• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.521-525
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• 2011

Although the Korean construction industry has risen rapidly, the quality of the buildings is not met with the industry standard compared to the potential of the technology development and the cost of maintenance has been increased. The user's request for quality have been increased, but in the current building construction, the contractors only follow the specifications of design, material and technology, and their main concern is whether they are in right track with the specification or not. Thus, the necessity of developing technology has been ignored and sufficient opportunities for the development have not been provided as well. In the developed countries, in contrast, the quality assurance and the payment regulation system has been utilized for the active response to the changes of users' request. As a result of this, the maintenance cost has been decreased and the development of construction technology has been improved. Therefore the pay adjustment system is needed to create the improvement of the quality of the buildings by the contractors' earnest building construction. In order to introduce the pay adjustment system suitable to the Korean construction industry, this study presented the logical method of adjusting the construction cost and making payment with the pay adjustment index that is created based on the result of the performance test, after making a set of the indicators of the building performance standard and applied them to the targeted building.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.459-479
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• 2013

To assess the feasibility of 'low carbon, sustainable growth' policy pursued of the Chinese government, this paper first measures technical efficiency, $CO_2$ shadow prices, and indirect Morishima elasticity of substitution between capital and energy for 24 of manufacturing sectors in Beijing and Chongqing, in which China launched pilot carbon emissions trading scheme, by estimating the input distance function. Based on these results, then the potential for $CO_2$ reduction, cost savings from emissions trading, and the effectiveness of capital investment in reducing $CO_2$ are compared across industries and provinces. In 2010, manufacturing industries in Beijing and Chongqing could potentially reduce the largest $CO_2$ emissions, amounting 5.2 and 17 million tons, respectively, by achieving 100% technical efficiency. While, on average, Chongqing has a comparative advantage in the cost savings from carbon trading over Beijing, Beijing is more likely to reduce $CO_2$ by expanding capital investment.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.169-179
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• 2017

This study was conducted to supply information that can be utilized as data for desalination plant construction in the future by estimating unit cost of water production in the potential site of Incheon, Daesan, Yeosu, Busan, Ulsan and Sokcho in Korea. The production costs in Sokcho and Ulsan were similar to those of Busan and Yeosu. Those four sites showed better economic range due to low construction cost for intake facility compared to Incheon and Daesan. Although the salinity measured in the above 6 sites did not show perceptible effect on the production cost, the difference of seasonal seawater temperature needs to be considered due to the change of flux in reverse osmosis (RO) membrane. It turned out that the most critical parameters are the amortization in a year by the analysis of life cycle and the capacity of plant. Incheon and Daesan showed the difference of production cost up to 29% at the condition of amortization in 25 year, and up to 22% depending on plant capacity. However, the production cost in this study did not take into account of other indirect costs, therefore, this should be considered as the minimum cost.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.426-426
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• 1999

;There are many sources of uncertainty in a typical production and inventory system. There is uncertainty as to how many items customers will demand during the next day, week, month, or year. There is uncertainty about delivery times of the product. Uncertainty exacts a toll from management in a variety of ways. A spurt in a demand or a delay in production may lead to stockouts, with the potential for lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction. Firms typically hold inventory to provide protection against uncertainty. A cushion of inventory on hand allows management to face unexpected demands or delays in delivery with a reduced chance of incurring a stockout. The proposed strategies are used for the design of a probabilistic inventory system. In the traditional approach to the design of an inventory system, the goal is to find the best setting of various inventory control policy parameters such as the re-order level, review period, order quantity, etc. which would minimize the total inventory cost. The goals of the analysis need to be defined, so that robustness becomes an important design criterion. Moreover, one has to conceptualize and identify appropriate noise variables. There are two main goals for the inventory policy design. One is to minimize the average inventory cost and the stockouts. The other is to the variability for the average inventory cost and the stockouts The total average inventory cost is the sum of three components: the ordering cost, the holding cost, and the shortage costs. The shortage costs include the cost of the lost sales, cost of loss of goodwill, cost of customer dissatisfaction, etc. The noise factors for this design problem are identified to be: the mean demand rate and the mean lead time. Both the demand and the lead time are assumed to be normal random variables. Thus robustness for this inventory system is interpreted as insensitivity of the average inventory cost and the stockout to uncontrollable fluctuations in the mean demand rate and mean lead time. To make this inventory system for robustness, the concept of utility theory will be used. Utility theory is an analytical method for making a decision concerning an action to take, given a set of multiple criteria upon which the decision is to be based. Utility theory is appropriate for design having different scale such as demand rate and lead time since utility theory represents different scale across decision making attributes with zero to one ranks, higher preference modeled with a higher rank. Using utility theory, three design strategies, such as distance strategy, response strategy, and priority-based strategy. for the robust inventory system will be developed.loped.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.185-195
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• 2015

Glucoamylase is an important industrial enzyme. Glucoamylase production by industrial Aspergillus niger strain featured with two major problems: (i) empirical substrate feeding methods deteriorating the fermentation performance; and (ii) the high raw materials cost limiting the economics of the glucoamylase product with delegated specification. In this study, we first proposed a novel three-stage varied-rate substrate feeding strategy for efficient glucoamylase production in a 5 L bioreactor using the standard feeding medium, by comparing the changing patterns of the important physiological parameters such as DO, OUR, RQ, etc., when using different substrate feeding strategies. With this strategy, the glucoamylase activity and productivity reached higher levels of 11,000 U/ml and 84.6 U/ml/h, respectively. The performance enhancement in this case was beneficial from the following results: DO and OUR could be controlled at the higher levels (30%, 43.83 mmol/l/h), while RQ was maintained at a stable/lower level of 0.60 simultaneously throughout the fed-batch phase. Based on this three-stage varied-rate substrate feeding strategy, we further evaluated the economics of using alternative carbon sources, attempting to reduce the raw materials cost. The results revealed that cornstarch hydrolysate could be considered as the best carbon source to replace the standard and expensive feeding medium. In this case, the production cost of the glucoamylase with delegated specification (5,000 U/ml) could be saved by more than 61% while the product quality be ensured simultaneously. The proposed strategy showed application potential in improving the economics of industrial glucoamylase production.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.3753-3757
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• 2016

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate whether electrochemotherapy is a clinically and cost-effective treatment option against skin tumors. Materials and Methods: We performed an analysis of the current literature based on database searches in PubMed/MEDLINE and we included articles till July 2012. Terms used for the search were 'electrochemotherapy', 'skin cancer', 'recurrence', and 'cutaneous and subcutaneous tumors'. Only papers published in English were included. In addition, we performed an analysis of the cost effectiveness of the method. Results: The combination of physics and chemistry is the foundation for electrochemotherapy and its efficacy, independent of the tumor histology. Clinical data showed that ECT is well tolerated and can be used in difficult cases without other available treatment options. The analysis also showed that the treatment is feasible and cost-effective. Conclusions: Electrochemotherapy is a clinically efficient safe and cost-effective treatment and clinicians should not hesitate to use it as alternative therapeutic modality or as palliative treatment.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.213-233
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• 2002

Recently, a lot of companies intend to make spin-offs as the Internet usage is proliferating in the business area. A spin-off means a small but autonomous company which is thought to show higher profitability rather than it stays under the influence of a mother enterprise. To prove our hypotheses, we collected questionnaire data from 104 companies considering spin-offs. From experiments with Factor Analysis, we found that there exist four factors which decision-makers should consider before deciding spin-offs such as competence of unit, competence of mother company, competence of spin-off company, and support of mother company. After massive experiments with Regression Analysis we also found that there are significant three performance factors such as competence of unit, competence of spin-off company, and support of mother company. The survey also asked about three potential strategies that they may have been following for achieving business objectives: Cost leadership, Focus, and Differentiation, Six benefits factors emerged from this study: External competitiveness, Internal competency, Productivity, Change, Cost saving, and Improvement. External competitiveness was the most important benefit, and it predicted a Differentiation and Focus strategy. Productivity and Improvement also predicted a Differentiation strategy. External competitiveness, Change, and Cost saving predicted a Cost leadership strategy. However, organizations followed Differentiation and Focus strategies significantly more than Cost leadership. The assessment thus sheds light on the link between information strategy and spin off. We hope that based on our results, many companies considering a spin-off can make a right decision and expect higher performance in a turbulent business environment.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.81 no.2
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• pp.116-122
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• 2018

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a serious chronic condition with a global impact. Symptoms of COPD include progressive dyspnea, breathlessness, cough, and sputum production, which have a considerable impact on the lives of patients. In addition to the human cost of living with COPD and the resulting death, COPD entails a huge economic burden on the Chinese population, with patients spending up to one-third of the average family income on COPD management in some regions is clinically beneficial to adopt preventable measures via prudent COPD care utilization, monetary costs, and hospitalizations. Methods: Toward this end, this study compared the relative effectiveness of six indices in predicting patient healthcare utilization, cost of care, and patient health outcome. The six assessment systems evaluated included the three multidimensional Body mass index, Obstruction, Dyspnea, Exercise capacity index, Dyspnea, Obstruction, Smoking, Exacerbation (DOSE) index, and COPD Assessment Test index, or the unidimensional measures that best predict the future of patient healthcare utilization, cost of care, and patient health outcome among Chinese COPD patients. Results: Multiple linear regression models were created for each healthcare utilization, cost, and outcome including a single COPD index and the same group of demographic variables for each of the outcomes. Conclusion: We conclude that the DOSE index facilitates the prediction of patient healthcare utilization, disease expenditure, and negative clinical outcomes. Our study indicates that the DOSE index has a potential role beyond clinical predictions.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.8
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• pp.217-226
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• 2019

This study examines the effect of the wedge between voting rights and cash flow rights of controlling shareholders on the implied cost of equity. Prior studies posit that controlling shareholder's voting rights exceeding cash flow rights causes expropriating minority shareholders. Using date from 793 group-affiliated Korean firms for 10 years from 2005 to 2016, the result shows that there is a positive and significant relationship between controlling shareholders' wedge and implied cost of equity. This result implies that investors regard the controlling shareholders' wedge as potential agency cost in which they require additional risk premium because controlling shareholders have a strong incentive to pursue their private interests trough tunneling practices.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.121-131
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• 2024

This research explores the potential of leveraging unstructured data from construction supervision documents, which contain detailed inspection insights from independent third-party monitors of building construction processes. With the evolution of analytical methodologies, such unstructured data has been recognized as a valuable source of information, offering diverse insights. The study introduces a framework designed to assess cost performance by applying advanced analytical methods to the unstructured data found in final construction supervision reports. Specifically, key phrases were identified using text mining and social network analysis techniques, and these phrases were then analyzed through binomial logistic regression to assess cost performance. The study found that predictions of cost performance based on unstructured data from supervision documents achieved an accuracy rate of approximately 73%. The findings of this research are anticipated to serve as a foundational resource for analyzing various forms of unstructured data generated within the construction sector in future projects.