In the final master’s dissertation analysis on current 15below communication platform PASNGR. In addition to this there is a short analysis done on each of PASNGR components to find out usage possibilities. Furthermore, the platform is dependant on Reservation Systems, so analysis on them is done as well, including processes and data. The goal of this dissertation is to create a mobile app integrated into PASNGR. For this reason integration analysis is done, by reviewing components, data and functions. After analysis is done, Business Process Model is created to represent the workflow of the app, including internal processes and interaction with PASNGR. Furthermore a review of mobile application technologies is done, including common tools used in development. By doing this there is the best solution for current 15below developers’ environment found. The solution would mean the least resources to be used to develop the app. Finally a prototype of the mobile application is created, to show the possibilities. The app works on Android and iOS platforms, gives an ability for user to download itineraries and store for offline usage, an ability to scan a barcode at the airport straight from the app, give post flight experience feedback for the airline, receive schedule change notifications and accept them. / Baigiamajame magistro darbe atliekama kompanijos „15below“ naudojamos avialinijų komunikacijos su keleiviais platformos „PASNGR“ analizė. Atskirai atliekama trumpa kiekvieno „PASNGR“ modulio apžvalga įvertinant taikymo galimybes. Be to, kadangi platforma yra priklausoma nuo globaliųjų paskirstymo sistemų, apžvelgiamos ir jos apimant procesus, bei naudojamus duomenis. Darbe yra numatomas sukurti mobiliosios aplikacijos prototipas surištas su „PASNGR“ platforma. Tam tikslui yra atliekama integracijos analizė, apžvelgiant komponentus, duomenis ir funkcijas. Galiausiai yra sukuriamas veiklos proceso modelis atvaizduojantis mobiliosios aplikacijos prototipo veikimo principus, bei interakciją su platforma „PASNGR“. Darbo eigoje apžvelgiamos mobiliųjų aplikacijų technologijos, bei įrankiai joms kurti. Taip parenkamas priimtiniausias spendimas esamai kompanijos „15below“ programuotojų aplinkai ir lemiantis minimalias sąnaudas. Galiausiai sukuriamas mobiliosios aplikacijos prototipas veikiantis Android ir iOS platformose, gebantis atsisiųsti elektroninius bilietus į mobilųjį įrenginį ir jame išsaugoti naudojimui neprisijungus prie interneto, leidžiantis naudotojui skenuoti brūkšninį kodą oro uoste, po skrydžio pateikti nuomonę apie gautas avialinijų paslaugas, priimti pranešimus apie skrydžių pakeitimus, bei leisti juos patvirtinti.

In this thesis, COTS-software requirements elicitation, which is an input for RFP in software intensive automation system&rsquo / s acquisition, is examined. Business Process Models are used for COTS-software requirements elicitation. A new method, namely CREB, is developed to meet the requirements of COTS-software. A software intensive system acquisition of a military organization is used to validate the method.

Climate change is currently a central problem in ecology, with far-reaching effects on species that may be diffcult to quantify. Ectothermic species which rely on environmental cues to complete successive stages of their life history are especially sensitive to temperature changes and so are good indicators of the impacts of climate change on ecosystems. Based on data collected in growth experiments for the alpine butterfly Parnassius smintheus (Rocky Mountain Apollo), a novel mathematical model is presented to study developmental rate in larval insects. The movement of an individual through larval instars is treated as a discrete-time four-outcome Bernoulli process, where class transition and death are assigned temperature-dependent probabilities. Transition and mortality probabilities are estimated using maximum likelihood estimation techniques. This adult emergence model is then integrated into a reproductive success model, and multi-year implications of climate change on the population dynamics of P. smintheus are explored. / Applied Mathematics

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The thesis investigates the gap between rhetoric and reality in how organisations use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) for marketing and brand differentiation. The rhetoric reality gap is the gap that develops between what organisations say they do and what they actually do. In terms of CSR, this gap is present as the phenomenon of greenwashing, whereby organisations embellish claims about their social and environmental activities. This leads to sceptical consumers and the discrediting of CSR activities in general. Left unmanaged, the gap presents significant reputation risk. However, the identification of the gap also has the potential for driving the organisation towards more responsible business practices. Previous research focused almost exclusively on organisations' CSR activities and the resultant outcomes and not on the views and judgments about CSR found inside organisations. A shift in focus towards the organisational sensemaking around CSR may better explain the dynamics of the rhetoric and reality gap. Basu and Palazzo's process model of sensemaking for the study of CSR, describes the cognitive, linguistic and conative aspects of sensemaking along seven dimensions to produce a CSR profile of organisations. The thesis uses Basu and Palazzo's model to study CSR in the food retail sector. Comparative case studies were undertaken in three of the largest retailers in South Africa in which various people involved with CSR were interviewed after Basu and Palazzo's (2008) model was operationalised. Thereafter a content analysis of the observed outcomes of organisations' CSR activities was undertaken. The observed outcomes were produced by analysing the organisations advertising strategy, website, use of social media, awards won, integrated reports and media reporting. Combining the content analysis with an analysis of the interviews produced a CSR profile for each of the cases which served as the basis for comparison. It was found that the rhetoric and reality gap of the organisations involved in this study could be explained by the organisations’ CSR profiles. The implications for the management of the rhetoric and reality gap varied between organisations. The success of the classification of the case studies meant that Basu and Palazzo’s model is able to produce a CSR profile for an organisation which can be linked to the observed CSR outcomes. In addition particular CSR profiles can explain the origins of specific rhetoric and reality gaps and how best to manage it. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die tesis ondersoek die retoriek en realiteitsgaping wat ontstaan uit organisasies se Korporatiewe Sosiale Verantwoordelikheidsinisiatiewe (KSV). Die retoriek en realitietsgaping is 'n verskil tussen wat organisasies sê hulle doen en wat hulle werklik doen. In terme van KSV is die gaping teenwoordig as die fenomeen van "greenwashing", waar organisasies hulle bydraes tot sosiale en omgewingsake oordryf. Dit lei tot skeptiese verbruikers en maak KSV-aktiwiteite verdag in die algemeen. As hierdie gaping nie bestuur word nie, kan dit bydra tot merkbare reputasie risiko vir organisasies. Die gaping is nie net 'n risiko nie, maar het ook die potensiaal om organisasies na meer verantwoordelike besigheidspraktyk te dryf. Vorige navorsing oor KSV fokus op organisasies se KSV-aktiwiteite en die uitkomste daarvan en nie op die sienings en oordele oor KSV binne organisasies self nie. Organisatoriese singewingsteorie verskuif die fokus na hoe organisasies sin maak oor KSV en kan die aard van die retoriek en realiteitsgaping beter beskryf as hoofstroom navorsing. Basu en Palazzo (2008) se proses-model van singewing vir die studie van KSV beskryf die kognitiewe, taal en konnatiewe aspekte van singewing oor sewe dimensies om 'n KSV-profiel van organisasies te ontwikkel. In die tesis word Basu en Palazzo se model geoperasionaliseer om KSV in die Suid-Afrikaanse voedsel kleinhandelsektor te bestudeer. Vergelykende gevallestudies is onder drie van die vier grootste kleinhandelaars in Suid-Afrika onderneem waartydens onderhoude met sleutelpersone betrokke by KSV gevoer is. Daarna is 'n inhoudsanalise van die waargenome KSV-uitkomste in elke geval onderneem. Hierdie uitkomste is die resultaat van 'n analise van advertensie-strategieë, webblaaie, gebruik van sosiale media, toekennings, geïntegreerde verslagdoening en media-dekking. Die KSV-profiel is saamgestel deur die inhoudsanalise met die analise van die onderhoude te kombineer. Daar is gevind dat die retoriek en realiteitsgaping van die betrokke organisasies deur die KSV-profiele verduidelik kan word. Die implikasies vir die bestuur van die gaping het gevarieer tussen die drie organisasies. Die sukses van die klassifikasie van die gevallestudies beteken dat Basu en Palazzo se model 'n KSV-profiel kan produseer wat met waargenome KSV-uitkomste verband hou. Verder kan spesifieke KSV-profiele die oorsprong van spesifieke gapings verduidelik en beginpunte bied vir die bestuur daarvan.

abstract: Electric utilities are exploring new technologies to cope up with the in-crease in electricity demand and power transfer capabilities of transmission lines. Compact transmission lines and high phase order systems are few of the techniques which enhance the power transfer capability of transmission lines without requiring any additional right-of-way. This research work investigates the impact of compacting high voltage transmission lines and high phase order systems on the surface electric field of composite insulators, a key factor deciding service performance of insulators. The electric field analysis was done using COULOMB 9.0, a 3D software package which uses a numerical analysis technique based on Boundary Element Method (BEM). 3D models of various types of standard transmission towers used for 230 kV, 345 kV and 500 kV level were modeled with different insulators con-figurations and number of circuits. Standard tower configuration models were compacted by reducing the clearance from live parts in steps of 10%. It was found that the standard tower configuration can be compacted to 30% without violating the minimum safety clearance mandated by NESC standards. The study shows that surface electric field on insulators for few of the compact structures exceeded the maximum allowable limit even if corona rings were installed. As a part of this study, a Gaussian process model based optimization pro-gram was developed to find the optimum corona ring dimensions to limit the electric field within stipulated values. The optimization program provides the dimen-sions of corona ring, its placement from the high voltage end for a given dry arc length of insulator and system voltage. JMP, a statistical computer package and AMPL, a computer language widely used form optimization was used for optimi-zation program. The results obtained from optimization program validated the industrial standards. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Electrical Engineering 2012

abstract: Decades of research in cyberpsychology and human-computer interaction has pointed to a strong distinction between the online and offline worlds, suggesting that attitudes and behaviors in one domain do not necessarily generalize to the other. However, as humans spend increasing amounts of time in the digital world, psychological understandings of safety may begin to influence human perceptions of threat while online. This dissertation therefore examines whether perceived threat generalizes between domains across archival, correlational, and experimental research methods. Four studies offer insight into the relationship between objective indicators of physical and online safety on the levels of nation and state; the relationship between perceptions of these forms of safety on the individual level; and whether experimental manipulations of one form of threat influence perceptions of threat in the opposite domain. In addition, this work explores the impact of threat perception-related personal and situational factors, as well as the impact of threat type (i.e., self-protection, resource), on this hypothesized relationship. Collectively, these studies evince a positive relationship between physical and online safety in macro-level actuality and individual-level perception. Among individuals, objective indicators of community safety—as measured by zip code crime data—were a positive reflection of perceptions of physical safety; these perceptions, in turn, mapped onto perceived online safety. The generalization between perceived physical threat and online threat was stronger after being exposed to self-protection threat manipulations, possibly underscoring the more dire nature of threats to bodily safety than those to valuable resources. Most notably, experimental findings suggest that it is not the physical that informs the digital, but rather the opposite: Online threats blur more readily into physical domains, possibly speaking to the concern that dangers specific to the digital world will bleed into the physical one. This generalization of threat may function as a strategy to prepare oneself for future dangers wherever they might appear; and indeed, perceived threat in either world positively influenced desires to act on recommended safety practices. Taken together, this research suggests that in the realm of threat perception, the boundaries between physical and digital are less rigid than may have been previously believed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2017

Für die Herstellung von Kunststoffformteilen, z.B. Verpackungen, Komponenten für Haushaltsgeräte, Automobil- oder Medizinbranche, werden aufgrund von Mikrostrukturen, neuen sowie hybriden Materialien und dem zunehmenden Kostendruck steigende Anforderungen an das Formteil, das Verfahren und den Prozess gestellt. Entsprechende Technologien zur Verbesserung des Umformprozesses stehen vor der Markteinführung oder werden derzeit entwickelt. Aufgrund des damit einhergehenden Anstiegs der Technologiekomplexität werden zunehmend Material- und Prozessmodelle eingesetzt. Die dienen der Technologieentwicklung, der Optimierung des Prozesses und bilden eine Hilfestellung bei der Inbetriebnahme. Ein Schwerpunkt und eine Herausforderung ist dabei die Materialmodellierung. Während des Umformens ins Werkzeug beim Thermoformen treten verschiedene Effekte auf: z. B. Dehnung und Verschiebung der Polymerketten, Bildung von amorphen und kristallinen Strukturen. Das sich daraus ergebende Verhalten ist durch geeignete Materialmodelle und deren Parametrisierung abzubilden. Ein gängiger Ansatz zur Bestimmung des Materialverhaltens und die damit verbundene Bestimmung der Materialparameter ist die Reverse-Engineering-Methode. Zu diesem Zweck stehen verschiedene Ersatzversuche zur Auswahl, z.B. Membrane-Inflation- Rheometer (MIR), Thermoformen-Material-Charakterisierung (TMC) und uniaxiale sowie biaxiale Zugversuche. Mit Hilfe geeigneter Modelle werden die Parameter entsprechend der experimentellen Daten gefittet. Für die Abbildung des Umformprozesses in einem numerischen Modell ist die Implementierung des Materialmodells in ein Prozessmodell notwendig. Um quantitative und qualitative Aussagen zur Übereinstimmung des numerischen Modells mit dem tatsächlichen Umformprozess zu erhalten, ist stets eine Validierung notwendig, indem experimentelle Simulationen durchgeführt und anhand ausgewählter Zielgrößen analysiert und den numerischen Ergebnissen gegenübergestellt werden. Zu diesem Zweck stehen verschiedene neue Messmethoden zur Verfügung, z.B. GEWAND, OCT, Hall-Effekt-Dickenmesser.

No description available.

As consumers or customers, when we go into a shop and buy a product or, these days, when we buy something online, we expect not only the product itself to be fit for purpose but we also expect that we, the customers, get good customer service. If we get good or excellent customer service, we leave the shop feeling satisfied and positive in some way. How do shops, online or otherwise, or any other organisations, such as banks, hospitals or universities help to ensure that their employees deliver the appropriate customer service? It is still the main challenge. Thus, there are instances when a customer does not get the service that they deserve, or believe that they deserve. A happy, satisfied customer may perhaps tell others and thus encourage others to buy or go to that particular shop or organisation thus benefiting the business (new customers, who will spend money). However, there is evidence that an angry, upset dissatisfied customer will almost certainly tell five, or perhaps more, people of their bad experience. This is, clearly, bad for the business in question. No wonder, then, that businesses want, and need, to ensure that they have happy, satisfied customers and not dissatisfied or grudgeholders. Given the importance of customer satisfaction to businesses/organisations, the literature in this area demonstrates that there is still much to further understand about not only customer satisfaction but, importantly, customer dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction can be short and easily forgotten and it might be argued that this might not negatively affect a business/organisation too much in terms of future business. However, if a customer experiences or believes that they have suffered a great deal of negative emotions such as anger, fear, disappointment, betrayal and/or disgust, as well as perhaps telling many people, potential future customers about their bad experience they may well, also, take more direct action in the form of either making a formal complaint to the business/organisation, or perhaps retaliating in some way either immediately or at the nearest opportunity. Such a customer may hold a grudge against the business/organisation which is not only bad for the customer for their mental health (holding a grudge is negative) but is also bad for the business/organisation, too. Unfortunately, despite vital advances in dissatisfaction and complaining behaviour research, the psychological cognitive-emotive process underlying consumers’ coping behaviour have been neglected in the literature, as major work on this issue did not take into account the different negative emotions responsible for grudge and their impact on the grudgeholding coping responses. Dealing with those customers who are more than dissatisfied is time consuming for a business/organisation. Time is money. It is therefore important that, if businesses/organisations are to better understand their customers’ feeling and thinking to be able to predict their behaviours in order to make them happy returners instead of angry revengers. Therefore, it is essential to understand the experiences of grudgeholding customers through a process model and to look closely at issues related to grudgeholding, including the wide range of retaliatory behaviours. These might well vary according to factors such as the cost of the product (dissatisfaction might be greater for a goods or service costing a lot of money compared to something costing very little) but it may also vary according to individual characteristics of the customers themselves. Gender also plays its part, perhaps, that is, men and women may possibly think, feel and behave differently when it comes to holding grudge or retaliating as always controversial disputes exist in terms of gender differences. For example, females complain and spread the word more aligning with their communal stereotypical nature, and males like bargains and shop to win according to their agentic stereotypical nature. There is a need to further explore the consumer grudgeholding behaviour and why emotion is an important factor when talking about grudgeholding, the behaviours undertaken by those who hold a grudge and the impact of grudges on businesses/organisations if businesses/organisations are to better deal with their customers. Therefore, a cognitive-emotive process model is developed based mainly on cognitive appraisal theory to better understand consumers grudgeholding through deeper insight on their cognitions and emotions. The model is designed due to the lack of attention to the role of emotion in the dissatisfying marketplace experience. The model presents cognitive appraisal as the key element in the evaluation of grudgeholding consumer stress and aggression. Stressful appraisal outcomes are posited to elicit emotive reactions that, in combination with cognitive appraisal, impact the type of coping strategy used by the grudgeholder. Two coping strategies (problem focused and emotion focused) are recognized and discussed. Key propositions are presented to answer some questions about consumer grudgeholding behaviours such as (causes of grudge, product or service involved, the cost, the emotions generated, the coping behaviours like complaining and word-of-mouth, the corrective actions, the current emotions, the purchase intentions and future behaviours). To achieve the aims of this study, the research described in this thesis adopts the positivist research, quantitative research approach. According to the exploratory nature of this research, self-administered questionnaires are used for data generation. Closed and open-ended questions (specifically propping questions) were both used in the research as a way of motivating the respondent’s memory to retrieve a previous experience and recall actions and behaviours. Using both closed and open-ended questions provides the research with expected and unexpected answers. The research used non-probability sampling; namely, convenience sampling consisted of 786 responses to undergraduates and postgraduates British students whose age groups range from 18 to 39.The survey data were subsequently edited, coded and entered in SPSS 20 for analysis. The ultimate contribution of this study stems from explaining the consumer grudgeholding phenomenon by designing a cognitive-emotive process model that takes the role of consumer’s emotion into account. The findings revealed that emotion made a critical difference, especially anger. Gender gap was relatively small between the young British males and females. Angry females shared their negative experiences with others more than angry males. Besides, females shop to love and males shop to win.

Ces dernières années, les progrès en sciences de la gestion et de l’information ont transformé la Gestion de Processus d’Affaires (Business Process Management, BPM) en un sujet important, tant du côté de l’industrie que de celui de la recherche. Le BPM utilise des processus métiers pour améliorer la performance opérationnelle des organisations. Les processus métiers établissent un lien entre les personnes, les systèmes, et les différentes organisations, dans le but de créer de la valeur pour les parties prenantes. La cible de notre travail est la famille des systèmes BPM. Un système BPM est un système logiciel générique guidé par des modèles explicites de processus métier avec pour objectif d’exécuter et de gérer des processus opérationnels. Malgré le vaste éventail de sujets traités par ce domaine de recherche, il reste encore quelques questions qui méritent une étude plus approfondie. Un problème particulier concerne la médiation entre les systèmes BPM et les humains. L’interaction homme-machine dans ces systèmes repose sur des interfaces standard basées sur des listes de taches et des formulaires, ce qui est très contraignant pour les utilisateurs.Ceux-ci ont non seulement des difficultés à exécuter leurs processus métier, mais aussi a trouver le processus métier le mieux adapté à leurs besoins. Il serait beaucoup plus efficace d’utiliser des dialogues en langage naturel. Malheureusement les langages de modélisation de processus ne permettent pas de capturer ni de modéliser un domaine de discours. Le travail présent propose une approche originale de gestion du dialogue basée sur des systèmes multi-agents pour l’exécution des processus métier. La motivation globale pour ce travail fut de concevoir un modèle de dialogue extensible à différents domaines. Ce modèle s’appuie sur les ontologies de domaine, nécessitant un minimum d’effort d’adaptation pour améliorer l’interaction. Les résultats montrent tout le potentiel de notre approche multi-agent pour réaliser une médiation automatiquement, sans qu’il soit nécessaire de reconstruire les modèles de processus métier. / Over the last few years, the advances in management science and information technology have transformed the business process management (BPM) discipline into an important topic for both industry and academy. BPM uses business processes as the means for improving the operational performance of organizations, and setting processes are at the heart of BPM allows linking together people, systems, and different organizations to deliver value to stakeholders. The target of our work is the family of BPM systems. A BPM system is a generic software system that is driven by explicit process designs to enact and manage operational business processes. Despite the wide range of topics addressed by the academy on business processes, there are still aspects not addressed by prior research. A particular problem in this regard is the mediation between BPM systems and humans. Human interaction in those systems follows a standard user interface based predominantly on work item lists and forms. Thus, there is little room for creativity for users. They have not only difficulties in enacting their processes but also for searching the most suitable one for their needs. It would be more efficient to let humans interact in natural language. However, process modeling languages are an insufficient means of capturing and representing the domain of discourse. The present thesis develops an original approach to agent dialog management for the problem of business process enactment. The overarching motivation for this work was to design a dialog model scalable to different domains. The model relies on domain and business process ontologies, and necessitates a minimum effort of adaptation on ontologies to improve the interaction. Results indicate the potential of our agent-based approach to generate natural language.