This paper confirms, sociological approach using Group Dynamics or Group Process in Social Psychology was mighty available to consider group behavior of work groups in manufacturing industries, and creates teamwork determinants from the group integrative determinants through statistical tests, principal component analysis and their regression (Sequential Type of Principal Component Multiple Regression Analysis : STOPC-MRA). Three factors (group size, cooperative work ratio in group, direct work ratio of leader's job) are considered as operative factor of work assignment on group work style. The relationship among three factors and the teamwork determinants are cleared, and indicates to design three factors on work assignment was very important for increasing teamwork ability. Moreover, this study certifies, the teamwork determinants were divided into two categories, "task oriented (productivity)" and "people oriented (cohesiveness), " as approach to effectiveness concern group work style through leaders and their subordinates within a group.

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This paper addresses a batch scheduling problem considering multi-due-date cases. The objective is to minimize the total actual flow time of products to be processed on one machine under Just-in-Time (JIT) environment. In developing the method for solving the problem, we use the so-called Principle of Optimality of the Dynamic Programming. In order to deal with the characteristics of the batch, however, we isolate the sub-problem of which the resulting schedule has no idle time. The quality of the solution is verified by the algorithm through numerical examples.

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This paper develops an approach of interaction diagram planning by generating links for plant layout problem. Our method is matching each degree of closeness requirement between a pair of departments to a real number. It produces the so-called basic elements representing the degree of departmental closeness with a priority of search order based on the total real number attached to each department. The method draws up a basic interaction diagram by generating links between departments. In order to utilize the sense of sight for obtaining the solution, the method employs nodes and arcs on equilateral triangles on a sheet of paper. Furthermore, this basic interaction diagram is revised through rules to connect adjacent pairs of departments based on the inputted conditions. If the step yields several alternative choices of interaction diagrams, the method selects the interaction diagram with the minimum (best) value of relative closeness.

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This paper is concerned with the effectiveness of organizational culture and the meaning of mediation variables. We test some hypotheses after the cross-sectional measurement of the member's perception of organizational culture in some firms. Our tested ones are (1) the organizational culture stipulates the organizational value, and (2) mediation variables affect the organizational culture, and its perception is influenced by the member's temperament. In this paper, the resultant variables are work motivation, performance, and job satisfaction and the cause variable, i. e., organizational culture is designated as the 12 factors gained by factor analysis. The mediation variables represent 5 situational characteristics, 2 dimensional organization evolution patterns, and 6 types of temperaments.

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In this paper, perishable inventory models subject to stochastic procurement leadtime both on FIFO (First In First Out) and LIFO (Last In First Out) issuing policies are considered under zero or 1 time unit leadtime. First of all, same assumptions and notations used throughout this paper are shown. And, FIFO and LIFO models were constructed and the existence of the optimal ordering policies and their properties were clarified in these models. Furthermore, the significant results are illustrated for the relationship among inventory on hand, delay probability of procurement and optimal ordering policies.

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This paper deals with the makespan minimizations problem in an n-item, three-stage flowshop production system. Each stage is assigned to a machine, and a processed job for a product is composed of four elementary operations. The machine assignments for the three elementary operations are fixed, but that for the remaining elementary operation is free. Thus a schedule is determined according to the machine assignment to an elementary operation and the operations sequencing in each machine. The study clarified that the operation sequencing is easily determined under a limited processing time constraint and showed the sufficient condition for obtaining the optimal schedule through theoretical analysis. Another research result is a proposal of optimal solution algorithm based on the branch and bound method, together with a numerical example and concrete procedure. The study also discussed the scheduling problem where the free assignment of machine to an elementary operation is limited to machine no. 1 and machine no. 3.

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A dynamic lot-sizing problem for the part family which has common set-up preparations can be regarded as the planning problem for a production cell. We call it "group lot-sizing problem" and have proposed the lot-sizing method using a Dynamic Programming. This paper discusses the performance of the proposed method by comparing with the lower bound given by Atkins et al. We also consider the case that some parts in a part family are needed to be produced by the machines allocated to the other production cells. Then we propose a heuristic lot-sizing method for the part family which has those particular parts.

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Sign language showing by fingers is useful communication method for the handicapped and the aged, or in a noisy place and a cleanroom. This paper denotes the method to recognize sign language (numeral 1〜50) to apply the man-machine interface using the image processing. Sign language is discriminated by the number of the finger image and thumb image position in the circular area. Its center is the gravity of the metacarpal hand image, and the radius is the length of the middle finger of the opened hand image.

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The concept of maximum entropy has been applied to specify the probabilistic model of consumer optional behavior. We presented an entropy model for the purpose of the marketing structure analysis when a new brand pushed into the existing market. In this model, it was assumed that each brand had its own single attribute for purchasing the particular brand. However, it is a natural way of thinking that each brand had its own not single attribute but multiple attributes for purchasing the particular brand. Furthermore, the information on the measure of significance given to each of attributes by consumers is important to the cases of the improvement and the development of the goods. Therefore, this paper proposes a new entropy model for analyzing the marketing structure when the goods are characterized by multiple attributes. Then, the inference method of the measure of significance for any attribute is also considered based on the proposed entropy model.

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