Management of applied analytics: The role of executives for the shift to analytics-based decision-making in a corporate context

This publication-based dissertation examines human-related success factors for the implementation and application of data analytics tools and methods within the decision-making process of organizations. Generated insights on human-related factors are outlined and described in six chapters. First, a general introduction to the subject is provided and the research is positioned within a broader overall context. Additionally, the first section comprises a summary of the research papers included, along with publication information. Chapter 2 presents a systematic literature review summarizing the capabilities of Big Data analytics (BDA) with regard to firm performance. Five key capability clusters have been identified to categorize all relevant human-related capabilities across existing research to date. Chapter 3 presents an empirical research paper examining the relevant managerial aspects that must be considered when shifting from intuitive to analytics-based decision-making. Introducing a six-factor framework, the chapter outlines the findings of an indepth single case study of a German manufacturing organization that has already implemented analytical methods and tools within its decision processes. Chapter 4 contains the second empirical paper, which outlines the crucial role that executives play within the process of a firm’s digital transformation toward the application of analytics. Based on conducted interviews, four managerial archetypes are identified, with detailed descriptions of their characteristics, capabilities, and contribution to transformation. Chapter 5 introduces a teaching case study that sheds light on best practices relevant to the application of analytics. This case study describes the most critical factors for success in the use of an AI tool using an example from Wilo, a leading German manufacturer of pumps and pump systems. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the findings of this publication-based dissertation, outlines its contributions to academia and practice, and presents its limitations and potential avenues for future research

Arterial inflammation in mice lacking the interleukin 1 receptor antagonist gene

Branch points and flexures in the high pressure arterial system have long been recognized as sites of unusually high turbulence and consequent stress in humans are foci for atherosclerotic lesions. We show that mice that are homozygous for a null mutation in the gene encoding an endogenous antiinflammatory cytokine, interleukin 1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra), develop lethal arterial inflammation involving branch points and flexures of the aorta and its primary and secondary branches. We observe massive transmural infiltration of neutrophils, macrophages, and CD4(+) T cells. Animals appear to die from vessel wall collapse, stenosis, and organ infarction or from hemorrhage from ruptured aneurysms. Heterozygotes do not die from arteritis within a year of birth but do develop small lesions, which suggests that a reduced level of IL-1ra is insufficient to fully control inflammation in arteries. Our results demonstrate a surprisingly specific role for IL-1ra in the control of spontaneous inflammation in constitutively stressed artery walls, suggesting that expression of IL-1 is likely to have a significant role in signaling artery wall damage

Establishment and characterization of a new human pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell line with high metastatic potential to the lung

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Pancreatic cancer is still associated with devastating prognosis. Real progress in treatment options has still not been achieved. Therefore new models are urgently needed to investigate this deadly disease. As a part of this process we have established and characterized a new human pancreatic cancer cell line.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The newly established pancreatic cancer cell line PaCa 5061 was characterized for its morphology, growth rate, chromosomal analysis and mutational analysis of the K-<it>ras</it>, EGFR and p53 genes. Gene-amplification and RNA expression profiles were obtained using an Affymetrix microarray, and overexpression was validated by IHC analysis. Tumorigenicity and spontaneous metastasis formation of PaCa 5061 cells were analyzed in pfp^-/-/rag2^-/-mice. Sensitivity towards chemotherapy was analysed by MTT assay.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>PaCa 5061 cells grew as an adhering monolayer with a doubling time ranging from 30 to 48 hours. M-FISH analyses showed a hypertriploid complex karyotype with multiple numerical and unbalanced structural aberrations. Numerous genes were overexpressed, some of which have previously been implicated in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (GATA6, IGFBP3, IGFBP6), while others were detected for the first time (MEMO1, RIOK3). Specifically highly overexpressed genes (fold change > 10) were identified as EGFR, MUC4, CEACAM1, CEACAM5 and CEACAM6. Subcutaneous transplantation of PaCa 5061 into pfp^-/-/rag2^-/-mice resulted in formation of primary tumors and spontaneous lung metastasis.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The established PaCa 5061 cell line and its injection into pfp^-/-/rag2^-/-mice can be used as a new model for studying various aspects of the biology of human pancreatic cancer and potential treatment approaches for the disease.</p

Business process modelling - languages, goals, and variabilities

Zsfassung in dt. SpracheOver the last decade more and more companies started to optimize their business processes in a way to meet its business goals. They develop business process mod- els defining which activities have to be executed in which order under which con- ditions by whom and by using which resources. For this purpose a lot of different approaches to business process modelling have been developed, which resulted in many different Business Process Modelling Languages (BPMLs). The definition of a business process has to cover many different aspects (e.g. con- trol flow, organizational view, data view, etc.). A perfect business process modelling approach would address all the different aspects. Unfortunately, none of the exist- ing approaches provides concepts for addressing all of these aspects.Each of them concentrates on some aspects. The focus on certain aspects is mainly due to the different applications areas, e.g. business engineering or software engineering etc. Although BPMLs are well established in industry and science, a comprehensive evaluation or a framework for an evaluation to compare the different BPMLs is still missing. Thus, it is the goal of this thesis to provide an evaluation framework for the comparison of BPMLs and to apply this framework in the evaluation of the currently most popular BPMLs. The resulting framework is based on a generic metamodel that captures all of the concepts appearing in any of the state-of-the-art BPMLs. On a high level this framework addresses the following views:Business Process Context Perspective, Behavioural Perspective, Functional Perspective, In- formational Perspective, and Organisational Perspective. An evaluation based on this framework checks whether the certain aspects in each of these perspectives is supported by the concepts of each of the considered BPMLs. In the evaluation of this thesis, we used the following languages: UML 2 Activity Diagram, Business Process Modelling Notation, Event Driven Process Chain, IDEF3, Petri Net, Role Activity Diagram. According to the evaluation we were able to identify three main problems in current BPMLs. The first problem is that the definition of the dependency be- tween business processes and their supporting software systems is inadequately supported. In our approach we support the elicitation of requirements from busi- ness process models for the software systems to be developed by extending current BPMLs with software requirements and components to ensure a business-goal ori- ented software development. The second problem concerns the variability of similar, but well-distinguished software products within a software product line. These software products not only differ in its structural definition, but also in the process to create them. Today, vari- ability modelling is a domain specific modelling technique that is limited to the structural definition of similar software products. In our approach we extend the concepts of variability modeling to integrate the dynamical aspects into the UML. The resulting approach is based on a well defined dependency between UML class diagrams and UML activity diagrams. The third problem is that current conceptual BPMLs do not provide explicit mod- elling means for process goals and their measures. The modelling of goals and its monitoring is a critical step in business process modeling. Hence, we extend the metamodels of UML 2 AD, EPC and BPMN with business process goals and per- formance measures. These concepts become explicitly visible in the corresponding models. Furthermore, a mapping of the performance measures onto the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) enables their monitoring in an execution envi- ronment.11

Sensorik für Photovoltaikmonitorsystem

Das Ziel dieser Arbeit besteht darin, ein Sensorikkonzept für ein Photovoltaikanlagen-Monitoringsystem auszuarbeiten, welches unter anderem besonderes Augenmerk auf den Einsatz in Photovoltaik-Forschungsanlagen legt. Des Weiteren ist ein einfacher Sensorkonten zur Messwerterfassung zu realisieren. In dieser Arbeit werden zunächst aktuell verfügbare Monitoringsysteme analysiert und deren Nachteile beim Einsatz in Forschungsanlagen aufgezeigt. An Hand der gewonnenen Erkenntnisse wird ein Konzept für die Messwerterfassung in der Photovoltaikanlage erstellt, wobei Forschungsanlagen eine besondere Berücksichtigung finden. Ausgehend vom erstellten Konzept wird die Hardware für einen einfachen Sensorknoten, welcher allgemeine Grundfunktionen bereitstellt, realisiert. Im folgenden Kapitel wird die Implementierung der für den Sensorknoten erforderlichen Software erläutert.Abschließend ist die Inbetriebnahme eines Sensorknotens dokumentiert, wobei die Ergebnisse mit den Erwartungen verglichen werde

RESTful web applications with reactive, partial server-side processing in Java EE

Zusammenfassung in deutscher SpracheKlassische Webapplikationen senden zu viele Daten vom Webserver zum Browser des Benutzers, weil für jede Server-Anfrage eine vollständige Seite generiert und übertragen wird, obwohl sich nur Teile dieser Seite wirklich ändern. Diese Verschwendung von Server- und Netzwerk-Ressourcen führt zu einem verminderten Nutzererlebnis, aufgrund der längeren Anfrage- und Übertragungszeiten. In Wirklichkeit reicht es vollkommen aus nur die Teile der aktuellen Seite neu zu berechnen und zu übertragen, welche sich auch tatsächlich ändern, wohingegen alle anderen Teile der Seite unverändert bleiben können. Dieser Ansatz, welcher unter dem Begriff "single-page Webapplikationen" bekannt ist, kann mit Hilfe von AJAX implementiert werden, wobei das jedoch zu neuen Problemen führt, wie z.B. schlechterer Unterstützung für direkte Links zu jeder beliebigen Seite der Webapplikation oder verminderter Funktionalität des Zurück-Buttons des Browsers auf der Webseite. Durch die Verwendung der HTML5 History API können diese Probleme jedoch beseitigt werden. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es die HTML5 History API auf deklarative Weise (d.h. mittels spezieller Syntax anstatt expliziter Aufrufe der API) in Java EE einzubinden. Realisiert wird dieses Ziel durch die Entwicklung eines neuen Webframeworks für die Erstellung von single-page Webapplikationen, basierend auf etablierten Java EE Standards, genannt Mascherl. Dieses Framework nutzt partielles Rendering zusammen mit AJAX und der HTML5 History API, damit die resultierende Webapplikation bookmarkfähige Internetadressen verwendet sowie die Zurück- und Vorwärts-Buttons des Browsers wie erwartet unterstützt, obwohl rein technisch der Webbrowser immer auf derselben Webseite bleibt. Das Berechnen und Rendern der partiellen Aktualisierungen der Webseite geschieht dabei vollständig am Server, im Unterschied zu bekannten Vertretern von "single-page Webapplikationen", die auf JavaScript basieren, wie z.B. AngularJS, EmberJS, oder dem Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Außerdem beschäftigt sich diese Arbeit mit dem weit verbreiteten Skalierbarkeitsproblem von aktuellen Webapplikationen, welches hauptsächlich durch die Verwendung von zustandsorientierten Webservern sowie synchroner, blockierender Anfragebearbeitung entsteht. Mit dem neu entwickelten Webframework ist es möglich Webapplikationen zu erstellen, welche dem REST-Paradigma genügen und die Installation auf einem zustandslosen Java EE Server erlauben. Eine horizontale Skalierung dieser Applikationen ist somit ohne Weiteres möglich. Zusätzlich können Benutzer-Anfragen auch asynchron und ohne Blockieren eines Server-Threads abgearbeitet werden, wodurch eine große Anzahl von Anfragen gleichzeitig bedient werden kann. Darüber hinaus wird die Zweckmäßigkeit das Webframeworks anhand einer Beispielapplikation präsentiert. Diese Applikation wird weiters für die Evaluierung der Performanz des Webframeworks herangezogen.Classic web applications are sending too much data from the web server to the client browser, because they are using full page requests, although only parts of the UI are actually changing. This implies that resources on the web server and network traffic are wasted, and furthermore the user experience suffers, because of longer response times. In fact, it is sufficient to only re-render those parts of the current web page, which are actually changing, whereas the other parts of the page can remain unchanged. This approach, called single-page web applications, can be implemented using AJAX, unfortunately, introducing problems like decreased bookmarkability and reduced back-button support. However, by introducing the HTML5 history API, these problems can be circumvented. This thesis aims to add declarative support (i.e. using special syntax rather then having to call the API manually) for using the HTML5 history API with Java EE by developing a novel web application framework, built on existing Java EE standards, for creating single-page web applications, called Mascherl. This framework employs partial-page rendering using AJAX in combination with the history API, in order to make the resulting single-page web application bookmarkable, and to allow the browser's back- and forward-buttons to work as expected. The framework uses server-side rendering with partial model evaluation for the partial-page updates, as opposed to client-side rendering used in popular JavaScript single-page web application frameworks like AngularJS, EmberJS, or Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Moreover, this thesis also addresses the scalability problem of prevalent web frameworks, which mainly exists because of the usage of stateful servers and synchronous, blocking request processing. Using the resulting framework, it is possible to create RESTful single-page web applications, which run on stateless Java EE servlet containers, and can therefore be horizontally scaled without further considerations. In addition, the framework has built-in support for asynchronous, non-blocking request handling, which allows the web application server to serve a great number of concurrent requests without blocking. On top, this thesis presents an example application, which is built using the developed framework. This example application is then used for evaluating the framework's performance.12

Management of applied analytics: The role of executives for the shift to analytics-based decision-making in a corporate context

This publication-based dissertation examines human-related success factors for the implementation and application of data analytics tools and methods within the decision-making process of organizations. Generated insights on human-related factors are outlined and described in six chapters. First, a general introduction to the subject is provided and the research is positioned within a broader overall context. Additionally, the first section comprises a summary of the research papers included, along with publication information. Chapter 2 presents a systematic literature review summarizing the capabilities of Big Data analytics (BDA) with regard to firm performance. Five key capability clusters have been identified to categorize all relevant human-related capabilities across existing research to date. Chapter 3 presents an empirical research paper examining the relevant managerial aspects that must be considered when shifting from intuitive to analytics-based decision-making. Introducing a six-factor framework, the chapter outlines the findings of an indepth single case study of a German manufacturing organization that has already implemented analytical methods and tools within its decision processes. Chapter 4 contains the second empirical paper, which outlines the crucial role that executives play within the process of a firm’s digital transformation toward the application of analytics. Based on conducted interviews, four managerial archetypes are identified, with detailed descriptions of their characteristics, capabilities, and contribution to transformation. Chapter 5 introduces a teaching case study that sheds light on best practices relevant to the application of analytics. This case study describes the most critical factors for success in the use of an AI tool using an example from Wilo, a leading German manufacturer of pumps and pump systems. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the findings of this publication-based dissertation, outlines its contributions to academia and practice, and presents its limitations and potential avenues for future research

Extending the EPC with Performance Measures

The Event-Driven Process Chain (EPC) is designed for modelling business processes, but does not yet include any means for measuring the performance of a business process. Thus, we extend the metamodel of the EPC with performance measures to make them conceptually visible. The extensions are tested with an example business process

Management of applied analytics: The role of executives for the shift to analytics-based decision-making in a corporate context

This publication-based dissertation examines human-related success factors for the implementation and application of data analytics tools and methods within the decision-making process of organizations. Generated insights on human-related factors are outlined and described in six chapters. First, a general introduction to the subject is provided and the research is positioned within a broader overall context. Additionally, the first section comprises a summary of the research papers included, along with publication information. Chapter 2 presents a systematic literature review summarizing the capabilities of Big Data analytics (BDA) with regard to firm performance. Five key capability clusters have been identified to categorize all relevant human-related capabilities across existing research to date. Chapter 3 presents an empirical research paper examining the relevant managerial aspects that must be considered when shifting from intuitive to analytics-based decision-making. Introducing a six-factor framework, the chapter outlines the findings of an indepth single case study of a German manufacturing organization that has already implemented analytical methods and tools within its decision processes. Chapter 4 contains the second empirical paper, which outlines the crucial role that executives play within the process of a firm’s digital transformation toward the application of analytics. Based on conducted interviews, four managerial archetypes are identified, with detailed descriptions of their characteristics, capabilities, and contribution to transformation. Chapter 5 introduces a teaching case study that sheds light on best practices relevant to the application of analytics. This case study describes the most critical factors for success in the use of an AI tool using an example from Wilo, a leading German manufacturer of pumps and pump systems. Finally, Chapter 6 summarizes the findings of this publication-based dissertation, outlines its contributions to academia and practice, and presents its limitations and potential avenues for future research

Sensorik für Photovoltaikmonitorsystem

Das Ziel dieser Arbeit besteht darin, ein Sensorikkonzept für ein Photovoltaikanlagen-Monitoringsystem auszuarbeiten, welches unter anderem besonderes Augenmerk auf den Einsatz in Photovoltaik-Forschungsanlagen legt. Des Weiteren ist ein einfacher Sensorkonten zur Messwerterfassung zu realisieren. In dieser Arbeit werden zunächst aktuell verfügbare Monitoringsysteme analysiert und deren Nachteile beim Einsatz in Forschungsanlagen aufgezeigt. An Hand der gewonnenen Erkenntnisse wird ein Konzept für die Messwerterfassung in der Photovoltaikanlage erstellt, wobei Forschungsanlagen eine besondere Berücksichtigung finden. Ausgehend vom erstellten Konzept wird die Hardware für einen einfachen Sensorknoten, welcher allgemeine Grundfunktionen bereitstellt, realisiert. Im folgenden Kapitel wird die Implementierung der für den Sensorknoten erforderlichen Software erläutert.Abschließend ist die Inbetriebnahme eines Sensorknotens dokumentiert, wobei die Ergebnisse mit den Erwartungen verglichen werde