• Informatization Policy
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.35-53
• /
• 2016

This paper attempts to present critical issues of the information society and an alternative research addressing the challenges of ensuring that ICT is applied in ways that are enabling and responsive to social contexts in which people live their lives. Drawing the question of why insights arising from the mainstream vision are rarely useful in policies, the study highlights some developmental paradigms linked to ICT. It explores how ICT is seen as a means to development, and elaborates on the limitations of how current issues are related to the quality of life. The results indicate that ICT reduces quality of life while economic growth entails the opposite. The research framework here involves some meaningful components of cultural residues: independence, risk-taking, government responsibility by mapping how the level of ICT is distributed in the topology of values around the world. Moving to the next phase, ICT policy design and implementation need to be set up practically in a broad perspective that can be pursued by those concerned with social and technological innovation.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.13 no.3
• /
• pp.93-110
• /
• 2014

With the explosive proliferation of smart devices that may be connected to the fast Internet, virtual desktop interfaces(VDI) are being implemented in enterprises allowing employees to work anywhere anytime in the same technological environment. As this kind of systems are intended to raise the work performance, a research model is constructed from the review of research literature on service quality and work design. The model consists of VDI system service quality (ubiquity, availability, compatibility, security and ease of use), system satisfaction, task performance and job satisfaction. As VDI is designed as a support system for cooperative work, the task interdependence adopted from the work design theory is postulated here as moderating the effect of user satisfaction on task performance and job satisfaction. 147 data points were collected by a survey of VDI users in a global firm and subjected to PLS analysis. Interestingly, ubiquity and compatibility seem to be not statistically significant for user satisfaction while availability, security and ease of use of VDI system are statistically significant. Task interdependence is found to be a relatively strong mediator between system user satisfaction and task performance, however, interestingly, the coefficient come out as negative. This may indicate that the influence of VDI user satisfaction on task performance would not be high in highly interdependent tasks. Considering that VDI is intended for supporting 'interdependence' in cooperative work, this finding is a bit surprising. In-depth discussions are made in the discussion followed by future research directions.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
• /
• v.47 no.6
• /
• pp.22-40
• /
• 2015

Cellulose fibers is one of the most abundant in nature. It has many distinctive features: abundant in nature, biodegradable, non-toxic, eco-friendly, sustainable, easy to fabricate, hydrophilic, and cost-effective. Cellulose fibers, known as pulp, is produced from cellulose-containing materials by the pulping process. As the raw material, wood has been most commonly used while recycled pulp has been also used to some degree. Thus, pulp usually refers to wood pulp. Generally, the pulp and paper industry is regarded as the commodity market where the cost should be much more important than the quality. It also belongs to a mature market where the growth is slow, or even in decline. Accordingly, technological development has been rather stagnant for the industry. Recently, however, the pulp and paper industry has faced very serious challenges. First, due to digital technology, there has been a steady decline in the need for pulp and paper products. The digital industry has continuously replaced printed products such as books, newspapers, and magazines. Second, there has been a trend initiated by developed countries to limit the use of wood as the raw material for the sake of environmental protection. This forces the industry to find a more efficient use of wood pulp as well as finding alternative, non-wood sources. Third, as an individual becomes wealthier and more conscious of health-care, the quality of a product becomes more important than the cost. Thus, a paradigm shift is needed from the cost-conscientious to the quality conscientious. The objective of this article is to review the technologies aimed at engineering cellulose fibers for producing high-value added paper products.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.40 no.4
• /
• pp.221-229
• /
• 2017

In the international businesses human resource elements acquired in different countries might have different values in varied industries due to the different quality of education and experiences in the original countries. Using selection models to evaluate expected values in earnings equation of human resource elements such as education and experiences etc. acquired in sending countries, system equations are expanded to examine also the values of science and engineering degrees in technology jobs with selectivity bias correction. This paper used the US census survey data of 2015 on earnings, academic degrees, occupations etc. The US has long maintained the policy of accepting more STEM workers than any other countries and helped maintaining own technological leadership. Assuming per capita GDP gap between the sending country and the US downgrades immigrant human resource quality, it rarely affects occupational selection but depresses earnings on average by two or more years' worth of education. Immigrant quality index in the sense of GDP gap appears to be a valid tool to assess the expected earnings of the worker with. Engineering degrees increase significantly the probability of selecting not only engineering jobs but also general management jobs, as well as increasing the expected earning additionally over nine years'worth of education. Getting a technology job is additionally worth about four years of education. Economics and business degrees are worth additionally almost six years of education but humanities degrees depress expected earnings. Since years after immigration does not very fast enhance earnings capacity, education level and English language ability might be more useful criteria to expect better future earnings by.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.41 no.5
• /
• pp.353-358
• /
• 2017

This study aims to propose an assessment tool of port service quality (PSQ) in the context of container transport logistics (CTLs), by taking the perspectives from port users. The CTLs defined in this study are the relevant activities of serving the physical flows of a container box from a point of origin via a container port to a point of destination. To address the ports' role in collaboration between its channel members in CTLs, the PSQ measures for all port user groups (i.e. common PSQ measures) are selected based on the relevant CTLs activities involved by port, and its users within terminal/port area as well as throughout the CTLs chain. An importance-performance analysis (IPA) is applied as a diagnostic tool to analyse the status quo of Busan Port in CTLs contexts, by comparing the importance and performance (IP ) scores against each individual CTLs criterion. The findings from the IPA reveal that port managers and policy makers at the Busan Port should concentrate on six PSQ measures (i.e. SR1, SR4, ITS1, VAS1, VAS4, ICI3) to enhance PSQ in CTLs. However, four measures (i.e. ITS2, ITS3, ITS4, VAS2) are identified as a possible overkill, indicating an area of inefficiency where a remedial action of the cost-cutting decision is necessary. On the other hand, the Busan port shows an outstanding performance on four measures such as SR2, SR3, ICI1 and ICI2. The measures are not only important but also high performance. The study findings provide managerial guidance to port managers in Busan Port, in view of searching for managerial and operational strategies for sustainable port growth.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.38 no.4
• /
• pp.168-176
• /
• 2015

Trends of integrating products and services lead to the emergence of Product-Service System (PSS). To implement and embody a PSS solution in new product development, a comprehensive design framework is allowed designers to facilitate the design factors of the PSS in complex business environments. A physical product, containing functionalities for services, is the role of medium between customers and a manufactures. Customers can access those metaphysical interfaces to utilize the product fully or expand its performances. The PSS is aiming to prolong its lifecycle while maintaining its expected quality. Since the quality can be represented as a measure which belongs to user's perspective, guaranteeing certain level of quality can be interpreted to sustaining customer satisfaction. The objective of this paper is to propose a PSS design framework to identify design factors for developing products and services by integrating object-oriented concepts and blueprinting in context of a business ecosystem. The proposed model is developed based on relationship products and services matching with their design factors. The products and the services are then brought together to form a PSS. Functions and processes can be categorized to identify the design factors in different levels using the object-oriented concepts. Objected-oriented concepts provide PSS analysis tools for describing a business process or a workflow process in the PSS. The blueprint is used to identify the relationships between the products functions and the service processes that are offered as part of a job. To demonstrate of the effectiveness of the proposed model, we use a case study involving a smart phone.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• /
• v.44 no.3
• /
• pp.50-63
• /
• 2021

There has been a steady rate of accident in Coal Thermal Power Plants which have relatively higher chance of mortality. However, neither the systematic view of safety management nor the methodology such as safety factors or system requirements are yet to be studied in detail. Therefore, this study aims to propose a methodology to preemptively deal with safety issues and to secure fact focused responsibility in safety. It consists of two main parts. First, the Safety Measurement Index(SMI) with total 50 factors is proposed by analyzing the key factors that contribute to safety accidents based on failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) and quality function deployment (QFD). To analyze the safety requirements, index presented by major countries and organizations are discussed. Second, main features of intelligent CCTV are studied to determine their relative importance for the framework of Smart Safety Management System (SSMS). Main features are discussed with four technological steps. Also, QFD was held to analyze to analyze how key technologies deal with Quality Measurement Index(QMI). The research results of this study reveal that scientific approaches could be utilized in integrating CCTV technologies into a smart safety management system in the era of Industry 4.0. Moreover, this reasearch provides an specific approach or methodology for dealing with safety management in Coal Thermal Power Plant.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.151-161
• /
• 2019

Ashwagandha (Withania sominifera Duanal) is an important medicinal herb with increased demand after discovering its anti-stress and sex stimulating properties that are attributed to the presence of biologically active alkaloid compounds. The aim of this study was to elucidate a proper agro technological package that ensures the optimum growth of Ashwagandha to obtain the finest quality without degrading the pharmacologically active constituents. Mixtures of organic and inorganic fertilizers were combined with direct seeding and transplanted as four different treatments in this study. The fresh and dry weights of the tubers were recorded up to 12 months starting from two months after sowing (MAS) while the shoot height, root length, number of leaves, fresh and dry weights of the shoot and the root with a shoot ratio of up to 6 MAS were determined. The results revealed that the growth of Ashwagandha was not affected significantly by the method of planting, type of fertilizer or their combinations during most of the harvests. However, tubers harvested at 6 MAS had the highest recorded dry tuber weight per plant in all four treatments compared to the early harvests where two direct seeded treatments had the best results. Comparison of the phytochemical compounds showed that direct seeding with organic fertilizer had the highest recorded values for alkaloid and withaferine A contents with a lower percentage of fiber compared to the treatments with inorganic fertilizer. In conclusion, direct seeding with organic fertilizer and tubers harvested at 6 MAS are recommended as the best cultivation conditions and harvesting stage to obtain high quality tubers of Ashwagandha, respectively.

• International Area Studies Review
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.171-196
• /
• 2017

This study employed the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology with the enhancement of the competitiveness of Vietnamese commercial banks set as the overall goal of the model. Analysis of the survey questionnaire based on pair-wise comparisons and collected from experts in the field of banking led to three significant findings. First, banking safety is the most important evaluation criteria for the competitiveness of local commercial banks in Vietnam, followed by operating efficiency, intangible values and large scale. Second, in order to achieve the overall goal of enhancing competitiveness for local banks, securing healthy financial conditions should be made the priority. Effective management systems, strategic human resource planning and high-quality products and services all show strong connections to achieving the evaluation criteria. Third, the study found that bad debt settlement is essential in obtaining healthy financial conditions. In order to introduce effective management systems as well as high-quality products and services, technological advances are very important. Improving the quality of executives and staff is imperative for strategic human resource planning purposes.

• Animal Bioscience
• /
• v.37 no.4_spc
• /
• pp.755-774
• /
• 2024

The main objective of this study was to present data on the current situation and future trends of pig meat production in the European Union-27 (EU). Pig production has played an important social and economic role for centuries in many states of the EU. In 2022, pig meat production in the EU reached 23 M tons, which represented 21% of total production worldwide. The two key reasons that justify such amount of pork produced, are the acceptance and high consumption of the meat by the local population and the high quality of the meat produced which facilitated pork export. However, current data show a reduction in pork production for the last three years, as a consequence of a series of events that include i) problems with the chain of ingredients supply, ii) uncontrolled increase in African Swine Fever (ASF) outbreaks, iii) fast recovery of pig production in China, iv) increasing concerns by the rural population on the high cost to meet future requirements of the EU legislation on farm management, environmental sustainability and animal welfare, v) increased cost of all inputs involved in pig production and vi) limited interest of the new farmer generation to work on the pig sector. Consequently, pork production is expected to decrease in the EU for the next years, although sales will be maintained at a relative high level because pork is the meat preferred by local consumers in most EU countries. In order to maintain the favourable position of the pork industry in the near future, strategies to implement include: i) maintain the quality of the meat destinated to export markets, ii) improve the control of outbreaks of ASF and other swine diseases, iii) implementation of technological innovations to improve working conditions making more attractive to work in the pork sector of the food chain to the new generation of farmers and workers.