• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.503-512
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• 2023

In tunneling projects, a significant part of the costs is spent on segment production. By more economically producing, the cost of tunnel construction can be greatly reduced, especially in long and large-diameter tunnels. In the present study, the effect of using the Carousel method in the improvement of the production system performance compared to the conventional Static system has been studied. To carry out the research, a quantitative comparison of cost and production time was carried out for two production methods using the available documentation. The opinions of experts have been obtained using questionnaires and qualitative comparison of cost, time and production quality was done by implementation of statistical analysis. The SPSS software and the univariate t-test were used to analyze the questionnaires. According to the results of statistical analysis with SPSS, the use of the Carousel method will reduce production time and costs along with increasing manufacturing quality. According to the documentation analysis, the Carousel method reduces the cost of production by almost 30% and leads to a reduction of the production time to approximately 40% of the Static moulds system. The Carousel method has a higher production rate, efficiency, and better performance. Research into quantifying the benefits of Carousel method in the production system performance is very limited. This comparison is based on real information from the under construction Tabriz Metro project. This article can be very helpful in choosing the best production method.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.115-131
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• 2011

Several common issues are encountered by countries - Germany, Japan, and the United States - that adopted long-term care (LTC) system. First, the demand for LTC and its associated costs have steeply risen following the implementation of the LTC policy. Second, ensuring the quality of services have been difficult. Third, the coordination of services among providers and between LTC and medical care has been inadequate. Learning from their experience, we suggest ways to improve the LTC system in Korea. The basic approach aims for efficiency over equity in the system. This would require promoting provider competition and consumer choice. We propose several policy options according to the major stakeholders. For consumers, cash benefits at fixed rates and personal savings accounts are feasible options to self-contain the demand and cost of services. On the insurer's side, creating an environment of multiple insurers will engender competition, leading to cost savings and quality care. For providers, delivery of quality services through competition, cost-containment through capitated reimbursements, and coordination of services through integrated delivery system can be achieved. From the assessors' perspective, establishing an information system to monitor the activities of insurers and providers would be important, empowering consumers with information to choose cost-effective service providers. In summary, the suggested approach would provide cost-effective LTC services by guaranteeing consumer choice and promoting major stakeholder accountability. Further studies are needed to test the feasibility of this model in ensuring quality LTC in Korea.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.40-58
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• 1994

Some systems such as early warning system should be inspected occasionally in order to detect failures. If the system is inspected too frequently, inspection cost increases. On the other hand, if the number of inspections is reduced too much, the undetected system downtime cost increases. Thus, it is of interest to find effective inspection schedule, which minimizes the sum of inspection and downtime costs. When the system has increasing failure rate, inspection intervals get shorter as time goes on. But a common practice is to inspect the system at predetermined periodic intervals. In this paper, periodic inspection policy and a modified periodic inspection policy are considered. The modified policy is easily applicable and cost-effective. Some numerical examples are included in order to explain the modified inspection ploicy and its cost performance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Quality Management Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.309-314
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• 2006

The linear Consecutive-k-out-of-n:F system consists of n component ordered linearly and fail if and only if at least k consecutive components fail. We assume that the components are independent and identical exponentially distributed. This paper develops a model to calculate the expected cost per unit time of a linear consecutive-k-out-of-n:F system. The optimization problem we consider regards the choice of the system structure parameter k to minimized the expected cost per unit time.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.9-14
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• 2002

In front of the opening of electric distribution market in 2004. it is indispensable to have a proper estimation of power quality index and power quality cost calculation mechanism are indispensable to stabilize highly industrialized society and to vitalize the investment for electric power system. However, there were not enough measures to reflect the voltage characteristics such as voltage sags and interruptions which make electric load in unstable operation. This paper suggests power quality index(LDI) and power quality cost(LDC) which translate various kinds of voltage records into load drop index and cost based on aggregated load CBEMA curve. A sample calculation result shows that this method can produces the acceptable power quality index and costs for utilities and customers requirements.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.22 no.12 s.177
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• pp.77-86
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• 2005

This paper is about the development of Automatic FPC(flexible printed circuit) punching instrument for the improvement of working condition and cost saving. FPC is used to detect the contact position of keyboard and button like a cellular phone. Depending on the quality of the printed ink and position of reference punching point to the FPC, the resistance and current are varied to the malfunctioning values. The size of reference punching point is 2mm and the above. Because the punching operation is done manually, The punching accuracy is varied with operator's condition. Recently, The punching accuracy has deteriorated severely to the 2mm punching reference hall so that assembly of the K/B has hardly done. To improve this manual punching operation to the FPC, automatic FPC punching system is introduced. Precise mechanical parts like a 5-step stepping motor and ball screw mechanism are designed and tested and low cost PC camera is used fur the sake of cost down instead of using high quality vision systems for the factory automation. Test algorithms and programs showed good results to the designed automatic punching system and led to the increasement of productivity and huge cost down to law material like FPC by avoiding bad quality.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.159-173
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• 2002

Any organization's Six Sigma program may be at high risk without heeding the lessons learned from the past and that tries to operate without a robust business foundation. A foundation that preferably should consist of stepping-stones such as a 5-S house-keeping program, an effective Integrated Management System (IMS), which includes a strong focus on planning for quality to fully capture the Voice of the Customer (VOC), and an organization-wide training scheme, as well as a reliable Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ) system. That's the best advise I can give to any organization that wishes to embark on a Six Sigma improvement program and hope to be successful. The paper will elaborate on the above issues and provide suggested solutions based on the review of published historical information and the experiences encountered over the last four decades by the author, as a quality practitioner and consultant, in industries that produced safety-critical product. This author maintains that few fundamentally new or useful things have been created in the field of Quality during the last couple of decades. Nevertheless, this paper deliberates on a number of relatively “newer” issues including the concept of “three types of customers”, the CTC, “Critical To Customer” term, the eight Quality Management Principles of the new ISO 9000 family, the growth of industry-specific standards, the adoption of Integrated Management Systems, the rebirth of AS2561 COQ standard, the spread of Six Sigma as well as related ASQ certification and the need for a robust business foundation to ensure Six Sigma survival.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.162-170
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• 2009

This paper deals with a closed-loop remanufacturing system with one manufacturer and one remanufacturer. The manufacturer sells new products bearing the 'Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).' It is assumed that the manufacturer's collection rate of used products depends only on the buy-back cost, while that of the remanufacturer depends on the minimum allowed quality level of used products in addition to the buy-back cost. Through the development of mathematical models with the objective function of maximizing profit, we study an efficient operation policy of each party. The decision variables are the unit selling price of new products and remanufactured products, the unit buy-back cost of the used products of the manufacturer and remanufacturer, and the minimum allowed quality level. The validity of the model is examined through numerical examples and sensitivity analysis.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.94-105
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• 2002

In this paper, replacement problems for a deteriorating system are considered. In the system under consideration, the successive lifetimes after repair become shorter and shorter, while the consecutive repair times become longer and longer. More specifically, the lifetimes of the system form a nonhomogeneous Poisson process, whereas the consecutive repair times constitute a stochastically increasing geometric process. Optimal replacement policies for the long-run average cost rate and the steady state availability are considered. Also taking the cost and the availability into consideration at the same time, the properties of optimal policies under the Cost Priority Policy and the Availability Priority Policy are obtained.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.3 no.3 s.11
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• pp.75-83
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• 2002

Korea government established a domestic quality management system under the Law for Construction Technology Management, which was revised in 1997. This Law prescribes that the owner has to assign quality management cost into the construction project budget However, there are some conflicts among internal regulations and prescriptions on the scope of quality management engineer's roles was not specific. In order to overcome these limitations, this research identifies proper scope of quality management engineer's roles and suggests an approach for an improved estimating guideline for construction quality management cost.