How costumers’ way of life influence the value co-creation

Purpose: This article is a contribution to the understanding of how value arises in wellestablished markets, and under which circumstances actors integrate resources from different service ecosystems to generate value. To understand this phenomenon, it is fundamental to consider which practices are performed by customers to co-create value and how they do so. Design/Methodology/Approach: Using a qualitative approach, the study provides fresh empirical insight into well-established market processes of value creation. After a literature review an ethnographic approach was chosen in order to understand how co-creation processes occur in the empirical setting of an international restaurant chain. Several observations, conversations and semi-structured interviews were undertaken concerning the analysis of the topic under study. Findings: The results show that even in a well-established market, a provider must consider individual customers’ distinct needs, present in their daily practices, to be able to assist them in the value creation process. It is argued that the practice styles are the building blocks for prevailing ways of life that actors assume, according to the context in which they are, to integrate resources. Practical implications: The study includes implications for service providers of a wellfounded market for facilitating value co-creation along with customers and fulfils the need to better understand this phenomenon. Originality/Value: Recent studies call for empirical evidence on co-creation processes in mature markets, accordingly, this study brings an additional understanding on how actors, depending on the context, adopt different ways of life that require unique resources, which activate to achieve what they want, in order to establish room for co-creation.peer-reviewe

Gaussian random field-based log odds occupancy mapping

This paper focuses on mapping problem with known robot pose in static environments and proposes a Gaussian random field-based log odds occupancy mapping (GRF-LOOM). In this method, occupancy probability is regarded as an unknown parameter and the dependence between parameters are considered. Given measurements and the dependence, the parameters of not only observed space but also unobserved space can be predicted. The occupancy probabilities in log odds form are regarded as a GRF. This mapping task can be solved by the well-known prediction equation in Gaussian processes, which involves an inverse problem. Instead of the prediction equation, a new recursive algorithm is also proposed to avoid the inverse problem. Finally, the proposed method is evaluated in simulations

Time-bounded distributed QoS-aware service configuration in heterogeneous cooperative environments

The scarcity and diversity of resources among the devices of heterogeneous computing environments may affect their ability to perform services with specific Quality of Service constraints, particularly in dynamic distributed environments where the characteristics of the computational load cannot always be predicted in advance. Our work addresses this problem by allowing resource constrained devices to cooperate with more powerful neighbour nodes, opportunistically taking advantage of global distributed resources and processing power. Rather than assuming that the dynamic configuration of this cooperative service executes until it computes its optimal output, the paper proposes an anytime approach that has the ability to tradeoff deliberation time for the quality of the solution. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed anytime algorithms are able to quickly find a good initial solution and effectively optimise the rate at which the quality of the current solution improves at each iteration, with an overhead that can be considered negligible

Iterative refinement approach for QOS-Aware service configuration

In heterogeneous environments, diversity of resources among the devices may affect their ability to perform services with specific QoS constraints, and drive peers to group themselves in a coalition for cooperative service execution. The dynamic selection of peers should be influenced by user’s QoS requirements as well as local computation availability, tailoring provided service to user’s specific needs. However, complex dynamic real-time scenarios may prevent the possibility of computing optimal service configurations before execution. An iterative refinement approach with the ability to trade off deliberation time for the quality of the solution is proposed. We state the importance of quickly finding a good initial solution and propose heuristic evaluation functions that optimise the rate at which the quality of the current solution improves as the algorithms have more time to run

A Logística no contexto da interoperabilidade dos meios operacionais

O presente estudo avalia as oportunidades e os desafios colocados à logística genética das Forças Armadas portuguesas, no contexto da interoperabilidade dos meios operacionais, face ao novo ambiente estratégico internacional verificado nos princípios do século XXI. Utilizando a metodologia hipotético dedutiva estuda-se as razões que levam as Forças Armadas dos países ocidentais a considerar como fundamental a interoperabilidade dos seus sistemas de armas e equipamentos, entre outros, para responder aos compromissos internacionais através da realização de operações conjuntas e ou combinadas. Procura-se analisar o quadro de legislação e de regulamentação nacional que ordena a actividade de logística genética nacional para perceber as possibilidades conjunturais do país, a fim de conseguir a interoperabilidade dos seus sistemas com os das Forças Armadas de países aliados. Posteriormente, analisa-se, quer no quadro da Aliança quer no da União Europeia, a evolução das metodologias que têm sido adoptadas para obter a interoperabilidade de armamentos e equipamentos a fim de conseguir melhorar a eficiência e aumentar a eficácia das operações. Finalmente, concluiu-se sobre a melhor forma de ultrapassar as dificuldades colocadas a um pequeno país, de forma a manter-se actualizado e em equidade com os restantes países das organizações internacionais a que pertence. Abstract: The present study evaluates both the opportunities and the challenges facing the genetic logistics of the Portuguese Armed Forces, in a context of operational interoperability required by the new 21st century strategic environment. Following a hypothetical deductive method, we studied the reasons that made the Western Armed Forces deem the interoperability between their arm systems and equipment to be fundamental to address international commitments by carrying out joint and/or combined operations. We endeavoured to analyse the national legal framework and regulations that define our genetic logistical activities, in order to ascertain the national possibilities to achieve interoperability between our systems and those of the Allied Armed Forces. We then analysed the evolution of the methodologies applied by both the Alliance and the EU to attain armament and equipment interoperability in order to improve the operations efficiency and effectiveness. Finally, we reached some conclusions concerning the best way to overcome the difficulties faced by a small nation, in order to remain up-to-date and in line with the other members of the international organizations we are part of

The capacity exchange protocol

This paper proposes a new strategy to integrate shared resources and precedence constraints among real-time tasks, assuming no precise information on critical sections and computation times is available. The concept of bandwidth inheritance is combined with a capacity sharing and stealing mechanism to efficiently exchange bandwidth among tasks to minimise the degree of deviation from the ideal system’s behaviour caused by inter-application blocking. The proposed Capacity Exchange Protocol (CXP) is simpler than other proposed solutions for sharing resources in open real-time systems since it does not attempt to return the inherited capacity in the same exact amount to blocked servers. This loss of optimality is worth the reduced complexity as the protocol’s behaviour nevertheless tends to be fair and outperforms the previous solutions in highly dynamic scenarios as demonstrated by extensive simulations. A formal analysis of CXP is presented and the conditions under which it is possible to guarantee hard real-time tasks are discussed