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Transition of Occupational Health Nursing Education in Korea (한국 산업간호교육의 변화추세 분석)

  • Cho, Tong Ran;June, Kyung Ja;Kim, So Yeon
    • Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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    • v.6 no.2
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    • pp.144-155
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    • 1997
  • In December 1990, Occupational Safety and Health Law was amended to reinforce employer's responsibilities on employees' health and safety. Among the amended law it was important to expand the role of an occupational health nurse to the role of an occupational health manager. An occupational health manager should take charge of coordinating periodic health examination and environmental hazard evaluation, providing primary care, monitoring employees' health status, giving the workplace walk-through, selecting safe protection equipment, providing health information, counseling and health education, independently. This position of occupational health nurse is equivalent to the role of doctors or occupational hygienists. In 1991, government made a master plan to prevent occupational disease and injury. Under the plan, Korea Industrial Nursing Association (KINA) was established in 1994 with the purpose of improving health services and upgrading career opportunities for members. Therefore, this study was designed to analyze the transition of occupational health nursing education with the changes of law and policy in Korea between 1991 and 1996. In details, it was to analyze the rate of school providing occupational health nursing practice based lecture, lecture hours, lecture contents in undergraduate curriculum, program contents of graduate school, kinds of continuing education, etc. For this purpose, we conducted survey two times. In February 1991, baseline study was conducted with all nursing programs in Korea (19 BSN programs and 43 nursing departments of junior college). From April to May in 1996, the second survey was conducted with all nursing programs (38 BSN programs and 69 junior colleges). The first response rate was 66.1% and the second was 40.6%. Structured questionnaires were mailed to the deans or the community health nursing faculties. In the case of graduate school, telephone survey was conducted with 10 school of public health or environmental health area. Data from the yearbook of Industrial Safety Training Institute (ISTI), the history of Korea Industrial Health Association, and the journals of KINA were also included in the analysis. As the results, we found that there were remarkable improvement in undergraduate and graduate programs, obligatory as well as voluntary continuing education in terms of occupational health nursing expertise between 1991 and 1996. 1) The number of school providing occupational health nursing practice-based lecture was increased with the rate from 7.3% to 25.6%. The rate of school giving over 15 class-hours was increased from 33.3% to 46.6%. 2) Content areas were composed of introduction of occupational health, occupational epidemiology, industrial hygiene, occupational disease and injury, law and policy, health education, concept of occupational health nursing, role of occupational health nurse, occupational health nursing process, etc. Of content areas, occupational health nursing process was more emphasized with the increased rate from 43.9% to 88.4%. 3) In the case of graduate school, occupational health programs were increased from 4 to 10. One of them has developed occupational health nursing program as an independent course since 1991. 4) The law increased educational hours from 28 hours to 36 hours for introductory course at the time of appointment, and from 14 hours to 24 hours every 2 years for continuing education. Course contents were Occupational safety and health law, introduction of occupational health, health education methodology, planning and evaluation, periodic health exam, occupational disease care, primary care, emergency care, management, industrial environment evaluation, etc. In 1996, Korea Industrial Nursing Association has begun to provide continuing education after Industrial Safety Training Institute. 5) Various educational programs in voluntary base were developed such as monthly seminar, CE articles, annual academic symposium, etc. It was shown that changes of law and policy led rapid growth of occupational health nursing education in various levels. From this trend, it is expected that occupational health nurse expertise be continuously to be enhanced in Korea. Legal and political supports should proceed for the development of occupational health nursing in early stage.

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Development Plan of Guard Service According to the LBS Introduction (경호경비 발전전략에 따른 위치기반서비스(LBS) 도입)

  • Kim, Chang-Ho;Chang, Ye-Chin
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.13
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    • pp.145-168
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    • 2007
  • Like to change to the information-oriented society, the guard service needs to be changed. The communication and hardware technology develop rapidly and according to the internet environment change from cable to wireless, modern person can approach every kinds of information service using wireless communication machinery which can be moved such as laptop, computer, PDA, mobile phone and so on, LBS field which presents the needing information and service at anytime, anywhere, and which kinds of device expands it's territory all the more together with the appearance of ubiquitous concept. LBS use the chip in the mobile phone and make to confirm the position of the joining member anytime within several tens centimeters to hundreds meters. LBS can be divided by the service method which use mobile communication base station and apply satellite. Also each service type can be divided by location chase service, public safe service, location based information service and so on, and it is the part which will plan with guard service development. It will be prospected 8.460 hundred million in 2005 years and 16.561 hundred million in 2007 years scale of market. Like this situation, it can be guessed that the guard service has to change rapidly according to the LBS application. Study method chooses documentary review basically, and at first theory method mainly uses the second documentary examination which depends on learned journal and independent volume which published in the inside and the outside of the country, internet searching, other kinds of all study report, statute book, thesis which published at public order research institute of the Regional Police Headquarter, police operation data, data which related with statute, documents and statistical data which depend on private guard company and so on. So the purpose of the study gropes in accordance with the LBS application, and present the problems and improvement method to analyze indirect of manager side of operate guard adaptation service of LBS, government side which has to activate LBS, systematical, operation management, manpower management and education training which related with guard course side which has to study and educate in accordance with application of the new guard service, as well as intents to excellent quality service of guard.

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Image analysis of Specialized Vocational high school recognized by middle school student (중학생이 인식하는 특성화 고등학교 이미지 분석)

  • Kim, Yeong-Hun;Kim, Tae-Hoon
    • 대한공업교육학회지
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    • v.38 no.2
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    • pp.114-135
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    • 2013
  • The purpose of this study is to provide base line data for right concept and identity establishment of Specialized Vocational high school, to identify recognition of Specialized Vocational high school, to analyze image of Specialized Vocational high school recognized by middle school student. The population was all middle school third year students in Korea. Using random sampling technique, 50 classes of 61 schools were sampled for the study. A survey questionnaire used Semantic Differential(SD) suggested by Osgood(1957). SD consisted of a number of adjective pairs, finally, this study used 11 adjective pairs to have validity. 1,198 out of 1,441 questionnaire were returned (a return rate of 83.14%), among which 935 were used for the analysis after data cleaning. An alpha level of 0.05 was established a prior for determining significance. All data analysis was accomplished using the SPSS 20.0 Win. Based on the finding of the study, the major results of the this study were as follows : 1. Higher average is female students' image of Specialized Vocational high school than male students' that, but, The difference between the two samples was not statistically significant. 2. It was only 20% that receive career education of Vocational high school. It is necessary to accomplish and expand career education of Specialized Vocational high school for proper career education from middle school, to realize career exploration and decide one's career path based on one's specialty. 3. They have positive images who hope for going on to the Specialized Vocational high school of education than the others. 4. It is necessary to accomplish and expand career education of Specialized Vocational high school for proper career education from middle school, to realize career exploration and decide one's career path based on one's specialty, because the result was statistically significant. 5. They have the more possitive image of Specialized Vocational high school, the more know it, totally.

A Study on the Moderating Effect of Perceived Voluntariness in the Organizational Information System Usage and Performance (정보시스템 사용과 성과에 있어서 자발성의 조절효과에 관한 연구)

  • Lee, Seung-Chang;Lee, Ho-Geun;Jung, Chang-Wook;Chung, Nam-Ho;Suh, Eung-Kyo
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.195-221
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    • 2009
  • According to an industry report, a large number of organizations have invested in Organizational Information System(OIS) in the past few years. Several research results indicate that successful investments in OIS lead to productivity enhancement, while failed ones result in undesirable consequences such as financial losses and dissatisfaction among employees. In spite of huge investments, however, many organizations have failed in achieving the hoped-for returns from OIS. Thus, understanding user acceptance, adoption, and usage of new IS(Information Systems) is an important issue for IS practitioners. Indeed, study of the user acceptance of new information system has been one of the most important research topics in the contemporary IS literature. Several theoretical models are tested to examine 'user acceptance' and 'usage behavior' in IS context. While many research models incorporate 'ease of use' or 'usefulness' as important factors in explaining user acceptance, Technology Acceptance Model(TAM) has been one of the most widely applied models in user acceptance and usage behavior. Even in recent IS studies that employ theories of innovation diffusion in the area of IS implementation, a major focus has been on the user's perception of information technologies. In this research, we study 'voluntariness' as an important factor in IS acceptance by users. Voluntariness is defined as "the degree to which the use of the innovation is perceived as being voluntary, or of free will" When examining the diffusion of accepting OIS, a thoughtful consideration should be given to 'perceived voluntariness.' Current article has following research questions: 1) What models are appropriate to explain the success of OIS? and 2) How does the 'voluntariness' affect the success of OIS? In order to answer these questions, a research model is proposed to describe the detailed nature of association among three independent variables (IT usage level, task interdependency, and organizational support), a mediating variable (IS usage), a dependent variable (perceived performance), and a moderating variable(perceived voluntariness). The central claim of this article is that organizations hardly realize expected returns from OIS investments unless perceived voluntariness is effectively managed after operating OIS. As an example of OIS in this study we have selected the Intranet of Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF). ROKAF has implemented the Intranet in an attempt to improve communication and coordination within the organization. To test our research model and hypotheses, survey questionnaires were first sent out to 400 Intranet users. With the assistance of ROKAF, Intranet users were initially identified among its members, and subjects were randomly drawn from the pool. 377 survey responses were finally returned. The unit of measurement and analysis in this research is a personal level. Path analysis based on structural equation modeling was used to test research hypotheses. Construct validity represents accordance between the theoretical base concept of constructs and its measurement items. Tests for the reliability and discriminant validity are accepted, thus verifying our survey instrument. In this research, we have proposed a conceptual framework to highlight the importance of perceived voluntariness after organization deploys OIS. The results of our analysis present several key finding. First, all three independent variables (IT usage level, task interdependency, and organizational support) have significant effects on IS usage, which will eventually improve performance. Thus, IS usage plays a mediating role between antecedent variables (IT usage level. task interdependency, and organizational support) and performance improvement. Second, the effect of the task dependency was the highest for IS usage among the three antecedent variables. This is highly plausible since one of the Intranet's major capabilities is to facilitate communication among members within an organization. Accordingly, we conclude that the higher the task dependency, the higher Intranet usage. The effect of user's IT usage level was the second, while the effect of the organizational support was the third. Finally, the perceived voluntariness plays a pivotal role in enhancing perceived performance in personal level after launching the Intranet. Relationships among investigated variables were significantly different between groups with a high level and a low level of voluntariness. The impact of the Intranet usage on the performance was greater in the higher level voluntariness group than in the lower one. For the lower level voluntariness group, the user's IT usage had the highest effect on the Intranet usage among the three antecedent variables. In short, our study suggests that the higher the perceived voluntariness is the more IS usage will be. Perceived voluntariness was found to have a moderating effect on the relationships among user IT usage level, task interdependency, IS usage, and perceived performance, supporting all the hypotheses on the moderating effect. Most of all, user IT usage level has the strongest influence on IS usage, indicating that users with superior IT usage are more likely to enjoy a high level of perceived performance.

The Origin and Formation of Korean Public Art Theories in the 1980s (1980년대 민중미술론의 기원과 형성)

  • Choi, Youl
    • The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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    • no.7
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    • pp.37-64
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    • 2009
  • The theories of Korean Public Art originated by the artists who were against dictatorship and they associated with democratic politicians. They criticized the Fine art that were supported by the dictatorship and gave their efforts for restoration of 'resistance paintings(against dictatorship)', 'proletarian painting', 'realism painting'. In addition, they participated new social ideology(democracy) movement and demonstrated for their rights in arts. These became the main kernel the public art theory was initiated. The public artists splitted into several different parts and participated in the democratic social movement as well as the art movement for freedom. They opened various art exhibitions within different genre, diverse space for various art section such as an exhibition hall, a factories, a university, or a congregation square. Furthermore, the public art theorists published their divergent views through newspaper/broadcasting or unauthorized printed materials. Most of the public artist and the theorists kept their relationship strongly until 1985, the time when 'National Arts Association' started. In 1983 and 1984, they were clearly separated into two parts; artists(move only in art museums) and activists(move in public spaces like school, convention square etc). Their ideological separation also took out national problems. The division; professional artists and armatures, became the social issue as a social stratification matter. And in creating method, there are also other conflicts; critical realism, and public realism as well as western painting and traditional one. These kinds of separation and conflicts made different Public artists associations, under divergent names; 'Reality and Speak'(R&S), 'KwangJu Art Association', 'Durung', 'Dang(Land)', and 'Local Youth Students Association'. In addition, their ideology and pursuit toward art movements were very difference. However, the differences and conflicts weakened When the oppression of democratic education from new dictatorship(Pres. Jun, Doo Hwan) came out. In August. 1985 the government opened to the public so called, 'The draft of School stabilization law'(Hankwon Anjung Bup) to control the teachers' rights and that initiated bigger street demonstration and conflicts between police and educators. In November.1985, assembly meeting of National Arts Association in democracy opened as 'ONE' combined organization. In this presentation, I'd like to summarize the stream of art movement until 1984, and clarify the main art theories that lead the Public Art Movements in 1980s. The main theories in 1980s are crucial because they become the origin of public art theories. This presentation started with O,youn's "Hyunsil Dong In the first declaration" and explained the absent of practice in 1970s. In addition, Won, Dong Suk 's theory was mentioned as all over struggles in theories before 1980s. GA and R&S 's founding declarations in 1970s were the start of public art theorists' activities and this article reported the activities after the declarations. First, realism base on the consciousness of reality. Second, practice art democratization based on the ideology. Third, the subject of public art movement based on understanding people's social stratification structure. Fourth, the matters of national forms and creative ways in arts based on showing reality. Fifth, the strong points in arts that the practitioners accepted. About the public art theories around 1984, I discussed the dividing point of public art theories that were shown in 'generation theory', 'organization theory', and 'popularization theory' by the practitioners. The public realism theory that subjects the contradiction of reality and point out the limits of critical realism not only showing the new creative ways but also giving the feeling of solidarity to the public art activist groups. After that, public art movements expressed 'Dismentlement of Capitalism' and 'Public revolution'. In addition, the direction of public art movements were established strongly. There were various opinions and views during the start and formation of the public art theories. The foundation of theorists activities derived from the practitioners who had the concept based on stratification and nationalism. The strong trend of group division spreaded out by practitioners who opened art work together in factories, universities, squares and rural areas. Now many lively active practitioners are gone to the other field not related with arts, and others join into professional art field not public art one with unknown reason. The theorists have the same situation with the practitioners. It means to me that theory always have to be based on the practice.

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Development of Convenience Evaluation Method of Urban Railway Station based on Universal Design - Focusing on Suseo Station - (유니버설디자인 기반 도시철도역사 편의성 평가방법 개발 - 수서역을 대상으로 -)

  • Lee, Sang Hwa;Kim, Hwang Bae;Kim, Hyun Joo
    • KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.38 no.1
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    • pp.159-165
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    • 2018
  • In recent years, universal design concepts have been introduced that are designed to make everybody more comfortable and safe to use for products, buildings, environments, services, and so on. In the case of urban railroad history, it is important to maintain facilities that incorporate the universal design concept because it is an important facility that serves as a base of city life and there are various users. This research is the last annual task of 5 years as part of the project of "Development of Technique to Improve the Convenience of Urban Railway History User" by the National Institute of Transportation Technology Promotion Agency. The purpose of this study is to develop criteria and method of facilities convenience evaluation based on UD and to evaluate user convenience by selecting test bed station. For this purpose, the UD principle of the historic facilities of Weihai Urban Railway was established and detailed evaluation criteria were presented. As a result of evaluating the test bed history using the 5-point Likert scale of the joint research institute / railway operating agency / expert, 50.3% of convenience improvement was achieved. As a result of evaluating the applicability according to the UD principle, 48.7% Respectively. The evaluation criteria and methodology based on the UD suggested in this study is a quantitative method for evaluating UD application of urban railway facilities in the future.

Discussions about Expanded Fests of Cartoons and Multimedia Comics as Visual Culture: With a Focus on New Technologies (비주얼 컬처로서 만화영상의 확장된 장(場, fest)에 대한 논의: 뉴 테크놀로지를 중심으로)

  • Lee, Hwa-Ja;Kim, Se-Jong
    • Cartoon and Animation Studies
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    • s.28
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    • pp.1-25
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    • 2012
  • The rapid digitalization across all aspects of society since 1990 led to the digitalization of cartoons. As the medium of cartoons moved from paper to the web, a powerful visual culture emerged. An encounter between cartoons and multimedia technologies has helped cartoons evolve into a video culture. Today cartoons are no longer literate culture. It is critical to pay attention to cartoons as an "expanded fest" and as visual and video culture with much broader significance. In this paper, the investigator set out to diagnose the current position of cartoons changing in the rapidly changing digital age and talk about future directions that they should pursue. Thus she discussed cases of changes from 1990 when colleges began to provide specialized education for cartoons and animation to the present day when cartoon and Multimedia Comics fests exist in addition to the digitalization of cartoons. The encounter between new technologies and cartoons broke down the conventional forms of cartoons. The massive appearance of artists that made active use of new technologies in their works, in particular, has facilitated changes to the content and forms of cartoons and the expansion of character uses. The development of high technologies extends influence to the roles of appreciators beyond the artists' works. Today readers voice their opinions about works actively, build a fan base, promote the works and artists they favor, and help them rise to stardom. As artist groups of various genres were formed, the possibilities of new stories and texts and the appearance of diverse styles and world views have expanded the essence of cartoon texts and the overall cartoon system of cartoon culture, industry, education, institution, and technology. It is expected that cartoons and Multimedia Comics will continue to make a contribution as a messenger to reflect the next generation of culture, mediate it, and communicate with it. Today there is no longer a distinction between print and video cartoons. Cartoons will expand in every field through a wide range of forms and styles, given the current situations involving installation concept cartoons, blockbuster digital videos, fancy items, and characters at theme parks based on a narrative. It is therefore necessary to diversify cartoon and Multimedia Comics education in diverse ways. Today educators are faced with a task to bring up future generations of talents who are capable of leading the culture of overall senses based on literate and video culture by incorporating humanities, social studies, and new technology education into their creative artistic abilities.

A Characteristics of Visual Narrative Expression in Garden Design - Focused on the Taehwagang Garden Show 2018 - (정원디자인에 나타난 시각적 서술의 표현특성 - 2018 태화강 정원박람회 작품을 대상으로 -)

  • Kwon, Jin-Wook
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Traditional Landscape Architecture
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    • v.37 no.3
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    • pp.108-118
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    • 2019
  • Appreciating gardens in garden show has its meaning in appreciating concepts and ideas of artists, hidden inside of garden, as formative arts, as well as the beauty of the nature. This study is aimed to understand the intension of artists in visual expression through formative media in the gardens by assessing structure of visual narrative in the space with 20 artworks among the ones presented in 2018 Taehwagang Garden Show. The formative structure is delivered as contents and forms through formative media and formative language. Thus, for analysis on the artworks, the researcher assessed expressive characteristics of the media, through visual and space language, that forms the formative structure in the contest of narrative structure expressed in the gardens and findings of the analysis are as follows. First, for intertextuality obtained through media image, most of the artworks delivered message through 'figure image.' This means, the concept is delivered as 'affinity of actual objects' through the media and associated 'meaning and meaning action' are expected. Second, the characteristics of signs to show symbolism in the gardens were categorized into 'icon'. 'index' and 'symbol'. The results showed that most of the artworks expressed common characteristics between image and meaning, using 'icon' and 'symbol'. Third, as space formation components, based on formative principles, the components of 'dominant' and 'subordinate' roles were defined as the key components for meaning delivery. Also, it was understood that 'space configuration with overlapped image' and 'space configuration with transparency' were adopted to strengthen conceptional layers. Forth, for space occupation types, there were mostly central hall type, corridor type and passage space type and for open space type, the entire space area was conceptualized, instead of certain object. The circulation line was defined in the frequency order of circular type, pass type and return type. The study on the expressive characteristics of visual narrative in garden design is meaningful as it could build base data for the method of spatial design for visual development of concepts in the future.

Flexible Specialization: A New Paradigm for Modern Industrial Society ? (柔軟的 專門化(Flexible Specialization) : 현대 産業社會의 새로운 패러다임 ?)

  • Lee, Deog-An
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.28 no.2
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    • pp.148-162
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    • 1993
  • There is much speculation that modern capi-talist society is undergoing fundamental and qualitative chnge towards flexible specialization. The purpose of this study is to examine this hypothesis. This paper focusses on: the idea of flexible specialization; the significance of this transition; industrial district; and the implicati-ons of this new production system for Korean industrial space. Main arguments of this study are as follows: First, as all different groups of researchers apply the idea of flexible specialization according to their own specifications, the current debate on this topic is not much fruitful. Not surpri-singly, the concept of flexible specialization has overlapped with subocontracting. This intergration of subcontracting into flexible specialization systems, however, is inappropriate because the two concepts have different historical contexts. The other cause of this controversy is its inherent weekness, conceptual ambiguity. Thus, today's flexibility becomes tomorrow's rigidity. Secondly, transition towards flexible speciali-zation has only been partially achieved even in advanced capitalist countries. The application of dualistic explanatory framework, such as rigidity versus flexibiity, mass production versus small-lot multi-product production, and de-skilling versus re-skilling, has resulted in great exaggeration of the transformation, from Fordism to post-Fordism. There is no intermediary part between two places. Considering that the workers allocated to the Fordist mass production assembly line are not as large as one might imagine, the shift from mass to flexible production has only limited implications for the transformation of capitalist economy. Thirdly, 'industrial district' contorversy has contributed to highlighting the importance of small firms and areas as production space. The agglomeration of small firms in specific areas is common in Korea, but it is quite different from the industrial district based on flexible specialization. The Korean phenomenon stems from close interactions with its major parent firm rather than interactions between flexible, specialized, autonomous and technology-intensive smll firms. Most Korean subcontractors are still low-skilled, labour-intensive, and heavily dependent on their mojor parent firms. Thus, the assertion that the Seoul Metropolitan Area adopts flexible specialization has no base. Fourthly, the main concern of flexible speciali zation is small firms. However, the corporate organization that needs product diversification and technological specialization is oligopolistic large corporations typified by multinational corporations. It is because of this that most of these organizations are adoptiong Fordist mass production methods. The problem of product diversification will be resolved naturally if economic internationalization progresses further. What is more important for business success is the quality and price competitiveness of firms rather than product diversification. Lastly, in order to dispel further misunderst-anding on this issue, it is imparative that the conceptual ambiguity is resolved most urgently. This study recommends adoption of more speci-fied and direct terminology (such as, factory automation, computer design, out-sourcing, the exploitation of part-time labor, job redesign) rather than that of ideological ones (such as, Taylorism, Fordism, neo-Taylorism, neo-Fordism, post-fordism, flexible specialization, peripheral post-Fordism). As the debates on this topic just started, we still have long way to go until consensus is reached.

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Hardware Approach to Fuzzy Inference―ASIC and RISC―

  • Watanabe, Hiroyuki
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems Conference
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    • 1993.06a
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    • pp.975-976
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    • 1993
  • This talk presents the overview of the author's research and development activities on fuzzy inference hardware. We involved it with two distinct approaches. The first approach is to use application specific integrated circuits (ASIC) technology. The fuzzy inference method is directly implemented in silicon. The second approach, which is in its preliminary stage, is to use more conventional microprocessor architecture. Here, we use a quantitative technique used by designer of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) to modify an architecture of a microprocessor. In the ASIC approach, we implemented the most widely used fuzzy inference mechanism directly on silicon. The mechanism is beaded on a max-min compositional rule of inference, and Mandami's method of fuzzy implication. The two VLSI fuzzy inference chips are designed, fabricated, and fully tested. Both used a full-custom CMOS technology. The second and more claborate chip was designed at the University of North Carolina(U C) in cooperation with MCNC. Both VLSI chips had muliple datapaths for rule digital fuzzy inference chips had multiple datapaths for rule evaluation, and they executed multiple fuzzy if-then rules in parallel. The AT & T chip is the first digital fuzzy inference chip in the world. It ran with a 20 MHz clock cycle and achieved an approximately 80.000 Fuzzy Logical inferences Per Second (FLIPS). It stored and executed 16 fuzzy if-then rules. Since it was designed as a proof of concept prototype chip, it had minimal amount of peripheral logic for system integration. UNC/MCNC chip consists of 688,131 transistors of which 476,160 are used for RAM memory. It ran with a 10 MHz clock cycle. The chip has a 3-staged pipeline and initiates a computation of new inference every 64 cycle. This chip achieved an approximately 160,000 FLIPS. The new architecture have the following important improvements from the AT & T chip: Programmable rule set memory (RAM). On-chip fuzzification operation by a table lookup method. On-chip defuzzification operation by a centroid method. Reconfigurable architecture for processing two rule formats. RAM/datapath redundancy for higher yield It can store and execute 51 if-then rule of the following format: IF A and B and C and D Then Do E, and Then Do F. With this format, the chip takes four inputs and produces two outputs. By software reconfiguration, it can store and execute 102 if-then rules of the following simpler format using the same datapath: IF A and B Then Do E. With this format the chip takes two inputs and produces one outputs. We have built two VME-bus board systems based on this chip for Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The board is now installed in a robot at ORNL. Researchers uses this board for experiment in autonomous robot navigation. The Fuzzy Logic system board places the Fuzzy chip into a VMEbus environment. High level C language functions hide the operational details of the board from the applications programme . The programmer treats rule memories and fuzzification function memories as local structures passed as parameters to the C functions. ASIC fuzzy inference hardware is extremely fast, but they are limited in generality. Many aspects of the design are limited or fixed. We have proposed to designing a are limited or fixed. We have proposed to designing a fuzzy information processor as an application specific processor using a quantitative approach. The quantitative approach was developed by RISC designers. In effect, we are interested in evaluating the effectiveness of a specialized RISC processor for fuzzy information processing. As the first step, we measured the possible speed-up of a fuzzy inference program based on if-then rules by an introduction of specialized instructions, i.e., min and max instructions. The minimum and maximum operations are heavily used in fuzzy logic applications as fuzzy intersection and union. We performed measurements using a MIPS R3000 as a base micropro essor. The initial result is encouraging. We can achieve as high as a 2.5 increase in inference speed if the R3000 had min and max instructions. Also, they are useful for speeding up other fuzzy operations such as bounded product and bounded sum. The embedded processor's main task is to control some device or process. It usually runs a single or a embedded processer to create an embedded processor for fuzzy control is very effective. Table I shows the measured speed of the inference by a MIPS R3000 microprocessor, a fictitious MIPS R3000 microprocessor with min and max instructions, and a UNC/MCNC ASIC fuzzy inference chip. The software that used on microprocessors is a simulator of the ASIC chip. The first row is the computation time in seconds of 6000 inferences using 51 rules where each fuzzy set is represented by an array of 64 elements. The second row is the time required to perform a single inference. The last row is the fuzzy logical inferences per second (FLIPS) measured for ach device. There is a large gap in run time between the ASIC and software approaches even if we resort to a specialized fuzzy microprocessor. As for design time and cost, these two approaches represent two extremes. An ASIC approach is extremely expensive. It is, therefore, an important research topic to design a specialized computing architecture for fuzzy applications that falls between these two extremes both in run time and design time/cost. TABLEI INFERENCE TIME BY 51 RULES {{{{Time }}{{MIPS R3000 }}{{ASIC }}{{Regular }}{{With min/mix }}{{6000 inference 1 inference FLIPS }}{{125s 20.8ms 48 }}{{49s 8.2ms 122 }}{{0.0038s 6.4㎲ 156,250 }} }}

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