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Background High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) has been proposed as an indicator of inflammation and cardiovascular risk. However, little is known of the comparative temporal profile of hs-CRP and its relation to outcomes according to the disease acuity. Methods We enrolled 4,263 East Asian patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and stable disease. hs-CRP was measured at baseline and 1 month post-PCI. Major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE: the composite occurrence of death, myocardial infarction, or stroke) and major bleeding were followed up to 4 years. Result The AMI group (n = 2,376; 55.7%) had higher hs-CRPbaseline than the non-AMI group (n = 1,887; 44.3%) (median: 1.5 vs. 1.0 mg/L; p Conclusion AMI patients have greater inflammation during the early and late phases than non-AMI patients. Risk phenotype of hs-CRPbaseline correlates with 1-month outcomes only in AMI patients. However, the prognostic implications of this risk phenotype appears similar during the late phase, irrespective of the disease acuity.

Purpose: This study is aimed to introduce the OPA-Kano method, an integrated version of OPA(Originality Practicality Analysis) and Kano's customer satisfaction method, and to examine its applicability.Methods: 30 ideas for smart phone accessories are generated using brain storming and SIT(Systematic Inventive Thinking) and they are analyzed through the OPA-Kano method. For analysis, correlation method between OPA and Kano's results is applied for the ideas.Results: The results show that there is significant correlation between the OPA and Kano's approach, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through the case of smart phone accessories.Conclusion: From the result of this study, we conclude that the proposed OPA-Kano method can be used for the evaluation of ideas and customer satisfaction.Key Words: OPA(Originality-Practicality Analysis), Kano model, Smart phone accessory, Creativity, Customer satisfaction. ● Received 12 January 2016, 1st revised 14 March 2016, accepted 22 March 2016Corresponding Author(ytpark@skku.edu)ⓒ 2016, The Korean Society for Quality ManagementThis is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits u nrestricted non-Commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the effect of product creativit y on the financial performance of new product in the food industry. In addition, the applicability of creative thinking method for the development of creative new food product is examined.Methods: In this study, OPA(Originality-Practicality Analysis) method i s applied to evaluate the creativity of 32 new food products of ‘H’ food company in Korea. Effects of product creativity on the financial perform-ance are analyzed using t-test and logistic regression analysis . In order to examine the applicability of SIT(Systematic Inventive Thinking) for the new product developm ent process, each subject are classified according to five SIT tools.Results: The product group belongs to creative area(CA) shows the highest financial performance among the quadrants of OPA matrix. The products are divided into two groups whether the product can be classified by SIT tools or not. The products belonged to SIT group show hi gher creativity than non-SIT group.Conclusion: From the result, it can be concluded that product creativity has effect on the financial performance of the new food products, and SIT can be used as a powerful tool in developing creative new food products.Key Words: Food Industry, OPA, Creativity of new product, Systematic Inve ntive Thinking

As the popularity of Kano's model grows, Kano's wording, which plays a pivotal role for the categorisation of quality attributes, has been criticised for being ambiguous, cumbersome, and indefinite. Many scholars have modified the wording; however, its impact has rarely been explored in detail. This paper identifies the intrinsic and extrinsic problems of Kano's wording through an extensive literature review and proposes a new way to ask using better–worse (B–W) questions and a five-point ordinal scale as alternative answers. To examine how the B–W approach works in comparison with the Kano model, the author conducted a case study of smartphones. The application results of the proposed method are different from that of the Kano model: ‘attractive’ and ‘must-be’ attributes, which postulate unidirectional effects on customer satisfaction in the Kano model, do not appear. Instead, ‘attractive tendency’ attribute and ‘must-be tendency’ attribute are found in the B–W method. A frequency test using the evaluati...

Purpose: To obtain the area for improvement, the Importance-Performance analysis(IPA) uses relatively simple questions, that is, satisfaction and importance at attribute level. However, no attempt has been made to consider the gap between own company's performance and those of competitors in IPA, in the field of quality management. This study is aimed to suggest a new prioritizing method for improvement and to test for validity of the proposed technique. Methods: This study used data collected from Song and Lim(2015), which is satisfaction of employees, customers and competitors as well as importance data for 7 quality attributes of K animal hospital. A correlation comparison with other priority methods such as Bacon(2003)'s model and Matzler and Hinterhuber(1998)'s QI index is conducted. Results: The priority results by the proposed method shows better in correlation coefficient with customer perceived priority for improvement than other methods. Conclusion: From the result of the current study, it can be concluded that the result of the proposed method is valid, while it is relatively easy to understand and analyze, and therefore no additional survey is necessary for improvement priority.

Purpose: Car seats affect customer satisfaction greatly when the seats' design is changed because car holders are in close contact with the seats. However, the improvement of the current seats' design involves risks such as investment cost, and therefore it needs strategic operating measures from the perspective of customers. Until now, operations of seats’ specification have been decided by technical-push rather than market-pull, and carried out based on professionals’ experience without measuring customer satisfaction correctly. The purpose of this study is to present a systematic approach to measure customers' perception on the car seats using the Kano model and pairwise comparison technique.Methods: The authors derive 17 major functions of a car seat by analyzing major components of car seats, and conduct a survey of 141 adults who hold a car(s).Results: The results show that consumers perceive the adjustable functions of front seats as must-be while the same functions for rear seats are perceived as attractive. In particular, motor operated functions for both front and rear seats increase customer satisfaction greatly if they are presented.Conclusion: This study shows that how much customer (dis)satisfaction will increase if a function of car seats (non)fulfilled, and therefore, the results of this study will provide practitioners and R&D personnel in new automobile seats development projects with useful information.Key Words: The Kano Model, Quality Attributes, Car Seats, Customer Satisfaction

Purpose: The recent major recalls of hazardous products caused consumer product safety acts to be strengthen worldwide. Although the recall system of hazardous products in Korea has been operating based on Framework Act on Product Safety since 2011, the evaluation of product risk has been relied on not the results of objective incident data but the results of illegal product investigations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a product risk assessment model for Korea using injury data.Methods: The authors derived Korea's risk assessment method by analysing the advantages and disadvantages of the most widely used models in advanced countries such as EU's RAPEX RAG and Janpan's R-MAP. In this study, the level of relative frequency and severity of injury are determined based on the objective incident data and the length of hospitalization respectively. In addition, the injury data occurred during 2011 is applied to the proposed risk assessment model for case study.Results: The data analysed in this paper can be classified as high risk, medium risk, low risk, acceptable risk, and safe products through the matrix from the combination of the relative frequency and the severity derived.Conclusion: The proposed risk assessment model in this study has advantage obtaining reliable objective results because it uses actual injury data and redeems the drawbacks of the existing models used in advanced countries. Furthermore, because the proposed model shows the high risk products among many, it is expected to be useful especially for customs whose main job is inspecting the imported goods and the government when selecting the target product groups for safety investigation.Key Words: Product Risk Assessment Model, Product Safety, Acceptable Risk, Severity of Injury

Purpose : This paper examines risk factors which affect project success, and proposes a method utilizing the average potential satisfaction index(API) to evaluate how much the satisfaction level of the personnel involved in the project can change by reducing the risk. Methods: The current study derives 11 risk factors affecting project success from literature review and con-ducts survey of 253 subjects who have project work experience. A modified Kano's questionnaire using 5-point Likert-scale is applied to investigate the amount of satisfaction or dissatisfaction when the risk factors are reducted or not, respectively. Results : The respondents consider that the risk factors which include the three elements of project manage-ment(schedule, quality, cost) is more important than other risk factors related to the project environment, and technology and profitability. Conclusion : The average potential satisfaction index proposed in this study can measure the perception on the risk factors of the personnel involved in the project, since it has a strong correlation with the perceived importance by the respondents in this study.Key Words : Project Management, Risk Management, Kano Model, Potential Satisfaction Index, Average Potential Index

Purpose: The Kano model has been widely accepted as a method for classifying quality attributes for almost three decades since its introduction. However, the wordings of the five alternatives in the Kano`s questionnaire has been criticised for unclear and confusable meanings. New wordings of the five alternatives are proposed in this paper. Methods: To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed wordings, we classify 30 quality attributes of smartphones using the conventional wordings and the proposed wordings respectively. The two classification results are compared with the direct classification results by undergraduate students who learned the Kano model. Results: The classification results using the proposed wordings are much more consistent with the direct classification results than those using the conventional wordings. Conclusion: The proposed wordings are less confusable and easy to understand, and thus it results in more consistent with the direct classification.