Today, rather than provide parts similar to their competitors and rely on one or two automakers, successful automotive component suppliers focus heavily on innovation and collaboration with several manufacturers in a global market. In this thesis, an as-is scenario for automotive winter testing is presented. A plausible to-be scenario framed by a Functional Product Innovation (FPI) vision is discussed. This vision places an emphasis on additional knowledge and information in early design phases, such as the importance of understanding the actual use of the product and the environment where it is going to be used since these aspects need to be designed into the final product. Life cycle perspective and close cross- company collaboration in the design and development of products constitutes a basis for realizing FPI. A simulation-driven approach during the early phases to support product development decisions, by the same token, try out those solutions in numerous of what-if business scenarios, is also included in the vision. A concept enabling distributed vehicle testing is suggested with an emphasis on vehicle dynamics simulation and visualization. The main benefit of this concept is that different disciplines involved in the product development process can use the system to enhance the concurrency between activities. Control system engineers and mechanical engineers can view ongoing tests in real-time and change designs, and efficiently re- simulate and influence ongoing tests in a distributed manner. The use of dynamic simulation software during the test in real-time will give more information of the vehicle's behavior and feed the visualization application with the data needed to render the moving vehicle in a 3D environment. By using visualization aids, engineers can simultaneously see the behavior of the vehicle and regular data presented in graphs or tables, and thus perceive more information from the test. A Java based visualization application presents the test results in a rich 3D environment, thus enabling non-experts to understand the dynamic behavior of complex vehicle systems. This application will contribute to an enhanced validation of the vehicle and the ability to collaborate in a distributed real-time virtual environment. By supporting test procedures with real-time simulations and in particular 3D visualization, how the tests are conducted radically changes. The approach supports decision-making to become a more concurrent activity, as well as facilitating and enabling distributed collaborative work. Furthermore, the approach increases the opportunity to extract rich information of the vehicle and its systems, which provides a good basis for well-informed decisions. / <p>Godkänd; 2007; 20070531 (evan)</p>

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are essential for the economy in many countries, given that the majority of companies often are SMEs. The use of modern information and communication technologies provides opportunities for SMEs to act on a global market. When an SME exports products or services to a foreign country, it should acquire knowledge of both customer and cultural preferences to avoid business failures. The main purpose of the studies presented in this thesis was to investigate what the product design preferences are like in three example countries, the USA, South Korea and Germany in order to illustrate possible design preference differences among cultures. Furthermore, the studies examine how an SME can use this information for increasing export sales. Field studies were conducted in the target countries to gather information concerning design preferences and to study the information gathering process. The selected methods, questionnaires, interviews and observations used for gathering information were assumed to be well known and easily accessible for most SMEs. The presented results show both similarities and differences. Americans found "good value for the price" to be the most important factor when buying a product, while Germans preferred "long life". Koreans found aesthetic factors more important than both Americans and Germans. Furthermore, most visual characteristics were found to be similar in the three target countries, but a colourful example was found to be one of the least preferred characters by Americans and Germans, while Koreans found it considerably more preferable. In addition, approaches to gathering information about customers in a foreign culture are presented as well as design concept suggestions for two example products based on results from the field studies. / <p>Godkänd; 2007; 20070413 (ysko)</p>

Companies are currently being encountered with increasing competition in the international markets, since products are exported more easily to a variety of countries. In order to succeed in export countries, product preferences should correspond to customer needs, since similarities and differences are found concerning product attribute preferences. However, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) might not have the resources to conduct vast studies to discover what the preferences are. In order to present the SMEs with information and possible explanations of what the various preferences are, a group of respondents´ product design preferences were investigated in three example countries, the USA, South Korea and Germany. The purpose is to demonstrate how SMEs can benefit from using quantitative and qualitative methods to develop products to better suit the intended target market, by providing knowledge of applicable methods and approaches when culture-related product design preferences are studied. Furthermore, the study provides knowledge of product design preferences in the three target countries with regard to example products, with supportive material concerning general design preferences. Based on the results, it is possible to draw conclusions about what product attribute categories should be emphasized when exporting to the example countries. The studied Americans rated economic attributes, especially good value for money, significantly more important than the other target countries concerning the example products. Then again, the Koreans and Germans emphasized usability, especially safe to use, higher than the Americans for specific products. Overall, the aesthetic attributes were not considered important, although the Koreans preferred a trendy and exclusive look significantly more than the Americans. To demonstrate how the acquired knowledge can be implemented in practice, a design concept with examples of function, design, materials, colours and other visual attributes is presented. The results are presented in four papers based on the acquired material. / <p>Godkänd; 2007; 20070413 (ysko)</p>

The trend today is to produce automobiles that have exciting systems which enhance the users' driving experiences, however, the distraction potential of these systems has not fully been considered. Since there can be large differences in the driver's level of distraction caused by visual overload due to individual and cultural characteristics. Therefore, three different markets were chosen due to their distinct vehicle and driving traditions and laws; China, Sweden and United States of America (US). The aim of this thesis, from an instrumentation design point of view, is to gain a better understanding of what information, and where information should be presented, in instrument panels to achieve low levels of distraction and, hence, decrease cognitive load, increase safety and functionality. Studies undertaken in this thesis sought a user based solution. The questionnaire results showed that safety attributes were ranked before, quality, practicality, and attractiveness in automobiles. The number one concern for the Chinese market was safety features presented to them from HDD in the instrument panel, the Swedish market preferred the traditional features and placements, the US preferred safety features and those assisting in safe driving to be placed in the HUD. A high-fidelity driving simulator was used to study respondents of varied age and driving experience, of which drove through both rural and city traffic with speed limits ranging from 50 to 70 km/hour while responding to information presented in HUD, HDD, IF, and CS positions. All groups rated the HUD as a very good placement for information retrieval while driving, followed by HDD, IF, and CS respectively. The overall preferred placement was HUD as it also was the preferred position of serious failures and vehicle operation. The results from both studies showed that people wanted logical groupings of driver information placed in the vehicle so to reduce the risk of distraction. / <p>Godkänd; 2008; 20081203 (phitre)</p> / OPTIVe - Optimised system integration for safe interaction in vehicles

No description available.

Context: Automated acceptance tests have become a core practice of agile software development (e.g. Extreme Programming). These tests are closely tied to requirements specifications and these tests provide a mechanism for continuous validation of software requirements. Software reuse has evolved with the introduction of each new reusable artefact (e.g., reuse of code, reuse of frameworks, tools etc.). In this study, we have investigated the reusability of automated acceptance tests keeping in view their close association with textual requirements. Objective: As automated acceptance tests are closely related to software requirements, we have used existing research in software engineering to identify reusability related characteristics of software requirements and used these characteristics for automated acceptance tests.This study attempts to address the following aspects: (i) what important reuse characteristics should be considered when measuring reusability of automated acceptance tests? (ii) how reusability can be measured in automated acceptance tests?, and (iii) how cost avoided through reuse of automated acceptance tests can be calculated? Method: We have used a combination of research methods to answer different aspects of our study. We started by identifying reusability related characteristics of software requirements, with help of systematic literature review. Later, we tried to identify the reusability related characteristics of defect reports and the process is documented using an experience report. After identifying the characteristics from the previous two studies, we used these characteristics on two case-studies conducted on Behaviour driven development test cases (i.e., acceptance tests of textual nature). We proposed two approaches that can identify the reuse potential of automated acceptance tests and evaluated these approaches in the industry. Later, to calculate the cost avoided through reuse, we proposed and evaluated a method that is applicable to any reusable artifact. Results: The results from the systematic literature review shows that text-based requirements reuse approaches are most commonly used in the industry. Structuring these text-based requirements and identifying the reusable requirements by matching are the two commonly used methods for enabling requirements to reuse. The results from the second study, industrial experience report, indicates that defect reports can be formulated in template and defect triage meeting can be used to identify important test-cases related to defect reports. The results from these two studies, text-based requirements reuse approaches and template based defect reports, were included when identifying approaches to measure reuse potential of BDD test-cases. The two proposed approaches, Normalised Compression Distance (NCD) and Similarity Ratio, for measuring reuse potential were evaluated in the industry. The evaluation indicated that Similarity ratio approach performed better than the NCD approach, however, the results from both approaches were comparable with the results gathered with the help of expert analysis. The cost related aspects of reusable acceptance tests were addressed and evaluated using a method that calculates the cost-avoidance through reuse. The industrial evaluation of the method and guidelines show that the method is an artifact independent method.  Conclusions: The evidence from this study shows that the automated acceptance tests are reusable, similar to text-based software requirements and their reuse potential can be calculated as well. The industrial evaluation of the three studies (i.e. approaches to measure reuse potential, calculation of cost avoidance and defect reports in triage meetings) shows that the overall results are applicable to the industry. However, further work is required to evaluate the reuse potential of automated acceptance tests in different contexts.

Att arbeta med storskaliga stadsutvecklingsprojekt, även kallade megaprojekt har blivit allt vanligare världen över. Anledningen till att fler megaprojekt påbörjas har sin grund i den ökade globaliseringen. Att knyta samman länder och eftersträva ekonomisk tillväxt är således en av megaprojektens målsättningar. Utifrån forskningen verkar projekten vara anpassade främst till större geografiska områden, men planeringen av megaprojekt berör såväl stora som små kommuner. Tillgänglig forskning förefaller till viss del sakna studier för hur kommuner förhåller sig till planeringen av megaprojekt. I Sverige utgör planeringen av höghastighetsbanan ett megaprojekt och är även en av de största infrastruktursatsningarna som landet har ställts inför. Denna uppsats fokuserar på att studera hur kommuner längs den uttänkta sträckningen hanterar de krav som planeringen av höghastighetsbanan ställer på utpekade stationsområden. De utvalda kommunerna för studien är Tranås samt Trosa kommun. Studien undersöker kommunernas föreställningar och förhållningssätt till planeringen av ett storskaligt stadsutvecklingsprojekt.Uppsatsens utgångspunkt har således inneburit att studera megaprojekt i svensk kommunal kontext. Studien grundar sig på olika planeringsteorier och olika sätt att styra samhället. Den rationella planeringsteorin samt pragmatismen har använts för att förklara hur kommunerna förbereder sig och hanterar de uppsatta kraven. Vidare bygger studien på en tredje teoretisk utgångspunkt, governance, vilket har använts för att studera hur samverkansformerna förefaller vara i planeringsprocessen. Studien visar på en nyanserad bild av planeringsprocessen som skett i Tranås och Trosa kommun. Det går i och med det inte entydigt fastställa att processerna har präglats av enbart government eller governance. Istället visar den genomförda studien på en process som inrymmer båda delarna. Studien visar på att staten har en styrande roll och är högst ansvarig för det slutgiltiga beslutsfattandet. Staten eftersträvar ett rationellt och logiskt planeringssätt. Denna top-down styrning visar sig emellertid ge upphov till en viss problemati knär planeringsprocessen befinner sig i ett sådant tidigt stadium. Planeringen av höghastighetsbanan är ett investeringsprojekt, vilket kräver förhandlingar med berörda stationskommuner och regioner. Kommunerna ingår därutöver i nätverk med andra aktörer för att på så sätt kunna stärka sin ställning gentemot staten i olika frågor. Hela idén med Sverigeförhandlingen förutsätter således ett arbete utifrån governance. Analysen visar även att de berörda kommunerna verkar eftersträva ett rationellt planeringssätt där det föreligger en vilja att planera varje steg i förväg. Studien visar dock att kommunerna har svårt att hantera processen utifrån enbart ett rationellt perspektiv. Planeringen av megaprojekt inrymmer flera okända faktorer och är en del av en komplex process. Den rationella planeringen är av den anledningen inte tillräcklig, utan behov finns av pragmatiska handlingssätt för att hantera processen. Det går således inte fastslå att planeringsprocessen har utgått från enbart ett rationellt planeringsperspektiv eller utifrån ett pragmatiskt förhållningssätt. Bilden visar istället på att en kombination av dem båda har förekommit. Ett mer pragmatiskt förhållningssätt har varit aktuellt i processens tidiga skede i form av förhandlingar och avtal. Vid dessa sammanhang visar studien på att kommunerna och organisationerna i högre utsträckning tar eget initiativ och driver på processen utifrån sina egna intressen. Den rationella planeringen framträder som starkast när kommunerna arbetar med de vanliga kommunala projekten, vilket kan avse arbetet med översiktsplaner eller detaljplaner och när planeringsprocessen är mer konkret. Det går sammanfattningsvis konstatera att kommunernas planering kännetecknas av en kombinerad arbetsprocess som innefattar både rationella och pragmatiska handlingar, vilka överlappar varandra i olika dimensioner.

Studies show that the success of a construction project depends onits initial design work. Thus, it’s interesting to investigate howensuring design work quality is done. Since the mid 70’s SKB has worked on how the final repository of spent long-lived nuclearfuel should be built to satisfy the requirement of total repository from the people and environment for a period of 100,000 years. The project is large and consists of many subprojects; where one of them is carried out by WSP. The quality work in this project has been evaluated to see how the ensuring of reaching required quality and expectations. This type of project can be assumed to be complex both to control and execute, in terms of structural complexity, technical complexity and uncertain complexity. By characterizing the project due to its surroundings, content and organizational behaviour and to them apply the dimensions of complexity the aim of the study is to identify how the complexity has effect the quality work. To understand this, semi structured interviews with the project organization has been done. The result of the study shows that especially the structural complexity, mainly by the number of collaborated departments, affects the quality work. Also uncertain complexity affects the quality work, due to unclear contract between client and supplier. To receive better quality work in the future the coordination between different departments needs to be better. This involves for example establish project specific methods and routines, for all in the project to use. To be able to deliver successful projects one presumption is that client and supplier agreed on what is to be delivered. If the project scope isn’t clear agreedupon, a satisfied client can never be reached.

<p>Betyg 170911.</p>

Today more than ever, Computerized Trouble Ticketing System is becoming a booming information technology system that makes the difference between staying in business in a competitive global telecommunication arena. This quantitative exploratory survey utilised conveniently selected research subjects to explore computerized trouble ticketing system and its inherent benefits in Vodafone Ghana Plc. Cross section of vital data set collected with the aid of structured questionnaires haven been analyzed using descriptive statistics model. The study revealed that, effective and efficient usage of computerized trouble ticketing systems benefit the company in terms of its customer satisfaction, competitive advantage and business intelligence in competitive telecom arena. Nevertheless, the smooth realization of these inherent benefits are constantly challenged by complexity in managing volumes of data generated, intense era of competition, high cost of trouble ticketing system, as well as, rapid technological obsolesce in computerized trouble ticketing applications in telecommunication market. The study recommended for the quick and effective adoption of differentiation strategy, cost leadership strategy and customer relationship management, which are customer-centric measures that can build sustainable long-term customer relationship that can create value for the company, as well as, for the customers. / <p></p><p></p><p>This was Via Adobe Connect</p><p>The room was be opened from 09:30 CET (Central European time and thus local time in Sweden), and the presentations began at 10:00.</p><p></p><p> </p>