• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.129-155
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• 2000

This empirical study, activity-based costing, a newly introduced approach that has proved to be an improvement over the conventional costing system in product or service costing, is applied at department of clinical pathology in K university hospital. The study subjects were 233 test procedures done in clinical laboratory of K university hospital. Activity analysis was done by interview, questionnaires, and time study, and the amount of resources consumed by each activity and their costs are then traced and applied to the laboratory tests. The main purpose of this study were to compare the test costs of activity-bases costing with those of conventional costing, and test fees of medical insurance, and to provide accurate cost informations for the decision makers of hospital. The major findings of this study were as belows. 1. The cost drivers for application of activity-based costing at clinical laboratory were cases of sample collection, case of specimen, cases of test, and volume-related allocation bases such as direct labor hours and total revenue of each test. 2. The profits of each clinical laboratory fields analyzed by conventional costing were different from the profits analyzed by activity-based costing, especially in the field of Urinalysis(approximately over estimated 750%). 3. The standard full costs by conventional costing were quite different from the costs computed by using activity-based costing, and the difference is most significant with the tests of long labor time. 4. From the comparison between costs computed by using activity-based costing and medical insurance fees, some test fees were significantly lower than the costs, especially in the non-automated fields. As described in this study, activity-based costing provides more accurate cost information than does conventional costing system. The former approach is especially important in the health care industry including hospitals in which planning and controlling the costs services provided are the key to maintaining a healthy financial status for the organization. Despite the contribution of activity-based costing the economic as well as technical feasibilities of implementing such a cost accounting system in an organization must be evaluated. In the development of activity-based costing systems, an activity analysis has to be conducted to identify activities that consume resources. This involves a detailed study of the organization's logistics and accounting information systems, and it is an expensive project in itself. Besides, it can be quite difficult and time consuming to identify and trace resource consumption to a specific activity. Thus the activity-based costing system should be implemented only when the decrease in cost of error far exceeds the increase in cost of measurement. By combining activity-based costing with standard costing, health care administrators can better plan and control the costs of health services provided while ensuring that the organization's bottom line is healthy.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.96-128
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• 1999

This research has a purpose to develop strategies for application and introduction of activitiy based costing for Korean hospitals. A 700 bed-sized general hospital in Taejon was chosen to conduct this study. The conventional costing and ABC methods were simultaneously applied to the Obstetrics & Gynecology department, using data surveyed from June 21 to 30, 1998. The difference of two costing methods' results were analyzed and ABC's superiority was recognized. It showed that the new ABC model was more rational, fair, and objective in allocating indirect costs. The strategies to introduce ABC model to hospitals were suggested as followings: 1)a committee to manage ABC should be organized; 2)education for the employees about costing and cost saving should be provided; 3)the computerized ABC program should be developed; and 4)more advanced and rigourous methods to identify activities and measure the resource consumption should be developed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1996.04a
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• pp.481-484
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• 1996

When logistics system is integrated with production system and marketing system, it takes a very important role of the business management. In general, measurement of logistics cost in logistics system uses the conventional cost assignment method. However the conventional method may result in the incorrect cost because the overhead cost may be incorrectly assigned to the products. Activity-Based Costing(ABC) was proposed as an alternative method which will distribute the overhead cost to each cost obeject more accurately. ABC assigns cost to activities based on the amounts of resources used by resource driver, and assigns cost to cost objects based on the amount of activities driver. This study proposes two heuristic algorithms. The first algorithm selects the best activity driver for each cost object by using correlation analysis. The best activity driver is the one that minimizes the sum of loss cost and measurement cost of activity driver. The second algorithm selects the best number of activities by using correlation analysis. The pair of activities with the highest correlation are combined into one if the saving of measurement cost is no less than the loss due to inaccurate distribution of overhead cost. In order to demonstrate the procedure and validity of the algorithms, Real data of one year from a paper manufacturer are used.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.360-371
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• 2003

The calculation of each unit cost of productions is very important for evaluating the economical efficiency and deciding the reasonable sale price. In the present, two methods of exergy costing on multiple energy systems are suggested to reduce the complexities of conventional SPECO method and MOPSA method and to improve the calculation efficiency of exergoeconomics. The suggested methods were applied to a gas-turbine cogeneration and the unit costs of the power and the steam energy were calculated as an example. The main points of our methods are the following three. First, one exergetic cost is applied to one cycle or system. Second, the suggested equations are the internal cost balance equation and the production cost balance equation. Third, necessary states in a system are only inlet and exit states of 1ha components producing energy.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.139-145
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• 2015

Modular construction is combined with manufacturing production process and conventional construction industry technique. Considering characteristic of modular construction production process, manufacturing facilities require indirect costs for utilities, equipment, and overall maintenance, which can affect modular units pricing. However, current modular construction cost classification is inadvertent to reflect the manufacturing overhead costs, because it is generally added as a percentage to sum of labor, material and equipment as it called in single cost pool used. This process is easy to estimate the total construction cost at the project starting points, but it brings on misunderstanding of project profit estimations by "cross subsidization phenomenon". To prevent this situation, in this research aims to provide modular construction overhead cost handling process at the detailed indirect cost calculation for manufacturing stage using Activity-Based Costing as one of the powerful method for overhead costs estimation and allocation. Using this research results, modular construction cost estimators have more detailed cost information of modular units and prevent to misallocate indirect costs. Also, it can be utilized to aid the understanding of the company's profit structure.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.1334-1337
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• 2007

A steel pallet to carry lighter logistic articles is developed based on the DFSS(design for Six Sigma) methodology. Combining the conventional DFSS(Design For Six Sigma) methodology with that of VE(Value Engineering) is the novel feature of this paper to achieve maximum cost reduction. In this paper, systematical steps to achieve the required structural spec's are presented by conventional DMEDI(Define-Measure-Explore-Develop-Implement) process. To imply the target costing, evaluation of functions consisting of the pallet has been performed by value methodology. Then best design concept is selected in the Explore step, following structural optimization utilizing FEM. Finally the performance of prototype is investigated by pilot test in the Implement step. The developed steel pallet is being commercialized in the fields of automated ware house.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.78-88
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• 2012

As worldwide efforts to reduce global warming gases, the construction Industry is endeavoring to diminish carbon dioxides emissions. Especially, by introducing the LCA methodology to the industry, A variety of related studies to measure the emission of carbon dioxides have been conducted. However, when the conventional LCA methodology is applied to the construction projects, some limitations have been reported. To overcome the restrictions derived from the industry characteristics, this research suggested the Activity-based LCA model by applying the Activity-based Costing (ABC), which breaks down the whole life cycles into more detailed stages. By implementing the newly developed model, forecasting accuracy of $CO_2$ emission was elevated, and the critical control points on carbon dioxides were established. Through the case study of aluminium curtain-wall system, this research verified the usefulness of the Activity-based LCA.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.485-496
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• 2022

Modular construction projects offer advantageous over conventional construction projects in the area of quality control through factory production. However, as clear standards and definitions for quality control activities have yet to be not established, it is difficult to judge the appropriateness of the scale of quality control costs, and it is also difficult to classify quality control activities by process stage. Therefore, in this study, a method for classifying quality management activities based on activity standards was presented, in addition to a method for classifying quality costs according to the PAF standards to check how effective the costs and activities are for quality control in the future. The findings of this study can be used to define the quality management activities for each stage of the modular construction project in the future, and to develop a database of evidence to determine the appropriateness of cost distribution accordingly.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.474-477
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• 2006

Recently, the needs for the virtual reality service of multimedia contents on the web are increasing. The services are provided by the parameter value of attribute informations of the contents. The Conventional method for managing the parameters is storing the informations separately for the contents, in this method managing and implementing the system are to be costing job. In this paper, a virtual reality service based on meta data is proposed. For the storing and managing the parameter information, we use the free space of the JPEG images. And for testing the effectiveness of the proposed system, we implemented the prototype virtual reality service model.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.373-376
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• 2016

The Mini Parasep SF fecal parasite concentrator (MPSFC) is a new modification of the closed concentration system, which can easily be adopted in any routine clinical pathology laboratory. Here we describe our experience with the system in diagnosing Opisthorchis viverrini. A total of 199 fecal samples was submitted for routine examination in the clinical pathology laboratory of Suranaree University of Technology hospital, Nakhon Ratchasima province, Thailand, during August to October 2015. Out of all samples examined, 10 (5.03%) were positive with intestinal parasites including O. viverrini (2.01%), followed by Strongyloided stercoralis (1.51%), Hookworm (0.5%), Taenia spp. (0.5%), and Entamoeba coli (0.5%). Regarding the distribution of intestinal parasites in relation to the methods used, and found that 4 samples (2.01%) were positive using the direct wet smear method while 10 (5.03%) were positive with the Mini Parasep SF method; the difference was statistically significant ($X^2$-test = 116.506, p-value =0.001). Mean time for processing using the Parasep system was 6.03 min/sample, the conventional direct wet smear method at 0.3 min/sample. Cost per test, conventional direct wet smear method costing less than the Parasep method at USD 0.74/sample versus USD 1.47/sample. This first report of O. viverrini detection using MPSFC indicates that Parasep concentration test is useful in the routine laboratory, increasing the yield of parasites as compared to direct microscopy, but with greater processing time and cost. Further comparisons between the Parasep concentration test and common methods for O. viverrini detection are required, particularly concerning use in epidemiological surveys.