https://www.mdu.se/

The rising demand for real-time applications with ultra-low end-to-end network latency has driven advancements in communication technologies. The IEEE 802.1 Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a set of standards that enable low-latency wired communication, meeting the stringent timing requirements of real-time applications. TSN uses wired communication and lacks the mobility of wireless networks. To overcome this limitation and broaden the applicability of TSN across diverse use cases, the integration of TSN with wireless technologies is essential. The fifth generation of cellular networks (5G) supports real-time applications by providing reliable communication with latencies as low as 1~ms. Seamless integration of TSN and 5G is needed to fully utilize the potential of these technologies in many contemporary and future industrial applications. However, achieving this integration presents significant challenges due to the fundamental differences between TSN and 5G, particularly in ensuring the applications requirements on end-to-end Quality of Services (QoS).

This thesis addresses the challenges of integrated TSN-5G networks, focusing on ensuring end-to-end QoS, traffic forwarding, and real-time scheduling. It presents a systematic literature survey of the existing research on TSN-5G integration that identifies gaps in the current research, including the need of a dedicated TSN-5G gateway to ensure seamless integration. To bridge this gap, the thesis proposes novel techniques to ensure end-to-end QoS and traffic forwarding, validated through a proof-of-concept implementation in a private 5G setup. Moreover, the thesis tackles the challenge of scheduling 5G radio resources for real-time TSN flows with diverse timing requirements. It introduces flow-based radio resource scheduling approaches that adapt to dynamic channel conditions and ensure latency guarantees for the transmission of TSN flows over 5G. These contributions enable real-time communication in integrated TSN-5G networks, paving the way for advanced real-time applications across various industrial domains.

Product development has increasingly evolved into an interorganisational activity where suppliers are involved in customers’ product development projects. This phenomenon of supplier involvement in product development has been studied for over four decades. However, most prior research has focused on the customer perspective, studying the benefits, risks, and challenges faced by customers, as well as the critical factors influencing their ability to successfully involve suppliers. Current research, however, provides limited insights into the supplier’s perspective on their involvement in customers’ product development projects. Understanding this perspective is vital for gaining deeper insights into the characteristics of supplier involvement in product development from the suppliers’ perspective, as well as the implications these characteristics entail.

This thesis explores the following research questions to address these gaps: “What characterises supplier involvement in product development from the supplier’s perspective?”, and “What are the implications of the characteristics for the supplier?”. The results build on a systematic literature review and the findings of a multiple case study including four Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) suppliers. The thesis consists of a compiled summary and five appended papers. 

The results show that supplier involvement in product development, from the suppliers’ perspective, is characterised by tasks that vary in terms of complexity, novelty, and responsibility, along with varying customer expectations, different types of interrelationships, capability- and interface-related challenges, and uncertainty regarding product requirements and technology. Two major implications related to these characteristics were identified. First, it is important for suppliers to develop their internal capabilities, such as enhancing competence, establishing product development process models, utilising design tools, and fostering internal collaboration. Second, it is crucial to improve conditions for interaction. The findings emphasise the importance of early supplier involvement and contextual information in improving interaction and product development outcomes. Early involvement helps suppliers understand customer requirements and design challenges, allowing them to influence the design and prevent manufacturing complexities. Contextual information facilitates in identifying areas for design and manufacturing improvements, as well as uncovering unspoken customer needs and information gaps.

Keywords:     supplier involvement, supplier integration, supplier collaboration, NPD, SME, manufacturing company

Participation, encompassing both attendance and involvement in daily and physical activities, is vital for the development and health of children and adolescents. Combinations of activities, places, people, objects, and time create contexts for participation. Participation varies with disabilities, socioeconomic status, gender, and age, factors which individually or collectively interact with these contexts. While assessments of participation commonly focus on activities, it is necessary to understand the contexts to promote participation. It remains unclear which contexts for daily activities are assessed by the Swedish participation instrument FUNDES-Child-SE, and how participation in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) contexts is distributed and shaped among adolescents. Therefore, this thesis aims to explore contexts for participation in daily activities, and the patterns and conditions for adolescents’ participation in MVPA contexts.

Two studies were conducted and presented in four articles. In Study I, data from 163 caregivers of 6-18-year-olds with disabilities were analyzed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and coefficient alpha, were used to assess the structural validity of the FUNDES-Child-SE and identify contexts for participation in daily activities. In Study II, data from 3494 adolescents were analyzed through cluster analysis and coincidence analysis to explore patterns of and conditions for participation in MVPA contexts of sports and physical exercise.

Study I found that FUNDES-Child-SE assesses participation in both informal (activities within and outside the home) and formal contexts (activities at school and in society). In Study II, two clusters characterized by participation in sports were associated with having a disability. Among older adolescents, most of the identified clusters were associated with sex, with female sex being linked to half of the non-participation clusters in MVPA. The conditions for the non-participation cluster in physical exercise differed for girls and boys. While socioeconomic status was a key condition for girls, boys had several interrelated conditions for belonging to this cluster.

The discussion focuses on access to contexts through accommodation and affordability. To facilitate participation in formal contexts such as sports, adolescents with disabilities may need accommodations including aids, organizational adaptations, and peer support. Organizational adaptations and peer support may also accommodate girls’ participation. The influence of socioeconomic status on girls’ participation in MVPA may be due to gender stereotypes affecting affordability. Researching contexts for organized activities is complex, as these activities may be inseparable from other contextual factors such as people or places. 

In conclusion, this thesis emphasizes the importance of considering contexts broadly to promote adolescents' participation in daily and physical activities. Facilitating access and participation involves more than simply focusing on the activities. Future research should employ interdisciplinary multi-method designs to further investigate the participation construct, to examine the sports and physical exercise contexts for MVPA more deeply, and to investigate the acceptability of MVPA contexts, specifically for adolescents with disabilities and for girls.

The digital twin concept has emerged as a pivotal tool in digital transformation, offering digital representations of physical components, systems, or processes to enable remote monitoring and control. The functional suitability of digital twins relies on interoperable subsystems that can seamlessly and effectively exchange data. Consequently, achieving interoperability in digital twin solutions is crucial. However, this remains an open challenge due to the diversity of data models employed across existing digital twin implementations. This challenge is further intensified by the lack of practical methods to integrate early-phase engineering models with digital twin models.This thesis provides software architecture analysis of digital twins, using the ISO 23247 standard as a baseline, and highlights the limitations of current interoperability solutions—drawing on findings from systematic studies, industry surveys, and expert interviews.In addition, it addresses the identified limitations by progressively developing a solution rooted in model-driven engineering, and the Asset Administration Shell standard, supporting the development of more scalable and standardized digital twins.The proposed approach aims to automate the integration process between engineering models and digital twin models, eliminating the need for manual creation of transformation rules. A full-scale implementation has been realized using model transformations to automatically generate Asset Administration Shell-compliant models from artifacts described in Systems Modeling Language version 2. The approach is developed and validated following an iterative, test-driven development methodology through the translation of a representative set of Systems Modeling Language version 2 models into Asset Administration Shell models, demonstrating its feasibility, completeness, and correctness.