• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.123-130
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• 2015

Purpose - Due to highly elevated levels of competition, many companies today have to face the problem of decreasing profits even when their actual sales volume is increasing. This is a common phenomenon that is seen occurring among companies that focus heavily on quantitative growth rather than qualitative growth. These two aspects of growth should be well balanced for a company to create a sustainable business model. For supply chain management (SCM) planners, the optimized, quantified flow of resources used to be of major interest for decades. However, this trend is rapidly changing so that managers can put the appropriate balance between sales volume and sales quality, which can be evaluated from the profit margin. Profit optimization is a methodology for companies to use to achieve solutions focused more on profitability than sales volume. In this study, we attempt to provide executional insight for companies considering implementation of the profit optimization system to enhance their business profitability. Research design, data, and methodology - In this study, we present a comprehensive explanation of the subject of profit optimization, including the fundamental concepts, the most common profit optimization logic algorithm -linear programming -the business functional scope of the profit optimization system, major key success factors for implementing the profit optimization system at a business organization, and weekly level detailed business processes to actively manage effective system performance in achieving the goals of the system. Additionally, for the purpose of providing more realistic and practical information, we carefully investigate a profit optimization system implementation case study project fulfilled for company S. The project duration was about eight months, with four full-time system development consultants deployed for the period. To guarantee the project's success, the organization adopted a proven system implementation methodology, supply chain management (SCM) six-sigma. SCM six-sigma was originally developed by a group of talented consultants within Samsung SDS through focused efforts and investment in synthesizing SCM and six-sigma to improve and innovate their SCM operations across the entire Samsung Organization. Results - Profit optimization can enable a company to create sales and production plans focused on more profitable products and customers, resulting in sustainable growth. In this study, we explain the concept of profit optimization and prerequisites for successful implementation of the system. Furthermore, the efficient way of system security administration, one of the hottest topics today, is also addressed. Conclusion - This case study can benefit numerous companies that are eagerly searching for ways to break-through current profitability levels. We cannot guarantee that the decision to deploy the profit optimization system will bring success, but we can guarantee that with the help of our study, companies trying to implement profit optimization systems can minimize various possible risks across various system implementation phases. The actual system implementation case of the profit optimization project at company S introduced here can provide valuable lessons for both business organizations and research communities.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.48-54
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• 2010

S plastic injection molding factory located at Namdong Industrial Complex in Incheon produces plastic parts for semiconductor, vacuum cleaners, office furniture, etc. It produces the parts to customers' order and delivers them directly to customers at due dates using the trucks of freight company. In recent years, it has been suffered from the excessive production cost, high lost sales rate, rigid response to customers' order, and high delivery cost, which affect negatively on its profit. This paper introduces a case study on the profit increase through a newly proposed production and distribution method which applies a make-to-stock and multi-visit delivery strategy at S plastic injection molding factory. The proposed method is evaluated by comparing with the current method with respect to sales profit using the historical data of customer demand. It is confirmed through the computational experiments that the proposed production and distribution method yields almost double increase in profit resulted from the increased production, reduced lost sales, reduced production cost, and reduced delivery cost.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.205-216
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• 1999

The aim of this study is to analyze the consumers perception of price and the economic benefit of shopping at the various discount-stores. We found that there is a significant difference between the real price level of discount-stores and the firms purporting discount level of their commodities. We also, found that there is a bias between the consumers perception of their monetary profit and the actual economic benefit. It's recommended that consumers should give objective judgement on price level of discount-stores and appreciate rationally the exact profit for them to take the advantage in their everyday life. To increase consumer welfare, it's desirable to improve labeling system on retail prices and regulations on distribution industry as well as the consumers perception of price and their profit level as mentioned above. Additionally, it should be followed that the business side build the consumer-oriented management system.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.21 no.45
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• pp.201-213
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• 1998

We address the problem of choosing the most economic mean value for an automatic filling operation on a production line through the sampling inspection. If quality characteristic of a unit is less than inspection specification then the goods is not accepted. Otherwise, it is accepted. The lots that the numbers of non-conforming units in a sample are larger than the allowable number of non-conforming units are rejected. The non-conforming units in the rejected lots are separated by the screening inspection. The non-conforming units separated are sold in discount price. We assume that quality characteristic is larger-the-better characteristic, the distribution of quality characteristic is normal distribution, and the standard deviation of the distribution is known. This paper presents total expected profit function model considering sales revenue, inspection costs, and material costs. The manufacturing process mean value maximizing total expected profit is determined, and the results of the process target value and total expected profit is analyzed as coefficients change.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.15 no.11
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• pp.73-82
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• 2017

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate a profit maximizing incentive of foreign traders in distributing the KOSPI 200 Futures. Such an incentive may induce unsophisticated retail traders to suffer loss from speculative trading. Since Korean government increased the entry barriers of the market to protect unsophisticated traders, the market size has been decreasing while the proportion of the contract held by foreign traders has been increasing. These on going changes make the market imperfectly competitive, where a profit maximization incentives of foreign traders are expected to grow. In this paper, we attempt to find any evidence of such behavior, thereby providing implications regarding market policy and market efficiency. Research design, data, and methodology - According to Kyle(1985), an informed trader exploits his/her monopoly power optimally in a dynamic context so that he/she makes positive profit, where he/she could conceal his/her trading utilizing noise trading as camouflage. We apply the KOSPI 200 Futures market to the Kyle's model: foreign traders who take into account the effect of his/her trading to maximize expected profits as an informed trader, retail investors as noise traders, and financial institutions as market makers. To find any evidence of monopolistic behavior, we test the variants of trading volume and price data of the KOSPI 200 Futures over the period of 2009 and 2017. Results - First, we find that the price of the KOSPI 200 Futures are more volatile than the price of underlying asset. Second, we find that monopolistic foreign trader's trading order flows are consistent with exploiting his/her monopoly power to maximize profit. Finally, we find that retail investors' trading order flows are inversely consistent with maximizing profit, that is, uninformed retail investors suffer loss continuously in speculative trading against informed traders. Conclusions - Our results show that the quantity of strategic order flows may have a large effect on the price, therefore, resulting the market inefficiency. The results also imply that, in implementing regulations, the depth of the market must be considered to maintain market liquidity, and suggesting interesting research topics regarding the market structure.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.481-496
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• 2023

Purpose: The main theme of this study is to derive a profit curve by a cubic cost function for nonlinear CVP analysis. According to the analytical approach to derive a nonlinear profit function in this study, it is possible with only the existing cost structure to calculate the profit maximization and downtime point sales unlike the classical CVP analysis. Furthermore, the profit curve by the mathematical model of this study could serve as a tool to quantify the qualitative evaluation of each stage of the industry life cycle. Methods: This study followed the mathematical approach from the cubic cost function model of microeconomics, and using real data of the Bank of Korea Results: The nonlinear profit function suggested by this study is as follows; ${\pi}(x)=-a\left(x-\frac{f}{1-v}\right)^3+(1-v)x-k$ where $a=\frac{1}{3}v\left(\frac{(1-v)}{f}\right)^2,k=f-a\left(1-\frac{f}{1-v \right)^3$ Conclusion: The process and results of this study would be able to contribute not only in practice of nonlinear CVP analysis required in the management accounting or financial management, but also in cost theory of microeconomics. Also, since the life cycle of all industries in Korea was verified to the growth or mature stage, decision makers should pay careful attention to determining life cycle stages and consider the profit curve by the average variable cost ratio over multi periods.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.13-20
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• 2016

Purpose - This paper attempts to determine the importance of financial sustainability and the impact of Selling, General and Administrative Expenses (SG&A) on the financial sustainability of the IT industry. Research design, data, and methodology - Primarily the impact of SG&A expenditure on the sales revenue, assets, gross margins and profit is ascertained. After that the impact of SG&A expenditure, sales revenue, assets, gross margins and profit on the financial sustainability i.e., return on assets is worked out. Finally the impacts of financial sustainability i.e., return on assets on total enterprise value and market valuation multiples are found out. Results - The empirical result shows that SG&A expenditure most strongly impacted sales revenue, assets, gross margins and profit positively. Financial sustainability impacted in mixed manner with SG&A expenditure, sales revenue, assets, gross margins and profit. Assets and gross margins have weak positive impact on financial sustainability. Sales revenue has no impact on financial sustainability. Finally financial sustainability had moderate positive impact on total enterprise value and had no impact on market valuation multiples. Conclusions - SG&A expense has moderate positive impact on the financial sustainability and magnitude is very low.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.22 no.51
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• pp.29-40
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• 1999

The distribution center location and routing problem involves interdependent decisions among facility, transportation, and inventory decisions. The design of distribution system affects the customers' purchase decision by sets the level of customer service to be offered. Thus the lower product availability may cause a loss of demand as falls off the customers' purchase intention, and this is related to the firm's profit reduction. This study considers the product availability of the distribution centers as the measure of the demand level change of the demand points, and represents relation between customer service and demand level with linear demand function. And this study represents the distribution center location and routing to demand point in order to maximize the total profit that considers the products' sales revenue by customer service, the production cost and the distribution system related costs.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.443-453
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• 2002

Many firms are trying to optimize their production and distribution systems separately, but possible profit increase by this approach is limited. Nowadays, it is more important to analyze these two systems simultaneously for the integrated supply chain management. This paper is a computational study to investigate the effectiveness of integrating production and distribution scheduling. We are interested in a multi-plant, multi-retailer, multi-product and multi-period industrial problem where the objective in solving production and distribution scheduling problem is to maximize the total net profit. Computational results on test problems of various sizes using the heuristic we developed show a substantial advantage of the integrated scheduling approach over the decoupled scheduling process. Sensitivity analysis on the parameter values indicates that, under the right conditions, the effectiveness of integrating production and distribution functions can be extremely high.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.123-128
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• 2005

The author derives a general explicit formula and presents an heuristic algorithm for solving Baker’s model. The examples show that this new approximate solution procedure for determining near optimum inspection intervals is more accurate than the ones suggested by Chung (1993) and Vaurio (1994), and is more efficient computationally than the one suggested by Hariga (1996). The construction and solution of the simplest profit model for an exponential failure distribution were presented in Baker (1990), and approximate analytical results were obtained by Chung (1993) and Vaurio (1994). The author will therefore mainly devote the following discussion to the problem of further approximating optimum inspection intervals.