Selection of the right machine tools is an important decision for most manufacturing companies. The quality and efficiency of manufacture are affected by the correct adoption of machine and equipment, and it will result in reducing the cost, increasing the production, and enhancing the flexibility for the diverse type of machining parts in this competitive globalized environment. On the contrary, an incorrect selection can retard the productivity of company. This research presents the procedures of AHP method for selecting 4-axis CNC machining centers including searching the literature of selecting machines, consulting experts with abundant experience of machine tool, translating the unstructured and biased commercial specification to the objective and hierarchical evaluation criteria for selecting machines. In order to experiment the applicability of the AHP model as well as to realize the relative importance of the criteria for the mold design and manufacturing company, a company was invited as the survey objective. This method proposed in this research is general in form and can be applied to the selections of other machine tools for other manufacturing industries. Also, it is hoped that the results of this experimental study will provide a reference for the domestic machinery manufacturing company to develop 4-axis CNC machining centers.

ABSTRACT Wei Chuan Wu Japanese Cuisine Restaurant is a newly emerging all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant, presently there are two branches in Kaohsiung. The domestic food and beverage consumption market has appeared to develop into extremely different ways, to match up to consumers¡¦ need, an all you can eat phenomenon has risen again. The new term of all you can eat restaurant features delicacy of the cuisine, focus on the quality of ingredients, and locations are relocated from lower rental business district to the centre business district, seemingly it will lead up an all you can eat market competition. Consumers¡¦ food taste preference varies over time; the new term of all you can eat restaurant devote effort on using variety of ingredients. Due to the sluggish economic condition, consumers have become more demanding, wanting to enjoy the luxury but unwilling to spend more expense. The food and beverage industry is the first to be affected with the change of the economic condition, facing the pressure of the increasing cost of raw materials, personnel, rent and other costs. Because of the limited salary, consumers have become fussier, set menu will not satisfy the costumers anymore. This is the opportunity for the middle-size all you can eat restaurant to join into the market. An all you can eat restaurant makes 30 percent of profit, but if it is located in a higher rent cost business district, profit might only reach to 20 percent only. The owner needs to win over costumers¡¦ favor to make more profit by its quantity. Despite focusing on the quality of ingredients, the atmosphere is also an important issue; nowadays costumers not only demand for nice meal but also want to enjoy the atmosphere. The dealer of the all you can eat restaurant should not save cost for the decoration and service. The current trend even shows that ¡§location picking¡¨ is an important key to success.The rationale for conducting this research is to discuss about a newly emerging restaurant, how to search for a standard managing system in the competitive food and beverage industry to create outstanding accomplishments. Therefore following this system you can make effective management and create added value for the food and beverage franchise system and also to provide a reference managing method to the dealers afterwards. This research used Five Forces Model, SWOT Analysis, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), questionnaire and experts interview for the researching method. The participants of this survey were scholars of the food and beverage industry, executive chefs, managers, assistant managers, kitchen cooks and costumers. This survey was conducted by interviewing every participant thoroughly, first by qualitative approach and then through quantitative approach. This study reveals the key factors for the success of Wei Chuan Wu that are mentioned respectively below: the flavor and taste of dishes, service quality, restaurant¡¦s atmosphere, restaurant¡¦s location and brand. The result shows the success factors of Wei Chuan Wu that are: the lower cost of rent and raw material, dishes should have distinguishing features to differentiate, good quality of service from the servers and also to provide a clean, hygienic and comfortable atmosphere to dine. These factors not only can increase the restaurant¡¦s brand but also its core competence and create costumers value. It also eliminates the threats of the sluggish economic condition, competitors¡¦ threat or any other replacing threat to create a new brand image. From the results of this research, in conclusion the key factors for a newly emerging restaurant to success are: the flavor and taste of dishes, good service and eating atmosphere. Restaurant should have its own brand and feature dishes, and provide good quality of service to increase costumers¡¦ value. To offer a clean, hygienic and comfortable eating atmosphere are also costumers¡¦ emphasis standards. This study results can provide future dealers a reference for management. Key words: Five Forces Model, SWOT Analysis, Analytical Hierarchy Process, Success Key Factors, Japanese Cuisine Restaurant

The Executive Yuan of Taiwan has launched many policies to encourage the county and city governments to develop their own different festivals. This new movement has pushed the festival industry, a new subsidiary industry of MICE, to a new phase of rapid growth. However, from 2005, the development of festivals in Taiwan has met some problems and hazards after a rapid growth in quantity and scale. It will be very helpful to enhance the quality and competitiveness and to develop the internationalization of Taiwan festivals if we can analyz and research the developing processs, key success factors and developing strategies of Taiwan festivals industry. A successful festival not only consists of good planning and execution but also the attractive and unique topic and content. Therefore, it will become an important topic for research on key success factors of Taiwan festivals. This research will focus on three different cases of festivals, Pingtung Bluefin Tuna Cultural Festival, Kaohsiung Lantern Festival and Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival. Some key success facets and factors of festivals will be analyzed by AHP(Analysis Hierarchy Process). The interviewees include festival industry corporations, governments and non-profit organazations. The quality analysis and AHP questionnaire has been used to analyze the key success factors and the key points of managing Taiwan festival. At last, this research also discussed the competitiveness of whole festival industry in Taiwan by using the tools of Diamond Model of Competitiveness of Michael Porter. We also summarized many experts¡¦ viewpoints to a six developing strategies, those are developing a systemic research on festivals, enforcing the planning and management of festivals, setting rules of festivals and festival organizations, promoting festival brands, enriching the interchanges of international zones, and enforcing variable marketing and promotions. Seven developing trends of internationalization, marketing, uniqueness, industrilization, variablization, centralization and regulationalization have also been presented. It will be very meaningful and helpful if some useful strategies and directions have been used from this research by the governments, corporations, and other parties that involved in the festival industry in Taiwan.

In recent years, the buccal cancer in Taiwan has been ranked the fourth among the top ten leading causes of cancer death, and the first among people at the prime age ( 25 ~ 44 years old ). Since people at the prime age are usually the main bread winners in the family and the main contributors in the economic development of the society, how to prevent the occurrences of buccal cancers or how to provide proper medical service to buccal cancer patients has become an urgent topic of the present medical industry. It is pointed out that the incidence of buccal cancers is frequently related to men¡¦s smoking, diet habit and their chewing of betel nuts. Especially in Kaohsiung-Pingtung area in southern Taiwan, the population of chewing betel nuts is much higher than that in other metropolitan cities. Thus, the incidence of buccal cancers is in vogue in this area. The aim of the present study is to discuss the key factors affecting the quality of medical treatment on buccal cancer patients under the management system of E-Da Hospital. Based on this model, we wish to further apply it to other disease treatments as well and to make E-Da Hospital become a characteristic medical center in the near future. This thesis adopts the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to exploit the multi-estimate criteria models of the medical quality. The first layer is the key factor for medical quality to buccal cancer patients at E-Da Hospital. The second evaluation criterion is divided into three aspects: namely, ¡§the hospital image of medical service¡¨, ¡§the available administrative resources¡¨, and ¡§ the convenience for patients¡¦ taking medical treatment¡¨. The third layer is the twelve evaluation characteristics. From this point of view, we can easily understand why patients choose E-Da Hospital as their priority. The interviewed participants are composed of the surgeons, the nursing staff, the administration personnel at E-Da Hospital, and the buccal cancer patients and their family members. Fifteen effective questionnaires are collected. Based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process, each subject is interviewed throughout and the result is verified by ANOVA. Based on the present study, we have found that the key factors of the management system for medical quality to buccal cancer patients at E-Da hospital are listed below in sequence---¡§the hospital image of medical service¡¨, ¡§the convenience for patients¡¦ taking medical treatment¡¨, and then ¡§the available administrative resources¡¨. Among the twelve evaluation characteristics, the critical top five ones are ¡§medical team work¡¨, ¡§medical effects¡¨, ¡§equipment novelty¡¨, ¡§home visit after operation¡¨ and ¡§ the convenience of transportation¡¨ in order. Several recommendations have been made to hopefully improve the management system and medical quality at E-Da hospital by strengthening the in-job training to the physicians and nurses and renovating medical equipment continuously. Besides, it is expected to set up buccal cancer patient club in the near future in order to achieve ¡§the Five Whole Attendance of Cares¡¨ - the whole person, the whole family, the whole team, the whole journey, and the whole community. Meanwhile, some proposals have also been made to the related health departments of the government so as to promote education on cancer prevention, to create and develop economic & effective cancer sieve checks in order to reduce the possible waste on the consumption of the medical resources and make them benecifical to the health for all. In so doing, we hope that our government can stress its long-term planning and investment on improving its medical service and enhance its medical quality thereby.

In biotechnology industry, health-care food is the most influential product accounting for considerable market share. Nowadays, National Health Insurance has been in the red innumerably, and Bureau of National Health Insurance has become stricter toward the payment to medical systems. Consequently, the medical market is reapportioned. Preventive Medicine, which has no subsidies from National Health Insurance, has become the ¡§Blue Sea¡¨ soon that medical systems intend to develop, instead of its original unnoticed situation; also, health-care food is the main subject collocated within this area. However, Taiwan¡¦s health-care food has numerous brand names which have their own independent channels, unable to develop an established business model effectively due to the limits of their scales. Hence, although many health-care food companies have good products, they are unable to find a good partner with insight of appreciation, so that they can not survive in the market. This study has explored how to cultivate a business model to expand the health-care food market under the current macro-environment. In this study, health-care food companies were the research targets. Through questionnaire surveys, this study has explored that choosing different marketing channel structures will bring in different marketing channel benefits. In this study, based on channel planning in marketing strategy, through the collections of questionnaire data by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) Method, the key success factors in health-care food marketing channels have been induced, aimed at the interactive relationship between health-care food industry and the developing trend of the consumer market. Also, the market is divided into four groups, namely TV Shopping, convenient stores and professional comprehensive pharmacy chains, health-care food distributers, the state-owned enterprises systems operating health-care food, to produce the common (consistently indentified) key success factors and the individual difference factors. In the overall conclusions in this study, the high weight is given according to weighting value, and the priority is: unique marketing method, customer satisfaction survey mechanism (customer response), nationwide media advertisement benefit, headquarters¡¦ goodwill value (brand image), and mechanism of reducing inventory and distribution costs. But for the consideration of resources utilization, if the proprietors of health-care food marketing channels can carry out the foregoing key indicators step by step according to the priority, in order to gain competitive advantage in business management, they may yield twice the result with half the effort.

Since 2003, the density of convenient stores in Taiwan has surpassed it is in Japan and Taiwan has become one of the most competitive regions in the world. The business mode in modern convenient chain stores is established by a standard operating process to duplicate rapidly to form franchise in a short period of time and build up advantage of economies of scale. The advantage will then reduce the overall operating cost to increase the profit. In order to solve the problem of manpower shortage generated from the speeding expansion of stores, joining ¡§franchise¡¨ would become the ideal solution. The core development of known-how for the four major convenient chain stores, 7-ELEVEn, FamilyMart, HiLife, and OK, is based on business mode of franchise chain stores. As of the end of 2008, the total number of four major convenient chain stores has exceeded over nine thousand. The majority of them are franchise stores and the franchise rate reaches 87.5%. Therefore, how to establish a complete staff education training to ensure operating quality and maintain store competitiveness is one of the keys in the business strategy for main franchise branch. This paper uses a certain major convenient franchise store in Taiwan as the target, and focuses on the effectiveness on critical success factors of staff education and training in the convenient franchise store. This paper adopts AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), exploring from the reference and an interview in depth with company supervisors from the case to conclude five evaluation indicators of critical success factors and twenty-six success factors to create AHP questionnaires. Then, twenty-five senior store supervisors and franchise store managers were required to process questionnaire interview and select the critical success factors. The three top evaluation indicator of critical success factors in second layer of structure of the staff education and training in convenient franchise stores in order are: (1) staff attitude; (2) reward and punishment measures; and (3) training course planning. The top five critical success factors in the third layer of structure are: (1) the degree of learning requirement for part-time staff required by store manager; (2) vivid and lively teaching method; (3) degree of store learning atmosphere; (4) connection between learning effectiveness and franchise renewal; and (5) acceptance of store manager towards education training.

To figure out the strengths of city growth is always the central issue of the regional economy development scholars. Cities are the centers of the civilization. With the rapid changes of modern time and industries, creativity has already become one of the strongest driving forces behind economic growth. To creat creative city not only to attract the talents to the city but also to resolve the city problems. So the concept of creative city is the urban planning paragon. The thesis is established on the theory of globalization, world city, creative city, creative industries theories. It¡¦s mainly based on creative theory, uses the Delphi Method and tries to establish the supporting dimensions of creative city that suits to Taiwan area.

Die vorliegende Ausgabe beschäftigt sich mit der innerbetrieblichen Erfassung und Verarbeitung von umweltrelevanten Kosten, den Umweltkostenrechnungssystemen. Die vorliegende Arbeit verfolgt das Ziel, Unternehmen bei der Entscheidung zu unterstützen, welches Umweltkostenrechnungssystem unter Berücksichtigung der unternehmensspezifischen Bedürfnisse und Präferenzen gewählt werden soll. Als Grundlage für die Auswahl werden die verschiedenen Umweltkostenrechnungssysteme kurz vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus werden die Umweltkostenrechnungssysteme klassifiziert. Die Klassifizierung basiert auf den Ausprägungen verschiedener Kriterien, die im Rahmen der Literaturrecherche erfasst und in einer Datenbank gesammelt wurden. Neben den Kriterien zur Klassifizierung wurden auch Merkmale zum Nutzen und Aufwand der Umweltkostenrechnungssysteme in die Datenbank aufgenommen. Diese Kriterien unterstützen die Entscheidung für den Einsatz eines bestimmten Umweltkostenrechnungssystems. Für die Auswahl aus der Vielzahl von Systemen wird ein mehrstufiges Verfahren vorgeschlagen. Zunächst wird eine Vorausauswahl in Abhängigkeit der betrieblichen Umweltpolitik empfohlen. Anschließend werden die verbleibenden Möglichkeiten einer multikriteriellen Analyse auf der Basis des Analytical Hierachy Prozesses unterzogen. Das Ergebnis des Entscheidungsverfahrens ist eine – auf den Präferenzen des Unternehmens beruhende – eindimensionale Skalierung der Umweltkostenrechnungssysteme.

The Texas Department of Transportation has been experiencing budget fluctuations in the recent past. These budget fluctuations can have a pronounced effect in the agency’s highway maintenance operations if key maintenance activities must be delayed due to budget constraints. The methodology proposed in this research project aims at reducing the impact of budget fluctuations on highway maintenance by identifying and ranking maintenance activities based on a set of identified maintenance objectives. With the help of maintenance experts from the highway agency, four maintenance objectives were identified and considered for this research project: include Aesthetics, Safety, System Operations and System Preservation. A similar process was conducted to identify the most relevant maintenance activities from a list of over 120 different maintenance functions used by the Texas Department of Transportation. The original list of maintenance functions was reduced by combining similar sub-categories. Ultimately, 16 maintenance functions were identified and included in this research project, representing an average of over 75 percent of the agencies maintenance expenditures between fiscal years 2008 – 2010. These four maintenance objectives and sixteen maintenance functions were then evaluated by maintenance experts from different geographic locations of the state using the Analytical Hierarchy Process to produce an Overall Relative Weight for each maintenance function. This process allowed each evaluator’s judgments and preferences to influence the final weight values and rankings of the maintenance functions. The Overall Relative Weight corresponds to each maintenance sub-category’s component from each maintenance objective and can be defined as the performance risk of not carrying out the maintenance activity. This information can be used by maintenance engineers and administrators, when faced with budget shortfalls, to suspend or reduce maintenance activities that have a lower performance risk in favor of performing activities that have a higher one. This will dampen the impact of budget fluctuations on highway maintenance operations by performing critical maintenance treatments at the expense of less critical. / text

The Texas Department of Transportation has been experiencing maintenance budget fluctuations recently. The shortage of budget has a negative impact on the agency’s maintenance strategies and results in the undesirable deterioration of highway conditions increasing the risk towards both road users and the agency. This paper aims at developing a methodology to minimize the impact of budget fluctuation by quantifying the risk of not performing a maintenance activity and identifying the priority of maintenance activities based on the quantified risk. With the help of maintenance experts from TxDOT, four maintenance objectives and 16 maintenance function groups were identified and a hierarchy structure was developed based on the objectives and function groups. Four pilot districts were selected to represent the different demographic and climatic regions in Texas and maintenance experts were selected from the four districts to participate in the workshop. The Overall Relative Weights of 16 maintenance function groups were determined based on the individual evaluator’s judgments using the Analytical Hierarchy Process. To determine if the four pilot districts give different relative importance to the four defined objectives and different priority to the 16 maintenance groups, statistical analyses were conducted with the four sets of values, one for each of the four pilot districts, using Kruskal-Wallis test. At last, a web-based prototype system was developed to assist users in generating the list of maintenance projects under budget constraints. Exposure factors, ADT and truck volume, were applied in the system to factor in the impact of traffic to the maintenance strategy. Users of this system can choose to use the weights and parameter values from one of the pilot districts which they think is most comparable to their own district or the state average values that has been proved to be applicable to all the districts in Texas. / text