Increase Cost Efficiency Research Articles

IMPLEMENTASI JUST IN TIME DALAM MENINGKATKATKAN PRODUKTIVITAS DAN EFISIENSI BIAYA PRODUKSI

The purpose of Just In Time (JIT) is to increase productivity and reduce production costs by eliminating dissipation that exist in the company through continuous improvement activities, so the purpose of this study was to determine the implementation of JIT in increase productivity and cost efficiency of production in manufacturing companies. Stages research is 1) identify problems 2) The type of data used in this research is quantitative data and qualitative data, 3) the collection and processing of production data and purchase data, 4) the implementation of JIT system, 5) eliminate the dissipation and the participation of employees, 6) reduce or eliminate defective products. And the results of this study indicate that the implementation of JIT can improve company productivity and efficiency of the production costs.

Cost inefficiency under financial strain: a stochastic frontier analysis of hospitals in Washington State through the Great Recession.

The importance of increasing cost efficiency for community hospitals in the United States has been underscored by the Great Recession and the ever-changing health care reimbursement environment. Previous studies have shown mixed evidence with regards to the relationship between linking hospitals' reimbursement to quality of care and cost efficiency. Moreover, current evidence suggests that not only inherently financially disadvantaged hospitals (e.g., safety-net providers), but also more financially stable providers, experienced declines to their financial viability throughout the recession. However, little is known about how hospital cost efficiency fared throughout the Great Recession. This study contributes to the literature by using stochastic frontier analysis to analyze cost inefficiency of Washington State hospitals between 2005 and 2012, with controls for patient burden of illness, hospital process of care quality, and hospital outcome quality. The quality measures included in this study function as central measures for the determination of recently implemented pay-for-performance programs. The average estimated level of hospital cost inefficiency before the Great Recession (10.4%) was lower than it was during the Great Recession (13.5%) and in its aftermath (14.1%). Further, the estimated coefficients for summary process of care quality indexes for three health conditions (acute myocardial infarction, pneumonia, and heart failure) suggest that higher quality scores are associated with increased cost inefficiency.

The cost efficiency analysis of Korean life insurance companies by data envelopment analysis

We investigate the effect of introduction of the bancassurance system on cost efficiency in the Korean insurance industry between 1997 and 2012. Our estimation results indicate that introduction of this system contributed positively to efficiency of life insurance companies in Korea. Increase in a one standard deviation of bancassurance increases cost efficiency by 0.08 which is equivalent to 12 percent of mean cost efficiency. Recognising that the bancassurance system is a relatively new concept, our results indicate that the bancassurance system can be a policy measure to improve productivity in an emerging insurance market. The results illustrate that positive effects have accrued particularly to medium-sized companies and domestic companies, contrary to the prevailing perception that increased competition through bancassurance is more beneficial to large companies and foreign companies.

Decision support for cost-efficient and logistically feasible marker-assisted seedling selection in fruit breeding

Development of genetically improved new cultivars is expensive, especially for tree fruit which may take years for the organs of economic importance to appear for direct evaluation. A costly and time-consuming part of breeding programs is seedling selection, which involves identifying a few seedlings from among many thousands that have the genetic potential for desired performance levels. New DNA-based diagnostic tools exist that can assist with resource-use efficiency and prediction accuracy of seedling selection, the application of which is known as marker-assisted seedling selection (MASS). However, MASS by fruit breeders is not yet routine, partially because of the lack of decision support for identifying resource-efficient schemes. The MASS Efficiency Calculator version 1.0 described here can be used to model the costs and timing of a breeding program’s traditional operations and combine them with the costs and logistics of DNA testing operations to identify cost-efficient MASS schemes. With this tool, users can explore various possible scenarios to identify conditions in which MASS is predicted to increase cost efficiency—without the need for complicated hand calculations or de novo spreadsheet creation. Users can determine whether enough time will be available for integrating DNA testing into traditional operations. Demonstration of the spreadsheet technology identified logistically feasible and cost-efficient schemes for several scenarios described in an earlier study reported in 2001 with a more realistic complex breeding design modeled here. In these scenarios, up to 43 % of operational costs were predicted to be saved over the first 6–8 years of breeding program operations. These results indicated that MASS can often be very cost efficient, enhancing resource-use efficiency under typical breeding situations with even a single DNA test. When using multiple DNA tests, maximal cost efficiency can be achieved by deploying DNA tests in sequence rather than together. Even when up to 60 % of DNA test results must be disregarded due to technical issues such as failed DNA extractions, substantial savings in resource use can be realized if a high proportion of seedlings are culled. For long-juvenility crops such as apple and grape, breeders have considerable flexibility in choosing when to implement MASS during seedling production while still achieving increased cost efficiency.

Using an Airborne Platform to Measure Canopy Temperature and NDVI under Heat Stress in Maize

In light of anticipated climate change, we assessed the possibility to use an airborne platform to measure canopy temperature (CT) and the normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) as well as the suitability of both traits for their use in breeding for tolerance to heat stress. We evaluated 71 subtropical maize (Zea mays L.) hybrids under heat stress and combined heat and drought stress in an environment with average temperatures of 29.8°C during the growing season and 31.2°C during the flowering period. Grain yield (GY) ranged from 0.33 to 4.19 Mg ha−1 under heat stress and from 0 to 1.37 Mg ha−1 under combined heat and drought stress, going along with increases in CT from 42.5°C to 49.5°C and decreases in NDVI from 0.54 to 0.48. The NDVI explained differences between and within treatments, while CT explained differences in GY among treatments and genotypes within the heat and drought stress treatment, as indicated by genetic correlations with GY. A principal component analysis was used to identify combinations of physiological characteristics associated with genotypic variation in GY. Results showed that selection gains for GY could be improved by 0.486 Mg ha−1 and 0.015 Mg ha−1 under heat and combined heat and drought stress, respectively, if selection is simultaneously carried out for GY, NDVI, and lower CT and shorter anthesis silking interval. We postulate that the use of selection indices, including CT and NDVI in conjunction with GY, will improve selection gains and increase cost efficiency of breeding programs.

Increasing Cost Efficiency in Health Care without Sacrificing the Human Touch.

High-value care can best be achieved by tailoring the delivery of care to the needs of a specific segment of the patient population to improve outcomes and by addressing patients’ needs in an efficient and scalable manner.

Competition, Cost Innovation, and X-inefficiency in Experimental Markets

This paper examines the relationship between competition, cost innovation, and x-inefficiency in experimental markets. In the lab, oligopolists make closer-to-optimal cost innovation expenditures than do monopolists, which result in lower x-inefficiency in oligopoly than in monopoly. Oligopolies also increase total surplus relative to monopoly, and consumer surplus makes up a larger portion of total surplus in oligopoly than monopoly. The data illustrate how x-inefficiency affects surplus dynamically and suggest price as a mechanism by which competitive pressure increases cost efficiency.

Analysis of cost efficiency in food crop production among small-scale farmers in Adamawa state, Nigeria

Efficient allocation of resources has been a problem in small holder farm economy in Nigeria. The study analyzes cost efficiency in food crop production among small-scale farmers in Adamawa State, Nigeria. Specifically, the socioeconomic characteristics of food crop farmers in the study area were described, their various cropping systems identified and the cost efficiency indices of the farmers determined. Data were collected from 360 randomly selected food crop farmers in eight local government areas spread across the four ADP zones of the State using structured questionnaires. The analytical tools were descriptive statistics involving the use of frequency tables and inferential statistics involving the use of stochastic frontier cost function. The result revealed that married female farmers constituted majority (57.22%) of the respondents. Their literacy level was high, as 84% of them had some form of formal education. The respondents cultivated an average of about two hectares of farm land using personal savings. Eleven cropping systems were identified with mixed cropping accounting for about 53% of the cropping systems and about 54% of the total hectarage allocations. The maximum likelihood estimates of the stochastic cost function revealed that the explanatory variables; extension contact, crop diversification and credit availability were significantly and positively related to cost efficiency in the study area. The cost efficiency index ranged from 0.18-0.98, with a mean of 0.84 implying that an average farm in the study area has the scope for increasing cost efficiency by 16% given the existing technology. The study recommended farmers education on fundamental farm management skills to enable farmers plan, evaluate and appraise their farm business activities among others. KEYWORDS : Cost efficiency, Cropping systems, Small-scale food crop farmers, Adamawa State, Nigeria

Efficient informal trade: Theory and experimental evidence from the Cape Town taxi market

Informal sectors in developing countries are often thought of as responses to rigid and cumbersome market regulations. In this paper I study informal trade as a first-best outcome. In the model I propose rigid regulations can be necessary to achieve efficiency even though they are always sidestepped. The key assumption is that the regulations define the trading parties' fall-back position in case the informal bargaining process breaks down. I set up a field experiment to test the model's mechanisms in the Cape Town market for metered taxis. Consistent with the model, I find that sidestepping the regulations increase cost efficiency (taxis take the shortest route). The price is however unaffected, suggesting informal bargaining leads to a Pareto improvement.

JetStream: Enabling high throughput live event streaming on multi-site clouds

Scientific and commercial applications operate nowadays on tens of cloud datacenters around the globe, following similar patterns: they aggregate monitoring or sensor data, assess the QoS or run global data mining queries based on inter-site event stream processing. Enabling fast data transfers across geographically distributed sites allows such applications to manage the continuous streams of events in real time and quickly react to changes. However, traditional event processing engines often consider data resources as second-class citizens and support access to data only as a side-effect of computation (i.e. they are not concerned by the transfer of events from their source to the processing site). This is an efficient approach as long as the processing is executed in a single cluster where nodes are interconnected by low latency networks. In a distributed environment, consisting of multiple datacenters, with orders of magnitude differences in capabilities and connected by a WAN, this will undoubtedly lead to significant latency and performance variations. This is namely the challenge we address in this paper, by proposing JetStream, a high performance batch-based streaming middleware for efficient transfers of events between cloud datacenters. JetStream is able to self-adapt to the streaming conditions by modeling and monitoring a set of context parameters. It further aggregates the available bandwidth by enabling multi-route streaming across cloud sites, while at the same time optimizing resource utilization and increasing cost efficiency. The prototype was validated on tens of nodes from US and Europe datacenters of the Windows Azure cloud with synthetic benchmarks and a real-life application monitoring the ALICE experiment at CERN. The results show a 3× increase of the transfer rate using the adaptive multi-route streaming, compared to state of the art solutions.

Effect of Internationalization on the Cost Efficiency of Taiwan’s Banks

:We focus on the effect of internationalization on the cost efficiency of banks by studying Taiwan as a sample for developing countries. We find that (1) increasing overseas businesses and foreign exchange deposits increases cost efficiency; (2) expanding offshore banking units increases bank efficiency; and (3) the profitability of a bank’s overseas branch is not a critical factor behind the differences in cost efficiency across both financial holding company (FHC) banks and non-financial holding company (non-FHC) banks. Finally, our metafrontier empirical results illustrate that FHC banks in Taiwan show better technical performance in cost control than non-FHC banks.

The Credit Crisis and De Nova Mimicking in Security Analysis

The failure of the investment community in 2007 to foresee the systematic collapse of the credit default swap market significantly increased the complexity of security analysis and damaged the reputation of the security analyst community in general. submit that in response to the credit crisis, security analysts may have engaged in a de nova form of mimicking by increasing emphasis on general market factors and reducing emphasis on idiosyncratic factors in their valuations, driven by behavioral motives to achieve increased cost efficiency and avoid higher penalties for unfavorable outlier valuations. The result would be increased correlation among security valuations and therefore returns, and diminished benefits of diversification. We test this hypothesis by examining the patterns of security and portfolio returns surrounding the onset of the credit crisis in early 2007 and observe a significant postcrisis increase in the proportion of security and portfolio returns explained by market factors. The findings support the hypothesized shift in emphasis in security analyst valuation techniques, and provide results consistent with the hypothesized behavioral explanations.

Integrated Product Service Offerings for rail infrastructure – benefits and challenges regarding knowledge transfer and cultural change in a Swedish case

The aim of this paper is to investigate potential benefits and challenges regarding knowledge transfer and cultural change from the provider and buyer perspectives when using IPSOs for Swedish rail infrastructure. Considering material use and the importance of availability of the tracks makes rail infrastructure an interesting candidate for a business model based on a life-cycle approach, which can result in a reduction in cost and environmental impact.The concept of the Integrated Product Service Offering (IPSO) has in several business areas proven to be a means with potential to reduce the environmental impact of products and services, increase cost efficiency and quality, and act as a driver for change. The business model, which is based on a life-cycle approach, focuses on the function instead of the initial price of the product.Among the main findings are the lack of information and knowledge transfer that act as a barrier for innovation, and that the buyer's conservative business culture makes it difficult to implement new types of contracts. Since IPSO contracts require improved information transfer, they could potentially stimulate innovation as well as processes for evaluation of the contracts. By involving the contractors in the design phase their knowledge could be used in a better way, creating a feedback loop from practice to design.The empirical part, focusing on the rail infrastructure industry in Sweden, has been collected using individual interviews and a group interview approach.

Preceding Crops Selection, Colza Seeding Norms and Dates Optimization in North Kazakhstan

Colza is a relatively new crop for North Kazakhstan. The increase of colza seeds production is restricted by its cultivation technology imperfection. Empiric model of colza for seeds cultivation is designed, allowing using its maximum potential. It was found out that correct preceding crops selection, optimization of norms and dates of colza seeding provide seeds heavy weight crops, reducing crops production cost and increasing cost efficiency at 62% average.

Harnessing Data for National Security

Since 9/11, the U.S. government has initiated efforts to enhance its information-sharing capabilities and doubled its investment in counterterrorism, spending nearly $80 billion. Sharing data and conducting analyses across the government’s legacy stovepipes of information is challenging but mandatory to reduce redundancy, increase cost efficiency, and improve national security mission performance. The challenges involved in harnessing big data analytics for a more enlightened approach to national security center on striking the optimal balance between complex opposing forces—opportunity versus risk, collective security versus individual privacy, and innovation versus protection. While the government has made progress in identifying existing data sources and sharing high-level metadata, it is still in the early phases of the maturity curve in terms of enabling access across the federal ecosystem to leverage the valuable analytics that inform evidence-driven decision-making. This paper explores the strategies and frameworks to expedite effectively analyzing and using data to drive national security activities.

Deriving Cost-Efficient Strategies for Observational Assessments of Postural Loads

Studies aimed at optimizing resource allocation between different sampling stages are characterized by both simplicity and incompleteness in optimization and economic analysis. The aim of this study was therefore to completely resolve the allocation problem for a four-stage strategy devoted to observational assessment of workrelated postural loads with the precision of the mean estimate considered as ‘output’. The derived demand functions for inputs to the four stages were used to derive functions for the minimized cost and the maximized precision of the assessment strategy. The application of the theoretical results to a working posture assessment study led to increased cost efficiency of the assessment strategy investigated in the study. Under the additional constraint that the optimal values must be integers, optimization of this strategy would result in either a 12% reduction in cost or a 7% increase in precision.

Personalisierte Medizin

In the middle of the 1980s and 1990s, drug research underwent a significant change. With new knowledge gained from molecular medicine, it became possible to understand the development and course of many diseases in much more detail. As a consequence, truly new therapies were developed on the basis of natural sciences. Progress in medicine is not only based on newly available therapeutic options but also implies the identification of the therapy which suits the patient best. And it is exactly here where medicine as well as drug development are currently undergoing a paradigm shift which can be characterised by the catchword "personalised medicine". Personalised medicine encompasses defined tandems of therapeutic and diagnostic agents and leads to a therapy which is based on single patient groups rather than solely on disease diagnoses. In this therapy concept--in addition to the regular examination of the patient--a diagnostic test is performed to assess certain patient characteristics as a basis for the choice of therapy and/or therapy control. Primarily, it is the patient who benefits from personalised medicine by a higher probability of therapeutic success or by an increased tolerance. Thereby, personalised medicine may also increase cost efficiency in the health care sector. To introduce more personalised therapies and therefore achieve the best possible patient care as well as increased cost efficiency for the health care system in the future, all players in health care should work closely together to meet the challenges of personalised medicine.

124-P: THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED – ROUTINE HIGH THROUGHPUT HLA TYPING BY NGS

Aim For HLA donor centers/registries the cost of HLA typing currently is a major constriction limiting the resolution and number of loci typed at registration. Therefore, we aimed to set up a workflow for HLA typing by NGS with the clear focus on cost efficiency and high throughput. Methods The workflow is based on direct sequencing of short amplicons on Illumina MiSeq instruments by 3 simple steps. Step 1: PCR amplification of exons 2 and 3 of HLA loci A, B, C, DRB1, DQB1 and DPB1 on Fluidigm Access Array chips. Adapters for the NGS sequencing reaction and tags to identify the samples are incorporated during PCR. Step 2: PCR products of 48 samples are pooled and purified by SPRIselect. Step 3: 8 purified sample pools (384 samples) are combined, denatured and sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq sequencer (2 x 250bp). All steps are automated on liquid handling systems equipped with barcode scanners that communicate with a custom LIMS for sample tracking to prevent sample mix-up by design. For HLA allele assignment we developed the neXtype software featuring high-quality typing in combination with minimal user intervention.[figure1] Results We have carried out typing of more than 200,000 samples at 6 loci since entering routine operation in January 2013. Turn around time is less than 14 days. Despite our focus on increasing cost efficiency, we achieve a typing resolution that exceeds the current standard of Sanger typing as applied for donor registration. Conclusions High throughput routine operation confirms that NGS measures up to the high expectations. The described workflow for HLA typing by NGS has proven simpler, faster, better and more cost effective than Sanger sequencing.

National Variation in Costs and Mortality for Leukodystrophy Patients in US Children's Hospitals

Inherited leukodystrophies are progressive, debilitating neurological disorders with few treatment options and high mortality rates. Our objective was to determine national variation in the costs for leukodystrophy patients and to evaluate differences in their care. We developed an algorithm to identify inherited leukodystrophy patients in deidentified data sets using a recursive tree model based on International Classification of Disease, 9th Edition, Clinical Modification, diagnosis and procedure charge codes. Validation of the algorithm was performed independently at two institutions, and with data from the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) of 43 US children's hospitals, for a 7-year period between 2004 and2010. A recursive algorithm was developed and validated, based on six International Classification of Disease, 9th Edition, Clinical Modification, codes and one procedure code that had a sensitivity up to 90% (range 61-90%) and a specificity up to 99% (range 53-99%) for identifying inherited leukodystrophy patients. Inherited leukodystrophy patients comprise 0.4% of admissions to children's hospitals and 0.7% of costs. During 7 years, these patients required $411 million of hospital care, or $131,000/patient. Hospital costs for leukodystrophy patients varied at different institutions, ranging from two to 15 times more than the average pediatric patient. There was a statistically significant correlation between higher volume and increased cost efficiency. Increased mortality rates had an inverse relationship with increased patient volume that was not statistically significant. We developed and validated a code-based algorithm for identifying leukodystrophy patients in deidentified national datasets. Leukodystrophy patients account for $59 million of costs yearly at children's hospitals. Our data highlight potential to reduce unwarranted variability and improve patient care.

Is There an Optimal Pension Fund Size? A Scale-Economy Analysis of Administrative and Investment Costs

This paper investigates scale economies and the optimal scale of pension funds, estimating different cost functions with varying assumptions about the shape of the underlying average cost function: Ushaped versus monotonically declining. Using unique data for Dutch pension funds over 1992-2009, we find that unused scale economies for both administrative and investment activities are indeed large and concave, that is, huge for small pension funds and decreasing with pension fund size. For administrative activities, we observe a clear optimal scale of around 40 thousand participants during 1992-2000 (pointing to a U shaped average cost function), which increases sharply in subsequent years to size above the largest pension fund, pointing to monotonically decreasing average costs. As regards investment costs we observe an optimal scale for total assets of around € 690 million and larger, without a clear shift over time and without diseconomies of scale for larger funds. The results are very sensitive to the correct functional form of the cost model. Consolidation among especially smaller and medium-sized pension funds would increase cost efficiency.