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The objective of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of a creativity-fostering program in industrial engineering and management (IE&M) curriculum reform. Fostering creativity in students has become a crucial issue in industrial engineering education. In a survey of previous studies, we found few on IE&M curriculum reform. In particular, no study has dealt directly with fostering students' creativity. In this study, we propose an IE&M curriculum reform program. The core of this program is intended to enhance students' creative problem solving ability. Based on this concept, three required courses were developed: industrial communication, creative problem solving, and scientific research methodology. To investigate the effectiveness of this curriculum reform program, we conducted a two-year follow-up study. One hundred seventy-seven IE&M undergraduates from Yuan-Ze University participated this study, and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) were used to measure changes in their creativity. The results showed that the students, after completing this reformed curriculum program, had significantly improved their creativity. (Contains 1 figure and 8 tables.)

In this paper, a digital signal processor (DSP) with programmable correlator array architecture is presented for third generation wireless communication system. The programmable correlator array can be reconfigured as a chip match filter, code group detector, scrambling code detector, and RAKE receiver with low power consideration. The architecture and instruction set of the proposed DSP are specially designed for several key operations of wireless communications, such as channel estimation for RAKE combining, Viterbi algorithm and finite-impulse response filtering. According to the performance evaluation results, the proposed DSP outperforms other previously presented communication digital signal processors in terms of several crucial operations of wireless applications. A chip of the proposed DSP was implemented using hybrid design method where the timing critical components were full-custom designed and the other parts were cell-based designed under TSMC 0.35-[micro]m CMOS 1P4M technology. We believe that the proposed system architecture would be useful for upcoming 3G mobile terminal applications. Index Terms--Digital signal processor, programmable correlator array, third generation wireless communication system.

In the past two decades, business process re-engineering (BPR) and organizational restructuring (OR) have been two of the most popular approaches to improving the efficiency and the effectiveness of an organization. However, a review of the relevant literature reveals that the two approaches have been studied in isolation. The theoretical gap in academic research is also reflected in practice. The present paper therefore proposes a customer-oriented and process-focused two-stage framework, entitled the 'process re-engineering-oriented organizational change exploratory simulation system' ('PROCESS'), to address these theoretical deficiencies. Two key concepts are introduced in this two-stage framework. The first is the 'process module' (PM), which indicates a set of common sequential activities that can be grouped as a subunit of a business process. The second is the 'macro-process' (MP), which indicates that a set of business processes have similar characteristics or functions. The two concepts serve as 'stepping stones' between BPR and OR. Based on these two concepts, the decision rules and the mathematical/simulation model can be developed under this two-stage framework. The paper then presents a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the 'PROCESS'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Chi-Kuang Chen, Shu-Fen Tseng, Hsin-I Huang This paper presents a comprehensive study of the digital divide phenomenon in Taiwanese government agencies. Based on a review of past literature in digital divide, we found most studies merely focused on the household&47;individual. Little attention was given to government agencies. To fulfill the research goal, this study employed the major elements, IT infrastructure, IT literacy, and IT application, to investigate the digital divide in Taiwanese government agencies. A national web-based e-survey was conducted. The effects of agency attributes and technological development on both internal interactivity and external online client services were examined. The sample consisted of responses from 1,769 agencies, representing 43.57% of total Taiwanese government agencies contacted. The results showed that there are significant disparities in internal interactivity and external online client services between different agency levels. The implications of these findings are discussed in the paper.

Most of the research on the concept of 'ageing-in-place' has focused on surveys of the needs of senior citizens and/or the quality of the services delivered to them. Service innovation for ageing-in-place has received little research attention, however. The present study addresses this issue by proposing a service innovation model for ageing-in-place. In this model, a TRIZ methodology is used to develop the parameter correspondence table, which integrates TRIZ contradiction parameters and ageing-in-place service-quality determinants, to deal with service contradiction. A TRIZ contradiction matrix is then applied to generate inventive solutions for the innovation of the ageing-in-place service system. A case study is also conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to conduct an empirical study on the role of total quality management organisational culture (TQM OC) in enabling Taiwanese companies to achieve a high level of business excellence. TQM OC is defined by TQM artefacts (also called practices), TQM core values (which indicate management commitment, customer focus, focus on fact, total participation and continuous improvement), and TQM underlying assumptions (which assume TQM benefits individual, organisation and society) that organisational members share about the appropriate behaviours prevailing in an organisation. In this study, seven Taiwanese companies, who are either National Quality Award winners or finalists, are investigated by using the approach developed by Chen, Ponce, and Jang [(2013) An approach on the cultivation of organizational culture toward TQM culture. The 16th QMOD conference, Portoroz, Slovenia]. It is intended to make an assessment of TQM organisational culture and come up with the necessary actions followed by the assessment to improve TQM OC. The result reveals that the performance of business outcome in the seven companies is positively correlated to their TQM OC. The implications of research findings in this empirical study are further discussed in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]