Supply chain agility has been receiving a lot of attention in recent literature as a way for organizations to become more responsive to change and improve customer service levels. However, agility is typically dealt with qualitatively, and organizations are usually unsure of the steps to take to improve their agility and the customer service level to target. This research studies supply chain agility based on a case study of Intel Corporation, a large semiconductor manufacturer. Here, agility is defined as the ability to satisfy customer demands by reacting effectively to changes in market stimuli. Reacting effectively does not mean reacting to every change in supply or demand. Doing so means increasing supply chain variability unnecessarily, which is amplified by the bullwhip effect. The essence of supply chain agility is determining the degree to which variability should be managed through artificial means such as safety stock, and appropriate triggers for changing production levels and inventory targets. The purpose of this research is to examine factors that influence supply chain agility and identify a cost-effective plan for achieving it. The first phase addresses the problem of identifying target inventory and customer service levels based on regression analysis of historical data and financial analysis of inventory holding costs and stock-out costs. The impact of three factors (forecast error, order lead-time, and demand variability) on the relationship between inventory and customer service level is also examined. The second phase of the research evaluates strategies for production and inventory control with the goal of finding the appropriate trade-off between minimizing cost (of holding inventory and stock-outs) and minimizing variability. Control policies based on the Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) control chart with control limits on demand forecasts are proposed to detect when tighter control of processes is necessary. A Monte Carlo supply chain simulation is used to evaluate the performance of these policies under various levels of forecast error and demand variability. Results indicate that several control chart-based policies outperform Intel's current planning policy in terms of cost without significantly increasing variability. The selection of the appropriate policy must be based on the decision-makers' desire to minimize cost compared to the desire to minimize variability, as each policy results in a trade-off between these two objectives.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyze possible strategies that can be used to improve the efficiency of the spare parts safety stock management in a multinational company which operates in the electronic industry. Research question: “Which safety stock dimensioning strategies are most suitable in an after-sales business environment, characterized by high level customer service and unpredictable demand?” Method: The theoretical framework illuminated the study’s phenomenon which was mainly based on peer-reviewed scientific articles but also academic books. Furthermore, the empirical data collection in this study was conducted through a mixed research approach, where the qualitative data was collected through three semi-structured interviews and several unstructured interviews, while the quantitative data consisted of calculations using numerical variables provided by the case company. Conclusion: The study concluded that the so called estimated safety stock method as well as the probabilistic demand based on history method are the most suitable safety stock dimensioning strategies to utilize in business environments where firms that offer products with unpredictable demand are facing challenges related to finding a balance between providing a high service level and keeping their costs as low as possible. / Syfte: Syftet med denna studie var att analysera möjliga strategier som kan användas för att förbättra säkerhetslagerhanteringen av reservdelar hos ett globalt företag inom elektronikindustrin. Frågeställning: “Vilka dimensioneringsstrategier för säkerhetslager är mest lämpliga i en eftermarknadsverksamhet, kännetecknad av hög servicenivå och oförutsägbar efterfrågan?” Metod: Det teoretiska ramverket belyste studiens fenomen som var baserad på främst expertgranskade vetenskapliga artiklar men även böcker. Vidare genomfördes den empiriska datainsamlingen i denna studie genom en mixad forskningsmetod, där den kvalitativa datan var i form av fyra semistrukturerade intervjuer samt flera ostrukturerade intervjuer, medan den kvantitativa datan bestod av beräkningar med hjälp av numeriska variabler tillhandahållna av fallföretaget. Slutsats: Studiens slutsatser visade att den så kallade manuellt bedömt säkerhetslager metoden samt probabilistisk efterfrågan baserad på historisk data metoden är de mest lämpliga dimensioneringsstrategier för säkerhetslager att använda i affärsmiljöer där företag som erbjuder produkter med oförutsägbar efterfrågan står inför utmaningar relaterade till att hitta en balans mellan att tillhandahålla en hög servicenivå och att ha så låga kostnader som möjligt.

Small companies and organizations have expressed doubts about using cloud services due to unclear Service Level Agreement (SLA) contracts. These contracts are usually based on security frameworks and measures adapted for data security in general, but not for complex cloud data specifically. The purpose of this study was therefore to compare end users’ opinions of the security measures and security frameworks that were being used for their SLA contracts for cloud services. The study was carried out through semi-structured interviews, thematization, and comparison with earlier research on SLA and cloud security. The result showed that security frameworks on which SLA contracts were based were being used in a too general way by cloud service providers. This made the contracts unclear and not entirely relevant to their own operations. Therefore, the users wanted implementations of security measures that were easier to interpret, well-established and recognized, and relevant to their own operations. The users wanted the security measures to be more detailed by having the cloud service providers divide them into more categories relevant to their particular activities. The users also wanted SLA contracts adapted to their individual needs for cloud security specifically. One conclusion was that frameworks such as ISO, NIST, and COBIT were being used in a too general way for generating cloud service SLAs. Another conclusion was that cloud service security measures should be more specific to users’ own operations and easier to interpret in relation to established frameworks. Cloud service providers could use NIST, ISO, and COBIT to generate more specific measures. One solution would be to automatically generate more specific SLA contracts by auto-selecting established frameworks and well-defined security measures.

Denna rapport belyser aspekter som kunder borde vara medveten om vid kontraktering med en molnleverantör. Molntekniken är effektiv, skalbar och relativt enkel att implementera, men det finns också ett antal nackdelar med tekniken som kunder borde vara uppmärksam på. I denna rapport är fokuseringen på hur villkoren och avtalen vid kontaktering med molnleverantörer ser ut, men fokus ligger också på att öka medvetenheten med riskerna vid kontraktering under en lång tidsperiod. Det finns fortfarande många frågetecken som behöver övervägas och analyseras när det gäller molntekniken. Inriktningen på denna rapport är därför kontrakten och designen av dessa ser ut och som leverantörerna oftast skriver ihop till sin egen fördel. Dessa leverantörsfördelar kommer att uppmärksammas i rapporten, dock är fördelarna med molntekniken lätta att upptäcka vid presentationer om tekniken, men kontrakten kan också innebära problem om beroendet på servicen är stor. För det är kontrakten leverantörerna hänvisar till om det skulle uppkomma fel på servicen. Exempelvis säger kontrakten att vid störningar på servicen kan maximalt 50 % av månadsbeloppen en kund betalar varje månad, återbetalas till kunden. Detta kan vid långvarit störning innebära finansiella problem för kunden. Kontrakt-aspekterna integritet, prestanda och kontrakts ändringar är oftast till fördel för leverantören, men det finns även ytterligare aspekter att försöka förhandla sig till bättre villkor på. Dock finns det åtgärder kunder kan göra för att förbättra sitt kontrakt. Exempelvis kan företag arbeta tillsammans för att stärka inflytandet mot leverantören för att på det sättet kunna förhandla sig till bättre kontraktsdetaljer. / This report highlights the aspects for customers to be aware of before contracting with a cloud provider. Cloud technology is efficient, effective, scalable and easy to implement, but there is also drawbacks that customers or potentials customers should know before contracting. The focus area in this report are the terms and agreements aspects when working with a cloud provider, but the report also highlights the risks with contracting with cloud providers in the long term. The focus is also on the design of the contracts that the providers want to design for their own winning. The report wants to make the reader aware of these pitfalls. There are several benefits with Cloud Computing and information about the technology is easy to find, but the information about the contracts are kept in the shadows and written in small letters by high paid lawyers. With maximum 50% payback of the monthly paid by the customer to the provider, if there is service disruption, the contracts can be an economical nightmare for the customers. With aspects such as privacy, performance and contract changes details that are in favor for the provider, are many aspects to consider when reading and negotiating about a contract. But there are things the costumers can do to improve their contract. An example is that by working together with other companies when the procurement is underway, the leverage is strengthened against the providers to negotiate for better contract details.

No / Aims and This analysis paper describes a comparative evaluation of service deliverables within the Service Level Agreements (SLA) of two acute psychiatric services; one inclusive and the other exclusive of occupational therapy. Methods: Six SLA agreements provided the standards by which the two services were evaluated. The SLAs were evaluated because they are used by the service managers and commissioners to measure performance and clinical effectiveness. The role of the occupational therapists and their contribution to the planning and delivery of the performance indicators is also considered. An evaluation framework was applied to explore the potential role occupational therapy may have had in any performance difference between the two sites. In doing so it is hoped to provide some evidence to support and inform occupational therapists and service managers on the role and of occupational therapy in acute mental health services. This comparative evaluation followed the first three of the five audit stages: 1. Preparing for audit; 2. Selecting criteria; and 3. Measuring performance level. Findings: The service with occupational therapy performed better on home leave day use, ward occupancy and less than 3-day admissions. Conclusions: By delivering their key roles of individual assessment, therapeutic groups, individual treatment and discharge planning occupational therapist were able to contribute to the overall efficiency of service delivery. These findings support the role of the occupational therapist in an acute psychiatric setting and provide guidance for managers on how to utilise occupational therapy in the delivery of service outcomes.

Atualmente, os usuários desejam obter, fornecer, compartilhar e interagir com informações e serviços com conteúdo multimídia em qualquer lugar, a qualquer momento e com qualquer dispositivo. Para que isso seja possível, um dos grandes desafios é assegurar a QoS (Quality of Service) fim a fim (entre o usuário final e a organização provedora de serviço) para a disponibilização de serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia para os usuários finais. Em geral esse tipo de serviço têm maior exigência de QoS, pois além dos parâmetros de redes, possuem parâmetros específicos para áudio, imagem e vídeo, além de exigirem sincronização de áudio e vídeo, e a QoS fim a fim deve considerar parâmetros de QoS sob a percepção do usuário final. Com isso, o objetivo deste trabalho é propor um método para o levantamento de parâmetros de QoS para o estabelecimento de USLAs (User Service Level Agreements - Acordo do Nível de Serviço do Usuário) entre a organização provedora de serviço e o usuário final para serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia em um ambiente de convergência tecnológica. O método consiste em quatro passos: 1. identificação do serviço a ser oferecido ao usuário final e elaboração de um grafo em árvore, que tem como objetivo identificar outros serviços que podem compor o serviço a ser oferecido ao usuário final; 2. mapeamento dos parâmetros de QoS em um metamodelo; 3. validação do metamodelo, para que se possa extrair do metamodelo os parâmetros de QoS; 4. elaboração do USLA. Este trabalho propõe um primeiro passo para solucionar a falta de métodos padronizados para o estabelecimento de USLA para serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia sob a percepção do usuário final. Além de facilitar a identificação e composição de serviços e parâmetros, por meio de um metamodelo que proporciona a integração de classes de serviços que podem ser facilmente reutilizadas e customizadas, de acordo, com o tipo de serviço oferecido pela organização provedora de serviço e pela necessidade do usuário final. / In these days the final users wish to obtain, to furnish and to interact using interactive services with multimedia content anywhere, anytime and with any kind of user device. One of the biggest challenges is to assure the End-to End Quality of Service (E2E QoS) in the delivering of the interactive and multimedia services for moving users. In general, this kind of users have more strict requirements needs, because, besides of the computer network parameters, they need specify specific parameters like sound, image and video and their synchronization, on the users\' point of the view - perceived QoS. The main objective of this thesis is to present the application of a method for eliciting the E2E QoS parameters aiming the establishment of the User Service Level Agreement - USLA between the service provider and the final user applied to interactive and mobile services with multimedia content, inserted on a technological convergence environment. The method is a four steps method that consists of (1) an identification of the service to be offered to the final user and the elaboration of a tree graph aiming the identification of the composition of the service by other services (2) mapping the QoS parameters in a metamodel (3) validation of the metamodel, and extraction of the E2E QoS parameters (4) elaboration the USLA. This thesis proposes a first step to solve the lack of standardized methods for the establishment of the USLA for interactive and mobile services with multimedia content under the users\' perception. Besides of facilitating the identification and the composition of services and parameters, using a metamodel, that provides the integration of classes of services, that can be easily reused and customized, according, with the type of service offered for the service provider to the final user.

Atualmente, os usuários desejam obter, fornecer, compartilhar e interagir com informações e serviços com conteúdo multimídia em qualquer lugar, a qualquer momento e com qualquer dispositivo. Para que isso seja possível, um dos grandes desafios é assegurar a QoS (Quality of Service) fim a fim (entre o usuário final e a organização provedora de serviço) para a disponibilização de serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia para os usuários finais. Em geral esse tipo de serviço têm maior exigência de QoS, pois além dos parâmetros de redes, possuem parâmetros específicos para áudio, imagem e vídeo, além de exigirem sincronização de áudio e vídeo, e a QoS fim a fim deve considerar parâmetros de QoS sob a percepção do usuário final. Com isso, o objetivo deste trabalho é propor um método para o levantamento de parâmetros de QoS para o estabelecimento de USLAs (User Service Level Agreements - Acordo do Nível de Serviço do Usuário) entre a organização provedora de serviço e o usuário final para serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia em um ambiente de convergência tecnológica. O método consiste em quatro passos: 1. identificação do serviço a ser oferecido ao usuário final e elaboração de um grafo em árvore, que tem como objetivo identificar outros serviços que podem compor o serviço a ser oferecido ao usuário final; 2. mapeamento dos parâmetros de QoS em um metamodelo; 3. validação do metamodelo, para que se possa extrair do metamodelo os parâmetros de QoS; 4. elaboração do USLA. Este trabalho propõe um primeiro passo para solucionar a falta de métodos padronizados para o estabelecimento de USLA para serviços móveis e interativos com conteúdo multimídia sob a percepção do usuário final. Além de facilitar a identificação e composição de serviços e parâmetros, por meio de um metamodelo que proporciona a integração de classes de serviços que podem ser facilmente reutilizadas e customizadas, de acordo, com o tipo de serviço oferecido pela organização provedora de serviço e pela necessidade do usuário final. / In these days the final users wish to obtain, to furnish and to interact using interactive services with multimedia content anywhere, anytime and with any kind of user device. One of the biggest challenges is to assure the End-to End Quality of Service (E2E QoS) in the delivering of the interactive and multimedia services for moving users. In general, this kind of users have more strict requirements needs, because, besides of the computer network parameters, they need specify specific parameters like sound, image and video and their synchronization, on the users\' point of the view - perceived QoS. The main objective of this thesis is to present the application of a method for eliciting the E2E QoS parameters aiming the establishment of the User Service Level Agreement - USLA between the service provider and the final user applied to interactive and mobile services with multimedia content, inserted on a technological convergence environment. The method is a four steps method that consists of (1) an identification of the service to be offered to the final user and the elaboration of a tree graph aiming the identification of the composition of the service by other services (2) mapping the QoS parameters in a metamodel (3) validation of the metamodel, and extraction of the E2E QoS parameters (4) elaboration the USLA. This thesis proposes a first step to solve the lack of standardized methods for the establishment of the USLA for interactive and mobile services with multimedia content under the users\' perception. Besides of facilitating the identification and the composition of services and parameters, using a metamodel, that provides the integration of classes of services, that can be easily reused and customized, according, with the type of service offered for the service provider to the final user.

Le « Cloud computing » est un nouveau modèle de systèmes de calcul. L’infrastructure, les applications et les données sont déplacées de machines localisées sur des systèmes dématérialisés accédés sous forme de service via Internet. Le modèle « coût à l’utilisation » permet des économies de coût en modifiant la configuration à l’exécution (élasticité). L’objectif de cette thèse est de contribuer à la gestion de la Qualité de Service (QdS) des applications s’exécutant dans le Cloud. Les services Cloud prétendent fournir une flexibilité importante dans l’attribution des ressources de calcul tenant compte des variations perçues, telles qu’une fluctuation de la charge. Les capacités de variation doivent être précisément exprimées dans un contrat (le Service Level Agreement, SLA) lorsque l’application est hébergée par un fournisseur de Plateform as a Service (PaaS). Dans cette thèse, nous proposons et nous décrivons formellement le langage de description de SLA PSLA. PSLA est fondé sur WS-Agreement qui est lui-même un langage extensible de description de SLA. Des négociations préalables à la signature du SLA sont indispensables, pendant lesquelles le fournisseur de PaaS doit évaluer la faisabilité des termes du contrat. Cette évaluation, par exemple le temps de réponse, le débit maximal de requêtes servies, etc, est fondée sur une analyse du comportement de l’application déployée dans l’infrastructure cloud. Une analyse du comportement de l’application est donc nécessaire et habituellement assurée par des tests (benchmarks). Ces tests sont relativement coûteux et une étude précise de faisabilité demande en général de nombreux tests. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons une méthode d’étude de faisabilité concernant les critères de performance, à partir d’une proposition de SLA exprimée en PSLA. Cette méthode est un compromis entre la précision d’une étude exhaustive de faisabilité et les coûts de tests. Les résultats de cette étude constituent le modèle initial de la correspondance charge entrante-allocation de ressources utilisée à l’exécution. Le contrôle à l’exécution (runtime control) d’une application gère l’allocation de ressources en fonction des besoins, s’appuyant en particulier sur les capacités de passage à l’échelle (scalability) des infrastructures de cloud. Nous proposons RCSREPRO (Runtime Control method based on Schedule, REactive and PROactive methods), une méthode de contrôle à l’exécution fondée sur la planification et des contrôles réactifs et prédictifs. Les besoins d’adaptation à l’exécution sont essentiellement dus à une variation de la charge soumise à l’application, variations difficiles à estimer avant exécution et seulement grossièrement décrites dans le SLA. Il est donc nécessaire de reporter à l’exécution les décisions d’adaptation et d’y évaluer les possibles variations de charge. Comme les actions de modification des ressources attribuées peuvent prendre plusieurs minutes, RCSREPRO réalise un contrôle prédictif fondée sur l’analyse de charge et la correspondance indicateurs de performance-ressources attribuées, initialement définie via des tests. Cette correspondance est améliorée en permanence à l’exécution. En résumé, les contributions de cette thèse sont la proposition de langage PSLA pour décrire les SLA ; une proposition de méthode pour l’étude de faisabilité d’un SLA ; une proposition de méthode (RCSREPRO) de contrôle à l’exécution de l’application pour garantir le SLA. Les travaux de cette thèse s’inscrivent dans le contexte du projet FSN OpenCloudware (www.opencloudware.org) et ont été financés en partie par celui-ci. / Cloud computing is a new computing model. Infrastructure, application and data are moved from local machines to internet and provided as services. Cloud users, such as application owners, can greatly save budgets from the elasticity feature, which refers to the “pay as you go” and on-demand characteristics, of cloud service. The goal of this thesis is to manage the Quality of Service (QoS) for applications running in cloud environments Cloud services provide application owners with great flexibility to assign “suitable” amount of resources according to the changing needs, for example caused by fluctuating request rate. “Suitable” or not needs to be clearly documented in Service Level Agreements (SLA) if this resource demanding task is hosted in a third party, such as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider. In this thesis, we propose and formally describe PSLA, which is a SLA description language for PaaS. PSLA is based on WS-Agreement, which is extendable and widely accepted as a SLA description language. Before signing the SLA contract, negotiations are unavoidable. During negotiations, the PaaS provider needs to evaluate if the SLA drafts are feasible or not. These evaluations are based on the analysis of the behavior of the application deployed in the cloud infrastructure, for instance throughput of served requests, response time, etc. Therefore, application dependent analysis, such as benchmark, is needed. Benchmarks are relatively costly and precise feasibility study usually imply large amount of benchmarks. In this thesis, we propose a benchmark based SLA feasibility study method to evaluate whether or not a SLA expressed in PSLA, including QoS targets, resource constraints, cost constraints and workload constraints can be achieved. This method makes tradeoff between the accuracy of a SLA feasibility study and benchmark costs. The intermediate of this benchmark based feasibility study process will be used as the workload-resource mapping model of our runtime control method. When application is running in a cloud infrastructure, the scalability feature of cloud infrastructures allows us to allocate and release resources according to changing needs. These resource provisioning activities are named runtime control. We propose the Runtime Control method based onSchedule, REactive and PROactive methods (RCSREPRO). Changing needs are mainly caused by the fluctuating workload for majority of the applications running in the cloud. The detailed workload information, for example the request arrival rates at scheduled points in time, is difficult to be known before running the application. Moreover, workload information listed in PSLA is too rough to give a fitted resource provisioning schedule before runtime. Therefore, runtime control decisions are needed to be performed in real time. Since resource provisioning actions usually require several minutes, RCSREPRO performs a proactive runtime control which means that it predicts future needs and assign resources in advance to have them ready when they are needed. Hence, prediction of the workload and workload-resource mapping are two problems involved in proactive runtime control. The workload-resource mapping model, which is initially derived from benchmarks in SLA feasibility study is continuously improved in a feedback way at runtime, increasing the accuracy of the control.To sum up, we contribute with three aspects to the QoS management of application running in the cloud: creation of PSLA, a PaaS level SLA description language; proposal of a benchmark based SLA feasibility study method; proposal of a runtime control method, RCSREPRO, to ensure the SLA when the application is running. The work described in this thesis is motivated and funded by the FSN OpenCloudware project (www.opencloudware.org).

De nos jours, le Cloud Networking est considéré comme étant l'un des domaines de recherche innovants au sein de la communauté de recherche du Cloud Computing. Les principaux défis dans un environnement de Cloud Networking concernent non seulement la garantie de qualité de service (QoS) et de sécurité mais aussi sa gestion en conformité avec un accord de niveau de service (SLA) correspondant. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons un Framework pour l'allocation des ressources conformément à un SLA établi de bout en bout entre un utilisateur de services Cloud (CSU) et plusieurs fournisseurs de services Cloud (CSP) dans un environnement de Cloud Networking (architectures d’inter-Cloud Broker et Fédération). Nos travaux se concentrent sur les services Cloud de types NaaS et IaaS. Ainsi, nous proposons l'auto-établissement de plusieurs types de SLA ainsi que la gestion autonome des ressources de Cloud correspondantes en conformité avec ces SLA en utilisant des gestionnaires autonomes spécifiques de Cloud. De plus, nous étendons les architectures et les SLA proposés pour offrir un niveau de service intégrant une garantie de sécurité. Ainsi, nous permettons aux gestionnaires autonomes de Cloud d'élargir leurs objectifs de gestion autonome aux fonctions de sécurité (auto-protection) tout en étudiant l'impact de la sécurité proposée sur la garantie de QoS. Enfin, nous validons notre architecture avec différents scénarios de simulation. Nous considérons dans le cadre de ces simulations des applications de vidéoconférence et de calcul intensif afin de leur fournir une garantie de QoS et de sécurité dans un environnement de gestion autonome des ressources du Cloud. Les résultats obtenus montrent que nos contributions permettent de bonnes performances pour ce type d’applications. En particulier, nous observons que l'architecture de type Broker est la plus économique, tout en assurant les exigences de QoS et de sécurité. De plus, nous observons que la gestion autonome des ressources du Cloud permet la réduction des violations, des pénalités et limite l'impact de la sécurité sur la garantie de la QoS. / Today, Cloud Networking is one of the recent research areas within the Cloud Computing research communities. The main challenges of Cloud Networking concern Quality of Service (QoS) and security guarantee as well as its management in conformance with a corresponding Service Level Agreement (SLA). In this thesis, we propose a framework for resource allocation according to an end-to-end SLA established between a Cloud Service User (CSU) and several Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) within a Cloud Networking environment (Inter-Cloud Broker and Federation architectures). We focus on NaaS and IaaS Cloud services. Then, we propose the self-establishing of several kinds of SLAs and the self-management of the corresponding Cloud resources in conformance with these SLAs using specific autonomic cloud managers. In addition, we extend the proposed architectures and the corresponding SLAs in order to deliver a service level taking into account security guarantee. Moreover, we allow autonomic cloud managers to expand the self-management objectives to security functions (self-protection) while studying the impact of the proposed security on QoS guarantee. Finally, our proposed architecture is validated by different simulation scenarios. We consider, within these simulations, videoconferencing and intensive computing applications in order to provide them with QoS and security guarantee in a Cloud self-management environment. The obtained results show that our contributions enable good performances for these applications. In particular, we observe that the Broker architecture is the most economical while ensuring QoS and security requirements. In addition, we observe that Cloud self-management enables violations and penalties’ reduction as well as limiting security impact on QoS guarantee.

No description available.