This paper deals with production scheduling of block assembly shop in shipbuilding company. The Objectives of the schedule are leveling of daily total workload and fair assignment of workload to each department of the shop. Optimizing the objectives, we consider some restrictions which consisit of block due dates, workability of each department, and space restriction. We formulate the problem in mathematical form. But the model is too complex to find the optimal solution (the problem is NP-complete) and we use the genetic algorithm to find a good solution.

This paper considers the sequencing problem in mixed model assembly lines with hybrid workstation types and sequence-dependent setup times. Computation time is often a critical factor in choosing a method of determining the sequence. We develop a mathematical formulation of the problem to minimize the overall length of a line, and present a tabu search technique which can provide a near optimal solution in real time. The proposed technique is compared with a genetic algorithm and a branch-and-bound method. Experimental results are reported to demonstrate the efficiency of the technique.

In the past decade, considerable effort has been devoted unsuccessfully to the development of information technology (IT) evaluation frameworks in the information systems area. Based on the literature review in this area and the decision analysis field, two competing evaluation frameworks are developed in this study: the direct evaluation framework and the indirect evaluation framework. A case study on Firm K shows that the latter is more practically efficient and theoretically appropriate but requires the adequate training for practitioners in order not to get confused the weight of an evaluation variable with the product of this weight and the score of the variable. Another finding is that Weill's conversion effectiveness is neither possible nor necessary to measure in the process of evaluating an IT although it is in theory an important concept.

Rapid globalization of production and marketing functions makes choice of international transportation mode of great importance. In this paper, transportation mode is characterized by two factors, mean and variability of transportation lead time. We developed a simple mathematical model to estimate the relative impact of mean lead time, lead time variance and demand variance on the required average inventory level under specified service rates.

This paper develops an adaptive scheduling policy for flexible manufacturing systems. The inductive learning methodology used for constructing this state-dependent scheduling policy provides and understanding of the relative importance of the various system parameters in determining the appropriate scheduling rule. Experimental studies indicated the superiority of the suggested approach over the alternative approach involving the repeated application of a single scheduling rule for randomly generated test problems as well as a real system, and under both stationary and nonstationary conditions. In particular, its relative performance improves further when there are frequent disruptions, and when disruptions are caused by the introduction of tiiight due date jobs, one of the most common surces of disruptions in most manufacturing systems.

Many researchers have studied the theme on CASE technology. However, there are no many researches which lightened the diffusion of CASE technology and organizational change. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence on the diffusion of CASE technology and the way how IS organization changes as a result of the diffusion. We exploited a case study research as a methodology. We selected five software development firms which possessed the leading IS technology abilities as the case companies. We realized that the diffusion of CASE technology proceeded under the three context variables - managerial context of information systems, the intent and behavior of key players and implementation strategy of organization - to enhance the performance of information systems. The contribution of this study is to clarify the change of IS organization as a result of CASE technology diffusion. This study has the limitation that tried to analyze the organizational change only in a direction.

Genetic Algorithms have been successfully applied to various problems (for example, engineering design problems with a mix of continuous, integer and discrete design variables) that could not have been readily solved with traditional computational techniques. But, several problems for which conventional Genetic Algorithms are ill defined are premature convergence of solution and application of exterior penalty function. Therefore, we developed an Improved Genetic Algorithms (IGAs) to solve above two problems. As a case study, IGAs is applied to several nonlinear optimization problems and it is proved that this algorithm is very useful and efficient in comparison with traditional methods and conventional Genetic Algorithm.

This paper identifies the current practice and problems of the performance appraisal system at a typical Korean company. We developed a general framework of performance appraisal system consisted of five subsystems. Along the components of this framework, we reviewed the internal documents and recent appraisal data in the firm, and analyzed the interview and questionnaire survey outcomes collected companywise. Main findings are as follows. The appraisal results are used solely for promotion decisions, and almost never for career development, rewarding, relocation and so on. The appraisal items are not clear in meaning, not comprehensive in scope, and do not adequately reflect characteristics of different jobs. The appraisal is made by superiors only, and needs to be complemented by peer and/or self reviews. The employees are appraised on the basis of subjective judgments of the superiors. The appraisal data are being accumulated, but due to inadequate formation and insufficient programs the database is not being used for the detection and correction of appraisal tendencies and errors. Appraisal results are not fedback to the employees for the constructive information exchange. Accordingly they perceive the effectiveness of the appraisal system as very poor. Finally, the implication of our finding for other companies is briefly discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to study the links between manufacturing strategy and change programs of manufacturing firms in Korea. The nature of our analysis is more descriptive than normative or confirmative. First, we investigate the linkage between manufacturing strategy, manufacturing capability, change programs and performance measurement systems. Secondly, we intend to explore an empirical typology of manufacturing strategy and change programs. The initial findings of the study are as follows: Linkage between manufacturing strategy and change programs of manufacturing firms was not apparent. Flexibility as a strategic priority is positively related to the innovative change programs. There are two distinctive strategies of manufacturing firms in Korea, namely, quality strategy and balanced strategy. We identified three types of change programs, which are incremental change, administrative innovation, and process innovation. Incremental change group has represented low factor score in the change program dimensions. The firms in administrative innovation group mainly depend on information systems and business reengineering. Korean manufacturing firms seem to pursue process improvement by trying simultaneously incremental change in the process, managerial process improvement, and a little bit of innovative change. Performance variable utilization of the firms are not significantly different along with manufacturing strategies and change programs. We found, however, learning and improvement performance dimension is significantly related to flexibility variables. Process innovation group marked high score in usage of learning and improvement indices. The findings of this study seem to have various implications on realigning the manufacturing strategy, change programs, and performance systems in Korean firms.

Because of the liberalization of Korean financial markets, domestic commercial banks are exposed to various risks including interest rate risk and foreign exchange risk. Therefore, asset liability management, developed to manage the risks and profitability of financial institutes systematically, is considered prerequisite for the success in more and more competitive financial environments. However, developing a high value-added software is not easy work because of the lack of domain knowlege and ever-changing financial environments. In this paper, we present a computer model for asset liability management systems. A prototype system is implemented by using Visual Basic 3.0 (professional version) and Access database, based on the 3-tiered client/server model.