Hochschule für Wirtschaft FHNW

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Bereich: Suchergebnisse

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  • Vorschaubild
    Publikation
    How to support customer segmentation with useful cluster descriptions
    (Springer, 2015) Witschel, Hans Friedrich; Loo, Simon; Riesen, Kaspar; Perner, Petra
    Customer or market segmentation is an important instrument for the optimisation of marketing strategies and product portfolios. Clustering is a popular data mining technique used to support such segmentation – it groups customers into segments that share certain demographic or behavioural characteristics. In this research, we explore several automatic approaches which support an important task that starts after the actual clustering, namely capturing and labeling the “essence” of segments. We conducted an empirical study by implementing several of these approaches, applying them to a data set of customer representations and studying the way our study participants interacted with the resulting cluster representations. Major goal of the present paper is to find out which approaches exhibit the greatest ease of understanding on the one hand and which of them lead to the most correct interpretation of cluster essence on the other hand. Our results indicate that using a learned decision tree model as a cluster representation provides both good ease of understanding and correctness of drawn conclusions.
    04B - Beitrag Konferenzschrift
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    Publikation
    Was man mit Blockchain nicht machen kann
    (Netzmedien, 19.06.2019) Dettling, Walter
    Nach der ersten Begeisterung über Kryptowährungen und Blockchain ist eine gewisse Ernüchterung eingetreten. Im Gegensatz zu Kryptowährungen ist bei den übrigen Blockchain-Anwendungen ist noch keine «Killerapplikation» in Sicht. Grund dafür sind die völlig unterschiedliche Konzeptionen von herkömmlichen Datenstrukturen für Business Applikationen und dem Konzept der Blockchain, welche primär den Schutz der Daten vor Manipulation und die Anonymität gewährleisten.
    01B - Beitrag in Magazin oder Zeitung
  • Vorschaubild
    Publikation
    Shaping aggregated load profiles based on optimized local scheduling of home appliances
    (Springer, 01.02.2018) Hunziker, Christoph; Schulz, Nicola; Wache, Holger
    We present a new method to control an aggregated electric load profile by exploiting the flexibilities provided by residential homes. The method is based on a common energy price combined with inclining block rates, broadcasted to all households allowing them to minimize their energy provisioning cost. The distributed home energy management systems receive the price signal and use mixed integer linear programming for optimal scheduling of load, storage, and generation devices. The method provides excellent scalability as well as autonomy for home owners and avoids load synchronization effects. As proof of concept, an optimization algorithm for determining a day-ahead price is applied in two case studies. An excellent conformance between a given reference load profile and the resulting aggregated load profile of all households is demonstrated.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
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    Publikation
    A market-based smart grid approach to increasing power grid capacity without physical grid expansion
    (Springer, 01.02.2018) Bagemihl, Joachim; Boesner, Frank; Riesinger, Jens; Künzli, Michael; Wilke, Gwendolin; Binder, Gabriela; Wache, Holger; Laager, Daniel; Breit, Jürgen; Wurzinger, Michael; Zapata, Juliana; Ulli-Beer, Silvia; Layec, Vincent; Stadler, Thomas; Stabauer, Franz
    The continuous increase of competitiveness of renewable energy in combination with the necessity of fossil fuel substitution leads to further electrification of the global energy system and therefore a need for large-scale power grid capacity increase. While physical grid expansion is not feasible for many countries, grid-driven energy management in the Smart Grid often interferes in customer processes and free access to the energy market. The paper solves this dilemma by proposing a market-based load schedule management approach that increases power grid capacity without physical grid expansion. This is achieved by allocating for a certain class of non-critical flexible loads called “conditional loads” the currently unused grid capacity dedicated to ensuring N−1 security of supply whereas this security level remains untouched for all critical processes. The paper discusses the necessary processes and technical and operational requirements to operate such a system.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
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    Publikation
    Technical Validation of the RLS Smart Grid Approach to increase Power Grid Capacity without Physical Grid Expansion
    (SciTePress, 05/2019) Christen, Ramón; Layec, Vincent; Wilke, Gwendolin; Wache, Holger; Donnellan, Brian; Klein, Cornel; Helfert, Markus
    The electrification of the global energy system and the shift towards distributed power production from sus- tainable sources triggers an increased network capacity demand at times of high production or consumption. Existing energy management solutions can help mitigate resulting high costs of large-scale physical grid rein- forcement, but often interfere in customer processes or restrict free access to the energy market. In a preceding paper, we proposed the RLS regional load shaping approach as a novel business model and load management solution in middle voltage grid to resolve this dilemma: market-based incentives for all stakeholders are pro- vided to allow for flexible loads that are non-critical in customer processes to be allocated to the unused grid capacity traditionally reserved for N-1 security of supply. We provide a validation of the technical aspects of the approach, with an evaluation of the day-ahead load forecasting method for industry customers and a load optimization heuristics. The latter is tested by a simulation run on a scenario of network branch with provoked capacity bottlenecks. The method handles all provoked critical network capacity situations as expected.
    04B - Beitrag Konferenzschrift
  • Vorschaubild
    Publikation
    Poster abstract: SmartStability. A multi-agent simulation environment for flexibility trading in households
    (Springer, 01.02.2018) Wache, Holger; Künzli, Michael; Schulz, Nicola; Bichsel, Jürg; Hall, Monika
    The increasing number of volatile energy sources, such as solar power plants, challenges the power network operators, the energy brokers as well as the electricity market actors. In this work, a multi-agent based approach will be introduced that allows multiple households to trade flexibilities, on top of the usual selling of produced energy to the paying consumer. Flexibility trading allows different optimisations for different actors. They can slightly shift their electricity consumption, e.g. by turning boilers on/off, to optimise the system (e.g. follow a predefined schedule). Simulation results indicate that a flexibility market consisting of only few households can already help to optimise the system.
    01A - Beitrag in wissenschaftlicher Zeitschrift
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    Publikation
    Event Data Sources for Enterprise Architecture Documentation
    (Hochschule für Wirtschaft FHNW, 02/2015) Frei, Michael; Hinkelmann, Knut
    Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) has become a widely accepted discipline that concerns itself with the alignment of business and information technology (IT) and deals with the increasing complexity of information system (IS) landscapes. It is the practice of documenting the interrelations of business and IT entities by developing a model of the enterprise architecture (EA). This documentation of the EA acts as basis for planning the future architecture and prioritizing the projects that transform the current architecture. Due to globalizing markets and the fast paced evolution of IT, organizations are forced to become agile and frequently adapt their internal architecture in order to stay competitive. Today, the majority of tasks concerning the maintenance of EA documentation are based on manual methods and are connected to huge data collection efforts. This has a negative impact on the quality and reliability of the EA documentation and therefore diminishes the benefits of EAM. The popularly utilized EA frameworks cover the process of keeping the EA documentation up-to-date only marginally. In recent literature, there has been an effort to automate the EA documentation with the use and integration of different productive IS across the company. It was identified that common IS in organizations not only hold data about the EA, but also can contain events that could be used to trigger EA documentation processes. However, only few concrete implementations of automated EA documentation are examined in research or found in practice, because organizations face several challenges when attempting to integrate IS into an automated EA documentation. This thesis identifies possible sources of EA data and EA events in the form of common IS or databases in today’s enterprises. Further, the thesis develops an evaluation catalogue for potential source candidates in order to recommend a set of suitable documentation techniques for each source. A proof of concept through a case-study at a financial institution demonstrates the feasibility and applicability of the catalogue. The proposed data source selection catalogue for EA documentation supports the identification and selection of productive IS and suitable techniques in order to increase the quality of EA documentation
    11 - Studentische Arbeit
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    Publikation
    Learning frequent and periodic usage patterns in smart homes
    (Hochschule für Wirtschaft FHNW, 31.01.2014) Schweizer, Daniel; Wache, Holger; Witschel, Hans Friedrich
    This paper discusses how usage patterns and preferences of smart home inhabitants can be learned efficiently. Such patterns as a baseline of what constitutes normal behavior of inhabitants allows future smart homes to autonomously achieve positive effects like comfort increases, energy savings or improved safety for elderly residents in assisted living homes. The approach for learning usage patterns chosen by this research project, which was carried out as a Master Thesis at FHNW, uses frequent sequential pattern mining algorithms to mine the event data available in smart homes. While other authors have already published possible solutions or at least approaches to the problem, the information presented herein is unique because it is based solely on reallife smart home event data and not data collected in a laboratory trial and/or enriched by additional sensors. Furthermore the project does not only propose one solution but compares the performance of different algorithms regarding completeness/correctness of the results, run times as well as memory consumption and elaborates on the shortcomings of the different solutions. To be able to solve the challenge of learning usage patterns, this project followed the research onion framework by Saunders, et al. (2009) and the design science research paradigm by Vaishnavi & Kuechler (2004): after a research design and a literature review was done, the available secondary data was analyzed in depth before different solutions (including a brute-force algorithm specifically designed for this project as well as adaptations of the three established frequent sequential pattern mining algorithms PrefixSpan, BIDE+ and GapBIDE) were designed, implemented as prototypes in Java and benchmarked against each other. The main findings of the benchmarking done with the prototypes and of the project as such were: • With all four algorithms a reasonable amount of frequent sequential patterns can be found with an input parameter set of pattern length = 2-5 events, minimum support = 0.01 – 0.001, overlapping patterns, wildcarding deactivated. • The traditional frequent sequential pattern mining algorithms like PrefixSpan, BIDE+ or GapBIDE need pre- and post-processing to be able to mine smart home event data. Additionally, if different minimum and maximum lengths of patterns shall be mined, those algorithms need to be run multiple times to report the correct support count. • The run times vary greatly for the different algorithms, BIDE+ being the slowest of the four algorithms. Both GapBIDE and especially PrefixSpan run significantly faster, however, they are outperformed by the brute-force algorithm WSDD developed for this project. • Wildcarding could not fulfill the potential attributed to it at the beginning of the project because no significantly higher support counts can be found with wildcarding being activated. • While WSDD as the fastest algorithms can be recommended without reservations regarding run times, all four benchmarked algorithms showed bad results regarding memory consumption for certain combinations of input parameters. This paper therefore contains six different propositions for lowering the memory consumption, should memory consumption be a concern. • While the aspect of periodic sequential pattern mining was investigated as part of this research project and a manual analysis of the available data showed that periodic patterns exist in smart home events, no satisfactory mining results could be achieved and it is therefore suggested to look into this aspect in a follow-up research project (e.g. by adapting a state-of-the-art periodic (sequential) pattern mining algorithm to the specifics of smart home event data). Overall it can be said that the thesis could prove part of its statement as true: it is possible to learn, in a run-time efficient way, frequent usage patterns and preferences of smart home inhabitants only from event data available within a smart home. With different use cases it could be shown in a theoretical way that the patterns can be used to achieve the aforementioned positive effects like saving electricity or increasing the comfort of smart home inhabitants.
    11 - Studentische Arbeit
  • Vorschaubild
    Publikation
    Agility meets Governance of Enterprise IT
    (Hochschule für Wirtschaft FHNW, 29.10.2014) Diptanshu, Kumar; Asprion, Petra
    Achievement of continuous competitive advantage in an ever changing business environment together with distinct advancement in technology, require enterprises to consider more efficient ways in their quick responding abilities and in their taking advantage of IT possibilities. Many studies confirmed the important role of Agility and IT/ERP governance in ERP post-implementation phase in this respect. Additionally it was found that agility affects ERP post-implementation phase in various ways and continuous improvement of this phase with customization and business process reengineering plays a vital role for an improved superior agility. Impact and influence of ERP systems in supporting business operations is significant, therefore the effect of post-implementation modification initiatives need to be closely examined. Since these influences of ERP PIP are not adequately studied, there is still gap in the literature regarding this (Oseni et al., 2014). This master thesis addresses the research problem about the lack of knowledge on how IT/ERP governance and agility influences ERP post-implementation phase. To reach this goal, three research questions were identified and a review of the related terms of agility, IT/ERP governance, ERP post-implementation phase and business environment was performed through literature studies. The first question to find the current literature status of ERP post implementation with focus on IT/ERP governance and agility is answered by reviewing of existing literature relating to the topic as an essential first step and foundation when undertaking a research project (Baker, 2000). The second question to find the result about agility affect on ERP post implementation, a qualitative research approach known as Relational Analysis is performed on nine related articles of four selected online journals from last one year. Third question to find the influencing factors impacting the ERP post implementation regard to IT/ERP Governance or/and agility is answered by determining these factors through literature analysis performed on the various related literatures included in foundation. A conceptual research model based on the existing literature is proposed to provide a visual representation of the relationship between the involved concepts. The outcome of the first research question is a table, which summarizes the main literatures topics, focus, and literature support. Outcome of second research question support the mutual promotive relationship between ERP post implementation and agility. Outcome of third question is list of influencing factors impacting ERP post implementation regard to IT/ERP Governance or/and agility. Finally a revised conceptual model is derived to visualize the interpretations of the findings of the research. The findings of the research could be important theoretical contributions to the body knowledge of business information systems. The research has bridged the knowledge gap among agility, IT/ERP governance and post implementation, in relation to the way on how they influence ERP post implementation. This research has specific focus on ERP post implementation with regard to agility and IT/ERP governance.
    11 - Studentische Arbeit
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    Publikation
    Critical Infrastructure Information Security Model
    (Hochschule für Wirtschaft FHNW, 31.01.2015) Schlüter, Michael; Asprion, Petra
    Malfunction of critical infrastructures have a serious impact on health, safety, security and economic wellbeing of citizens and have therefore to be supremely protected. Today’s cyber threats gain in importance especially for critical infrastructure as they have enormous potential for damage. Critical infrastructures are the backbone of our nation's economy, security and health. Different instruments are available to address various information security topics. Some regulations exist for parts of critical infrastructure sectors. But there is currently no unique security level of critical infrastructure enterprises. Goal of this study is to develop a model for critical infrastructures to prevent and mitigate current cyber risks. Gaps in information security for critical infrastructures were disclosed between available instruments and the needs of critical infrastructure providers. Primary source is based on case study research. Critical infrastructure experts were interviewed to get information about current situations in critical infrastructure enterprises. Books, documentation and journals in the field of information security or critical infrastructure protection are investigated as secondary resources. These sources were used to build a model by prototyping approach, which then was validated by critical infrastructure experts. Analysis of the case study discloses gaps in the area of awareness, cyber risk management, education, funding, regulation and technology. The developed “Critical Infrastructure Information Security Model” describes these areas and shows an improved information security model with focus on cyber risks of critical infrastructures.
    11 - Studentische Arbeit