• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2020

Purpose - This paper studies the welfare impacts of behavior-based price discrimination (BBPD) when firms are asymmetric in quality improvement costs. Design/methodology/approach - To this end, we consider a differentiated duopoly model with an inherited market share, where firms first make quality decisions and then compete in prices according to the pricing scheme, namely, uniform pricing or BBPD. Findings - We show that BBPD increases social welfare relative to uniform pricing if the firms' cost gap is large enough. This is because BBPD induces more consumers to buy a high-quality product than under uniform pricing, and because a low-cost firm's profit loss from BBPD decreases as the cost difference increases. Research implications or Originality - Our analysis offers policy implications for markets where BBPD raises antitrust concerns, and quality competition prevails.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.9
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• pp.218-228
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• 2020

The material industry is an important infrastructure industry that uses process technology in order to produce parts applied to the final product and determine the quality of the finished product. However, the market environment, which has been recognized as a 3D industry, has deteriorated recently and lost competitiveness compared to other material industry countries. This study analyzed the characteristics of forging companies and The study found that three characteristics of the forging industry, facility-oriented, order-based, and field-centered, and internal failure cost and external failure costs were set as the range of quality cost. A total of eight quality tasks were selected by applying the quality cost management system and continuous quality improvement process developed for large-scale A forging company, and improvement activity proved its effectiveness reducing quality costs by 63.3% compared to the previous year. The research helps forging companies establish a quality management strategy by systematically managing and analyzing quality costs.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.535-552
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• 2020

Purpose: The main theme of this study is to derive a specific quality loss function with multiple characteristics according to the same analytical structure as the single characteristic quality loss function of Taguchi. In other words, it presents an analytical framework for measuring quality costs that can be controlled in practice. Methods: This study followed the analytical methodology through geometric, linear algebraic, and statistical approaches Results: The function suggested by this study is as follows; $$L(x_1,x_2,{\cdots},x_t)={\sum\limits_{i=1}^{t}}k_i\{x_i+{\sum\limits_{j=1}^{t}}\({\rho}_{ij}{\frac{d_i}{d_j}}\)x_j\}x_i$$ Conclusion: This paper derived the quality loss function with multiple quality characteristics to expand the usefulness of the Taguchi quality loss function. The function derived in this paper would be more meaningful to estimate quality costs under the practical situation and general structure with multiple quality characteristics than the function by linear algebraic approach in response surface analysis.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.45-55
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• 2015

While the influence of healthcare accreditation system to the quality improvement of hospitals has more increased, regarding the preparation costs for healthcare accreditation, it has never been empirically studied about the costs that are actually invested by hospitals. This study is going to determine the difficulties in the preparation process of accreditation and details of accreditation preparation costs for hospitals that participated in the healthcare accreditation system and acquired accreditation. The survey was performed in a self-reported form from February 28 to March 21 2014 for 189 acute hospitals accredited as a hospital from 2011 to February 2014. Of all questionaries of survey participants, 98 were recovered; the response rate was 51.9%. A total of 40 questionnaires were used except for 58 containing insincere answers. Main findings are followings: Firstly, findings showed that advanced general hospitals spent the most statistically significantly highest in terms of equipments and total costs among cost items for accreditation preparation. When accreditation preparation costs items were classified according to classification of hospitals, advanced general hospitals spent the most statistically significantly highest in the equipments and total costs. Also in terms of regional, Gyeonggi, Incheon regions were found to spend statistically significantly higher costs in the equipments costs. Secondly, as a result of the survey in the distribution of the total accreditation preparation costs, advanced general hospitals have disbursed the most out of all. However, the result in hospitals does not show significant difference to the expense of advanced general hospitals and that especially other regional hospitals spent higher costs. As such, all hospitals are under a heavy burden of higher costs on accreditation preparation, especially hospitals. The build-up of infrastructures by hospitals through an accreditation system consequently led to a higher initial investment; if the accreditation system is effective in improving the quality of health care and patient safety, appropriate responses are needed. In other words, financial support for investment costs needs to be given to allow hospitals to actively participate in the accreditation system.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.94-102
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• 2008

When facing the global severe competition, the enterprises all try their best to upgrade the quality, reduce the costs to reach the goal of customer satisfaction. Motorola was the earliest firm creating the term Six Sigma (6 ${\sigma}$); GE was the enterprise successfully fulfilling Six Sigma. The success of these two firms revealed the prominent effects and became the world-class model enterprises. The main purpose of promoting Six Sigma activity was to reduce the possible defects in the business process to the least through designing and monitoring business process in order to reach the goals such as the best quality and efficiency, the lowest costs, the shortest circular process time, maximum profits and customer satisfaction. This research used the Six Sigma technique to improve the business process of ceramics manufacturing plant and find out the major factors of slower core task time by the analytical process of Process Mapping, Pareto Chart, Simu18 simulation software and figures and proposed the improvement measures. Through the confirmation of the case companies, it successfully reduced the core process time and the organizational costs and increased the capacity.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.89-111
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• 2005

The purpose of the study was to examine the role of cognitive costs in the relationship between service quality and store loyalty using structural equation modeling. The findings showed that cognitive costs playa mediating role between service quality and store loyalty. The findings also showed that physical environment indirectly affected store loyalty through cognitive cost. However, personal service had both direct effect and indirect effect on store loyalty. It was also appeared that there were differences in the models between customers and prospects.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.125-132
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• 1991

This paper is concerned with the flow shop scheduling problems considering different weighted penalty costs for earliness and lateness, and a common due date. The objective of the paper is to develop an efficient heuristic scheduling algorithm for minimizing total penalty costs and for determining the optimal common due date. The positional weight index and, the product sum method are used. A numerical example is given for illustrating the proposed algorithm.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.102-112
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• 1996

Estimation of warranty costs is an important application area of reliability engineering. On the manufacturer's point of view, exact estimation of warranty costs helps decisions on budgeting, product pricing, and A/S capacity planning, etc. We reviewed the state-of-the-art of existing models on warranty policies and suggested some future research directions.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.243-250
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• 2009

Objectives : The purposes of this study is to estimate the cost of cancer care after its diagnosis and to identify factors that can influence the cost of cancer care. Methods : The study subjects were patients with an initial diagnosis one of four selected tumors and had their first two-years of cancer care at a national cancer center. The data were obtained from medical records and patient surveys. We classified cancer care costs into medical and nonmedical costs, and each cost was analyzed for burden type, medical service, and cancer stage according to cancer types. Factors affecting cancer care costs for the initial phase included demographic variables, socioeconomic status and clinical variables. Results : Cancer care costs for the initial year following diagnosis were higher than the costs for the following successive year after diagnosis. Lung cancer (25,648,000 won) had higher costs than the other three cancer types. Of the total costs, patent burden was more than 50% and medical costs accounted for more than 60%. Inpatient costs accounted for more than 60% of the medical costs for stomach and liver cancer in the initial phase. Care for latestage cancer was more expensive than care for early-stage cancer. Nonmedical costs were estimated to be between 4,500,000 to 6,000,000 won with expenses for the caregiver being the highest. The factors affecting cancer care costs were treatment type and cancer stage. Conclusions : The cancer care costs after diagnosis are substantial and vary by cancer site, cancer stage and treatment type. It is useful for policy makers and researchers to identify tumor-specific medical and nonmedical costs. The effort to reduce cancer costs and early detection for cancer can reduce the burden to society and improve quality of life for the cancer patients.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1995.04a
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• pp.827-844
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• 1995

Total Quality Management (TQM) is the aggregated management philosophy for quality including production, operation, human resource, leadership, marketing, and etc. TQM is the advanced concept and philosophy rather than traditional "Quality Control" or "Quality Assurance". Nowadays, downstream costs has been increased, that made cost accountants' attention to costs of quality. Many countries have developed their own quality awards system in order to improve overall national quality level. The Deming Prize of Japan and Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) of United States are two representatives of quality prizes. We compared the two awards by means of their history, objective, coverage, and judging criteria. Deming Prize has a longer history than MBNQA. Deming Prize selects five winners a year, while MBNQA has two or three areas. The biggest difference is judgement criteria. The Deming Prizes focuses on statistical control which is a traditional quality control method, while MBNQA concentrates on modem business concept such as customer satisfaction. The suggestions to these awards are: evaluate more on information of quality; evaluate more on inter-functional relationship between quality control function and other link more financial success.e financial success.