Customer segmentation prediction has attracted a lot of research interests in previous literature, and recent studies have shown that artificial neural networks (ANN) method achieved better performance than traditional statistical ones. However, ANN approaches have suffered from difficulties with generalization, producing models that can overfit the data. This paper employs a relatively new machine learning technique, support vector machines (SVM), to the customer segmentation prediction problem in an attempt to provide a model with better explanatory power. To evaluate the prediction accuracy of SVM, we compare its performance with logistic regression analysis and ANN. The experiment results with real data of insurance company show that SVM superiors to them.

This paper aims to construct an effective decision making model on selection of product design in product development using fuzzy AHP technique. It is expected that this paper contributes to enhancement of company's market competitiveness by shortening the lead time to develop a new product and minimize initial investment. The proposed model using fuzzy AHP enables quick decision making by integrating and analyzing all customer requirements related to a product. In addition, it can deal with vagueness and uncertainty of decision making process using fuzzy set theory. Decision making processes for evaluating the best selection of product design are also constructed to describe the exact concept of development. A tennis racket is shown as an example. The proposed model is expected to be applied in various fields of managerial decision making processes as well as of product development process.

An issue of globalized and competitive business environment is a transformation of manufacturing strategy for rapidly product development. To copy with these trends, building up a market from various product is becoming conspicuous the core strategy of manufacture. Therefore, it is increasing of necessity for the environment of collaborative product development. As a part of corresponding for these demands, we propose the method that allows easy and rapid integration of legacy resources within the company and between departments. The proposed framework can easily construct a distributed environment for collaborative design between departments in the companies. It was implemented using CO<SUP>TM</SUP> based on DOME (Distributed Object-based Modeling Environment) that is knowledge based engineering solution.

This paper explores an image segmentation and representation method using Vector Quantization(VQ) on color and texture for content-based image retrieval system. The basic idea is a transformation from the raw pixel data to a small set of image regions whi

Recently. the severe competition in the internet shopping mall has forced firms to increase the customer satisfaction and to enhance service quality. Despite the internet shopping mall's fast and superficial growth and extraordinary potential, study on fa

The recycling cell formation problem means that disposal products are classified into recycling product families using group technology in their end-of-life phase. Disposal products have the uncertainties of product condition usage influences. Recycling cells are formed considering design, process and usage attributes. In this paper, a new approach for the design of cellular recycling system is proposed, which deals with the recycling cell formation and assignment of identical products concurrently. Fuzzy ART neural networks are applied to describe the condition of disposal product with the membership functions and to make recycling cell formation. The approach leads to cluster materials, components, and subassemblies for reuse or recycling and can evaluate the value at each cell of disposal products. Disposal refrigerators are shown as an example.

Web-based services have fundamentally confidential problems due to characteristics of internet environment such as anonymity. These problems are serious obstacles to grow the web-based services. The security and confidence of web-based services rely on both service provider and users' opinion. But the former has difficulty in trusting the service provider and the latter takes too long time to propagete all users after converging their opinion. Therefore it is necessary to establish the objective and confidential evaluation and certification program for web-based service. In this paper, the internal and external web-based services evaluation and certification programs are compared and analyzed. The critical factors and evaluation methodology for secure and confidential web-based service are identified. Finally, this paper provides the improvement and strategy for web-based services evaluation and certification program.

In this paper, a new method of product function analysis is presented to categorize various design information generated in product development processes. In order to improve product functions, designers must understand unit functions and modified parts of products. The product function analysis (PFA) is based on the designer's understanding of product functions. The proposed PFA provides the methodology to classify the various functions systematically and understand the relation between functions easily. Using this approach, efficient design support system can be developed and used for designers to support decision-making with design knowledge.

The operation and management of a plant require proper accounting for the constraints coming from reliability requirements as well as from budget and resource considerations. Most of the mathematical methods to decide the inspection time interval for plan

In the future, all kinds condition of industrial safety is a primary need in all advanced countries in which workplace safety is an issue. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of production systems and the rapidity of technological innovation have consolidated the recognition of the strategic value of safety, alongside the traditional competitive factors such as quality, costs, delivery time and flexibility, In this paper, the some critical issues of changes and counter-plan in an adequate safety management were identified by above considerations as follows： needs of systematic identification and analysis of safety factors； requirements to define priorities and budgeting to support the decision-making process; and needs of audit activities and indicators which measure company performance in terms of safety improvements, and so on.

Producing what customers need with near mass production efficiency, or mass customization, has been a major trend in industry. Effective definition of customer requirements is a pre-requisite for realizing mass customization. The new method, called "Design by Customers", is proposed. The proposed method is an approach for companies to communicate to customers about what the company can offer, to find out customer needs, to assist customers in making choices and to negotiate for agreements. In this paper, the design and manufacturing capabilities in making company are represented in a Product Family Architecture. Adaptive Conjoint Analysis is then applied help customers assert their needs, defined variations from base product, visualize their options and assess alternatives. A power supplier of a electronic appliance is shown as an example to demonstrated the suggested method.ed method.

The recycling cell formation problem means that disposal products are classified into recycling part families using group technology in their end of life phase. Disposal products have the uncertainties of product status by usage influences. Recycling cells are formed considering design, process and usage attributes. In this paper, a novel approach to the design of cellular recycling system is proposed, which deals with the recycling cell formation and assignment of identical products concurrently. Fuzzy clustering algorithm and Fuzzy-ART neural network are applied to describe the states of disposal product with the membership functions and to make recycling cell formation. This approach leads to recycling and reuse of the materials, components, and subassemblies and can evaluate the value at each cell of disposal products. Application examples are illustrated by disposal refrigerators, compared fuzzy clustering with Fuzzy-ART neural network performance in cell formation.