Este trabajo propone un modelo de gestión de servicios de Tecnologías de la Información (TI) para Frutarom Perú S.A. que permita alinear los principales procesos de TI dentro de la organización, con la finalidad de mejorar la entrega de servicios, minimizar los incidentes y agregar valor en su interacción con el resto de las áreas, contribuyendo a pasar de una visión de TI como un rol de proveedor de servicios a un papel de área estratégica. El primer capítulo presenta el marco teórico mostrando el contexto de la empresa y la literatura correspondiente a la gestión de servicios TI, marcos de trabajo, buenas prácticas y normas internacionales como ISO/ IEC 20000, ISO/IEC 9001, ISO/IEC 15504, COBIT 2019 e ITIL 4. En el segundo capítulo se realiza la evaluación de la situación actual de la empresa y el análisis las oportunidades de mejora, los puntos críticos identificados como el bajo nivel de satisfacción en la entrega de los servicios de TI, inestabilidad operativa e incumplimiento de los indicadores de rendimiento, a fin de determinar sus causas e impacto en la empresa. El tercer capítulo expone la propuesta de solución. Para ello se seleccionó como marco de referencia la norma ISO/IEC 20000 e ITIL 4; se determinó el nivel de madurez de gestión de servicios de TI basado en la norma ISO/IEC 15504; se establecieron los objetivos y alcances; se determinó el modelo de gestión de TI y se analizó su viabilidad. En el cuarto capítulo se presentan las conclusiones y recomendaciones. / This work proposes an Information Technology (IT) service management model for Frutarom Peru SA that allows aligning the main IT processes within the organization, to improve service delivery, minimize incidents and add value in its interaction with the rest of the areas, helping to move from an IT vision as a service provider role to a strategic area role. The first chapter presents the theoretical framework showing the context of the company and the literature corresponding to IT service management, frameworks, good practices, and international standards such as ISO / IEC 20000, ISO / IEC 9001, ISO / IEC 15504, COBIT 2019 and ITIL 4. In the second chapter, the evaluation of the current situation of the company and the analysis of the opportunities for improvement are carried out, the critical points identified as low level of satisfaction in the delivery of IT services, operational instability, and non-compliance of the performance indicators, to determine its causes and impact on the company. The third chapter presents the proposed solution. For this, the ISO / IEC 20000 and ITIL 4 standards were selected as the reference framework; the IT service management maturity level was determined based on the ISO / IEC 15504 standard; the objectives and scope were established; The IT management model was determined, and its viability analyzed. The fourth chapter presents the conclusions and recommendations. / Trabajo de investigaciín

Modern logistics is strongly influenced by ongoing outsourcing. Numerous logistics service providers as stakeholders, as well as fragmented logistics networks and supply chains, result from this outsourcing and specialization on distinct core competencies. These stakeholders have to collaborate in order to enable complex supply chains. The collaboration is difficult with the inherent heterogeneity between stakeholders in terms of differing naming conventions and differing IT systems. An inadequate integration and poor communication as well as incorrect information lead to mistakes and inefficiency. One promising approach to solve these problems is the interdisciplinary paradigm of Cloud Logistics. Several parallels can be drawn between services of cloud computing and services of logistics. The paradigm of Cloud Logistics is based on these parallels and focuses on the adoption of the basic principles from cloud computing to logistics. These principles comprise the virtualization of all resources and their encapsulation within reusable modules, the so called cloud logistics services. The essential aspect of the cloud logistics paradigm is to bridge the logistics service providers' heterogeneity and differing naming conventions and IT systems with a semantic approach. The systematic literature review contained in the thesis reveals existing research gaps in the field of cloud logistics. Shortcomings are, next to others, basic aspects such as a definition and a conceptual framework to set the field of cloud logistics in context to both affecting disciplines - cloud computing and logistics. Essential explicit artifacts describing concepts and semantics of cloud logistics services are missing as well. Following a design oriented information systems research approach, the contribution of the cumulative thesis comprises the development of these mentioned essential artifacts. Especially the reusable generic ontology design patterns that semantically describe the cloud logistics services and their structuring are important contributions. Summarizing, the thesis contains a basic set of artifacts to enable the paradigm of cloud logistics. The development of a first prototype and the elaboration of an application example in the context of systematic engineering and evaluation of logistics process alternatives complement the course of the thesis.:Contents List of Figures III List of Tables V List of Abbreviations VI 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background and Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 Objective and Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1.3 Reflections on Research in IS and Logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 1.4 Outline and Structure of the Thesis’ Contributions - Included Publications 25 2 Landscape - Conceptual 33 2.1 'Go with the Flow - Design of Cloud Logistics Service Blueprints' . . . 33 2.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3 Landscape - Technical 46 3.1 'LoSe ODP - An Ontology Design Pattern for Logistics Services' . . . . 46 3.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4 Map - Conceptual 62 4.1 'Metamodel of a Logistics Service Map' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 4.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 5 Map - Technical 77 5.1 'Ontological Structuring of Logistics Services' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 5.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6 Service Granularity Framework 88 6.1 'How Low Should You Go? - Conceptualization of the Service Granu- larity Framework' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 6.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 7 Prototype 108 7.1 'Logistics Service Map Prototype' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 7.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 8 Application 116 8.1 'Planning of Composite Logistics Services: Model-Driven Engineering and Evaluation' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 8.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 9 Consolidation and Research Roadmap 140 9.1 'Towards the Conception of Cloud Logistics - Engineering and Manage- ment of Modular Cloud Logistics Services in the Context of Flexible Future Supply Chains' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 9.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 10 Conclusion and Future Work 189 10.1 Developed Artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 10.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 10.3 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 10.4 Limitations and Threats to Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 10.5 Outlook and Subsequent Research Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Bibliography VIII Curriculum Vitae XXVIII Selbständigkeitserklärung XXIX / Logistik ist heutzutage durch eine wachsende Arbeitsteilung und von einem Outsourcing-Trend geprägt. Daraus resultieren fragmentierte Logistiknetzwerke und Supply Chains, welche durch eine Vielzahl von Logistikdienstleistern als Stakeholder geprägt sind. Diese Stakeholder müssen miteinander kollaborieren, um innerhalb der Supply Chains zusammen zuwirken. Die Kollaboration geht mit Herausforderungen einher, welche aus der inhärenten Heterogenität zwischen den Stakeholdern sowie abweichenden Namenkonventionen und IT-Systemen der beteiligten Stakeholder resultiert. Unzureichende Integration, mangelhafte Kommunikation sowie Fehlinformation führen zu Fehlern und Ineffizienzen. Ein vielversprechender Ansatz, um diese Probleme zu lösen, ist das interdisziplinäre Paradigma Cloud Logistics. Zwischen Diensten des Cloud Computing und Diensten der Logistik können diverse Parallelen gezogen werden. Das Cloud Logistics Paradigma basiert auf diesen Parallelen und überträgt die Grundprinzipien des Cloud Computing auf die Logistik. Zu diesen Grundprinzipien gehören unter anderem Aspekte wie die Ressourcenvirtualisierung und -kapselung in wiederverwendbaren Modulen, den so genannten Cloud Logistics Services. Essentieller Aspekt des Cloud Logistics Paradigmas ist die Überbrückung der Heterogenität der Logistikdienstleister und ihrer abweichenden Namenskonventionen und IT-Systeme mittels eines semantischen Ansatzes. Die vorliegende Dissertation deckt mit Hilfe einer systematischen Literaturrecherche bestehende Lücken innerhalb des Forschungsfeldes Cloud Logistics auf. Defizite bestehen, neben anderen Aspekten, vorallem in essentiellen Artefakten des Forschungsfeldes, wie bspw. einer angemessenen wissenschaftlichen Definition, und eines konzeptuellen Frameworks, um das Forschungsfeld in den Kontext der beiden tangierenden Disziplinen - Cloud Computing und Logistik - einzuordnen. Weiterhin mangelt es an essentiellen und explizit beschriebenen Artefakten, welche Konzepte und die Semantik des Engineering und Managements der Cloud Logistics Services beschreiben. Der Methodologie der gestaltungsorinetierten Wirtschaftsinformatik folgend, besteht der Beitrag dieser Dissertation in der Entwicklung der vorgenannten Artefakte. Besonders die wiederverwendbaren generischen Ontology Design Pattern zur semantischen Beschreibung der Cloud Logistics Services und ihrer Strukturierung stellen einen wichtigen Beitrag dar. Zusammenfassend enthält die Dissertation ein notwendiges Grundset an Artefakten für die Umsetzung des Cloud Logistics Paradigmas. Die Entwicklung eines ersten Prototypen, sowie die Erarbeitung eines Anwendungsbeispiels im Kontext systematischer Entwicklung und Evaluation von Prozessvarianten in der Logistik runden die Arbeit ab.:Contents List of Figures III List of Tables V List of Abbreviations VI 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Background and Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 Objective and Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1.3 Reflections on Research in IS and Logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 1.4 Outline and Structure of the Thesis’ Contributions - Included Publications 25 2 Landscape - Conceptual 33 2.1 'Go with the Flow - Design of Cloud Logistics Service Blueprints' . . . 33 2.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3 Landscape - Technical 46 3.1 'LoSe ODP - An Ontology Design Pattern for Logistics Services' . . . . 46 3.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 4 Map - Conceptual 62 4.1 'Metamodel of a Logistics Service Map' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 4.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 5 Map - Technical 77 5.1 'Ontological Structuring of Logistics Services' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 5.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6 Service Granularity Framework 88 6.1 'How Low Should You Go? - Conceptualization of the Service Granu- larity Framework' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 6.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 7 Prototype 108 7.1 'Logistics Service Map Prototype' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 7.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 8 Application 116 8.1 'Planning of Composite Logistics Services: Model-Driven Engineering and Evaluation' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 8.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 9 Consolidation and Research Roadmap 140 9.1 'Towards the Conception of Cloud Logistics - Engineering and Manage- ment of Modular Cloud Logistics Services in the Context of Flexible Future Supply Chains' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 9.2 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 10 Conclusion and Future Work 189 10.1 Developed Artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 10.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 10.3 Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 10.4 Limitations and Threats to Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 10.5 Outlook and Subsequent Research Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Bibliography VIII Curriculum Vitae XXVIII Selbständigkeitserklärung XXIX

Background: Every year 260 million lunch meals are served in Swedish schools. To design sustainable meals that are eaten and appreciated by the children, not only the food is important but also to understand how the meeting between the Food Service Professionals (FSP) and the children, and part of the service provided, affects the children's overall meal experience.  Objective: The purpose was to explore the perceptions of food service quality among children, and how FSP in school perceive and work with service during meal situations. Methods: The present study was the first qualitative phase of an exploratory mixed method study. Qualitative data was collected from six children 10 ≤ 13 years old, in five different Primary schools, and two FSP, from two different Primary schools, in south east of Sweden, through semi structured interviews. The quantitative study will be conducted spring semester 2021. Results: The study result showed that among the children and the FSP, service was perceived in terms of being “functional”, as well as “caring”. Functional referred to the importance of maintaining hygienic order in the school canteen, and to be able to answer questions regarding the content of the food. Service was also described by the FSP in terms of caring for the children and listening to their special needs. The FSP believed that their presence, in the canteen, was important for making the right decisions at the right time. Artefacts like food labels and the menu were interpreted as important service markers among the FSP. However, the artefacts could be perceived in the reversed way, as an expression of poor service quality among the children. Clearly, if the information meant that children’s desires and expectations were not satisfied; the perceived service quality could affect the overall meal experience in a negative way. Conclusion: The children perceived that service in the school canteen was about the FSP maintaining a hygienic order, in the canteen. Also, being close to the children, to be able to answer questions about the food's content, based on the children’s different needs, for example lactose-free, vegetarian, and pork-free. The FSP considered that the most important thing was to serve tasty food, prepared from scratch, and in doing that, include the different wishes from the children. In the meeting with the children, they stated that a commitment is created between the child, and that service quality was about having an eye for what needs to be done.

Campus foodservice has experienced drastic changes over the twentieth century. Its cafeteria style service has some major advantages in catering the needs of the clientele: speed of service, convenience in food selection, and range of price, and so forth. As enrollments in colleges and universities have been continuously increasing during the past few years, campus foodservice operation is gaining its importance in the foodservice industry. Additionally, it serves as a part of the marketing mix with an appeal to increasing number of students. The campus foodservice administrators are facing increased pressure of cost containment. Therefore, how to improve operational efficiency and productivity has been a major concern among foodservice managers. However, this is difficult to achieve due to the numerous variables likely to influence productivity with interrelating factors, such as policy and standard, employee and management skills, efficiency of facility layout, and so forth. There is a lack of published reports that single out these variables and provide in-depth analysis as to their impact on productivity. Efficiency of kitchen equipment and workplace layout has been identified as a variable that influences labor productivity. It is the objective of this study to utilize the variables inherent in meal production of campus foodservice operations to assess the efficiency of kitchen equipment and workplace layout and determine their impact on with labor productivity. Case studies were conducted in Owens Food Court, Shultz and Dietrick Dining Halls on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. Work flow analysis and process time analysis of kitchen employees was utilized to collect data in describing work flow and utilization of labor time in meal production among the dining facilities. Ten entree items were purposively sampled from each dining facility. The Product Process Gross Charts, often used in industrial engineering, were used as a major data collecting tool. A total of 150 charts, which included Move Charts, Distance Charts, Travel Charts, Description of By-pass, and Worker Process Time Charts, were utilized extensively for data collection and interpretation. The differences in work flow variables and utilization of labor time variables among the dining facilities were studied. An analysis of the influence of work flow variables on the utilization of labor time was conducted. In addition, the differences in the functioning of work flow variables in affecting utilization of labor time among the dining facilities were also analyzed. The results showed significant differences in absolute travel distance and percentage of time spent walking and (or) for delays among three dining facilities. Further more, collapsed information indicated that absolute travel distance was positively related with percentage of time spent walking and (or) for delays; and that percentage of backward movement was also positively related with percentage of time spent walking and (or) for delays. Based on the findings, it is recommended by the researcher that a smooth work flow should be achieved in kitchen design, and some major equipment and workplace should be located within the direct line of flow. Equipment and workplace should be organized into different "functional clusters". It is also recommended that further research would be useful in identifying additional variables which would account for a great percentage of variance in the utilization of labor time. / Master of Science

Tidigare forskning har påvisat att ERP-system och komplexa system överlag lider av användbarhetsproblem och låg användarupplevelse. Eftersom ERP-system måste bearbeta och integrera stora mängder av data ställer det ännu högre krav på användbarhet och användarupplevelse när användare vill få åtkomst till denna data via mobila enheter. PACMAD modellen som är en relativt ny användbarhet modell bygger vidare på tidigare etablerade modeller såsom ISO-standarden och Nielsens teorier om användbarhet och kompletterar några av de brister som existerande användbarhetsmodeller har gällande mobila applikationer. Modellen bygger på befintliga teorier i användbarhet men är anpassad speciellt för applikationer som används på mobila enheter. PACMAD-modellen innehåller samtliga attribut för både ISO-standarden och Nielsens modell men introducerar även attributet kognitiv belastning som är av särskild betydelse för mobila applikationer. För att besvara vår frågeställning utfördes workshops och intervjuer hos två leverantörer av ERP-modulen Field Service Management. Utifrån resultatet från dessa utfördes användbarhetstester med slutanvändare från båda leverantörer i form av observation test för att mäta dess effektivitet och verkningsgrad och NASA task load test för att mäta applikationernas kognitiva belastning. Resultatet påvisade att deras befintliga applikation led av stora användbarhetsproblem samt att utformningen av applikationerna beaktade inte faktorer såsom användare, kontext och uppgift. De upptäckter som gjordes i bidrog till framtagning av en ny prototyp med hjälp av etablerade designmönster och PACMAD-modellen som ställdes mot existerande litteratur, testades igen samt jämfördes med deras befintliga applikation. Detta utgjorde studiens huvudsakliga resultat att navigationen bestod av för många steg, att det fanns avsaknad av funktionalitet och hög kognitiv belastning. De nyckelord som var huvudsakliga för slutsatsen var “konsekvens”, “tydlighet” och “struktur” och förklarar designprocessen som utgjorde många upptäckter där företagen inte följde etablerade designmönster eller användbarhet modeller. Dessa nyckelord ägde stor tyngd för att öka användbarhet och användarupplevelse.

The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of customer vulnerability across varying service industries. While the concept of customer vulnerability has been debated in business, marketing, sociology, and psychology scholarly literature, there has been little research conducted that specifically investigates consumers’ perceptions of vulnerability during the service exchange. Specific to this research, customer vulnerability is defined as experiences in which consumers participate in a service exchange with a firm during a time of individual or shared medical, physical, emotional, or spiritual necessity, whether the vulnerability is experienced during the course of the transaction or whether consumers arrive to the firm already immersed in that state. Customer vulnerability is an important concept for research, as the exchanges between service providers and consumers during a time of vulnerability are heightened in emotion and memory. As a result, these exchanges lend themselves to be more likely to become transformative experiences, in that the provider and recipient may be left emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually changed as a result. Therefore, additional focus is needed in this area to understand transformative experiences in service as a result of exchanges between service providers and customers. The explorative study first conducts a critical literature review across disciplines regarding scales that have been used and are considered by the researcher to be important constructs of analysis when exploring vulnerable service encounters. Next, a qualitative investigation of consumer forums is conducted in the air travel, banking, and assisted living industries, which resulted in the finding that similar behavioral attributes within industry, but iv different behavioral attributes between industries, were needed to cater to consumers experiencing vulnerability. The study is followed by a quantitative investigation of vulnerable service experiences through an application of the identified scales combined with the results of the qualitative investigation across the same three industries. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that two industries’ results loaded onto two factors; however, each industry’s factors differed due to the nature of that industry. The air travel factors were entitled task humanism and task functionality. The banking factors were entitled maintenance functionality and maintenance humanism. A third factor was revealed within the assisted living facility segment entitled hospitable humanism, along with factors of personal humanism and personal functionality. The study concludes by presenting a discussion of the findings and practical implications for service industry managers, a presentation of the study limitations, and suggestions for future research.

To achieve brand success and develop a competitive advantage through consistently delivering brand experiences to customers, the roles of employees in service organizations are critical. Specifically, it is necessary that service employees are capable and motivated to transform a brand promise into brand reality. Although service organizations have widely adopted internal branding initiatives to engender employees' pro-brand attitude and behavior, how employees perceive such organizational effort to inform their brand-consistent attitude and behavioral outcomes has remained unclear. Drawing upon Job Characteristics Theory, Self-Determination Theory, and Organismic Integration Theory, it is suggested that the attainment of employees' pro-brand attitude and behavior requires a joint effort from both the organization and employees. Organizations need to establish a brand climate through internal branding practices that enhance employees' perceived encouragement and support of the coveted brand performance. Based on this brand climate, employees are likely to internalize the brand enabling them to obtain necessary brand knowledge and skills, understand the relevance of the brand to their roles, as well as perceive a fit between their values and the values of the brand. As such, employees are more likely to develop positive brand attitudes and behaviors, including endorsing the brand, staying with the brand, and exhibiting brand-consistent behaviors (i.e., employee brand equity). The brand climate to brand internalization to employee brand equity model conceptualized in this dissertation was assessed with two empirical studies. Study 1 utilized a sample of current employees in service-related industries and Study 2 served as a strict replication study with a sample of current hotel employees. Additional moderation effects based on employees' individual traits including proactive personality and intrinsic motivation were also examined in Study 2. The results from both studies provide strong support for the conceptual model. Brand climate is shown to have a significant impact on all employee brand internalization factors. That is, when employees perceive that the organization is supportive and encouraging with respect to employees' brand performance, they are more likely to transform such perception into their brand understanding, including perceiving appropriate brand knowledge, self-brand relevance, and congruence between the brand values and their own value systems. In addition, it was found that when employees perceive a high level of relevance between their roles and the brand success, as well as congruence between the brand's values and their personal values, they are more likely to develop positive brand attitudes and behaviors, including endorsing the brand, staying with the brand, and exhibiting brand-consistent behaviors (i.e., employee brand equity). Further, it is suggested that employee proactive personality has a positive impact on the relationship between brand climate and employee brand value congruence, while employee intrinsic motivation to work has a negative impact on the relationship between employee perceived brand relevance and employee brand equity. This dissertation significantly advances the current internal brand management literature and contributes to theory development with respect to examining and validating employee brand internalization. This dissertation also provides practical implications to help justify and guide service organizations' investment in internal branding. In addition, this dissertation demonstrates that a brand-aligned workforce can be selected and cultivated through a brand climate that affords employees' internalization of the brand. / Tourism and Sport

Mobility management addresses the issues of how to track and locate a mobile node (MN) efficiently. Service management addresses the issues of how to efficiently deliver services to MNs. This dissertation aims to design and analyze integrated mobility and service management schemes for future all-IP based wireless systems. We propose and analyze per-user regional registration schemes extending from Mobile IP Regional Registration and Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 for integrated mobility and service management with the goal to minimize the network signaling and packet delivery cost in future all-IP based wireless networks. If access routers in future all-IP based wireless networks are restricted to perform network layer functions only, we investigate the design of intelligent routers, called dynamic mobility anchor points (DMAPs), to implement per-user regional management in IP wireless networks. These DMAPs are access routers (ARs) chosen by individual MNs to act as regional routers to reduce the signaling overhead for intra-regional movements. The DMAP domain size is based on a MN's mobility and service characteristics. A MN optimally determines when and where to launch a DMAP to minimize the network cost in serving the user's mobility and service management operations. We show that there exists an optimal DMAP domain size for each individual MN. We also demonstrate that the DMAP design can easily support failure recovery because of the flexibility of allowing a MN to choose any AR to be the DMAP for mobility and service management. If access routers are powerful and flexible in future all-IP based networks to perform network-layer and application-layer functions, we propose the use of per-user proxies that can run on access routers. The user proxies can carry service context information such as cached data items and Web processing objects, and perform context-aware functions such as content adaptation for services engaged by the MN to help application executions. We investigate a proxy-based integrated mobility and service management architecture (IMSA) under which a client-side proxy is created on a per-user basis to serve as a gateway between a MN and all services engaged by the MN. Leveraging Mobile IP with route optimization, the proxy runs on an access router and cooperates with the home agent and foreign agent of the MN to maintain the location information of the MN to facilitate data delivery by services engaged by the MN. Further, the proxy optimally determines when to move with the MN so as to minimize the network cost associated with the user's mobility and service management operations. Finally we investigate a proxy-based integrated cache consistency and mobility management scheme called PICMM to support client-server query-based mobile applications, to improve query performance, the MN stores frequently used data in its cache. The MN's proxy receives invalidation reports or updated data objects from application servers, i.e., corresponding nodes (Cans) for cached data objects stored in the MN. If the MN is connected, the proxy will forward invalidation reports or fresh data objects to the MN. If the MN is disconnected, the proxy will store the invalidation reports or fresh data objects, and, once the MN is reconnected, the proxy will forward the latest cache invalidation report or data objects to the MN. We show that there is an optimal ``service area'' under which the overall cost due to query processing, cache consistency management and mobility management is minimized. To further reduce network traffic, we develop a threshold-based hybrid cache consistency management policy such that whenever a data object is updated at the server, the server sends an invalidation report to the MN through the proxy to invalidate the cached data object only if the size of the data object exceeds the given threshold. Otherwise, the server sends a fresh copy of the data object through the proxy to the MN. We identify the best ``threshold'' value that would minimize the overall network cost. We develop mathematical models to analyze performance characteristics of DMAP, IMSA and PICMM developed in the dissertation research and demonstrate that they outperform existing schemes that do not consider integrated mobility and service management or that use static regional routers to serve all MNs in the system. The analytical results obtained are validated through extensive simulation. We conclude that integrated mobility and service management can greatly reduce the overall network cost for mobile multimedia and database applications, especially when the application's data service rate is high compared with the MN's mobility rate. / Ph. D.

In this dissertation research, we design and analyze integrated mobility and service management for network cost minimization in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs). We first investigate the problem of mobility management in WMNs for which we propose two efficient per-user mobility management schemes based on pointer forwarding, and then a third one that integrates routing-based location update and pointer forwarding for further performance improvement. We further study integrated mobility and service management for which we propose protocols that support efficient mobile data access services with cache consistency management, and mobile multicast services. We also investigate reliable and secure integrated mobility and service man agement in WMNs, and apply the idea to the design of a protocol for secure and reliable mobile multicast. The most salient feature of our protocols is that they are optimal on a per-user basis (or on a per-group basis for mobile multicast), that is, the overall network communication cost incurred is minimized for each individual user (or group). Per-user based optimization is critical because mobile users normally have vastly different mobility and service characteristics. Thus, the overall cost saving due to per-user based optimization is cumulatively significant with an increasing mobile user population. To evaluate the performance of our proposed protocols, we develop mathematical models and computational procedures used to compute the network communication cost incurred and build simulation systems for validating the results obtained from analytical modeling. We identify optimal design settings under which the network cost is minimized for our mobility and service management protocols in WMNs. Intensive comparative performance studies are carried out to compare our protocols with existing work in the literature. The results show that our protocols significantly outperform existing protocols under identical environmental and operational settings. We extend the design notion of integrated mobility and service management for cost minimization to MANETs and propose a scalable dual-region mobility management scheme for location-based routing. The basic design concept is to use local regions to complement home regions and have mobile nodes in the home region of a mobile node serve as location servers for that node. We develop a mathematical model to derive the optimal home region size and local region size under which overall network cost incurred is minimized. Through a comparative performance study, we show that dual-region mobility management outperforms existing mobility management schemes based on static home regions. / Ph. D.

Thesis (M. Tech. Environmental health) -- Central University of technology, Free State, 2011 / Millions of people in South Africa eat out every day, utilising the food service sector. Although the lack of an effective reporting system makes it difficult to know how many of these people suffer from food-borne illness, statistics from the developed countries show that this number may be significant. There is, therefore, the need to ensure that the food service sector, which encompasses fast food outlets, hotels and similar accommodation outlets offering food and beverage services, restaurants, caterers, etc., implement effective food safety management systems. Internationally, the trend has been that food safety management systems should be based on the internationally accepted Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles. In South Africa, the implementation of HACCP as a food safety management system has been driven by international trade requirements where foods are exported to countries such as the European Union or the United States of America. A national regulation requiring HACCP implementation was promulgated in 2003, but compliance is not yet required for the food service sector. Currently, neither of the above mentioned factors put adequate pressure on the food service sector to implement formal food safety management systems. However, increasing international tourism and the hosting of international sporting events has brought this sector under scrutiny. Food handlers have been implicated in many outbreaks of food-borne illness and much research has been done to investigate causal factors in this regard. Food handler training has been proposed as a strategy to improve food safety practices. However, research has shown that the traditional provision of food safety and food hygiene knowledge does not equate to improved food safety behaviours. Some authors postulate that the organisational context, created largely by the management of an organisation, is of greater significance than training. Less research is available on these management factors – defined as the situational factors when discussing organisational culture, or defined as enabling and reinforcing factors when discussing food handler behaviour. This study commenced with the hypothesis that food handlers are not able to implement the correct food safety behaviours in the absence of sufficient management support. This support would require appropriate policies regarding food safety, the provision of training and infrastructure and enforcing the correct behaviours by line management, as a minimum. The aim of this study was to investigate and assess the role of line management in relation to food safety at a prominent South African entertainment facility. In order to achieve this, the following objectives were defined for the study: to conduct a qualitative assessment of the role of management in food safety, to assess the role of management in the provision of food safety training and to assess the role of management in the provision of a basic hygiene infrastructure at the study site in order to allow food handlers to carry out the correct behaviours. The objective of conducting a qualitative study of management practices, policies and resource provision with respect to food safety revealed that there was no formal evidence of management commitment to food safety other than the recent provision of food handler training. The findings also indicated a lack of a formal management system for food safety at the study site. In the exploratory survey of food safety training and knowledge, results showed that only 60 % of staff in the survey had received training. This indicates that at the time of the survey, the study site did not fully comply with the minimum legal requirements for food handler training. The results of the employee survey further indicated that employees were aware of the importance of hand washing although it was not possible to determine whether this knowledge was as a result of the training intervention or prior knowledge. Many of the supervisors were not yet trained in food safety and the impact of the food safety training intervention on related behaviours at the site will require further in-depth assessment. Upon investigating the food hygiene infrastructure provided at the study site to allow food handlers to carry out the correct behaviours, findings indicated that although the personnel hygiene programme addressed most of best practice requirements in design, the implementation of the hand washing requirements was not aligned with accepted norms due to the lack of sufficient hand wash basins. The provision of facilities such as sufficient and conveniently located hand wash basins is a management function and findings suggest that, as a priority, management should ensure that they are not contributing to the lack of implementation of the correct food safety behaviours of food handlers as a result of failing to provide the necessary resources. The results of this study should be of value in the food service sector, specifically hotel kitchens, as a guideline to ensure that management plays an effective role in facilitating food safety management systems. A robust food safety and food hygiene training programme for all levels of the organisation is essential in ensuring adequate knowledge of food safety hazards and correct practices. Training should be supported by daily supervision of food safety controls, management commitment and a work environment that supports the implementation of the correct behaviours. Literature has shown that undesirable practices are often deeply rooted in kitchen culture. It has further been commented that culture changes require a top-down approach which usually involves working with the leadership of the organisation. Important policies and procedures generally originate from the management tiers and will always require the concurrence of management in providing resources, altering priorities or otherwise changing how things are done in the organisation. The results of this study are invaluable in highlighting areas in an organisation that could be targeted to change the kitchen culture. Such changes are primarily the responsibility of management. Ultimately, this study endeavours to contribute to the body of knowledge pointing to the role of social-behavioural aspects in ensuring food safety and thereby consumer well-being.