The Heatex-Model - Multi-Cultural Business Process Development

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a model for business process improvement that integrates national culture aspects to achieve sustainable performance improvement. Research questions: * How can national culture aspects be combined into a business process management model? * What is the difference between mapping methods? * How do they relate to each other and their intended scope? Research procedure: This project takes place from September 2014 to March 2015. During this time the researcher spent October – mid December at Heatex subsidiary in Shanghai, looking at the order to delivery process for the rotor production line. By first conducting a literary review of business process management, and development with a specific focus on business process mapping. This study has compared different business process mapping techniques into a business process management model that was applied to the case company. As an attempt to further understand a foreign process the Hofstede framework was also integrated into the business process management model. The idea was to better be able to predict the process reaction to changes and be able to develop a suggestions that could create sustainable change and improve overall performance. Results: The implemented improvements in the production process at Heatex Shanghai are: * A KPI system for measuring performance * A new and more efficient layout for the spinning line * Tool-belts and –carts Based on the experience and research procedure used in this study the Heatex model for multi-cultural process improvement were developed. It is a ten step model that combines previously established process management models with Hofstede’s model for culture dimensions: 1. Identified goal, opportunity or problem 2. Assemble team 3. Draw boundaries 4. Examine process 5. Evaluate issues 6. Find cause 7. Culture analysis 8. Develop solutions 9. Implement 10. Evaluate process Conclusions: The purpose of this study is to develop a model for business process improvement that integrates national culture aspects to achieve sustainable performance improvement. It is a growing need for companies to develop their processes that cross national and cultural boarders. The Heatex model presents a suggestion for how the Hofstede culture research can be applied to gain knowledge about a foreign culture. This can help to extract trustworthy data as well as be used as a tool to achieve sustainable process change. This study conducted a literary review over different mapping methods in order to further deepen the knowledge about process mapping. Based on this theory a theoretical model was developed for how to apply different process mapping techniques. By applying these mapping methods to Heatex Shanghai further conclusions could be drawn about how process mapping should be conducted. By answering the research questions this study provides an explanatory result between culture analysis and business process management, and within business process mapping

Experimentally Calibrated Kinetic Monte Carlo Model Reproduces Organic Solar Cell Current-Voltage Curve

Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations are a powerful tool to study the dynamics of charge carriers in organic photovoltaics. However, the key characteristic of any photovoltaic device, its current-voltage ($J$-$V$) curve under solar illumination, has proven challenging to simulate using KMC. The main challenges arise from the presence of injecting contacts and the importance of charge recombination when the internal electric field is low, i.e., close to open-circuit conditions. In this work, an experimentally calibrated KMC model is presented that can fully predict the $J$-$V$ curve of a disordered organic solar cell. It is shown that it is crucial to make experimentally justified assumptions on the injection barriers, the blend morphology, and the kinetics of the charge transfer state involved in geminate and nongeminate recombination. All of these properties are independently calibrated using charge extraction, electron microscopy, and transient absorption measurements, respectively. Clear evidence is provided that the conclusions drawn from microscopic and transient KMC modeling are indeed relevant for real operating organic solar cell devices.Comment: final version; license update

Modelling of glucose repression signalling in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Saccharomyces cerevisiae has a sophisticated signalling system that plays a crucial role in cellular adaptation to changing environments. The SNF1 pathway regulates energy homeostasis upon glucose derepression; hence, it plays an important role in various processes, such as metabolism, cell cycle and autophagy. To unravel its behaviour, SNF1 signalling has been extensively studied. However, the pathway components are strongly interconnected and inconstant; therefore, elucidating its dynamic behaviour based on experimental data only is challenging. To tackle this complexity, systems biology approaches have been successfully employed. This review summarizes the progress, advantages and disadvantages of the available mathematical modelling frameworks covering Boolean, dynamic kinetic, single-cell models, which have been used to study processes and phenomena ranging from crosstalks to sources of cell-to-cell variability in the context of SNF1 signalling. Based on the lessons from existing models, we further discuss how to develop a consensus dynamic mechanistic model of the entire SNF1 pathway that can provide novel insights into the dynamics of nutrient signalling

Fine-Tuning of Energy Levels Regulates SUC2 via a SNF1-Dependent Feedback Loop

Nutrient sensing pathways are playing an important role in cellular response to different energy levels. In budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the sucrose non-fermenting protein kinase complex SNF1 is a master regulator of energy homeostasis. It is affected by multiple inputs, among which energy levels is the most prominent. Cells which are exposed to a switch in carbon source availability display a change in the gene expression machinery. It has been shown that the magnitude of the change varies from cell to cell. In a glucose rich environment Snf1/Mig1 pathway represses the expression of its downstream target, such as SUC2. However, upon glucose depletion SNF1 is activated which leads to an increase in SUC2 expression. Our single cell experiments indicate that upon starvation, gene expression pattern of SUC2 shows rapid increase followed by a decrease to initial state with high cell-to-cell variability. The mechanism behind this behavior is currently unknown. In this work we study the long-term behavior of the Snf1/Mig1 pathway upon glucose starvation with a microfluidics and non-linear mixed effect modeling approach. We show a negative feedback mechanism, involving Snf1 and Reg1, which reduces SUC2 expression after the initial strong activation. Snf1 kinase activity plays a key role in this feedback mechanism. Our systems biology approach proposes a negative feedback mechanism that works through the SNF1 complex and is controlled by energy levels. We further show that Reg1 likely is involved in the negative feedback mechanism

Demokratin försvarare - En implementeringsstudie om jämställdhet i den offentliga förvaltningen

Denna studie studerar Försvarsmakten och Lunds universitet som två unika fall av svensk förvaltning ur ett implementeringsperspektiv rörande jämställdhet. Vi studerar jämställdhetsimplementering utifrån handläggandet av förvaltningarnas policys och utifrån nyckelpersoners berättelser. I denna uppsats studerar vi två strukturellt liknande organisationer men med vitt skilda verksamhetsområden och hur de arbetar med samma frågeställning; hur de implementerar jämställdhet. Båda har dock samma ansvar gentemot de svenska medborgarna, de är offentliga förvaltning och ska därför försvara våra demokrativärden där jämställdhet är ett utav dem. Båda förvaltningarna tror på att utbilda den egna personalen och att skapa hållbara strukturer för ett effektivt förändringsarbete. Båda stöter också på liknande problematik med deltagandet hos den egna personalen och utelämnar diskussionen om förankring inom den egna organisationen

Intelligenta Hus – Ett koncept för framtidens bostäder?

I takt med den tekniska utvecklingen som har skett de senaste decennierna har ett nytt begrepp och utförande gällande nya bostäder vuxit fram – Intelligenta hus. Detta innebär att byggnader automatiseras i större utsträckning och med hjälp av ett kommunikationssystem kan den boende kontrollera och styra hemmets funktioner efter närvaro och aktivitet. Denna studie ska utreda vilka funktioner som finns tillgängliga och hur kostnadsbilden ser ut för en småhusköpare. Då svenska myndigheter och EU ställer högre krav på att bostäder ska bli mer energieffektiva genomförs även en undersökning om vilken energibesparingspotential intelligent system har. En förutsättning för att den här typen av installation i nya bostäder ska få ett genombrott är att byggentreprenörer kan erbjuda den till sina beställare. Därför ska rapporten belysa möjligheter och hinder med en implementering av intelligenta hus

Scalable and flexible inference framework for stochastic dynamic single-cell models

Understanding the inherited nature of how biological processes dynamically change over time and exhibit intra- and inter-individual variability, due to the different responses to environmental stimuli and when interacting with other processes, has been a major focus of systems biology. The rise of single-cell fluorescent microscopy has enabled the study of those phenomena. The analysis of single-cell data with mechanistic models offers an invaluable tool to describe dynamic cellular processes and to rationalise cell-to-cell variability within the population. However, extracting mechanistic information from single-cell data has proven difficult. This requires statistical methods to infer unknown model parameters from dynamic, multi-individual data accounting for heterogeneity caused by both intrinsic (e.g. variations in chemical reactions) and extrinsic (e.g. variability in protein concentrations) noise. Although several inference methods exist, the availability of efficient, general and accessible methods that facilitate modelling of single-cell data, remains lacking. Here we present a scalable and flexible framework for Bayesian inference in state-space mixed-effects single-cell models with stochastic dynamic. Our approach infers model parameters when intrinsic noise is modelled by either exact or approximate stochastic simulators, and when extrinsic noise is modelled by either time-varying, or time-constant parameters that vary between cells. We demonstrate the relevance of our approach by studying how cell-to-cell variation in carbon source utilisation affects heterogeneity in the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae SNF1 nutrient sensing pathway. We identify hexokinase activity as a source of extrinsic noise and deduce that sugar availability dictates cell-to-cell variability

A new broad typology for rivers and lakes in Europe: Development and application for large-scale environmental assessments

European countries have defined >1000 national river types and >400 national lake types to implement the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). In addition, common river and lake types have been defined within regions of Europe for intercalibrating the national classification systems for ecological status of water bodies. However, only a low proportion of national types correspond to these common intercalibration types. This causes uncertainty concerning whether the classification of ecological status is consistent across countries. Therefore, through an extensive dialogue with and data provision from all EU countries, we have developed a generic typology for European rivers and lakes. This new broad typology reflects the natural variability in the most commonly used environmental type descriptors: altitude, size and geology, as well as mean depth for lakes. These broad types capture 60–70% of all national WFD types including almost 80% of all European river and lake water bodies in almost all EU countries and can also be linked to all the common intercalibration types. The typology provides a new framework for large-scale assessments across country borders, as demonstrated with an assessment of ecological status and pressures based on European data from the 2nd set of river basin management plans. The typology can also be used for a variety of other large-scale assessments, such as reviewing and linking the water body types to habitat types under the Habitats Directive and the European Nature Information System (EUNIS), as well as comparing type-specific limit values for nutrients and other supporting quality elements across countries. Thus, the broad typology can build the basis for all scientific outputs of managerial relevance related to water body types