This study identified the core competencies of aircraft maintenance quality engineers and compared the importance and retention of core competencies. Through literature research, 21 core competencies were derived in three areas of management technology, elemenal technology and collaboration technology, and a survey was conducted on the importance and retention of core competencies for 42 aircraft maintenance quality engineers. As a result of the survey, the importance of all core competencies of aircraft maintenance quality engineers is 3.95/5 on average, and the retention of all core competencies is 3.99/5 on average. 'Risk Management’, ‘Creating Document’, ‘Honesty/Moral’ were identified as the most important competencies in each area, and ‘Quality Management’, ‘Language’, ‘Honesty/Moral’ were identified as the most possessed competencies in each area. An IPA (Importance-Performance Analysis) was performed to analyze the details. Through IPA, ‘Risk Management’ and ‘Safety Management’ were evaluated as having a low degree of retention compared to a high level of importance. Therefore, they were identified as a core competencies that need to be improved first. In addition, the characteristics of each core competency and the recognition level in the field were also identified. This study will be helpful in defining the roles and functions of aircraft maintenance quality engineers to improve flight quality and prevent aviation accidents.

In this paper, we investigate the requirements of QPA(Quality Process Audit), which is a process quality audit system for secondary defense contractors, compared with those of DQMS(Defense Quality Management System). And evaluate whether the deployment of QPA meets the DQMS certification requirements through the case example of Company H. The evaluation items of QPA are composed of five categories such as Material Management, Incoming Inspection, Manufacturing Process, Product Evaluation, and Packaging Management. The QPA requirements are mainly related to the chapter 7(support) and chapter 8(operation) of DQMS standards. In this view point, QPA can be expected as an effective audit for suppliers preparing for DQMS certification. In the case example, we evaluate the results and effects of improvement due to QPA and compare it with the case of DQMS. QPA can be used as appropriate quality management standards of secondary and tertiary defense contractors and can provide the basis guidelines for the preparation of implementation steps in DQMS certification.

This paper is a follow up to the previous study which reveals that smartphone users are divided into three subcategories according to their usage characteristics. In this paper, these groups are called as ‘general’, ‘entertainment’, and ‘work-assistant’, taking into account their respective characteristics. The ‘general’ is a group whose smartphone usage characteristics are not focused on a specific purpose, the ‘entertainment’ is focused on music, internet, SNS, picture, and e-banking, and the ‘work-assistant’ is on work, GPS, diary. Inter-relation between the importance and satisfaction for the purchase determinants to the groups is investigated. In addition, Kano analysis of quality attributes is also performed, which includes quality type, satisfaction/dissatisfaction index, and PCSI (Potential Customer Satisfaction Improvement) index. The analysis result are as follows. Firstly, inter-relation between importance and satisfaction differs by user group. ‘Internet’, ‘Ease of use’, and ‘Performance’ purchase determinants are evaluated as competitive determinants in ‘work-assistant’ user group. Secondly Kano quality types of quality characteristics also differs by user group. ‘Application’ was classified as an attractive (A) types to ‘entertainment’ group and so on. ‘Internet’ ‘Failure/Bug’, ‘Touch response rate’ and ‘Charging’ are located in ‘Nice’ Region of S-PCSI Diagram and have to be considered as strategic quality characteristics. The results of this study is expected to give some helps in establishing a customer tailored quality strategy.

Innovation activities represented by Six Sigma (6σ) led to improvements not only in manufacturing industries but also in various business fields. In the aviation industry, Six Sigma has been used as a tool of innovation since the beginning of 2000, and it has developed into a comprehensive form of innovation activity that includes various improvement tools. In this study, the innovation activities in K company that is a representative company of aviation industry are summarized in the last 10 years, and the effectiveness of the innovation tools and the performance of the tasks are also analyzed. The results of 2,091 projects over the past decade have been analyzed from various perspectives. First, we found out the tools that were used frequently at each DMAIC step, showed their frequency, and analyzed the evaluation results for the project. The project was evaluated from grade 1 (highest level) to grade 7 (lowest level) with an average grade of 4.1 for the overall project. The evaluation grades of the projects were compared and analyzed in terms of the qualifications of the leader, the roadmap for the implementation of the project, the financial effect, the size of the financial effect, the business classification, and the project execution period. These results may suggest new perspectives for companies considering or adopting innovation programs.

Since the appearance of smartphones, the smartphone market has been in fierce completion by new technologies and marketing trends. The smartphone market is now somewhat saturated, and the manufacturers are trying to improve their position in the market through the repurchase of existing customers and the influx of competitors. At the same time, customers have their own purchasing criteria for smartphones. Therefore, manufacturers need to determine new technology and marketing trends based on customer purchasing trends and usage characteristics. The aim of this study is to analyze the quality attributes of smartphones. We conducted a survey on 220 respondents, and divided the respondents into several groups by purchasing trends and usage characteristic through cluster analysis. The groups are analyzed and compared based on the Kano model for the quality attributes of smartphone. The analysis result are as follows. Firstly, purchasing trends divide responders into groups that prefers high-end premium smartphones and those that take into account practicality in terms of purchasing trends. Secondly, usage characteristic divide responders into three groups: those with clear usage pattern, those who prefer ease of use, and the rest, and we find out that those with clear usage pattern are important customer in viral marketing. Lastly, Kano analysis is revealed the ‘Slow/ hi-speed camera’, ‘Private mode’, ‘Widget’, ‘Health care’ are attractive quality attributes.

This paper is an exploratory study on the success factors of Defence Quality Management System (DQMS) which is the certification system granted by the military for improving the quality of munitions. DQMS is established by adding military requirements to the ISO standard, thus, we especially focus on the additional requirements to figure out success key factors of DQMS certification. The 51 additional requirements of Korean Defense Specification (KDS) are empirically investigated from 67 companies that acquired DQMS certification. Firstly, we conduct an independent t-tests on 51 additional requirements of KDS 0050-900-3 to determine if there is a difference between an easily certified company and a hard-to-certify company, and obtain 8 requirements such as ‘Internal propagation of performance’, ‘Preparation of documented work instructions’, ‘Work instructions in the workplace’, ‘Documentation of equipment management’, ‘Inventory management’, ‘Packaging and identification’, ‘Guarantee of access to internal audit result for customers’, ‘Notification to the customer for improper product.’ Secondly, we carry out an factor analysis to the 51 additional requirements for classification, and figure out that 4 requirements among the 8 requirements above mentioned are grouped together in the same factor. The 4 requirements are ‘Preparation of documented work instructions’, ‘Work instructions in the workplace’, ‘Packaging and identification’, and ‘Guarantee of access to internal audit result for customers.’ The result of this paper will provide useful information to the company preparing for DQMS.

The DQMS (Defence Quality Management System) is a certification system that manages participating companies to improve the quality of munitions. Since Korean Defense Specification (KDS) for DQMS certification that was established by adding military requirements based on the ISO quality standard, many companies complain that they should pay too much effort into the preparation process. However, it is hard to find helpful information on the preparation process because we have been only interested in the effect of DQMS acquisition. The purpose of this paper is to provide helpful information to companies preparing for DQMS certification. We surveyed the degree of difficulty and importance of the DQMS requirements from the companies with certification experience, and performed IDA (Importance-Difficulty analysis) by dividing the companies into the main contractor and the subcontractor. The result of IDA shows that there is a different recognition to the DQMS certification between main-contracting and sub-contracting companies. Subcontractor has more difficulties than main contractor in preparing the DQMS certification. In addition, we are able to identify the difficult and important requirements in the preparation process to the DQMS certification. Both main contractor and subcontractor have difficulty to the requirements related to configuration or validation such as ‘customer controls configuration’, ‘configuration review shall be implemented’ and ‘design and development validation documentation.’ The requirements related to customers are important to main contractor but the subcontractor regards difficult requirements as important ones. The result of this paper would be helpful to both the company preparing for DQMS and the munitions quality assurance agency.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the service tree analysis introduced recently by Geum et al. [15]. Service tree analysis structures the service based on the customer participation perspective and provides a qualitative analysis method categorizing the service elements on the basis of its impact to top service. This paper attempts to apply the concept of reliability importance to the service tree analysis as a perspective of quantitative analysis, which is considered little in Geum et al. [15]. Reliability importance is a measure of the structural impact of the components that make up the system on the system lifetime in reliability engineering field and often used in fault tree analysis. We transform the reliability importance into service importance in accordance with service tree analysis, so that the influence of service elements on the service can be judged and compared. The service importance is defined as the amount of change of the service according to the change of the service element, therefore, it can be utilized as an index for determining a service element for service improvement. In addition, as an index for paired service elements, the relationship between the two service components can be measured by joint service importance. This paper introduces conceptual changes in the process of applying reliability importance to service analysis, and shows how to use the service importance for identifying the priority of service element for the final service and improving customer satisfaction through an example. By using the service importance and joint service importance in service tree analysis, it is possible to make efficient decision making in the process of determining the service elements for analyzing and improving the service.

The engineering knowledge and technology is core driving forces of continuous growth in knowledge based society. Companies, the government, and universities are the subjects of an innovation and the cooperation between them is very important. Nowadays, the main purpose of industry-university cooperation moves to train experts and develop a new product. A shift of the paradigm came from the change of recognition that the final consumers of the program are companies and the universities are supporters of the program. In this paper, we investigate the purpose, participation and satisfaction of companies to industry-academy technology cooperation through empirical studies. The need to expert training, product development and process development makes companies participate industry-academy technology cooperation and companies have different purpose of participation by the business type. Companies often feel that expert training, subsidiary purpose of industry-academy technology cooperation, is more important than product development or process development. This result is caused by the real world environment of small and mid-size companies, lacking of technology experts. The participation of companies to each technology cooperation program (technology transfer, joint technology development, consigned technology development, technology consulting, co-op. lab.) is also different by business type. The companies’ satisfaction with the purpose of process development is relatively higher than that with the purpose of product development and companies show also different satisfaction value by business type and participating program. The results of this study can give a contribution to the design of demand oriented industry-academy technology cooperation model.

In aerospace industry, MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) and MFTBF (Mean Flight Time Between Failure) are generally used for reliability analysis. So far, especially to Korean military aircraft, MFTBF of avionic equipments is predicted by MIL-HDBK-217 and MIL-HDBK-338, however, the predicted MFTBF by military standard has a wide discrepancy to that of real-world operation, which leads to overstock and increase operation cost. This study analyzes operational data of avionic equipments. Operational MFTBF, which is calculated from operational data, is compared with predicted MFTBF calculated conventionally by military standard. In addition, failure rate trend is investigated to verify reliability growth in operational data, the investigation shows that failure rate curve from operational data has somewhat pattern with decreased failure rate and constant failure rate.

In aerospace industry, MTBF(Mean Time Between Failure) and MFTBF((Mean Flight Time Between Failure) are generally used for reliability analysis. So far, especially to Korean military aircraft, MFTBF of avionic equipments is predicted by MIL-HDBK-217 and MIL-HDBK-338, however, the predicted MFTBF by military standard has a wide discrepancy to that of real-world operation, which leads to overstock and increase operation cost. This study analyzes operational data of avionic equipments. Operational MFTBF, which is calculated from operational data, is compared with predicted MFTBF calculated conventionally by military standard. In addition, failure rate trend is investigated to verify reliability growth in operational data, the investigation shows that failure rate curve from operational data has somewhat pattern with decreased failure rate and constant failure rate.

This paper is a case study of reliability assessment with field warranty data of Clutch Master Cylinder (CMC) in hydraulic clutch system. We estimate lifetime distribution using field warranty data which contain much useful information for understanding reliability of the system in the real-world environments. However, the estimated parameters are far from existing reference values, which seems to be caused right censored field warranty data. To modify the parameters, we use the information of the durability test which is performed to verify that the lifetime of the item meets the required level. After that, we can observe that the modified parameters are closer to the existing reference values. This case study shows a possible idea to supplement lack of right censored field warranty data and its applicability.