• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.1-28
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• 2007

The success of new product development is a key factor for getting competitive advantages. Marketing research has been investigating marketing capability, manufacturing technical capability, cross-functional integration, market knowledge competence, market orientation, and competitive environment as the key success factors of new product development. Recently, the role of IT infrastructure in enhancing new product advantage is assumed in the literature. However, the empirical studies on the role of IT infrastructure are lacking. The purpose of this study is to empirically exam the impacts of IT infrastructure on new product competitive advantage. In this study, IT infrastructure is conceptualized as the flexibility of IT infrastructure. Based on previous research, a conceptual model is established by incorporating the direct impact of IT infrastructure flexibility and its indirect impact through the key success factors on new product development. To empirically test the research model, data are surveyed from a pair of IS department and Marketing department of 92 consumer goods manufacturers. By employing PLS technique, the measurement reliability and reliability of research variables are tested and the path analysis is conducted to do the hypothesis testing. The path analysis shows that IT infrastructure flexibility has no direct effect on new product advantage, However, the indirect effect of IT infrastructure is found, which is mediated by marketing capability, manufacturing technical capability, cross-functional integration, and market orientation respectively. Hence, The flexible IT infrastructure increases cross-functional integration (H1), market orientation (H3), marketing capability (H5), and manufacturing technical capability (H6). All success factors of new product development excepts for competitive environment have a positive association with new product competitive advantages (from H10 to H14). Finally, the path from IT infrastructure flexibility to cross-functional integration, to market orientation, to market knowledge capability, and to new product advantage is found as the strongest path. These results indicate that the flexible IT infrastructure enhances information sharing with multiple departments and collaboration within a distributed innovation environment. The collaboration among departments positively affects the level of customer and competitor intelligence. The ability to obtain knowledge about customers and competitors makes firms to adapt to a changing environment quickly and to respond to customers' demands adequately. The flexible IT infrastructure also enhances the capability of organization to more rapidly respond to the changes in product design resulting in faster product development and reduced costs. In addition to, it enhances marketing capability by the two-way communications with customers and the analyses of various kinds of customer data. In brief, the finding of this study suggests that the flexible IT infrastructure allows many firms to pursue sustained new product competitive advantages. This study advances research on IT infrastructure in two important aspects. First, by Integrating marketing research and IS research, this study develops a conceptual model on the role of IT infrastructure in enhancing new product advantage. Second, it empirically finds the indirect impacts of IT infrastructure on new product advantage, which confirms the potential for the IS field to contribute to new product development research. The limitations of this study are also discussed to provide research directions for future research.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.389-402
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• 2011

Previous research on the management of health care organization has heavily focused on health care quality and operational efficiency, whereas this research deals with flexibility, an important strategic priority in the field of operations management. Particularly, this research analyzes the effects that internal and external resources of volume and product flexibilities have on the organization's financial performance. Survey data from various types of sampled domestic hospitals have been collected using the developed questionnaire and analyzed with a regression model. The results show that volume flexibility based on internal resources has not only main effects but also interaction effects with internal and external resources of product flexibility. However, volume flexibility based on external resources is not shown to have any effect on performance. The explanation and managerial implications from the results are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.16 no.1 s.94
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• pp.75-86
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• 1999

In the assembly system, a pallet plays an important role of transfer and storage. As products become various, many different pallets are also necessary. Since some of them are redundant, a design of pallet with high flexibility is important. This paper suggests design alternatives, in designing pallets with high flexibility. The purpose of this study is to rationalize assembly process of mid-small size products. Every pallet has suitability values depending on characteristic factors of a product, and this value is determined by using AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) technique. As the characteristic factors of a product are changed, the suitability value is also changed. Design alternatives can be found by tracing change of the suitability value, which are based on correlation between the characteristic factors of a product and a pallet element.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.137-156
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• 1999

Flexibility is a competitive weapon in the changing environment. In order to pursue the flexibility, Korean manufacturing companies must define the flexibility dimension clearly, build the appropriate manufacturing infrastructures and measure the right flexibility performance indicators. This paper found out as follows. First, Korean manufacturing companies' flexibility strategy groups were formed three types. They are flexibility superior group, middle flexibility group and flexibility inferior group. Second, when different types of flexibility strategy group measured their performances, the degree of importance of flexibility performance indicators were different among groups. Third, when different types of flexibility strategy group were pursued, the different manufacturing methods such as product/process design technology, analysis technology, production system management technology and non technological factors were used. Lastly, when different types of flexibility strategy group were pursued, the actual flexibility performances were different among groups.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.218-226
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• 2014

In order to improve manufacturing performance by flexibilities, type of strategies, types of information with manufacturing companies in Korea. This study is based on the situation theory. The variables of flexibility were applied with 'product flexibility' and 'mix flexibility'. 'low-cost strategy' and 'differentiation strategy' were applied at strategy types. Financial information and non-financial information, information attributes are applied at. At this study, product flexibility is significantly influenced the differentiation strategy. Mix flexibility is significantly influenced the low cost strategy. Only the low-cost strategy significantly affected on financial information and non-financial information. financial information and non-financial information were significantly influenced on Productive performance. To achieve the purpose of this study, Structural Equation Model (SEM) has been applied.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 2019

Purpose This study exploratory investigated the effects of the fit between forms of knowledge management(KM) strategy and types of information technology(IT) capability on the kinds of innovations such as product and process innovations. In this study, the openness of innovations that affects the innovations of a firm is considered. Design/methodology/approach For this empirical study, 104 manufacturing firms' data were finally collected through field survey. For the analysis of the data, cluster analysis and multiple regression analysis were employed. Findings This study demonstrated that when a system-oriented KM strategy is adopted, IT flexibility, which supports the implementation of a system-oriented strategy, is highly employed and utilized. It was also found that under a dynamic KM strategy, both IT integration and IT flexibility are highly employed. For the innovation of a firm, it was found that when a system-oriented strategy is employed and the flexibility of IT is highly adopted, the levels of product innovation are enhanced. Under a dynamic strategy, when the degrees of IT integration and IT flexibility are high, high levels of product and process innovations were empirically found. The impact of innovation openness on the innovations of a firm were partially demonstrated. Finally, the positive impact of the innovations on the improvement of performance in manufacturing firms were demonstrated.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.453-460
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• 2006

In this article, we introduce a new class of product codes based on convolutional codes, called convolutional product codes. The structure of product codes enables parallel decoding, which can significantly increase decoder speed in practice. The use of convolutional codes in a product code setting makes it possible to use the vast knowledge base for convolutional codes as well as their flexibility in fast parallel decoders. Just as in turbo codes, interleaving turns out to be critical for the performance of convolutional product codes. The practical decoding advantages over serially-concatenated convolutional codes are emphasized.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.80-88
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• 2019

With more emphasis on emotional communication with users in product design field, designers' clear and prompt grasp of user's emotion has become the core activity in product design research. To increase the flexibility applying emotion measurement in the process of product design, this study has used Facial Action Coding System (FACS) of behavioral emotion measurement method in product design evaluation. To select specimens, it has flexibly used the emotional product Image Map. Then this study has selected six product irritants inducing positive, negative and neutral emotions, and conducted FACS experiment with ordinary product users of 20 generations as the experimental subject, and analyzed users' emotional state in response to the irritants through their facial expressions. It also analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of FACS in the process of product design, such as "recording users' unconscious facial expressions" and puts forward some applicable schemes, such as "choosing a product stimulus with high user response". It is expected that this paper can be helpful to the flexibility of FACS as a method to predict user's emotion in advance at the trial stage of product design before launching them to the market.

• Proceedings of the KIPE Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.865-870
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• 1998

We propose a multifunctional power line compensator (PLC) which can individually compensate multiple impediments at the same time. The PLC has the flexibility to share power to each compensation according to commands, this improving the working rate. We constructed a 100kVA PLC model including a controller with digital signal processor (DSP) to realize a multifunctional compensation were obtained.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.251-262
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• 1999

In the automated manufacturing systems, the problem regarding how to make production activities flexible is even more important and critical than that regarding how to product large quantities, and the more flexible, if possible, the manufacturing system is, the more competitiveness and profitable factors it gets. This research, therefore, concentrated on establishing the flexibility and evaluating performance on the manufacturing system, operational flexibility is considered because of enabling the manufacturing system to get both the improvement of production rate and the adaptive ability of environment changes. For it, we used the analytical tool, GSPNs, which is a kind of timed Petri-Nets. GSPNs is competent enough to consider practical situations just like operation priorities, machine failure, randomness, concurrency and so on. Through the GSPNs analysis, it is confirmed that in the manufacturing system with operational flexibility is compatible with the traditional performances such as production rate or mean waiting time.