Inter- & Intradepartmental Knowledge Management Barriers when Offering Single Unit Solutions

The Business-to-Business market is increasingly characterized by customers asking for solutions fitting their infrastructure and functional requirements in a short timeframe. The high frequency of such single unit solutions together with the unpredictable and often very specific customer requests impose a challenge onto the supplier’s knowledge management. This paper analyses current corresponding knowledge management barriers, which hamper the production process, in particular, because of misunderstandings between sales and engineering departments. The aggregation of the results of a literature review and an empirical study identifies three measures for overcoming these barriers in order to establish a global culture of knowledge sharing

Asking Why: Towards Conscious Decision-making in times of VUCA

To ensure an organization’s long-term success in times of vulnerability, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity it is fundamental that organizations focus on continuous adaptation. The key to success is to understand why to adapt and what to achieve to ensure that all initiatives and measures achieve new internal and/or external value for the organization. Today, digitalization gets simultaneously perceived as threat and opportunity. One problem is that digitalization is not clearly defined and thus intangible. However, established organizations must be careful to not mistake digitalization as a goal in itself. Just adopting IT-tools does not lead to success. Thus, the from Digital Vagueness to Aligned, Lifelong Understanding and Evaluation Canvas (Digital V ALUE Canvas) aims to support and guide organizations in identifying, designing and implementing value-driven solutions. To ensure the value proposition’s uniqueness and competitiveness it is key that it is built on the organization’s strengths and enabled by today’s digital possibilities

Tourism as an Instrument of Peace--Is Cross-cultural Preparation the Answer? Rationale and Methodology

Communication and work with members of other cultures is essential, especially in the tourist industry. Individuals have their own customs, values, and traditions and it is difficult to overcome them to see the importance of other cultures. This judgmental view is the root of difficulties in relating on equal terms with people of another culture. Cross-cultural awareness and communication skills are useful in helping to overcome cultural differences and to develop tourism as an instrument of education and peace

Reduzierung des Keimdrucks durch alternative Desinfektionsverfahren

In der ökologischen Schweinehaltung, insbesondere in der Ferkelerzeugung, sind vielfältige Gesundheitsprobleme bekannt. Häufige Ursachen sind pathogene Keime, die sich nur durch ein konsequentes Hygienemanagement bewältigen lassen. Dieses setzt sich aus verschiedenen Maßnahmen zusammen. Reinigung und Desinfektion sind ein Teil davon. Im ökologischen Landbau werden Alternativen zu den chemisch Hilfsmitteln bevorzugt. Im Bereich der Desinfektion von Stallungen sind chemische Desinfektionsmittel aber auch alternative Desinfektionsverfahren in der Praxis anzutreffen. Die LandwirtInnen betreiben einen nicht unerheblichen Arbeitsaufwand mit alternativen Desinfektionsverfahren wobei die Wirksamkeit in der Praxis relativ unbekannt ist. Daher sollte in einer Untersuchung geklärt werden, welche alternativen Desinfektionsverfahren sich für die Reduzierung des Keimdruckes eignen. Ausgewählt wurden die Verfahren: Abflammen, Heisswasserdampf und Elektroaktiviertes Wasser im Vergleich zur einem chemischen Desinfektionsmittel auf Basis von Peressigsäure sowie der Kontrolle (nur Hochdruckreiniger). Der Versuch wurde in eine Exaktversuchsphase sowie eine Praxisversuchsphase aufgeteilt. In der Exaktversuchsphase wurden Abferkelbuchten gleicher Bauart und Grösse mit Materialplatten ergänzt, um die in der Praxis gängigen Stallbaumaterialien (Holz, Kunststoff, Beton und Epoxid) zu erfassen. In einem ersten Durchgang führte, unabhängig von der Oberfläche, die Desinfektion mit Elektroaktiviertem Wasser (Nades®), Peressigsäure, Dampf und Abflammen zu einer Reduktion der Keime um 98.1, 98.3, 99.7 und 96.2%. Auch für die Kontrollbuchten wurde ein Keimrückgang von 91.0% gemessen. In einem weiteren Durchgang wurden Reduktionen von 96.6, 85.3, 88.6 und 75.8% und 80.2% für die Kontrollbuchten gemessen. Nur im ersten Durchgang konnten im Vergleich zur Kontrolle Unterschiede für die Desinfektion mit Peressigsäure und Heissdampf signifikant (p beide < 0.05) bestimmt werden. Insgesamt zeigte sich v.a. anhand der geringen Streuung, dass die Dampfdesinfektion im Vergleich zu anderen zu konsistent hoher Keimreduktion führt: 99.7 +- 0.67 % Reduktion (n=16). Die Ergebnisse aus der Exaktversuchsphase liessen darauf schliessen, dass die Desinfektionsverfahren Dampf und Peressigsäure am effizientesten bezüglich Keimreduktion sind. Diese beiden Verfahren wurden auf vier Praxisbetriebe implementiert und bezüglich Wirksamkeit und Praxistauglichkeit geprüft. Dabei wurde festgestellt, dass die chemische Desinfektion mit einem Peressigsäureprodukt bezüglich Anwendbarkeit und Kostenaufwand der Dampfdesinfektion vorzuziehen ist. Es wird geschlussfolgert, dass keines der getesteten alternativen Desinfektionsverfahren eine Alternative zur chemischen Desinfektion bezüglich Keimreduktion, Arbeitsaufwand und Kosten darstellt

'License to VIT’ - A Design Taxonomy for Visual Inquiry Tools

Visual Inquiry Tools are valuable assets to work conjointly on an ill-structured or wicked problem and solve it creatively. With visual inquiry tools, designers can sketch the problem-space of an artifact-to-be-designed and generate solutions in a priori defined ontological elements. While there exists guidance in how visual inquiry tools should be designed content-wise, there is a lack of clarification on the design options available to design them. Subsequently, the paper proposes a taxonomy of visual inquiry tools outlining options for their design. We do this by incorporating a sample of 24 visual inquiry tools developed in the scientific literature corpus as well as 15 through empirical example

Analyzing and Evaluating today’s Power of Open Source: The Open Source Value Canvas

The drastically progressing digitalization of society and economy shines a new light on the open-source paradigm. Previously, open-source was merely a developer paradigm to share code openly and make it available to others. However, given the need for innovation and optimization, companies can leverage open-source components to use out of the box, build services on top, or replace commodifiable services. Subsequently, there is great potential to create new value in companies using open-source components. To assist companies and researchers in achieving this, the paper presents the Open Source Value Canvas for companies’ collaborative and interdisciplinary identification of open-source value. It particularly aims at analyzing and aligning the open-source potentials from the business and IT perspectives. We draw on rich insights from an ongoing research project providing tailored open-source components for the European logistics sector

Fault-Tolerant Computing With Biased-Noise Superconducting Qubits

We present a universal scheme of pulsed operations for the IBM oscillator-stabilized flux qubit comprising the CPHASE gate, single-qubit preparations and measurements. Based on numerical simulations, we argue that the error rates for these operations can be as low as about .5% and that noise is highly biased, with phase errors being stronger than all other types of errors by a factor of nearly 10^3. In contrast, the design of a CNOT gate for this system with an error rate of less than about 1.2% seems extremely challenging. We propose a special encoding which exploits the noise bias allowing us to implement a logical CNOT gate where phase errors and all other types of errors have nearly balanced rates of about .4%. Our results illustrate how the design of an encoding scheme can be adjusted and optimized according to the available physical operations and the particular noise characteristics of experimental devices.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure

Transformer(s) of the Logistics Industry - Enabling Logistics Companies to Excel with Digital Platforms

Platformization is a prevailing trend that changes industries at their core. The rise and dominance of platform-based companies require incumbent companies and start-ups to rethink how they approach that novel challenge and leverage its full potential. To successfully steer and initiate this digitally enabled industry transformation, even in traditional industries like logistics, the incumbent companies require IT and specific platform design support. However, designing a digital platform is a complex task riddled with design options, potential pitfalls, and complex underlying mechanisms. Consequently, research and practice require tools to leverage past design knowledge and generate digital platforms in a goal-oriented fashion. This paper addresses precisely that issue as we report on a design science research study that developed a visual inquiry tool for digital platform design. Ultimately, the visual inquiry tool provides researchers and practitioners with the means to develop digital platforms more efficiently and strategically

Federal Platform Ecosystems to Counter Monopolists: A Value-Based Vision for the Logistics Industry

Today, we observe the platformization of many industries. Although most platforms fail, a few monopolists have the potential to completely transform industries and their competitive dynamics. In contrast to this, European values, e.g., democracy and freedom, aim to protect today’s variety of companies and offers. This paper’s goal is to protect European values and companies’ competitiveness against potential monopolists. We suggest founding and governing federal platform ecosystems following the “swarm intelligence” principle where many small(er) organizations collaboratively fight off monopolists. While this is currently still a new and untested concept, we selected a use case to make it more tangible and adaptable. The government-funded project aims at a vision for the Logistics Broker (LB) – which is envisioned to become the center-piece of the German logistics industry’s federal platform ecosystem. To analyze the context, role, and stakeholders we conducted a workshop study and propose an agenda for future research

Un ejemplo de mundialización: los biombos en el comercio del Pacífico

Cartel de Mesa Redonda celebrada en la Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Sevilla, 9 de febrero de 2011.Actividad enmarcada en el Proyecto de Excelencia "El Pacífico Hispano: imágenes, conocimiento y poder" (PO9-HUM-5392), aprobado y financiado por la Junta de Andalucía (2010-2013).Peer reviewe