such as asymmetric information, incentive misalignment, bounded rationality, high transaction costs, and contract incompleteness are greater in PPPs than in traditional projects. This is because PPPs involve numerous heterogeneous stakeholders and multiple discrete project phases spanning decades. These challenges interact and result in high uncertainty in PPPs. Thus, how to address uncertainties is crucial in designing and implementing a PPP contract. Using a deliberately sampled data set of 20 contemporary greenfield highway contracts in Australia, the Philippines, and India, three studies explore the current practices of three key areas in PPPs: risk allocation, decision rights allocation, and lifecycle project management. Together, these studies shed light on how contracting parties design contracts ex ante to address ex post uncertainty due to inevitable changes in circumstances and requirements. In the study of risk allocation, the results support the risk transfer tenet and risk allocation principle and criteria. For instance, most of the comprehensive set of the 35 key risks investigated were transferred to the private sector or shared; exogenous risks had more consistent allocation and were shared more than endogenous risks across the three countries. A high level of similarity in risk allocation within each country and across the countries was uncovered regardless of remarkably different characteristics at both project and country levels. The similarities among these countries may indicate common risk allocation practices across other comparable countries in the region, and it provides the basis for revisiting existing literature such as studies about the relationship between institutional strength and the extent of risk transfer. Several silent or indeterminate provisions were also identified, indicating areas for improving current contractual designs. Some shift of responsibilities to the private sector in tolled projects (typically longer contract duration) compared with government-paid ones (typically shorter) was observed across the countries. Some limited trends over time such as less silent or indeterminate provisions and more risks retained by the public sector in recent projects in the Philippines and India, respectively, were also observed. For the examination of decision rights allocation, the key finding was the dominant level of owner control in a comprehensive set of 10 key provisions in almost all contracts regardless of the country's level of development and the substantial number of risks transferred to the private sector. The observed owner control aligns with agency theory, and this finding is likely driven by governments' accountability concerns and risk aversion. The extensive level of owner control does not support the argument that interprets property rights theory as applied to PPPs as providing the private sector with more extensive decision rights given their significant role in the decades-long duration of a PPP project. Contracts in Australia were more rigid, having distinctive, rigorous, and more detailed requirements with more ex-ante effort required to specify numerous provisions. Some limited national trends include contractual design evolvement over time in some provisions in the Philippines and India. The identified silent provisions indicate areas for improvement. For the lifecycle project management inquiry, the practices explored specify project structure, requirements, processes, and procedures that function as key elements of measurement- and process-based management throughout a project's contract period. Implementing these elements can trigger corresponding governance mechanisms to promote contractual and relational governance. Contracts in Australia tend to be more comprehensive in many areas requiring more ex ante contracting efforts such as naming contractors in contracts and ex post implementation efforts to comply with many distinctive requirements such as those concerning environmental and community/user management. Meanwhile, contracts in Australia likely rely more on trust-based management versus monitoring/control-based management, having limited requirements for monitoring and safeguarding the contract. Together, these findings provide insights to more comprehensively understand how contracts are designed to address uncertainties. The common and different practices revealed benefit both practitioners and scholars and consequently suggest pathways toward enhancing the potential benefits and efficiency of PPPs; the former by facilitating informed decisions such as market entry, project selection, and strategic contractual designs at both the project-level and policy-level, especially for evolving markets such as the Philippines, India, and other regional and comparable countries; the latter by providing a framework with supporting contractual evidence that (i) reinforces and supports numerous contractual and governance theories and principles and (ii) establishes a baseline for multiple subsequent inquiries such as examining the key factors affecting parties' contractual choices, the effectiveness of the practices uncovered, and the gaps with parties' preferences. The research is characterized by its broad scope exploring comprehensive sets of key provisions in 20 contracts spanning three countries and its important implications for both theory and practice of PPP contractual design. / Doctor of Philosophy / Public-private partnerships (PPPs) involve decades-long contracts between governments and private firms where a single private firm typically designs, builds, finances, operates, and maintains a specific infrastructure facility for revenues mainly from users (tolls) or governments. PPPs are theoretically expected to address certain limitations of traditional delivery approaches by capitalizing on private sector expertise and capabilities. Numerous studies have shown the feasibility of PPPs in many projects and sectors in various countries. However, PPP transactions are characterized by high uncertainty as a result of the involvement of numerous diverse stakeholders and the integration of multiple project lifecycle phases that span decades where changes in circumstances and requirements are inevitable. Contracts are the key and central instrument in project governance. Thus, addressing uncertainties is crucial in designing and implementing a PPP contract. Using a data set of 20 contemporary greenfield highway contracts in Australia, the Philippines, and India, this dissertation explored three key issues: risk allocation, decision rights allocation, and lifecycle project management. Risk allocation refers to which contracting party would take responsibility for certain contractual requirements with corresponding consequences or benefits. Decision rights allocation defines the boundaries of public sector involvement and consequently its control of the private sector's activities and decisions. Lifecycle project management is a set of contractual requirements, project structure, processes, and principles that steer the actions of and interactions between parties over a project's lifecycle. For risk allocation, the results reveal that most of the 35 key risks investigated were either transferred to the private sector or shared. One interesting and, to some extent, unexpected finding was the relatively high level of similarity in risk allocation within each country and across the countries, despite remarkably different characteristics at both project and country levels. This suggests that similar risk allocation practices may be employed across regional and comparable countries and perhaps beyond. No noticeable transnational trends or variances were observed except some shift of responsibilities to the private sector in user-paid projects (typically longer contract duration) compared with government-paid ones (typically shorter). Some limited trends over time such as a decrease in silent or indeterminate provisions and more risks retained by the public sector in recent projects in the Philippines and India, respectively, were observed. Additionally, exogenous risks (external to the project) had more consistent allocation and were shared more than endogenous risks (within a project's boundary). Some silent provisions were identified, indicating areas for improvement of contractual designs. For decision rights allocation, the key finding was the dominant level of owner control in 10 key provisions in almost all contracts, regardless of the country's level of development and the substantial number of risks transferred to the private sector. Contracts in Australia were more rigid, having distinctive, rigorous, and more detailed requirements with more efforts required beforehand to specify numerous provisions. Some limited national trends include contractual design evolvement over time in some provisions in the Philippines and India. Some silent provisions were identified, indicating areas for improvement or consideration. For lifecycle project management, parties designed contractual practices to rely on (1) contractual requirements with consequences for noncompliance and harmonious and collaborative relationships between parties, (2) rigid and detailed requirements and flexible ways to correspond to uncertainties, and (3) output-based management approaches (e.g., performance linked payments) and process-based management approaches (e.g., regular meetings and communication, procedures to resolve disputes) to address future uncertainties throughout a project's contract duration. Contracts in Australia tend to be more comprehensive in many areas requiring more ex ante contracting efforts such as naming contractors in contracts and ex post implementation efforts to comply with many distinctive requirements such as those concerning environment and community/user management. Meanwhile, contracts in Australia likely rely more on trust-based management versus monitoring/control-based management, having limited requirements for monitoring and safeguarding the contract. Overall, the common and different practices revealed facilitate informed decisions such as market entry, project selection, and strategic contractual designs at both the project-level and policy-level, especially for evolving markets such as the Philippines, India, and other regional and comparable countries. For instance, international developers expecting high revenue can choose the Philippines over India since revenue risk is typically a private risk in the Philippines but shared in India. Additionally, governments in the Philippines and India might want to consider adopting more trust-based management practices so that their contracts would better attract and incentivize international developers. The findings also provide contractual evidence that supports numerous contract and governance theories and principles and establishes a baseline for subsequent inquiries such as investigating the effectiveness of the practices uncovered, the key reasons for parties' contractual choices, and the gaps with parties' preferences. The research is characterized by its broad scope exploring comprehensive sets of key provisions in 20 contracts spanning three countries and its important implications for both theory and practice of PPP contractual designs.

Automobiles have evolved from meeting transportation needs of their owners a century ago, to addressing transportation desires of their owners today. They now meet the owner’s desire for status though sign values such as speed, safety, environmental consciousness, sexual desire, freedom, masculinity etc., and are anthropomorphised by creatively invented names. It comes as little surprise that the transport sector alone accounts for nearly a quarter of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – levels that are further expected to double by 2050. Germany, which is the highest emitter of GHGs in Europe recorded nearly 1 Gt GHG emissions in 2016 alone. Such high concentration of emissions from the German transport sector can in some part be attributed to the autobahn network in Germany – 2/3rd of which have no mandated speed limits, thus encouraging the car manufacturers to design cars that are operation worthy even at speeds of up to 250 km/ h (or higher), that are unrepresentative of real world driving conditions. This thesis aims at quantifying the environmental impact of this design for high top speeds in passenger cars from a systems perspective. This is achieved by using a comparative lifecycle assessment of passenger cars from a cradle-to-grave approach. A number of passenger car specifications are modelled which include a representative base case for a German car, vehicle light-weighting approach through material substitution, and down engineered car. The results of the comparative lifecycle assessment showed that, light-weighting a passenger car through material substitution showed a reduction of between 3 to 9% in impact categories such climate change, particulate matter formation, fossil depletion, human toxicity and terrestrial eco-toxicity as compared to the baseline levels. Higher reductions of nearly 12% and 31%, were observed in the marine eco-toxicity and the metal depletion impact categories respectively. However, there exists potential to reduce up to 40% in all selected environmental impact categories when comparing baseline passenger car to a down engineered one. Further, light-weighting a passenger car through higher material substitution showed an increase in the indirect energy consumption and higher impacts in ten out of the eighteen impact categories, as compared to a lower material substitution option. Thus, an important conclusion drawn from this thesis is that when implementing steps to reduce environmental impacts of passenger cars, shift of burden must be avoided between the lifecycle phases as well as the impact categories.

No description available.

Product quality is directly related to how well that product meets the customer's needs and intents. It is paramount, therefore, to capture customer requirements correctly and succinctly. Unfortunately, most development models tend to avoid, or only vaguely define the process by which requirements are generated. Other models rely on formalistic characterizations that require specialized training to understand. To address such drawbacks we introduce the Requirements Generation Model (RGM) that (a) decomposes the conventional "requirements analysis" phase into sub-phases which focus and refine requirements generation activities, (b) constrains and structures those activities, and (c) incorporates a monitoring methodology to assist in detecting and resolving deviations from process activities defined by the RGM. We present an empirical study of the RGM in an industrial setting, and results derived from this study that substantiate the effectiveness of the RGM in producing a better set of requirements. / Ph. D.

De modo geral, há pouca informação disponível aos gestores para orientá-los tanto sobre o desenvolvimento de um Sistema de Medição de Desempenho (SMD) quanto à adequabilidade do SMD atual. Já Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) é uma abordagem para a gestão integrada das informações e dos processos de negócio para todas as fases da vida de um produto. A fim de compreender todas as fases da vida de um produto e, de forma consistente, considerar a abordagem PLM, as empresas estão tentando incorporar indicadores de desempenho de sustentabilidade em seus SMDs. O presente trabalho possui por objetivo propor um framework para o desenvolvimento de um SMD para a abordagem PLM com ênfase na sua aplicação prática, compreendendo as seguintes características: um procedimento com a descrição dos seus passos; um conjunto de ferramentas como formulários para apoiar o procedimento; uma lista de indicadores de desempenho de prática seleção dos indicadores na aplicação do framework, relacionados com PLM e sustentabilidade. Esta pesquisa adota a metodologia de pesquisa em design, como a abordagem mais ampla, na qual a proposta do framework é sintetizada da literatura e posteriormente aplicada e aperfeiçoada à medida que se conduzia uma pesquisa-ação. As principais contribuições consistem em possibilitar o diagnóstico do SMD atual da empresa assim como o seu nível de maturidade e selecionar indicadores com base em uma lista previamente sistematiza, para facilitar essa escolha. Finalmente, mostra-se que é possível incorporar indicadores de desempenho de sustentabilidade nos SMDs atuais da empresa para abordagem PLM, desde que existam stakeholders interessados em estabelecer objetivos estratégicos para a sustentabilidade. / Usually there is little information available to managers to guide them on either the development of a Performance Measurement System (PMS) or the uptade of the current PMS. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is an integrated approach to information management and business processes for all stages of life of a product. Further, in order to fully address all phases of a products life and consistently support consider the PLM; companies are trying to incorporate sustainability performance indicators into their PMS. Thus, this work aims at proposing a framework to develop a PMS for the PLM approach with an emphasis on practical application, comprising the following characteristics: a procedure containing steps and a set of tools such as forms to support them; a list of performance indicators PLM and sustainability to enable the selection of indicators. This research adopts the design research methodology, as the broader approach, in which the proposed framework is synthesized from literature and then applied and improved during an action research. The highlights of the framework are the diagnosis of the current SMD company as well as their level of maturity of the PMS and the selection of performance indicators through a list. Finally, this work indicates that is possible to incorporate sustainability performance indicators into the PMS for the PLM approach as long as there stakeholder interested in establishing strategic objectives for sustainability.

De modo geral, há pouca informação disponível aos gestores para orientá-los tanto sobre o desenvolvimento de um Sistema de Medição de Desempenho (SMD) quanto à adequabilidade do SMD atual. Já Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) é uma abordagem para a gestão integrada das informações e dos processos de negócio para todas as fases da vida de um produto. A fim de compreender todas as fases da vida de um produto e, de forma consistente, considerar a abordagem PLM, as empresas estão tentando incorporar indicadores de desempenho de sustentabilidade em seus SMDs. O presente trabalho possui por objetivo propor um framework para o desenvolvimento de um SMD para a abordagem PLM com ênfase na sua aplicação prática, compreendendo as seguintes características: um procedimento com a descrição dos seus passos; um conjunto de ferramentas como formulários para apoiar o procedimento; uma lista de indicadores de desempenho de prática seleção dos indicadores na aplicação do framework, relacionados com PLM e sustentabilidade. Esta pesquisa adota a metodologia de pesquisa em design, como a abordagem mais ampla, na qual a proposta do framework é sintetizada da literatura e posteriormente aplicada e aperfeiçoada à medida que se conduzia uma pesquisa-ação. As principais contribuições consistem em possibilitar o diagnóstico do SMD atual da empresa assim como o seu nível de maturidade e selecionar indicadores com base em uma lista previamente sistematiza, para facilitar essa escolha. Finalmente, mostra-se que é possível incorporar indicadores de desempenho de sustentabilidade nos SMDs atuais da empresa para abordagem PLM, desde que existam stakeholders interessados em estabelecer objetivos estratégicos para a sustentabilidade. / Usually there is little information available to managers to guide them on either the development of a Performance Measurement System (PMS) or the uptade of the current PMS. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is an integrated approach to information management and business processes for all stages of life of a product. Further, in order to fully address all phases of a products life and consistently support consider the PLM; companies are trying to incorporate sustainability performance indicators into their PMS. Thus, this work aims at proposing a framework to develop a PMS for the PLM approach with an emphasis on practical application, comprising the following characteristics: a procedure containing steps and a set of tools such as forms to support them; a list of performance indicators PLM and sustainability to enable the selection of indicators. This research adopts the design research methodology, as the broader approach, in which the proposed framework is synthesized from literature and then applied and improved during an action research. The highlights of the framework are the diagnosis of the current SMD company as well as their level of maturity of the PMS and the selection of performance indicators through a list. Finally, this work indicates that is possible to incorporate sustainability performance indicators into the PMS for the PLM approach as long as there stakeholder interested in establishing strategic objectives for sustainability.

No description available.