Vertical integration | EPFL Graph Search

In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is an arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or (market-specific) service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need. It contrasts with horizontal integration, wherein a company produces several items that are related to one another. Vertical integration has also described management styles that bring large portions of the supply chain not only under a common ownership but also into one corporation (as in the 1920s when the Ford River Rouge Complex began making much of its own steel rather than buying it from suppliers). Vertical integration and expansion is desired because it secures supplies needed by the firm to produce its product and the market needed to sell the product. Vertical integration and expansion can become undesirable when its actions become anti-compet

Building Capabilities for Service Innovation

Andreas Felix von Vangerow

The service sector is the most dominant sector in every developed economy today. The ability to develop and successfully launch new services is crucial for service organizations to stay competitive and to adapt to the ever-changing conditions of the environment. However, up until now, a mismatch remains between the importance of service innovation for society and the attention given to it in both academia and practice. Existing research has compared the innovative output of service firms with manufacturing firms and found that the difference is one of degree rather than of substance. Studies which focus on the process instead of the output of service innovation, however, are still relatively scarce. This dissertation aims to help close this research gap by examining three service innovation processes in different contexts. First, it offers a theoretical illumination of service innovation with the help of knowledge creation theory. This is beneficial for defining service innovation more precisely. The second study is concerned with the influence of emotional factors on the development of dynamic capabilities in new ventures. It shows that young ventures which are able to deliberately switch between emotional and analytical modes of operation have a higher likelihood of success. The study compares the development of two service-oriented ventures with two product-oriented ones that are part of an accelerator program at the School of Design Thinking at Stanford University. The third paper is concerned with product-service strategies, or Servitization, and the relation to vertical integration and the coordination of innovation in downstream markets. The study shows that the Servitization development, i.e. the vertical integration of manufacturing firms into its users' operation, is a response to the failure of architectural innovation in more flexible buyer-supplier relationships. The study finds four different strategies for the service business of manufacturing firms based on case studies in the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical industries. Overall, I am able to show that firms need to be able to build three distinct capabilities to master their service innovation efforts. First, they need to build up a capacity for innovation to gain economies from partial repetition of solutions. Second, firms need to have skills in place to create and manage boundary objects, especially at the client interface. Finally, they need to have capabilities to build up complementarities which help protect revenues from their service innovation initiatives.

EPFL2015

Secure Integration of Wireless Sensor Networks into Applications

Christophe Trefois

Wireless sensors are small devices that are able to gather, process and deliver information from a physical environment to an external system. By doing so, they open new applications in different domains, such as healthcare, traffc control, defense and agriculture. The integration of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) with Business Applications (BA) raises technical and security related challenges. Existing approaches target technical issues such as interoperability between WSN and BAs or heterogeneity of acquired sensor data. In this work, we start by performing an analysis of the risks that such an integration of WSNs with BAs may present using the NIST SP 800-30 recommendations. We then introduce and analyze an effcient security scheme that does not use complex operations and guarantees end-to-end confidentiality of sensor data. Finally, we provide an in silico proof-of-concept and validate it using a real WSN co-developed with Cisco Systems France.

2008

Towards room-temperature deterministic ferroelectric control of ferromagnetic thin films

Zhen Huang

The persisting demand of higher computing power and faster information processing keeps pushing scientists and engineers to explore novel materials and device structures. Within emerging functional materials, there is a focus on multiferroics materials and material-systems possessing both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic orders. Multiferroics with two order parameters coupled through a magnetoelectric interaction are of particular interest for novel information processing technologies. This thesis explores a promising concept of magnetoelectric multiferroic heterostructure incorporating separate ferroelectric and ferromagnetic thin layers with field-effect-mediated coupling through the heterointerface. The major issues related to ferroelectric control of ferromagnetism in multiferroic heterostructures addressed in this thesis include non-volatile magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature, deterministic switching of magnetization via polarization reversal, ferroelectric control of dynamics of magnetic domains and integration of ferroelectric gates on magnetic channels. The major accomplishments of this thesis are the following: Non-volatile ferroelectric control of magnetic properties has been demonstrated in ultra-thin Co layers at room temperature. The ferromagnetic transition Curie temperature, magnetic anisotropy energy and magnetic coercivity are shown to be switchable via the persistent field effect associated with the ferroelectric polarization. The magnitude of the effect is comparable or exceeds the results observed using the conventional (non-ferroelectric) gates. Local control of individual magnetic domain nucleation and propagation in Co channels by creating new ferroelectric domains has been achieved at the ambient conditions. The microscopic ferroelectric domains written on poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) [P(VDF-TrFE)] ferroelectric polymer gate projected onto the magnetic channel changing locally the magnetic anisotropy energy, and consequently altering magnetic domain dynamics. Therefore it was possible to promote/impede magnetic domain nucleation and significantly change the domain wall velocity using a non-destructive and reversible procedure of ferroelectric domain writing. Non-volatile control of anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) has been demonstrated on diluted magnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)(As,P) thin films with integrated P(VDF-TrFE) ferroelectric gate. The field effect induced by the ferroelectric gate has shown the capability to strongly modulate the AMR behavior. Profound qualitative changes of the nature of AMR has been observed, including complete on/off switching of the crystalline component of AMR in (Ga,Mn)(As,P). A workflow for fabrication of integrated FET-type structures comprising a magnetic metal or semiconductor magnetic channel and ferroelectric polymer gate has been successfully developed. Different approaches for enhancement of ferroelectric gate operation were explored including integration of highly resistive hydrophobic interfacial layer and change of polymer composition for lower leakage. A significant increase of the non-volatile gate effect magnitude compared to the state of art was reached via improved quality of the ferroelectric/ferromagnetic interface.

EPFL2015

Building Capabilities for Service Innovation

Andreas Felix von Vangerow

EPFL2015

Towards room-temperature deterministic ferroelectric control of ferromagnetic thin films

Zhen Huang

EPFL2015