beSMART

INNOVATION MANAGEMENT FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED MANUFACTURING FIRMS – A CASE STUDY IN KONYA

Assoc. Prof. Rıfat İRAZ, Assist Prof. A.Burhan ÇAKICI,  Mehmet ŞAHİN

In today’s competitive environment, the importance of innovation for businesses is increasing day by day. Particularly SMEs’ overcoming the disadvantages that they have because of their nature and continuing their businesses by creating a difference in competitive and fast-changing environment are closely associated with their innovations. In this study, innovation perspectives of small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises operating in the province of Konya and their innovation trends were investigated. As a result of the analysis it has emerged that all companies participating in the survey stated that innovation is an important element for businesses and in manufacturing businesses the product / service innovation is at the forefront.

Innovation, SME, Manufacturing Enterprises

LEVERAGING EMPIRICAL ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS/EXPERT SYSTEMS MODELING FOR QUANTIFICATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY’S GENERATED SERVICES AND ASSOCIATIVE COSTS

Mahmud Mavaahebi and Ken Nagasaka

In today’s business world, Information Technology (IT) is an indispensible function within every organization providing solutions and services that are expected to enable the achievement of business goals and objectives. As it is extremely difficult to precisely determine the correlation between IT’s investment costs and the generated business values [2] by using traditional approaches, methods such as Artificial Neural Network/Expert Systems/Fuzzy Logic can be utilized for building the relationship models. Such methods use previous fiscal periods’ large volume of data relevant to IT’s cost factors, generated services and their associative costs for building patterns, fine tuning them and training the models. Once the model is fully developed, stabilized, and passed through intensive Training with large volume of data, it would become possible to feed a specific fiscal period’s data into the model in order to determine the quantities of IT generated services, their associative costs and level of business effectiveness caused by IT investment for that particular period. The Neural Network model introduced in this paper defines business effectiveness of IT investment [3] to be the degree of fluctuations relevant to the cost of IT’s provided services during a specific period, in comparison with their associative optimized costs of those services determined by the model. This paper is a follow up to a previous paper (titled: “Measuring business effectiveness of information technology investment by using empirical artificial neural networks and expert system”) by the same authors [4] in which an overall approach and methodology have been introduced for developing Neural Network based models to enable calculation of IT investment effectiveness in business. In the previous paper [4] a three-level-three-layer Neural Network model links IT Cost Factors to the IT generated services and eventually to the organization’s business objectives. However, in the present paper the introduced Neural Network models focus on the first-level three-layers Consumed IT Resources (cost factors) and the IT generated services consumable by the business users. The models referred to in this paper, leverage Back-Error Propagation paradigm [5] with Supervised Training for developing patterns in each group of IT Generated Consumable Services consisting of 6 groups, each with sub components (services) varying from 6 to 9.

Neural Network Modeling, Information technology Effectiveness, Business Effectiveness of IT, Quantification of IT Services, IT Consumable Services

TOWARDS ENHANCING EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

Rirhandzu Sharon Mhing

The Knowledge Economy has emerged and is emerging and it should be encouraged to emerge.  The advent of the knowledge economy directs more and more societies around the world to use information to build knowledge for human development.  To achieve this, the knowledge economy requires people with a wide range of skills and abilities to meet its demands. These skills and abilities are essential for productive participation in the knowledge economy. Amongst others, the skills required in a knowledge economy include the following, effective communication, thinking skills, team work, habits of learning and information literacy skills which may also include attitudes such as determination, enthusiasm and commitment.  Due to the fact that many employers find the quality and relevance of graduates to be unsatisfactory, there is a need to effect changes in the education system and field excursions or in a way institutions of higher learning intervene in terms of preparing graduates to venture into the job market.

Knowledge economy, technology, communication skills

COMPUTER & INTERNET USAGE IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: CASE FOR KYRGYZ UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Dr. Mustafa Seref Akin

The usage of computer&internet in higher education in developed countries among students is a common practice. In this paper, we search how frequently students in developing countries are using computer&internet for academic and non-academic purposes. The uneven distribution of these technologies across the world has been called the digital divide. The survey among Kyrgyz students indicates that digital divide exists seriously between developing and developed countries in higher education.
Most of students don’t have computer and internet access. Lack of ownership is more acute in internet access since the computer is a fixed cost and it is only paid in the beginning, however, the internet has a high variable cost which requires constant monthly payment. The high cost of internet and computer in student’s budget is the main factor of lack of ownership. 80% of students almost never send their homework by e-mail. This is also an indicator of the lack of institutional academic culture in Kyrgyz universities among instructors.

Central Asia- Kyrgyzstan- Computer-Internet- Digital Divide

TEXT EMBEDDING BASED ON CONTOURELET TRANSFORMATION COEFFICIENTS

Khalil  IbrahimAlSaif & Meaad M. Salih

Text hiding in digital image has recently received quite a bit of attention because it is very important in invisible communication. This paper presents a new data hiding technique for embedding text data in image using (NSCT) . The text data is first converted to ASCII format and then represented in binary form and then, added to contourlet coefficients. A high frequency directional band pass of the contourlet transform is selected for data embedding.
The proposed method show that we could successfully embed data in cover_images and extract it with the average embedding capacity of  bits per pixel without any error . High capacity can be achieved using this method according to block size.  The accuracy of the stego _image with respect to the original one was checked by evaluating PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) , MSE and the correlation factor which studied in details  .

Steganography , Contourlet Transform ,Stego_Image , Cover Image .

SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS ON CONVENTIONAL SILVICULTURE AND INTENSIVE SILVICULTURE SYSTEM: A CASE STUDY AT PT.SUKA JAYA MAKMUR, WEST KALIMANTAN

Fahrizal, Nunung Nuryartono, Bustanul Arifin, Mohamad Fadhil Hasan

Forest management policy in general is to obtain a high production of forest products, continues to rise, environmental services are adequate and sustainable. The purpose of this study are 1) to analyze the cost and benefit patterns IUPHHK, held on two silvicultural systems TPTI and  TPTII  (silin), 2) determine the effect of the values of cost and benefit non-timber products, and environmental services in the calculation of economic analysis on two silvikutur systems, 3) determine the feasibility of utilization of three criteria IUPHHK through investment in cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and a sensitivity analysis by adding factors of forest environmental services, and 4) to provide recommendations utilization patterns which are deemed worthy to serve as the Guidelines for Forest Management in Indonesia to not only take into consideration the benefits of timber production, but also the benefits of environmental services. This study conducted a cost benefit analysis approach and sensitivity analysis. The required data are key data and supporting data. Basic data required is the cost component, either fixed or variable costs, including external costs and all income components. Costs and benefits IUPHHK in natural production forests in Indonesia at this time only managed to produce timber and not fully pay attention to other forest products and services. The results of the analysis of the costs and benefits of forest activities are calculated using three criteria (NPV, BCR and IRR), shows that for the management of the system TPTII the financial and economic analysis is very decent. Forest management systems and silin TPTI, both financially as well as analysis of economic analysis to the three criteria yield calculations worth the effort. The results of calculations by including the cost of environmental services, especially non-timber forest products and carbon produced from the remaining standing stock is not cut, indicating that the calculation of the estimated total for 25 years, managing the silin system is more profitable than conventional TPTI system. Exploitation patterns silin deemed worthy and better to serve Forest Management Guidelines in Indonesia, because it not only takes into account the benefits of timber production, but also the benefits of ecosystem services is a unity in the forest ecosystem.

TPTI, Silin, CBA, forest management

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY
TO INCREASE THE INNOVATION OF THE TELECOMMUNICATION COMPANY

Rahadi Sucahyo , Eriyatno, Imam Arief Suroso & M. Joko Affandi

In the global competition, knowledge management (KM) through knowledge sharing is expected the business entity to have the ability to increase business innovation. Innovation will be the capital to compete in the business in the knowledge management era. Soft system approach was used in this study to resolve complex problems effectively. Developing the knowledge management model was done by various methods, namely (1) Strategic Assumption Surfacing and Testing (SAST), (2) Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM), and (3) Exponential Comparison Method (ECM). The methods involved the experts and practitioners as thinking respondents. The results showed that there are 20 assumptions of model have high level of certainty and importance. Assumptions were built as ideal conditions that provide certainty in the implementation of knowledge management models. Based on the structure of the model, a key element in the development of KM needs of the company are the programs related to the KM which is the implementation of the objectives of the company. KM program effected to effectiveness increasing of company’s management in order to grow the competitiveness innovation. In the implementing KM the role of directors is required to move the other stakeholders, especially employees or staff. Commitment and understanding of knowledge management at the level of top management and senior leaders also influence efforts codified knowledge in databases and information technology. In addition, the role of institutional support is also required union employees as supervisors KM implementation and general corporate policy. The implementation of knowledge management to grow company innovation in the case study was conducted with most importance priority is the preparation of innovation competition program and establish innovation one of the variable of performance appraisal.. 

knowledge management, soft system approachs, strategic, innovation