Advanced Materials Research Vols. 433-440

Abstract: Recently a strong increase in R&D investment has encouraged a firm to create a more effective and efficient R&D process, which allows it to save time and costs significantly. In order to build such a process, a firm should be able to evaluate its process, based on which the process can be improved. With all its importance and value, however, the previous studies on R&D process have seldom focused on the method of evaluating the process. Therefore this study aims to develop a framework for evaluating R&D process. For the purpose, CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integrated) is used as a main method, which is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes that ultimately improve their performance and thus considered suitable for this research. We tried to develop a framework for evaluating R&D process based on the CMMI approach by modifying it to be suitable for measuring R&D performance where the essential elements for effective R&D process are obtained from the literature on best practices. A simple case study was conducted to illustrate how the proposed framework could be applied. The research results are expected to guide R&D process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization.

Abstract: Although R&D activity has been increasingly considered as an important factor in managing an organization, related efforts have not been effectively conducted. In particular, construction of R&D process and assessment of the process, which are regarded as a critical tool for managing R&D activities, are not well-defined due to the lack of research and the different characteristics of R&D organizations. Therefore this paper aims at proposing a standardized R&D process and a R&D assessment framework by investigating the existing R&D process of R&D organizations, literature survey and interviews on domain experts. To verify results of this research, a case study on a Korean R&D organization is conducted.

Abstract: The research in this paper is based seeks to understand how manufacturing companies can accomplish of their projects in the real time with less cost. This paper describes a new model using critical success factors of implementing projects in the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The factors in conceptual model were identified in past studies and validate from the survey by interview with 20 project management in electronic industries in Iran. Several prior researches have suggested some critical success factors for reducing time and cost in new product. These factors are departments of product, planning, procurement and design. However, none of these studies has proposed a model that specifies practices that should be undertaken to facilitate the progression to reduce time and cost in new product in SMEs. Following this, a development of a new model is supposed important to help SMEs understand what is required in order to be an effective global organization in terms of reduce time and cost by electronic collaboration (E-collaboration) through project management.

Abstract: Most of the studies in Response Surface Methodology commonly involve one response or quality characteristics, whereas in most industrial applications considering all responses simultaneously is required. Multiple Response Surface (MRS) Optimization Problems often deal with responses that are conflicting. In dealing with incommensurate responses, incorporating a decision maker’s preference information into the problem has lots of advantages although a few researches in MRS literature have taken this into attention. The purpose of this paper is to take a detailed look at the most prominent approaches that has been suggested so far in MRS, and also to review and discuss the classifications with a special focus on the decision maker’s preference information. In today’s competitive market satisfying the customer is of high importance. The DM can be a customer and reaching a compromise with an interactive method would help the firm to succeed in having loyal customers. A case study is applied to show that interactive method with existing MRS approach leads to better results.

Abstract: This paper presents the results of empirical research conducted during March to September 2009. The study focused on the influence of virtual research and development (R&D) teams within Malaysian manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The specific objective of the study is better understanding of the application of collaborative technologies in business, to find the effective factors to assist SMEs to remain competitive in the future. The paper stresses to find an answer for a question “Is there any relationship between company size, Internet connection facility and virtuality”. The survey data shows SMEs are now technologically capable of performing the virtual collaborative team, but the infrastructure usage is less. SMEs now have the necessary technology to begin the implementation process of collaboration tools to reduce research and development (R&D) time, costs and increase productivity. So, the manager of R&D should take the potentials of virtual teams into account.

Abstract: Since the Industrial Engineering (IE) was introduced to China, people have already had much understanding of this cross discipline, and IE has been successfully popularized and applied in some enterprises. In such circumstances, a task we face is to systematically and comprehensively develop a theory and application system of IE from the subject development and practical application point of view, and the industrial engineering body of knowledge is established based on such a need. In this paper, on the basis of investigation and study on the domestic and foreign relevant studies, it establishes the industrial engineering body of knowledge, and proposes the implementation mode of IE projects based on project management, providing a certain reference role in the discipline development of IE and the implementation of IE in enterprises.

Abstract: The short term load forecast of power system is one of the important tasks of power dispatch and service department, whose accuracy has a close relation with dispatch operation, production plan and quality of power supply. Artificial neural network was introduced into forecasting of short term load. Aiming at the drawback in classical BP artificial networks and combining with differential evolution algorithms, this paper puts forwards the prediction model based on real number coded DE-BP artificial networks. Experimental result show this model has high prediction accuracy and can be used into real project.

Abstract: The offshore outsourcing of IT services is more and more important in today’s IT industry. Applying a simple model with two countries, the “North” and the “South”, we analyze the optimal industrial competition policy which is set by a Competition Agency. During the interactions between the “North” and the “South”, a final IT product is provided by the northern oligopolistic firms, who utilize an input processed by the southern oligopolistic IT services providers with lower costs. In the paper, we focus on relations between IT services outsourcing and industrial competition policy. The Competition Agency plays an important role throughout the outsourcing process. The result shows that, by controlling the degree of competition, the IT services outsourcing rents can be appropriated perfectly.

Abstract: One of the key advantages of the smart grid is its capability to manage the electricity trading automatically between homes and electricity grids to cope with the inherent real-time dynamic in electricity demand and supply. In this context, this paper presents some advantages and capabilities offered by intelligent agents for trading of electricity in the microgrid. A market-based mechanism and agent trading strategy are developed and studied. Based on the Continuous Double Auction model, the proposed mechanism can deal with unforeseen demand or increased supply capacity in real time. A new trading strategy that can achieve higher market efficiency than previously published well known strategy is also illustrated. The importance of intelligent agents for the distributed control and autonomous operation for the smart grid is demonstrated.

Abstract: In competitive world, it becomes essential for the firms to consider the risks and uncertainties as the core concerns. To control the risks, various strategies like multiple sourcing, horizontal/ vertical integrations, buffer stocks etc are employed. But, out of many available risk mitigation strategies, SMEs usually prefer to keep excess safety stocks to manage the operational risks as they have feeble control and position in supply chain as well as limited means to employ other strategies, which requires skills and resources. Keeping appropriate safety stocks becomes a very complex and crucial problem for SMEs as excess stocks reduces the efficiency and shortage of it may make their position vulnerable in supply chains. Concerning to this issue, this paper focuses on operational risks with SME perspectives and explores the appropriate safety inventory levels using artificial neural network models and the results are further simulated with various settings of risk scenarios.