Sitki Gozlu

Benefits of Knowledge Management in Banking

Knowledge management has been increasingly one of the most important practices for organizations to achieve better performance and long-term competitive advantage. This study aims to investigate the relationships of the benefits obtained from knowledge management implementation based on research in a knowledge management implementing banking institution, which is among one of the five largest banks in Turkey. The study is based on one of the specific applications of knowledge management to achieve process efficiency. The results of the study show that knowledge management implementation has provided various interrelated benefits to the instituation, rendering to utilize its resources efficiently and effectively. Although the study is based on a specific application in one instituation, it provides useful insight for understanding the contribution of knowledge management implementation to organizations for improving their performance and competitiveness.

Impact of Intellectual Capital on Exportation Performance: Research on the Turkish Automotive Supplier Industry

ABSTRACT Intellectual capital is a concept emphasizing the fact that the nonmaterial can create more values than the material, and also envisioning that business enterprises can create values through the development of employee relations, creativity, and innovation. The connection between increasing structural and functional performance of exportation and the accumulation of acquired intellectual capital of a business enterprise in todays databased competitive environment is a highly important issue. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of acquired intellectual accumulation of business enterprises on their exportation performance, which operate in the Turkish automotive supplier industry following an export-based production policy. A survey has been conducted to achieve this goal on 107 enterprises active in automotive supplier industry that appear in “The Research of Most Exporting Companies in Turkey,” annually published by The Turkish Exporters Council. It has been determined by this research that the exportation performance of a business enterprise is greatly affected by its intellectual accumulation. The improvement of exportation performance of business enterprises, possessing accumulation of intellectual capital, is more positive as compared to the ones without it, in the aspects of structural, employee, and customer capital.

The sources of success and failure of information technology projects: Project managers’ perspective

Although the causes for information technology (IT) project success and failure have been the subject of many studies, there has been relatively little attention given to how individuals attribute IT project success and failure. The purpose of this research is to determine how project managers attribute IT project success and failure. A questionnaire form was designed for study in this research and mailed to the 500 major manufacturing enterprises, ranked with respect to their sales from production in the year 2006, published by Istanbul Chamber of Industry. The questionnaire consists of three sections. The background information section addresses issues such as respondentpsilas gender, age band, main job responsibility, the length of employment time; and organizationpsilas type, estimated annual turnover, number of employees, etc. The project failure section addresses issues such as involvement of the respondent, size and importance of the project, project failure reasons such as going over budget, going over time allocated, having no great organizational benefits, having low user satisfaction, etc. The project success section addresses issues such as involvement of the respondent, size, and importance of the project. Project success reasons such as staying within budget, staying within time allocated, having great organizational benefits, having high user satisfaction, etc. are studied.

A Study on Performance Measurement of a Plastic Packaging Organization's Manufacturing System by AHP Modeling

By the effect of globalization, products, services, capital, technology, and people began to circulate more freely in the world. As a conclusion, in order to achieve and gain an advantage against competitors, manufacturing firms had to adopt themselves to changing conditions and evaluate their critical performance criteria. In this study, the aim is to determine general performance criteria and their characteristics and classifications from previous studies and evaluate performance criteria for a plastic packaging organization by utilizing analytic hierarchy process (AHP) modeling. A specific manufacturing organization, operating in the Turkish plastic packaging sector has been selected and the manufacturing performance criteria have been determined for that specific organization. Finally, the selected criteria have been assessed according to their relative importance by utilizing AHP approach and expert choice (EC) software program. As a result of this study, operating managers chose cost, quality, customer satisfaction and time factors as criteria for this organization. As the findings of the study indicate, the manufacturing organization operating in the plastic packaging sector, overviews its operations and measures its manufacturing performance basically on those four criteria and their sub criteria. Finally, relative importance of those main measures and their sub criteria are determined in consideration to plastic packaging sector.

A knowledge-based expert system for technology acquisition in small and medium scale manufacturing organizations

Abstract Consistent and reliable decision making for technology acquisition in small and medium scale manufacturing organizations is vitally important since these firms are the backbone of national economies, both in developed and developing countries. Because of their flexibility, small and medium scale firms are successful in adopting new technologies. However, a careful analysis should be conducted in technology acquisition decisions. Since these decisions require special type of knowledge and expertise, expert system, as an important tool of computerized decision making, can overcome these multidimensional difficulties. This paper proposes a knowledge-based approach making use of issues such as sales, processes, costs and general policies, in decision processes for technology acquisition by small and medium scale manufacturing organizations in the developing environments.

Investigation of performance criteria for health information systems

Expenditures of health care are increasing in every country and studies about health care expenditures predict that this trend will not end very soon. The greatest proportion of health care investment made is health information systems (HIS). It is obvious that performance measurement criteria are needed to trace the improvement in this area. In this study, it is aimed to develop performance measurement criteria for organization-wide HIS. In the first step of the study literature survey is conducted to understand the requirements of health care industry, the evolution of HIS, current usage area of information systems in health care industry and its promises. The literature survey is also performed to find out the ways to evaluate performance of different technologies, especially information systems. In the next step in-depth interviews are conducted with IT experts in health care organizations and health care staff. New perspectives and their experiences with information systems are scrutinized. In the last step, HIS usages are classified according to operational levels such as clinical HIS, administrative HIS, and strategic HIS. Performance criteria of these three classes of HIS are derived. The financial criteria are extracted from the study to focus on HIS specific criteria.

Identification of Technology Performance Criteria for CAD/CAM/CAE/CIM/CAL in Shipbuilding Industry

There has been considerable activity regarding the current computer-aided design, computer aided manufacturing, computer aided engineering, computer integrated manufacturing, computer aided lofting {CAD/CAM/CAE/CIM/CAL (C5)} capabilities in the past five years in shipbuilding industry. There are a huge number of reports and papers that provide a detailed description of the deployments at yards, including items such as the network infrastructure, operating systems, databases, and C5 capabilities of yards. However, none of them defines performance criteria for the selection of technology. The objective of this paper is to identify the performance criteria for the C5 technologies in shipbuilding industry, which is a traditionally managed and a highly design related custom-made production process. In this pursuit, two basic questions have been asked: 1) in what ways do firms decide to implement a certain technology? 2) after implementing the selected technology and software how do they decide about their level of satisfaction? Two major groups of C5 performance criteria have been identified and a model is illustrated as a result of performing forty worldwide interviews. Finally, the major groups of C5 technology performance criteria are weighted

General packet radio service (GPRS) technology transfer: A case study to evaluate transferors

The arrival of mobile phone also known as global system for mobile communications (original acronym: groupe special mobile - GSM) operators and their rapid growth may well be seen as one of the most significant developments in the field of communication and information technology over the last two decades. The aim of this study is to investigate the international transfer process of general packet radio service (GPRS) technologies, which supports the wireless access to external Internet protocol-based networks, and to propose a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to evaluate the alternative transferor companies. In order to achieve these purposes, firstly an in-depth interview was conducted with a purchasing manager of the third largest GSM operator in Turkey. Then, the major factors, which directly affect the success of a technology transfer (TT) project, are identified from the literature in order to determine the transferor selection criteria for a transferee company. The next step was to find out the relative importance of these criteria by asking the purchasing manager who was also a member of the GPRS project team. Finally, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), which is a MCDM method, is applied to rank the alternative transferor companies.

Determination of performance criteria for ERP software technology

In this paper, the main goal is to determine the performance criteria for ERP software technology with respect to their sources. Today, the companies are in interaction with many internal and external partners and have to face many situations in various environments. Especially, many small and medium sized firms utilize ERP software technology to plan their business interactions in the chain. In this study, firstly a literature search is accomplished. Then, in order to reveal the performance criteria, a large-scale automotive company has been selected to conduct interviews with managers. Also, the meeting reports of a few small and medium-sized companies have been analyzed. The similar and common agreements on ERP software technology performance criteria were listed and grouped. As a result of the analysis on findings, the common views of the firms about performance criteria are classified into four groups according to their sources such as people, technical, managerial, and economical. The subfactors of these main criteria are also taken into account in order to point out the origins of the criteria. The results of the study will provide insight to researchers and as well as to professionals in the practice.

Improvement of capacity utilization in a subcontracting small scale manufacturing company

In this study, a goal programming model is proposed for the improvement of capacity utilization in a subcontracting small scale manufacturing company. This is a suburban Istanbul manufacturing company that produces certain final and intermediate products for a few large scale animal health companies. The company operates two production lines and produces different kinds of veterinary drugs and feed additives. Because this is a small scale company, it has the flexibility of reducing production costs as low as possible and also operating at a low profitability level. The utilization of production capacity is low. The company aims to increase profitability by increasing the production capacity to higher utilization levels.