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Libraries since their inception 4000 years ago have been in a process of constant change. Although, changes were in slow motion for centuries, in the last decades, academic libraries have been continuously striving to adapt their services to the ever-changing user needs of students and academic staff. In addition, e-content revolution, technological advances, and ever-shrinking budgets have obliged libraries to efficiently allocate their limited resources among collection and services. Unfortunately, this resource allocation is a complex process due to the diversity of data sources and formats required to be analyzed prior to decision-making, as well as the lack of efficient integration methods. The main purpose of this study is to develop an integrated model that supports libraries in making optimal budgeting and resource allocation decisions among their services and collection by means of a holistic analysis. To this end, a combination of several methodologies and structured approaches is conducted. Firstly, a holistic structure and the required toolset to holistically assess academic libraries are proposed to collect and organize the data from an economic point of view. A four-pronged theoretical framework is used in which the library system and collection are analyzed from the perspective of users and internal stakeholders. The first quadrant corresponds to the internal perspective of the library system that is to analyze the library performance, and costs incurred and resources consumed by library services. The second quadrant evaluates the external perspective of the library system; user’s perception about services quality is judged in this quadrant. The third quadrant analyses the external perspective of the library collection that is to evaluate the impact of the current library collection on its users. Eventually, the fourth quadrant evaluates the internal perspective of the library collection; the usage patterns followed to manipulate the library collection are analyzed. With a complete framework for data collection, these data coming from multiple sources and therefore with different formats, need to be integrated and stored in an adequate scheme for decision support. A data warehousing approach is secondly designed and implemented to integrate, process, and store the holistic-based collected data. Ultimately, strategic data stored in the data warehouse are analyzed and implemented for different purposes including the following: 1) Data visualization and reporting is proposed to allow library managers to publish library indicators in a simple and quick manner by using online reporting tools. 2) Sophisticated data analysis is recommended through the use of data mining tools; three data mining techniques are examined in this research study: regression, clustering and classification. These data mining techniques have been applied to the case study in the following manner: predicting the future investment in library development; finding clusters of users that share common interests and similar profiles, but belong to different faculties; and predicting library factors that affect student academic performance by analyzing possible correlations of library usage and academic performance. 3) Input for optimization models, early experiences of developing an optimal resource allocation model to distribute resources among the different processes of a library system are documented in this study. Specifically, the problem of allocating funds for digital collection among divisions of an academic library is addressed. An optimization model for the problem is defined with the objective of maximizing the usage of the digital collection over-all library divisions subject to a single collection budget. By proposing this holistic approach, the research study contributes to knowledge by providing an integrated solution to assist library managers to make economic decisions based on an “as realistic as possible” perspective of the library situation. Doctoral in Systems Engineering Leuven

Un correcto manejo de los costos y la gestión estratégica de procesos son herramientas indispensables hoy en día en el normal desenvolvimiento de las industrias debido a su impacto directo en los objetivos de toda empresa, estando entre los primordiales, el minimizar costos y maximizar utilidades. Por un lado, el manejo de los costos nos ayudara a controlar que los insumos estén siendo utilizados de una manera eficiente, lo mismo sucede con la gestión estratégica de los procesos brindando las directrices necesarias para mejorar la gestión empresarial. En este sentido, un sistema de costos nos facilitará información adecuada, precisa y detallada para una mejor toma de decisiones. El presente trabajo consiste en documentar el análisis y diseño de una plataforma informática para el apoyo a la gestión de costos y procesos en una industria del sector productivo, específicamente el de ensamblaje mediante la aplicación del sistema de costes basados en el tiempo invertido por actividad (TDABC), mediante el uso de metodologías ágiles se busca verificar si el desarrollo de la plataforma permite superar algunas de las limitaciones del sistema de costeo, así como acentuar sus ventajas. Para esto, se establece primero un marco teórico que se centra en describir los principales sistemas de costeo, así como las metodologías de desarrollo ágiles existentes. Seguidamente, el estudio hace referencia al estado actual de la empresa, documenta los componentes de análisis, diseño y desarrollo de una plataforma informática, haciendo una alineación con respecto a metodologías ágiles. Para finalizar el sistema planteado supone una evolución de la experiencia previa de desarrollo de un prototipo que aplica TDABC para el manejo de procesos en bibliotecas al alinearlo a empresas de producción. El trabajo finaliza extrayendo las conclusiones más importantes del análisis efectuado. Cost management and strategic process management are indispensable tools today in the development of industries given their direct impact on the objectives of every company, among the most important, minimizing costs and maximizing profits. On one hand, cost management helps to ensure that inputs are being used in an efficient way, along with the strategic management of the processes, which provides the necessary guidelines to improve business management. A cost system is critical to provide us with adequate, accurate and detailed information for better decision making in businesses. This article presents the analysis and design of a software that serves to manage cost management and assembly processes using the ¨Time Driven Activity Based Costing¨ (TDABC) system. This study supports the academic field by using agile methodologies to verify if the development of the platform allows its clients to overcome limitations of TDABC, while simultaneously accentuating its advantages. First, a theoretical framework is established that focuses on presenting the main costing systems and existing agile development methodologies. Next, the study reviews the current state of business in order to assess the the components of analysis and design that are essential for the development of a software that aligns with agile methodologies. Lastly, this article explores the evolution of past experiences with a TDABC prototype that was designed for libraries in order to assess its appropriateness for production companies. This article concludes by arguing the groundbreaking role of the software which promotes the advantages of managing TDABC, while also preventing and limiting the downfalls of the methodology. Magíster en Gestión Estratégica de Tecnologías de la Información Cuenca