• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.135-164
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• 2003

The operating room is the major facility that costs the highest investment per unit area in a hospital. It requires commitment of hospital resources such as manpower, equipments and material. The quantity of these resources committed actually differs from one type of operation to another. Because of this, it is not an easy task to allocate the operating cost to individual clinical departments that share the operating room. A practical way to do so may be to collect and add the operating costs incurred by each clinical department and charge the net cost to the account of the corresponding clinical department. It has been customary to allocate the cost of the operating room to the account of each individual department on the basis of the ratio of the number of operations of the department or the total revenue by each operating room. In an attempt to set up more rational cost allocation method than the customary method, this study proposes a new cost allocation method that calls for itemizing the operation cost into its constituent expenses in detail and adding them up for the operating cost incurred by each individual department. For comparison of the new method with the conventional method, the operating room in the main building of hospital A near Seoul is chosen as a study object. It is selected because it is the biggest operating room in hospital A and most of operations in this hospital are conducted in this room. For this study the one-month operation record performed in January 2001 in this operating room is analyzed to allocate the per-month operation cost to six clinical departments that used this operating room; the departments of general surgery, orthopedic surgery, neuro-surgery, dental surgery, urology, and obstetrics & gynecology. In the new method(or method 1), each operation cost is categorized into three major expenses; personnel expense, material expense, and overhead expense and is allocated into the account of the clinical department that used the operating room. The method 1 shows that, among the total one-month operating cost of 814,054 thousand wons in this hospital, 163,714 thousand won is allocated to GS, 335,084 thousand won to as, 202,772 thousand won to NS, 42,265 thousand won to uno, 33,423 thousand won to OB/GY, and 36.796 thousand won to DS. The allocation of the operating cost to six departments by the new method is quite different from that by the conventional method. According to one conventional allocation method based on the ratio of the number of operations of a department to the total number of operations in the operating room(method 2 hereafter), 329,692 thousand won are allocated to GS, 262,125 thousand won to as, 87,104 thousand won to NS, 59,426 thousand won to URO, 51.285 thousand won to OB/GY, and 24,422 thousand won to DS. According to the other conventional allocation method based on the ratio of the revenue of a department(method 3 hereafter), 148,158 thousand won are allocated to GS, 272,708 thousand won to as, 268.638 thousand won to NS, 45,587 thousand won to uno, 51.285 thousand won to OB/GY, and 27.678 thousand won to DS. As can be noted from these results, the cost allocation to six departments by method 1 is strikingly different from those by method 2 and method 3. The operating cost allocated to GS by method 2 is about twice by method 1. Method 3 makes allocations of the operating cost to individual departments very similarly as method 1. However, there are still discrepancies between the two methods. In particular the cost allocations to OB/GY by the two methods have roughly 53.4% discrepancy. The conventional methods 2 and 3 fail to take into account properly the fact that the average time spent for the operation is different and dependent on the clinical department, whether or not to use expensive clinical material dictate the operating cost, and there is difference between the official operating cost and the actual operating cost. This is why the conventional methods turn out to be inappropriate as the operating cost allocation methods. In conclusion, the new method here may be laborious and cause a complexity in bookkeeping because it requires detailed bookkeeping of the operation cost by its constituent expenses and also by individual clinical department, treating each department as an independent accounting unit. But the method is worth adopting because it will allow the concerned hospital to estimate the operating cost as accurately as practicable. The cost data used in this study such as personnel expense, material cost, overhead cost may not be correct ones. Therefore, the operating cost estimated in the main text may not be the same as the actual cost. Also, the study is focused on the case of only hospital A, which is hardly claimed to represent the hospitals across the nation. In spite of these deficiencies, this study is noteworthy from the standpoint that it proposes a practical allocation method of the operating cost to each individual clinical department.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.52 no.8
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• pp.457-462
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• 2003

This paper presents an optimal operating strategy of distributed generation (DG) with reliability worth evaluation of distribution systems. Using DG for peak-shaving unit could reduce the overall system operating cost, and using DG for standby power unit could reduce the customer interruption cost. If DG operating cost is less than utility power cost in peak time, DG should be running to reduce the overall system operating cost. When customer interruption cost enlarges, however, standby power strategy may be the better operating strategy than peak-shaving strategy. Selection of whether DG should be operated for peak-shaving or for standby power, needs the accurate reliability worth evaluation and the accurate power cost evaluation. Instead of using annual average reliability worth, the concept of hourly reliability worth is introduced in this paper to determine the optimal operating decision of DG. Applying suggested hourly reliability worth, the distribution companies that possess DG could set up the optimal operating strategy of DG.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.73-93
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• 2006

This study aims at providing necessary informations for management decision-making to the hospital manager, such as ratios of fixed and variable cost to total operating expense, and variable cost ratio to operating revenues, and determinant factors affecting cost behavior. A study model and related hypotheses were established, data were collected from 41 private university hospitals for the 6years from 1998 to 2003, and regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. The results of the analyses and conclusions are as follows; First, labor cost and administration cost within the same number of beds have not only fixed quality of the cost, but variable quality of that. Also, the ratio of the variable costs to operating revenue of the metropolitan was estimated 76.9% and that of other area hospitals was 80.1%. Second, the major factors affecting the increase rate of the operating expense were the increase rates of the number of inpatients, the number of employee, and the number of hospital operating bed. This result implies that maintaining a optimal hospital bed size and efficient operation of the beds are important strategic factors of hospital management.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.45-62
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• 1993

The major objective of this study is to analyze the differences between operating costs of teleconferencing and alternative transportation modes for the conference in major compaines. Alternative transportation modes include road, rail, and air transportation mode. A case study is conducted using the data gathered for Pohang Steel Coperations. The main results are: (1) the operating cost of the teleconferencing is cheaper than operating cost of transportation modes when the number of teleconferencing are over 12 frequencs, and the number of person are over 15. Results reveal that teleconferencing turns out to be effective means of conference. (2) the amount of differences of operating costs on teleconsferencing and transportation modes gets higher according to the time elapsed. In particular, when teleconferencing cost is compared to operating cost of road transportation, it is found that the cost saving of 2.75 billion won in year 2001 can be realized.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.202-212
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• 2012

Due to the deterioration of water supply network and the deficiency of raw water, the water utility of local governments have performed various projects to improve their revenue water ratio. However, it is very difficult to estimate the cost for maintaining the revenue water ratio at higher level after completing the project, because local governments have different conditions affecting the operating and maintenance cost of water supply network. The purpose of this study is to present a procedure to estimate the operating and maintenance cost required to maintain the target revenue water ratio of the water supply network. For this purpose, we estimated the cost used only for operation and maintenance of water supply network of 164 local governments with the aid of K-Mean Clustering Analysis and the data from 40 representative local governments. Then, the regression analysis was performed to find relationship between revenue water ratio and the operating and maintenance cost with two different data sets generated by two classification methods; the first method classifies the local governments by means of k-means clustering, and the other classifies the local governments according to the index standardized by the operating and maintenance cost per unit length of water mains per revenue water ratio. The results shows that the method based on the index standardized by the cost and revenue water ratio of each government produces more reliable results for finding regression equations between revenue water ratio and the operating and maintenance cost only for water supply network. The estimated regression equations for each group can be used to estimate the cost required to keep the target revenue water ratio of the local government.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.78-90
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• 2009

Recently, operation of highway is the complex digital Infrastructure based on complicated IT. The application of IT is increasing more and more in digital Infrastructure. Though IT is very convenient, if unpredicted operating risk of highway occurs, widespread damage can be large. When operating risk of highway occurs, road users are out of smoothly-run service because of the operating interruption. This risk causes unpredicted operating management cost and additional maintenance cost. It will excess over the planned operating cost, which may leads to users's unsafety and operator's insolvency because of income loss. Until now, related studies to find out the risk are not sufficient. The purpose of this study is to suggest risk cost items and to estimate the reasonable risk cost by using simulation method in case of occurring the huge power failure at the operating digitalized highway. This study indicates the several plans to hedge against risk cost and the management of highway project. From now on, it will be used as basic data to confirm the soundness of operating system in Digital Infrastructure.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2008.11b
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• pp.2051-2057
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• 2008

This paper is a feasibility study on the calculation of operating cost in regards to the overall operation following the completion of a number of LRT lines currently in progress. Owing to the absence of operating experience in driveless LRT system at home, the difficulties lie in the assumption of the optimal operating budget applying domestic real situation. Nevertheless, with 34 years of accumulated operating experience in heavy rail transit system, Seoul Metro, the nation's biggest urban rail transit operator, performs O&M consultancy services for several on-going projects along with every effort to acquire know-how where the appropriateness of the cost estimation as a required deliverable is reviewed and a more efficient way is provided. The main focus of this study is to seek a method to calculate the optimal amount of operating expenses as well as a cost-effective alternative for possible weaknesses from the standpoint of the operator. The body of this paper discusses the five issues such as personnel cost, overhead, maintenance cost, additional purchase price, alternative investment fee from a more macroscopic point of view, and the conclusion deals with the adequacy of the reason for selection of institutions with various operating know-how.

• International Journal of Railway
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2016

Life cycle cost analysis is compulsively required for the system operation. System operation costs are consisted of acquisition, operation, maintenance and so on. In the beginning of the system planning, we need to take into account of various costs following the system operating. To implement LCC, we need to analyze system life cycle to identify all costs during system life. The costs can be divided into three parts. The first part is purchasing cost, the second for operating cost and the last for disposal cost. The second operating cost can be decomposed of operating cost included labor, energy consumption cost for system running, maintenance costs to keep systems healthy, delay cost caused from maintenance and hazard cost, and so on. In this paper, we carried out for railway locomotives which operate over more 30years and which cost about 10 million USD. We decompose the life cycle of the locomotives and break down the locomotives into subsystems to require maintenance or not, and subsystems to need energy or not. We showed how to decide optimal locomotives through cost identification and system breakdown.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.126-135
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• 2009

Recently, operation of highway is the complex digital Infrastructure based on complicated IT. The application of IT is increasing more and more in digital Infrastructure. Though IT is very convenient, if unpredicted operating risk of highway occurs, widespread damage can be large. When operating risk of highway occurs, road users are out of smoothly-run service because of the operating interruption. This risk causes unpredicted operating management cost and additional maintenance cost. It will excess over the planned operating cost, which may leads to users's unsafety and operator's insolvency because of income loss. Until now, related studies to find out the risk are not sufficient. The purpose of this study is to suggest risk cost items and to estimate the reasonable risk cost by using simulation method in case of occurring the huge power failure at the operating digitalized highway. This study indicates the several plans to hedge against risk cost and the management of highway project. From now on, it will be used as basic data to confirm the soundness of operating system in Digital Infrastructure.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.10-22
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• 2010

The first full-scale u-City operation has started in Dongtan u-City. As local cities take over and operate the u-City, unexpected issues arise such as securing the budget of operating costs and self-providing the costs with business models utilizing the u-City assets. The paper presents a strategy for solving these issues. The strategy provides a foundation(infrastructure) for long-term operation models which may reduce the long-term operating costs. In order to establish the economic operating framework of u-City, suggested are some cost-reduction models based on the operating costs structure. For each model, a base framework with comparative analysis of operating costs is provided. With these models, each u-City may select a relevant model according to the characteristics of it. We hope that the framework provides the foundation for efficient and sustainable u-City operations.