Chih‐Hung Tsai

A study of the business value of Total Quality Management

Many scholars have recently researched the relationship between quality management and performance, but there was no one who had discussed the relationship between quality management and performance from the view of business value. This study focuses on the business value of Total Quality Management (TQM) as we studied the fifteen enterprises of the National Quality Award (Taiwan) from seven industries and used eighteen indices of five perspectives to value them. There were eight conclusions, as follows: (1) the business value of all 15 enterprises was greater than the average industry level; (2) the business value of the electronic industry of the National Quality Award owners was over the average business value of the electronic industry; (3) there was a growth trend of business value in the automobile industry award-winning; (4) there was a downward trend of business value in the iron and steel industry award-winning after they obtained the award for seven years; (5) there was a superior business value of the electrical machinery industry before award-winning than after; (6) the business value of food industry award-winning showed an situation over average industry level after obtained the award seventh year; (7) the business value of plastic and rubber industry was significant over the average industry level; (8) there was a continuous growth trend in the electric and cable industry of the National Quality Award (Taiwan) owners after they obtained the award.

Environmental design implementation in Taiwan's industries

Abstract This study investigated Taiwans industries to identify the characteristics of companies most advanced in environmental design. Thirty design principles in five categories were used to define advanced environmental design. The five categories are: use of raw materials, use of energy, design for recyclability, product life cycle assessment, and packaging optimization. We found that of the 30 design principles only eight were applied consistently by Taiwanese manufacturers. Most effort was given to the “use of energy” category. The most advanced environmental design was found at large companies—those with over 2000 employees, 3 billion in capital, and/or 3 billion in annual sales.

A Study on Service Demand in Customer Relationship Management for Taiwan’s Small and Medium‐sized Enterprise

Due to the global economic effect, Taiwan’s small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) is much threatened by China. Since remarkable advances have being made in information technology, taking competition advantage for an enterprise has become a very important issue when facing rigorous global competition. However, the business of the enterprise starts with finding the customers’ demands, and ends with fufilling customers’ demands. Therefore, in order to increase competition advantage for SME, the customer management must be effectively strengthened, especially by increasing customer satisfaction and maintaining good relationship with the customer. This is the key for an enterprise leading to success. The purpose of this study is aiming to discussing the relationship analysis between customer and SME by viewing the four aspects of customer relationship management (CRM), which are relation marketing, customer service, customer value, and customer satisfaction. Moreover, this research will perform an empirical analysis on CRM for a typical small and medium‐sized company so as to grasp its real definition and enterprises’ demands. The conclusions will be drawn from our literature survey and practical experience as well as site investigation. Recommendations are evolved from discussing the interaction between customers and enterprises in improving their constructing factors and increasing benefits and values.

Using Balanced Scorecard to Explore Learning Performance of Enterprise Organization

In the early industrial age which with high intensity of machine and labor, using financial measurement index was good enough to tie in company’s mechanization and philosophy of management and been in efficiency. But being comply with “New Economic age,” a new economic environment is full of knowledge and information, the enterprise competition had changed from tangible assets, plants to intangible innovation ability of knowledge. As recognizing the new tendency by enterprise, they value gradually the growth and influence from learning. Practice of organization learning not only needs firm structure and be in coordination with both hardware and software, but also needs an affect measurement model to offer enterprise to estimate learning performance. It’s a good instrument of financial performance measure mold in the past years, But it’s for measuring the past, couldn’t formulate enterprise trend to future, hard to estimate investment for future, such as development of products, organization learning, knowledge management etc, as which intangible assets and knowledge ability just the key factors of being win around competition environment in the future. In 1992, Kaplan and Norton brought up Balance Scorecard (BSC) on Harvard Business Review, as an instrument helping enterprise to measure performance, which is being considered to be a most influence management instrument. It added non‐financial index such as customer, internal process and learning growth besides traditional financial index, as offering enterprise an index to measure and manage intangible assets and intellectual property. As being aware of organization learning is hard to be ignored in the new economic age, this research is based on learning and growth of BSC, and citing one national material company try to let the most difficult measurement performance of organization learning, to be estimate through BSC, analyze of factor and individual case, to discuss the company how to make the related strategy and vision of organization learning to develop learning and growth of the structure of BSC, subject the matter of out put factors to be discussed, and measure the outcomes as a result of research. The research affect offers (1) the base implement procedure of carrying out BSC; (2) the reference of formulating measurement index while enterprise using BSC to estimate performance of organization learning; (3) the possibility bottleneck maybe forcing while carrying out BSC, to be an improvement or preventive for enterprise.

A study of Constructing Knowledge Management for Taiwan’s Small and Medium‐sized Enterprises by Successful Factors

In the Knowledge‐based Economic Era, all of the enterprises are facing global competitive pressure. The activities of knowledge accessing, codifying, and application will ogviously become the main inner function on enterprise operation. Knowledge will be the primary competitive advantage; therefore, he who wants to hold the competitive advantage should do the knowledge management (KM) very well. In this study, we cconstruct the research dimensions and variances by the successful factors of KM, which had been practiced very well by big enterprises inside and outside our country, and which was recommended by the related scholars. In order to approach the differences between big enterprises and small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) towards implementing KM, this study takes the way of questionnaire investigation to do empirical analysis and to construct the model of KM by path analysis. The study found out when implementing KM, SMEs should highlight “leadership”, “library‐architecture”, and “corporate culture” these three aspects, while “information technology” and “performance evaluation” these two aspects show no remarkable influence. It shows that he who wants to construct KM might not too overweight on information technology to build the KM system. Therefore, we suggest when implementing KM enterprises should reinforce the corporate culture by sharing, organized KM process, learning environment for all employees, and highly authorization by top managers in order to reach the expectant success of KM. The result of this study offers practical thinking directions to reach the expectant success for the policy makers in SMEs, who are accessing to or evaluating to implement KM.

Comparison of Relative Risk before and after SEMI S2‐93A Implementation: Using a Semiconductor Plant in a Taiwan’s Science Park as an Example

The objective of this study is to evaluate the equipment risk before and after SEMI S2‐93A implementation, thus providing a guideline for safety improvement. Semiconductor Plant A located in Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Based Industrial Park with 147 manufacturing machines was used for risk assessment. The study was carried out in three steps. First, a preliminary hazard analysis was conducted. A detailed process safety evaluation was conducted (Hazard and Operability Study, HAZOP); and finally, the equipment risk comparison before and after Semiconductor Equipment Manufacturing Instruction (SEMI S2‐93A) implementation. The preliminary hazard analysis results showed high risk in 21.77 per cent of the manufacturing machines under risk assessment at Plant A. The largest percentage existed in the Diffusion Department. The machine types specified by the hazardous work site review and inspection according to Article 26 of Labor Inspection Regulation (the machines that use such chemicals as, SiHi, HF, HCL, etc. and that are determined to be highly hazardous through preliminary hazard analysis) were added to the detailed process analysis and evaluation. In the third part of this evaluation, the machines at Plant A used for detailed process safety assessment were divided into two groups based on the manufacturing data before and after 1993. The severity, possibility, and actual accident analysis before and after SEMI S2‐93A implementation were compared. The semiconductor Equipment Manufacturing Instruction (SEMI S2‐93A) implementation can reduce the severity and possibility of hazard occurrence.

Applying a Life‐Cycle Assessment to the Ultra Pure Water Process of Semiconductor Manufacturing

A life‐cycle assessment (LCA) is based on the attention given to the environment protection and concerning the possible impact while producing, making, and consuming products. It includes all environmental concerns and the potential impact of a product’s life cycle from raw material procurement, manufacturing, usage, and disposal (that is, from cradle to grave). This study assesses the environmental impact of the ultra pure water process of semiconductor manufacturing by a life‐cycle assessment in order to point out the heavy environmental impact process for industry when attempting a balanced point between production and environmental protection. The main purpose of this research is studying the development and application of this technology by setting the ultra pure water of semiconductor manufacturing as a target. We evaluate the environemntal impact of the Precoat filter process and the Cation/Anion (C/A) filter process of an ultra pure water manufacturing process. The difference is filter material used produces different water quality and waste material, and has a significant, different environmental influence. Finally, we calculate the cost by engineering economics so as to analyze deeply the minimized environmental impact and suitable process that can be accepted by industry. The structure of this study is mainly combined with a life‐cycle assessment by implementing analysis software, using SimaPro as a tool. We clearly understand the environmental impact of ultra pure water of semiconductor used and provide a promotion alternative to the heavy environmental impact items by calculating the environmental impact during a life cycle. At the same time, we specify the cost of reducing the environmental impact by a life‐cycle cost analysis.

Research on the Structure and Application of Fuzzy Environmental Impact Assessment Model

Any business activities may have impact on environmental to a certain extent. Enterprises must find appropriate approaches to measure the impact on these environmental aspects, which can be used as the basis to direct enterprises’ efforts to improve the environmental impact. The method used to evaluate significant factors in life cycle assessment standards is the one most commonly used by enterprises in general to measure environmental impact. By this method, the decisive factors of each environmental aspect are given scores according to the preset scoring standard of the organizaion. The scores are added up for each aspect and ranked to assess major environmental apsects. The drawback of this assessment method, that is, it ignores the degree to which each of these factors affects the environment, results in poor credibility. Therefore, this study attempts to solve some qualitative problems by applying to fuzzy theory, in particular, by identifying appropriate fuzzy numbers through fuzzy sets and membership function. Moreover, the study seeks to obtain a crisp value in the process of defuzzifization in order to make up for the shortfall of the original method in dealing with relative weight of decisive factors and thus increase its applicability and credibility. The department of light production of an electronics company is used as an example in this study to measure environmental aspects by employing both the traditional significant factor method and the fuzzy environmental impact assessment model proposed in this study. Based on verification and comparison of results, the model proposed in this study is more feasible as it reduces partiality in decision‐making by taking the relative weights of decisive factors into consideration.

Research on Current Execution of Knowledge Management in Taiwan’s Medical Organizations

Since the execution of National Health Insurance system in Taiwan, the competition of medical industry is becoming more and more severe. The ways the hospital operate knowledge management (KM) concept, combine current human resources and professional knowledge by information techniques and upgrade the competitiveness through reinvention of organizational culture have become the important issues. This research is based on the relationship between KM and organizational operation, integrates the characteristic of medical institutions and framework of medical knowledge cycle and starts the research subject by questionnaires from three dimensions: current situation of KM construction in medical organizations, executive effect of KM activities and the challenges faced by KM; subsequently, from qualitative interview, this research attempts to understand how a medical organization executes and adjusts in the consideration of theory and reality as well as quality and costs when actually operates the organization. This research accesses to KM system application of medical institutions and the empirical executive benefits and difficulties through questionnaires. The research results are as follows: (1) having initial understanding toward current KM establishment of medical institutions; (2) confirming the most important items of KM establishment of medical organizations; (3) understanding the most difficulty which the medical organizations encounter when executing KM; (4) establishing medical knowledge cycle figure of the hospitals receiving interviews. Through case interview, this research profoundly accessed to the actual operation of KM application of medical organizations. The target hospitals intended to try many medical KM measures; however, during to complicated hospital organizations and cultural characteristics, the promotion was not successful and the results were not apparent. The most difficulty was to change the employees’ behavior. The targets believed that only the continuous promotion of KM can allow it to be an important aspect of organizational culture and the competitiveness could constant be upgraded.

Research on the Critical Factors Affecting Taiwan Secondary School Teachers’ Initial Acquisition of Formal Teaching Position

This research treated the secondary school teachers as the research scale and the research targets included the following: secondary school (employ unit), center of teacher education, and qualified teachers. In terms of these three groups of people, the topics of exploration focused on the perception of suitable teachers, perception of evaluation standard during the process of teacher examination and the relationship among teacher examination systems. The research was managed by two phases: the first phase referred to literature reorganization, expert interview, the qualities and conditions of suitable teachers, important evaluation standard during the process of teacher examination and teacher examination system used; the second phase included questionnaire survey, employ school acquisition, the perception of centers of teacher education and qualified teachers toward the suitability condition and examination evaluation standard in the first phase and teacher examination system used. This research found out that as to the perception of suitable teachers, through data collection, there were six factors reorganized. The levels of their importance were as follows: education devotion, teaching capacity, class management, capacity to guide special students, capacity to communicate with the parents and the will to undertake administrative works. Noticeably, employee unit and centers of teacher education apparently valued class management more, compared with trained teachers; as to evaluation standard of examination, the analytical result found out that the perception of three groups were different in terms of the views toward educational works, written examination data, candidate’s age, club experience at school and capacity to use multimedia support teaching materials. This research further proposed six suggestions for centers of teacher education and trained teachers: (1) employ schools considerably valued educational devotion; (2) trained teachers tended to neglect the importance of class management; (3) employee unit considerably cared about the new teachers’ competence to use multimedia support teaching materials; however, trained teachers did not have the same view; (4) employee unit considerably cared about new teachers’ views toward educational works as well as the candidates’ ages; (5) generally speaking, trained teachers neglected the importance of club experience at school; (6) the data revealed that written examination data was not relatively important in terms of teacher examination