Olli Martikainen

The GSM standard and Nokia as an incubating entrant

Summary The Finnish telecom industry is largely based on the unprecedented success of Nokia. The GSM standard is interesting in this context. It is at present the most widely diffused telecom standard in the world, and largely accounts for the international breakthrough and market leadership of Nokia. Moreover, the GSM was discontinuous to the incumbent equipment suppliers compared to previous standards. This paper identifies the nature and consequences of these discontinuities, and analyses the conditions and processes that contributed to Nokia’s ability to successfully enter the market ahead of incumbents in the industry. We suggest that Nokia was an ‘incubating entrant’ by possessing latent competencies in discontinuous GSM-related technologies, even though it was a new entrant in the field of cellular systems. We also suggest that this largely explains Nokia’s subsequent success, and question some underlying assumptions of the literature on technology competition and industrial dynamics.

Security management process or video surveillance systems in heterogeneous communication networks

In this paper, we are going to study and analyze the security management process for video surveillance systems. Subsequently, an architecture concept will be presented, showing the different standard security processes e.g. physical security, application security, network security and describe and analyze the individual factors affecting each process. Then the influence and impact to the video surveillance business continuity as well as on the law & ethic issues will be discussed. Finally the interdependencies between different security process and/or the different security parameters in video surveillance systems will be analyzed while keeping in mind the heterogeneous nature of the networks in order to achieve an optimal security management process architecture.

Developing a real-time process data acquisition system for automatic process measurement

As the population aging is a global and unalterable trend, and the whole society is lacking of productive workforce to provide healthcare services, there is a pressure to develop smart services to support the elderly persons live a more independent life and improve the quality of open healthcare. This paper combines together the concepts of smart living environment and process management, we discuss a novel method called automatic process measurement that uses wireless technologies to collect process data for process mining and process analysis. Besides, this paper presents the real-time data acquisition system that is capable of measuring elderly peoples behavior and nurses behavior. We apply the system to three Linux-based platforms and evaluate it in laboratory and practical environment. The proposed system fulfills the measurement needs of collecting process data for automatic process modeling.

Core nursing process improvement enabled by wireless services

The research by Maliranta and Rouvinen based on the Finnish industrial statistics confirms that the productivity improvements in firms correlate to organizational and process changes (Maliranta and Rouvinen, 2003 and Maliranta and Rouvinen, 2004). These results implied a further question: Which types of process changes create the most beneficial productivity improvements in different environments. This question should be of major importance when new services are applied or developed. The research on process improvements has been done in ETLA and in the University of Oulu, where the Three Viewpoint Methodology (3VPM) (Martikainen, 2007) was developed for productivity analysis. In this paper we apply the 3VPM methodology to analyze the nursing documentation process and the impact of documentation process improvement by wireless services on core nursing process in Kyoto University Hospital. The information was collected by interviews and server logs. We have analyzed the benefit of introducing wireless PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) devices to update patient data on place instead of writing it down by hand and later storing it into the system on PC (Personal Computer) and consider other possible solutions like sensors, wireless tracking and touch by device paradigm. Nursing documentation process can be clearly improved and the improvement of the nursing process can be as much as 14%. This means that the same patient intensity can be achieved with less number of nurses.

Idle period notification policy for dynamic task assignment

Performance optimization is an important part of the efficient management of modern information and communication technology based systems such as data communication networks, computing centers or workflow systems. Key factor affecting the performance of a distributed server system is selection of appropriate task assignment policy, because it coordinates the use of processing capacity of servers. In this paper, we propose new dynamic idle period notification policy, in which each server only needs to notify dispatcher of the start of every idle period. We demonstrate by simulation that this policy performs as well as shortest expected delay policy, which requires immediate knowledge of the state of each server at the time of every arrival.

ICT-Based Improvement of Construction Procurement Process

The research by Maliranta and Rouvinen based on the Finnish industrial statistics confirms that the productivity improvements in ICT services in firms correlate to organizational and process changes. These results implied a further question: Which types of process changes create the most beneficial productivity improvements in different environments? In this paper we apply the Three Viewpoint Method (3VPM) approach, originally developed for the productivity analysis of process changes, to analyze the improvement of the construction procurement process of a large Scandinavian construction company when an IT system for procurement was taken into use in the Finnish offices. The analysis revealed that implementing the procurement IT system decreased worker utilization rates and improved the procurement process throughput.

Algorithm for time-constrained paths to deliver services

In logistic services there often are pick-up and delivery time window constraints specified by logistics customers. Our study was to find a solution to manage huge amount of data to enable data processing when calculating shortest or most productive routes for vehicles. The solution allows different kinds of restrictions for the application area and it is adaptable in several services such as healthcare offered at home, postal services or carrying schoolchildren. Design science research was applied to build the output that relied heavily on mathematical approach.

Process Improvement Through Software

The productivity increase and entrepreneurial dynamics in the adoption and efficient use of ICT. Possible lags in the effects of ICT are not very well known. Furthermore, timing between the implementation of ICT and complementing organizational changes remains an open question. According to their research it seems that the additional productivity achieved typically ranges from 8 to 18%. The effect on services tends to be larger than on manufacturing. The effect is often manifold in younger and can even be negative in older firms. Since organizational changes are easier to implement in younger firms and recently established firms have by definition a new structure, this can be interpreted as evidence for the need for complementary organizational changes. Manufacturing firms seem to benefit from ICT-induced efficiency in internal communication whereas service firms benefit from efficiency in their external communications.

Barriers to Horizontal Development

The growth of telecommunications has recently been based on mobile services and broadband data. According to OECD statistics (OECD 2005) the number of mobile subscribers of all telecom operators in 2003 was 828 million and in 2006 the number exceeded 2 billion. So the number of mobile connections exceeds by far the number of fixed access lines, which was 503 million in 2003. Already in 2006 the number of VoIP users exceeded 100 million, which is 20% of all fixed connections. It is expected that the Internet Protocol (IP) based traffic will soon grow tenfold compared to the amount of traditional ISDN based traffic. The transition from the existing services to Internet based ones will change the service infrastructure as well as the telecom market.

Mobile services curriculum - enabling mobile diffusion for future Mobile Enterprises

The 1990s and early 2000s witnessed emergency of dominant designs of Internet and mobile networks. Internet and mobile technologies are enablers that support the change of traditional industrial processes, flexibility in organizations and the increasing role of services with the products. These developments are examples on how mobile technology diffusion changes industrial processes. The mobile diffusion proceeds through changes in knowledge, methods, tools and services. The resulting educational question is: Which are the competences needed to support this development form Mobile Enterprises. Our paper presents the rationale used and choices made in the University of Oulu to construct the mobile services curriculum.