<p>Background: AA Logistics Sweden is having logistic efficiency problems, and at this point they do not have performance measurement in terms of KPI´s. Due to constant development and demand on their products, there have not been enough resources available to perform these measurements.</p><p>Purpose: Our purpose is, on the basis of service level and turnover speed, to measure efficiency in terms of KPI’s at AA. It is also to design record sheets that can assist AA to increase the efficiency over time.</p><p>Methodology: Interviews with managers and employees, in order to have a solid foundation for what to look for and analyse in the ERP system. The empirical material that was received was analysed on the basis of different theories.</p><p>Result, conclusions: We have developed values for each KPI and also suggested SMART goals that in the long run will contribute to increasing the logistic efficiency.</p>

M. Tech. Architectural Technology / The South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP) requires that all registered architects clearly set out the terms (as defined by Rule 4.1 of the SACAP Code of Conduct, Board Notice 154 of 2009) of their appointment, before they undertake to perform any architectural work. Although the legally tested professional service agreements conform to the requirements of the Code of Conduct, architects are still reluctant to make use of these contracts. It has become common practice for architects to rely on their own knowledge of contracts to construct self-drafted agreements that are often not legally enforceable, or not to enter in to a client-architect agreement at all. It is the researcher's opinion that architects' knowledge and perceptions of the elements of contract law and the existing client-architect agreements should be investigated in an attempt to encourage the use of established service agreements. The agreement between the client and the architect plays a vital role in setting out the obligations of the parties involved in a construction project. Architects fail to provide their clients with a balanced, equitable and insurable professional service agreement, placing both parties at risk. The architect's authority is not established without a proper contract of agency, and the client does not understand the obligations and the role that the service provider has to undertake to earn his fee. The purpose of this study is to determine the origin and development of contracts of agency in the built environment. The study further aims to establish if the current available client-architect agreements are defined clearly and appropriately, as a legal agreement.

Increasing number of software vendors are offering or planning to offer their applications as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to leverage the benefits of cloud computing and Internet-based delivery. Therefore, potential clients will face increasing number of providers that satisfy their requirements to choose from. Consequently, there is an increasing demand for automating such a time-consuming and error-prone task. In this work, we develop an architecture for automated service discovery and selection in cloud computing environment. The system is based on an algorithm that recommends service choices to users based on both functional and non-functional characteristics of available services. The system also derives automated ratings from monitoring results of past service invocations to objectively detect badly-behaving providers. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach using an early prototype that was developed following object-oriented methodology and implemented using various open-source Java technologies and frameworks. The prototype uses a Chord DHT as its distributed backing store to achieve scalability.

Service providers’ goals include providing reliable connections with the minimum allocated resources over a shared-mesh path restoration scheme in WDM networks. However, in some cases, the requested parameters in an SLA are beyond the capacity of the network, and the connection is typically blocked. To give the customer a chance to choose another provider, or in the case of having only one provider, to comply with the provider’s network capacity, new SLA-based architectures and mechanisms are required to be introduced to provide better service to prioity-aware shared mesh WDM networks. To achieve this goal, the dissertation’s contributions focus on three main characteristics of the network design: i) A dynamic SLA negotiation infrastructure to negotiate and propagate crucial SLA parameters, ii) Path attributes which can provide a better picture of network resources and status and are suitable to be propagated by the negotiating system, and iii) Algorithms benefiting from the path attributes to improve the blocking probability and resource utilization of the network. To fulfill the first goal of the contributions, a dynamic SLA negotiation mechanism for both intra and inter-domain communications using OSPF and BGP protocols is proposed. Link attributes via intra-domain, and new proposed TE path attributes through inter-domain mechanisms are advertised. Several novel path constraints and attributes are proposed which are dynamically updated and propagated through the network over the connections provisioning process period to satisfy the second objective of the contributions in this dissertation. The path availability, holding time, SLA violation risk, and path risk factor are the important characteristics of the proposed path attributes. As the third goal considered for the contributions, novel priority-aware algorithms and SLA-based mechanisms are proposed to improve the network performance for different traffic types of various priority classes. The algorithms and mechanisms proposed in this thesis take advantage of the new path attributes and SLA negotiation infrastructure to better serve high-priority connection requests at the lowest cost. The mechanisms and network architectures proposed in this work are a solution for the high-priority requests that normally cannot be accommodated as they violate the best availability offered by service providers.

In this thesis, we propose architecture for a SaaS model in Cloud that would provide service to the financial investors who are not familiar with various mathematical models. Such finance models are used to evaluate financial instruments, for example, to price a derivative that is currently being traded before entering into a contact. An investor may approach CSP to price a particular derivative and specify the time, budget and accuracy constraints. Based on these constraints specified by investors, the service provider will compute the option value using our proposed FSM. To evaluate our proposed model, we compared pricing results with the classical model that provides a closed-form solution for option pricing to meet the accuracy constraints. After establishing the accuracy of our pricing results, we further ensured that the SLA between the FSP and the investors is honoured by meeting the constraints put forth by the investor who uses the Cloud service.

In this thesis, we propose architecture for a SaaS model in Cloud that would provide service to the financial investors who are not familiar with various mathematical models. Such finance models are used to evaluate financial instruments, for example, to price a derivative that is currently being traded before entering into a contact. An investor may approach CSP to price a particular derivative and specify the time, budget and accuracy constraints. Based on these constraints specified by investors, the service provider will compute the option value using our proposed FSM. To evaluate our proposed model, we compared pricing results with the classical model that provides a closed-form solution for option pricing to meet the accuracy constraints. After establishing the accuracy of our pricing results, we further ensured that the SLA between the FSP and the investors is honoured by meeting the constraints put forth by the investor who uses the Cloud service.

Management of Virtual Organizations faces new challenges that traditional approaches cannot address. This research proposes a performance measurement framework for service oriented virtual organizations including a structural and a procedural component. The structural framework aligns the activities of partners in a virtual organization at three different layers. The first layer is designed for partners’ strategic alignment through coordination of the value creation network. In the second layer, performance dimensions of partners’ collaboration are defined and mapped to the service choreography model. The third layer focuses on assessing effectiveness and efficiency of partners’ domain specific services, which is designed based on ITIL V3 service level management guidelines. In order to consolidate the structural framework, these three layers are integrated using a method for extracting service choreography model and SLA aggregation patterns from the value network. The procedural framework, on the other side, defines the processes required to design the KPI structure, implement the solution, communicate the results, and derive improvements. We propose an implementation architecture that enables inter-organizational performance management in collaborative environments. Then, the IBM products for business process and performance management (IBM BPM, Business Monitor, and Cognos BI) are employed to implement the proposed architecture. The conceptual framework along with the implementation architecture provides an integrated solution for decentralized performance measurement without the need for a central authority. We demonstrate that the proposed solution enhances flexibility, scalability, and interoperability, and supports transparency of partners’ performance information at an agreed-upon level as a basis for mutual trust.

Το αντικείμενο αυτής της διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι η μελέτη της επίδρασης του φυσικού στρώματος των ψηφιακών συνδρομητικών γραμμών στην συνολική απόδοση του DSL συστήματος, όπως αυτή ορίζεται από το συμβατικό επίπεδο εξυπηρέτησης. Πιο συγκεκριμένα εξετάζεται o τρόπος με τον όποιο επιδρούν ο θόρυβος διαφωνίας και τα χαρακτηριστικά του καναλιού στον μέγιστο ρυθμό μετάδοσης που μπορεί να επιτευχθεί. Ο θόρυβος διαφωνίας δημιουργείται από την ανεπιθύμητη παρεμβολή μεταξύ των σημάτων γειτονικών γραμμών της ιδίας δέσμης καλωδίων. Τα χαρακτηριστικά του καναλιού καθορίζονται από το μήκος της γραμμής, την ύπαρξη γεφυρών με ατερμάτιστα τμήματα κατά μήκος του συνδρομητικού βρόγχου και από τις τεχνικές παραμέτρους του δισύρματου καλωδίου (διάμετρος, χαρακτηριστική αντίσταση κ.α.). Με την βοήθεια προσομοιώσεων που υλοποιήθηκαν στο περιβάλλον Μatlab παρουσιάζονται διάφορες μετρήσεις για τον μέγιστο δυνατό ρυθμό μετάδοσης ενός ADSL συστήματος καθώς μεταβάλλονται οι παράγοντες που αναφέρθηκαν παραπάνω. Μελετώντας τα αποτελέσματα αυτά εξάγονται χρήσιμα συμπεράσματα τόσο για την σχεδίαση νέων DSL δικτύων όσο και για την διαχείριση των υπαρχόντων. Έτσι μπορούν να οριστούν ασφαλέστερα οι παράμετροι που περιγράφονται από το συμβατικό επίπεδο εξυπηρέτησης και καθορίζουν την δυνατότητα για παροχή υπηρεσιών εγγυημένης ποιότητας. / The objective of this diploma thesis is to study the effect of DSL physical layer on the overall system infrastructure. More specifically, examine in what way the effects of the crosstalk noise and the channel characteristics on the highest bit rate can be achieved. The crosstalk noise is created by the unwelcome interruption between the neighbor signal lines. The channel characteristics are determined by the length of subscriber loop, by the existence of bridged-tap and the technical parameters of twisted pair (diameter, characteristic resistance etc.). With the help of simulations in Matlab environment, we take various measurements of the highest bit rate of a ADSL system as we change the factors which have been mentioned above. Studying these results are exported useful conclusions for the design of new DSL networks and to manage existing ones. So it can be defined safer parameters which are described by the service level agreements and determine the ability to provide guaranteed quality service.

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is typically a set of wireless mobile nodes enabled to communicate dynamically in a multi-hop manner without any pre-existing network infrastructure. MANETs have several unique characteristics in contrast to other typical networks, such as dynamic topology, intermittent connectivity, limited resources, and lack of physical security. Securing MANETs is a critical issue as these are vulnerable to many different attacks and failures and have no clear line of defence. To develop effective security services in MANETs, it is important to consider an appropriate trust infrastructure which is tailored to a given MANET and associated application. However, most of the proposed trust infrastructures do not to take the MANET application context into account. This may result in overly secure MANETs that incur an increase in performance and communication overheads due to possible unnecessary security measures. Designing and evaluating trust infrastructures for MANETs is very challenging. This stems from several pivotal overlapping aspects such as MANET constraints, application settings and performance. Also, there is a lack of practical approaches for assessing security in MANETs that take into account most of these aspects. Based on this, this thesis provides a methodological approach which consists of well-structured stages that allows the exploration of possible security alternatives and evaluates these alternatives against dimensions to selecting the best option. These dimensions include the operational level, security strength, performance, MANET contexts along with main security components in a form of a multidimensional security conceptual framework. The methodology describes interdependencies among these dimensions, focusing specifically on the service operational level in the network. To explore these different possibilities, the Server-based Security Architectures for MANETs (SSAM) simulation model has been created in the OMNeT++ simulation language. The thesis describes the conceptualisation, implementation, verification and validation of SSAM, as well as experimentation approaches that use SSAM to support the methodology of this thesis. In addition, three different real cases scenarios (academic, emergency and military domains) are incorporated in this study to substantiate the feasibility of the proposed methodology. The outcome of this approach provides MANET developers with a strategy along with guidelines of how to consider the appropriate security infrastructure that satisfies the settings and requirements of given MANET context.

[pt] O nível de serviço fill rate é uma alternativa viável de quantificação do custo de falta em um modelo de estoque para o Sistema de Controle (Q, R). Aproximações deste modelo são importantes para tornar mais simples a busca por sua solução. Uma aproximação é proposta e outras duas são analisadas. Experimentos foram feitos com as três aproximações para verificar o erro da solução encontrada em relação à solução resultante do modelo exato. Foram analisados os casos em que as aproximações são aceitáveis. / [en] The fill rate service level is a viable alternative to quantify the penalty cost in a inventory model for control system (Q, R). Approximations of this model are important to make a simplest solution. An approximation is proposed and two other are analyzed. Experiments were made with the three approximations to check the error of the solution in relation to the resulting solution of the exact model. So, we defined cases where the approximations are acceptable.