International Business Machines Corporation

Akio Koide

Shuichi Shimizu

Makoto Kano

Norishige Morimoto

Bala Ramachandran

Kaori Fujiwara

Seiji Kobayashi

Jay William Benayon

Te-Kai Liu

Koichi Kamijo

Akio Doi

Tohru Sakakura

A system and method for analyzing and managing business performance by designing and evaluating the performance of a business process model comprising a flow of business tasks and artifact sources that generate business artifacts. Business processes may be parsed to identify transformation opportunities meeting transformation conditions specified in a transformation knowledge. One or more identified transformation opportunities may be adopted, and parts of the process may be transformed according to transformation rules specified in a transformation knowledge. Analytics and computer simulation may be employed to evaluate business performance metrics of each of said transformed business processes. Iterative changes may be made to said business processes to manage business performance, reiterating transformation and evaluation steps until a satisfactory business process model is obtained. The resulting output is finally produced as a business process model in machine-readable format and can be deployed to a business environment.

System and method for analyzing and managing business performance

A computer implemented method and a computer system implementing the method of a business process transformation wizard leads a business analyst through a series of steps to invoke business transformation patterns, in order to analyze the results of those processes. The wizard first prompts the business analyst to specify business objectives of process transformation. Required parameters are added to the business process model guided by the business process transformation wizard until the business process model is completed. Once the model is completed, the wizard prompts the business analyst to select transformation techniques or patterns for optimizing process parameters and, for each selected transformation pattern, optimizes process parameters using a selected optimization technique. The wizard also prompts the business analyst to select transformation patterns for optimizing topology of the business process and, for each selected transformation pattern, optimizes topology for the business process using a selected optimization technique.

Method and apparatus for business process transformation wizard

To support a purchase or a production of a product by accurately predicting a sold amount of the product. A system that supports a purchase or a production of a product, the system including an input section for accepting an input of a history of a supplied amount and a sold amount of the products, a function generating section for representing a conditional probability function showing probability distribution of a sold amount when the sold amount is restricted by the supplied amount by means of a potential demand probability function including a parameter showing probability distribution of the sold amount when it is supposed that the sold amount is not restricted by the supplied amount and computing a value of the parameter maximizing a value of a likelihood function of the conditional probability function using the input history as a sample to generate the potential demand probability function, and a supplied amount computing section for computing a supplied amount of the product maximizing a profit by a sale of the product, based on the generated potential demand probability function and a predetermined selling price and supplying price of the product, and outputting the amount as a quantity of the product to be purchased or produced.

System and method for supporting purchase or production of products by potential demand prediction

A system for authenticating digital data capable of preventing change or disguise of data by improvement or interchange in case of no confidentiality in the data itself so as to maintain the data. When writing digital data from an input device to a memory and transferring the digital data from the memory to a receiving device, device authentication is performed between the input device and the memory and between the memory and the receiving device respectively. At the same time, when writing digital data to the memory, in the case of implementing on the digital data an electronic signature by a one-way hash function and also reading from the memory and transferring the digital data, the implemented electronic signature is decrypted so as to transfer the digital data after ensuring that it has not been changed since it was recorded. Thus, it is possible to prevent change or disguise of data by improvement or interchange in case of no confidentiality in the data itself so as to maintain the data.

System for authenticating digital data

To provide an electronic watermark method and system for which the detection reliability of embedded information does not depend on the strength of signals that are measured in frames. To achieve the above object, information is prepared for embedding as a bit stream, the sign of the bit stream being changed in accordance with a sign inversion cycle, and the bit stream being embedded in a frame. As for detection of information, values obtained through observation of frames are accumulated, and the accumulated values are compared with threshold values that are varied in accordance with the accumulated values obtained by observation. The comparison results are then employed to detect the embedded information.

Motion picture electronic watermark system

The invention makes it possible to properly certify a genuine owner, and to inhibit deterioration of image quality of media information to which an embedding operation is performed by adaptively determining amount of embedding for characteristic values such as pixel values. It includes a data hiding method for embedding message data into media data comprising the steps of obtaining a secondary key by inputting a key having a predetermined value to a specified function; determining hiding positions in which the message data will be embedded according to the obtained secondary key, and selecting one of plural hiding functions according to the secondary key so that the selected hiding function is used for each of the determined hiding positions; and embedding the message data into each of the determined hiding positions according to the selected hiding function corresponding to the hiding position.

Data hiding method and data extraction method using statistical examination

A method and system for displaying a three-dimensional object without requiring depth sorting of polygons or z-buffer calculation. The three-dimensional space is divided into rectangular parallelepipeds and tetrahedrons. A determination of the depth order of the rectangular parallelepipeds and tetrahedrons is made based on a view vector. The rectangles and tetrahedrons are then processed in order of depth from the furthest from the view point to the nearest. As each tetrahedron is processed, geometric data of a polygon containing the iso-valued surface is determined, the intensity of illumination calculated and the polygon data transferred to the display apparatus for display. The method and system of the present invention avoid the need for large memories to store intermediate data.

Method and system for displaying a three dimensional object

To render a three-dimensional object by using a plurality of dots, surfaces forming the three-dimensional object are divided into several regions based on curvature of the surfaces forming the object. A plurality of dots are arranged on the surfaces forming the object in accordance with rules which are different with respect to the different regions. To render a sphere by using a plurality of dots, spherical surfaces of the sphere are divided into polar regions and the equatorial region. In polar regions, dots whose number increase in accordance with radius around the axis of revolution are distributed at an equal interval on coaxial circumferences on polar regions. In the equatorial region, a certain number of dots are distributed at an equal interval on coaxial circumferences on the equatorial region so that a dot on the circumference are placed between dots on adjacent circumferences in the equatorial region.

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Yokohama, Japan

Akio Koide