Managing Product Life Cycle Data Using Automatic Identification

Kuluttajat ja lainsäätäjät vaativat yhä tarkempaa tietoa tuotteiden alkuperästä ja ympäristökuormituksesta. Yhä monimutkaisemmiksi käyvät tuotteiden tuotantoketjut ovat haasteellisia tämän tiedon keräämisen kannalta. Tuotantoketjussa voi olla satoja eri alihankkijoita sekä lukuisia jatkojalostajia. Tähän asti yleisin tapa laskea tuotteen elinkaaren ympäristövaikutukset on ollut mitata resurssien ja energian käyttö prosesseissa sekä prosessien päästöt ilmaan, maahan ja veteen esimerkiksi vuoden jaksolla ja käyttää saatua lukua keskiarvona kaikille tuotetuille tuotteille. Tämä väitös esittää mallin, joka mahdollistaa yksittäisen tuotteen elinkaaren seuraamisen ja sen elinkaari-informaation keräämisen sekä tämän informaation jakamisen. Esitettyä mallia voidaan käyttää pohjana kehitettäessä luotettava järjestelmä tuotteiden ympäristövaikutusten mittaamiseen ja tämän tiedon jakamiseen kuluttajille. Näin kuluttajat voivat tehdä ostopäätöksensä oikean ja tarkan tiedon perusteella. Työssä on tarkasteltu metsäteollisuutta esimerkkitapauksena, jossa tuotteiden ja komponenttien tunnistaminen perustuu RFID-tekniikkaan. Automaattinen tunnistaminen mahdollistaa jopa yksittäisen tuotteen seuraamisen koko tuotantoketjun läpi ja tarkan elinkaari-informaation keräämisen. Tätä informaatiota käyttämällä yksittäiselle tuotteelle voidaan laskea tarkka ympäristövaikutus.Managing the life cycle of products is becoming more and more important. Organizations are facing increasing pressure from consumers and legislators to accurately measure and manage the environmental impact of products. However, the complexities of today s supply chains pose a challenge for gathering accurate data throughout the life cycle of the product. The life cycle of a product can be defined as a network of entities responsible for the procurement, manufacturing and distribution of the product. In order to enable tracing through the dynamic supply chain, the products must be identified. The development of automatic identification enables us to identify each object in the supply chain and trace it through the complex and dynamic supply chain where each organization manages a part of the chain. Thanks to traceability, we can connect the information about the products' movements with the information about processes. In other words, we can allocate the properties of the processes to the actual product instances involved in each process. To be able to store the life cycle information of products, we must have a model that enables the allocation of life cycle information to the traced product throughout the supply chain. This dissertation defines such a model (traceability graph) that can be used to allocate life cycle information from processes to individual products. Further, the model enables multidimensional analyzes of data associated with the life cycle information of products and their components. The dissertation also specifies a solution for collecting, storing and sharing life cycle information about the product throughout its life cycle, enabling consumers to make educated choices based on accurate information regarding products they are purchasing. The method enables supply chain stakeholders to exchange life cycle information by utilizing the EPCGlobal Network architecture. The case example used in this dissertation is environmental impact information. In recent times, consumers and legislators have become increasingly interested in the environmental impacts of products throughout their life cycle. The biggest challenge with measuring the environmental impact is the fact that supply chains are complex and dynamic. A manufacturer can use various subcontractors and supply various end manufacturers or retailers in different countries. So far, the most common method of calculating the environmental impact of a product has been to measure the resources used, emissions and production for a certain period of time and then calculate the average environmental impact of the product. This work provides methods to monitor environmental performance even at a product level

Buku Ajar Kecerdasan Bisnis

Kecerdasan bisnis (Business Intelligence) adalah suatu ilmu yang mendukung pengambilan keputusan pada organisasi bisnis. Tujuan utamanya adalah menyediakan akses interaktif terhadap data, memungkinkan manipulasi data, dan memberi manajer kemampuan untuk melakukan analisis bisnis. Dengan kemampuan untuk melakukan analisis terhadap data, performa, dan situasi lingkungan bisnis, maka manajer dapat melakukan pengambilan keputusan yang lebih baik. Dengan buku ajar kecerdasan bisnis ini, pembaca khususnya mahasiswa diharapkan dapat mengetahui dan memahami kecerdasan bisnis dengan lebih terkonsep. Buku ini membahas mengenai pengantar kecerdasan bisnis, data warehousing, business analytics dan OLAP, data mining, business performance management, serta dashboard system. Selain berisi tentang konsep dasar, di dalam buku ajar ini juga terdapat panduan praktik menggunakan beberapa aplikasi / tools serta latihan-latihan untuk memperkuat pemahaman konse

Avaliação de um ambiente analítico com apoio de um modelo de capacidade e maturidade

De uma forma geral, nos dias de hoje, a estrutura tradicional de Inteligência de Negócios, do inglês de Business Intelligence (BI), não consegue atender aos anseios e demandas dos usuários de negócios e acaba sendo insuficiente para alcançar os objetivos das áreas e da própria corporação. A estrutura atual, que é centralizada pela equipe da área de Tecnologia da Informação (TI) da empresa, oferece como capacidades analíticas: relatórios, dashboards, processamento analítico online (OLAP), ferramenta para consultas e análises ad hoc. Para superar as limitações existentes, as unidades de negócios começam a implantar soluções unilaterais, como ferramentas de reconhecimento de dados, aplicações analíticas verticais, bancos de dados analíticos de código aberto ou ainda, plataformas alternativas de BI na nuvem sem o suporte ou a aprovação da TI. Neste cenário, é frequente termos redundância de trabalho com geração de respostas conflitantes para perguntas semelhantes. Este panorama indica uma necessidade premente de reestruturar a plataforma de BI e análise e ainda revisar as habilidades e responsabilidades dos usuários e reorganizar o processo de criação e implantação de conteúdo. Neste contexto, ainda surge o conceito de Analíticos de Negócios, do inglês Business Analytics (BA), como elemento capaz de fornecer flexibilidade e agilidade que os usuários esperam para seus processos de análise e suporte a decisão. Porém o uso desgovernado de analíticos pode aumentar significativamente a geração de informações redundantes e conflitantes. Uma forma eficiente para lidar com uma transformação como esta é através da implantação de um modelo de capacidade e maturidade, que pode trazer como benefícios uma maior confiabilidade no que refere ao cumprimento de prazos e custos, uma melhor qualidade nos produtos gerados além de uma busca por melhoria contínua. O produto deste trabalho é mostrar como um modelo de capacidade e maturidade pode ser importante para uma organização aprimorar o seu processo de exploração de dados e informações, através da modernização de suas práticas em BI e ainda com a introdução dos novos conceitos de BA

Towards Data Governance for International Dementia Care Mapping (DCM). A Study Proposing DCM Data Management through a Data Warehousing Approach.

Information Technology (IT) plays a vital role in improving health care systems by enhancing the quality, efficiency, safety, security, collaboration and informing decision making. Dementia, a decline in mental ability which affects memory, concentration and perception, is a key issue in health and social care, given the current context of an aging population. The quality of dementia care is noted as an international area of concern. Dementia Care Mapping (DCM) is a systematic observational framework for assessing and improving dementia care quality. DCM has been used as both a research and practice development tool internationally. However, despite the success of DCM and the annual generation of a huge amount of data on dementia care quality, it lacks a governance framework, based on modern IT solutions for data management, such a framework would provide the organisations using DCM a systematic way of storing, retrieving and comparing data over time, to monitor progress or trends in care quality. Data Governance (DG) refers to the implications of policies and accountabilities to data management in an organisation. The data management procedure includes availability, usability, quality, integrity, and security of the organisation data according to their users and requirements. This novel multidisciplinary study proposes a comprehensive solution for governing the DCM data by introducing a data management framework based on a data warehousing approach. Original contributions have been made through the design and development of a data management framework, describing the DCM international database design and DCM data warehouse architecture. These data repositories will provide the acquisition and storage solutions for DCM data. The designed DCM data warehouse facilitates various analytical applications to be applied for multidimensional analysis. Different queries are applied to demonstrate the DCM data warehouse functionality. A case study is also presented to explain the clustering technique applied to the DCM data. The performance of the DCM data governance framework is demonstrated in this case study related to data clustering results. Results are encouraging and open up discussion for further analysis

Electronic medical records concepts and data management

Healthcare information (Clinical Data) is associated with every individual, young or old, rich or poor, belonging to any country. Clinical data is very extensive. Everyday some new diseases and new symptoms are being seen and the human race is struggling to find cures. There are many diseases whose diagnosis, symptoms, and possible treatment are known but unfortunately that rare knowledge is not available to every individual in the world. This initiates all the vision behind presenting a paper on EMR/ EHR and its Data Management. The thesis reviews the concept of EMR/ EHR thus explaining its concepts, importance, market need etc. Thesis will also explain privacy and security related to clinical data in electronic format which is a very important as any electronic data is prone to hacks and data loss. To manage and utilize such amount of data, there is need of extensive data management and so the thesis explains the concepts of Datawarehouse, its importance, ETL, Schemas etc. As part of explaining these concepts a mini EMR/EHR Datawarehouse is designed which explains various subject areas possible in any EMR Datawarehouse. Last but not the least, the thesis comments on the Future of EMR/ EHR and the World Vision on this revolutionary change

Data limitations can be overcome to move toward effective business system integration

Investigation indicates that data quality and consistency issues will continue to be overwhelming impediments to the complete integration of all information systems in the current Information Technology (IT) environment. However, there is evidence that businesses can still move toward an effective Digital Business Design (DBD) by focusing on a relatively small number of critical success factors. The possible approaches to integration available in the current IT environment were reviewed to gain insight into candidate design bases available. The DBD implementations of sample firms were examined to explore what aspects of integration they considered in their implementations and whether or not they achieved significant levels of integration from a customer perspective. Based on these examinations, several key points that should be kept in focus when contemplating a DBD integration project were identified

Incidences de RFID dans une chaîne d’approvisionnement : processus, gestion des connaissances et performance

RÉSUMÉ : Objectif principal et motivations L’objectif principal de la thèse par article vise à évaluer, dans un contexte de chaîne d’approvisionnement, les impacts de la technologie RFID (“Radio Frequency Identification”) sur les processus, la gestion des connaissances et la performance. Cette recherche se distingue des travaux antérieurs en mettant une emphase particulière sur les incidences de RFID sur l’acquisition, la gestion, le partage et le transfert des connaissances, et ce, autant à l’interne (dans chaque organisation) qu’à l’externe (dans la chaîne d’approvisionnement). Nous proposons également que la gestion des connaissances ainsi améliorée permet l’ajout d’intelligence. Cet objectif est poursuivi dans le contexte spécifique de la construction industrielle. Un tel contexte est intéressant puisque le poids économique de l’industrie de construction est élevé (au Québec, un emploi sur 20 en dépend) et que la construction industrielle connait des investissements substantiels, de l’ordre au Canada de 86,9 milliards de dollars pour 2012. De plus, c’est un secteur à forte intensité de connaissances dans lequel les firmes de génie-conseil jouent un rôle déterminant. Finalement, le fait de s’intéresser à une chaîne d’approvisionnement plutôt qu’à des entreprises individuelles correspond à une tendance lourde. Nous avançons donc que l’objectif général de recherche présente une certaine pertinence pratique. Sur le plan théorique, le projet doctoral est motivé par plusieurs facteurs. Premièrement, le nombre d’articles de recherche qui visent un objectif de recherche similaire est très restreint. Deuxièmement, la gestion des connaissances nous apparait primordiale dans une économie dite basée sur les connaissances, les connaissances étant un facteur de production relativement plus important que les coûts de la main d’œuvre. Troisièmement, les connaissances représentent un actif intangible qui est à base même des avantages concurrentiels durables. Quatrièmement, la technologie RFID soulève des enjeux technologiques et non-technologiques qui ne sont pas entièrement résolus. Stratégie méthodologique privilégiée Cette recherche est exploratoire car elle sert à combler le ‘vide’ théorique et empirique concernant notre problématique spécifique. Elle correspond donc au paradigme qualifié d’empirico-inductif et est fondée sur des propositions de recherche. Plus précisément, elle a été conduite dans cinq entreprises membres de cette chaîne pendant les étapes de la construction et post-construction au sein d’une raffinerie). Le client final est l’entreprise propriétaire de cette raffinerie, le maître d’œuvre est la firme de construction et les fournisseurs et sous-traitants sont respectivement le fournisseur de matières premières, l’entreprise de fabrication de systèmes de tuyauterie et l’entreprise responsable de la préparation de la surface et du revêtement anticorrosif des systèmes de tuyauterie. Ces cinq entreprises correspondent à cinq niveaux de la chaîne d’approvisionnement. Au total, 57 participants ont été impliqués. Observations, entrevues semi- structurées et analyse de documents internes et externes représentent pour l’étude de terrain les techniques de collecte de données privilégiées tandis que les groupes de discussion ont permis d’atteindre certains consensus et de valider les données empiriques et résultats obtenus. Un consensus s’est formé pour explorer le potentiel de RFID au niveau de 1) l’approvisionnement des systèmes de tuyauterie, 2) de leur fabrication, peinture et installation sur le site de construction (soit la raffinerie) et, 3) leur inspection et maintenance après que les systèmes de tuyauterie soient installés. Ceci constitue trois applications distinctes de RFID, chacune ayant par exemple leurs propres exigences sur le plan technologique, leurs contraintes sur le plan organisationnel et inter-organisationnel, etc. Ces trois applications sont aussi les trois études de cas. Principaux résultats Les données empiriques confirment que RFID a en effet une influence positive sur les modèles de gestion que ce soit au niveau de l’amélioration des modèles existants ou de l’adoption de nouveaux modèles selon les résultats des trois articles de thèse. Par contre, l’incidence de RFID sur les modèles collaboratifs reçoit un soutien plus faible et mitigé : en effet, nous n’avons obtenu aucune évidence empirique sur la confiance tandis que l’amélioration des relations inter-organisationnelles est surtout démontrée dans le premier article de thèse. L’adoption de la technologie RFID dans une industrie aussi complexe que celle de la construction industrielle est prometteuse. En effet, les résultats empiriques de notre recherche démontent que la technologie RFID a des incidences positives sur l’uniformisation, l’intégration, l’amélioration et l’automatisation des processus. Cette technologie améliore également l’acquisition, la gestion, le partage, le transfert des connaissances et permet d’ajouter de l’intelligence au niveau intra- et inter- organisationnel. Elle réduit certaines inefficacités et plusieurs coûts opérationnels. L’analyse inter-cas a permis de dégager des facteurs déterminants additionnels. En particulier, nous avons pu établir que trois types de pressions isomorphiques, soit mimétiques, coercitives et normatives, s’exercent de façon différencié selon le type d’application RFID et selon la perspective de chacune des cinq entreprises. La compatibilité des scénarios RFID avec les compétences technologiques des entreprises impliquées se révèle un facteur important. Les limites et contraintes ainsi que les principales contributions sont examinées dans le septième chapitre et la thèse conclut avec des avenues de recherche.----------ABSTRACT : Main objective and motivations The main objective of the thesis is to evaluate, in the context of supply chain, the impacts of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology on processes, knowledge management and performance. This research differs from previous work by placing a strong emphasis on the impacts of RFID on the acquisition, management, sharing and transfer of knowledge, that are assessed internally (within the organization) and externally (across the supply chain). We also propose that improved knowledge management allows added-intelligence. The above objective is pursued within the specific context of the industrial construction sector. Such a context is interesting because the economic weight of the construction industry is high (in Quebec, one out of 20 jobs) and because the Canadian industrial construction benefited, in 2012, from substantial investments in the order of 86.9 billion dollars. Moreover, industrial construction represents a knowledge-intensive where engineering firms play a decisive role. Finally, the focus on a supply chain rather than on individual companies corresponds to a heavy trend. We argue that the overall objective of research has some practical relevance. From a theoretical perspective, the thesis is motivated by several factors. First, the number of research articles that target a similar research goal is very limited. Second, knowledge management appears to be critical in the so-called knowledge-based economy where knowledge can be considered as an important production factor. Third, knowledge is an intangible asset that brings sustainable competitive advantages. Fourth, RFID technology raises technological and non-technological issues that are not fully resolved. Methodological strategy This research is exploratory as it serves to fill the existing theoretical and empirical gaps in the literature. It thus corresponds to the empirical-inductive paradigm and is based on research propositions. More specifically, the field study was conducted in five companies in one supply chain during the construction and post-construction stages within one refinery. The end customer is the owner of the refinery, the contractor is the construction firm and the suppliers and subcontractors are respectively the supplier of raw materials, the manufacturing company of the piping systems, and company responsible for surface preparation and coating of the piping systems. These five companies correspond to the five levels of the supply chain. A total of 57 participants were involved. Observations, semi-structured interviews and analysis of internal and external documents were used as data sources while the focus groups allowed to reach some consensus on key decision points and to validate the empirical data and the results. A consensus was formed to explore the potential of RFID for 1) the supply of piping systems, 2) the manufacturing, painting and installation of these systems in the construction site (the refinery), and 3) the inspection and maintenance of the piping systems after their installation. This represents three different RFID applications, each with its own requirements in terms of technological, organizational and inter-organizational constraints. These three applications are also the three case studies. Main results Empirical evidence confirms that RFID has indeed a positive influence on business models, whether at improving existing models or at adopting new models. The impact of RFID on collaborative models receives a weaker and mixed support. The adoption of RFID technology in a sector as complex as the industrial construction industry seems promising. Indeed, the empirical results demonstrate that RFID technology has a positive impact on the standardization, integration, improvement and automation of processes. This technology also enhances the acquisition, management, sharing, and transfer of knowledge and adds intelligence at the intra-and inter-organizational levels. Finally, it reduces several inefficiencies and lowers several operational costs. The cross-case analysis has identified additional factors. In particular, we have established that three types of isomorphic pressures or mimetic, coercive and normative, have a differentiated influence depending on the type of RFID application and on firms’ perspective. The compatibility of RFID scenarios with organizational technology competences also proved to be a significant factor. The research limits as well as the main contributions are discussed in the seventh chapter and the thesis concludes with avenues of research