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To assess the quality of a person’s sleep, it is essential to examine the sleep behaviour by identifying the several sleep stages, their durations and sleep cycles. The established and gold standard procedure for sleep stage scoring is overnight polysomnography (PSG) with the Rechtschaffen and Kales (R-K) method. Unfortunately, the conduct of PSG is time-consuming and unfamiliar for the subjects and might have an impact of the recorded data. To avoid the disadvantages with PSG, it is important to make further investigations in low-cost home diagnostic systems. For this intention it is necessary to find suitable bio vital parameters for classifying sleep stages without any physical impairments at the same time. Due to the promising results in several publications we want to analyse existing methods for sleep stage classification based on the parameters body movement,
heartbeat and respiration. Our aim was to find different behaviour patterns in the several sleep stages. Therefore, the average values of 15 whole-night PSG recordings -obtained from the ‘DREAMS
Subjects Database’- where analysed in the light of heartbeat, body movement and respiration with 10 different methods.
Für Führungskräfte sind Widersprüche und paradoxe Spannungen eine alltägliche Erfahrung. Dennoch sehen viele Führungskräfte Widersprüche als etwas an, das »eigentlich« nicht da sein sollte. Häufig blenden sie die widersprüchlichen Signale aus und ignorieren die Paradoxie. Oder sie nehmen die Spannungen als störend und belastend wahr und versuchen die Paradoxie zu lösen. Die Management- und Organisationsforschung zeigt jedoch: Paradoxien sind in Organisationen omnipräsent. Und sie sind nicht dauerhaft lösbar. Welche Konsequenzen hat das für unser Verständnis von Management?
Die Organisationsentwicklung hat eine bewegte Geschichte hinter sich und eine aussichtsreiche Zukunft vor sich. Die Kerngedanken der Organisationsentwicklung, die wesentlich durch die Forschungen von Kurt Lewin und Kollegen beeinflusst wurden, haben die theoretischen Vorstellungen über und praktische Handhabung von intentional gesteuerten Veränderungsprozessen wesentlich beeinflusst. Nachdem die Organisationsentwicklung über die Zeit strategischer und pragmatischer geworden ist, droht sie als eigenständige Methode zunehmend unkenntlich zu werden. In diesem Beitrag wird anhand von zwei Thesen argumentiert, dass eine zukunftsfähige Organisationsentwicklung die Grundidee der Partizipation in einer digitalen Arbeitswelt wieder stärken und sich reflektierter als bislang dem paradoxen Verhältnis zwischen Stabilität und Wandel annehmen müsste. Eine Organisationsentwicklung, die sich mit diesen Themen beschäftigt, ist zukunftsfähig und wird wesentlich die Art und Weise prägen, wie in Organisationen Veränderungen gestaltet werden.
Die neue DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 ist ein Meilenstein in der Normenentwicklung, da mit ihr die Zusammenführung unterschiedlicher Strukturen verschiedener Managementnormen erfolgt, die jetzt alle nach dem gleichen System strukturiert sind bzw. in Zukunft noch derart strukturiert werden. Außerdem spezifiziert sie Anforderungen in einigen Bereichen deutlich genauer und umfangreicher als dies bisher der Fall war. Dementsprechend müssen Unternehmen für eine Neu- oder Reakkreditierung ihre Organisation weiterentwickeln. Der folgende Artikel gibt einen Überblick über wesentliche Änderungen und den anzustrebenden Umgang damit.
In a digitally controlled slope shaping system, reliable detection of both voltage and current slope is required to enable a closed-loop control for various power switches independent of system parameters. In most state-of-the-art works, this is realized by monitoring the absolute voltage and current values. Better accuracy at lower DC power loss is achieved by sensing techniques for a reliable passive detection, which is achieved through avoiding DC paths from the high voltage network into the sensing network. Using a high-speed analog-to-digital converter, the whole waveform of the transient derivative can be stored digitally and prepared for a predictive cycle-by-cycle regulation, without requiring high-precision digital differentiation algorithms. To gain an accurate representation of the voltage and current derivative waveforms, system parasitics are investigated and classified in three sections: (1) component parasitics, which are identified by s-parameter measurements and extraction of equivalent circuit models, (2) PCB design issues related to the sensing circuit, and (3) interconnections between adjacent boards.
The contribution of this paper is an optimized sensing network on the basis of the experimental study supporting fast transition slopes up to 100 V/ns and 1 A/ns and beyond, making the sensing technique attractive for slope shaping of fast switching devices like modern generation IGBTs, CoolMOSTM and SiC mosfets. Measurements of the optimized dv/dt and di/dt setups are demonstrated for a hard switched IGBT power stage.
This paper presents a control strategy for optimal utilization of photovoltaic (PV) generated power in conjunction with an Energy Storage System (ESS). The ESS is specifically designed to be retrofitted into existing PV systems in an end-user application. It can be attached in parallel to the PV system and connects to existing DC/AC inverters. In particular, the study covers the impact such a modification has on the output power of existing PV panels. A distinct degradation of PV output power was found due to the different power characteristics of PV panel and ESS. To overcome such degradation a novel feedback system is proposed. The feedback system continuously modifies the power characteristic of the ESS to match the PV panel and thus achieves optimal power utilization. Impact on PV and power point tracking performance is analyzed. Simulation of the proposed system is performed in MATLAB/Simulink. The results are found to be satisfactory.
The digital transformation of our society changes the way we live, work, learn, communicate, and collaborate. This disruptive change drive current and next information processes and systems that are important business enablers for the context of digitization since years. Our aim is to support flexibility and agile transformations for both business domains and related information technology with more flexible enterprise information systems through adaptation and evolution of digital architectures. The present research paper investigates the continuous bottom-up integration of micro-granular architectures for a huge amount of dynamically growing systems and services, like microservices and the Internet of Things, as part of a new composed digital architecture. To integrate micro-granular architecture models into living architectural model versions we are extending enterprise architecture reference models by state of art elements for agile architectural engineering to support digital products, services, and processes.
There is no doubt that the amplification of channel integration towards an omni-channel structure is a powerful idea whose time has finally come. The digitally cross-linked world postulates all-encompassing, ubiquitous, and unobtrusive future services. In the concomitant, increasingly competitive market, retailers are starting to lay the foundation for omnichannel, meeting the expectations of a digitally cunning audience wanting their shopping experience to be as seamless and uncomplicated as possible. Nevertheless, recent researches show that there are still enough avenues for further research on omnichannel. Until now, the performance of companies was solely considered by experts from a suppliers’ point of view. It would be rather interesting to find out whether the desire to meet the increased cus-tomer expectations is also recognized by the customers themselves. This paper seeks to answering how the purchasing behavior has changed and what customers demand. In addition, it elaborates the opportunities that are promoted by omni-channel. Searching out all the effects, the paper will get to a final step, where it can be attested how the omnichannel performance of fashion and lifestyle retailers can be measured from a consumers’ perspective by developing an exclusive index. The study is confined to four fashion and lifestyle retailers: Hugo Boss AG, Levi Strauss & Co, Pull and Bear as well as COS. Using the scientific method of mystery shopping and a multi-item checklist including 54 key performance indicators, the paper aims to examine to which extend the four selected retailers provide a seamless customer journey, according to the five decision-making phases.
In this paper we claim that a competitive analysis with new players entering a market requires a specific and systems-based analysis. System dynamics provides such an approach. We infer from our study that established premium automobile manufacturers could have identified a possible threat by a newcomer like Tesla earlier with using system dynamics. In particular, we postulate that a feedback view supports decision makers to better understand the significance of competitive information and perceive information faster and more reliably.
Durch die Digitalisierung und Vernetzung der Industrieproduktion werden sich Arbeitsinhalte und Arbeitsprozesse in den nächsten zehn Jahren stark verändern. Allerdings ist bislang unklar, wie sie sich verändern, welche neuen Anforderungen sich daraus für die Beschäftigten ergeben und mit welchen Kompetenzen die MitarbeiterInnen für die neue Arbeitswelt gerüstet sind. In diesem Beitrag zeigen wir anhand einer qualitativen Fallstudie bei einem Automobilhersteller, dass die durch Industrie 4.0 hervorgerufenen Veränderungen zu mehr Vielfalt und Komplexität bei den Prozessen und Aufgaben der MitarbeiterInnen führen sowie höhere Flexibilität verlangen. Zudem nehmen die Kommunikationsanforderungen zu und auch die technologische Unterstützung gewinnt an Bedeutung. Um diese Herausforderungen zu bewältigen, benötigen MitarbeiterInnen vor allem ein breiteres Spektrum an Fach- und Methodenkompetenzen sowie sozial-kommunikative Kompetenzen.
Nenne sie niemals Senioren!
(2017)
Eine Vielzahl einzelner Personalmanagementaktivitäten ist in Forschungseinrichtungen bereits etabliert. Im Rahmen eines Nachhaltigkeitsmanagements ist jedoch ein systematisches und strategisches Vorgehen bei der Konzeption, Planung und Implementierung von Personalmanagementaktivitäten notwendig. Ein an einem Nachhaltigkeitsmanagement orientiertes Personalmanagement richtet Personalmaßnahmen an der Strategie und den Organisationszielen der Forschungseinrichtung aus. Nachhaltiges Personalmanagement in Forschungsorganisationen bedeutet, dass die Forschenden ihr kreatives wissenschaftliches Potential entfalten und einsetzen können; die Expertise des wissenschaftsunterstützenden Personals ist dabei ein wichtiger Partner und Begleiter.
This paper presents a novel multi-modal CNN architecture that exploits complementary input cues in addition to sole color information. The joint model implements a mid-level fusion that allows the network to exploit cross modal interdependencies already on a medium feature-level. The benefit of the presented architecture is shown for the RGB-D image understanding task. So far, state-of-the-art RGB-D CNNs have used network weights trained on color data. In contrast, a superior initialization scheme is proposed to pre-train the depth branch of the multi-modal CNN independently. In an end-to-end training the network parameters are optimized jointly using the challenging Cityscapes dataset. In thorough experiments, the effectiveness of the proposed model is shown. Both, the RGB GoogLeNet and further RGB-D baselines are outperformed with a significant margin on two different tasks: semantic segmentation and object detection. For the latter, this paper shows how to extract object level groundtruth from the instance level annotations in Cityscapes in order to train a powerful object detector.
Characteristics of modern computing and storage technologies fundamentally differ from traditional hardware. There is a need to optimally leverage their performance, endurance and energy consumption characteristics. Therefore, existing architectures and algorithms in modern high performance database management systems have to be redesigned and advanced. Multi Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) approaches in data-base management systems maintain multiple physically independent tuple versions. Snapshot isolation approaches enable high parallelism and concurrency in workloads with almost serializable consistency level. Modern hardware technologies benefit from multi-version approaches. Indexing multi-version data on modern hardware is still an open research area. In this paper, we provide a survey of popular multi-version indexing approaches and an extended scope of high performance single-version approaches. An optimal multi-version index structure brings look-up efficiency of tuple versions, which are visible to transactions, and effort on index maintenance in balance for different workloads on modern hardware technologies.
Social networks, smart portable devices, Internet of Things (IoT) on base of technologies like analytics for big data and cloud services are emerging to support flexible connected products and agile services as the new wave of digital transformation. Biological metaphors of living and adaptable ecosystems with service-oriented enterprise architectures provide the foundation for self-optimizing and resilient run-time environments for intelligent business services and related distributed information systems. We are extending Enterprise Architecture (EA) with mechanisms for flexible adaptation and evolution of information systems having distributed IoT and other micro-granular digital architecture to support next digitization products, services, and processes. Our aim is to support flexibility and agile transformation for both IT and business capabilities through adaptive digital enterprise architectures. The present research paper investigates additionally decision mechanisms in the context of multi-perspective explorations of enterprise services and Internet of Things architectures by extending original enterprise architecture reference models with state of art elements for architectural engineering and digitization.
This paper models the political budget cycle with stochastic differential equations. The paper highlights the development of future volatility of the budget cycle. In fact, I confirm the proposition of a less volatile budget cycle in future. Moreover, I show that this trend is even amplified due to higher transparency. These findings are new evidence in the literature on electoral cycles. I calibrate a rigorous stochastic model on public deficit-to-GDP data for several countries from 1970 to 2012.
Das Internet ist längst ein fester Bestandteil in den Marketing- und Vertriebsstrategien. Doch auch mit dem Einsatz von Onlinewerbung, Suchmaschinenoptimierung und der Nutzung von Social Media ist es Unternehmen oft nicht möglich, die erhoffte Aufmerksamkeit zu erhalten und die gewünschte Wirkung von Botschaften auf die Kunden zu erzielen. Mithilfe einer strukturierten Zusammenarbeit mit sogenannten Social Influencern ist es auch im B2B-Bereich möglich, ein authentisches und glaubhaftes Image aufzubauen.
Trotz größer werdendem Tenor, die Intuition als gewinnbringende Ergänzung zur rational geprägten Entscheidungskultur im Vertrieb zu implementieren, scheint dennoch Unsicherheit und Unwissenheit über den richtigen Umgang mit der Intuition seitens der Mitarbeiter und Mitarbeiterinnen vorzuherrschen. Durch die systematische Legitimierung der Intuition Vertrieb kann diesem Umstand entgegengewirkt werden.
In an exploratory study about online communication of large and medium-sized B2B companies from the German state of Baden-Württemberg, their message content communicated via websites, and their websites' appeal for international prospects has been analyzed. It revealed many basic content items absent, making the site less attractive for further exploration, and difficult or international prospects to enter into a dialog, become leads, and possible customers. The subsequent survey elicited organizational backgrounds, available resources, and objectives for online communication. It could trace deficiencies back to a lack of understanding of the importance of digital communication for lead generation, and the customer journey in general, absence of a communication strategy, lack of urgency, and lack of resources to implement desired changes and additions to communication content.
As the market penetration of alternative fuel vehicles is still uncertain, defining green design cues for their design is of specific relevance to target environmentally conscious customers. This paper is a review of the existing literature aiming at summarizing the market penetration scenarios of alternative fuel vehicles over the next years, consumer demand for sustainable materials, and present methodologies to represent characteristics of eco-friendly mobility in the interior of alternative fuel vehicles. In particular, present attempts to correlate materials with green design cues are explored. Finally, projections for the future of the field are suggested, posing enchanting research questions to further unify the field of environmentally conscious design with the domain of product personality.
Maskenball mit Aubameyang
(2017)
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Torjäger von Borussia Dortmund, lässt sich einen Nike-Swoosh in seine Frisur einfärben und spielt so Anfang März 2017 in der Bundesliga gegen Bayer Leverkusen. Nur wenige Wochen später, Anfang April 2017, schnappt sich Aubameyang nach seinem Tor gegen Schalke 04 eine Nike-Maske, zieht sie auf und jubelt damit intensiv und publikumswirksam. Kurz zuvor war diese Maske als Gegenstand in einem Youtube-Werbevideo von Nike mit Aubameyang zu sehen.
Das Pikante dabei ist, dass Borussia Dortmund von Puma ausgestattet und gesponsert wird. Aubameyang dagegen ist ein Testimonial von Nike. Hier pusht also ein Star, der das Vorbild vieler Jugendlicher ist, seinen persönlichen Sponsor und schadet damit dem Ausrüster seines Vereins. Ist das ethisch gesehen korrekt? Es ist offensichtlich, dass BVB-Sponsor Puma darüber nicht amüsiert ist. Darüber hinaus ist es nachvollziehbar, wenn Fußball-Fans immer lauter beklagen, dass die Kommerzialisierung im Fußball langsam überhandnimmt.
Marketing mit Instagram
(2017)
In einer reizüberfluteten Konsumgesellschaft gestaltet es sich nicht immer einfach, potentielle Kunden über den passenden Kanal zu erreichen. Für die Markenpositionierung müssen steigende Budgets in die Produktion von qualitativ hochwertigen Inhalten investiert werden, um durch den wachsenden digitalen Wettbewerb Authentizität und Relevanz für den Konsumenten zu wahren. Dabei ist der Fokus längst von der reinen Werbebotschaft zum "Storytelling" gewandert. Die Bedeutung der Erlebnisqualität einer Marke rückt in den Vordergrund, denn die Zielgruppe möchte nicht nur den objektiven Mehrwert erfahren, sondern zugleich eine spannende Geschichte, die sie auch selbst mit dem Produkt oder der Dienstleistung erleben können. Durch die Zunahme des mobilen Konsums von Content finden gerade soziale Netzwerke wie Instagram bei der Planung der Marketing-Aktivitäten eines Unternehmens steigende Beachtung. Im Textileinzelhandel wird diese Erkenntnis bereits seit längerer Zeit aktiv genutzt, nicht so im deutschen Lebensmitteleinzelhandel. Vor diesem Hintergrund stellt sich die Frage, ob eine ästhetische Inszenierung von Lebensmitteln auf Instagram überhaupt beim Rezipienten ankommt? Die Antwort ist eindeutig: Amerikanische Unternehmen wie Wholefoods machen es vor. Mit über 1,9 Millionen Abonnenten und fast 2.500 geposteten Beiträgen (Stand Februar 2017) erfreut sich das Unternehmensprofil des Lebensmitteleinzelhändlers aus Texas großer Beliebtheit. Marketing mit Instagram und Le-bensmittel kann also erfolgreich verknüpft werden, aber wie? Dies soll im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit untersucht werden.
Marketing mit Youtube
(2017)
Die Video-Plattform Youtube ist eine der meistbesuchten Webseiten weltweit. Youtube-Stars erreichen mit ihren Videos große Zuschauergruppen und können als Multiplikatoren für Werbebotschaften dienen. Sie sind oftmals Meinungsführer, denen hohes Vertrauen entgegengebracht wird, weshalb sie sich sehr gut für Influencer-Marketing eignen. Marketing mit Youtube ermöglicht eine offene, mehrwegige, schnelle und kostengünstige Kommunikation mit Kunden, insbesondere jüngeren. Unternehmen können sich dies zu Nutze machen, indem sie Youtube nicht nur als Plattform für klassische Werbespots, sondern auch für Produktplatzierungen, Videosponsoring oder Branded Entertainment in Zusammenarbeit mit Youtubern verwenden.
Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit werden zunächst die Video-Plattform Youtube vorgestellt und die Grundidee des Influencer-Marketings dargelegt. Daraus leiten sich verschiedene Möglichkeiten der Zusammenarbeit mit Youtubern zu Marketingzwecken ab, die beschrieben und anhand zahlreicher Beispiele illustriert werden. Die Arbeit schließt mit einer kritischen Würdigung der Ergebnisse und Handlungsempfehlungen zur Nutzung von Youtube als Marketinginstrument im Hinblick auf Influencer-Marketing.
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Managing decentralized corporate energy systems is a challenging task for enterprises. However, the integration of energy objectives into business strategy creates difficulties resulting in inefficient decisions. To improve this, practice-proven methods such as the balanced scorecard and enterprise architecture management are transferred to the energy domain. The methods are evaluated based on a case study. Managing multi-dimensionality and high complexity are the main drivers for an effective and efficient energy management system. Both methods show a positive impact on managing decentralized corporate energy systems and are adaptable to the energy domain.
Management virtueller, internationaler Engineering-Prozesse. - (Berichte aus dem Maschinenbau)
(2017)
Die Internationalisierung von Geschäftsprozessen hat dazu geführt, dass in den Engineering-Prozessen, z.B. Produktentwicklung, Produktionsplanung etc., zunehmend in virtuellen, internationalen Teams gearbeitet wird. Die Prozesse und Methoden wurden aber oft nicht entsprechend weiterentwickelt, dass die virtuellen, internationalen Engineering-Prozesse effektiv und effizient ausgeführt werden. In Rahmen einer fragebogenbasierten Unternehmensbefragung in Deutschland wird untersucht, wie Unternehmen mit Kernfragen der Gestaltung virtueller, internationaler Engineering-Prozesse umgehen und welche Vorgehensweisen, Methoden und Werkzeuge, insbesondere Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien, sie einsetzen. Dabei werden neben dem Nutzen auch die Risiken thematisiert, die nach der neuen DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 stärker in den unternehmerischen Fokus rücken müssen.
Die meisten der aktuell im Allag vorfindlichen Touch-Flächen wurden unter Anwendung komplexer und kostenintensiver Technologien realisiert. Gerade für das Anwendungsszenario eines Touchfloors, bei welchem meist eine überdurchschnittlich große Touch-Fläche erwünscht ist, werden kostengünstigere Umsetzungsmöglichkeiten angestrebt. Dieses Paper dient als Ausgangsbasis für die Umsetzung eines Low-cost Touchfloors, der die kollaborative Arbeit eines Projektteams unterstützen soll. Mithilfe einer Analyse des State of the Arts der Touch-Technologien und einer anschließenden Evaluation, wird die Touch-Technologie abgeleitet, die sich am besten zur Realisierung dieses low-cost Touchfloors eignet. Aus der Evaluation geht hervor, dass vor allem optische Touch-Technologien, insbesondere visionsbasierte, für die Umsetzung von kostengünstigen großen Touch-Flächen geeignet sind.
Understanding the factors that influence the accuracy of visual SLAM algorithms is very important for the future development of these algorithms. So far very few studies have done this. In this paper, a simulation model is presented and used to investigate the effect of the number of scene points tracked, the effect of the baseline length in triangulation and the influence of image point location uncertainty. It is shown that the latter is very critical, while the other all play important roles. Experiments with a well known semi-dense visual SLAM approach are also presented, when used in a monocular visual odometry mode. The experiments show that not including sensor bias and scale factor uncertainty is very detrimental to the accuracy of the simulation results.
Learning factories present a promising environment for education, training and research, especially in manufacturing related areas which are a main driver for wealth creation in any nation. While numerous learning factories have been built in industry and academia in the last decades, a comprehensive scientific overview of the topic is still missing. This paper intends to close this gap establishing the state of the art of learning factories. The motivations, historic background, and the didactic foundations of learning factories are outlined. Definitions of the term learning factory and the corresponding morphological model are provided. An overview of existing learning factory approaches in industry and academia is provided, showing the broad range of different applications and varying contents. The state of the art of learning factories curricula design and their use to enhance learning and research as well as potentials and limitations are presented. Conclusions and an outlook on further research priorities are offered.
Customer prioritization is a common marketing activity in business practice. It aims at an increase in average customer profitability and return on sales by treating important customers more intensively. After a short introduction highlighting the importance of customer prioritzation, the present article provides an overview of key aspects of customer prioritization. First, companies need to select a prioritization criterion, determine the method to identify important customers, and decide on how to treat these customers in a particular way. Second, companies face challenges and need to address key requirements for implementing customer prioritization within a company. Finally, the article emphasizes positive and negative consequences of customer prioritization.
Bei großen Sportereignissen wie Fußball-, Welt- und Europameisterschaften oder Olympischen Spielen geht es für Verbände und offizielle Sponsoren um Millionen, entsprechend scharf verteidigen sie ihre Werberechte. Burger King zeigt, wie sich dieses „Monopol“ kreativ umgehen lässt. Im folgenden Beitrag werden exemplarisch zwei Ambush-Marketing-Aktivitäten von Burger King im Rahmen der Fußball Europameisterschaften 2016 vorgestellt. Nicht-Sponsor Burger King setzte Ambush Marketing dabei gezielt und kreativ im Rahmen der EM ein, um gegen den offiziellen UEFA-Sponsor und Wettbewerber McDonald‘s Punkte zu sammeln.
Zusammen mit Partnern aus Industrie und Politik untersuchen die ESB Business School der Hochschule Reutlingen, die Hochschule Offenburg und die Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW) in einem Interreg-Projekt die Möglichkeiten, klima- und gesundheitsschädliche Emissionen im Grenzverkehr am Hochrhein zu reduzieren. Elektromobilität und Fahrgemeinschaften werden dazu im Rahmen eines Pilotprojekts gefördert und die Wirkung analysiert. Erste Ergebnisse zeigen, dass heutige Elektroautos für das grenzüberschreitende Pendeln unter bestimmten Voraussetzungen geeignet sind.
The purpose of this paper is to explain the key aspects and growing relevance of sustainability in fashion retail and to evaluate the possibilities of fashion retailers to act sustainable in supply chain management as well as carving out the challenges they have to deal with. The research methodology applied for this purpose is a critical literature review examining books and articles. The findings demonstrate the rising importance of sustainability in fashion retail. In this regard, fashion retailers play a key role and responsibility for sustainability in the fashion supply chain, from the beginning up to the end. This paper mainly analyzes sustainability in the fashion supply chain. It does not analyze topics like second-hand shopping or social media sustainability.
Wer in ein Unternehmen investiert, tut dies, um in Zukunft Geld zu verdienen. Er rechnet mit einer risikoadäquaten Rendite. Die Auswahl der Kennzahlen, die diese Wertsteigerung transparent machen, ist allerdings nicht trivial. Denn von ihnen hängt ab, ob die Unternehmensziele richtig vorgegeben und ob die Anreize für das Management richtig gesetzt werden.
In any autonomous driving system, the map for localization plays a vital part that is often underestimated. The map describes the world around the vehicle outside of the sensor view and is a main input into the decision making process in highly complicated scenarios. Thus there are strict requirements towards the accuracy and timeliness of the map. We present a robust and reliable approach towards crowd based mapping using a GraphSLAM framework based on radar sensors. We show on a parking lot that even in dynamically changing environments, the localization results are very accurate and reliable even in unexplored terrain without any map data. This can be achieved by collaborative map updates from multiple vehicles. To show these claims experimentally, the Joint Graph Optimization is compared to the ground truth on an industrial parking space. Mapping performance is evaluated using a dense map from a total station as reference and localization results are compared with a deeply coupled DGPS/INS system.
Durch Industrie 4.0 kann die individuelle Fertigung von kleineren Stückzahlen zu geringen Kosten ermöglicht werden. Dafür müssen alle Anlagen miteinander vernetzt werden, um Daten austauschen und kommunizieren zu können. Durch die Vernetzung können neue Risiken und Gefahren entstehen. In dieser Arbeit wird die ITSicherheit in der Industrie 4.0 anhand möglichen Bedrohungsszenarien, Herausforderungen und Gegenmaßnahmen evaluiert. Dabei wird untersucht, welche Möglichkeiten Industrieunternehmen haben, um Hackerangriffen vorzubeugen und ob bereits etablierte Sicherheitskonzepte für industrielle Anlagen einfach übernommen werden können.
In den letzten Jahren beschäftigten sich Forscher und Automobilhersteller mit den Voraussetzungen für die Einführung von autonomem Fahren. Für Innovationen und Geschäftsmodelle im Bereich der intelligenten Mobilität, aber auch innerhalb der digitalen Wertschöpfungskette, spielen generell Zuverlässigkeit und Qualität der digitalen Datenübertragung eine entscheidende Rolle. Bevor das autonome Fahren vollständig eingeführt wird, muss man feststellen, welche Anforderungen an die digitale Infrastruktur beachtet werden müssen, gleichzeitig muss die Bedrohungslandschaft für autonomes Fahren analysiert werden.
Die folgende Arbeit beschäftigt sich damit, die Anforderungen und Gefahren zu analysieren und allgemeine Handlungsempfehlungen vorzuschlagen.
Der flächendeckende Einsatz digitaler Zähler wird eine bislang ungekannte Menge an Kundendaten mit sich bringen. Wie können die deutschen Energieversorger hieraus ein besseres Kundenverständnis entwickeln? Die systematische Datenauslese unter Zuhilfenahme modellgestützter Zukunftsprognosen - sog. Predictive Analytics - scheint hier ein vielversprechendes Instrument zu sein. Aufbauend auf einer mit Unterstützung des Verbandes kommunaler Unternehmen durchgeführten Untersuchung lassen sich vier Handlungsempfehlungen ableiten, wie man die Digitalisierung im Vertrieb nutzen kann. Demnach sind die Festlegung von klaren Zielen und Strategien, die systematische Erschließung von Datenquellen, der Aufbau von Inhouse-Kompetenz sowie ein "Joint effort" von Marketing, Vertrieb und IT zu forcieren.
Im Rahmen der wissenschaftlichen Vertiefung soll auf Basis der vorhandenen Ansätze das IT-Risikomanagement evaluiert werden. Hierbei soll die Frage, inwiefern das IT-Risikomanagement dem Unternehmen eine Hilfestellung bieten kann, geklärt und anschließend anhand von zwei Fallbeispielen dargestellt werden.
Introducing continuous experimentation in large software-intensive product and service organisations
(2017)
Software development in highly dynamic environments imposes high risks to development organizations. One such risk is that the developed software may be of only little or no value to customers, wasting the invested development efforts.Continuous experiment ation, as an experiment-driven development approach, may reduce such development risks by iteratively testing product and service assumptions that are critical to the success of the software. Although several experiment-driven development approaches are available, there is little guidance available on how to introduce continuous experimentation into an organization. This article presents a multiple-case study that aims at better understanding the process of introducing continuous experimentation into an organization with an already established development process. The results from the study show that companies are open to adopting such an approach and learning throughout the introduction process. Several benefits were obtained, such as reduced development efforts, deeper customer insights, and better support for development decisions. Challenges included complex stakeholder structures, difficulties in defining success criteria, and building experimen- tation skills. Our findings indicate that organizational factors may limit the benefits of experimentation. Moreover, introducing continuous experimentation requires fundamental changes in how companies operate, and a systematic introduction process can increase the chances of a successful start.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the value of the web representation of certain fashion hot spots and how these results can be shown on fashion maps in an illustrated way.
Design/methodology/approach: A new ranking was created, which was evaluated with a self-instructed index, to gain solid results. Numbers were collected from Google, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and web.alert.io. Additionally, fashion maps were created for an illustrative visualization of the results.
Findings: Compared with the ranking of a trend forecasting agency, called Global Language Monitor, which concepted a ranking of non-virtual fashion cities, the web representation and therefore the ranking of the research project, differs mainly in the situation of the cities among the first 10, viz. the rank on which a city occurs, but fewer in the actual cities mentioned.
Research limitations: The research was limited to subjective analysis of data, leading to partly subjective results, as well as the selected number of social media platforms, that had been used.
Originality/value: This is the first study to explore the web representation value of fashion metropolises in comparison to their non-virtual ranking. The results are partly based on results that already existed, concerning transformations of fashion cities or in general which cities own the status of a fashion city.
Kauf- und Vertragsrecht sind oft Schwerpunkt von Rechtsvorlesungen in betriebswirtschaftlichen Studiengängen. Hier spielen nicht nur nationale, sondern immer öfter auch grenzüberschreitende Transaktionen eine Rolle. In diesem Buch werden nationale und internationale Regelungen im Kauf- und Vertragsrecht miteinander verglichen. Neben dem UN-Kaufrecht werden rechtsvergleichend auch allgemeine rechtliche Fragen behandelt, wie etwa das Verhältnis vertraglicher und außervertraglicher Ansprüche und Rechtsbehelfe, Einbeziehung und Gültigkeit Allgemeiner Geschäftsbedingungen, vertragliche Haftungsbeschränkungen und Vertragsstrafen oder Unterschiede im allgemeinen Schadensrecht.
Der Verfasser macht deutlich, dass Regelungen, die in der eigenen Rechtsordnung als selbstverständlich erscheinen, sich zum Teil von denen in anderen Rechtsordnungen erheblich unterscheiden oder dort sogar unbekannt sein können. Studierende sollen erkennen, warum es diese Unterschiede gibt. Das erlaubt ihnen später bei Vertragsverhandlungen, Vorschläge ausländischer Partner besser zu verstehen und angemessen auf sie zu reagieren.
Intermediate filament reorganization dynamically influences cancer cell alignment and migration
(2017)
The interactions between a cancer cell and its extracellular matrix (ECM) have been the focus of an increasing amount of investigation. The role of the intermediate filament keratin in cancer has also been coming into focus of late, but more research is needed to understand how this piece fits in the puzzle of cytoskeleton-mediated invasion and metastasis. In Panc-1 invasive pancreatic cancer cells, keratin phosphorylation in conjunction with actin inhibition was found to be sufficient to reduce cell area below either treatment alone. We then analyzed intersecting keratin and actin fibers in the cytoskeleton of cyclically stretched cells and found no directional correlation. The role of keratin organization in Panc-1 cellular morphological adaptation and directed migration was then analyzed by culturing cells on cyclically stretched polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates, nanoscale grates, and rigid pillars. In general, the reorganization of the keratin cytoskeleton allows the cell to become more ‘mobile’- exhibiting faster and more directed migration and orientation in response to external stimuli. By combining keratin network perturbation with a variety of physical ECM signals, we demonstrate the interconnected nature of the architecture inside the cell and the scaffolding outside of it, and highlight the key elements facilitating cancer cell-ECM interactions.
Digitisation forms a part of Industrie 4.0 and is both threatening, but also providing an opportunity to transform business as we know it; and can make entire business models redundant. Although companies might realise the need to digitise, many are unsure of how to start this digital transformation. This paper addresses the problems and challenges faced in digitisation, and develops a model for initialising digital transformation in enterprises. The model is based on a continuous improvement cycle, and also includes triggers for innovative and digital thinking within the enterprise. The model was successfully validated in the German service sector.
A wide variety of cell types exhibit substrate topography-based behavior, also known as contact guidance. However, the precise cellular mechanisms underlying this process are still unknown. In this study, we investigated contact guidance by studying the reaction of human endothelial cells (ECs) to well-defined microgroove topographies, both during and after initial cell spreading. As the cytoskeleton plays a major role in cellular adaptation to topographical features, two methods were used to perturb cytoskeletal structures. Inhibition of actomyosin contractility with the chemical inhibitor blebbistatatin demonstrated that initial contact guidance events are independent of traction force generation. However, cell alignment to the grooved substrate was altered at later time points, suggesting an initial ‘passive’ phase of contact guidance, followed by a contractility-dependent ‘active’ phase that relies on mechanosensitive feedback. The actin cytoskeleton was also perturbed in an indirect manner by culturing cells upside down, resulting in decreased levels of contact guidance and suggesting that a possible loss of contact between the actin cytoskeleton and the substrate could lead to cytoskeleton impairment. The process of contact guidance at the microscale was found to be primarily lamellipodia driven, as no bias in filopodia extension was observed on micron-scale grooves.
Die digitale Zukunft zu definieren und zu gestalten ist in aller Munde - in der Industrie, der Lehre und so auch im Fokus der diesjährigen Informatics Inside Konferenz. Dazu gehören einerseits die Möglichkeiten, die die Digitalisierung mit sich bringt, z.B. beschrieben im Umfeld Krankenhaus oder in der Pferdezucht, andererseits die Schnittstelle zwischen realer und virtueller Welt, ausgeführt an Beispielen der Gesichts- und Bewegungserkennung. Auffällig ist, dass auch die Studierenden sich immer stärker auf die Sicherheit und Privatsphäre persönlicher Daten in einer digitalen Welt fokussieren. Dazu gehören fundamentale Sicherheitsuntersuchungen für ausgewählte Domänen, z.B. Industrie 4.0 oder Smart Home, wie auch die Betrachtung konkreter Einsatzszenarien, wie das autonome Fahren, die Kommunikation zwischen Fahrzeugen und dem neuen Personalausweis. Darüber hinaus stellen die Studierenden ihre Master-Projekte in Kurzbeiträgen vor.
Die Teilnehmer erfüllen nicht nur den Anspruch, die Ergebnisse ihrer Arbeit in schriftlicher Form anschaulich auszuarbeiten, sondern auch interaktiv vor ihrem Publikum zu verteidigen und zu diskutieren. Die Informatics Inside bietet somit ein Forum für Studierende, um während des Studiums zum einen die Ergebnisse ihrer Arbeit professionell einem interessierten Publikum zugänglich zu machen und zum anderen Anregungen anderer Vertiefungsgebiete aufzunehmen, aber auch die Arbeiten anderer kritisch zu hinterfragen.
This research is about Omnichannel Retailing and addresses the question how the omnichanneling of retailers in the fashion market can be measured. Our sources will include books, interviews, newspapers and scientific databases.
Omnichanneling is a current topic in the fashion market, retailers all over the world face the question on how to adapt to the challenges Omnichannel Retailing sets. We are going to define what Omnichanneling is by explaining the differences between Multiple-, Multi-, Cross- and Omnichannel Retailing. After we defined omnichanneling itself, we took a set of 26 retailers to evaluate regarding their Omnichannel capabilities. Then we create an index with criteria that can measure the Omnichannel capability of each retailer.
The Omnichannel Score is based on 31 criteria, which analyze the retailers in offline, online, mobile and social aspects enables to see differences between retailers. Our findings were that retailers in the US fashion market are more advanced in Omnichannel Retailing than retailers in the German fashion market. Our top three Omnichannel retailers were Sears with an Omnichannel Score of 91, followed by KOHL’S and Marks&Spencer, both with a Omnichannel Score of 88. The best Omnichannel Retailer from Germany was Adidas with the fourth place and an Omnichannel Score of 81.
Incubators in multinational corporations : development of a corporate incubator operator model
(2017)
This paper analyzes the components of a corporate incubator operator model in multinational companies. Thereby, three relevant phases were identified: pre incubation, incubation, and exit. Each phase contains different criteria that represent critical success factors for a corporate incubator, which are based on theoretical findings and lessons learned from practice. During the pre-incubation phase companies should define their need for a corporate incubator, the origin of ideas and the selection criteria for incubator tenants. The actual phase of incubation refers to the incubator program, which should be flexible with respect to each tenant. Furthermore, resource allocation plays an important role during the incubator program. Exit options after a successful incubation differ according to internal ideas and external start-ups, as well as the objective of the incubator. The research is based on a comprehensive screening of existing incubator literature and a qualitative content analysis of statements from eight experts of international corporate incubators.
In the present paper we demonstrate a novel approach to handling small updates on Flash called In-Place Appends (IPA). It allows the DBMS to revisit the traditional write behavior on Flash. Instead of writing whole database pages upon an update in an out-of-place manner on Flash, we transform those small updates into update deltas and append them to a reserved area on the very same physical Flash page. In doing so we utilize the commonly ignored fact that under certain conditions Flash memories can support in-place updates to Flash pages without a preceding erase operation.
The approach was implemented under Shore-MT and evaluated on real hardware. Under standard update-intensive workloads we observed 67% less page invalidations resulting in 80% lower garbage collection overhead, which yields a 45% increase in transactional throughput, while doubling Flash longevity at the same time. The IPA outperforms In-Page Logging (IPL) by more than 50%.
We showcase a Shore-MT based prototype of the above approach, operating on real Flash hardware – the OpenSSD Flash research platform. During the demonstration we allow the users to interact with the system and gain hands on experience of its performance under different demonstration scenarios. These involve various workloads such as TPC-B, TPC-C or TATP.
In recent times, enterprises have been increasingly dealing with the use of social media in internal communication and collaboration. In particular, so-called Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) promise meaningful benefits for the nature of work in corporations. However, these platforms often suffer from poor degrees of use. This raises the question of what initiatives enterprise can launch in order to stimulate the vitality of ESN. Since the use of ESN is often voluntary, individual adoption by employees need to be examined to find an answer. Therefore, the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model was selected for the theoretical foundation of this paper. Following a qualitative research approach, the available research provides an analysis of expert interviews on specific ESN implementation strategies and included factors. In order to extensively conceptualize and generalize these strategic considerations, we conducted an inductive coding process. The results reveal that ESN implementation strategies can be understood as a multi-level construct (individual vs. group vs. organizational level) containing different factors dependent on the degree of documentation and intensity. This research in progress describes a qualitative evaluation as a preliminary study for further quantitative analysis of an ESN adoption model.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact on sustainability of fashion production and consumption in order to discuss what the main lever is to reduce the negative impact. The research methodology applied is a literature review examining academic references. Key findings suggest that fashion production and consumption have a single comparable impact on sustainability. Moreover, as the fashion production follows the demand, the consumer steers the production in a certain direction. Therefore, consumers take over responsibility and need to be informed. To reach a long-term change in the fashion industry, the consumer has to be the focus of the sustainable efforts. Most results in literature were conducted by qualitative research methods, so that further quantitative testing of the results is recommended. Furthermore, most surveys were conducted with young fashion consumers in the EU or UK which does not represent the fashion consumer in general.
The purpose of this paper is to define what impacts sustainable manufacturing standards have for retail brands concerning the communication policy and to find possible solutions of how the companies can deal with them. Therefore, sustainable standards and the impacts on the internal and external communication are described. The enclosed discussion finds possible solutions for the negative impacts. A literature discussion has been conducted to investigate the purpose. Generally, there are many impacts fashion retails have to consider, if they want to transform their company to become more sustainable, because only the impacts on a defined part of the communication policy were huge. A limitation of this paper is that the proposals how retailers could deal with the impacts of the transformation of the company toward more sustainability need further research and tests until they are practicable.
Software and system development faces numerous challenges of rapidly changing markets. To address such challenges, companies and projects design and adopt specific development approaches by combining well-structured comprehensive methods and flexible agile practices. Yet, the number of methods and practices is large, and available studies argue that the actual process composition is carried out in a fairly ad-hoc manner. The present paper reports on a survey on hybrid software development approaches. We study which approaches are used in practice, how different approaches are combined, and what contextual factors influence the use and combination of hybrid software development approaches. Our results from 69 study participants show a variety of development approaches used and combined in practice. We show that most combinations follow a pattern in which a traditional process model serves as framework in which several fine-grained (agile) practices are plugged in. We further show that hybrid software development approaches are independent from the company size and external triggers. We conclude that such approaches are the results of a natural process evolution, which is mainly driven by experience, learning, and pragmatism.
How to separate the wheat from the chaff: improved variable selection for new customer acquisition
(2017)
Steady customer losses create pressure for firms to acquire new accounts, a task that is both costly and risky. Lacking knowledge about their prospects, firms often use a large array of predictors obtained from list vendors, which in turn rapidly creates massive high-dimensional data problems. Selecting the appropriate variables and their functional relationships with acquisition probabilities is therefore a substantial challenge. This study proposes a Bayesian variable selection approach to optimally select targets for new customer acquisition. Data from an insurance company reveal that this approach outperforms nonselection methods and selection methods based on expert judgment as well as benchmarks based on principal component analysis and bootstrap aggregation of classification trees. Notably, the optimal results show that the Bayesian approach selects panel-based metrics as predictors, detects several nonlinear relationships, selects very large numbers of addresses, and generates profits. In a series of post hoc analyses, the authors consider prospects’ response behaviors and cross selling potential and systematically vary the number of predictors and the estimated profit per response. The results reveal that more predictors and higher response rates do not necessarily lead to higher profits.
We were able to identify a set of specific capabilities corporations need to develop in order to enhance brand love. Furthermore, the effects of most dynamic capabilities on brand love have a strong correlation to the degree of customer orientation. Other results are relevant concerning the proposed moderation and mediation hypotheses. Firstly, the impact of customer orientation on brand love is varied under specific market conditions, supporting our central moderation hypothesis (β = .259, p = .001). To be precise, the impact of customer orientation is strongest in markets that have low competitive differentiation in products and services. Other control variables like age, gender, or market form (B2B versus B2C) lead to no significant heterogeneity in the data set. Finally, mediation analyses show no significant “direct effect” of the existing DC constructs on brand love, supporting the mediating role of customer orientation.
Software startups often make assumptions about the problems and customers they are addressing as well as the market and the solutions they are developing. Testing the right assumptions early is a means to mitigate risks. Approaches such as Lean Startup foster this kind of testing by applying experimentation as part of a constant build-measure-learn feedback loop. The existing research on how software startups approach experimentation is very limited. In this study, we focus on understanding how software startups approach experimentation and identify challenges and advantages with respect to conducting experiments. To achieve this, we conducted a qualitative interview study. The initial results show that startups often spent a disproportionate amount of time focusing on creating solutions without testing critical assumptions. Main reasons are the lack of awareness, that these assumptions can be tested early and a lack of knowledge and support on how to identify, prioritize and test these assumptions. However, startups understand the need for testing risky assumptions and are open to conducting experiments.
New digital technologies present both game-changing opportunities for—and existential threats to—companies whose success was built in the pre-digital economy. This article describes our findings from a study of 25 companies that were embarking on digital transformation journeys. We identified two digital strategies—customer engagement and digitized solutions—that provide direction for a digital transformation. Two technology-enabled assets are essential for executing those strategies: an operational backbone and a digital services platform. We describe how a big old company can combine these elements to navigate its digital transformation.
AUDI AG has historically focused on producing and selling premium vehicles but has begun to experiment with providing mobility services, built around car sharing. Its response to the so-called sharing economy addressed strategic and transformational challenges. Strategically, the company pursued additional sources of revenue from targeted, premium mobility services, rather than the less segmented services provided by competitors such as BMW and Zipcar. AUDI AG also transformed its organizational structure, processes and architecture to balance autonomy for innovation and integration for competitiveness.
This article covers the design of highly integrated gate drivers and level shifters for high-speed, high power efficiency and dv/dt robustness with focus on automotive applications. With the introduction of the 48 V board net in addition to the conventional 12 V battery, there is an increasing need for fast switching integrated gate drivers in the voltage range of 50 V and above. State-of-the-art drivers are able to switch 50 V in less than 5 ns. The high-voltage electrical drive train demands for galvanic isolated and highly integrated gate drivers. A gate driver with bidirectional signal transmission with a 1 MBit/s amplitude modulation, 10/20 MHz frequency modulation and power transfer over one single transformer will be discussed. The concept of high-voltage charge storing enables an area-efficient fully integrated bootstrapping supply with 70 % less area consumption. EMC is a major concern in automotive. Gate drivers with slope control optimize EMC while maintaining good switching efficiency. A current mode gate driver, which can change its drive current within 10 ns, results in 20 dBuV lower emissions between 7 and 60 MHz and 52 % lower switching loss compared to a conventional constant current gate driver.
To evaluate the quality of sleep, it is important to determine how much time was spent in each sleep stage during the night. The gold standard in this domain is an overnight polysomnography (PSG). But the recording of the necessary electrophysiological signals is extensive and complex and the environment of the sleep laboratory, which is unfamiliar to the patient, might lead to distorted results. In this paper, a sleep stage detection algorithm is proposed that uses only the heart rate signal, derived from electrocardiogram (ECG), as a discriminator. This would make it possible for sleep analysis to be performed at home, saving a lot of effort and money. From the heart rate, using the fast Fourier transformation (FFT), three parameters were calculated in order to distinguish between the different sleep stages. ECG data along with a hypnogram scored by professionals was used from Physionet database, making it easy to compare the results. With an agreement rate of 41.3%, this approach is a good foundation for future research.
Durch den Anstieg volatiler Stromerzeugung aus Wind und Sonne benötigt die deutsche Energiewirtschaft in zunehmendem Ausmaß flexibel verfügbare Leistung und Arbeit. Diese Flexibiliät können bspw. Batteriespeicher bereitstellen. In welchem Ausmaß jene diese Rolle übernehmen können und somit der Markt wachsen wird, hängt von der Professionalität der Marktakteure und den Umfeldparametern ab. Wenn diese stimmen, steigen Akteure in die Entwicklung von Geschäftsmodellen ein. Gleichzeitig streben sie an, die Weiterentwicklung dieser Umfeldparameter im eigenen Interesse zu beeinflussen, womit ein weiteres Marktpotenzial entsteht.Im Folgenden werden erkennbare Geschäftsmodelle aufgezeigt und in den Kontext der Ergebnisse aktueller Potenzialanalysen gestellt. Dabei entwickeln sich die zwei Teilmärkte für Batteriespeicher - Heimspeicher und Großspeicher - unter unterschiedlichen Rahmenbedingungen.
Software engineering education is under constant pressure to provide students with industry-relevant knowledge and skills. Educators must address issues beyond exercises and theories that can be directly rehearsed in small settings. Industry training has similar requirements of relevance as companies seek to keep their workforce up to date with technological advances. Real-life software development often deals with large, software-intensive systems and is influenced by the complex effects of teamwork and distributed software development, which are hard to demonstrate in an educational environment. A way to experience such effects and to increase the relevance of software engineering education is to apply empirical studies in teaching. In this paper, we show how different types of empirical studies can be used for educational purposes in software engineering. We give examples illustrating how to utilize empirical studies, discuss challenges, and derive an initial guideline that supports teachers to include empirical studies in software engineering courses. Furthermore, we give examples that show how empirical studies contribute to high-quality learning outcomes, to student motivation, and to the awareness of the advantages of applying software engineering principles. Having awareness, experience, and understanding of the actions required, students are more likely to apply such principles under real-life constraints in their working life.
Medical applications are becoming increasingly important in the current development of health care and therefore a crucial part of the medical industry. An essential component is the development of user interfaces for mobile medical applications. The conceptual process is crucial for the further development of the main development process. Inconsistency or errors in the conceptual phase, have a serious impact on all areas and could prevent the certification for market approval.
This paper presents a guide to support developer with this process. It was developed based on a requirement analysis of the legal requirements to publish a medical device.
In diesem Beitrag haben wir uns mit den Grenzen der Leistungsgerechtigkeit in Personalbeurteilungen auseinandergesetzt. Dabei haben wir auf Basis der EC argumentiert, dass die Beteiligten leistungsbezogene Beurteilungskriterien so auslegen, dass sie mit ihrem Gerechtigkeitsempfinden kompatibel sind. Dieses Argument deutet darauf hin, dass es in vielen Organisationen nicht möglich ist, das Leistungsprinzip strikt umzusetzen. Sofern in Organisationen die Leistungsgerechtigkeit mit weiteren Gerechtigkeitsvorstellungen kollidiert, werden die Akteure bemüht sein, in Konventionen lokaler Arrangements oder Kompromisse zu etablieren. Zudem haben wir argumentiert, dass durch die Entkoppelung der am Beurteilungssystem Beteiligten organisationalen Subsysteme lokale Konventionen ausgebildet werden und eine durchgängige Kontrolle durch höhere Instanzen vermieden wird.
Green fashion retail
(2017)
This book focuses on sustainability in fashion retail, which is fast becoming the pivot point of future fashion retail strategies. Chapters in the book provide theoretical and practical insight on how going green may positively influence the strategy of fashion retailers and marketers, who have to react to the changing society and customer needs. Structured in four main parts, and based on distinct research questions, readers will be able to dig deep into the individual levers for possible adaptions. It thus provides a solid understanding on how to integrate green aspects into any fashion retailers business model.
Indium tin oxide (ITO) particle coatings are known for high transparency in the visible, good conductive properties and near-infrared absorption. These properties depend on ITO particle's stiochiometric composition, defects and size. Here we present a method to gradually change ITO particle's optical properties by a simple and controlled laser irradiation process. The defined irradiation process and controlled energy dose input allows one to engineer the absorption and transsmission of coatings made from these particles. We investigate the role of the surrounding solvent, influence of laser fluence and the specific energy dose targeting modification of the ITO particle's morphology and chemistry by stepwise laser irradiation in a free liquid jet. TEM, SEM, EDX, XPS, XRD and Raman are used to elucidate the structural, morphological and chemical changes of the laser-induced ITO particles. On the basis of these results the observed modification of the optical properties is tentatively attributed to chemical changes, e.g. laser-induced defects or partial reduction.
Geschäftsmodelle in der Energiewirtschaft : ein Kompendium von der Methodik bis zur Anwendung
(2017)
Ob Student oder Angestellter, Forscher oder Unternehmer, Politiker oder Dozent, ob im Start-up oder im Unternehmens-Oldie „Energieversorger“ – heute kommt vermeintlich keiner ohne ein gutes Geschäftsmodell aus. Warum ist das so? Was macht Geschäftsmodelle zu „fleißigen Lieschen“ nicht nur der Betriebswirtschaftslehre, sondern auch der Ingenieure, Volkswirte oder Informatiker? Das Geschäftsmodell beschreibt das Prinzip, nach dem eine Organisation Werte schafft, vermittelt und erfasst. Es ermöglicht durch diese Vereinfachung und Strukturierung eine leichtere Kommunikation und Analyse des Gesamtkonstrukts oder seiner Bestandteile. Es dient als Planungsinstrument, mit dessen Hilfe Innovationen effizienter und gezielter identifiziert werden können. Geschäftsmodelle können auf Ebene von Unternehmen oder einzelner Geschäftseinheiten entwickelt werden. Das vorliegende Kompendium dient dem Studenten wie dem Praktiker der Energiewirtschaft als methodische Basis zur eigenständigen Entwicklung von Geschäftsmodellen. Daher wird im 1. Kapitel aus Wissenschaft und Forschung abgeleitet, was ein Geschäftsmodell ist und wie es angewendet wird. Kapitel 2 beschreibt die Herausforderungen der Energiewirtschaft. Die Branche ist seit Jahrzehnten im Wandel. Neue Technologien zur (dezentralen) Erzeugung, Digitalisierung, sich wandelnde politische Ziele und Instrumente (Liberalisierung, Kernkraftausstieg, Energiewende,…) und neue Kundenbedürfnisse erfordern, dass die Unternehmen – große wie kleine, etablierte wie neue Anbieter, in öffentlichem wie in privatem Eigentum – angesichts erodierender Margen und zunehmendem Wettbewerb in diesem Umfeld erfolgversprechende Wege in die Zukunft suchen. Schon mit dem Begriff „Geschäftsmodell“ wird heute die Hoffnung eines Heilsbringers in diesem Dickicht erhofft, dem natürlich ein Strukturierungsinstrument – mehr ist das Geschäftsmodell schließlich nicht – nicht gerecht werden kann. In Kapitel 3 werden im Prinzip bekannte Geschäftsmodelle der Energiewirtschaft geschildert, sowie ihre Patterns, angelehnt an andere Branchen, ausdifferenziert. Dies sollte dem relativen Neuling den Einstieg in die Branche erleichtern und dem nach neuen Geschäftsmodellen Suchenden die Basis für eigene Innovation bieten. In Kapitel 4 werden Geschäftsmodelle für virtuelle Kraftwerke geschildert. Anhand dieses Beispiels wird auch ausgeführt, wie Geschäftsmodelle von Partnern entlang der Wertschöpfungskette ineinander greifen müssen. Im letzten Kapitel 5 wird schließlich auf Erfolgsfaktoren zur Entwicklung und Umsetzung von Geschäftsmodellen eingegangen.
Im Februar 2011 wurden die Autoren von der Metropolitan School Frankfurt eingeladen, in einer vierstündigen Unterrichtseinheit die Grundlagen von systemischem Denken und System Dynamics einer vierten Klasse mit Kindern im Alter von 9 und 10 Jahren zu vermitteln. Inhaltlicher Themenschwerpunkt sollten Ökosysteme sein, die im Curriculum eine mehrwöchige Fokuslehreinheit bilden. Als Ergebnis eines Austauschs mit dem Klassenlehrer wurde der Fokus auf zwei Handlungsstränge gelegt: Räuber-Beute-Systeme sind für Viertklässler inhaltlich interessant und fügen sich passsend in die Unterrichtseinheit der Jahrgangstufe ein. Als weiteres, komplexeres Themengebiet wurd der Klimawandel gewählt. Beide Themen haben den gewünschten inhaltlichen Bezug zum Schwerpunkt "Ökosysteme".
Under update intensive workloads (TPC, LinkBench) small updates dominate the write behavior, e.g. 70% of all updates change less than 10 bytes across all TPC OLTP workloads. These are typically performed as in-place updates and result in random writes in page-granularity, causing major write-overhead on Flash storage, a write amplification of several hundred times and lower device longevity.
In this paper we propose an approach that transforms those small in-place updates into small update deltas that are appended to the original page. We utilize the commonly ignored fact that modern Flash memories (SLC, MLC, 3D NAND) can handle appends to already programmed physical pages by using various low-level techniques such as ISPP to avoid expensive erases and page migrations. Furthermore, we extend the traditional NSM page-layout with a delta-record area that can absorb those small updates. We propose a scheme to control the write behavior as well as the space allocation and sizing of database pages.
The proposed approach has been implemented under Shore- MT and evaluated on real Flash hardware (OpenSSD) and a Flash emulator. Compared to In-Page Logging it performs up to 62% less reads and writes and up to 74% less erases on a range of workloads. The experimental evaluation indicates: (i) significant reduction of erase operations resulting in twice the longevity of Flash devices under update-intensive workloads; (ii) 15%-60% lower read/write I/O latencies; (iii) up to 45% higher transactional throughput; (iv) 2x to 3x reduction in overall write
amplification.
Layout generators, commonly denoted as PCells (parameterized cells), play an important role in the layout design of analog ICs (integrated circuits). PCells can automatically create parts of a layout, whose properties are controlled by the PCell parameters. Any layout, whether hand-crafted or automatically generated, has to be verified against design rules using a DRC (design rule check) in order to assure proper functionality and producibility. Due to the growing complexity of today’s PCells it would be beneficial if a PCell itself could be ensured to produce DRC clean layouts for any allowed parameter values, i.e. a formal verification of the PCell’s code rather than checking all possible instances of the PCell. In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility of such a formal PCell verification for a simple NMOS transistor PCell. The set from which the parameter values can be chosen was found during the verification process.
The ability to develop and deploy high-quality software at a high speed gets increasing relevance for the comptetitiveness of car manufacturers. Agile practices have shown benefits such as faster time to market in several application domains. Therefore, it seems to be promising to carefully adopt agile practices also in the automotive domain. This article presents findings from an interview-based qualitative survey. It aims at understanding perceived forces that support agile adoption. Particularly, it focuses on embedded software development for electronic control units in the automotive domain.
First International Workshop on Hybrid dEveLopmENt Approaches in Software Systems Development
(2017)
A software process is the game plan to organize project teams and run projects. Yet, it still is a challenge to select the appropriate development approach for the respective context. A multitude of development approaches compete for the users’ favor, but there is no silver bullet serving all possible setups. Moreover, recent research as well as experience from practice shows companies utilizing different development approaches to assemble the bestfitting approach for the respective company: a more traditional process provides the basic framework to serve the organization, while project teams embody this framework with more agile (and/or lean) practices to keep their flexibility. The first HELENA workshop aims to bring together the community to discuss recent findings and to steer future work.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss the current state of fashion business academic education worldwide. This is motivated by the wish to develop recommendations for the fashion business bachelor program of Reutlingen Uni versity.
Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on a systematic review of relevant fashion business academic programs. A qualitative comparison is conducted through a categorization of the programs’ content and a score system evaluating the programs’ concepts.
Findings: Key findings were that several factors ensure successful fashion business education: Industry connections, international networks, project-based work, personalized career services and innovative approaches in teaching that include all steps along the fashion value chain.
Research limitations/implications: The research was primarily limited due to the limited number of schools assessed. As a result of the restricted time frame, those schools that were presented could only be analyzed regarding a few aspects. Future research should focus on a more in-depth analysis and further-reaching comparisons, e.g. comparisons with teaching concepts outside the fashion business area or with requirements by fashion companies.
High quality decorative laminate panels typically consist of two major types of components: the surface layers comprising décor and overlay papers that are impregnated with melamine-based resins, and the core which is made of stacks of kraft papers impregnated with phenolic (PF) resin. The PF-impregnated layers impart superior hydrolytic stability, mechanical strength and fire-resistance to the composite. The manufacturing involves the complex interplay between resin, paper and impregnation/drying processes. Changes in the input variables cause significant alterations in the process characteristics and adaptations of the used materials and specific process conditions may, in turn, be required. This review summarizes the main variables influencing both processability and technological properties of phenolic resin impregnated papers and laminates produced therefrom. It is aimed at presenting the main influences from the involved components (resin and paper), how these may be controlled during the respective process steps (resin preparation and paper production), how they influence the impregnation and lamination conditions, how they affect specific aspects of paper and laminate performance, and how they interact with each other
(synergies).
Pokémon Go was the first mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game that made it to the top of the download charts of mobile applications. However, very little is known about this new generation of mobile online Augmented Reality (AR) games. Existing media usage and technology acceptance theories provide limited applicability to the understanding of its users. Against this background, this research provides a comprehensive framework that incorporates findings from uses & gratification theory (U>), technology acceptance and risk research as well as flow theory. The proposed framework aims at explaining the drivers of attitudinal and intentional reactions, such as continuance in gaming or willingness to conduct in-app purchases. A survey among 642 Pokémon Go players provides insights into the psychological drivers of mobile AR games. Results show that hedonic, emotional and social benefits, and social norms drive, vice versa physical risks (but not privacy risks) hinder consumer reactions. However, the importance of these drivers differs between different forms of user behavior.
Werkstoffkundeunterricht wird in den allermeisten Fällen als reiner Frontalunterricht abgehalten. Ergänzender Laborunterricht zur Werkstoffkunde findet teilweise statt, nur beziehen sich hier die durchgeführten Experimente größtenteils auf sehr wenige Teilgebiete, wie z.B. den Zugversuch. Im Curriculum mancher Studiengänge ist für derartige im Labor druchgeführte Experimente gar keine Zeit vorgesehen. Das Wissen muss komplett im Unterricht vermittelt werden.
Ziel von ExperiMat ist es, praxistaugliche Schauexperimente für den werkstoffkundlichen Unterricht zu beschreiben.
Ein stark erforschtes Gebiet der Computer Vision ist die Detektion von markanten Punkten des Gesichtszuges (englisch: facial feature detection), wie der Mundwinkel oder des Kinns. Daher lassen sich eine Vielzahl von veröffentlichten Verfahren finden, die sich jedoch teils deutlich hinsichtlich der Detektionsgenauigkeit, Robustheit und Geschwindigkeit unterscheiden. So sind viele Verfahren nur bedingt echtzeitfähig oder liefern nur mit hochaufgelösten Bildquellen ein zufriedenstellendes Ergebnis. In den letzten Jahren wurden daher Verfahren entwickelt, die versuchen, diese Problematiken zu lösen. In dieser Arbeit erfolgt eine Betrachtung dreier dieser State-of-the-Art Verfahren: Constrained Local Neural Fields (CLNF), Discriminative Response Map Fitting (DRMF) und Structured Output SVM (SO SVM), sowie deren Implementierungen. Dazu erfolgt ein empirischer Vergleich hinsichtlich der Detektionsgenauigkeit.
While the topic of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has generated an increasing amount of research attention in recent years, still lacking is a comprehensive overview that helps to explain how companies can implement CRM successfully. To address these issues, this article identifies and discusses factors that are associated with a greater degree of CRM success. More specifically, we identify and discuss determinants on strategy, human resources, information management, structure and processes as well as specific factors within the implementation phase which help to improve CRM success. First, our results indicate that the implementation of CRM processes is associated with better company performance, especially at the relationship initiation and maintenance stage. Second, the findings emphasis a predominant influence of firm-based factors vis-à-vis structural industry, and customer-based factors. Furthermore, cross-functional CRM teams and a top management feeling responsible for CRM projects help to improve CRM success. In addition, internal processes which are related to customer contact points have to be redesigned to enhance the interaction between employees and customers. The current article sheds more light on what really drives CRM success.
Im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes sollten die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Einsatzes von Sol-Gel-Ausrüstung für die Verbesserung der Scheuer-/Abrasionsbeständigkeit für Gewebe aus unterschiedlichen Fasermaterialien untersucht werden. Dabei lag der Schwerpunkt auf Textilien für die Bereiche Bekleidung- /Berufsbekleidung sowie Bezugsstoffe (Möbel, Automotive, Personentransport).
Entwicklung eines nicht vergilbenden, faserbasierten BH's mittels innovativer FIM-Technologie
(2017)
Energy transfer kinetics in photosynthesis as an inspiration for improving organic solar cells
(2017)
Clues to designing highly efficient organic solar cells may lie in understanding the architecture of light harvesting systems and exciton energy transfer (EET) processes in very efficient photosynthetic organisms. Here, we compare the kinetics of excitation energy tunnelling from the intact phycobilisome (PBS) light harvesting antenna system to the reaction center in photosystem II in intact cells of the cyanobacterium Acaryochloris marina with the charge transfer after conversion of photons into photocurrent in vertically aligned carbon nanotube (va- CNT) organic solar cells with poly(3-hexyl)thiophene (P3HT) as the pigment. We find that the kinetics in electron hole creation following excitation at 600 nm in both PBS and va-CNT solar cells to be 450 and 500 fs, respectively. The EET process has a 3 and 14 ps pathway in the PBS, while in va-CNT solar cell devices, the charge trapping in the CNT takes 11 and 258 ps. We show that the main hindrance to efficiency of va CNT organic solar cells is the slow migration of the charges after exciton formation.
Um einen Funksensor zum Messen der Windgeschwindigkeit per Energy Harvesting mit Energie zu versorgen, bietet es sich an, das Messsignal selbst zur Energiegewinnung zu nutzen. Mit optimierter Funkübertragung und Energiemanagement lässt sich ein autarker Windstärke-Funksensor realisieren, der ab 2 m/s Windgeschwindigkeiten messen und die Messwerte per Funk übertragen kann.
Nowadays CHP units are discussed for the production of electricity on demand rather than for generation of heat providing electricity as a by-product. By this means, CHP units are capable of satisfying a higher share of the electricity demand on-site and in this new role, CHP units are able to reduce the load on the power grid and to compensate for high fluctuations of solar and wind power.
Evidently, a novel control strategy for CHP units is required in order to shift the operation oriented at the heat demand to an operation led by the electricity demand. Nevertheless, the heat generated by the CHP unit needs to be utilized completely in any case, for maintaining energy as well as economic efficiency. Such a strategy has been developed at Reutlingen University, and it will be presented in the paper. Part of the strategy is an intelligent management for the thermal energy storage (TES) ensuring that the storage is at low level in terms of its heat content just before an electricity demand is calling the CHP unit into operation. Moreover, a proper forecast of both, heat and electricity demand, is incorporated and the requirements of the CHP unit in terms of maintenance and lifetime are considered by limiting the number of starts and stops per unit time and by maintaining a certain minimum length of the operation intervals.
All aspects of this novel control strategy are revealed in the paper, which has been implemented on a controller for further testing at two sites in the field. Results from these tests are given as well as results from a simulation model, which is able to evaluate the performance of the control strategy for an entire year.
We present a topology of MIMO arrays of inductive antennas exhibiting inherent high crosstalk cancellation capabilities. A single layer PCB is etched into a 3-channels array of emitting/receiving antennas. Once coupled with another similar 3-channels emitter/receiver, we measured an Adjacent Channel Rejection Ratio (ACRR) as high as 70 dB from 150 Hz to 150 kHz. Another primitive device made out of copper wires wound around PVC tubes to form a 2-channels “non-contact slip-ring” exhibited 22 dB to 47 dB of ACRR up to 15MHz. In this paper we introduce the underlying theoretical model behind the crosstalk suppression capabilities of those so-called “Pie-Chart antennas”: an extension of the mutual inductance compensation method to higher number of channels using symmetries. We detail the simple iterative building process of those antennas, illustrate it with numerical analysis and evaluate there effectiveness via real experiments on the 3-channels PCB array and the 2-channels rotary array up to the limit of our test setup. The Pie Chart design is primarily intended as an alternative solution to costly electronic filters or cumbersome EM shields in wireless AND wired applications, but not exclusively.
Electronic word-of-mouth (eWoM) communication plays an increasingly important role in modern business. The underlying concept of word-of-mouth (WoM) communication is well researched and has proved highly significant in respect of its impact on customers purchase behavior. However, due to the advent of digital technologies, decision-making among customers is progressively shifting to the online world. Consequently, eWoM has received a lot of attention from the academic community. As multiple research papers focus on specific facets of eWoM, there is a need to integrate current research results systematically. Thus, this paper presents a scientific literature analysis in order to determine the current state-of-the-art in the field of eWoM. Five main research areas were analyzed, supporting the need for further eWoM studies and providing a structured overview of existing results.
This paper presents an approach for label-free brain tumor tissue typing. For this application, our dual modality microspectroscopy system combines inelastic Raman scattering spectroscopy and Mie elastic light scattering spectroscopy. The system enables marker-free biomedical diagnostics and records both the chemical and morphologic changes of tissues on a cellular and subcellular level. The system setup is described and the suitability for measuring morphologic features is investigated.
Es wird gezeigt, wie bei Fernspeisung die Vorhersage der Erwärmung mit entsprechender Modellierung verbessert werden kann und wie der Einfluss von Material und Form des Kabelkanals die Erwärmung und das das Temperaturprofil des Bündels beeinflusst. Es wird auch vorgestellt, dass die erhöhte Erwärmung von Metallkabelkanälen auf die geringere Emissivität zurückzuführen ist und wie das verbessert werden kann.
In vitro composed vascularized adipose tissue is and will continue to be in great demand e.g. for the treatment of extensive high-graded burns or the replacement of tissue after tumor removal. Up to date, the lack of adequate culture conditions, mainly a culture medium, decelerates further achievements. In our study, we evaluated the influence of epidermal growth factor (EGF) and hydrocortisone (HC), often supplemented in endothelial cell (EC) specific media, on the co-culture of adipogenic differentiated adipose derived stem cells (ASCs) and microvascular endothelial cells (mvECs). In ASCs, EGF and HC are thought to inhibit adipogenic differentiation and have lipolytic activities. Our results showed that in indirect co-culture for 14 days, adipogenic differentiated ASCs further incorporated lipids and partly gained an univacuolar morphology when kept in media with low levels of EGF and HC. In media with high EGF and HC levels, cells did not incorporate further lipids, on the contrary, cells without lipid droplets appeared. Glycerol release, to measure lipolysis, also increased with elevated amounts of EGF and HC in the culture medium. Adipogenic differentiated ASCs were able to release leptin in all setups. MvECs were functional and expressed the cell specific markers, CD31 and von Willebrand factor (vWF), independent of the EGF and HC content as long as further EC specific factors were present. Taken together, our study demonstrates that adipogenic differentiated ASCs can be successfully co-cultured with mvECs in a culture medium containing low or no amounts of EGF and HC, as long as further endothelial cell and adipocyte specific factors are available.
Integrated power semiconductors are often used for applications with cyclic on-chip power dissipation. This leads to repetitive self-heating and thermo-mechanical stress, causing fatigue on the on-chip metallization and possibly destruction by short circuits. Because of this, an accurate simulation of the thermo-mechanical stress is needed already during the design phase to ensure that lifetime requirements are met. However, a detailed thermo mechanical simulation of the device, including the on-chip metallization is prohibitively time-consuming due to its complex structure, typically consisting of many thin metal lines with thousands of vias. This paper introduces a two-step approach as a solution for this problem. First, a simplified but fast simulation is performed to identify the device parts with the highest stress. After, precise simulations are carried out only for them. The applicability of this method is verified experimentally for LDMOS transistors with different metal configurations. The measured lifetimes and failure locations correlate well with the simulations. Moreover, a strong influence of the layout of the on-chip metallization lifetime was observed. This could also be explained with the simulation
method.
In this paper we build on our research in data management on native Flash storage. In particular we demonstrate the advantages of intelligent data placement strategies. To effectively manage phsical Flash space and organize the data on it, we utilize novel storage structures such as regions and groups. These are coupled to common DBMS logical structures, thus require no extra overhead for the DBA. The experimental results indicate an improvement of up to 2x, which doubles the longevity of Flash SSD. During the demonstration the audience can experience the advantages of the proposed approach on real Flash hardware.
Integrierte Schaltkreise (IC) sind ein integraler Bestandteil vieler Geräte wie zum Beispiel Smartphones, Computer oder Fernseher. Auf den Schaltkreisen werden immer mehr Funktionen integriert. Um die Arbeit auch zukünftig in gegebener Zeit bewältigen zu können, bedarf es daher einer Möglichkeit für die gleichzeitige Zusammenarbeit der Entwickler. Unter dem Arbeitstitel eCEDA (eCollaboration for Electronic Design Automation) wird ein Konzept für eine Webanwendung entwickelt, die die Echtzeitkollaboration von Entwicklern im Chipentwurf ermöglichen soll. Dieses Konzept sowie verschiedene Aspekte der Kollaboration werden in dieser Arbeit behandelt.
EBIT & Co.
(2017)
Eine ganze Reihe von Kennzahlen wird in der Betriebswirtschaftslehre zur Ermittlung und Steuerung des Unternehmensgewinns verwendet. Doch nicht alle eignen sich für denselben Zweck. Je nach Fragestellung sollten unterschiedliche Kennzahlen herangezogen werden. Ihre Interpretation muss nicht zuletzt auch branchenspezifisch erfolgen.
A concept for a slope shaping gate driver IC is proposed, used to establish control over the slew rates of current and voltage during the turn-on and turn off switching transients.
It combines the high speed and linearity of a fully-integrated closed-loop analog gate driver, which is able to perform real-time regulation, with the advantages of digital control, like flexibility and parameter independency, operating in a predictive cycle-bycycle regulation. In this work, the analog gate drive integrated circuit is partitioned into functional blocks and modeled in the small-signal domain, which also includes the non-linearity of parameters. An analytical stability analysis has been performed in order to ensure full functionality of the system controlling a modern generation IGBT and a superjunction MOSFET. Major parameters of influence, such as gate resistor and summing node capacitance, are investigated to achieve stable control. The large-signal behavior, investigated by simulations of a transistor level design, verifies the correct operation of the circuit. Hence, the gate driver can be designed for robust operation.
In this article, liposome-based coatings aiming to control drug release from therapeutic soft contact lenses (SCLs) materials are analyzed. A PHEMA based hydrogel material loaded with levofloxacin is used as model system for this research. The coatings are formed by polyelectrolyte layers containing liposomes of 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3- phosphocholine (DMPC) and DMPC1cholesterol (DMPC1 CHOL). The effect of friction and temperature on the drug release is investigated. The aim of the friction tests is to simulate the blinking of the eyelid in order to verify if the SCLs materials coated with liposomes are able to keep their properties, in particular the drug release ability. It was observed that under the study conditions, friction did not affect significantly the drug release from the liposome coated PHEMA material. In contrast, increasing the temperature of release leads to an increase of the drug diffusion rate through the hydrogel. This phenomenon is recorded both in the control and in the coated samples.