Two different methods to extract the license plate area of a vehicle have been used for automatic recognition purposes. One method is with a color vision system and the other is with an edge detecting operator. The system with color vision has some problems if the colors of license plate and vehicle's body are similar. The various plate colors in Korea also drops the system performance. The edge detecting operator also has a problem for a real time processing since it performs on all pixels of the scene. In this paper a possible method using gray level vision system and available pre-known information of license plates is suggested. The suggested procedure searches the lower boundary of the plate by counting high contrast points between one and near pixel from the bottom line of the scene. It finds the upper boundary from the bottom line by adding number plate height after finding the lower boundary. The left and right boundaries are found by similar processes.

CIM and JIT have been known as a suitable production system under various product with small quantity production environment which demands short delivery, high quality, and flexibility. CIM is the integrated system for both automated facilities and computer information processing technology and JIT is the system for an exhaustive waste elimination. This paper proposes the JIT-CIM system which combines the concepts and characteristics of JIT and CIM. The JIT-CIM system has been implemented under the strategy of management such as market-in, integration, recycling and resonable profit and which integrates the automation facilities and information processing technology on the basis of waste elimination concept and small lot pronciple of JIT.

Mixed Model Assembly Lines (MMALs) are increasingly used to produce differentiated products on a single assembly line without work-in-process storage, Usually, a typical MMAL consists of a number of (1) stations doing exactly the same operation on every job, (2) stations involving operations with different choices, and (3) stations offering operations that are not performed on every job, or that are performed on every job but with many options. For stations of the first type there is no sequencing problem at all. However, for the second type a set-up cost is incurred each time the operation switches from one choice to another. At the third type of stations, different models, requring different amounts and choices of assembly work, creates an uneven flow of work along the line and variations in the work load at these stations. When a subsequence of jobs requires more work load than the station can handle, it is necessary to help the operations at the station or to complete the work elsewhere. Therefore, a schedule which minimize the sum of set-up cost and utility work cost is desired. So this study has developed Fixed Random Ordering Rule (FROR), Fixed Ascending Ordering Rule (FAOR), Fixed Descending Ordering Rule, and Extended NHR (ENHR). ENHR is to choose optimal color ordering of each batch with NHR, and to decide job sequence of the batch with it, too. As the result of experiments, ENHR was the best heuristic algorithm. NHR is a new heuristic rule in which only the minimum addition of violations from both partial sequence and unassigned sequence at every branch could be considered. And this is a heuristic sequencing rule for the third type of stations at MMAL. This study developed one more heuristic algorithm to test the performance of NHR, which is named as Practical Heuristic Rule (PHR).

The use of advanced electronic security system is growing quickly to protect properties and life. However, customers cannot select appropriate configuration of the system because there are no objective evaluation methods to measure the security ability of the system. Furthermore, the system suppliers cannot propose quantitative value of security ability of the system. This study suggests an objective evaluation and selection method that customers and suppliers can use to base his or her decision when choosing the most appropriate configuration of the system. Our method identifies 6 characteristics and 20 sub- characteristics of the electronic security system, calculates their weights, and decides the best configuration. We use AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to assign the weights of characteristics. Finally, this paper gives an example to compare four alternative configurations of the system.

In this paper, we propose an interface design for helping users to utilize a statistical analysis program efficiently. This interface design is useful to suggest which statistical method to use and to provide the result by linking data file to the statistical analysis program in a user friendly way. In chapter 2, we explain the overall structure and modules of the interface.

Knapsack problems represent many business application such as cargo loading, project selection, and capital budgeting. In this research we developed a knapsack problem solver based on Martello-Toth algorithm using a relational database management system on the PC platform. The solver used the menu-driven user interface. The solver can be easily integrated with the database of decision support system because the solver can access the database to retrieve the data for the model and to store the result directly.

Information technology's potential for changing processes is widely acknowledged and various information technologies exist as a tool making business reengineering possible. Groupware is one of information technology that typically work in concert to bring out change in processes. This paper attempts to explain the importance of groupware as a critical information technology for business reengineering by developing a methodology of applying groupware to business reengineering. In order to understand the applicability of groupware to business reengineering, this paper has the following objectives. 1) Examines how the capability of groupware can play as a chang lever or enabler of process innovation explicitly. 2) Propose a integrated business reengineering methodology that incorporates process, process environment and information technologies specifically. A case study was used to provide the insight how groupware can play as a enabler of process innovation. The case was analyzed according to the reengineering methodology we proposed.

Integrating database views is an important step in the conceptual database design process. This paper develops a view integration support system by using a semantic object model. In order to determine the order of the integration, affinities among views and objects are analyzed by employing the vector space theory. Semantic conflicts such as naming and structural conflicts are then resolved. The resolution results are stored in a view repository. Objects and views are integrated and stored in this view repository until all views are considered. A prototype for the system is built and can be used in a client/server environment.

Due-date is an important factor in Flexible Manufacturing System scheduling. Even though most of researchers have focused part selection and loading problem using fixed due-date assignment rules, FMSs consist of multi-function machines which facilitate alternative processes. This research investigates interactions of three dispatching mechanisms, three NSS (Next Station Selection) rules and four due-date assignment rules using simulation. Both cost-based and time-based performance measures are considered in this research.

This research shows that fuzzy set theory can be useful in modeling and solving flow shop scheduling problems with uncertain processing times and illustrates a method for solving job sequencing problem which the opinions of experts disagree in each processing time. In this study, FCDS (Fuzzified Campbell-Dudek-Smith) algorithm and FNEH (Fuzzified Nawaz-Enscope-Ham) algorithm are proposed to improve the fuzzified Branch & Bound algorithm that requires long run-time and computational complexities to find the optimal sequence. These proposed algorithms are also designed to treat opinions of experts. In this paper, Fuzzy processing times are expressed as triangular fuzzy numbers and comparison method use Lee-Li method and ranking method based on the dominance property. On the basis of the proposed method, an example is presented.

Quality is defined as several terms of fitness for use, conformance to requirements or specification, and loss of social effect. And the quality can be classified into design, production and service quality according to its formation of product (or servece). To be satisfactory product, the product must be controlled to maintain the specified level of quality at the whole life cycle of R&D step through disposal step. And the wrong design is one of the great source of cost. Therefore, the quality assurance on the R&D step is very important. This paper suggests a general procedure for the R&D quality assurance and discusses the methods for the reliable design. And a telecommunication equipment is considered as an applied example. Finally, it is discussed some subjects on the R&D quality assurance as further researches.

There is no generally accepted definition of information technology (IT) although this is an important issue in the management information systems (MIS) area. In an effort to address this issue, the evolution of IT is reviewed from a historical perspective. A historical review on IT suggests that its evolution be broken down into three stages in a systematic way. Further, the identification of mainstream research interests at each stage makes a contribution in part to defining IT. Two approaches to defining IT are identified, and limitations of each approach are discussed. Finally, a better way to address these limitations is suggested.

This paper develops a simple interactive procedure which can be efficiently used to solve a bicriteria linear programming problem. The procedure exploits the relatively simple structure of the bicriterion linear programming problem. Its application to a transportation problem is also presented. The results demonstrate that the method developed in this paper could be easily applicable to any bicriteria linear program in general.

This paper presents a fuzzy set theory based formulation and heuristic which will allow plant layout problems to be solved for more than two input goals with different weights. The heuristic combines a construction and improvement procedure to generate a good layout from the formulation. To test the effectiveness of the heuristic, a set of examples previously used by various authors is solved and the results are compared to those from other known heuristics. The comparison indicates that the proposed method performs well for each of seventeen classical test problems.