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In the past, the main force of Taiwan's economic development is the traditional manufacturing industry. After decades of changes in industrial structure, actual production plants of many factories have been moved to the outside of Taiwan only the of the administration center to stay in Taiwan. As of today, the number of manufacturing sector in Taiwan have been gradually diminished. However, the actual production capacity is very important to a country. Steel pipe and pipe fittings is infrastructure components that were used as a framework for plant pipeline in the establishment of a factory, which were used in petrochemical, chemical, construction, medical, nuclear, high-tech industries when factories, maintenance required. The method in this study is the case interview, and we interviewed with seven main production company of stainless steel pipe fittings industry in Taiwan to understand the competitive situation of the stainless steel pipe fittings industry in Taiwan. And intends to interview about dimensions of competitive strategy, response mode, human resources, marketing, customer development, product, valuable resources. Then learned that the various manufacturers of competitive strategy, competitive advantage, and then identify each vendor's market position in the market. The study found that, relatively speaking, Taiwan is still the base of the stainless steel pipe industry. Every year, Taiwan still import foreign pipe fittings. This suggest that there is a growth space of the pipe industry in the domestic market. In the seven companies, The market leader is TA CHEN stainless pipe co., LTD; The market challengers are TRU-FLOW INDUSTRIAL CO.,LTD, TACHIA YUNG HO MACHINE INDUSTRY CO.,LTD, LIANG FENG STAINLESS STEEL FITTING CO.,LTD; And the market followers are CHU TEI FU PIPING FITTNG MATERIAL CO.,LTD, HEN DAI FITTNG CO.,LTD, KAO JUNG ENTERPRISE CO., LTD. In this study, four suggestions were given to these companies, increase the different products, enhanced marketing capabilities, increase the certification and to maintain R & D capabilities

ABSTRACT Recent years the reducing number of public works projects has been a very serious situation. We had 380 billion and 360 billion projects in 2009 and 2010, in 2011 we only got 180 billion by the big amount of shrinkage of up to as much as 200 billion. In addition, more un-sold houses has been gradually increasing, which makes the relative reduction of the use in concrete can be expected, not even mention the follow-up addition works will be inevitably shrinking. The reduced Shipments plus the up-price of gravel, cement, oil, tires, etc, our industry is forced to raise a lot of the cost. The current situation is extremely unfavorable to the business. The requirements of concrete is being able to reach required strength after 28 days of compressive strength in order to satisfy suppliers and construction companies, in any case the price of course is the first consideration, so the ready-mix concrete companies have price competition in order to get orders, which will cause the poor quality and the shortage of quantity. And this is temporary means of the operation, eventually we will be out of the market by running the business in this way. In the future, I hope to seek the best business strategy through competitive analysis, but also reduce operating costs. As long as we streamline the organization and transformation of the management model, we should be able to get through the crisis, and enhance the industrial competitiveness. Eventually the undesirable industry will be naturally eliminated and the market will back on track.

The history of Taiwan hypermarket industry began with the entering of Makro in1989. The same year, the French company Carrefour established a joint-venture with President Group in Taiwan. Besides Carrefour and Makro, companies that joined the market include local brands Geant and RT-MART and international brands like Costco and Tesco. After years of fast booming in the early stage of development, the entire industry has faced stagnancy for years. Why the industry suffered a downturn can be explained from the following aspects: investors are not optimistic about the overall macroeconomic conditions, consumer confidence is too weak, the competition within the Taiwan hypermarket industry is intense, and the strategic groups of all the participants in the markets are similar. All the reasons combined caused some company have no choice but leave the market or change their strategy. Macro left Taiwan market and Tesco Taiwan are included in Carrefour Taiwan. However, not every company in this industry suffered, Costco¡¦s sales increased when the industry top leaders, Carrefour and RT-MART, faced decreasing sales last year. The purpose of the study is to understand how Costco satisfies customer demand through its unique way in the competitive Taiwan hypermarket industry, how Costco makes consumers accept its way of doing business and how this unique business model differs from competitors in terms of operation, profit earning by analyzing the external industry competition, consumer demand that Costco faces and Costco¡¦s internal operation model. Besides internal and external analysis, the author designs a questionnaire that focus on Costco¡¦s customers¡¦ feelings about it.

Dans cette thèse, nous proposons et évaluons des algorithmes pour résoudre des problèmes d’ordonnancement en ligne. Pendant des décennies, les études en ordonnancement considèrent des modèles déterministes où toutes les informations nécessaires pour la définition du problème sont supposées connues à l’avance. Cette hypothèse n'est généralement pas réaliste. Ceci a motivé les études sur l’ordonnancement en ligne. Dans un problème d’ordonnancement en ligne, un algorithme doit prendre des décisions sans connaissance du futur. L’analyse compétitive est généralement la méthode utilisée pour évaluer les performances de tels algorithmes. Dans cette analyse, la performance d'un algorithme en ligne est mesurée par le ratio compétitif qui est le ratio dans le pire cas entre la performance de la solution obtenue et celle d’une solution optimale hors ligne. Nous considérons principalement deux paradigmes en ligne: celui où les tâches se présentent dans la liste et celui où les tâches arrivent au fur et à mesure. Sur la base de ces deux paradigmes, nous considérons différents modèles : une seule machine, deux machines identiques parallèles, deux machines uniformes parallèles, batch machines et open shop. Pour chacun des problèmes, nous démontrons une borne inférieure de ratios compétitifs et proposons des algorithmes en ligne. Ensuite, nous évaluons la performance de ces algorithmes à l’aide de l’analyse compétitive. Pour certains problèmes, nous montrons que les algorithmes proposés sont optimaux dans le sens où le ratio compétitif est égal à la borne inférieure. / This thesis proposes and evaluates some online algorithms for machine scheduling problems. Deterministic scheduling models have been extensively studied in the literature. One of the basic assumptions of these models is that all the information is known in advance. However, this assumption is usually not realistic. This observation promotes the emergence of online scheduling. In online scheduling problems, an online algorithm has to make decisions without future information. Competitive analysis is a method invented for analyzing online algorithms, in which the performance of an online algorithm (which must satisfy an unpredictable sequence of requests, completing each request without being able to see the future) is compared with the performance of an a posteriori optimal solution where the sequence of requests is known. In the framework of competitive analysis, the performance of an online algorithm is measured by its competitive ratio. We mainly deal with two online paradigms: the one where jobs arrive over list and the one where jobs arrive over time. Based on these two paradigms, we consider different models: single machine, two identical parallel machines, two uniform parallel machines, batch processing machine and open shop. For each of the problems, we prove a lower bound of competitive ratios and propose online algorithms. Then we further measure the worst case performance of these algorithms. For some problems, we can show that the algorithms we proposed are optimal in the sense that their competitive ratios match the lower bounds.

From the historical point of view the development of micro-car is always short-lived, the size is smaller than the UK's Micro Car Mini is memorable, but in the subsequent market performance was weak, Fiat 500 and BMW Isetta is the best example. But as environmental awareness, social structure, economic and energy and other issues, making micro cars by the world's attention again.It can be seen in the future will be increasingly fierce market competition, the depot itself must find a core competitive advantage to succeed in such a competitive environment while maintaining a competitive edge. This study was to explore the competition of imports of micro cars, the use of narrative inquiry in qualitative research and depth interviews, by the German group Daimler smart micro-car brand distributor in Taiwan , from the north, central, and southern The three regional sales director to narrate its brand image, product quality, marketing, publicity, business model. Results through data analysis, economic and practical, unique shape is the industry and consumers that the mini cars must have two key factors, the most important thing is unique, micro-car brand and the product must emit a unique image and personality, and then select the product differentiation strategy marketing promotion, and in addition to brand image and product quality, the organizers of the service behavior of consumers is also very important, especially in Taiwan has been slow to enter the service industry-based economy, how to make consumers feel the caring services, thereby causing and increase consumer interest and willingness to buy, and ultimately look forward to the conclusions of this study for the industry in the development of micro-car market in Taiwan.

Communication systems have an important role to play in managing the safe and efficient operation of the National Airspace System (NAS). The users of the NAS, from the commercial transport aircraft to hobby airplanes can all benefit from the recent advances in digital communication technology especially as the capacity of the analog voice systems is surpassed by the growth in air traffic. One of the benefits of the new digital data links being developed is to allow delivery of real time weather information to the cockpit of aircrafts. Weather information is essential to flight operations and until recently there were only limited voice and text weather reports available to the pilot. With data links, graphical weather in the cockpit is possible and also highly desired by the aviation community. This thesis will develop a decision model and analysis tool for product developers of weather information systems that need to select appropriate data link technology for which to develop their weather information systems. A comparative analysis of the aeronautical communications systems is done with the view of satisfying end-user requirements for weather information and achieving market success. A study of the various data links is conducted to gain an understanding of their performance characteristics and implementation issues. A consumer survey was designed and valuable insight into the requirements and opinions of pilots was gained. The method of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) was employed to find the most important technical characteristics of the data links to satisfy the consumer requirements captured in the survey. The decision model consisting of the QFD and also further technical assessment was implemented in software to allow any scenario of product requirements and data link to be performed. / Master of Science

Globally, China is the number one soybean importer, and the United States, Brazil, and Argentina are the top three soybean exporters. This research, based on the reverse residual demand model, developed and estimated a two-country partial equilibrium trade model to test who has stronger market power in the Chinese soybean import market. This two-country partial equilibrium trade model incorporates the U.S. residual soybean supply for China, the Chinese residual demand for U.S. soybeans, and the equilibrium condition, where the U.S. residual soybean supply equals the Chinese residual soybean demand. Data used in this research are monthly data from January 1999 to February 2005, 74 observations. Empirical results indicated that Chinese soybean importers have stronger market power relative to U.S. soybean exporters.This research also conducted the competitive analysis of the Chinese soybean import market by examining both annual and monthly data of Chinese soybean imports from the U.S. and South America (Brazil and Argentina). Results implied that the U.S. and South America are seasonal complementary soybean suppliers for China. Possible reasons include: 1) seasonal difference--the U.S. and South America have opposing growing seasons, i.e., different time periods to supply soybeans to markets; and 2) stronger market power of Chinese soybean importers–China's strategic choice, diversifying their soybean suppliers and reducing price increase risk, made the U.S. and South America complementary soybean suppliers to China.Additionally, this research compared the soybean export costs to China for the three countries. Results showed that Brazil has the greatest advantage for production costs, followed by Argentina and the U.S.; the U.S. has the greatest advantage for internal and international transportation and marketing costs, followed by Argentina and Brazil. In aggregate, the total soybean export costs for Brazil were the lowest and the export costs for Argentina were the highest, with U.S. costs between them.In terms of policy implications for the U.S. soybean industry facing strong competition from South America, we cannot expect that U.S. market share in the Chinese soybean import market can be expanded much. With the development of infrastructure in Brazil and Argentina, the U.S. advantage will become less and less. Therefore, if the U.S. soybean industry wants to keep its current position in the Chinese soybean import market, some governmental policy supports are still necessary.

O presente estudo, de abordagem qualitativa e descritiva, investiga as relações entre as teorias sobre Economia Criativa, Vantagem Competitiva, Cadeia de Valor e Qualidade no Mercado de Luxo objetivando identificar a contribuição do Programa do Polo de Joias do Pará para a criação de valor na indústria de joias do referido estado brasileiro. O método de pesquisa utilizado abrangeu a construção de proposições a partir da literatura revisada e reduzida, a realização de entrevistas com profissionais do setor joalheiro brasileiro, análise de conteúdo das entrevistas e análise da cadeia de valor do Polo de Joias do Pará com base na observação participante. Os resultados apontam que as estruturas teóricas empregadas neste estudo estão presentes na Cadeia de Valor do Programa do Polo de Joias do Pará, destacando a criação de valor por meio do benefício percebido pelo consumidor. O incipiente estudo cria oportunidade para a realização de novas relações com outros clusters criativos ou para a identificação de atitudes e intenções de compra dos clientes do Polo. / This qualitative and descriptive study investigate the relationship between theories about Creative Economy, Competitive Advantage, Value Chain and Quality in Luxury Market aiming to identify the contribution of the Pará Jewelry Cluster Program for creating value in jewelry industry of that Brazilian state. The research method included the construction of propositions from the literature reviewed and reduced, conducting interviews with professionals in the Brazilian Jewelry Industry, content analysis of the interviews and analysis of value chain of Pará Jewelry Cluster based on observation participant. The results show that the theoretical frameworks used in this study are present in the Value Chain of the Pará Jewelry Cluster Program, highlighting the creation of value through benefit perceived by consumers. The study creates opportunity for the realization of new relationships with other creative clusters or to identify attitudes and purchase intentions of customers from Polo.

We study online scheduling policies for buffer management models, in which packets are arriving over time to a buffer of a network switch to be sent through its single output port. However, the bandwidth of the port is limited and some packets need to be dropped, based on their weights. The goal of the scheduler is to maximize the weighted throughput, that is, the total weight of packets transmitted. Due to the natural lack of information about future, an optimal performance cannot be achieved, we thus pursue competitive analysis and its refinements to analyze online algorithms on worst-case inputs. Specifically, in the first part of the thesis, we focus on a simple online scheduling model with unit-size packets and deadlines, called Bounded-Delay Packet Scheduling. We design an optimal φ-competitive deterministic algo- rithm for the problem, where φ ≈ 1.618 is the golden ratio. It is based on a detailed understanding of an optimal schedule of pending packets, called the plan, which may be of independent interest. We also propose a semi-online setting with lookahead that allows the algorithm to see a little bit of future, namely, packets arriving in the next few steps. We provide an algorithm with lookahead for instances in which each packet can be scheduled in at most two consecutive slots and prove lower...