<p>E-commerce is far more common in large firms than in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As a result SMEs risk competitive disadvantages. A growing body of research has attended to this problem but few studies examine the adoption of e-commerce from a broader contextual perspective. To be able to understand SMEs’ adoption of e-commerce it is desirable to study their contextual preconditions, approaches and effects.</p><p>The purpose of this study is to contribute to the theory building in the e-commerce area by forming a conceptual framework over SMEs’ adoption of e-commerce: the ECA (Electronic Commerce Adoption) framework. A central starting point for the study is Pettigrew’s (1985) contextual framework for strategic changes. The analysis dimensions in Pettigrew’s framework − content, context and process − are adapted to adoption of e-commerce. Thus, the ECA framework consists of analysis models that focus on a) the content, b) the context and c) the process of e-commerce adoption in SMEs. Further, the ECA framework includes an analysis model over the interplay between content, context and process and a typology over adoption situations. The SME in its role as a supplier is the unit of analysis. The study uses an abductive approach where results from previous studies in areas such as e-commerce, information systems and decision making are used as sources for forming the ECA framework. The ECA framework is then applied to the collection, interpretation and analyze of empirical data from the case studies of two small and one medium-sized enterprise. The case studies lead to the identification of additional elements that are added to the analysis models.</p><p>One contribution from the study is the typology over adoption situations. The typology, which builds on studies of Junghagen (1998) and Engsbo et al. (2001), divides the adoption of e-commerce in SMEs into five categories of adoption situations: proactive adoption situations, adaptive adoption situations, pragmatic adoption situations, forced adoption situations and enabled adoption situations. An adoption situation describes what is being adopted (content), why (context) and how (process).</p><p>Another contribution is the so called adoption guides. These are contextual conditions whose states indicate if a SME will adopt e-commerce or not and if so, which adoption situation they are likely to find themselves in. The adoption guides are: the relative dependence on individual customers, the degree of customer pressure, the strategic needs of e-commerce, the information complexity and, the CEO’s extent of aversion towards risk-taking. Consequently two major conclusions from this study are that SMEs’ e-commerce adoption can be divided into five different adoption situations and a small number of contextual conditions – here called adoption guides – determine which of them a SME tend to go through. The typology enables organizations that educate SMEs or support their development of e-commerce to design their efforts more efficiently and researchers to diversify the studied population. As the study is theory building the contributions and conclusions are propositions that need to be tested empirically in future studies.</p>

The theme of the diploma thesis deals with the description and improvement of business process inside of the service company. The Goal is to formalize current state of business processes in the Czech division of international hardware producer and provide overall view on the processes for the company management. In the first section there is a company profile described by organisation chart, strategy, SWOT analysis and brief description of the internal information system. The middle part contains descriptive tables and Event-driven process chains of three main processes and their subprocesses. In the all processes there are identified few weaknesses that are the base for the last section. The final part suggests specific improvements to the weaknesses. It is author's proposals for solving difficulties inside of the processes. In conclusion all of the plans are grouped by every single role in the process.

E-commerce is far more common in large firms than in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As a result SMEs risk competitive disadvantages. A growing body of research has attended to this problem but few studies examine the adoption of e-commerce from a broader contextual perspective. To be able to understand SMEs’ adoption of e-commerce it is desirable to study their contextual preconditions, approaches and effects. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the theory building in the e-commerce area by forming a conceptual framework over SMEs’ adoption of e-commerce: the ECA (Electronic Commerce Adoption) framework. A central starting point for the study is Pettigrew’s (1985) contextual framework for strategic changes. The analysis dimensions in Pettigrew’s framework − content, context and process − are adapted to adoption of e-commerce. Thus, the ECA framework consists of analysis models that focus on a) the content, b) the context and c) the process of e-commerce adoption in SMEs. Further, the ECA framework includes an analysis model over the interplay between content, context and process and a typology over adoption situations. The SME in its role as a supplier is the unit of analysis. The study uses an abductive approach where results from previous studies in areas such as e-commerce, information systems and decision making are used as sources for forming the ECA framework. The ECA framework is then applied to the collection, interpretation and analyze of empirical data from the case studies of two small and one medium-sized enterprise. The case studies lead to the identification of additional elements that are added to the analysis models. One contribution from the study is the typology over adoption situations. The typology, which builds on studies of Junghagen (1998) and Engsbo et al. (2001), divides the adoption of e-commerce in SMEs into five categories of adoption situations: proactive adoption situations, adaptive adoption situations, pragmatic adoption situations, forced adoption situations and enabled adoption situations. An adoption situation describes what is being adopted (content), why (context) and how (process). Another contribution is the so called adoption guides. These are contextual conditions whose states indicate if a SME will adopt e-commerce or not and if so, which adoption situation they are likely to find themselves in. The adoption guides are: the relative dependence on individual customers, the degree of customer pressure, the strategic needs of e-commerce, the information complexity and, the CEO’s extent of aversion towards risk-taking. Consequently two major conclusions from this study are that SMEs’ e-commerce adoption can be divided into five different adoption situations and a small number of contextual conditions – here called adoption guides – determine which of them a SME tend to go through. The typology enables organizations that educate SMEs or support their development of e-commerce to design their efforts more efficiently and researchers to diversify the studied population. As the study is theory building the contributions and conclusions are propositions that need to be tested empirically in future studies.

The topic of the thesis is an analysis of selected business processes in the company XY, which is engaged in providing employee benefits and catering. The issue of business processes and their optimization is recently very topical issue and is dealt with more organizations. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the current condition of selected business processes at the customer service center company XY, for a purpose of identify their possible shortcomings. Subsequently, the author of the work proposed possible solutions that contribute to optimizing selected processes. Contribution work consists mainly in analyzing selected processes and propose possible solutions to the identified shortcomings. The theoretical part deals with the explanation of basic concepts relevant to the understanding of the issues, comparing two basic approaches management of the organization and introduction of basic methodologies, techniques and notations used for modeling business processes. The practical part is an actual analysis of selected business processes, the author of the work area is restricted to the customer service center XY. And then the possible solutions identified shortcomings.

This thesis explains business process mining and it's principles. A substantial part is devoted to the problems of process discovery. Further, based on the analysis of specific manufacturing process are proposed three methods that are trying to identify shortcomings in the process. First discovers the manufacturing process and renders it into a graph. The second method uses simulator of production history to obtain products that may caused delays in the process. Acquired data are used to mine frequent itemsets. The third method tries to predict processing time on the selected workplace using asociation rules. Last two mentioned methods employ an algorithm Frequent Pattern Growth. The knowledge obtained from this thesis improve efficiency of the manufacturing process and enables better production planning.

Purpose – Due to faster innovation cycles and competitive markets, current methods for implementing and adapting business processes can not keep pace with changing requirements and cause BPM solutions to falls short of business needs. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach for implementing an agile BPM methodology by substituting the plan-build-run approach with an incremental prototype-based model, removing intermediaries from the time critical path of business process evolution, and empowering end users to change business processes at runtime by manipulating process artefacts. Design/methodology/approach – Based on interviews with customers and stakeholders and our experience in implementing complex BPM solutions in SMEs, we propose key concepts for an agile BPM approach and derive basic requirements for implementing a BPM system that allows users to redefine business processes during their execution. This analysis is supplemented by a brief overview of current research trends in modelling and implementing agile BPM. Originality/value – All existing solutions examined by our team imply a separate modelling step by users or process managers. The designed key concepts enable users to implicitly model processes without interrupting day to day operations. Our approach enables organisations to introduce business process management in areas where agility is very important (e.g. product development) or to increase operational agility in areas with established BPM. Practical implications – An agile BPM solution can give organisations the flexibility they need to react quickly to changing markets and customer needs. We want to help them to introduce standardization and efficiency without losing agility. In areas where classical BPM is in place, our approach can increase the adaptation rate of process changes. In the areas of knowledge workers with a high level of agility, our approach can increase efficiency by supporting knowledge sharing.

The aim of this thesis is to map how the most common process-oriented methodologies and standards govern the issue of process ownership, define the role of a process owner and a comparison of these with a current practice in the corporate environment. The first part describes the theoretical concepts related to process management, including a description of selected methodologies. The following part is a questionnaire and its description followed by the expected responses based on previous theories. The last, third, part of the thesis contains an analysis based on the data obtained from the questionnaire respondents compared with the stated hypotheses and its evaluation.

The thesis deals with workflow design and its implementation in a construction company. The current state of document management is becoming obsolete and insufficient. Thus the company´s board has approved the realization of workflow system. The aim of this thesis is therefore analysis of company´s related processes and design of a workflow model. In addition, the new model is required to be linked with present financial and managerial accounting systems and allow for future adjustments and modifications. Final output of this thesis consists of workflow process maps, risk assessment, budget and time plan of realization.

Objective: Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death. The gold standard for their diagnosis and treatment are angiographic procedures. Clinicians rely on dedicated and specialized equipment for these interventions, e.g. angiography systems. The speed of the associated development is important as better technology enables progress in treatment methods and clinical outcomes. The goal of this article is to show how to optimize the innovation and development process such that it takes minimal time. Methods: 672 data sets on 302 topics were collected over 47 months during a long-term observation of the innovation and development process of angiographic systems. The total data collected is equivalent to efforts worth 30 man-years. This input was used to calculate key process parameters, analyse key process roles, evaluate the use of problem-solving methods and identify key technologies. We also developed a process model comprising the primary innovation sources, important input providers and key processes. This model is characterized by a continuous loop for the innovation and development process. Results: The conducted literature research identifies this closed loop process model as being unique in comparison to the well-established models proposed by Brockhoff, Cooper, Crawford, Durfee, Ebert, Eppinger, Hughes, Pleschak, Thom, Ulrich, Vahs and Witt. According to the best knowledge of the authors no comparable data collection has been performed and presented anywhere else yet. When analysing our 672 data sets, we found that the median process time ( in this data pool (n=672) was to be 10 weeks (p<0,05). The median number of task owners (xPA) per task across all topics was 2. Our data revealed that the number of task owners had a direct impact on the process time. For data sets with up to eight task owners the relationship between process time and task owners can be described as tPd=3.6*xPA^1.4. The median time of owning a topic was determined for Sales (7 weeks), Service (11 weeks), Customer Relationship Management (6 weeks), Product Lifecycle Management (10 weeks) and Research & Development (11 weeks). Main input providers were Sales (53%) and customers (28%). Sales (42%) and PLM (37%) are significant connectors. Problem solvers are PLM (35%), CRM (27%) and R&D (27%). The problem-solving methods were analysed and it was found that clarification (77%) as well as dialog and variation method (both 50%) were used most often. We found that changes to the application software (33%), mechanics, device interfaces and user interface (all 21%) are the four out of six components that were involved in most often. In the analysed datasets a potential of an up to 20% shorter process time was identified. Conclusion: This article proposes a new model for the innovation and development process. Based on our data, we recommend to apply a continuous loop process in the context of innovation and development of medical devices. Our results can, for example, be used for Activity Based Costing Approach or be applied to bring new or upgraded angiography systems faster to market benefitting patient outcome due to improved diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.

This thesis focuses on the problem of technological process modelling and simulation. It is based on the realistic requirements of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, where they lacked an extensible and open simulation tool with the ability to model biomass processing. In this work we explain the main concepts in the field of (physical) chemistry, the systematic approach to process modelling and simulation and we discuss various problems of simulation methods. We also describe the differences between simulation and design specifications and give reasons for choosing the sequential modular approach. An important part of the work is aimed at the design of the simulation tool's architecture, where the main emphasis is laid on the extensibility of future application. The tool has been implemented and it is now sucessfully being used at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.