Browsing by Subject "Standardization"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Exploring the impact of lean design and lean supply chain management on an organization’s innovation capability.
    (2010-06) Taylor, Ryan Douglas
    This thesis analyzes and discusses how implementing lean design and lean supply chain management affect an organization’s innovation capabilities. Since lean concepts focus on low risk, short-term gradual improvement of existing processes and products with an emphasis on eliminating any and all wastes in the system, applying lean to an organization often implies difficulties in promoting innovations that involve high risks and dramatic changes. Little is known about how lean design and lean supply chain management concepts might affect an organization’s innovation capability and its responsiveness to react quickly to changes brought by radical innovations. These relationships were investigated and analyzed based on findings from two online surveys. Seventy-six and seventy-seven respondents were acquired from the two surveys, respectively. Results suggest that the stressed importance of standardization in lean design has a negative effect on an organization’s radical and architectural innovation capability. It is also shown that disruptive innovation capability will be negatively influenced by value analysis in lean design, especially in terms of how an organization ranks product attributes and allocates resources based on customer requirements. For the impact on an organization’s responsiveness to radical innovations, the findings suggest no impact from minimizing buffers in a lean supply chain but a positive impact from increasing supplier commitment and involvement levels.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The impact of the demand for integration in the large multi-business unit firm on the IT organization structure
    (2012-06) Larson, Eric Christopher
    Large, multi-business unit firms are decentralizing their overall corporate structures. At the same time, the structures of their IT organizations are becoming more centralized. This is contrary to current wisdom that the IT organization structure will mimic the structure of the corporation, all else being equal. Because the general business environment is increasingly uncertain, the trend in decision rights for the corporation has favored decentralization, yet the IT organization has not followed. Empirical work in the domain of IT organization structure has focused narrowly on the locus of decision rights (centralization/decentralization). This paper extends the existing literature by taking a broader approach to conceptualizing IT organization structure to include the dimensions of standardization, formalization, centralization and configuration. We provide evidence of a dramatic change in the IT organization structure toward more standardization, more formalization, more centralization, a configuration emphasizing headquarters IT and higher CIO Rank. We also provide an explanation for this unexpected trend by empirically testing the impact of the demand for integration on IT organization structure using data representing 186 Fortune 1000 firms over the period 1993-2009. We further provide evidence that suggests that the structure of the IT organization moderates the generally harmful influence that the demand for integration has on the performance of the firm. Understanding this phenomenon is critical to managing the IT organization in the most cost-effective manner. Since IT expenditure is a significant portion of overall capital investment for most firms, improving the efficiency of the IT operation significantly impacts the bottom line. Better understanding of the contextual factors that impact the organization of the IT function allows IT managers to modify the organization structure in meaningful ways and to anticipate and manage expectations regarding how the context impacts the role that IT plays in the larger firm. Additionally, the results of this study are notable for the top management team of large multi-business unit firms. The fact that information pervades the modern firm means that the appropriate design of the IT organization deeply impacts both the top-line revenue growth and the cost-efficiency of the businesses of the firm.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Leveraging ADL Archetypes by transforming them to AML Archetypes
    (2015-08) Sharma, Deepak
    The Clinical Information Modeling Initiative (CIMI) has developed the Archetype Modeling Language (AML) specifications, which is now an Object Management Group (OMG) standard. The AML is for modeling archetypes using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The development of the AML specifications is part of one of the goals for CIMI - to deliver a shared repository of clinical models that is open and free to use. The AML is an attractive option to create, reuse and extend archetypes and the ability to share these archetypes greatly improves interoperability. AML is new standard with lot of promises and benefits, but lacks support of any tooling to get started with creating AML archetypes easily. The ADL archetypes are built using a proprietary format and hence lack an easy gateway to Model-Driven Architecture. The author has created maps for transforming existing archetypes in the OpenEHR's Archetype Definition Language (ADL) to AML workspace. These proven mappings bridge the gap between ADL and AML by providing seamless transition and leverage the ADL archetypes to the AML modeling workspace. This thesis is about these mappings and their implementation.