Effective Fault Diagnosis in Chemical Plants By Integrating Multiple Methodologies

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Early aspects: aspect-oriented requirements engineering and architecture design

This paper reports on the third Early Aspects: Aspect-Oriented Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design Workshop, which has been held in Lancaster, UK, on March 21, 2004. The workshop included a presentation session and working sessions in which the particular topics on early aspects were discussed. The primary goal of the workshop was to focus on challenges to defining methodical software development processes for aspects from early on in the software life cycle and explore the potential of proposed methods and techniques to scale up to industrial applications

Efficient methodologies for real-time state identification during process transitions

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

An Ontology for Product-Service Systems

Industries are transforming their business strategy from a product-centric to a more service-centric nature by bundling products and services into integrated solutions to enhance the relationship between their customers. Since Product- Service Systems design research is currently at a rudimentary stage, the development of a robust ontology for this area would be helpful. The advantages of a standardized ontology are that it could help researchers and practitioners to communicate their views without ambiguity and thus encourage the conception and implementation of useful methods and tools. In this paper, an initial structure of a PSS ontology from the design perspective is proposed and evaluated

The service elimination process : an empirical investigation into the British financial services sector

The present study represents an in-depth empirical investigation into the service elimination process in the British financial services sector. It aims to make a contribution towards the concise development of the literature on service elimination and to provide empirically based recommendations, which can improve the way financial service elimination is practised. The theoretical part of the study focused first on a review of the characteristics of services in general and of financial services in particular and of the service range management activities of financial institutions. Second, the literature on product and service elimination was reviewed. The bulk of this material refers to conceptual propositions and empirical evidence on elimination from manufacturing settings, while conceptual and empirical material from service and financial service settings is alarmingly sparse. The presents tudy conceptualisedth e service elimination process as consisting of three broad stages, a) the pre-elimination stage, b) the actual service elimination decision-making process and c) the post-elimination stage. The study adopted a research approach based on the broad hypothesis that service elimination decisions are not made in a vacuum (as the limited literature on service and financial service elimination assumes explicitly or implicitly) but that they are influenced by contextual organisational and environmental characteristics of companies. Based on the above conceptualisations, the research objectives were to a) identify the content of the service elimination process (i. e., the decision variables involved in the various steps of the process) b) measure the relative importance/frequency of use of the above content and c) measure the influence of a set of contextual independent variables on the relative importance/frequency of use of the content of the service elimination process. To meet the above research objectives, a pluralistic research method was adopted. For the identification component of the research objectives qualitative research (in-depth interviews) was conducted, while for the measurement component quantitative research was conducted(mail survey). The findings indicated that service elimination decisions were the outcome of a multi-step process, which with very few exceptions (i. e., the way in which British financial institutions identified financial services as candidates for elimination) was found to be largely informal and unsophisticated. Moreover service elimination was rated as the least important service range management activity and was allocated the least amount of resources (temporal, monetary and human). The findings also suggested that the content of the service elimination process was both similar and different to elimination practice in manufacturing settings. Among the most obvious similarities was the paramount importance of sales and profitability considerations in making products and financial services candidates for elimination. Among the most striking differences was that while a product is fully eliminated, partial elimination was the predominant outcome of the service elimination process in the studied setting. With regards to the contextual influence, it was found that the relative importance/frequency of the decision variables involved in the service elimination process varied in relation to the type and the size of individual financial institutions, the pursued overall business strategy, and degree of market orientation, the degree of formalisation of the service elimination process, the number of services in the range (service diversity), the type of financial service which is considered for elimination, the method of its delivery process, the intensity of competition and of the legislative environment and the volatility of the technological environment. As such, the findings confirmed the hypothesised dynamism of the service elimination decisions and suggested that any attempt to describe the service elimination process in a golden rule way that fits all companies, all financial services and all environmental circumstances would be misleading

More than words: The influence of affective content and linguistic style matches in online reviews on conversion rates

Customers increasingly rely on other consumers' reviews to make purchase decisions online. New insights into the customer review phenomenon can be derived from studying the semantic content and style properties of verbatim customer reviews to examine their influence on online retail sites' conversion rates. The authors employ text mining to extract changes in affective content and linguistic style properties of customer book reviews on Amazon.com. A dynamic panel data model reveals that the influence of positive affective content on conversion rates is asymmetrical, such that greater increases in positive affective content in customer reviews have a smaller effect on subsequent increases in conversion rate. No such tapering-off effect occurs for changes in negative affective content in reviews. Furthermore, positive changes in affective cues and increasing congruence with the product interest group's typical linguistic style directly and conjointly increase conversion rates. These findings suggest that managers should identify and promote the most influential reviews in a given product category, provide instructions to stimulate reviewers to write powerful reviews, and adapt the style of their own editorial reviews to the relevant product category

Comparative study of logistics services in the container liner shipping market in the U.K. and South Korea

In line with the dramatic changes of business environment, certain liner shipping companies have claimed that what they are providing is a 'logistics service' rather than a 'traditional shipping service'. It was found that there is a shortage of discussion in existing literature related to the liner shipping industry regarding the introduction of logistics service and no empirical study on how the operation of such a logistics service has been perceived by shippers. The prime objective of the research is to provide a practical clarification to understanding an operation of logistics service in the liner shipping market. The Delphi technique was used to investigate the difference between the features of traditional shipping service and those of logistics services. It also explored the driving forces, which appear to stimulate liner shipping service providers to adopt logistics service concepts into their business area. A mail questionnaire was developed to analyse shippers' perception of logistics service and measure the performance of logistics service operation with reference to the international shippers in the U. K. and South Korea. An analysis of the survey revealed that there is a significant association between years in business and the perception of logistics service. With regard to the analysis of relationship between service providers' performance and choice of service providers, the research reached an answer by analysing the correlation between service providers' performance and the behaviour of choosing service providers. A positive correlation was found for transport, payment, and cargo related factors. On the other hand, no correlation was found for the document factor. With reference to these findings, service providers could initiate the target marketing for various classes of shippers. The comparisons between the U. K. and South Korean shippers were made in terms of the level of satisfaction on the service functions. The Delphi technique indicated the exploratory findings related to the conceptualisation of logistics service in the liner shipping market. The research dealt with experts' points of view only, albeit in some depth. However, the conceptualisation would be more developed if the views of service providers and service consumers were also sought. Based upon the size of the sample, caution must be exercised when making any broad generalisation. The research makes an original contribution to knowledge by applying a service function approach to a logistics service concept in the liner shipping context for the first time. The researchf indings could help explain consumers' assessmenot f their service provided in a wider variety of industries and therefore add to the understanding of perceptions and the assessmenot f the nature of logistics service operations

Why Wait Until It’s Too Late? - How do the challenges deriving from the adoption of a reactive approach to Market Orientation affect the transitioning process?

Research question-/s: Incumbents in the financial industry - what are the challenges faced in the beginning of a reactive transition to Market Orientation and how do these influence the process? Methodology: The case study was conducted in a global financial service provider based in Sweden. The research takes a qualitative approach which follows an inductive method with small elements of deduction. The data collection was conducted with semi-structured interviews to collect empirical data which was supported by additional sources such as company documents and informal discussions. Theoretical perspectives: The main theoretical perspective of this study is Market Orientation and the related transitioning process as a reactive measure. Contribution to theory is made by investigating challenges present in a reactive approach to Market Orientation. Conclusions: The reactive approach brings new challenges to incumbents as they are developing immediate short-term strategies to alleviate the issues deriving from the external environment while working towards the main long-term objective of Market Orientation. This results in a conflicting resource allocation that translates in further problems that stakeholders identify as poor leadership and low internal collaboration

Reducing Customer Waiting Time of Commercial Banking Industry (A Case Study)

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the College of Business and Technology Morehead State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Science by Feng Gao April 26, 2016