• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.17-27
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• 2011

As the world becomes more globalized, business competition becomes fiercer, while consumers' needs for less expensive quality products are on the increase. Business operations make an effort to secure a competitive edge in costs and services, and the logistics industry, that is, the industry operating the storing and transporting of goods, once thought to be an expense, begins to be considered as the third cash cow, a source of new income. Logistics centers are central to storage, loading and unloading of deliveries, packaging operations, and dispensing goods' information. As hubs for various deliveries, they also serve as a core infrastructure to smoothly coordinate manufacturing and selling, using varied information and operation systems. Logistics centers are increasingly on the rise as centers of business supply activities, growing beyond their previous role of primarily storing goods. They are no longer just facilities; they have become logistics strongholds that encompass various features from demand forecast to the regulation of supply, manufacturing, and sales by realizing SCM, taking into account marketability and the operation of service and products. However, despite these changes in logistics operations, some centers have been unable to shed their past roles as warehouses. For the continuous development of logistics centers, various measures would be needed, including a revision of current supporting policies, formulating effective management plans, and establishing systematic standards for founding, managing, and controlling logistics centers. To this end, the research explored previous studies on the use and effectiveness of logistics centers. From a theoretical perspective, an evaluation of the overall introduction, purposes, and transitions in the use of logistics centers found issues to ponder and suggested measures to promote and further advance logistics centers. First, a fact-finding survey to establish demand forecast and standardization is needed. As logistics newspapers predicted that after 2012 supply would exceed demand, causing rents to fall, the business environment for logistics centers has faltered. However, since there is a shortage of fact-finding surveys regarding actual demand for domestic logistic centers, it is hard to predict what the future holds for this industry. Accordingly, the first priority should be to get to the essence of the current market situation by conducting accurate domestic and international fact-finding surveys. Based on those, management and evaluation indicators should be developed to build the foundation for the consistent advancement of logistics centers. Second, many policies for logistics centers should be revised or developed. Above all, a guideline for fair trade between a shipper and a commercial logistics center should be enacted. Since there are no standards for fair trade between them, rampant unfair trades according to market practices have brought chaos to market orders, and now the logistics industry is confronting its own difficulties. Therefore, unfair trade cases that currently plague logistics centers should be gathered by the industry and fair trade guidelines should be established and implemented. In addition, restrictive employment regulations for foreign workers should be eased, and logistics centers should be charged industry rates for the use of electricity. Third, various measures should be taken to improve the management environment. First, we need to find out how to activate value-added logistics. Because the traditional purpose of logistics centers was storage and loading/unloading of goods, their profitability had a limit, and the need arose to find a new angle to create a value added service. Logistic centers have been perceived as support for a company's storage, manufacturing, and sales needs, not as creators of profits. The center's role in the company's economics has been lowering costs. However, as the logistics' management environment spiraled, along with its storage purpose, developing a new feature of profit creation should be a desirable goal, and to achieve that, value added logistics should be promoted. Logistics centers can also be improved through cost estimation. In the meantime, they have achieved some strides in facility development but have still fallen behind in others, particularly in management functioning. Lax management has been rampant because the industry has not developed a concept of cost estimation. The centers have since made an effort toward unification, standardization, and informatization while realizing cost reductions by establishing systems for effective management, but it has been hard to produce profits. Thus, there is an urgent need to estimate costs by determining a basic cost range for each division of work at logistics centers. This undertaking can be the first step to improving the ineffective aspects of how they operate. Ongoing research and constant efforts have been made to improve the level of effectiveness in the manufacturing industry, but studies on resource management in logistics centers are hardly enough. Thus, a plan to calculate the optimal level of resources necessary to operate a logistics center should be developed and implemented in management behavior, for example, by standardizing the hours of operation. If logistics centers, shippers, related trade groups, academic figures, and other experts could launch a committee to work with the government and maintain an ongoing relationship, the constraint and cooperation among members would help lead to coherent development plans for logistics centers. If the government continues its efforts to provide financial support, nurture professional workers, and maintain safety management, we can anticipate the continuous advancement of logistics centers.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.156-172
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• 2007

The high-tech industry is the economic lifeline for Taiwan. Its characteristics are short product life cycle, rapid changes in the market, and a high obsolescence rate for new products. Under globalization, the high-tech industry has adopted Information Technology (IT) to shorten the manufacturing process, reduce costs and conduct product research and development (R&D) to increase the core competence of enterprises and achieve the goal of sustainable operations. Enterprises should actively strengthen their integration with internal and external resources and lead in R&D management to increase industrial operating performance. Effectively managing operations and R&D management evaluation in Taiwan's High-tech Industry has become a critical subject. This study adopted 4 major Balanced Scorecard (BSC) perspectives to establish the Total Performance Evaluation Indicators for the R&D management department in Taiwan's High-tech Industry. The Analytic Network Process (ANP) was applied to evaluate the overall performance of the R&D management department. The research framework is divided into 2 phases. The first phase is combined with the 4 major perspectives, Financial, Customer, Internal Business Process and Learning and Growth, as the related indicators for each measurement perspective. The Key Performance Indicators (KPI) were selected using Factor Analysis to identify the key factor from the complicated indicators. The relationship between the characteristics of each BSC's evaluation perspective is dependence and feedback. This study applied ANP to conduct the calculation and adjustment of correlation between each KPI, and determine on their relative weights for the objective KPI. The "Financial Perspective" for R&D management department in Taiwan's High-tech Industry focused on the budget achievement rate of R&D management. The weight indicator value is (0.05863). The "Customer Perspective" focused on problem-solving satisfaction. The weight value of this indicator is (0.17549). The "Internal Business Process Perspective" focused on the quantity and quality of R&D. The weight value of this indicator is (0.13506). The "Learning and Growth Perspective" focused on improving competence in the research personnel's professional techniques. The weight value of this indicator is (0.02789). From the total weighting indicators, the order of the Performance Indicators for the R&D management department in Taiwan's High-tech Industry is: (1) Customer Perspective; (2) Internal Business Process Perspective; (3) Financial Perspective; and (4) Learning and Growth Perspective.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.165-176
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the IT resources on the work efficiency and corporate performance in Mobile Smart-Work Environment with IT convergence Technology by applying the Resource-Based View. The study has an academic meaning by empirically analyzing the effects of factors identified based on the existing study on the IT resources in Mobile Smart-Work, and practical implications to identify how the significance of the Mobile Smart-Work used as a platform of variety industries in manufacturing, logistics, service, distribution, finance, public institutions, and so on positively affects improvement of corporate efficiency and performance. The results showed that IT Infrastructure and IT skills in the Mobile Smart-work environment were found to bring positive effects on individual work efficiency, and IT skills had positive influence on team work efficiency. Also, we confirmed the individual and team work efficiency positively affect financial and market performance of business firms. Finally, we expect that business firm equipped with IT resources in the Mobile Smart-Work environment with IT convergence Technology. It can improve this work efficiency and the performance, which leads to strengthening the core competency.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.133-140
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• 2012

This study starts from interests on an endeavor of each economy unit, especially the enterprises, for the survival and sustainability of themselves. Competition, how to get it, maintain it and advance it! Agreeing the perceivedness of industries, scholars and public; what the core competition of manufacturer is an competitiveness of product, this study focuses on the PLM system as the key solution for obtaining the competitiveness of product with reviewing the contents and studies of PLM formulated. PLM is highlighted as the one of top tier ICT solution for the product development domain of manufacturing industry today. First of all, this study deals with the opinion of actual work-site and management of our small&medium business for the benefits of PLM based on product development; the impact on the performances of management, which is the key objective of the existence of enterprises. In conclusion, the answers for these questionnaires shows positive perception of actual work-sites and managers for the PLM system. They agree some useful effects on shortening the term and downsizing the cost of product development due to Data integration and Process management, even if they have not full confidence on the effectiveness of the individual functionality of the PLM system.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.87-103
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• 2017

In recent years, many small and medium-sized manufacturing companies are making process innovation and product innovation through the public knowledge services. K Research institute provides different types of knowledge services in combination and due to this complexity, it is difficult to analyze the performance of knowledge service programs precisely. In this study, we derived performance items from bottom-up viewpoints, rather than top-down approaches selecting those items as in previous performance analysis. As a result, 74 items were finded from 82 companies in the K Research Institute case book, and the final result was refined to 17 items. After that a case-performance matrix was constructed, and binary data was entered to analyze. As a result, three clusters were identified through K-means clustering as 'enhancement of core competitiveness (product and patent),' 'expansion of domestic and overseas market,' and 'improvement of operational efficiency.'

• Information Systems Review
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.135-164
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• 2008

This research is to offer a structured yet practical ex-ante evaluation methodology for IT investment. Benchmarking the best practices of four Korean organizations, we try to integrate core processes, relevant measures, and evaluation dimensions into a consistent and wholesome body of evaluating methodology. The best practices we considered encompass a wide range of business enterprises, including for-profit, non-profit, service-oriented, and manufacturing entities. The proposed methodology consists of three stages; the first stage checks the validity of investments by looking into comprehensiveness of planning, willingness to accomplish, justifiable grounds for the investments, overlapping investments, and obstructing risks; the second do so by putting an IT investment into economic, strategic, and technological perspectives; and the last third would produce a unified quantity that summarizes outcome of the previous stages. Incorporating the proven knowledge, guidelines, and quantifying tools, the methodology could make a valuable reference model for IT evaluation practitioners who have been bedeviled by having to going through such ex-ante evaluations.

• Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.47-61
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• 2007

In SCM (supply chain management), companies are pursuing a new approach through which overall functions within the supply chain, ranging from material purchase to production, distribution, and sales are designed, planned, and managed in an integrated way. The core functions among them are production planning and distribution planning. As these problems are mutually related, they should be dealt with simultaneously in an integrated manner. SCM is large-scale and multi-stage problems. Also, its various kinds of internal or external factors can, at any time, dynamically bring a change to the existing plan or situation. Recently, many enterprises are moving toward an open architecture for integrating their activities with their suppliers, customers and other partners within the supply chain. Agent-based technology provides an effective approach in such environments. Multi-agent systems have been proven suitable to represent domains such as supply chain networks which involve interactions among manufacturing organization, their customers, suppliers, etc. with different individual goals and propriety information. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent system based on the genetic algorithm that make it possible to integrate the production and distribution planning on a real-time basis in SCM. The proposed genetic algorithm produced near optimal solution and we checked that there is a great difference in the results between integrated planning and non-integrated planning.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.287-316
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• 2015

The trend of R&D in automotive electronics industry is shifting towards ECU(Electronic Control Units) based on softwares which requires technology convergence to accommodate customers' requests on safety and convenience. The trend requires systemized R&D paradigm which reflects increased role of softwares. As the softwares became the core components in automotive innovation, there has been wide range of efforts to introduce software R&D processes and methodologies such as CMMI, A-SPICE and ISO-26262 etc. However, R&D departments in the industry fields are confronted with conflicts which arise from discrepancies among the individual process. In this study, we focus on suggesting our integrated and systematic R&D process with the aim of alleviating the conflicts and confusions. For this purpose, we analyze the cases of Korean automotive electronics companies to compare various R&D processes in the field and their relationships. Based on the analysis, we derive and suggest our model of R&D process which effectively integrate ISO/TS-16949 for manufacturing quality and CMMI, A-SPICE, ISO-26262 for system with softwares.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.75-93
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• 2012

The steel cargoes as the core raw materials for the manufacturing industry have important roles for increasing the handling volume of the port. In particular, steel cargoes are fundamental to vitalize Port of Incheon because they have recognized as the primary key cargo items among the bulk cargoes. In this respect, the IPA(Incheon Port Authority) ambitiously developed the port complex facilities including dedicated terminals and its hinterland in northern part of Incheon. However, these complex area has suffered from low cargo handling records and has faced operational difficulties due to decreased net profits. In general, the import and export steel cargo volumes are sensitively fluctuated followed by internal and external economy index. There is a scant of research for forecasting the steel cargo volume in Incheon port which used in various economy index. To fill the research gap, the aim of this research is to predict the steel cargoes of Port of Incheon using the well established methodology i.e. System Dynamics. As a result, steel cargoes volume dealt with in Incheon port is forecasted from about 8 million tons to about 10 million tons during simulation duration (2011-2020). The Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) is measured as 0.0013 which verifies the model's accuracy.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.80-87
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• 2018

In recent years, due to the spread of various renewable energy power sources and the pursuit of high efficiency and low-power consumption, not only trends in the electric power industry but also the consumption, control methods, and characteristics are diversified. However, in this diversified electric power industry, the fuse (which is the core part responsible for safety) has not developed significantly in classical operation mode, and thus, fires continue to occur. In this paper, the effects of low melting-point metal plating and high melting-point metal plating on operating characteristics and IT curve movement of the fuse are investigated in a cartridge fuse, which is a classic fuse manufacturing method. The effects of plating on the thickness of the fuse are investigated, and various operating characteristics of the fuse are implemented. In addition, it is suggested that the plating of the low melting-point metal moves the rated current line of the fuse to a low rating, and moves operating characteristics to characteristics of delay operation. It is possible to design various operating characteristics using this characteristic.