• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.198-206
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• 2005

The single sourcing policy, in which an automobile manufacturer purchases identical or similar parts from one supplier, has an advantage of scale economy. Meanwhile, multiple sourcing policy, which allows procuring similar parts from multiple suppliers, has benefits of dispersing risks and promoting competition among suppliers. This paper analyzes the procurement policies by presenting a model of the Japanese automobile parts trade. It concludes that maturity of technology involved should be taken into account besides above-mentioned factors which have traditionally been recognized. For parts produced using evolving technologies, the single sourcing enhances purchaser’s benefits because of the scale economy in learning process. In the meantime, multiple sourcing is more beneficial to the purchaser if the parts are based on mature technologies. In either policy, if the technology involved is evolving, motivating suppliers by returning a great part of cost reduction as a reward to them may eventually increase profit for the purchaser. The conclusion supports the situation where the number of suppliers is being cut down as the trend of modularization and system deliveries of parts progresses in the auto parts industry, and suggests that returning part of benefits to parts suppliers may be encouraged from the viewpoint of auto manufacturers’ own interest.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.27 no.9_10
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• pp.1124-1133
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships among partnership variables and sourcing performance. Partnership variables were included as: contract conditions, information sharing, communication, conflict, job understanding, monitoring, culture understanding, trust and commitment. Sourcing performance included perceived benefits and sourcing satisfaction. The survey research design was employed with the structured questionnaire. A sample of 104 Korean apparel firms' managers participated in this survey. Apparel firms selected for this study were casual, sports, children's wear firms doing actively international sourcing. For the data analysis, descriptive statistics (i.e., frequency, percent), factor analysis, correlation, and multiple regression analysis were used. Information sharing and job understanding were positively related with trust. That is to say, the better information sharing and the better job understanding apparel firms had higher scores of trust than others. Contract conditions, communication, conflict, and culture understanding were known as predictions of commitment to international outsourcing. The more trust firms had with their vendors, the more commitment the firms had in the international sourcing. This result showed that trust is the essential factor of commitment. Trust and commitment were significantly related with outsourcing performance (i.e., perceived benefits, satisfaction of the international sourcing). Partnership information of international sourcing assembled in the review of literature and the results from this empirical study may assist the domestic apparel firms to make better decision in the adoption process of international sourcing.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.13-30
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• 2008

We explore the determinants of long-term relationship between the buyer and the supplier to help suppliers develope a strategy to build long-term relationship with their buyers. Based upon an extensive literature review, we propose three droops of independent variables which may affect long-term relationship, including (a) environmental factors (product complexity, product importance, source dependence, price sensitivity), (b) relational factors(trust, commitment, satisfaction, intention of expansion), (c) operational performance(quality, delivery, cost capability, technical knowhow). The buyer's actual period of relationship with its main supplier is used as a dependent variable. Using hierarchical multiple regression analysis, we empirically test hypotheses, analysing a sample of 290 manufacturing firms in the U.S. The statistical results indicate that the buyer's source dependence, price sensitivity and the supplier's commitment play a significant role in establishing long-term relationship between the buyer and the supplier. However, the supplier's cost capability and technical knowhow in operational performance negatively affect long-term relationship in contrast with our hypotheses. Due to this controversial result, we divide the sample group Into dual sourcing and multiple sourcing environments and reconduct regression analysis in a post hoc manner. The findings show that the supplier's cost capability and technical knowhow are negatively associated with the length of relationship only in the multiple sourcing environment. The results may confirm that both parties' opportunistic behavior is more salient in the multiple sourcing environment than in the single sourcing environment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.173-188
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• 2014

This research aims to analyze empirically the effects of learners' knowledge sourcing behavior on the knowledge utilization outcomes in a social learning community. This kind of virtual community is of service to users who not only produce but also share a variety of valuable knowledge which is created based on relationships and interactions among learners. In order to conduct the study, a group of learners was made of 55 undergraduate students who were majoring in social science. The data was collected by online survey at the end of the term and multiple regression methods have been used for empirical analysis. The study shows that dyadic knowledge sourcing and published knowledge sourcing both have significant effects on knowledge reuse and knowledge adaptation. In addition, knowledge adaptation and knowledge innovation were affected by group knowledge sourcing. The research results help to select appropriate knowledge sourcing behavior depending on one's purpose of knowledge use.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.19-34
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• 2017

In this study, we develop an optimal sourcing strategy considering compensation orders to mitigate the supply chain disruption risks. We considered two-echelon supply chain consisting of a single buyer and multiple suppliers who have fixed transaction cost and probabilistic disruption risks. Under this setting, we provide the joint optimization method to determine the number of suppliers and the order quantities. Through numerical examples, we provide managerial implications on the sourcing strategy by investigating changes in the order quantities and the number of suppliers due to the degree of supply chain disruption risks.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.322-328
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• 2007

Highly standardized products are suitable for automated purchasing using electronic commerce technology, where the price becomes the most important factor. Suppliers can change the prices dynamically based on the inventory level and market situation in order to maximize the sales and profit. In the virtual marketplace where multiple customers purchase multiple standardized products from multiple suppliers repetitively, customers can purchase the required amount of each item as a dynamic bidding by allocating purchase orders to the suppliers based on the current price. Customers need a method to quickly determine the optimal allocation of orders to the suppliers using the dynamically changing data to minimize the total cost. We present a LP model which minimizes the sum of the total price plus transportation cost for this problem. Simulation results using random data show meaningful reduction of the total cost.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.113-118
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• 2010

The single-sourcing of content is extremely beneficial because when we are managing several projects with hundreds or thousands of documentation, we don't want to be changing the same content, or substantially similar content in multiple locations. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical documents. It consists of a set of design principles for creating Information -typed topic modules and for using that content in various ways. In this paper, we examine the approach of using The Darwin Information Typing Architecture for technical documents development to enhance the reuse of existing content components for difference information products.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.423-444
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• 2015

Ideation is a process of generating new ideas or solutions using online crowd-sourcing technologies. This process has the potential to change the ways by which government agencies innovate and solve problems. Although increasingly more government agencies are implementing online ideation programs to tap into their employees' ideas and creativity, little is known about the unique challenges and effective practices of such programs. Thus, many government agencies are undergoing trial and error and often reinventing the wheel. This research aims to address this problem. By analyzing a focus group session and four cases of U.S. federal government ideation programs designed for their employees, this research identifies important organizational and technological challenges and effective practices. Furthermore, effective practices are grouped into different phases of ideation process and strategic vs. tactical levels to provide more meaningful and actionable insights. This research is an important step towards building a theoretical foundation for government ideation programs. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.136-145
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• 2007

The selection of suppliers and the determination of order quantities to be placed with those suppliers are important decisions in a supply chain. In this research, a non-linear mixed integer programming model is presented to select suppliers and determine the order quantities. The model considers the purchasing cost which takes into account quantity discount, the cost of transportation, the fixed cost for establishing suppliers, the cost for holding inventory, and the cost of receiving poor quality parts. The capacity constraints for suppliers, quality and lead-time requirements for the parts are also taken into account in the model. Since the purchasing cost, which is a decreasing step function of order quantities, introduces discontinuities to the non-linear objective function, it is not easy to employ traditional optimization methods. Thus, a heuristic algorithm, called particle swarm optimization (PSO), is used to find the (near) optimal solution. However, PSO usually generates initial solutions randomly. To improve the PSO solution quality, a heuristic procedure is proposed to find an initial solution based on the average unit cost including transportation, purchasing, inventory, and poor quality part cost. The results show that PSO with the proposed initial solution heuristic provides better solutions than those with PSO algorithm only.

• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.24-30
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• 2018

In Botswana, mopane worms are widely harvested for household consumption. They are also traded for income generation. Urban based entrepreneurs' source mopane worms from rural areas to sell. The price of sourcing mopane worms from the harvesters has increased quite incredibly in villages. However, there is dearth of academic studies on the commercialisation of mopane worms in Botswana. This paper uses primary data collected from multiple sources to investigate the factors influencing the prices of mopane worms. Data collection involved administration of questionnaires to purposively selected harvesters in four campsites in the Central District, focus group discussions at each campsite and key informant interviews. The results show that there is declining population of mopane worms. The decline is attributable to such factors as over-harvesting and climate change which are the main factors influencing the price of mopane worms. In addition to physical scarcity of mopane worms, institutional weaknesses exist in the study area. The Agricultural Resources Conservation Act is ineffective and the majority of the harvesters are unaware of its existences. It is recommended that the regulations on the harvesting of mopane worms be reviewed. In order to benefit harvesters, mopane worms should be processed to add diversified economic value to rural communities.