The economy of a developing nation like India depends on various sectors such as: Agriculture, Commerce and Industries, Finance, Communication and Information Technology, etc. The manufacturing industries play a key role in contributing to the economy of a nation. They mainly consist of industries like steel casting, automobiles and other heavy manufacturing. This research study is related to automobile industry and particularly the gear manufacturers. The automobile industry is an important industry from the manufacturing point of view. This is due to the fact that it has deep forward and backward linkages with several key segments of the economy and it has a strong multiplier effect. Hence, it is capable of being the driver of economic growth. The recent trend among the automobile manufacturing organizations is to outsource individual components to sub-contractors and conduct the sub-assemblies and assemblies in-house. Some components like gears are important in terms of quality. So in case of these components the automobile manufacturing organizations normally partially outsource the components. They carry out the important finishing operations in-house. Due to this practice, many micro to medium scale gear manufacturers have emerged as sub-contractors to different automobile manufacturing organizations. There is a high amount of competition among different gear manufacturers. To survive the competition any gear manufacturer must focus on the three major aspects: cost, quality and delivery. The focus in this study is on the delivery aspect. Precisely, this thesis attempts to address the scheduling problems in automobile gear manufacturing by proposing efficient solution methodologies in order to aid the gear manufacturers in the delivery of orders in the form of semi-finished gears, to the customers (i.e. automobile manufacturing organizations). The automobile gear manufacturing process can be broadly divided into three distinct stages, starting from the machining of the gear blanks. These three stages in automobile gear manufacturing are: pre heat treatment (pre-HT), heat treatment (HT) and post heat treatment (post-HT). Out of these three stages, the gear manufacturers carry out the first two stages namely pre-HT and HT, and deliver the semi-finished gears to the automobile manufacturing organizations. As most of the operations are carried out by the gear manufacturers, the real research problem lies in identifying bottleneck operations in both pre-HT and HT stages. By addressing the bottleneck operations, one can expect to have a competitive advantage among the gear manufacturers and in turn among the automobile manufacturing organizations. Since every gear manufacturer is involved in both: the pre-HT stage and the HT stage of gear manufacturing, they will always try to achieve both: throughput (from their own company’s perspective) and due date compliance (from the customer’s i.e. automobile manufacturing organizations’ perspective). In order to meet these two objectives for the gear manufacturer, there are two research problems identified in this thesis based on the bottleneck operations: one at the pre-HT stage and the other at the HT stage. The Research Problem 1, identified in the pre HT stage consists of a variety of machining operations. In all the pre-HT operations, one single gear is processed on a machine at a time. The machines used in these operations are essentially the discrete processors as known in the scheduling literature. Among the different operations carried out in the pre-HT stage, the gear shaving operation is the final operation which takes a relatively longer processing time compared to other operations in this stage. Hence this operation becomes the bottleneck operation and the Research Problem 1 is related to this operation. Normally, there are more than one machines available for carrying out the gear shaving operations. The processing time of a job is independent of the type of machine used (identical parallel machines). However, since automobile gears vary widely in terms of size, all the available machines may not be able to process a given job (machine eligibility restrictions). The jobs are made available for processing as and when the job orders are received from the automobile manufacturing organizations. Thus all the jobs may not be available for processing at the same time (unequal release times or dynamic job arrivals). After a job is completed on a machine, a setup is incurred before processing the next job. The setup operations involve cleaning of the machine, changing of cutting tools and toolings, setting of the machining parameters and fine tuning of the machining parameters. The amount of time required for the setup depends on both, the job that has been completed and the job that is to be processed (sequence dependent setup time). Different jobs will have different priorities depending on the nature of the job order, monetary value of the job and urgency for the next stage (job weights). Since the pre-HT stage is an upstream stage in gear manufacturing, particularly to the heat treatment (HT) stage, the aim of this stage will be to feed the downstream stage as quickly as possible. Hence, a completion time based scheduling objective is considered. Since the release times of jobs are unequal, the flowtime of a job is of interest in determining the throughput. Also, since the jobs have different weights, the weighted flowtime is of significance. Therefore, the scheduling objective for Research Problem 1 is taken as minimizing the total weighted flowtime of the jobs in a scheduling window. A vast amount of literature is available on scheduling of parallel machines. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has simultaneously addressed the job characteristics: unequal release times, sequence dependent setup times and machine eligibility restrictions for identical parallel machines to minimize the total weighted flowtime. The Research Problem 2 was identified at the HT stage of gear manufacturing. The aim of the HT stage in the metallurgical terms is to achieve case hardening of gears. The types of machines used in the HT stage are essentially the batch processing machines (BPM) or simply batch processors (BP). A BP unlike the discrete processor, can process several different jobs at a time. The constituent jobs that are processed together form a batch in the BP. The different operations of this stage are: hardening and soaking, quenching, tempering and shot blasting. The hardening and soaking operation typically takes a longer processing time (6-18 hours) as compared to the other operations (15 minutes to 90 minutes). Also, being the first operation of the HT stage, once the hardening and soaking operation is completed, the other operations can be streamlined. Hence the scheduling of this bottleneck operation is of managerial importance. The jobs arrive at the hardening and soaking operation as and when they are completed at the pre-HT stage (unequal release times). Different jobs may have different processing requirements corresponding to time and temperature setting. Therefore, although a BP can process multiple jobs at a time, jobs with different processing requirements cannot be processed together. Jobs that can be processed together are grouped in job families. Since jobs of different families cannot be processed together we get the situation of incompatible job families. The BP has a fixed and finite capacity (expressed in terms of mass). Jobs will have different masses – which represents the size of jobs (non-identical job sizes). While constructing a batch, a job can be split in case there is a capacity violation for the BP (job splitting). The same priorities of the jobs (job weights) as in the pre-HT stage, will continue in this stage as well. As the Research Problem 2 deals with downstream stage of the gear manufacturing the objective of scheduling will be efficient delivery of the job to the automobile manufacturing organizations. The non-conformance to the due date will result in tardiness of the job. Also, since the jobs have different weights, the weighted tardiness of a job is of significance. Therefore, the scheduling objective for Research Problem 2 is taken as minimizing the total weighted tardiness (TWT) of the jobs in a scheduling window. Compared to the discrete processors, the scheduling of batch processors is a relatively new field (about two decades old). However, a review of literature reveals that no study has simultaneously addressed in any problem domain, the characteristics: unequal release times, incompatible job families, non-identical job sizes and job splitting for scheduling batch processors to minimize the total weighted tardiness. For Research Problem 1, an integer linear programming (ILP) model is developed. A suitable numerical example is developed and the workability of the proposed ILP model is validated for a small sized problem. The computational intractability of the proposed ILP model is verified empirically. Due to the computational intractability, real life large-size problems cannot be solved using the proposed ILP model. This has motivated us to propose simple heuristic algorithms. Accordingly, ten heuristic algorithms are proposed. Out of these ten proposed heuristic algorithms, five heuristic algorithms allow the use of unforced idleness and the remaining five heuristic algorithms do not allow the use of unforced idleness. In scheduling, unforced idleness is a situation when a machine is kept idle even if there are jobs available for processing. In order to understand the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithms, various factors that can affect the performance of the heuristic algorithms are identified based on the literature as well as based on the knowledge gained from the industry. An experimental design is developed based on the identified factors with different levels. A series of computational experiments has been conducted for absolute evaluation of the heuristic algorithms: (a) in comparison with optimal solution for small size problem instances (there are 96 problem instances) and (b) in comparison with the estimated optimal solution for large size problem instances (there are 2880 problem instances). The evaluation is based on computational time and the quality of the solution. With respect to the computational time, it is observed that the time required for obtaining results from the heuristic algorithms is meager. For evaluating the quality of the solution, the two standard performance measures – Average Relative Percentage Deviation (ARPD) which indicates the average performance of the proposed heuristic algorithms and Maximum Relative Percentage Deviation (MRPD) which indicates the worst case performance of the proposed heuristic algorithms have been used. From the results of the experimental evaluation it is observed that the heuristic algorithms incorporating the information on machine eligibility restrictions along with other job characteristics worked relatively better compared to other proposed heuristic algorithms. It is also observed that system congestion plays an important role in determining the performance of the heuristic algorithms. Hence, a further study based on the effect of system congestion on different heuristic algorithms is carried out. The system congestion effect was controlled using the two problem factors: number of jobs and release time of jobs. The computational experiments were based on a total of 48 problem instances. Based on the results it was inferred that for congested systems, the proposed heuristic algorithms allowing unforced idleness perform better than the corresponding heuristic algorithms not allowing unforced idleness. For Research Problem 2, two situations are examined. The first situation pertains to the micro and small scale gear manufacturers. In this case, the gear manufacturers can have a single batch processor (BP) for the operation: hardening and soaking. The other situation pertains to small and medium scale gear manufacturers, and in this case, there are more than one batch processors with possibly different capacities (multiple non-identical batch processors). For the Research Problem 2 with single BP, an ILP model is developed. A suitable numerical example is developed and the workability of the proposed ILP model is validated for a small sized problem. The computational intractability of the proposed ILP model is verified empirically. Due to the computational intractability it is proposed to develop simple heuristic algorithms. Based on the pilot experimental analysis and based on the fact that allowing unforced idleness gave superior results in case of Research Problem 1, it is decided to incorporate unforced idleness while developing heuristic algorithms for the Research Problem 2 with single BP. Accordingly, three groups of heuristic algorithms are proposed for Research Problem 2 with single BP by allowing unforced idleness – (i) Seven variants of the heuristic algorithms are based on the computation of the weighted tardiness, (ii) Three variants of the heuristic algorithms based on computation of the composite job scores and (iii) Three variants of the heuristic algorithms based on the computation of composite family scores followed by the composite job scores. For evaluating the performance of the thirteen proposed heuristic algorithms various factors that can affect the workability of the heuristic algorithms are identified based on the literature as well as based on the knowledge gained from the industry. An experimental design is developed based on these factors with levels. A series of computational experiments has been conducted for absolute evaluation of the heuristic algorithms: (a) in comparison with optimal solution for small size problem instances (192 problem instances) and (b) in comparison with the estimated optimal solution for large size problem instances (7680 problem instances). The evaluation is based on computational time and the quality of the solution. With respect to the computational time, it is observed that the time required for obtaining results from the heuristic algorithms is meager. For evaluating the quality of the solution, the two standard performance measures – ARPD and MRPD, used in Research Problem 1, could not be used here due to the nature of the scheduling objective: minimizing the TWT (as the TWT tends to zero). Therefore, a suitable performance measure was identified in the literature and suitably modified for the Research Problem 2 with single BP under study. This performance measure gives stable results even when the TWT value approaches zero. From the results of the experimental evaluation it is observed that variants of heuristic algorithms based on accommodation of non-consecutive jobs while batch construction, perform better than the other variants of the heuristic algorithms. Following the research study on single BP sitaution, the multiple non-identical BPs situation of Research Problem 2 is studied. The ILP model proposed for the Research Problem 2 with single BP problem is suitably extended to account for multiple non-identical BPs and the workability of the model is demonstrated. Additionally, the proposed heuristic algorithms for the Research Problem 2 with single BP problem have been suitably modified for the multiple non-identical BP situation. After developing a suitable experimental design for Research Problem 2 with multiple non-identical BPs, a series of computational experiments has been conducted for absolute evaluation of the heuristic algorithms in comparison with the estimated optimal solution for large size problem instances, based on the 7680 problem instances. Similar performance measure as that used in the Research Problem 2 with single BP problem is used. The observations made from the experimental evaluation for the Research Problem 2 with multiple non-identical BPs are similar to and therefore consistent with those made for the Research Problem 2 with single BP problem. Finally, a sensitivity analysis to determine the effect of capacity of batch processor sets (BP sets) in terms of: number of batch processors and capacities of each batch processor, for Research Problem 2, is carried out. That is, considering different combinations of the two factors: number of batch processors and capacities of each batch processor, seven different BP sets are considered for the proposed sensitivity analysis. The effect on the scheduling objective: Total Weighted Tardiness for different problem configurations is studied by conducting computational experiments. It is observed that higher net capacities of the BP sets give a proportionately better advantage as compared to lower net capacities of the BP sets. Proportionately better advantage means that the percentage of improvement observed in the scheduling objective is higher than the percentage increase in the net capacity of the BP set. Another observation made is that for a given net capacity, it is better to have multiple BPs with smaller capacities than a single BP with high capacity. Although the problems pertaining to the gear manufacturing process simultaneously considering many real life situations have been addressed in this study, there are some limitations to it such as addressing of identical parallel machines instead of a general case of unrelated parallel machines (for Research Problem 1) and consideration of only deterministic situations for both the research problems. There are many immediate future research directions for the problem studied in this thesis such as overcoming the limitations mentioned in this study, proposing good lower bounds and additional heuristic algorithms, and coming up with integrating both, Research Problem 1 and Research Problem 2 and proposing solution methodologies for the integrated problem.

Vikten av utbildning och livslångt lärande är betydelsefulla faktorer för att den ekonomiska tillväxten i vårt land ska stimuleras, för att välfärden ska kunna tryggas och för att motverka ytterligare samhällsklyftor. Statistik från Skolverket visar på en konstant andel, ca 10 % de senaste fem åren, av elever i årskurs 9 som inte är behöriga att söka till gymnasiet. Det beror på att de inte har uppnått kursplanemålen för att få godkänt i kärnämnena svenska, matematik och engelska. Detta är bakgrunden till att vi har valt att redogöra för och belysa lärares utsagor och resonemang kring hinder och förutsättningar för elevers måluppfyllelse i kärnämnena. I denna kvalitativa studie har vi använt oss av intervjuer som teknik. Vi har intervjuat sex lärare, på fem olika skolor i en mellanstor kommun i sydvästra Sverige. Studien är uppdelad på tre nivåer, organisations-, grupp- och individnivå. På organisationsnivå handlar det bland annat om skolpolitik, skolans ledning och skolans styrdokument. På gruppnivå handlar det om klassen/gruppen och arbetslaget och på individnivå handlar det om den enskilde eleven och den enskilde läraren. Resultatet indikerar på att lärarnas resonemang till stor del kom att kretsa kring lärarens egen roll för elevers måluppfyllelse. Ytterligare framkom det att styrdokumenten spelar en betydande roll, på grund av att de lämnar stort tolkningsutrymme. Andra faktorer som resultatet visar på är att elever inte är tillräckligt motiverade för skolarbete och därigenom måluppfyllelse. Det finns elever som har låg begåvning och det finns elever med utländsk bakgrund som kommer in sent i det svenska skolsystemet. De kan därför få svårigheter att uppnå målen. Vår slutsats är därför; nej skolans mål är inte möjliga att nå för alla elever! / The importance of education and lifelong learning are essential factors to ensure and stimulate economic growth in our country, to secure welfare and counteract polarisation of social classes. During the last five years statistics from the Swedish Board of Education shows a constant number of approximately 10 % of the students in year 9 who have not qualified for upper secondary education. This is because they have not attained the goals of the syllabus which require a pass in the core subjects of Swedish, mathematics and English. This fact is the reason for our investigation in which we illustrate teachers’ assertions and lines of arguments concerning impediments and preconditions for attaining the goals of the core subjects. In this qualitative study we have used interviews as our main approach. We have interviewed six teachers at five different schools in a medium size municipality in the south-west of Sweden. The study is divided into three levels, organization, group and individual level. On the organization level the key issues are school policy, school administration and the steering documents of the school. On the group level the key issues are the class/group and the working team and on the individual level the study focuses on the individual pupil/student and the individual teacher. The result indicates that the teachers’ lines of arguments were focused on his/her own role of importance for the pupils’/students’ attainments of the goals. Furthermore it appeared that the steering documents play an important part because they can be interpreted in many ways. Other factors shown in the study are that pupils/students are not motivated enough to do schoolwork and thereby reach the goals. There are pupils/students who are less talented and others who have a different cultural background and get enrolled in the Swedish school system late. They might therefore have difficulties attaining the goals. Thus our conclusion is; no it is not possible for every pupil/student to attain the goals of school! We use both the words pupil and student because we sometimes mean the younger children (pupils) but also the older ones (students).

Vi har under året fått larmrapporter om att Sveriges matematikundervisning är undermålig. Enligt Skolverkets statistik får vi också detta bekräftat. Undersökningen avser att ta reda på hur lärare uttrycker sig kring undervisning, elevens självbild och kunskapsbedömning när det gäller att minimera antalet elever som lämnar grundskolan utan betyg i matematik. I denna kvalitativa studie har vi valt att intervjua sex matematiklärare i grundskolans senare år. Med dessa intervjuer vill vi synliggöra tänkbara orsaker till att svenska elever tappar mark när det gäller matematikkunskaper. Vi har valt att fokusera på hur undervisning och kunskapsbedömning ser ut på skolor med högt respektive lågt antal elever som ej uppnått målen för matematik i grundskolan. Vi har dessutom valt att lägga fokus på hur elevens självbild påverkar förmågan att tillägna sig matematikkunskaper. I vårt resultat visar det sig att våra sex respondenter inte skiljer sig anmärkningsvärt i hur de undervisar och kunskapsbedömer sina elever utifrån högt eller lågt antal elever som ej uppnått målen för grundskolan i matematik. Vad vi däremot kan se är att matematiklärarna är kritiska till hur undervisningen fungerar i de tidigare åldrarna. Respondenterna ger också en tydlig bild av att vår samhällsstruktur har förändrats vilket ger dem elever med skiftande social och kulturell bakgrund. Vi har behandlat dessa iakttagelser i vår diskussionsdel där vi med stöd från olika litteratur och styrdokument ger tänkbara orsaker om hur vi kan åtgärda resultatet utifrån frågor som var ansvaret ligger men också påvisa olika faktorers samspel i den komplexa verklighet vår skola befinner sig. / We have during the year received alarming reports concerning the inferior state of the Swedish mathematics teaching. According to the statistics from the Department of Education we also get this confirmed. The survey intends to find out how teachers express themselves about teaching, the pupil's self-image, and judging of knowledge when it comes to minimizing the number of pupil's who leave elementary school without any grades in mathematics. In this qualitative study we have chosen to interview six teachers of mathematics from the later years of the elementary school. With these interviews we would like to make visible possible causes why Swedish pupils are falling behind when it comes to knowledge in mathematics. We have chosen to focus on how teaching and judging of knowledge look like at schools with a high respectively low number of pupils who haven't reached the goals set up for mathematics in elementary school. We have also chosen to focus on how the self-image of the pupil affects the ability to acquire knowledge in mathematics. Our results show that our six respondents do not in a considerable way differ in the way they teach and judge the knowledge from a point of view where a high or low number of pupils that have not reached the goals set for the elementary school is concerned. What we can see on the other hand is that the teachers of mathematics are critical about the way the teaching works in the earlier years. The respondents also provide a clear picture that the structure of our society has changed which gives them pupils of shifting social and cultural background. We have treated these observations in our discussion section where we with support from different literature and steering documents present thinkable causes about how we can take measures from questions concerning where the responsibility lies but also show the interplay between different factors in the complex reality where our school is.

<p>Vikten av utbildning och livslångt lärande är betydelsefulla faktorer för att den ekonomiska tillväxten i vårt land ska stimuleras, för att välfärden ska kunna tryggas och för att motverka ytterligare samhällsklyftor. Statistik från Skolverket visar på en konstant andel, ca 10 % de senaste fem åren, av elever i årskurs 9 som inte är behöriga att söka till gymnasiet. Det beror på att de inte har uppnått kursplanemålen för att få godkänt i kärnämnena svenska, matematik och engelska. Detta är bakgrunden till att vi har valt att redogöra för och belysa lärares utsagor och resonemang kring hinder och förutsättningar för elevers måluppfyllelse i kärnämnena.</p><p>I denna kvalitativa studie har vi använt oss av intervjuer som teknik. Vi har intervjuat sex lärare, på fem olika skolor i en mellanstor kommun i sydvästra Sverige. Studien är uppdelad på tre nivåer, organisations-, grupp- och individnivå. På organisationsnivå handlar det bland annat om skolpolitik, skolans ledning och skolans styrdokument. På gruppnivå handlar det om klassen/gruppen och arbetslaget och på individnivå handlar det om den enskilde eleven och den enskilde läraren.</p><p>Resultatet indikerar på att lärarnas resonemang till stor del kom att kretsa kring lärarens egen roll för elevers måluppfyllelse. Ytterligare framkom det att styrdokumenten spelar en betydande roll, på grund av att de lämnar stort tolkningsutrymme. Andra faktorer som resultatet visar på är att elever inte är tillräckligt motiverade för skolarbete och därigenom måluppfyllelse. Det finns elever som har låg begåvning och det finns elever med utländsk bakgrund som kommer in sent i det svenska skolsystemet. De kan därför få svårigheter att uppnå målen. Vår slutsats är därför; nej skolans mål är inte möjliga att nå för alla elever!</p> / <p>The importance of education and lifelong learning are essential factors to ensure and stimulate economic growth in our country, to secure welfare and counteract polarisation of social classes. During the last five years statistics from the Swedish Board of Education shows a constant number of approximately 10 % of the students in year 9 who have not qualified for upper secondary education. This is because they have not attained the goals of the syllabus which require a pass in the core subjects of Swedish, mathematics and English. This fact is the reason for our investigation in which we illustrate teachers’ assertions and lines of arguments concerning impediments and preconditions for attaining the goals of the core subjects.</p><p>In this qualitative study we have used interviews as our main approach. We have interviewed six teachers at five different schools in a medium size municipality in the south-west of Sweden. The study is divided into three levels, organization, group and individual level. On the organization level the key issues are school policy, school administration and the steering documents of the school. On the group level the key issues are the class/group and the working team and on the individual level the study focuses on the individual pupil/student and the individual teacher.</p><p>The result indicates that the teachers’ lines of arguments were focused on his/her own role of importance for the pupils’/students’ attainments of the goals. Furthermore it appeared that the steering documents play an important part because they can be interpreted in many ways. Other factors shown in the study are that pupils/students are not motivated enough to do schoolwork and thereby reach the goals. There are pupils/students who are less talented and others who have a different cultural background and get enrolled in the Swedish school system late. They might therefore have difficulties attaining the goals. Thus our conclusion is; no it is not possible for every pupil/student to attain the goals of school!</p><p>We use both the words pupil and student because we sometimes mean the younger children (pupils) but also the older ones (students).</p>

Since 2006 Swedish compulsory school teachers are required to use individual developmentplans (IDPs) as part of their assessment practices. The IDP has developed through two major reforms and is currently about to undergo a third in which requirements for documentation are to be reduced. The original purpose of IDP was formative: a document containing targets and strategies for the student's future learning was to be drawn up at the parent-pupil-teacher meetingeach semester. The 2008 reform added requirements for written summative assessments/grade-like symbols to be used in the plan. This thesis aims to generate knowledge of the IDP as a tool in terms of what characterizes IDP documents as well as teachers' descriptions of continuous IDP work. It contains four articles. The first two are based on 379 collected IDP documents from all stages of compulsoryschool, and the last two build on interviews with 15 teachers. Throughout, qualitative content analysis has been used for processing data. The analytical framework comprises Latour's conceptual pair inscription – translation, Wartofsky's notions of primary/secondary/tertiary artifacts, and Wertsch's distinction between mastery and appropriation, which together provide an overall framework for understanding how the IDP becomes a contextually shaped tool that mediates teachers' actions in practice. Moreover, the activity theoretical concept of contradictionis used to understand and discuss dilemmas teachers experience in relation to IDP. In article 1, targets and strategies for future learning given to students are investigated and discussed in relation to definitions of formative assessment. Concepts were derived from the data and used for creating a typology of target and strategy types related either to being aspects (students' behavior/attitudes/personalities) or to subject matter learning. In article 2, the distribution of being and learning targets to boys and girls, respectively, is investigated. The results point to a significant gendered difference in the distribution of being targets. Possible reasons for the gendered distribution are discussed from a doing-gender perspective, and the proportion of being targets in IDPs is discussed from an assessment validity point of view. In article 3, teachers' continuous work with IDPs is explored, and it is suggested that IDP work develops in relation to perceived purposes and the contextual conditions framing teachers' work. Three qualitatively different ways of perceiving and working with IDP are described in a typology. Article 4 elaborates on dilemmas that teachers experience in relation to IDP, concerning time, communication, and assessment. A tentative categorization of dilemma management strategies is also presented. Results are synthesized in the final part of the thesis, where the ways in which documents are written and IDP work is carried out are discussed as being shaped in the intersection between rules and guidelines at national, municipal and local school level, and companies creating solutions for IDP documentation. Various purposes are to be achieved with the help of the IDP, which makes it a potential field of tension that is not always easy for teachers to navigate. Several IDP-related difficulties, but also opportunities and affordances, are visualized in the studies of this thesis. / <p>Svensk sammanfattning: s. 111-126.</p>

As the demand for energy continues to increase around the world, more vessels used in the transport of energy, such as Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and crude oil tankers are being built to transport energy to market overseas. The escort tug has been developed in order to assist in the safe transit of such vessels in confined waterways. Designed to apply emergency braking and steering forces to the stern of a tanker while underway, an escort tug features a hull shape that generates large hydrodynamic lift and drag forces when operating at high angles of attack, this is known as indirect mode. This escorting mode is highly effective at speeds 8 knots and above, often generating towline forces well in excess of bollard pull. Escort performance prediction is a vital aspect of the design of escort tugs. It is important to know a priori if a design will meet the necessary performance criteria. In the past, performance predictions have relied heavily on model testing and empirical methods. With the recent emergence of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as a commercially viable design tool for naval architects, extensive escort performance predictions can now be carried out more accurately in less time and at less cost than was previously possible. This thesis describes the methodology of a CFD based escort performance prediction method that is accurate and cost effective. / Graduate

<p>Vi har under året fått larmrapporter om att Sveriges matematikundervisning är undermålig. Enligt Skolverkets statistik får vi också detta bekräftat. Undersökningen avser att ta reda på hur lärare uttrycker sig kring undervisning, elevens självbild och kunskapsbedömning när det gäller att minimera antalet elever som lämnar grundskolan utan betyg i matematik. I denna kvalitativa studie har vi valt att intervjua sex matematiklärare i grundskolans senare år. Med dessa intervjuer vill vi synliggöra tänkbara orsaker till att svenska elever tappar mark när det gäller matematikkunskaper. Vi har valt att fokusera på hur undervisning och kunskapsbedömning ser ut på skolor med högt respektive lågt antal elever som ej uppnått målen för matematik i grundskolan. Vi har dessutom valt att lägga fokus på hur elevens självbild påverkar förmågan att tillägna sig matematikkunskaper. I vårt resultat visar det sig att våra sex respondenter inte skiljer sig anmärkningsvärt i hur de undervisar och kunskapsbedömer sina elever utifrån högt eller lågt antal elever som ej uppnått målen för grundskolan i matematik. Vad vi däremot kan se är att matematiklärarna är kritiska till hur undervisningen fungerar i de tidigare åldrarna. Respondenterna ger också en tydlig bild av att vår samhällsstruktur har förändrats vilket ger dem elever med skiftande social och kulturell bakgrund. Vi har behandlat dessa iakttagelser i vår diskussionsdel där vi med stöd från olika litteratur och styrdokument ger tänkbara orsaker om hur vi kan åtgärda resultatet utifrån frågor som var ansvaret ligger men också påvisa olika faktorers samspel i den komplexa verklighet vår skola befinner sig.</p> / <p>We have during the year received alarming reports concerning the inferior state of the Swedish mathematics teaching. According to the statistics from the Department of Education we also get this confirmed. The survey intends to find out how teachers express themselves about teaching, the pupil's self-image, and judging of knowledge when it comes to minimizing the number of pupil's who leave elementary school without any grades in mathematics. In this qualitative study we have chosen to interview six teachers of mathematics from the later years of the elementary school. With these interviews we would like to make visible possible causes why Swedish pupils are falling behind when it comes to knowledge in mathematics. We have chosen to focus on how teaching and judging of knowledge look like at schools with a high respectively low number of pupils who haven't reached the goals set up for mathematics in elementary school. We have also chosen to focus on how the self-image of the pupil affects the ability to acquire knowledge in mathematics. Our results show that our six respondents do not in a considerable way differ in the way they teach and judge the knowledge from a point of view where a high or low number of pupils that have not reached the goals set for the elementary school is concerned. What we can see on the other hand is that the teachers of mathematics are critical about the way the teaching works in the earlier years. The respondents also provide a clear picture that the structure of our society has changed which gives them pupils of shifting social and cultural background. We have treated these observations in our discussion section where we with support from different literature and steering documents present thinkable causes about how we can take measures from questions concerning where the responsibility lies but also show the interplay between different factors in the complex reality where our school is.</p>

There has been a steady growth in the traffic generated by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), and by 2020 it is expected to overload the existing licensed spectrum capacity and lead to the problem of scarce resources. One method to deal with this traffic overload is to access unlicensed and shared spectrum bands using an opportunistic approach. The use of Licensed Shared Access (LSA) is a novel approach for spectrum sharing between the incumbent user (i.e., the current owner of the shared spectrum) and the LSA licensee (i.e., the temporary user of frequencies, such as an MNO). The LSA system allows the incumbent users to temporarily provide the LSA licensee with access to its spectrum resources. However, licensees must adopt vertical handover and traffic steering procedures to vacate their customers from the LSA band without causing interference, whenever this is required by the incumbent. These procedures should be carried out, de facto, before the base station is turned off as a part of a rapid release of unscheduled LSA band facing evacuation scenarios. Thus, in this dissertation, a cognitive mechanism is proposed to make decisions in advance to find the best target network(s) for evacuated customers in connected mode and with active traffic per class of service. On the basis of these decisions, the vertical handover and traffic steering procedures are carried out for the best target network(s), which are selected in advance and undertaken immediately to avoid interference between the licensee and incumbent services. Furthermore, this guarantees the seamless connectivity and QoS of evacuated customers and their traffic respectively, during and after the unscheduled evacuation scenarios. A performance evaluation conducted in a simulating scenario consisting of one LTE-LSA and three Wi-Fi networks, demonstrated that the proposed solution could be completed within the time required for the unscheduled evacuation, as well as, being able to ensure the QoS and seamless connectivity of the evacuees. The total execution time obtained during the performance evaluation of the proposed solution was around 46% faster than of two related works and could thus avoid interference between the licensee and incumbent services.

The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the project management system in the organization and to suggest possible changes. In the first phase of work, the author studied the available literature on the basis of which is a review. The next section describes the project management system in the organization, namely Komerční Banka. Furthermore, comparison of results of research conducted by Ernst and Young with the state Komerční Banka. Further research is described Brandeis University internal research of the Bank. Based on this research are determined two critical reasons for project failure. The first is the lack of definition of essential information at the beginning of the project and other insufficiently competent project manager. Another section is devoted to the project manager. Furthermore SWOT analyses is created. There are described hard and soft skills. Suggestions for improvement were divided for existing project managers and for those newly admitted.

The emergence of the exascale era necessitates development of new techniques to efficiently perform high-performance scientific simulations, online data analysis and on-the-fly visualization. Critical applications like cyclone tracking and earthquake modeling require high-fidelity and high- performance simulations involving large-scale computations and generate huge amounts of data. Faster simulations and simultaneous online data analysis and visualization enable scientists provide real-time guidance to policy makers. In this thesis, we present a set of techniques for efficient high-fidelity simulations, online data analysis and visualization in environments with varying resource configurations. First, we present a strategy for improving throughput of weather simulations with multiple regions of interest. We propose parallel execution of these nested simulations based on partitioning the 2D process grid into disjoint rectangular regions associated with each subdomain. The process grid partitioning is obtained from a Huffman tree which is constructed from the relative execution times of the subdomains. We propose a novel combination of performance prediction, processor allocation methods and topology-aware mapping of the regions on torus interconnects. We observe up to 33% gain over the default strategy in weather models. Second, we propose a processor reallocation heuristic that minimizes data redistribution cost while reallocating processors in the case of dynamic regions of interest. This algorithm is based on hierarchical diffusion approach that uses a novel tree reorganization strategy. We have also developed a parallel data analysis algorithm to detect regions of interest within a domain. This helps improve performance of detailed simulations of multiple weather phenomena like depressions and clouds, thereby in- creasing the lead time to severe weather phenomena like tornadoes and storm surges. Our method is able to reduce the redistribution time by 25% over a simple partition from scratch method. We also show that it is important to consider resource constraints like I/O bandwidth, disk space and network bandwidth for continuous simulation and smooth visualization. High simulation rates on modern-day processors combined with high I/O bandwidth can lead to rapid accumulation of data at the simulation site and eventual stalling of simulations. We show that formulating the problem as an optimization problem can deter- mine optimal execution parameters for enabling smooth simulation and visualization. This approach proves beneficial for resource-constrained environments, whereas a naive greedy strategy leads to stalling and disk overflow. Our optimization method provides about 30% higher simulation rate and consumes about 25-50% lesser storage space than a naive greedy approach. We have then developed an integrated adaptive steering framework, InSt, that analyzes the combined e ect of user-driven steering with automatic tuning of application parameters based on resource constraints and the criticality needs of the application to determine the final parameters for the simulations. It is important to allow the climate scientists to steer the ongoing simulation, specially in the case of critical applications. InSt takes into account both the steering inputs of the scientists and the criticality needs of the application. Finally, we have developed algorithms to minimize the lag between the time when the simulation produces an output frame and the time when the frame is visualized. It is important to reduce the lag so that the scientists can get on-the- y view of the simulation, and concurrently visualize important events in the simulation. We present most-recent, auto-clustering and adaptive algorithms for reducing lag. The lag-reduction algorithms adapt to the available resource parameters and the number of pending frames to be sent to the visualization site by transferring a representative subset of frames. Our adaptive algorithm reduces lag by 72% and provides 37% larger representativeness than the most-recent for slow networks.