beSMART

KEY DETERMINANTS OF INFORMATION SYSTEM EFFECTIVENESS – AN EMPIRICAL CASE IN LAC HONG UNIVERSITY

Lam Thanh Hien, Thanh-Lam Nguyen, Pham Hung Cuong

Information Systems (IS) have played crucial roles for the survival of organizations in today’s technology-focused environment. Therefore, due to the intense competition among educational institutions in Vietnam, Lac Hong University (LHU) has paid great investment in its web-based IS to improve its efficiency in terms of operation processes, planning and decision making. However, a formal evaluation of its effectiveness has never been considered. Hence, this study aims at providing practical insights of its current status by investigating the perception of its stakeholders towards some key attributes of the system effectiveness. Particularly, the effectiveness of LHU IS is found significantly affected by the information reliability, informative outputs provided by the system, the system quality itself, and service quality, whose relationships were statistically tested and found that the information reliability and service quality have the strongest impact on the use of LHU IS whereas the outputs influence user satisfaction the most. Moreover, service quality is also an important factor of user satisfaction. Additionally, there is a strong and positive correlation between the use of LHU IS and the user satisfaction which positively affect the perception of its stakeholders. These findings pave the way for the board of management of LHU to implement more proper policies for its sustainable growth and development.

INFLUENCE OF STYLUS TIP MATERIAL ON HANDWRITING INPUT PERFORMANCE OF HANDHELD DEVICES

Chin-Lung Chen, Chiwu Huang, Yong-Wen Chen

This study used an experimental method to investigate the effects of various stylus tip materials on the handwriting input performance of handheld devices. The stylus tip materials used in this study were stainless steel, plastic, wood, and rubber. Performance assessment indicators were Chinese character handwriting input speed, accuracy, and ease of writing. The results showed that plastic stylus tips yielded the highest degree of ease of handwriting input, and rubber stylus tips yielded the slowest handwriting input speed and the lowest level of ease of handwriting input. An extremely high or low friction coefficient between stylus tip material and touch screen decreased the ease of handwriting input. A high friction coefficient also decreased its speed. When the size of a handwriting input box was of sufficient size, all types of stylus tip materials yielded extremely high handwriting input accuracies.

OPTIMIZATION OF DEPT CARBURIZING HEAT TREATMENT

Sorin Adrian BARABAS, Adriana FLORESCU

Optimization of deep carburizing heat treatment is made with integration in heat treatment process, next stages,  diffusion and annealing spheroidization that is to transform the residual austenite into ferrite and globular carbides. These steps allowed to bring carburized materials in optimal parameters  In this paper are  presented research on the hardness of SAE 3310 and SAE 4320 steelsin different moments of deep carburizing , made by the proposed method. This research clearly demonstrate an improvement in outcomes deep carburizing and the application of optimization methods in concrete conditions  has an important role, with real beneffits. From the study carburizing treatments can be observed decrease in residual austenite content located on the surface of the piece after diffusion and spheroidization annealing, which leads to increased hardness in the area.

AN INTELLIGENT SYSTEM FOR COURSE SCHEDULING
IN HIGHER EDUCATIONS

In this paper, we focused on the implementation of genetic algorithm for course scheduling. Course scheduling is how to plan the organization of lecture time in accordance with some constraints. Preparation of a planned schedule can help the academic and administration to manage the resources needed for lectures. Course scheduling has several variables,courses, lecturers, students, lecture rooms and time slots. Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) is one of the major state universities in Indonesia. IPB has a Major Minor curriculum. This curriculum allows students to take a course package or several courses across faculties in the form of course packages or multiple courses according to their interest. The possibility of the students in taking courses outside the faculty is high. Therefore, it may lead to the complexity of course scheduling. Genetic algorithm is used to automatically reschedule. The genetic algorithm is used to optimize the preparation of class schedules. The test result obtained 99 conflicting classes from 635 existing classes.  The average non-conflict schedulling accuracy of the system is 84.4%.

PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE MECHANISM FOR PERVASIVE COMPUTING SYSTEMS

Nlerum P. A. And Nwachukwu E.O

The publish/subscribe component model is an emerging paradigm to support software applications composed of highly evolvable and dynamic federations of components. According to this paradigm, components do not interact directly, but through a special-purpose element called EventService Broker. The Event Service receives events and forwards them to subscribers, that is, to all components registered to listen to them. The event paradigm and publish/subscribe systems allow clients to asynchronously receive information that matches their interests. We outline an event architecture for Pervasive Computing Systems that addresses two key requirements: component interaction and system-environment interaction. The system consists of access peer servers, event channels and a mechanism for locating events. The architecture uses filter covering and merging for supporting high accuracy in event delivery, reducing communication cost, and improving event processing on terminals and devices. Class and Block diagrams were used to implement the architecture.

Event Service, Filter Covering, Publish/Subscribe

IMPEDIMENTS OF E-COMMERCE ADOPTION AMONG SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES IN TANZANIA: A REVIEW

Joel D.Rumanyika, Robert Galan Mashenene

One of the great challenge facing SMEs performance in Tanzania is how to adopt and use ICT related technologies and particularly e-commerce technology. This study examined the impediments of e-commerce adoption among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Tanzania. Variables including poor telecommunication infrastructure, poor e-commerce security systems, lack of information technology (IT) education and training, weak government policy, high taxes imposed on e-commerce services, poor e-readiness and socio-cultural beliefs, lack of capital, lack of  IT experts, abrupt technological changes and lack of clear communication standards were identified and measured using quantitative approach. An intensive literature review involving twelve (12) recent (2010-2014) related literatures was conducted to find out the impediments of e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Tanzania. Frequencies and percentages of ten (10) studied variables were computed and presented in a table and bar graph. The findings show that poor telecommunication infrastructure, poor e-commerce security systems, lack of IT education and training, poor e-readiness and socio-cultural beliefs and lack of IT experts are significant impediments of e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Tanzania. The study recommends that policy makers should view these impediments as interrelated obstacles of e-commerce adoption among SMEs in Tanzania which need integrated effort and strategies when addressing them. 

Impediments, E-commerce Adoption, Small and Medium Enterprises, Tanzania

ON USING SUPER–EFFICIENCY OF DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS IN DRUG ELUTING STENT (DES) IN TAIWAN

Nai-Chuan Fang, Ming-Jong Yao, Tsueng-Yao Tseng

In order to balance the trade-off between medical quality and cost reduction, hospitals have to keep making critical decisions on choosing a best cost-effectiveness of hospital materials. This study aims to develop approaches for the evaluation of drug eluting stent (DES). Since it is a multi-criteria decision-making problem, we first screen the indicators as “cost”, “in-stent restenosis”, “quantity” and  “profit”. We proposed to evaluate the indicators by super-efficiency of data envelopment analysis (DEA). The proposed approaches are able to acquire a ranking of the cost-effectiveness of DES. Following our case study, we conclude that the proposed approaches may serve as more objective and effective decision-making tool for the decision-makers.

drug eluting stent (DES),  super-efficiency, data envelopment analysis (DEA)