Building IT Change-Readiness Capabilities in the Mobile Service Delivery: A Case Study in the Exhibition Industry

The mobile technology is applied in more and more aspects in our life. It is used not only in communication, but also business activities. As the great progress of wireless transmission, commercial information can be delivered to one’s handheld devices immediately, no matter where he or she is. Many companies attempt to introduce such convenient technology as their new strategy to perform their real-time services. Individual-oriented information delivery is also a beneficial function for these companies. This research will examine the organization star-model to find out the critical factors how an organization successfully adopts mobile technology. In-depth interviews will be provided for validation

Assessing the Fit between Mobile Technology on Self-Service and Individual Difference in the Exhibition Industry

The concept of self-service is getting popular. Many firms and users adopt the SST (Self-service Technology) due to its lower cost and saving time. Mobile technology is an emerging technology and because of its characteristics such as identity and location-sensitivity that it is quite suitable for Self-Service in terms of people can easily obtain information tailored for them. Individual difference is one the factors that affect the user adoption. This research is to find out what kind of mobile self-service fits with the certain individual characteristic that generates the better task performance. The result can guide service providers to develop attractive self-service through mobile technology

The Teaching Case For Product Management In The Electronic Component Industry -Using Company Was A Case Study

Company W is one of the biggest Electronic Component Distributors in Taiwan. In the electronic component industry, W company plays a buffer role between upstream and downstream companies. It coordinates order quantity and production time. In addition, it can also reduce loss caused by uncertain situations like urgent or rescheduling orders. While an electronic component distributor may face many uncertain situations, product managers in the company face tremendous challenges in making ordering decisions. Currently, product managers in the W company only depend on their experience and intuition to make choices. In other words, W company does not have a clear rule or method to educate their product managers. According to Harvard Business Publishing (2015), “using case method teaching can let students enjoy the lively, participatory nature of an approach that enables them to play an active role in the learning process.” Thus, W company collaborates with us to design a teaching case for their product managers. Roberts, M. J. (2001) pointed out some tips for writing a good case. In addition to prepare an outline, it is important to use a time line for understand the logical relationships between events. Simulation can easily be built in case by means of spreadsheet or data, which is available over the web as “courseware”. Analysis of financial data is often helpful to make available in spreadsheet. There are many teaching cases on Harvard Business Pub.. Gourville, J. T. (2011) made a pricing simulation software to simulate rental car agency. Students can check the dashboard to overview several cities’ market share and set each price to maximize inventory and profit. For every pricing decision, students must consider competitive reactions. Instructors can help students using varied scenarios to experience different pricing challenges. Other teaching cases like Hammond, J. H. (1994) extended beer game to a board version that made it easier to understand how supply chains work. Frei, F. X., & Shapiro, R. D. (2009) used some simulation models teaching in executive education programs. Students can increase their intuition and understand core operation concepts via group discussing. Mollick, E. (2014) has developed simulation for students to learn starting a new company. While incorporating simulation and games into teaching case is helpful for students to understand difficult concepts, rules and theories,.We aim to use this approach to design our teaching case for students to understand how to determine order amount and time in an uncertain environment. We started this research in July, 2015. Our research plan will go through one year and be divided into three stages. First, we will conduct interviews with product managers in W companies. In this stage, our goal is to identify questions for students and prepare potential answers. Second, we will incorporate the questions and answers into a simulation or game. We will invite employees to test the simulation model and refine it. At the last stage, we will prepare teaching tutorial to illustrate the theories and concepts behind the simulation model and the teaching goals of this case. We expect this research will deliver three outputs: 1. The implicit knowledge about ordering amount and time extracted from from product managers. 2. A case with simulation and gaming design. 3. A teaching tutorial that illustrates how to use the case to educate product managers

Developing An Optimal Multivariate Forecasts Model For Supply Chain Inventory Management—A Case Study Of A Taiwanese Electronic Components Distributor

By reducing the volume of inventory and the ratio of obsoleted stock, enterprises can not only lower their cost and risk in a great amount, but also increase their flexibility of capital management. Thus, inventory issues are always taken seriously in enterprises’ supply chains. In the last decades, both industries and academia have come up with multiple solutions to avoid the damage caused by market volatility and to diminish the bullwhip effect. Examples include Toyota Production System (TPS), vendor managed inventory (VMI), collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR) and so forth. However, little research has addressed the issue regarding with the optimal order amount given the forecast of customers’ demand. The issue is important because order amount is directly related with stock shortage and the inventory cost. To answer the question, this research aims to develop an optimal multivariate forecast model to determine how much and when we should order so that the inventory cost and the rate of stock shortage can be minimized. We will develop a decision support system (DSS) to implement our model. The bullwhip effect shows that if a retailer periodically updates the mean and variance of demand based on observed customer’s demand data, the variance of the orders placed by the retailer will be greater than the variance of demand. Lee et al. (2007) suggested information sharing and coordinate orders among the supply chain are solutions to alleviate the adversity of supply chain uncertainty that mentioned above, including the whiplash effect and dead stock risk. This research will develop an optimal multivariate forecasts to solve the problem. Multivariate forecasts use more than one equations if the variables, such as lead time, backlog and stock, are jointly dependent. We will compare our proposed model with exponential-smoothing forecasting model and a moving-average model to see which model is more applicable. We will also compare a correlated demand with a demand with linear trend to determine which one will be used in our optimal forecasting model. Decision Support System (DSS) can integrate analytical models responsive to the view point of a business process such as demand management. Thus, we will implement our analytical model using DSS. Even though several researchers have already developed DSS regarding with inventory management, like Achabal’s research in 2000 and Cakir’s research in 2008, few of them emphasize environmental dynamics such as demand uncertainty, significant seasonality, short product life cycle or high competitive intensity. Our model will address this issue by developing a multivariate forecasting model which considers multiple uncertainty factors. We will collect data from an electronic components distributor (ABC company). The data collection will be started at the beginning of 2016 and completed before March 2016. The data will enable us to test and refine our analytical model and make the DSS more feasible. We expect the DSS can support the ABC company to decide how much they should order and when is the best time for ordering in terms of reducing inventory. Therefore, the contribution of this research can be two-folded: first, to design a DSS that can actually help the case company to manage their orders more effectively, and, second, to find out variables that are related to inventory optimization in a dynamic environment and to develop an analytical model that is more general to be applied in other industires

The Study Of Order Decisions Under Indirect Selling Model Of An Electronic Component Distributor－Taking ABC

Electronic component distributors play a mediate role in the electronic component industry. They need to coordinate upstream suppliers and downstream customers to decrease the gap of market demand and supply. ABC company, a leading electronic component distributor in Asia, plays a role of distribution among companies and be a buffer for its supply chain members. ABC company has two different selling models: indirect and direct. The difference between them is the actors involved in the order management process. The former one has two essential actors: sales and product managers. Sales need to carry the duty of selling the product, and product managers are responsible for the order fulfillment. The later one only has product managers who handle every affair related to selling and ordering. Under the indirect selling model, sales need to get the order requests approved by product managers. The conflicts may occur while the order requests are rejected. The reason is due to that sales tend to sell products as more as possible to attain the targeted amount whereas product managers might concern the increased stock ratio from obsolete or surplus goods. This situation is common in order fulfillment problems. In general, firms should consider the fulfillment budget in determining how much is acceptable to spend on fulfilling the order such as extra shipping cost, and the sales would usually adapt the “sell what you have” policy which they are encouraged to sell products avoiding the extra stocks generated (Keely L., 2003). In this paper, we would like to understand how order decisions are made in an electronic component distributor company under indirect selling model. We would like to identify its ordering process and further examine its effectiveness in terms of reaching high ordering fulfillment rate and low inventory level. This study will take case approach as the primary researching method. Through interviews with product managers and sales in the case company, we expect to obtain the knowledge regarding with ordering processes and different fulfillment policies under indirect selling model

Realizing the Value of Mobile Services in the Exhibition Industry – The Verification of Limit-to-Value Framework

The MICE industry and the M-Commerce service recently become a popular issue since the mature internet environment. It will be a significant subject to realize the IT investment in the MICE industry. The study is to test and verify the Limits to Value for IT Investments framework [1] and to redefine and modify the constructs of model to examine the barriers of IT value, in the context of M-Commerce in the MICE industry. This reforming model can help us understand the critical value discounting factors and the impact about adoption and usage of the innovative IT in the marketplace

SOFTWARE-AS-A-SERVICE (SAAS) INNOVATION IN THE CONTEXT OF SOFTWARE INDUSTRY: A RESOURCE ORCHESTRATION PERSPECTIVE

Cloud computing brings a paradigm shift in the software industry and changes the business model of software vendors (SV). Software as a service (SaaS), the most popular form of cloud computing, has been recognized as the fundamental change in the delivery, utilization, and management of software. While the transformation to SaaS requires changes within the organization, SVs must actively take action to attract customers to accept the SaaS business model, the so-called pull strategy. Drawing on the resource orchestration view, we propose that the antecedents (i.e., structuring cloud resources, developing service bundling capability, and leveraging cloud ecosystem) are related to the likelihood of an innovative SaaS, which, in turn, is associated with SaaS attractiveness to users. Our proposed research framework provides a guideline for SV to attract and persuade customers to adopt SaaS solutions actively

Different Individual’s Impact on Learning Performance in Virtual Reality

Motivation This study cooperated with National Palace Museum and the aim is to determinate the difference between various personal characteristics on learning performance in virtual reality (VR), to find out what kind of personality can have a better impact on performance and also want to raise people’s interests in learning by using virtual reality. According to the current application on VR, it has been widely utilized in surgery simulation, aircraft simulation training and as we can see now, VR is getting more and more popular in gaming filed. Also, there already have many studies discussed about the VR, for example, many studies ([1]Witmer & Singer, 1998; [2]Steuer, 1992; [3] Rafaeli , 1988) discussed the factors which may influence user’s experience in virtual environment and also there already have been lots of literatures ([4] Heeter, 1992; [5] Sanchez-Vives & Slater., 2005;[1] Witmer & Singer, 1998) talked over the indicator which can measure user’s experience, the indicator we call it ‘presence’ and will talk about it later. In addition, there has another literatures proposed another indicator to measure user’s experience, it’s called ‘engagement’. In this study we will talk about them and use them to measure how much subjects involve in the virtual environment. But as we can see now, there are not so much application on educational field in VR. Otherwise, most of the literatures talked about what kind of usage in technology can have better presence to user or what kind of presence user would have when they experienced VR, also as we mentioned above, the application of VR in surgery simulation or aircraft stimulation training etc. With the chance if cooperating with the National Palace Museum, it’s a good opportunity to do a research on it, National Palace Museum provide virtual reality equipment and the educational content to us, we dedicated to find out the different individual’s impact on the usage of VR and also explore what kind of channels can have better presence or engagement to users and find the suitable content usage in different channel. After all, our aim is to let the application of VR can have more possibility in different field such as education and make people have more interests in learning the history of antiquities by using the virtual reality equipment which is supplied by National Palace Museum