Abstract: A method for mediating transactions between firms including receiving registration demands and relevant product and firm information from purchasing firms and supplier firms, performing various mediating processing, and ultimately providing to the purchasing firm, the information that relates to selected supplier firm and products that the supplier firm wishes to supply, when the supplier firm communicates a desire to transact with the purchasing firm, or the supplier firm is selected by the comparison processing of the requested transaction conditions information.

Abstract: In conventional transactions between firms, it is difficult to make objective, quantitative evaluations in advance of firms with which no past transactions have been performed or of the quality of items supplied by a supplier firm with which few transactions have been made. Thus, a firm will not necessarily be able to negotiate with a firm that can supply high-quality items. As a result, a purchasing firm may not be able to purchase high-quality items efficiently, leading to increases in production costs and shipping details. Also, product quality may be lowered because high-quality items could not be obtained. When global purchasing is to be performed, the majority of negotiations will be with firms with which there have been no past transactions. Thus, there is a need for a system that allows efficient purchasing of high-quality products.

Abstract: A development support system for supporting new product development activities including designing, manufacturing experimental models and testing the functions of the experimental models and for providing an environment for the cooperative activities of a plurality of members of a development project team has a model storage for storing product models, resource models of resources to be used for product development and product development activity models; a target storage for storing target values of schedules of product development, and the cost and the performance of the product; an estimating unit for estimating schedules of product development and the cost and the performance of the product on the basis of the models stored in the model storage; a support unit for support the operations of the members of the development project team for making reference to the models, the target values and the estimated values, and changing and particularizing the models, the target values and the estimated values; a noti

Abstract: A resource recycling system and a product circulation system, wherein a search is made for information regarding specifications and production methods for a recovered product and an original product is produced with the recovered product used as resources. These systems include a plurality of production factories for producing a predetermined products, and housing a production apparatus and a reclamation factory. A communication network is connected for transmitting therebetween production information necessary for producing products. Also a recycle plate is created for identifying a production apparatus. The plate is used to transmit accounting information on an amount of money required to reproduce the product from the reclaimed resources. The reclamation apparatus also identifies a production apparatus by which a recovered product was produced, extracts production information on the recovered product and generates a disassembly procedure for the recovered product from the extracted production information.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a manufacturing system which accepts a custom order of product from a customer and custom manufactures a product without sacrificing manufacturing efficiency. The manufacturing system includes the featuring steps of inputting the required specification of a product, creating the product design based on the design information of the product transmitted from a designing department, status data from the production department, and the input required specification, showing the created product design to the customer, selectively indicating a product to be purchased, transmitting the specification of the selected product to the production department, and producing a product based on the selected product specification.

Abstract: Order entry apparatus for automatic estimation a transformation model comprising a pattern composed of a plurality of parameters representing custom product specifications, production line conditions and factors for composing the estimates for production cost and completion date. The parameters of this transformation model are specified by learning, leading to estimation for the requested product specifications, in broad consideration of conditions such as those of the production line. The use of a neural network model as this pattern transformation model makes pattern transformation more flexible and pattern learning more efficient. Estimation accuracy is also increased by entering values of predicted charges in production line conditions such as loads or stock obtained from resource requirements planning, process design, capacity requirements planning, etc.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a character recognition equipment which is capable of recognizing with high accuracy those characters that have poor contrast and produce variation in printing density such as characters printed on industrial products.The character recognition equipment according to the present invention is composed of an input unit group which processes in image in a plurality of window regions that are set on a character image, a feature unit group which performs calculation on values obtained by adding thresholds to the output values therefrom, and an output unit group which performs calculation on values obtained by multiplying output values from the feature unit group and adding the thresholds to the sum total thereof. Here, the thresholds and the weights can be adjusted automatically with an actual object image.

Abstract: A system for carrying out a cooperative control operation for a plurality of automated devices connected together in which the individual operations of the automated device can be controlled individually in accordance with a program. In the control method in this system, the controlling of various automated devices is practiced by inputting a program described in a language which has a unified system, and translating this program in accordance with the combination of the automated devices.