• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.122-128
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• 2015

The purpose of this paper is to propose an appropriate evaluation scheme for improvement activities, based on a simple model comprising cash inflow by sales as well as variable and fixed cost expenditures. The paper distinguishes capacity surplus and capacity shortage situations, and examines economic benefits gained by yield increase improvement and capacity increase. The paper then proposes a basic rule of thumb for economic evaluation of improvement activities. The logic is simple but useful in practice, being conducive towards improvement activities under current economic conditions with uncertainties.

• Korea Journal of Hospital Management
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2017

Purposes: This study analyzed activities for improvement of quality of care in nursing units to identify group-level success factors of quality improving efforts. Methodology/Approach: Research subjects were 31 general wards of C university hospital, which has 1,200 beds. Data were collected through survey and focus group interview. The mean value of nurses in a ward was converted to unit-level variable value of the ward. The SPSS 24.0 version was used to analyse the data. The units were classified into two groups, high performing and low performing, by the subjective level of quality improvement performance. Findings: The main findings are as follows: 1. The high performing groups participated more in education related to quality improvement and showed more quality improvement cases in progress than that of their counterpart. 2. The high performing group's nurses show more positive perception and attitude on quality improvement activities, and they have positive assessment on the necessity, effect, satisfaction about the quality improvement activities. 3. Middle managers' ability, attitude, motivation, and effective communication across members of the ward played pivotal roles in boosting the quality improvement activities of wards.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.76-91
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• 1998

Background : The purpose of this study was to understand general attitudes of physicians toward hospital quality improvement activities who have been members of QA committee in 32 Korean university hospitals. Methods : A postal survey about opinions of hospital quality improvement activities and desirable policy directions was sent to 328 QA committee member physicians. The questionnaires were composed of 48 items. In total 152 physicians responded to this survey(response rate: 49.3%). This study was carried out from January to February 1996. Results : Most physicians(97.5%) recognized the necessity of hospital QA activities. The most dominant supporting reason for quality activities was to improve clinical outcome. Two thirds of physicians regarded their own hospital activities for quality improvement as inactive. They considered that the obstacles were too little concern(33.6%), unclear objectives(28.9%), lack of human resources(14.3%), and insufficient education and training for quality improvement(10.1%). The most favoring policy among respondents was to give health care providers economic incentives. Provision of education and training for implementing quality improvement was the next to it. Physicians revealed their preferences for professional society, government, health insurance societies, consumer groups, hospital labor unions, and mass media in sequence as sponsoring agencies for hospital accreditation program. Conclusion : These study suggested that the concrete means for motivating physicians and promoting constructive partnership among related parties should be developed in order to activate current hospital quality activities in Korea.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.145-152
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• 2011

Company's survival in a changing business environment is depend on what kind of strategy will be used for facing this business competition society. For this, many companies continued to apply management techniques to improve the activities in this process has been running productivity-oriented activities to switch away from the quality has become a central activity. In other words, quality improvement activities (quality improvement activity) for the continuing businesses is an important strategic element. In this study, single-PPM (Single-PPM) the company's leading quality improvement activities will be used and browse to accommodate factors that affect a successful quality improvement activities, absolute requirement for companies to learn about the conditions to improve the quality of corporate tries to emphasize the importance of the activity.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.93-103
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• 2022

This study investigated the method of continuous improvement of small-medium company production processes through POSCO's QSS(Quick Six Sigma) activities. QSS is a field operation technique that encompasses the advantages of Six Sigma, TPS(Toyota Production System), TQM (Total Quality Management), and IE(Industrial Engineering). Through this, POSCO not only encourages activities centered on related small and medium-sized partners, etc., but is also expected to contribute to the continuous improvement of the company's own production process through QSS activities. In this study, rather than unconditionally carrying out activities according to the needs of large companies, the research is to help the continuous improvement of the actual production process of small and medium-sized enterprises by effectively applying and spreading QSS activities in consideration of the characteristics and environment of the company. For this purpose, empirical research is conducted on the process improvement activities and QSS activities of company Y, which has less than 100 assembly and production quality and inspection processes among SMEs. The changes in the production process improvement of SMEs through the application of the final QSS were investigated through empirical studies.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2013.01a
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• pp.111-114
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• 2013

Underground construction requires long construction duration and a variety of equipment, and environmental management and improvement of its activities are considered necessary. For the purpose of the environmental improvement of underground construction activities, the appropriate development of technologies to reduce generated pollutants is mandatory. However, the analysis of the needs of technology development and the evaluation of development priorities should take precedence. In this research, the needs for the improvement of each construction activity are analyzed as a preliminary study for a proposed technology development plan to improve the environmental performance of underground construction. Firstly, environmental problem factors caused by underground construction activities are determined while underground construction types, methods, and activities are classified. A questionnaire survey to determine the needs for the improvement of each activity is then carried out. The survey indicated that the most urgent activity to be improved is that of cutting excavation, which causes environmental problems associated with flying dust. This study could be used as a basis for a technology development plan for the environmental improvement of underground construction activities. The result of this study, the priority of improvement needs, contributes to the effective allocation of a limited Research and Development (R&D) budget.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.133-141
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• 1999

Recently there are increasing concerns on quality improvement activities related to difficult economic situations, more competitive environment, health professional's emphasis on quality, and customer's needs in health care. The purpose of this study was to identify educational needs in the quality improvement for staff nurses. Study setting was an acute care hospital having more than 1000 bed in Seoul, Korea. The subjects were 40 staff nurses who participated in the first Quality Assurance(QA) inservice education. Data were collected by self-administered questionnaire which consisted of four parts : QA knowledge and attitude(ten items, by five Likert scale), contents of QA education(ten items, by setting the priority), evaluation of the program(structure, time allocation, place, educational method), and general characteristics of respondents (age, duration to work for hospitals etc.) The response rate was 85%(34/40), Most had positive perspective and attitude about QI/QA activities, but 9% had negative impression and knowledge about this activities. Also they'd like to know the plan of hospital-level QI/QA activities, QI/QA current practice, general hospital system, the role of QA specialist and so on. Consequently, for building the quality improvement activities that is customer-focused, coordinated, outcome-oriented, resource-efficient, collaborative in Korea, at first the education about philosophy, theory, and implementation process of QI/QA should be conducted, and then that on QI/QA terminology, quality indicators development, the analysis and presentation of quality-related data and so forth be followed.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Dental Administration
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.38-43
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• 2021

Based on data from the Korean Academy for Dental Administration, which has been conducting the Dental Quality Improvement (QI) Contest since 2010, we aimed to provide basic data for the development of dental quality improvement indicators by analyzing the trends of dental quality improvement activities. A total of 54 articles in the dental QI contest from 2015 to 2021 were used to search for frequently used words and to classify the quality of dental care. The criteria for the quality dimension of dental care were first classified into structure, process, and outcome, and secondary classification was performed into patient safety, timeliness, patient-centeredness, equity, efficiency, effectiveness, and accessibility. The frequently used key terms were satisfaction (five times), efficiency (four times), system (three times), and implant (three times). The activities for process evaluation were high at 62.26%, structural evaluation activities at 35.85%, and outcome evaluation activities at 1.89%. According to the components of dental care quality improvement, the activity performed under efficiency was the highest (33.96%), followed by patient-centeredness (18.87%), effectiveness (16.98%), patient safety (15.09%), accessibility (5.66%), timeliness (1.89%), and the equity (1.89%). QI activities in dental hospitals were mainly activities on improvement in structure and process, as well as activities on efficiency, patient-centeredness, effectiveness, and patient safety.

• Journal of Society of Occupational Therapy for the Aged and Dementia
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.29-35
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• 2018

Objective : The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of hand dexterity, cognition skill, instrumental activities of daily living, and depression after cognition improvement activities in elderly welfare centers. Method : The cognition improvement activities were performed for 10 ristimes on 20 elderly people. This study assessed hand dexterity, cognition skills, IADL, and depression using grooved pegboard, MOCA-K, K-IADL, and K-GDS before and after cognition improvement activities. Result : After cognition improvement activities, hand dexterity improves positively and cognition skills and depression improves significantly. However, instrument activities of daily living was not affected by cognition improvement activities. Conclusion : The cognition improvement activities affect positively on hand dexterity, cognition skills and depression. The elderly people of welfare center were highly satisfied with cognition improvement activities. However, this study were held in one welfare center in K city, so further study required to recruit more sample size and develop regional programs to generalize the result.

• Quality Improvement in Health Care
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• v.6 no.1_2
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• pp.136-149
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• 1999

Background : Although a number of studies are related to QA improvement, there are few studies applied various method of QA tools. This study reviewed the availability of general quality assurance(QA) tools according to ten steps in performing quality improvement activities at emergency room of a tertiary teaching hospital which has more than 1,000 beds. Methods : All patients in emergency room from 15th Oct. 1997 to 5th Sep. 1998 were surveyed. The survey data based on the patient's records of emergency room were evaluated according to length of stay, and we tried to identify problems with management of emergency room. To solve the problems, our team applied general QA tools(brainstorming, flow chart, nominal group technique, benchmarking, cause-and-effect diagram, run chart, control chart) to quality improvement activities and discussed the availability of the tools. Results : After the activities such as changes of staffing, the establishment of local area network and chest pain clinic, application of triage and so on, the percentage of patient who had stayed more than six hours was reduced from 56.0% to 46.8%. The mean number of patients per day in emergency room was increased from 49 to 62. But the reporting time for laboratory test was not changed after these activities. Conclusion : Each QA tool has unique benefit and limitation, but we can implement and evaluate the quality improvement activities more scientifically and systematically by applying these tools to practice according to QA ten steps.