The Economics Of System Integration: Toward An Evolutionary Interpretation.

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SIMBA: a simulator for business education and research

Business simulators are used for decision-making since different scenarios can be evaluated without risk. They are also used in business management education. The main goal of this paper is to introduce SIMBA (SIMulator for Business Administration), a new simulator that serves as a web-based platform for business education, permitting both classroom and distance education. This paper also adds a research aspect in business intelligence because SIMBA can be used as a fieldwork tool for the development and evaluation of intelligent agents. The simulator creates a more complex competitive environment in which intelligent agents play the role of business decision makers.This work has been partially sponsored by a regional project CCG08-UC3M/TIC-4141 of the Comunidad de Madrid, a national project TIN2008-06701-C03-03 of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain and a contract with Simuladores Empresariales S.L.Publicad

INTEROPERABILITY FOR MODELING AND SIMULATION IN MARITIME EXTENDED FRAMEWORK

This thesis reports on the most relevant researches performed during the years of the Ph.D. at the Genova University and within the Simulation Team. The researches have been performed according to M&S well known recognized standards. The studies performed on interoperable simulation cover all the environments of the Extended Maritime Framework, namely Sea Surface, Underwater, Air, Coast & Land, Space and Cyber Space. The applications cover both the civil and defence domain. The aim is to demonstrate the potential of M&S applications for the Extended Maritime Framework, applied to innovative unmanned vehicles as well as to traditional assets, human personnel included. A variety of techniques and methodology have been fruitfully applied in the researches, ranging from interoperable simulation, discrete event simulation, stochastic simulation, artificial intelligence, decision support system and even human behaviour modelling

Nature-inspired survivability: Prey-inspired survivability countermeasures for cloud computing security challenges

As cloud computing environments become complex, adversaries have become highly sophisticated and unpredictable. Moreover, they can easily increase attack power and persist longer before detection. Uncertain malicious actions, latent risks, Unobserved or Unobservable risks (UUURs) characterise this new threat domain. This thesis proposes prey-inspired survivability to address unpredictable security challenges borne out of UUURs. While survivability is a well-addressed phenomenon in non-extinct prey animals, applying prey survivability to cloud computing directly is challenging due to contradicting end goals. How to manage evolving survivability goals and requirements under contradicting environmental conditions adds to the challenges. To address these challenges, this thesis proposes a holistic taxonomy which integrate multiple and disparate perspectives of cloud security challenges. In addition, it proposes the TRIZ (Teorija Rezbenija Izobretatelskib Zadach) to derive prey-inspired solutions through resolving contradiction. First, it develops a 3-step process to facilitate interdomain transfer of concepts from nature to cloud. Moreover, TRIZ’s generic approach suggests specific solutions for cloud computing survivability. Then, the thesis presents the conceptual prey-inspired cloud computing survivability framework (Pi-CCSF), built upon TRIZ derived solutions. The framework run-time is pushed to the user-space to support evolving survivability design goals. Furthermore, a target-based decision-making technique (TBDM) is proposed to manage survivability decisions. To evaluate the prey-inspired survivability concept, Pi-CCSF simulator is developed and implemented. Evaluation results shows that escalating survivability actions improve the vitality of vulnerable and compromised virtual machines (VMs) by 5% and dramatically improve their overall survivability. Hypothesis testing conclusively supports the hypothesis that the escalation mechanisms can be applied to enhance the survivability of cloud computing systems. Numeric analysis of TBDM shows that by considering survivability preferences and attitudes (these directly impacts survivability actions), the TBDM method brings unpredictable survivability information closer to decision processes. This enables efficient execution of variable escalating survivability actions, which enables the Pi-CCSF’s decision system (DS) to focus upon decisions that achieve survivability outcomes under unpredictability imposed by UUUR

Decisions in software development proyects management: an exploratory study.

Given the importance of software in today's world, the development of software systems is a key activity that requires complex management scenarios. This article explores the implications of hard decisions in the context of software development projects (SDPs). More in deep, it focuses on the emotional consequences of making hard decisions in IT organisations. Complex SDPs involve a great variety of actors. This fact entails morale, feelings and emotions, which play an important role for communication, interaction and, ultimately, decision making. The aim of the article is twofold. First (Study 1), to identify which are the most important hard decisions in SDPS. Second (Study 2), to study the influence of emotions on decision-making processes (Study 2). Findings show the complex emotional consequences and difficulties that managers must face in hard decision-making processes.Publicad

Naval Ship Maintenance: An Analysis of the Dutch Shipbuilding Industry Using the Knowledge Value Added, Systems Dynamics, and Integrated Risk Management Methodologies

Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program)Initiatives to reduce the cost of ship maintenance have not yet realized the normal cost-reduction learning curve improvements. One explanation is the lack of recommended technologies. Damen, a Dutch shipbuilding and service firm, has incorporated similar technologies and is developing others to improve its operations. The research team collected data on Dutch ship maintenance operations and used them to build three types of computer simulation models of ship maintenance and technology adoption. The results were analyzed and compared with previously developed modeling results of U.S. Navy ship maintenance and technology adoption. Adopting 3D PDF alone improves ROI significantly more than adopting a logistics package alone and adding both technologies improves ROI more than adding either technology alone. Adoption of the technologies would provide cost benefits far in excess of not using the technologies and there were marginal benefits in sequentially implementing the technologies over immediately implementing them. There are a number of issues in comparing the results with previous research but the potential benefits of using the technologies are very high in both cases. Implications for acquisition practice include the need for careful analysis and selection from among a variety of available information technologies and the recommendation for a phased development and implementation approach to manage uncertainty.Acquisition Research Progra

Ethics and taxation : a cross-national comparison of UK and Turkish firms

This paper investigates responses to tax related ethical issues facing busines

The Political Economy of Industrial Policy in China: The Case of Aircraft Manufacturing

Since 1960, only one new country, Brazil, has succeeded in delivering more than one civil jet per month. Otherwise, all the countries now offering world-class planes were established in aviation by the end of World War I. This being said, low-cost producers within several of the newly emerging markets have already acquired front-end manufacturing expertise as a direct result of industrial offset contracts and/or other forms of technology transfer. In all such cases, government intervention, notably through state ownership, has been predominant, but failures have been numerous in view of the difficulty of aligning ownership structure to financial, managerial, and technological requirements and of garnering the support of domestic interest groups. In this paper the focus is China’s efforts to build a world-class aircraft manufacturing industry. In the first half of the 1990s the potential of the Chinese industry to mount a competitive challenge to Western aircraft builders was largely discounted. Nowadays, as China strives to bear the ARJ-21 project to execution and even considers entering the market for wide-bodies, the threat is taken more seriously. The growth in the Chinese air transport market has reinforced the bargaining power of national aircraft producers and authorities are giving priority to building science and technology capacity in this area. Progress in creating military/civilian synergies has proven much more modest – especially when compared to the shipbuilding industry – and better coordination in the overall industry comes a distant fourth in the explanations’ peaking order.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40165/3/wp779.pd

Dynamic Analysis for Enterprise Strategic Flexibility using System Engineering Methodology

From a system thinking perspective, the competition / cooperation boundaries govern the evolution of a firm\u27s adaptive strategic behaviour and drive it towards its desired objectives. Strategic flexibility is considered a sustainability advantage in today\u27s global competitive environment. This study explores the strategic flexibility capability that fits with the market requirement and the degree of competition it faces in its market(s). After exploring the link between the manufacturing objectives and their effect on the total industry performance in terms of profitability, product availability and capacity utilization, this study quantify the strategic effect of applying five different strategies on the enterprise strategic flexibility capability. By modeling and analyzing different scenarios using a system dynamic simulation approach and considering the market competitive dynamics, this model introduces the volume flexibility as a macro strategic measure that affects the firm\u27s intended production capacity. The effect of enterprise volume flexibility on its market share is studied and reported. The research explored how operations management theory on volume flexibility can be linked to the dynamic capability theory to develop new macro measures for the enterprise manufacturing strategy. Results show that matching between the firm capabilities and its external environment is a critical factor for organizational success. While the intense of competition govern the product life cycle duration and rate of change, success level is proportional to the competitor simultaneous actions and reactions and the effect differs from market to another. Results show that different product life cycle affects the industry speed and that may change the wining strategies adopted by the competing firms. As a result there are no ultimate right strategies for firms to follow. While tradeoffs between flexibility and cost are confirmed, the competitive advantage occurs when it is unique to the company and matches with the market variables for limited time. In conclusion, for industrial organization to achieve high productivity, efficiency and maximum utilization rate they need to select from a wide range of strategic capabilities rather than concentrating on a single capability or process to match the requirements of the external environment with responsive rate that matches the industry clock speed