The development and technology transfer of software engineering technology at NASA. Johnson Space Center

The United State's big space projects of the next decades, such as Space Station and the Human Exploration Initiative, will need the development of many millions of lines of mission critical software. NASA-Johnson (JSC) is identifying and developing some of the Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) technology that NASA will need to build these future software systems. The goal is to improve the quality and the productivity of large software development projects. New trends are outlined in CASE technology and how the Software Technology Branch (STB) at JSC is endeavoring to provide some of these CASE solutions for NASA is described. Key software technology components include knowledge-based systems, software reusability, user interface technology, reengineering environments, management systems for the software development process, software cost models, repository technology, and open, integrated CASE environment frameworks. The paper presents the status and long-term expectations for CASE products. The STB's Reengineering Application Project (REAP), Advanced Software Development Workstation (ASDW) project, and software development cost model (COSTMODL) project are then discussed. Some of the general difficulties of technology transfer are introduced, and a process developed by STB for CASE technology insertion is described

Reengineering the management process of hospital consumable medical supplies to reduce cost and improve quality: an empirical study in China

JEL: M00As the society continues developing and people’s living standards rise in China, the top priority of its new medical reform has become pushing forward public hospital reform and optimizes the medical service system. At the same time, the medical reform’s guiding principles for operating the country’s hospital system have changed into maintaining non-profit medical institutions as the main body of the healthcare system, for-profit medical institutions as supplements; public medical institutions playing the leading role, and encouraging the concurrent development of non-public medical institutions. This change in guiding principles has led to intensified competition among hospitals. To survive in the competition, hospitals are emphasizing on reducing cost and improving service quality. Therefore, reducing cost and providing high quality medical services has become an important goal for hospital management. With continued advancement of medical technologies, the type and the quantity of medical supplies have been continuously increasing. The number of wasted medical supplies has also been increasing rapidly. Medical supplies include three major categories, namely, pharmaceuticals, consumable medical supplies, and medical logistical materials (Fu, 2009). This thesis aims to study the management of consumable medical supplies. This thesis examines how hospitals can achieve inventory reduction of hospital consumable supplies, improve management quality, and lower cost by reengineering and optimizing the management process of the whole lifecycle of consumable medical supplies, including production, circulation, hospital, units and utilization, and by utilizing information management systems. The first half of the thesis describes the theoretical bases of reengineering and optimization as well as information systems utilized to achieve improved hospital consumable supply management. The second half uses three groups of data, namely, interviews, a case study and questionnaire surveys, to provide analysis results of successful use of reengineering and optimization as well as information system to improve hospital consumable supply management process in China. The first group of data includes interviews of several managers from three companies providing hospital consumable medical supplies which offer qualitative analyses regarding the problems in hospital consumable medical supply management process, solutions to resolve those problems, and challenges in solution implementing. The second group of data includes a case study of a large hospital in Shanghai, from the supplier’s perspective, of their consumable medical supply management process resulted from the restructured information systems platform. The third group of data includes questionnaire survey responses from leaders of multiple hospitals regarding comparisons of its consumable medical supply management process and results between before and after the implementation of the information systems platform.À medida que a sociedade Chinesa se desenvolve e as condições de vida melhoram, a prioridade da reforma médica tem vindo a concentrar-se na reestruturação dos hospitais públicos e na otimização do sistema médico nacional. Ao mesmo tempo, os princípios orientadores do funcionamento do sistema hospitalar nacional mantêm as instituições médicas não orientadas para o lucro como o corpo principal da sistema de saúde, e as instituições orientadas para o lucro como suplementares; em suma, enquanto as instituições médicas públicas desempenham o papel principal no sistema de saúde, o desenvolvimento de instituições privadas é incentivado. Esta mudança de princípios desencadeou uma concorrência entre hospitais. Para sobreviverem no ambiente cada vez mais concorrencial, os hospitais concentraram-se na redução de custos e na melhoria da qualidade dos seus serviços. Deste modo a redução dos custos e a melhoria dos serviços médicos prestados transformaram-se em objetivos principais, para os gestores hospitalares. Com a evolução contínua das tecnologias médicas, o tipo e a quantidade de fornecimentos hospitalares tem vindo a aumentar. A quantidade de desperdícios resultantes dos fornecimentos hospitalares tem também aumentado de uma forma muito rápida. Os fornecimentos hospitalares consumíveis incluem três categorias: farmacêutica, consumíveis médicos e materiais de logística (Fu, 2009). Esta tese tem como objetivo principal investigar a gestão dos fornecimentos médicos consumíveis. Esta tese investiga como os hospitais podem diminuir o inventário dos fornecimentos hospitalares consumíveis, melhorar a qualidade da gestão e baixar o custo através da reengenharia e otimização da gestão de todo o processo de vida dos consumíveis médicos, incluindo a produção, a circulação e utilização, apoiando-se sistemas de informação para a gestão. A primeira parte desta tese descreve as bases teóricas da reengenharia e otimização, assim como dos sistemas de informação utilizados para conseguir a melhoria da gestão dos fornecimentos. A segunda parte utiliza três tipos de dados, nomeadamente, dados recolhidos através de entrevistas, dados provenientes de um caso, e dados recolhidos através de um questionário. Estes dados permitem-nos descrever casos de sucesso na melhoria da gestão dos fornecimentos hospitalares na China. Os dados provenientes das entrevistas a gestores de três empresas fornecedoras de consumíveis médicos permitem-nos, uma visão qualitativa dos problemas e soluções para os resolver. Os dados provenientes do estudo de caso de um grande hospital de Shanghai, na perspetiva dos fornecedores fornecem-nos uma ideia da importância da existência de plataforma de sistemas de informação. O terceiro grupo de dados é proveniente dos questionários administrados a gestores de hospitais onde se questiona sobre a situação da gestão dos consumíveis médicos hospitalares antes e depois da existência de plataformas de informação

A decision-making approach for investigating the potential effects of near sourcing on supply chain

Purpose - Near sourcing is starting to be regarded as a valid alternative to global sourcing in order to leverage supply chain (SC) responsiveness and economic efficiency. The present work proposes a decision-making approach developed in collaboration with a leading Italian retailer that was willing to turn the global store furniture procurement process into near sourcing. Design/methodology/approach - Action research is employed. The limitations of the traditional SC organisation and purchasing process of the company are first identified. On such basis, an inventory management model is applied to run spreadsheet estimates where different purchasing and SC management strategies are adopted to determine the solution providing the lowest cost performance. Finally, a risk analysis of the selected best SC arrangement is conducted and results are discussed. Findings - Switching from East Asian suppliers to continental vendors enables a SC reengineering that increases flexibility and responsiveness to demand uncertainty which, together with decreased transportation costs, assures economic viability, thus proving the benefits of near sourcing. Research limitations/implications - The decision-making framework provides a methodological roadmap to address the comparison between near and global sourcing policies and to calculate the savings of the former against the latter. The approach could include additional organisational aspects and cost categories impacting on near sourcing and could be adapted to investigate different products, services, and business sectors. Originality/value - The work provides SC researchers and practitioners with a structured approach for understanding what drives companies to adopt near sourcing and for quantitatively assessing its advantage

Risk Management for Enterprise Resource Planning System Implementations in Project-Based Firms

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been regarded as one of the most important information technology developments in the past decades. While ERP systems provide the potential to bring substantial benefits, their implementations are characterized with large capital outlay, long duration, and high risks of failure including implementation process failure and system usage failure. As a result, the adoption of ERP systems in project-based firms has been lagged behind lots of companies in many other industries. In order to ensure the success of ERP system implementations in project-based firms, sound risk management is the key. The overall objective of this research is to identify the risks in ERP system implementations within project-based firms and develop a new approach to analyze these risks and quantitatively assess their impacts on ERP system implementation failure. At first, the research describes ERP systems in conjunction with the nature and working practices of project-based firms and current status and issues related to ERP adoption in such firms, and thus analyzes the causes for their relatively low ERP adoption and states the research problems and objectives. Accordingly, a conceptual research framework is presented, and the procedures and research methods are outlined. Secondly, based on the risk factors regarding generic ERP projects in extant literature, the research comprehensively identifies the risk factors of ERP system implementation within project-based firms. These risk factors are classified into different categories, qualitatively described and analyzed, and used to establish a risk taxonomy. Thirdly, an approach is developed based on fault tree analysis to decompose ERP systems failure and assess the relationships between ERP component failures and system usage failure, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The principles and processes of this approach and related fault tree analysis methods and techniques are presented in the context of ERP projects. Fourthly, certain practical strategies are proposed to manage the risks of ERP system implementations. The proposed risk assessment approach and management strategies together with the comprehensive list of identified risk factors not only contribute to the body of knowledge of information system risk management, but also can be used as an effective tool by practitioners to actively analyze, assess, and manage the risks of ERP system implementations within project-based firms

Cost-benefit analysis for software process improvement

Justification of investments to improve software development processes and technol- ogy continues to be a significant challenge for software management. Managers interested in improving quality, cost, and cycle-time of their products have a large set of methods, tools, and techniques from which to choose. The implementation of one or more of these potential improvements can require considerable time and cost. Decision makers must be able to understand the benefits from each proposed improvement and decide which improvements to implement. While a variety of approaches exist for evaluating the costs and benefits of a few specific improvements such as inspections or systematic reuse, there is no general model for evaluating software process improvements. The result of this research is a practical, useful framework to assist practitioners in evaluating potential process improvements. This general framework can accommodate a variety of methods for estimating the cost-benefit effects of a process change. To illustrate this framework a set of cost-benefit templates for Emerald and Cleanroom technologies were developed and validated. Methods for evaluating effects range from constants and simple equations to bayesian decision models and dynamic process simulations. A prototype tool was developed to assist in performing cost-benefit analysis of software process improvements

A Quantitative Analysis of Business Process Reengineering and Organizational Resistance: The Case of Uganda

ABSTRACT Despite efforts by many organisations to redesign their processes, many of them have not succeeded. The main objective of the study was to analyse the extent to which organisational resistance impacts on the implementation of BPR. We used survey methodology using a questionnaire for data collection. Descriptive analysis of factors that cause resistance was conducted and results showed that only 30.4% of BPR in Uganda have been successful. The results showed that the factors that impact on BPR implementation include; users’ awareness of BPR project, level of emotional response, organisational resistance, and failure of management to create awareness among others. Organisational resistance can significantly lead to failure of BPR and therefore user involvement should be paramount throughout implementation. This paper is important to organisations that need reform and effectiveness in their business process to highlight the importance of soft issues in BPR and to other researchers of BPR

Preliminary Results in a Multi-site Empirical Study on Cross-organizational ERP Size and Effort Estimation

This paper reports on initial findings in an empirical study carried out with representatives of two ERP vendors, six ERP adopting organizations, four ERP implementation consulting companies, and two ERP research and advisory services firms. Our study’s goal was to gain understanding of the state-of-the practice in size and effort estimation of cross-organizational ERP projects. Based on key size and effort estimation challenges identified in a previously published literature survey, we explored some difficulties, fallacies and pitfalls these organizations face. We focused on collecting empirical evidence from the participating ERP market players to assess specific facts about the state-of-the-art ERP size and effort estimation practices. Our study adopted a qualitative research method based on an asynchronous online focus group

Effective Management System: A Key to BPR Success

Today’s competitive business environment pressurizes the organization’s management to focus on successful implementation of Business Process Reengineering (BPR). BRP implementation is a critical task. Many organizations have successfully reported reengineering efforts but not all the organization achieves the desire results.  Many researchers and practitioners reveal that more then seventy percent BPR projects fails because of implementation issues. And for successful implementation of BPR project the management system plays a vital role. BPR helps the organization to achieve the desire objectives by increasing productivity and profitability through cost and process time reduction, improve quality and increasing customer satisfaction. However to attain these objectives, BPR must be implement and managed in the best interest of organization, employees and customers. The objective of this qualitative research study is to identifying the management factors responsible for the success of BPR programs. A model representing seven variables and their elements was developed. These variables and their elements are consider as essentially important for effective management system and are key factors for BPR success. These include Strategic Quality Planning, Organizational Culture, Quality of Life at Workplace, Human Resource Development, Employee Empowerment, Performance Measure and Reward System Keywords: Effective Management System, Business Process Reengineering, Successful Implementation Factors, Strategic Quality Planning, Organizational Culture, Quality of Life at Workplace, Human Resource Development, Employee Empowerment, Performance Measure and Reward Syste

Aplikasi Pengukuran Risiko Transformasi Organisasi (Studi Kasus Pada Perusahaan Telekomunikasi)

. The aim of this study is to perform quantitative risk assessment oforganizational transformation at PT X and develop its risk mitigation. The design ofthis study based on business risk analysis model by Fekete (2000), which are consist 4steps: (1) risk identification; (2) qualitative analysis; (3) quantitative analysis; and (4)risk response. The result of study showed there are significance risks of organizationaltransformation at PT X with the biggest risk level in consecutive order are systemreadiness factor, organization factor, and culture factor