• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.197-208
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• 2020

Social enterprises are entities to pursue solving societal problems with maintaining commercial viability. In order for a social enterprise to achieve commercial viability, it must be able to provide products that consumers can satisfy, to make social enterprise trustable, and to establish a lasting relationship with customers. This study suggests that perception of value congruence, price fairness and service quality will affect customer performance such as trust, satisfaction and customer loyalty. And this structural relationship was confirmed through structural equation modelling. The empirical results show that customer trust and satisfaction can be improved when the value congruence is high and service quality is high. Meanwhile, the perception of price fairness has a negative effect on customer trust. However, considering the influence of price fairness on customer satisfaction, the total effect of price fairness on trust is not significant. This result implies that customers are less sensitive to social enterprise product prices than general companies. And customer satisfaction for the social enterprise is positively affecting trust and loyalty, and customer trust is also positively affecting customer loyalty. After the empirical analysis, this study suggests implications for social enterprises to improve customer performance and secure commercial viability.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.603-617
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• 2017

This paper presents investigation into the behavior of beam-column joints, with the joint region concrete being replaced by steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) and by ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC). A total of ten beam-column joint specimens (BCJ) were tested experimentally to failure under monotonic and cyclic loading, with the beam section being subjected to flexural loading and the column to combined flexural and axial loading. The joint region essentially transferred shear and axial stresses as received from the column. Steel fiber reinforced concrete (SFRC) and ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) were used as an innovative construction and/or strengthening scheme for some of the BCJ specimens. The reinforced concrete specimens were reinforced with longitudinal steel rebar, 18 mm, and some specimens were reinforced with an additional two ties in the joint region. The results showed that using SFRC and UHPC as a replacement concrete for the BCJ improved the joint shear strength and the load carrying capacity of the hybrid specimens. The mode of failure was also converted from a non-desirable joint shear failure to a preferred beam flexural failure. The effect of the ties in the SFRC and UHPC joint regions could not be observed due to the beam flexural failure. Several models were used in estimating the joint shear strength for different BCJ specimens. The results showed that the existing models yielded wide-ranging values. A new concept to take into account the influence of column axial load on the shear strength of beam-column joints is also presented, which demonstrates that the recommended values for concrete tensile strength for determination of joint shear strength need to be amended for joints subject to moderate to high axial loads. Furthermore, finite element model (FEM) simulation to predict the behaviour of the hybrid BCJ specimens was also carried out in an ABAQUS environment. The result of the FEM modelling showed good agreement with experimental results.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.89-97
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• 2015

With advances in IT Smart-Work is emerging as a new way of conducting business and several companies are considering to introduce the Smart-Work digital convergence technology. In this paper, we examined the effects of the Smart-Work IT resources on the work efficiency and the corporate performances in service industry by applying the Resource-Based View. The results of the structural equation modelling analysis showed that Smart-Work IT infrastructure and individual IT skills had positive influence on individual work efficiency while business application software and IT skills affected team work efficiency. Also, we confirmed that individual and team work efficiency positively affect financial and market performance of business firms. With the findings of the study, we expect that the introduction of Smart-Work would have positive effect, at least in service industry, on work efficiency and corporate performance, which will in turn lead to gaining competitive advantage for those firms adopting Smart-Work.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.73-80
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• 2007

This article aims to optimize the nitrogen removal of a sequencing batch reactor (SBR) through the use of the activated sludge model and iterative dynamic programming (IDP). Using a minimum batch time and a maximum nitrogen removal for minimum energy consumption, a performance index is developed on the basis of minimum area criteria for SBR optimization. Choosing area as the performance index makes the optimization problem simpler and a proper weighting in the performance index makes it possible to solve minimum time and energy problem of SBR simultaneously. The optimized results show that the optimal set-point of dissolved oxygen affects both the total batch time and total energy cost. For two different influent loadings, IDP-based SBR optimizations suggest each supervisory control of batch scheduling and set-point trajectory of dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration, and can save 20% of the total energy cost, while meeting the treatment requirements of COD and nitrogen. Moreover, it shows that the re-optimization of IDP within a batch can solve the modelling error problem due to the influent loading changes, or the process faults.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.217-217
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• 2015

The objective of this study was mainly to evaluate the water resources potential of Lake Tana Basin (LTB) by using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). From SWAT simulation of LTB, about 5236 km2 area of LTB is gauged watershed and the remaining 9878 km2 area is ungauged watershed. For calibration of model parameters, four gauged stations were considered namely: Gilgel Abay, Gummera, Rib, and Megech. The SWAT-CUP built-in techniques, particle swarm optimization (PSO) and generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation (GLUE) method was used for calibration of model parameters and PSO method were selected for the study based on its performance results in four gauging stations. However the level of sensitivity of flow parameters differ from catchment to catchment, the curve number (CN2) has been found the most sensitive parameters in all gauged catchments. To facilitate the transfer of data from gauged catchments to ungauged catchments, clustering of hydrologic response units (HRUs) were done based on physical similarity measured between gauged and ungauged catchment attributes. From SWAT land use/ soil use/slope reclassification of LTB, a total of 142 HRUs were identified and these HRUs are clustered in to 39 similar hydrologic groups. In order to transfer the optimized model parameters from gauged to ungauged catchments based on these clustered hydrologic groups, this study evaluates three parameter transfer schemes: parameters transfer based on homogeneous regions (PT-I), parameter transfer based on global averaging (PT-II), and parameter transfer by considering Gilgel Abay catchment as a representative catchment (PT-III) since its model performance values are better than the other three gauged catchments. The performance of these parameter transfer approach was evaluated based on values of Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and coefficient of determination (R2). The computed NSE values was found to be 0.71, 0.58, and 0.31 for PT-I, PT-II and PT-III respectively and the computed R2 values was found to be 0.93, 0.82, and 0.95 for PT-I, PT-II, and PT-III respectively. Based on the performance evaluation criteria, PT-I were selected for modelling ungauged catchments by transferring optimized model parameters from gauged catchment. From the model result, yearly average stream flow for all homogeneous regions was found 29.54 m3/s, 112.92 m3/s, and 130.10 m3/s for time period (1989 - 2005) for region-I, region-II, and region-III respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.57-78
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• 2005

The vehicle routing problem (VRP) is to determine a set of feasible vehicle routes, one for each vehicle, such that each customer is visited exactly once and the total distance travelled by the vehicles is minimized. A feasible route is defined as a simple circuit including the depot such that the total demand of the customers in the route does not exceed the vehicle capacity. While there have been significant advances recently in exact solution methodology, the VRP is not a well solved problem. We find most approaches still relying on the branch and bound method. These approaches employ various methodologies to compute a lower bound on the optimal value. We introduce a new modelling approach, termed route-splitting, for the VRP that allows us to address problems whose size is beyond the current computational range of set-partitioning models. The route-splitting model splits each vehicle route into segments, and results in more tractable subproblems. Lifting much of the burden of solving combinatorially hard subproblems, the route-splitting approach puts more weight on the LP master problem, Recent breakthroughs in solving LP problems (Nemhauser, 1994) bode well for our approach. Lower bounds are computed on five symmetric VRPs with up to 199 customers, and eight asymmetric VRPs with up to 70 customers. while it is said that the exact methods developed for asymmetric instances have in general a poor performance when applied to symmetric ones (Toth and Vigo, 2002), the route splitting approach shows a competent performance of 93.5% on average in the symmetric VRPs. For the asymmetric ones, the approach comes up with lower bounds of 97.6% on average. The route-splitting model can deal with asymmetric cost matrices and non-identical vehicles. Given the ability of the route-splitting model to address a wider range of applications and its good performance on asymmetric instances, we find the model promising and valuable for further research.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.74-81
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• 2016

This study evaluated the habitability of operators for main control room fires in nuclear power plants. Fire modeling (FDS v.6.0) was utilized for a fire safety assessment so that it could determine the performance of the smoke ventilation and operator habitability with the main control room. For this study, it categorized fire scenarios into three cases depending on the conditions in the HVAC system. As a result of fire modelling, it showed that Case 1 (with HVAC) would give rise to the worst situation associated with the absolute temperature, radiative heat flux, optical density, and smoke layer height as deliberating the habitability and smoke ventilation. On the other hand, it showed that Cases 2 (w/o HVAC) and 3 can maintain much safer situations than Case 1. In the case of temperature at 820 s, Cases 2 and 3 were up to approximately 63% greater than Case 1 in the wake of ignition. In addition, the influence of radiative heat flux of Case 1 was even larger than Cases 2 and 3. That is, the radiative heat fluxes of Cases 2 and 3 were approximately 68% higher than Case 1. Furthermore, when it comes to considering the optical density, Case 1 was approximately 93% greater than Cases 2 and 3. Accordingly, it expected that the HVAC system can influence a the performance on the smoke ventilation that can be sustainable for operator habitability. On the other hand, it revealed an inconsecutive pattern for the smoke layer height of Cases 2 and 3 because supply vents and exhaust vents were installed within the same surface.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.73-85
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• 2019

Since the beginning of a new century, many Korean construction and engineering companies are facing a very dynamic and fast changing business environment which includes severe competition, higher risk, economic depression, declining revenues and profits, etc. In order to cope with these challenges, they need to secure special capabilities to actively adapt to the paradigm changes. One of those capabilities could be project management capability which allows us to manage organizational resources dynamically and integratively based on project portfolio management concept. The objective of this study is to investigate how the dynamic capability of a project-based organization to control the resource affects the firm performance and the competitive advantages. Data was collected from the construction and engineering companies in South Korea by using survey questionnaire, and analyzed for empirical tests by using statistical methods such as structural equation modelling and path analysis. The results showed that the organizational resources, if they had the VRIN characteristics, would have positive impacts on creating the dynamic capabilities for project organization. In turn, the dynamic capabilities of a project organization would have impacts on improving business performance and creating competitive advantages. Also, it was found that the organizational resources may have direct impact on business performance and competitive advantages. The academic contribution of this study is that it attempts to integrate resource based view and the dynamic capability theory about creating competitive advantages for project based organization. This study also provided practical implications to the companies in construction industry by showing how to use organizational resources strategically to create competitive advantages.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.121-127
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• 2010

This paper relates with the improved CMA blind adaptive equalization algorithm which uses the constellation matching method that improve the inverse modelling efficiency of a communication channel compared to the present CMA blind adaptive equalizer. The amplitude distortion can be compensated in the present CMA blind adaptive equalizer which is used for the reduction of intersymbol interference by distortion that generate such as a band limited wireless mobile channel, but in the improved adaptive alogorithm operates with the minimize the amplitude phase distortion in the output of equalizer by applying the cost function that is composition of additional signal constellation matching error terms. In order to evaluation of the inverse modeling efficiency of improved algorithm, the residual intersymbol interference and recovered signal constellation were compared by computer simulation. As a result of comparion of computer simulation, the improved algorithm has a good stability in the residual intersymbol interference in the steady state, but it has a slow convergence rate in the adaptation state in initial state.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.287-306
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• 2002

The assessment of structural performance of transfer structures under potential seismic actions is presented. Various seismic assessment methodologies are used, with particular emphasis on the accurate modelling of the higher mode effects and the potential development of a soft storey effect in the mega-columns below the transfer plate (TP) level. Those methods include response spectrum analysis (RSA), manual calculation, pushover analysis (POA) and equivalent static load analysis (ESA). The capabilities and limitations of each method are highlighted. The paper aims, firstly, to determine the appropriate seismic assessment methodology for transfer structures using these different approaches, all of which can be undertaken with the resources generally available in a design office. Secondly, the paper highlights and discusses factors influencing the response behaviour of transfer structures, and finally provides a general indication of their seismic vulnerability. The representative Hong Kong building considered in this paper utilises a structural system with coupled shear walls and moment resisting portal-frames, above and below the TP, respectively. By adopting the wind load profile stipulated in the Code of Practice on Wind Effects: Hong Kong-1983, all the structural members are sized and detailed according to the British Standards BS8110 and the current local practices. The seismic displacement demand for the structure, when built on either rock or deep soil sites, was determined in a companion paper. The lateral load-displacement characteristic of the building, determined herein from manual calculation, has indicated that the poor ductility (brittle nature) of the mega-columns, due mainly to the high level of axial pre-compression as found from the analysis, cannot be effectively alleviated solely by increasing the quantity of confinement stirrups. The interstorey drift demands at lower and upper zones caused by seismic actions are found to be substantially higher than those arising from wind loads. The mega-columns supporting the TP and the coupling beams at higher zones are identified to be the most vulnerable components under seismic actions.