• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.121-130
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• 2010

In today's uncertain economic environment, economic risk is inherent in making large investments on manufacturing facilities. It is, therefore, practically meaningful to divide investment over multiple periods, reducing the risk of investment. Then, the cash-flow over the entire planning horizon would comprise positive inflow and negative outflow. In this case, in general, evaluation by internal rate of return (IRR) is not feasible, because multiple IRRs are involved. This paper deals with a problem of evaluating profitability, as well as risk, of investment alternatives made in multiple times of investment over the entire horizon. Typically, an additional investment is required after the initial one, for expanding manufacturing capacity or other reasons. The paper pays attention to a unit cash-flow over two periods, decomposing the total cash-flow into a series of unit cash-flow patterns. It is easy to evaluate profitability of a unit cash-flow by using IRR. The total cash-flow can be decomposed into the series of two types of unit cash-flows: an investment type one (negative-positive) and the borrowing type one (positive-negative). This paper, therefore, proposes a method in which only the borrowing type unit cash-flow is eliminated in the series by converting total cash-flow using capital interest rate. Then, a unique IRR can be obtained and the profitability is evaluated. Thus, the paper extends the method of IRR so that it may help decision making in complicated cash-flow pattern observed in practice.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.956-962
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• 2005

This paper presents an integrated analysis of production and financing decisions. We assume that a cash storage unit is installed to manage the cash flows related with production activities such as raw material procurement, process operating setup, Inventory holding cost and finished product sales. Temporarily financial investments are allowed for more profit. The production plant is modeled by the Batch-Storage Network with Recycle Streams in Yi and Reklaitis (2003). The objective function of the optimization is minimizing the opportunity costs of annualized capital investment and cash/material inventory while maximizing stockholder's benefit. No depletion of all the material and cash storage units is major constraints of the optimization. A novel production and inventory analysis formulation, the PSW(Periodic Square Wave) model, provides useful expressions for the upper/lower bounds and average level of the cash and material inventory holdups. The expressions for the Kuhn-Tucker conditions of the optimization problem can be reduced to two subproblems and analytical lot sizing equations under a mild assumption about the cash flow pattern of stockholder's dividend. The first subproblem is a separable concave minimization network flow problem whose solution yields the average material flow rates through the networks. The second subproblem determines the decisions about financial Investment. Finally, production and financial transaction lot sizes and startup times can be determined by analytical expressions as far as the average flow rates are calculated. The optimal production lot and storage sizes considering financial factors are smaller than those without such consideration. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the results obtainable using this approach.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.209-214
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• 2018

In this paper, the techno-economic analysis of glycerol steam reforming for $H_2$ production capacity of $300m^3\;h^{-1}$ was carried out. The process of glycerol steam reforming was constructed by using Aspen $HYSYS^{(R)}$, a commercial process simulator, and parametric studies for the effect of the operating temperature on $H_2$ production was performed. Moreover, the economic analysis was conducted through an itemized cost estimation, sensitivity analysis (SA) and cash flow diagram (CFD), and the unit $H_2$ production cost was 5.10 $ ${kgH_2}^{-1}$ through the itemized cost estimation of glycerol steam reforming for $H_2$ production capacity of $300m^3\;h^{-1}$. SA was employed to identify key economic factors and various economic indicators such as net present value (NPV), discounted payback period (DPBP), and present value ratio (PVR) were found according to $H_2$ selling price using CFD.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.210-212
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• 2015

The growth-share matrix is a portfolio planning tool developed by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to assist competitive positioning in the international market including those in the construction industry. This matrix is helpful in balancing the firm's cash-flow, and it can suggest strategic directions for each business unit. However, its effectiveness and applicability have long been debated in the academic field due to the complex and unique industrial context of construction. To solve the dispute, this research clarifies the applicability of theories underlying the growth-share matrix to the construction industry. Empirical research based on actual financial data of Korean construction firms is adopted for the statistical analysis including one-way analysis of variance and correlation analysis. The results of this research show that empirical findings on the relationship between performance variables. In this context, this research can provide important insights on the concept of portfolio management in the construction industry.

• Journal of applied mathematics & informatics
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• v.15 no.1_2
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• pp.109-126
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• 2004

This paper deals with two problems of optimal portfolio strategies in continuous time. The first one studies the optimal behavior of a firm who is forced to withdraw funds continuously at a fixed rate per unit time. The second one considers a firm that is faced with an uncontrollable stochastic cash flow, or random risk process. We assume the firm's income can be obtained only from the investment in two assets: a risky asset (e.g., stock) and a riskless asset (e.g., bond). Therefore, the firm's wealth follows a stochastic process. When the wealth is lower than certain legal level, the firm goes bankrupt. Thus how to invest is the fundamental problem of the firm in order to avoid bankruptcy. Under the case of different lending and borrowing rates, we obtain the optimal portfolio strategies for some reasonable objective functions that are the piecewise linear functions of the firm's current wealth and present some interesting proofs for the conclusions. The optimal policies are easy to be operated for any relevant investor.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.231-237
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• 2017

With worldwide efforts to increase the portion of renewable energy for $CO_2$ reductions, a lot of attention has been paid to P2G (power-to-gas) in Europe and Japan to efficiently utilize the surplus electricity. In this paper, economic feasibility analysis has been carried out for P2G using PEM water electrolysis by reflecting current economic status in Korea. In addition, efficiency and electricity price required to be competent in Korean market were provided. Based on cash flow diagrams, unit production costs for $H_2$ and $CH_4$ were estimated and profitability of P2G using PEM water electrolysis was analyzed.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2019

In this research, schedule optimization is defined as balancing the number of workers while keeping the demand and needs of the project resources, creating the perfect schedule for each activity. Therefore, when one optimizes a schedule, multiple potentials of schedule changes are assessed to get an instant view of changes that avoid any over and under staffing while maximizing productivity levels for the available labor cost. Optimizing the number of workers in the scheduling process is not a simple task since it usually involves many different factors to be considered such as the development of quantity take-offs, cost estimating, scheduling, direct/indirect costs, and borrowing costs in cash flow while each factor affecting the others simultaneously. That is why the optimization process usually requires complex computational simulations/modeling. This research attempts to find an optimal selection of daily maximum workers in a project while considering the impacts of other factors at the same time through OPEN BIM based multiple computer simulations in resource leveling. This paper integrates several different processes such as quantity take-offs, cost estimating, and scheduling processes through computer aided simulations and prediction in generating/comparing different outcomes of each process. To achieve interoperability among different simulation processes, this research utilized data exchanges supported by building SMART-IFC effort in automating the data extraction and retrieval. Numerous computer simulations were run, which included necessary aspects of construction scheduling, to produce sufficient alternatives for a given project.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2007.03a
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• pp.800-809
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• 2007

Current payment methods have many faults which are detrimental to the formation and completion of a project. This includes the use of unfair payment terms, pricing strategies and payment mechanisms between the contracting parties. This resulted in being criticised and remain in doubt, the use of current payment methods to reward good contractors and to distinguish poorly performed construction firms. In order to have an insight into this issue, a structured survey was conducted amongst UK construction practitioners. It was found that traditional pricing methods (i.e. lump sum and unit price), payment methods (i.e. interim valuation) and retention still dominate current practice. The empirical findings show that there are significant differences in the use of pricing and payment methods (when making and receiving payments) in construction. Significant differences also found in the factors affecting the choice of pricing methods when making (and receiving) construction payments. The paper concludes with analysis of the findings and future direction of research in payment systems is also provided.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.65-90
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• 2011

Private stevedoring companies are leasing and operating the container terminals of the Busan Port. The total amount of lease fees private stevedoring companies paid in 2010 reached 161 billion wons, an approximately 66 percent of the total revenue of the Busan Port Authority(BPA). In other words, lease fees are the most important revenue source for BPA. However, the lease fee assessment system of Busan container terminals goes against the principle of equity due to different assessment methods and criteria adopted by each container terminal. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to analyze the systematic problems of the lease fee assessment system that is used at Busan container terminals, and propose a new standardized scheme with a case study on the new system. In order to standardize the assessment system, the assessment methods need to be simplified by using the Discounted Cash Flow(DCF) method. In addition, the assessment criteria such as assessment duration, discount rates, price indexes, estimated container throughputs, sales unit price per TEU, operation costs, including labor costs, need to be standardized as well. The new standardized assessment system can be applied to estimate lease fees for new terminals. However, for existing terminals to run the new system, factors such as assessment duration, discount rates, price indexes, estimated container throughputs, investment and re-investment costs, and maintenance & repair costs of the new system should be changed slightly.