ENTROPY,INFORMATION,NOISE—STUDIES ON SYSTEM EVOLUTION

Universe, ecosystem, social system, etc. are evolving systems. The evolving processes of thesesystems have gradual small changes and rapid drastic changes with uncertainties under the constraintsof environment. Systems, as a whole, are evolving toward complexity, diversity and variety withfluctuations and jumps. New order emerges from "mutations". The evolution is bothchance-dependent and path-dependent. In this paper three basics: entropy, information and noise areemphasized with regard to system evolution which is a field that can give people wisdom to solvesystem problems with domain knowledge.     

COMPARISON OF MAX—MIN APPROACH AND NN METHOD FOR RELIABILITY OPTIMIZATION OF SERIES—PARALLEL SYSTEM

Two heuristics, the max-min approach and the Nakagawa and Nakashima method, are consideredfor the redundancy allocation problem with series-parallel structure. The max-min approach canformulate the problem as an integer linear programming problem instead of an integer nonlinearproblem. This paper presents a comparison between those methods from the standpoint of solutionquality and computational complexity. The experimental results show that the max-min approach issuperior to the Nakagawa and Nakashima method in terms of solution quality in small-scale problems,but analysis of computational complexity shows that the max-min approach is inferior to other greedyheuristics.     

STABILITY CRITERIA FOR A CLASS OF UNCERTAINSYSTEMS WITH TIME—DELAY

Some stability criteria are obtained for a class of uncertain systems with time-delay usingLyapunov functional and analytic techniques. It is easy to check the criteria by making use of theboundedness of the uncertainties.     

STRATEGIC EXERCISE OF REAL OPTIONS：INVESTMENT DECISIONS IN TECHNOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Viewing investment projects in new technologies as real options, this paper studies the effects ofendogenous competition and asymmetric information on the strategic exercise of real options. We firstdevelop a multi-period, game-theoretic model and show how competition leads to early exercise andaggressive investment behaviors and how competition erodes option values. We then relax the typicalfull-information assumption found in the literature and allow information asymmetry to exist acrossfirms. Our model shows, in contrast to the literature that payoff is independent of the ordering ofexercise, that the sequential exercise of real options may generate both informational and payoffexternalities. We also find some surpising but interesting results such as having more information isnot necessarily better.     

FROM MANUFACTURING SCHEDULING TO SUPPLY CHAIN COORDINATION：THE CONTROL OF COMPLEXITY AND UNCERTAINTY

With time-based competition and rapid technology advancements, effective manufacturingscheduling and supply chain coordination are critical to quickly respond to changing marketconditions. These problems, however, are difficult in view of inherent complexity and variousuncertainties involved. Based on a series of results by the authors, decomposition and coordination byusing Lagrangian relaxation is identified in this paper as an effective way to control complexity anduncertainty.A manufacturing scheduling problem is first formulated within the job shop context withuncertain order arrivals, processing times, due dates, and part priorities as a separable optimizationproblem. A solution methodology that combines Lagrangian relaxation, stochastic dynamicprogramming, and heuristics is developed. Method improvements to effectively solve large problemsare also highlighted. To extend manufacturing scheduling within a factory to coordinate autonomicmembers across chains of suppliers, a decentralized supply chai     

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING AND VENDOR SUPPORT QUALITY BY THE USAGE OF APPLICATION SOFTWARE PACKAGES： A STUDY OF ASIAN ENTREPRENEURS

In this paper we study how organizational learning impacts organizational behavior, and howvendor support quality enhances product adoption and usage behavior.These constructs were verifiedusing Application Software Packages(ASP)-a prewritten, precoded, commercially available set ofprograms that eliminates the need for individuals or organizations to write their own softwareprograms for certain functions. The relationship between ASP usage, usage outcomes and useprocesses were also investigated. Two hundred and ninety-five Chinese, Indian, and Malayentrepreneurships were studied. It was found that usage outcome strongly determines usage, while useprocess has only an indirect relationship (via outcome) on usage. The impact of organizational learningand vendor service quality on usage, usage outcome, and use process were robust. Theoretical andpractical implications of the research are discussed.     

Technical Notes ：STUDIES ON THE VALUE OF SECONDARY MARKET TO THE SUPPLY CHAIN

This paper investigates the impact of a secondary market, where retailers can buy and sell excessinventories, on the supply chain. We develop a two-period model with a single manufacturer and tworetailers. At the beginning of the first period the retailers order and receive products from themanufacturer, but at the beginning of the second period, they can trade surplus products betweenthemselves in the secondary market. We investigate the impact of the correlated dependence ofretailers' demand on both the quantity effect and the allocation effect under the secondary market.Lastly,we study potential strategies for the manufacturer to increase sales with the existence of thesecondary market.     

LOGISTICS SCHEDULING： ANALYSIS OFTWO-STAGE PROBLEMS

This paper studies the coordination effects between stages for scheduling problems where decision-making is a two-stage process. Two stages are considered as one system. The system can be a supply chain that links two stages, one stage representing a manufacturer; and the other, a distributor It also can represent a single manufacturer, while each stage represents a different department responsible for a part of operations. A problem that jointly considers both stages in order to achieve ideal overall system performance is defined as a system problem. In practice, at times, it might not be feasible for the two stages to make coordinated decisions due to (i) the lack of channels that allow decision makers at the two stages to cooperate, and/or (ii) the optimal solution to the system problem is too difficult (or costly) to achieve.Two practical approaches are applied to solve a variant of two-stage logistic scheduling problems. The Forward Approach is defined as a solution procedure by which the first sta     

Finding the topology of implicitly defined two algebraic plane curves

An algorithm is given for computing in a very efficient way the topology of two real algebraic plane curves defined implicitly.The authors preform a symbolic pre-processing that allows us later to execute all numerical computations in an accurate way.     

The large sample properties of the solutions of general estimating equations

This paper develops the large sample properties of the solutions of the general estimating equations which are unbiased or asymptotically unbiased or with nuisance parameters for correlated data.The authors do not make the assumption that the estimating equations come from some objective function when we establish the large sample properties of the solutions.So these results extend the work of Newey and McFadden(1994) and are more widely applicable.Furthermore,we provide some examples to justify the importance of our work.