Hitachi, Ltd.

Kichie Matsuzaki

Hideaki Suzuki

Hisashi Onari

Masahiro Watanabe

Mitsunobu Isobe

Hideaki Matoba

Kenzo Takeichi

Hidetoshi Inaba

Tomoyuki Hamada

Kenji Takeda

Ichiro Nakamura

Koichi Sugimoto

Akira Masaki

Kohji Kamejima

Masakazu Ejiri

Seiji Hata

Toshijiro Ohashi

Masami Yamasaki

Yoshio Matsumoto

Kenji Suzuki

Keiichi Okamoto

Kazuo Kato

Shunji Mohri

Mitsuharu Hayakawa

Toru Mita

Ryouichi Hisatomi

Masahito Uno

Hiroshi Makita

Shigeru Fujimori

Ryoichi Hisatomi

Kouzou Nemoto

Ichiro Taniguchi

Motohisa Funahashi

Junichi Nishihashi

Roberto Kishikawa

Hiroshi Kitazawa

Masasi Kudou

Mitsuo Oono

Kaoru Imai

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 notifying unit for deciding, when each model is changed or particularized, whether or not the estimated values meet the corresponding target values and, when the estimated values do not meet the corresponding target values, for notifying the members of the development project team to that effects; and a unit for monitoring electronic mail necessary for carrying out tasks essential to the development of the product, extracting information relating to the progress of tasks essential to carrying out the development of the product, and providing the members of the development project team with information about the progress of the tasks.

Development support system

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.

Systems and methods for recycling resources and circulating products

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.

Custom-made manufacturing system and custom-made manufacturing method

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.

Order entry apparatus for automatic estimation and its method

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.

Character recognition equipment

An object recognize apparatus suitable for recognition of a complex object constituted with a plurality of elements. When specifying a recognition object, a plurality of elements constituting the finally required recognition object are respectively designated as recognition objects, and when specifying an upper-level recognition object, lower-level recognition objects thereof are designated. Furthermore, for each lower-level recognition object, geometric features necessary for the recognition are specified. In an analysis of image data, the lower-level recognition objects are first detected by use of the geometric features so as to next attain the upper-level recognition object based on results of the detection. As a result, a complex object existing at an arbitrary position can be judged and the position thereof is obtained.

Object recognize apparatus

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.

Method of and apparatus for controlling automated devices

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Yokohama, Japan

Kichie Matsuzaki