World Wide Web was born as a means to provide information through the Internet. As a number of e-shopping sites are developed on the Internet, the Web provides not only information but also services with which users can interact to buy products. This paper describes the basic standards used in Web service; XML, SOAP, and WSDL, and how Web services are implemented on the Java-based platform Axis. It also mentions the REST-based Web service which gains more attention recently. Finally it forecasts the future of Web service from a viewpoint of Semantic Web.

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The proportion of the tertiary industry is increasing in the developed nations. Not only in service business but also in all industry including the manufacturing industry, offering service value has come to occupy important position in economic activities. Under such trend of service economics, it is required to find service value and to create service business model continually and systematically. We expect that an approach harmonizing systems engineering and knowledge management is effective for this purpose. This paper shows the possibility of our new idea through reporting a panel discussion in the study meeting related to trans-disciplinary science and technology.

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In order to analyze the success/failure factors in offshore software development service by the structural equation modeling, this paper proposes to follow two approaches together; domain knowledge based heuristic analysis and factor analysis based rational analysis. The former works for generating and verifying of hypothesis to find factors and causalities. The latter works for verifying factors introduced by theory to build the model without heuristics. Following the proposed combined approaches for the responses from skilled project managers of the questionnaire, this paper found that the vendor property has high causality for the success compared to software property and project property.

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Almost all companies are now utilizing computer networks to support speedier and more effective in-house information-sharing and communication. However, existing systems are designed to support communications only within the same department. Therefore, in our research, we propose an in-house communication support system which is based on the “Information Propagation Model (IPM).” The IPM is proposed to realize word-of-mouth communication in a social network, and to support information-sharing on the network. By applying the system in a real company, we found that information could be exchanged between different and unrelated departments, and such exchanges of information could help to build new relationships between the users who are apart on the social network.

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To develop a new piece of reuse-based software, the first task is to estimate the workload, the time, the human resource availability and their skill level, the reusable software resources, and the cost that is necessary for development. Consequently, the correct amounts of resources, such as development members and costs, must be prepared; then the development project can proceed. To accomplish such work as precisely as possible, some type of computer-assisted method is required for work to select and determine the modules to reuse, and to estimate the workload for their modification. Such software development for a maintenance service system would have to proceed with various types of specialized fields involved. Therefore, several different sections or companies might need to cooperate to make any estimation. In this paper, we propose an estimate support method using a software organization management tool that can visualize the relationships among the existing software modules, and estimate data linked to each module. The method allows investigation of the existing software to select reusable modules and gathers estimate data to produce an estimate for a development workload while taking into consideration of the complexity of every software module found. Furthermore, this paper describes an evaluation when the proposed method is used in a reuse-based software development project for a particular maintenance service system.

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A method of forecasting shipping number of parts is proposed for build-to-order products using quote information in pre-sales as an advance indicator. As the target shipping number of parts changes irregularity in a short cycle, it is difficult to forecast with conventional methods. In case of build-to-order product, quote information is useful for forecasting multiplying by order probability. But the problem is how to identify the order probability includes unobservable noise. The method assumes the noise as normal random number and corrects it with Kalman filter. The shipping number is calculated using identified order probability and previous quoted information. The method was evaluated using 78 types of parts of an information equipment product. Experimental result demonstrates that shipping number of parts whose average rate of change are less than 0.4 can be estimated with 28.2% of mean absolute percent error, making the method available for forecasting the target shipping number.

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This paper shows an optimization method for redemption and due date matching which assigns the receivables to the payments date under the pre-defined constraints which related companies specified. Our proposed method determines the pairs of the receivables and the payment with proper new settlement date which closes the fluid assets of companies to their target amounts by extending/shortening the redemption/due date. This paper shows that this matching program is categorized in integer linear programming. By applying this matching mechanism, transferors could utilize credit of issuers and also reduce fluid assets for payments. Effectiveness of our optimization method is shown by executing simulation which emulates the issuing and receiving status of receivables in Japanese companies.

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The La_0.5Sr_0.5CoO₃ was used as a cathode for the first time when the plasma display panel was used on the handheld personal computer. It has favorable sputtering resistance characteristic and stable discharge characteristic in gases. In this report, the electrical characteristics of the La_0.5Sr_0.5CoO₃ was investigated through an analysis of the DC plasma panel which was made as prototype. The dimensions of the test plasma panel were measured exactly by the end-measuring machine, and its electric properties were estimated. On the analysis of the DC plasma panel, LaB₆ and metal Ni cathode were investigated in the same way, and the comparative analysis was carried out. From the analysis in sputtering experiment that was conducted in the AC-type sputtering apparatus, the sputter rate of La_0.5Sr_0.5CoO₃ is greater than the LaB₆'s one, while the sputter rate of La_0.5Sr_0.5CoO₃ that is used as a cathode, is smaller than others. The La_0.5Sr_0.5CoO₃ has larger secondary-emission coefficient γ than LaB₆ or metal Ni. It was presumed that La_0.5Sr_0.5CoO₃'s larger secondary-emission coefficient γ reduce the sputter rate when it is used as a cathode.

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The problem of time series can be classified into three types, in a practical sense. The first problem is how to generate a prediction model that adequately represents the characteristics of the early time series data. The second problem is how to quickly detect the structural change of the time series, where the estimated prediction model does not meet the real data any longer. The third problem is how to correct the time series model after the change detection. This paper focuses on the second problem and proposes a novel method for quick detection of the structural change point in time series. The proposed method is based on a sequential probability ratio test that has been mainly used in the field of quality control. This paper discusses the features of the method from numerical experimentation results. And also, this paper shows its effectiveness, in comparison with the well-known Chow Test.

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This paper proposes a method for contrast improvement to generate an output image with a balance of higher contrast and visual naturalness. In the proposed method, not only a distribution of all gray-levels in an input image but also a distribution of quadratic differential values at all pixels are used for generating Look-Up-Table. Both a histogram to represent a distribution of gray-levels and a histogram to represent a distribution of quadratic differential values are generated. The frequency of a gray-level is divided by the frequency of the corresponding quadratic differential values to avoid from the increase of noises and from the too strong contrast enhancement with the saturation of brightness. The output images by the proposed method had good balance of higher contrast and visual naturalness without many noises and brightness saturation.

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The contours of many industrial parts contain straight lines and positions of the lines are therefore useful information for object detection. This paper presents a matching technique of straight lines in θ-ρ space. Any lines in 2D space are represented with parameters θ and ρ by Hough transform. To find an object is to find combination of line parameters in θ-ρ space. Our matching method contains edge detection, line detection and matching processes. At first, we perform edge detection for model and scene image to detect contour of objects. Next, we extract the straight lines using Hough transform for provided edge image. Then in the matching process, we perform matching with parameters of straight lines. Matching process contains θ matching, ρ matching and pose estimation. In the θ matching, we use the relative θ values of corresponding lines. In the ρ matching, we compute parameters of transfer and deviations of ρ values. Finally, in the pose estimation we compute transfer parameters using corresponding intersection points of the straight lines. The experimental results show our method is robust for rotation, occlusion and scaling of objects.

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Recently, laser radar as a sensor to measure distance with a forward car is widely studied. The laser radar has a characteristic that the received signal becomes to be buried in noise with increasing distance. It is difficult to measure long distance with low laser power. Then, a new type of the chaos laser radar has been studied. This laser radar is relatively resistant to noise and can simply process because of using only add calculation. However, a distance resolution of the chaos laser radar is limited by clock cycle of FPGA which is used for signal processing of the laser radar. Therefore, a new method to improve a distance resolution by a phase delay circuit is developed. As a result, the distance resolution of chaos laser radar is improved to 1/10 using phase delay circuit.

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This paper discusses robust H_∞ disturbance attenuation for an uncertain system with time varying delay. An appropriate Lyapunov functional, which takes into account the range of time-delay and its derivative, is introduced to investigate robust H_∞ disturbance attenuation. Less conservative results are obtained by such a Lyapunov functional with model transformation method and free weighting matrix method. Numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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So many papers with respect to the stabilization of the inverted pendulum are reported, because it is typically unstable system and is well used as example to verify many control theories. However, few approaches consider the inverted pendulum as unknown parameter system. This paper proposes a new VSS (Variable Structure System) robust adaptive control system including a self-tuning controller for a rotary inverted pendulum whose whole parameters are unknown. The control system prepares two kinds of adaptive controllers, and the stabilization of inverted pendulum is achieved by separating the system to two parts of the pendulum and the rotary arm. The rotational angle of the pendulum is stabilized by tracking type's VSS adaptive control method, and the rotary arm is simultaneously stabilized by STC (self-tuning control) system that assures the boundary reference angle of the pendulum. It is then not sufficient to construct STC system by using only adjustable parameter of VSS adaptive control system. Therefore, whole basic parameters are recursively estimated in order to realize STC system by using least squares parameter adaptive law, and it is achieved by superposing the perturbation signal to the stable adaptive control input on limited short interval. Furthermore, STC system designs LQ controller by developing an efficient QR method for real time operation.
Finally, the validity of the proposed system is demonstrated through some numerical simulations and practical experimental result.

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Uncapacitated Facility Location Problem (UFLP) is a fundamental optimization problem about the selection of locations where some facilities in which the same service is supplied are placed. Since it is shown that UFLP is NP-hard, it is thought that there exists no hope in finding a polynomial time algorithm through which an optimal solution is always obtained. In this paper, we propose a genetic algorithm for solving UFLP. In UFLP, according to the ratio for the cost for facilities placement and the cost for which the users use the facility, the number of facility placement locations can be expected, roughly. Therefore, the partial solution space that seems there is a good solution can be expected to some extent based on the classification index. By using the mutation with the operation which searches the partial solution space where it can be expected that there is a good solution, the proposed method can search the whole space of solutions efficiently. The effectiveness is shown by a numerical experiment where our method is compared with existing methods.

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This paper presents a method for the integrative optimization system. Recently, many methods for global optimization have been proposed. The objective of these methods is to find a global minimum of non-convex function. However, large numbers of function evaluations are required, in general. We utilize the response surface method to approximate function space to reduce the function evaluations. The response surface method is constructed from sampling points. The RBF Network, which is one of the neural networks, is utilized to approximate the function space. Then Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is applied to the response surface. Proposed system consists of three parts. That is, (Part 1) Generation of the sampling points, (Part 2) Construction of response surface by RBF Network, (Part 3) Optimization by PSO. By iterating these three parts, it is expected that the approximate global minimum of non-convex function can be obtained with a few number of function evaluations. Through numerical examples, the effectiveness and validity are examined.

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With the high speed innovation of information technology, many production scheduling systems have been developed. However, a lot of customization according to individual production environment is required, and then a large investment for development and maintenance is indispensable. Therefore now the direction to construct scheduling systems should be changed. The final objective of this research aims at developing a system which is built by it extracting the scheduling technique automatically through the daily production scheduling work, so that an investment will be reduced. This extraction mechanism should be applied for various production processes for the interoperability. Using the master information extracted by the system, production scheduling operators can be supported to accelerate the production scheduling work easily and accurately without any restriction of scheduling operations. By installing this extraction mechanism, it is easy to introduce scheduling system without a lot of expense for customization. In this paper, at first a model for expressing a scheduling problem is proposed. Then the guideline to extract the scheduling information and use the extracted information is shown and some applied functions are also proposed based on it.

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We propose a business scenario evaluation method using qualitative and quantitative hybrid model. In order to evaluate business factors with qualitative causal relations, we introduce statistical values based on propagation and combination of effects of business factors by Monte Carlo simulation. In propagating an effect, we divide a range of each factor by landmarks and decide an effect to a destination node based on the divided ranges. In combining effects, we decide an effect of each arc using contribution degree and sum all effects. Through applied results to practical models, it is confirmed that there are no differences between results obtained by quantitative relations and results obtained by the proposed method at the risk rate of 5%.

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An Integrated Analysis and Evaluation Support System for Sustainable Development (IAESSD) has been developed for analyzing and assessing energy systems from the aspect of sustainable development of regional, national even the global levels. The developed IAESSD consists of three major components: Multilevel Flow Model (MFM), Geographic Information System (GIS) and Driver Force, State and Response (DSR) model. The three components are linked together through the Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development (EISD). By using the IAESSD, appropriate options of energy policies can be evaluated by the three steps; (i) calculation of EISD parameters based on the MFM and GIS, (ii) causal analysis for the time changes of the EISD parameters based on the DSR model, and (iii) recommendation and investigation new policy options in qualitative analysis way based on the causal analysis results. The tools and technologies of computer science and software engineering were applied to materialize the three modeling components to develop a workable software platform. As a case study, the whole energy system of China was simulated and evaluated by the developed IAESSD to reduce viable policy in her future from the aspect of sustainable development.

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A bi-directional magnetic energy recovery switch (MERS) having a bridge configuration with four IGBTs has the feature that a power factor correction is possible regardless of the impedance and power frequency of the load by the automatic synchronized switching. For this application, a new 1200V IGBT module has been successfully designed and fabricated, for the first time. Since the switching frequency in the MERS application is so slow of 50-60 Hz that a lower forward voltage drop characteristic is strongly required for the IGBT and FWD chips even though their fast switching features are sacrificed. Therefore, the superior characteristics of lower on-state voltage drop of 1.54 V in the IGBT chip and 1.20 V in the FWD one can be attained and, as a result of this, total power dissipation can be successfully reduced by approximately more than 40% when compared to the conventional PWM converter application.

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This paper focuses on realizability of a reduced-size LPF using a substrate loaded width high relative dielectric constant rods by LTCC technologies. We have examined two sections form hairpin type LPF and one section form hairpin. As a result, in comparison with the characteristic of one section, we could confirm that good out-of-band characteristic was provided with the realization of a steep skirt characteristic.

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