• Title/Summary/Keyword: small and medium size business

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Production of Silver Impregnated Bamboo Activated Carbon and Reactivity with NO Gases (은첨착 대나무 활성탄의 제조와 NO 가스 반응 특성)

  • Bak, Young-Cheol;Choi, Joo-Hong;Lee, Geun-Lim
    • Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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    • v.52 no.6
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    • pp.807-813
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    • 2014
  • The Ag-impregnated activated carbon was produced from bamboo activated carbon by soaking method of silver nitrate solution. The carbonization and activation of raw material was conducted at $900^{\circ}C$. Soaking conditions are the variation of silver nitrate solution concentration (0.002~0.1 mol/L) and soaking time (maximum 24 h). The specific surface area and pore size distribution of the prepared activated carbons were measured. Also, NO and activated carbon reaction were conducted in a thermogravimetric analyzer in order to use for de-NOx agents of used activated carbon. Carbon-NO reactions were carried out with respect to reaction temperature ($20{\sim}850^{\circ}C$) and NO gas partial pressure (0.1~1.8 kPa). As results, Ag amounts are saturated within 2h, Ag amounts increased 1.95 mg Ag/g (0.2%)~ 88.70 mg Ag/g (8.87%) with the concentration of silver nitrate solution in the range of 0.002~0.1 mol/L. The specific volume and surface area of bamboo activated carbon of impregnated with 0.2% silver were maximum, but decreased with increasing Ag amounts of activated carbon due to pore blocking. In NO reaction, the reaction rate of impregnated bamboo activated carbon was retarded as compare with that of bamboo activated carbon. Measured reaction orders of NO concentration and activation energy were 0.63[BA], 0.69l[BA(Ag)] and 80.5 kJ/mol[BA], 66.4 kJ/mol[BA(Ag)], respectively.

A Study On the Industrial Clusters In a Region Using Big data (빅데이타 분석을 이용한 지역내 산업클러스터 연구)

  • Jung, Jaeheon
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.17 no.2
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    • pp.543-554
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    • 2017
  • We tried to get useful information from social network analysis on the transaction network for the companies in Busan, Ulsan, Kyong-nam region using more than 80 thousand company transaction data obtained from Korean enterprise data (KED). We found that there are 282 clusters having more than 3 companies when we made clusters composed of the companies having the transactions with each other as the first transaction partners in the region. Most of clusters have a major big company with most of sales in the clusters and have the member companies without the transaction with other cluster's member companies so that they have closed and hierarchical transaction pattern. Analysing the transaction network using the network index, we know that there are small medium size companies playing the central role in the regional transaction network and a few clusters have many transactions with other clusters. Also we found that there are very rare sale transactions to the companies outside the region and many purchasing transactions from the companies outside the region. Policy makers need to try to diversify the transaction patterns and to use the exceptional companies and clusters as the levers.

Performance of Collaboration Activities upon SME's Idiosyncrasy (중소기업 특성에 따른 외부 협업 활동이 혁신성과에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Hye Sun;Oh, Junseok;Lee, Jaeki;Lee, Bong Gyou
    • Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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    • v.14 no.6
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    • pp.95-105
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    • 2013
  • Recently, SME's Collaboration activities have become one of a vital factor for sustaining competitive edge. This is because of the rapidly changing and competitive market environment, and also to leverage performance by overcoming obstacles of having limited internal resources. Discussing about the effects and relationships of the firm's collaboration activities and its outputs are not new. However, as ICT and various technologies have been diffused into the traditional industries, boundaries and practice capabilities within the industries are becoming ambiguous. Thus contents of the products/services and their development methods are also go and come over the industries. Although many researchers suggested the relations of SME's collaboration activities and innovation performances, most of the previous literatures are focusing on broad perspectives of firm's environmental factors rather than considering various SME's idiosyncrasy factors such as their major product and customer types at once. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze how SME(Small Medium Enterprise)'s external collaboration activities by their idiosyncrasy act as an input to types of innovation performance. In order to analyze collaboration effects in detail, we defined factors that can represent the SME's business environment - Perceived importance of using external resources, Perceived importance of external partnership, Collaboration and Collaboration levels of Major Product types, Customer types and lastly the Firm Sizes. We have also specifically divided the performance of innovation types as product innovation and process innovation based on existing research. In this study, the empirical analysis is based on Probit Regression Model to observe the correlations with the impact of each SME's business environment and their activities. For the empirical data, 497 samples were collected which, this sample data was extracted from the 'Korean Open Innovation Survey' performed by ETRI(Korean Electronics Telecommunications Research Institute) in 2010. As a result, empirical test results indicated that the impact of collaboration varies depend on the innovation types (Product and Process Innovation). The Impact of the collaboration level for the product innovation tend to be more effective when SMEs are developing for a final product, targeting on for individual customers (B2C). But on the other hand, the analysis result of the Process innovation tend to be higher than the product innovation, when SMEs are developing raw materials for their partners or to other firms targeting on for manufacturing industries(B2B). Also perceived importance of using external resources has effected to both product and process innovation performance. But Perceived importance of external partnership was statistically insignificant. Interesting finding was that the service product has negative effects on for the process innovation performance. And Relationship between size of the firms and their external collaboration activities with their performance of the innovations indicated that the bigger firms(over 100 of employees) tend to have better for both product and process innovations. Finally, implications of the results can be suggested as performance of innovation can be varied depends on firm's unique business idiosyncrasy as well as levels of external collaboration activities. The Implication of this research can be considered for firms in selecting an appropriate strategy as well as for policy makers.

The Pattern Analysis of Financial Distress for Non-audited Firms using Data Mining (데이터마이닝 기법을 활용한 비외감기업의 부실화 유형 분석)

  • Lee, Su Hyun;Park, Jung Min;Lee, Hyoung Yong
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.111-131
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    • 2015
  • There are only a handful number of research conducted on pattern analysis of corporate distress as compared with research for bankruptcy prediction. The few that exists mainly focus on audited firms because financial data collection is easier for these firms. But in reality, corporate financial distress is a far more common and critical phenomenon for non-audited firms which are mainly comprised of small and medium sized firms. The purpose of this paper is to classify non-audited firms under distress according to their financial ratio using data mining; Self-Organizing Map (SOM). SOM is a type of artificial neural network that is trained using unsupervised learning to produce a lower dimensional discretized representation of the input space of the training samples, called a map. SOM is different from other artificial neural networks as it applies competitive learning as opposed to error-correction learning such as backpropagation with gradient descent, and in the sense that it uses a neighborhood function to preserve the topological properties of the input space. It is one of the popular and successful clustering algorithm. In this study, we classify types of financial distress firms, specially, non-audited firms. In the empirical test, we collect 10 financial ratios of 100 non-audited firms under distress in 2004 for the previous two years (2002 and 2003). Using these financial ratios and the SOM algorithm, five distinct patterns were distinguished. In pattern 1, financial distress was very serious in almost all financial ratios. 12% of the firms are included in these patterns. In pattern 2, financial distress was weak in almost financial ratios. 14% of the firms are included in pattern 2. In pattern 3, growth ratio was the worst among all patterns. It is speculated that the firms of this pattern may be under distress due to severe competition in their industries. Approximately 30% of the firms fell into this group. In pattern 4, the growth ratio was higher than any other pattern but the cash ratio and profitability ratio were not at the level of the growth ratio. It is concluded that the firms of this pattern were under distress in pursuit of expanding their business. About 25% of the firms were in this pattern. Last, pattern 5 encompassed very solvent firms. Perhaps firms of this pattern were distressed due to a bad short-term strategic decision or due to problems with the enterpriser of the firms. Approximately 18% of the firms were under this pattern. This study has the academic and empirical contribution. In the perspectives of the academic contribution, non-audited companies that tend to be easily bankrupt and have the unstructured or easily manipulated financial data are classified by the data mining technology (Self-Organizing Map) rather than big sized audited firms that have the well prepared and reliable financial data. In the perspectives of the empirical one, even though the financial data of the non-audited firms are conducted to analyze, it is useful for find out the first order symptom of financial distress, which makes us to forecast the prediction of bankruptcy of the firms and to manage the early warning and alert signal. These are the academic and empirical contribution of this study. The limitation of this research is to analyze only 100 corporates due to the difficulty of collecting the financial data of the non-audited firms, which make us to be hard to proceed to the analysis by the category or size difference. Also, non-financial qualitative data is crucial for the analysis of bankruptcy. Thus, the non-financial qualitative factor is taken into account for the next study. This study sheds some light on the non-audited small and medium sized firms' distress prediction in the future.

Spatial Structure of Hinterlands and Forelands of Pusan Container Export Port: the Cases of 3 National Flag Carriers (부산 컨테이너 수출항의 배후지와 지향지의 공간구조)

  • Cho, Su-Kyung
    • Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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    • v.28 no.3
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    • pp.247-267
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    • 1993
  • According to developing international economy since the World War II, the increase and competition of the national business is so empha-sized tht both the interest and the necessity about marine transportation playing the impor-thant role of international transportation are increased. Today, the container transportation, as called the innovation of marine transport has been prevailed since the 1970's. The purpose of this paper is to grasp the spatial structure of the hinterlands and forelands, its object is export container cargo at Pusan Export Port, as known for the transportation node of modern containerlization. In this study, for the purpose of grasping the relation between hinterlands and forelands of Korean export container cargo, first, I researched the transition of carloading about container cargo, the bistribution channel of cargo, the change of the items of container and the carlo-adings about transport route, secondly, I used the cluster analysis so as to group hinterlands according to the items of goods and forelands. The object of the analysis is container cargo of Choyang Line, Hanjin Shipping and Hyundai Merchant Marine of National Frag Carriers. The source materials used in this study are Trucking Data of Hanjin Co., Container Ren-tal Data of Samik Transport Co. and Transpor-ting Present Condition Tables of Hyundai Mer-chant Marine. 1. There are two kinds of the transport classi-fied by its form: FCL and LCL. In Pusan Con-tainer Export, a lot of textile goods, clothings and furniture, compound, electric goods, and so on are dealed with but the rate of occupation of the transport is getting lower while that of occupation of equipment, papers and agricultu-ral, mineral and livestock industry higher. 2. In 1990, the transports of container cargo in Korea consist of 7 services and round-the world lines. We can list North America lines, East-South Asian lines, Japan lines and Inter European lines, in order of the quantity of tran-sport form the largest to the smaller. We can have another list that Japan lines, North Ame-rica lines and East-South lines in order of the rate participation of national flag carriers, be-cacuse Korean foreign trade lay disproportionate emphasis on East-South Asian lines. Japan lines among them is the biggest import-export market. Since the rationlization policy of marine tran-sport in 1984, each of national flag carriers have its own lines. Hanjin Shipping predominates over North America lines, Choyang Line over New Zealand, Inter European and Austria lines and Hyundai Merchant Marine over Center-South America lines, in terms of the volume of transport. And small-to-medium sized shippers are prevailing in lines which are adjacent to Korea, Such as Japan lines and East-South Asian lines. 3. In relation to hinterlands and forelands of Choyang Line, the light industry goods, electric goods and machinary produced in Seoul and Pusan are exported to the major ports in Europe and Japan, the same produces in Suwon, Ulsan, Kumi are exported to European Ports, and those in Incheon and Kwangju Austrian and Japanese ports, and those in the rest regions to the major port in Japan. 4. In relation to hinterlands and forelands of Hanjin Shipping, the light industry goods pro-ducing in Seoul and Pusan, the electric goods and machinary in Incheon and Pyeongteck, are exported to New York and Los Angeles. Electric goods and machinary Masan, Anyang, Cheona, Cheongju and Incheon, Electric goods machinary and light industry goods in Kwangju and non mental goods in Pohang, are exported New York, Los Angeles and Oakland. 5. In relation to hinterlands and forelands of Hyundai Merchant Marine, the region of Seoul, Pusan and Incheon closely related with the main ports in U.S.A. The rest regions with Montreal. The hinterlands of export container cargo can be classified by its export items into three kinds: the large city, industrial city and the rest city. Choyang Line's forelands are European lines, Japan lines and Austria lines, and Hanjin Shipping's forelands are North America lines, and Hyundai Merchant Marine's forelands are North America lines and Japan line. 3 National flag carriers' major forelands are determined by the size of port and the shipper's convenient use of the port terminal.

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A Study of Properties and Coating Natural Mineral Pumice Powder of in Korea (한국산 천연 광물 부석 파우더 코팅 및 특성에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, In-Young;Noh, Ji-Min;Nam, Eun-Hee;Shin, Moon-Sam
    • Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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    • v.36 no.2
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    • pp.498-506
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    • 2019
  • This study is based on a coating method that provides utilization value as a micronised powder for cosmetic raw materials using natural minerals buried in Bonghwa, Gyeongsangbuk-do in Korea. The mineral powder name is called Buseok, and chemical name is pumice powder. The results of a study on the efficacy of cosmetics are reported by the development of particulate powder to assess the performance of this powder. First of all, in order to coat the surface of this powder with oil, aluminum hydroxide was coated on the particulate surface and then coated with alkylsilan. In addition, it was coated with vegetable oil to prevent condensation of the powder and increase the dispersion in the oil phase. First; the particle size of pumice powder was from 10 to 50mm having porous holes on the surface of the particles. Second; The components of this powder contained $SiO_2$, $Al_2O_3$, $Fe_2O_3$, MgO, CaO, $K_2O_2$, $Na_2O$, $TiO_2$, $TiO_2$, MnO, $Cr_2O_3$, $V_2O_5$. Third: The particles of this powder have a planetary structure and are reddish-brown with porosity through SEM and TEM analysis. Fourth; the far-infrared radiation rate of this parabolic powder was $0.924{\mu}m$, and the radiative energy was $3.72{\times}102W/m^2$ and ${\mu}m$. In addition, the anion emission is 128 ION/cc, which shows that the coating remains unchanged. Based on these results, it is expected to be widely applied to basic cosmetics such as BB cream, cushion foundation, powderfect, and other color-coordinated cosmetics, sunblock cream, wash-off massage pack as an application of cosmetics. (Small and Medium Business Administration: S2601385)

Open Skies Policy : A Study on the Alliance Performance and International Competition of FFP (항공자유화정책상 상용고객우대제도의 제휴성과와 국제경쟁에 관한 연구)

  • Suh, Myung-Sun;Cho, Ju-Eun
    • The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
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    • v.25 no.2
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    • pp.139-162
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    • 2010
  • In terms of the international air transport, the open skies policy implies freedom in the sky or opening the sky. In the normative respect, the open skies policy is a kind of open-door policy which gives various forms of traffic right to other countries, but on the other hand it is a policy of free competition in the international air transport. Since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the United States has signed an open skies agreement with many countries, starting with the Netherlands, so that competitive large airlines can compete in the international air transport market where there exist a lot of business opportunities. South Korea now has an open skies agreement with more than 20 countries. The frequent flyer program (FFP) is part of a broad-based marketing alliance which has been used as an airfare strategy since the U.S. government's airline deregulation. The membership-based program is an incentive plan that provides mileage points to customers for using airline services and rewards customer loyalty in tangible forms based on their accumulated points. In its early stages, the frequent flyer program was focused on marketing efforts to attract customers, but now in the environment of intense competition among airlines, the program is used as an important strategic marketing tool for enhancing business performance. Therefore, airline companies agree that they need to identify customer needs in order to secure loyal customers more effectively. The outcomes from an airline's frequent flyer program can have a variety of effects on international competition. First, the airline can obtain a more dominant position in the air flight market by expanding its air route networks. Second, the availability of flight products for customers can be improved with an increase in flight frequency. Third, the airline can preferentially expand into new markets and thus gain advantages over its competitors. However, there are few empirical studies on the airline frequent flyer program. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the effects of the program on international competition, after reviewing the types of strategic alliance between airlines. Making strategic airline alliances is a worldwide trend resulting from the open skies policy. South Korea also needs to be making open skies agreements more realistic to promote the growth and competition of domestic airlines. The present study is about the performance of the airline frequent flyer program and international competition under the open skies policy. With a sample of five global alliance groups (Star, Oneworld, Wings, Qualiflyer and Skyteam), the study was attempted as an empirical study of the effects that the resource structures and levels of information technology held by airlines in each group have on the type of alliance, and one-way analysis of variance and regression analysis were used to test hypotheses. The findings of this study suggest that both large airline companies and small/medium-size airlines in an alliance group with global networks and organizations are able to achieve high performance and secure international competitiveness. Airline passengers earn mileage points by using non-flight services through an alliance network with hotels, car-rental services, duty-free shops, travel agents and more and show high interests in and preferences for related service benefits. Therefore, Korean airline companies should develop more aggressive marketing programs based on multilateral alliances with other services including hotels, as well as with other airlines.

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The Characteristics and Performances of Manufacturing SMEs that Utilize Public Information Support Infrastructure (공공 정보지원 인프라 활용한 제조 중소기업의 특징과 성과에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Keun-Hwan;Kwon, Taehoon;Jun, Seung-pyo
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.25 no.4
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    • pp.1-33
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    • 2019
  • The small and medium sized enterprises (hereinafter SMEs) are already at a competitive disadvantaged when compared to large companies with more abundant resources. Manufacturing SMEs not only need a lot of information needed for new product development for sustainable growth and survival, but also seek networking to overcome the limitations of resources, but they are faced with limitations due to their size limitations. In a new era in which connectivity increases the complexity and uncertainty of the business environment, SMEs are increasingly urged to find information and solve networking problems. In order to solve these problems, the government funded research institutes plays an important role and duty to solve the information asymmetry problem of SMEs. The purpose of this study is to identify the differentiating characteristics of SMEs that utilize the public information support infrastructure provided by SMEs to enhance the innovation capacity of SMEs, and how they contribute to corporate performance. We argue that we need an infrastructure for providing information support to SMEs as part of this effort to strengthen of the role of government funded institutions; in this study, we specifically identify the target of such a policy and furthermore empirically demonstrate the effects of such policy-based efforts. Our goal is to help establish the strategies for building the information supporting infrastructure. To achieve this purpose, we first classified the characteristics of SMEs that have been found to utilize the information supporting infrastructure provided by government funded institutions. This allows us to verify whether selection bias appears in the analyzed group, which helps us clarify the interpretative limits of our study results. Next, we performed mediator and moderator effect analysis for multiple variables to analyze the process through which the use of information supporting infrastructure led to an improvement in external networking capabilities and resulted in enhancing product competitiveness. This analysis helps identify the key factors we should focus on when offering indirect support to SMEs through the information supporting infrastructure, which in turn helps us more efficiently manage research related to SME supporting policies implemented by government funded institutions. The results of this study showed the following. First, SMEs that used the information supporting infrastructure were found to have a significant difference in size in comparison to domestic R&D SMEs, but on the other hand, there was no significant difference in the cluster analysis that considered various variables. Based on these findings, we confirmed that SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure are superior in size, and had a relatively higher distribution of companies that transact to a greater degree with large companies, when compared to the SMEs composing the general group of SMEs. Also, we found that companies that already receive support from the information infrastructure have a high concentration of companies that need collaboration with government funded institution. Secondly, among the SMEs that use the information supporting infrastructure, we found that increasing external networking capabilities contributed to enhancing product competitiveness, and while this was no the effect of direct assistance, we also found that indirect contributions were made by increasing the open marketing capabilities: in other words, this was the result of an indirect-only mediator effect. Also, the number of times the company received additional support in this process through mentoring related to information utilization was found to have a mediated moderator effect on improving external networking capabilities and in turn strengthening product competitiveness. The results of this study provide several insights that will help establish policies. KISTI's information support infrastructure may lead to the conclusion that marketing is already well underway, but it intentionally supports groups that enable to achieve good performance. As a result, the government should provide clear priorities whether to support the companies in the underdevelopment or to aid better performance. Through our research, we have identified how public information infrastructure contributes to product competitiveness. Here, we can draw some policy implications. First, the public information support infrastructure should have the capability to enhance the ability to interact with or to find the expert that provides required information. Second, if the utilization of public information support (online) infrastructure is effective, it is not necessary to continuously provide informational mentoring, which is a parallel offline support. Rather, offline support such as mentoring should be used as an appropriate device for abnormal symptom monitoring. Third, it is required that SMEs should improve their ability to utilize, because the effect of enhancing networking capacity through public information support infrastructure and enhancing product competitiveness through such infrastructure appears in most types of companies rather than in specific SMEs.