Improve Production Process Performance By Using Lean Management －A Case Study of Lady Underwear

People around the world work every year to improve the requirement standards of various commodities. Product life cycles are getting shorter, replaced by a number of innovative products; thus, in order to adapt to social changes, companies must develop a number of innovative products to attract consumers to buy. In Taiwan, most development occurs in small and medium traditional industries. Women’s underwear is a personal privacy product. As women are gradually being taken more seriously, women’s underwear products are gradually increasing in value, but the women’s underwear and underwear fabric design process is quite complex and time-consuming. To help enterprises improve production performance, this study introduces lean enterprise management, using IE tools for program analysis, which provides time to study the law, and 7S management practices, identifies problems, and proposes ways to improve in order to verify the practices and analysis of results. Research pointed out that introducing lean management for enterprises to improve process performance, so that women’s underwear product processes achieve significant improvement, improved results as follows: Before and after the improvement, GAP reached 23.83%; product production time was reduced; employee take line operation time reduced; quantization benefits of $1,909,425 improved the efficiency to$1,023,225, putting the cost at $106,200; and table bad rate increased the cost by$780,000. These results show that in the present study, lean management practices successfully improved the production performance of the women’s underwear industry included in this study. It is expected that the process improvements can provide a method for the lingerie industry to continuously improve and succeed in raising the performance feedback of employees to increase cohesion so that the company reaps more profits and benefits

Critical Success Factors of Alignment between Websites and OCAs in the Manufacturing Industry

In this study, a list containing twelve organizational critical activities (OCAs) of manufacturing industry is found out by the interviews with executives and revision of two experts. The analysis on secondary data and the deeper interviews are carried out to obtain the critical success factors of the alignment between websites and OCAs in the manufacturing industry. Six common critical success factors of the three companies are: Support of Executives, Excellent and Professional Team, Full Communication, Harmonic Website Build Process, Technical Support, and Complete Information System Architecture. Finally, this study hopes that companies in the manufacturing industry can improve the competitiveness according to the result of this study

Effect of P to A Mutation of the N-Terminal Residue Adjacent to the Rgd Motif on Rhodostomin: Importance of Dynamics in Integrin Recognition

Rhodostomin (Rho) is an RGD protein that specifically inhibits integrins. We found that Rho mutants with the P48A mutation 4.4–11.5 times more actively inhibited integrin α5β1. Structural analysis showed that they have a similar 3D conformation for the RGD loop. Docking analysis also showed no difference between their interactions with integrin α5β1. However, the backbone dynamics of RGD residues were different. The values of the R2 relaxation parameter for Rho residues R49 and D51 were 39% and 54% higher than those of the P48A mutant, which caused differences in S2, Rex, and τe. The S2 values of the P48A mutant residues R49, G50, and D51 were 29%, 14%, and 28% lower than those of Rho. The Rex values of Rho residues R49 and D51 were 0.91 s−1 and 1.42 s−1; however, no Rex was found for those of the P48A mutant. The τe values of Rho residues R49 and D51 were 9.5 and 5.1 times lower than those of P48A mutant. Mutational study showed that integrin α5β1 prefers its ligands to contain (G/A)RGD but not PRGD sequences for binding. These results demonstrate that the N-terminal proline residue adjacent to the RGD motif affect its function and dynamics, which suggests that the dynamic properties of the RGD motif may be important in Rho's interaction with integrin α5β1

Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

Investigation of Approaches to Control the Compositions of Zn(Se,OH) Buffers Prepared by Chemical Bath Deposition Process for Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) Solar Cells

We deposited zinc-based films with various ammonia (ammonium hydroxide; NH4OH) and selenourea concentrations, at the bath temperature of 80 °C, on soda-lime glass substrates using the chemical bath deposition (CBD) process. We analyzed the results using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), which showed binding energies of zinc, selenium, and oxygen. The as-deposited films, containing zinc selenide, zinc oxide, and zinc hydroxide, were also verified. The films prepared in this investigation can be referred to a zinc compound, characterized as Zn(Se,OH). A conformal coverage of the Zn(Se,OH) films, with the smooth surface morphologies, was obtained by optimizing the ammonia or selenourea concentrations in the deposition solutions. The Zn(Se,OH) films had a preferred (111) orientation, corresponding to a cubic crystal structure. The bandgap energies of the as-deposited Zn(Se,OH) films were determined from the optical absorption data, suggesting a dependence of the bandgap energies on the atomic percentages of ZnSe, Zn(OH)2 and ZnO in the films. The same variation tendency of the compositions and the bandgap energies for the films, deposited with an increment in the ammonia or selenourea concentrations was achieved, attributing to the facilitation of ZnSe formation. These results show that the compositions, and therefore the bandgap energies, can be controlled by the ammonia concentrations, or selenourea concentrations

Understanding the organizational critical activities of manufacturers in case studies

Manufacturers tend to carry out certain important and continuous activities with respect to internal operations which could contribute to their success. These activities are termed organization critical activities (OCAs). The main objective of this study is to elicit the OCAs in the manufacturing industry to understand what can cause them to be successful. Through the case study approach including the interviews with the senior managers from three manufacturing companies in Taiwan and a series of prioritizing activities, 12 OCAs have been identified. This study found that Taiwanese manufacturers placed more importance on the activities of quality and cost control while placed relatively less importance on the marketing related activities. More findings and future research suggestions are also provided

Deep Sea Water Improves Abnormalities in Lipid Metabolism through Lipolysis and Fatty Acid Oxidation in High-Fat Diet-Induced Obese Rats

Deep sea water (DSW) is a natural marine resource that has been utilized for food, agriculture, cosmetics, and medicine. The aim of this study was to investigate whether DSW has beneficial lipid metabolic effects in an animal model. Our previous in vitro study indicated that DSW significantly decreased the intracellular triglyceride and glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase activity in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. DSW also inhibited the gene levels of adipocyte differentiation, lipogenesis, and adipocytokines, and up-regulated gene levels of lipolysis and fatty acid oxidation. In the present study, the results showed that body weight, liver, adipose tissue, hepatic triglycerides and cholesterol, and serum parameters in the high-fat diet (HFD) + DSW groups were significantly lower compared to the HFD group. Moreover, the fecal output of total lipids, triglycerides, and cholesterol in the HFD + DSW groups was significantly higher than that of the HFD group. Regarding gene expression, DSW significantly increased the gene levels of lipolysis and fatty acid oxidation, and decreased the gene levels of adipocytokine in the adipose tissue of rats with HFD-induced obesity. These results indicate a potential molecular mechanism by which DSW can suppress obesity in rats with HFD-induced obesity through lipolysis and fatty acid oxidation

Cladieunicellins K and L, New Eunicellin-Based Diterpenoids from an Octocoral Cladiella sp.

Two new eunicellin-based diterpenoids, cladieunicellins K (1) and L (2), were isolated from an octocoral Cladiella sp. The structures of 1 and 2 were elucidated by spectroscopic methods and 2 exhibited moderate cytotoxicity towards the MOLT-4 human leukemia