• Educational Technology International
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• 제12권1호
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• pp.21-46
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• 2011

International virtual teamwork offers new opportunities for the professional development of teachers. In this paper, we examine the initial experiences in an ongoing international virtual benchmarking project coordinated by the Finnish Online University of Applied Sciences. What challenges does an international context present for project construction and collaboration? Data from five countries, in the form of participant reflections and researchers' observations, were analysed according to four types of barriers: language, time, technical and mental barriers. Initial data indicates that trust is an essential starting point, as there is neither time nor possibilities to build mutual trust by traditional means. Organisational confidentiality issues, however, can complicate the situation. The project introduces 'collision' as a method of professional development, in which physical and organisational borders are crossed and the skills and competencies needed in global learning environments are acquired.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• 제22권6호
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• pp.297-309
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• 2022

Taking into account the globalization of the economy and the intensification of European integration processes, it has been proved that an important part of evaluating the effectiveness of activity of public sector enterprises should be a comparative analysis of the overall operation environment, namely public procurement, economic environment and tax policy, with the relevant systems of other countries of the world. The indicators and components of international ratings "Doing Business", "Paying Taxes", "Benchmarking Public Procurement" have been studied. Different groups of indicators forming "Doing Business" and "Paying Taxes" in the context of the impact on public sector enterprises have been identified: those which fully comply with the need to evaluate the operating environment of public sector enterprises and those which should be used with restrictions, regarding the peculiarities of creating and functioning of public sector enterprises. A comparative analysis of the place of Ukraine, Lithuania and Slovenia among other countries of the world in accordance with the international rankings of "Doing Business", "Paying Taxes", "Benchmarking Public Procurement" have been made. It has been substantiated that the results of such comparative analysis will allow identifying risk areas, and relevant information can be used in developing of recommendations for improving the effectiveness of activity of public sector enterprises.

• 품질경영학회지
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• 제47권1호
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• pp.33-46
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• 2019

Purpose: This study proposed a DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis)-based stepwise benchmarking target selection for inefficient DMU (Decision Making Unit) to improve its efficiency gradually to reach most efficient frontier considering resource (DEA inputs and outputs) improvement preferences. Methods: The proposed method proceeded in two steps. First step evaluates efficiency of DMUs by using DEA, and an evaluated DMU selects benchmarking targets of HCU (Hypothesis Composit Unit) or RU (Real Unit) considering resource improvement preferences. Second step selects stepwise benchmarking targets of the inefficient DMU. To achieve this, this study developed a new DEA model, which can select a benchmarking target of an inefficient DMU in considering inputs or outputs improvement preference, and suggested an algorithm, which can select stepwise benchmarking targets of the inefficient DMU. Results: The proposed method was applied to 34 international ports for validation. In efficiency evaluation, five ports was evaluated as most efficient port, and the remaining 29 ports was evaluated as relative inefficient port. When port 34 was supposed as evaluated DMU, its can select its four stepwise benchmarking targets in assigning the preference weight to inputs (berth length, total area of pier, CFS, number of loading machine) as (0.82, 1.00, 0.41, 0.00). Conclusion: For the validation of the proposed method, it applied to the 34 major ports around the world and selected stepwise benchmarking targets for an inefficient port to improve its efficiency gradually. We can say that the proposed method enables for inefficient DMU to establish more effective and practical benchmarking strategy than the conventional DEA because it considers the resource (inputs or outputs) improvement preference in selecting benchmarking targets gradually.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• 제8권2호
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• pp.57-68
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• 2007

Benchmarking is more than just a comparison of measures about different company's performance in a wider sense. It is a methodology of learning-comparing-learning, at least within small and medium sized enterprises. This learning is not just limited to learn by copying successful concepts from other enterprises or competitors. It starts in learning more about the own company, about its structure and processes causing its own success or its failure. This kind of learning is necessary before the enterprise starts watching for a suitable Benchmarking partner. Learning from each other's strengths and weaknesses is the main goal of the European research project Quality beyond Borders! By using the Benchmarking methodology, small and medium sized enterprises get the opportunity to take part in a Benchmarking study and can learn more about the different strengths and weaknesses of other enterprises on both sides of the border. The results of such a Benchmarking can help to identify potentials for future cooperations among German and Polish enterprises in the same market or business. These potentials can lie in different ways of realising the same success or top-position. The Benchmarking study is not focused on an special business or region. That helps to find out trends for different kinds of top-positions, which can be claimed in all markets within a country. Every trend is characterised by different success factors which are responsible for the success in this top-position. In a first overview, the results of the Benchmarking study show 5 different groups of top-positions within a market which all have different profiles regarding to the importance of their success factors. By the end of the Benchmarking study it will be possible, to give answer about the special reasons for different kind of successes of these groups. These answers can be related to a special region within a country, a special business or of course related to possible differences in the expression of the group success factors in comparison of both countries.

• 국제학술발표논문집
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• The 3th International Conference on Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• pp.935-941
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• 2009

In competitive society, performance management is an essential element of business success. Despite the importance of performance management, it has not been widely implemented in construction companies. In the recent years, construction companies have become more aware of its need to identify, implement, and sustain performance improvements more systematically. Thus, the objective of this paper is to develop performance management system (PMS) for construction companies. The roles of performance management system is not only measuring performance but also offering guidance to improve performance. Therefore, PMS needs benchmarking process that provides Best Practice and new knowledge. This paper investigates the case of PMSs in UK, USA, Brazil, and Chile and discusses the lessons learned. To overcome the limitations of existing PMSs, new performance measurement framework, in form of 'Construction' BSC, is proposed. Based on the 'Construction' BSC, key performance indicators are derived and methodology of performance management is suggested. This paper concludes by developing PMS for benchmarking in construction companies and recommending some further directions on this research topic.

• 국제학술발표논문집
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• The 9th International Conference on Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• pp.590-598
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• 2022

Benchmarking is an important tool to assess the performance of capital projects in the construction industry. Incorporating cost-related metrics into a benchmarking system requires an effective cost normalization process to enable meaningful comparisons among projects that were executed at different locations and times. Projects in the downstream and chemicals sector have unique characteristics compared to other types of construction projects, they require a distinctive cost normalization framework to be developed to benchmark their absolute cost performance. The purpose of this study is to develop such a framework to be used for the case of benchmarking the downstream and chemical projects for their performance assessment. The research team started with a review of existing cost normalization methodologies adopted in benchmarking systems and conducted 7 interviews to identify the current cost normalization practices used by industrial professionals. A panel of 12 experts was then convened and it held 6 review sessions to accomplish the framework development. The cost normalization framework for benchmarking downstream and chemical projects was established as a three-step procedure and it adopts a 4-element cost breakdown structure to accommodate projects submitted by both owners and contractors. It also incorporated 5 published cost indexes that are compatible with downstream and chemical projects and they were embedded into 2 options to complete the normalization process. The framework was then pilot-tested on 4 completed projects to validate its functional practicality and the downstream and chemical use case in the benchmarking system.

• 국제학술발표논문집
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• The 3th International Conference on Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• pp.1509-1514
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• 2009

CII BM&M(Benchmarking & Metrics) in USA and DTI(Department of Trade and Industry) in UK have built up systems that enable performance measuring and made the results of performance measurement comparable between projects to utilize them as benchmarking tools. By comparing the results of performance measurement, it is possible to grasp the success level of project management and to establish the direction of management. However, construction projects are much diversified and even those projects with the same work type have different attributes. Therefore, simply comparing the results of project performance measurement without considering the characteristics of projects is not justifiable and affects the reliability of the benchmarking results. Therefore, to solve this problem, this study presents a methodology that makes it possible to compare the individual construction projects considering various characteristics. The benefits and importance of project characteristics to overall project performance will be quantitatively expressed and they will be reflected on the results of performance management. By maximally converting multiple projects with different characteristics into the same projects through a new methodology to convert different projects into the same level utilizing such utility-bases and comparing the performances of those projects, project performance results can be utilized in project management as a tool for more accurate decision making and as a robust benchmarking tool.

• 국제학술발표논문집
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• The 9th International Conference on Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• pp.831-838
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• 2022

Machine Learning is a process of using computer algorithms to extract information from raw data to solve complex problems in a data-rich environment. It has been used in the construction industry by both academics and practitioners for multiple applications to improve the construction process. The Construction Industry Institute, a leading construction research organization has twenty-five years of experience in benchmarking capital projects in the industry. The organization is at an advantage to develop useful machine learning applications because it possesses enormous real construction data. Its benchmarking programs have been actively used by owner and contractor companies today to assess their capital projects' performance. A credible benchmarking program requires statistically valid data without subjective interference in the program administration. In developing the next-generation benchmarking program, the Data Warehouse, the organization aims to use machine learning algorithms to minimize human effort and to enable rapid data ingestion from diverse sources with data validity and reliability. This research effort uses a focus group comprised of practitioners from the construction industry and data scientists from a variety of disciplines. The group collaborated to identify the machine learning requirements and potential applications in the program. Technical and domain experts worked to select appropriate algorithms to support the business objectives. This paper presents initial steps in a chain of what is expected to be numerous learning algorithms to support high-performance computing, a fully automated performance benchmarking system.

• 무역상무연구
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• 제51권
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• pp.391-414
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• 2011

The advance into the overseas markets of domestic enterprises has been increasing continuously. Brazil, for domestic companies, has been emerging as the huge potential country in the development of markets and resources. According to the reports from World Bank and Brazil government, one of the biggest difficulties of businesses in Brazil for foreign enterprises is the lack of Transportation Infrastructure and high logistics costs. However, until now, there is no professional institute and systematic DB in Korea to provide the overall information of Brazil logistics or details oriented to enterprises' needs; furthermore, enterprises have the difficulties to gather or investigation the logistics information by themselves due to the constraints of language and budget. For these reasons, with the latest data, this study reviews the overall information of Brazil logistics environment and provides the status of Brazil logistics that is necessary for enterprises to advance into Brazil market. Also, this explains the reason for why Brazil has such a high logistics cost with the objective data. In addition, this paper carried out the benchmarking case study as an example of logistics strategy and plan in Brazil. This study can contribute to serve as useful information for domestic enterprises which planning or doing business in Brazil.

• 국제초고층학회논문집
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.285-291
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• 2013

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the energy consumption differences between tall and low-rise buildings. Energy usage data from 706 office buildings in New York illustrates expected correlations from the framework. Notable correlations include: taller buildings tend to use more energy until a plateau at 30~39 floors; tall buildings in Manhattan use 20% more energy than low-rise buildings in Manhattan, while tall buildings outside Manhattan use 4% more energy than low-rise buildings outside Manhattan. Additional correlations are discussed, among which is the trend that the Energy Star program in New York City assigns higher ratings to tall buildings with higher EUIs than low-rise buildings with the same EUI. Since Energy Star is based on regressions of existing buildings, the Energy Star ratings suggest taller buildings have higher EUIs than shorter buildings, which is confirmed by the New York City energy benchmarking data.