• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.25-40
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• 2007

It has been pointed out that the shortage of the Korean science and engineering workforce is a key issue in enterprises' competitiveness. The Korean government has conducted various surveys and research projects to determine the current situation and its causes. Nevertheless, the surveys report different results, and, to date, very few in-depth studies have been conducted on the factors that lead to such a shortage. This study aimed at investigating the factors that cause the shortage of the science and engineering workforce by looking at a recent survey on the actual employment conditions in manufacturing and major service industries. The study also estimated the determinant factors, based on the results of a survey conducted on 5,967 enterprises. Particularly, the probability of the workforce shortages are defined as a logistic probability function, which includes a diverse number of explanations that represent the characteristics of an enterprise and its internal demand conditions on workforce. The findings showed that key determinants include not only the factors that have been recognized by previous studies, but also research propensity and competitiveness aw well as the enterprises' internal demand conditions on human resources. In other words, an enterprise is more exposed to the problem of workforce shortage when it performs its R&D more proactively and its innovative activities are more organized. It has been further analyzed that the R&D and internal demand variables are more eminent to the shortage problem on skilled workers, which proves the shortage of workforce is not only caused by the quantitative aspect but also hold qualitative aspect characterized by skill obsolescence and mismatch in the labor market.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.43-47
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• 2013

This paper studies an optimal consumption and portfolio choice problem for unemployed people who have an option to work. Our problem is to find optimal consumption, risky investment, and workforce re-entry strategies for the unemployed. We find a closed form of the critical wealth level to re-enter the workforce. We show that the unemployed with a higher disutility of labor or a larger relative risk aversion are more reluctant to re-enter the workforce.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.61-67
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• 2010

The current trends in engineering education have been examined in order to address the situation of educating engineering workforce. It was found that the decline in the supply of manpower in engineering education had not been a serious problem since 2003. However, a large number of students who graduated engineering colleges intended to enter medical schools. Engineering colleges may consider developing high school exposure programs making students to explore engineering. Also policies are required for engineering program to be competitive for attracting and retaining strong workforce into an engineering career.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.640-648
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• 2022

In the United States, the Safety Rest Areas (SRAs) were introduced as highway roadside infrastructures in the early 1900s. The State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) operate/maintain their SRAs using different methods. The Washington DOT used the in-house workforce method for over 20 years, whereas some states moved to Performance-Based Contracting (PBC) from the in-house workforce to save cost primarily. Several existing studies claimed that using the PBC approach saved costs on several highway assets. Thus, the principal objective of this study is to compute and compare the unit operating/maintenance cost of SRAs using the in-house workforce method (in Washington state) with the PBC approach (in other states). The findings of this study show that the average annual cost using the PBC approach was much more than the average annual cost using the in-house workforce approach. The findings also show that in Washington state, the 'Labor Cost' category was a key expenditure, which is statistically higher than other categories. The 'Labor Cost' was followed by the 'Other Services', and then 'Materials and Supplies' and 'Equipment.' The study's findings indicated that outsourcing does not always save costs for agencies. The study findings may help transportation construction/maintenance professionals select a cost-effective approach for their future planning.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.140-150
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to compare and analysis researches related the promising career and job outlook and to provide the direction for job choice to engineering students. Literature review and expert council were used to achieve the objectives of study. The result of this study was analyzed that these jobs were promising, that is, environmental scientist and specialist, earth scientist and hydrologist(education and research related career), architecture and architectural engineer, civil engineer, landscape technician, land surveyor map production expert photo surveyor surveying technician(construction related career), material engineer (mechanics and material related career), mine and geology engineer(chemistry, fiber and environment related career), computer system design and analyst, system software engineer, application software engineer, web specialist, and computer support specialist (electrical and telecommunication related career) and food engineer(food related career). In addition, health silver specialist, bio biomedical engineer, renewable energy specialist etc. were promising by considering social and economic trend for demographic change like aging and green growth.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.22-27
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• 2007

This paper describes the optimization of maintenance workforce scheduling at Afam power station in Nigeria. The objective is to determine the optimum schedule to satisfy growing maintenance labour requirements with minimum cost and highest efficiency. Three alternative maintenance workforce schedules are compared. The first alternative is to continue with the traditional five-day workweek schedule currently being practiced by Afam power station maintenance line. The second alternative is to switch to a seven-day workweek schedule for the morning shift only. The third alternative is to use a seven-day workweek schedule for all three work shifts. The third alternative is chosen, as it is expected to save 11% of the maintenance labour cost.

• World Technopolis Review
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.153-164
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• 2014

It is recent that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education emerged as a great concern of the U.S. policy makers in terms of securing national and regional competitiveness. However, few attempts to embrace STEM education as a source for sustainable regional growth have been made mainly due to methodological challenges. This paper investigates the role of STEM education in achieving sustainable economic growth. For the purpose of the paper, a U.S. federal workforce development program named Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) in Southeastern Virginia that was implemented between 2007 and 2010 is selected and evaluated qualitatively. By identifying three themes as a result of three-stage coding methods, the evaluation results call for particular attention of local policy makers and key stakeholders to STEM education as a source of sustainable long-term economic growth in regions.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.21-45
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to verify how the vocational education for training industrial workforce as a national human resource development (NHRD) system has undergone a transition process in relation to the national economic, industrial, and socio-cultural contexts. First, how vocational education as an industrial workforce training system has changed in accordance with Korea's economic environment, industrial development, and social changes; second, what are the main factors that influenced the role and importance of vocational education; and third, vocational education as a system for training industrial workforce and training workforce in science and engineering were analyzed differently from the perspective of the NHRD model. To this end, domestic and international academic journal papers, research reports, and thesis were investigated and classified by period, and major changes in vocational education were analyzed in relation to economic, industrial, and social issues and policies by period. As a result of the research, first, as the industry advanced, the level of vocational education increased and the scope expanded. Second, vocational education tended to shrink gradually after the manufacturing industry base, and especially secondary vocational education tended to decline after the national industry focused on light industry. Third, since the 1970s, the diversification of the NHRD and jobs has resulted in wage gaps depending on the level of education, which has increased the preference for university education and avoided secondary vocational education. In addition, a NHRD model focusing on training science and engineering workforce was proposed to compare the existing NHRD model focusing on overall vocational education, and it was revealed that the NHRD needs to be subdivided into various fields or levels to derive a model and examine changes. From the results of the study, vocational education in Korea, especially in secondary vocational education, has declined due to large impacts on socio-cultural perception due to economic growth, enthusiasm for education, and external shocks such as the financial crisis, and the long-term effort to change this perception is suggested to overcome the crisis of vocational education.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.150-153
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• 2015

The construction industry is an integral part of any nation's economy, whether measured by dollar volume or workforce size. In spite of its strong influence, there has been very little specifically aimed at evaluating the current industry performance. This research investigates the macroeconomic performance of the construction industry by accounting for crucial performance affecting factors such as labor productivity and gross margin. A clustering analysis, followed by a series of statistical analyses, yielded a notable finding that labor productivity is the most important factor that affects industry's profitability. The results of the analysis also revealed that the states with the strongest labor productivity show the highest level of profitability in terms of gross margin. This study should be of value to decision-makers when plotting a roadmap for future growth and rendering a strategic business decision.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.717-723
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• 2019

Smart systems and services aim to facilitate growing urban populations and their prospects of virtual-real social behaviors, gig economies, factory automation, knowledge-based workforce, integrated societies, modern living, among many more. To satisfy these objectives, smart systems and services must comprises of a complex set of features such as security, ease of use and user friendliness, manageability, scalability, adaptivity, intelligent behavior, and personalization. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI) is realized as a data-driven technology to provide an efficient knowledge representation, semantic modeling, and can support a cognitive behavior aspect of the system. In this paper, an integration of AI with the smart systems and services is presented to mitigate the existing challenges. Several novel researches work in terms of frameworks, architectures, paradigms, and algorithms are discussed to provide possible solutions against the existing challenges in the AI-based smart systems and services. Such novel research works involve efficient shape image retrieval, speech signal processing, dynamic thermal rating, advanced persistent threat tactics, user authentication, and so on.