Efficient organization of information processing

The paper examines the application of the concept of economic efficiency to organizational issues of collective information processing in decision making. Information processing is modeled in the framework of the dynamic parallel processing model of associative computation with an endogenous setup cost of the processors. The model is extended to include the specific features of collective information processing in the team of decision makers which may lead to an error in data analysis. In such a model, the conditions for efficient organization of information processing are defined and the architecture of the efficient structures is considered. We show that specific features of collective decision making procedures require a broader framework for judging organizational efficiency than has traditionally been adopted. In particular, and contrary to the results available in economic literature, we show that there is no unique architecture for efficient information processing structures, but a number of various efficient forms. The results indicate that technological progress resulting in faster data processing (ceteris paribus) will lead to more regular information processing structures. However, if the relative cost of the delay in data analysis increases significantly, less regular structures could be efficient. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The scheduling and organization of periodic associative computation: Efficient networks

This paper characterizes the efficient decentralized networks for calculating the associative aggregate of cohorts of data of a fixed size that arrive periodically. Radner (1993) proposed this problem of periodic parallel associative computation as a model of the ongoing information processing and communication by the administrative staff of a large organization. For a simpler model in which the organization processes a single cohort of data – which is equivalent to the periodic model when the agents are paid only when busy – he found that the efficient networks are hierarchical but quite irregular, even though the computation problem and technology are each symmetric. In the periodic model in which managers are paid even when idle, it becomes important to minimize idle time when scheduling managers to processing tasks. Such scheduling appears more difficult when each problem is processed by an irregular hierarchy, which suggest that hierarchies might be more regular in the periodic model. However, we show that in a class of efficient networks for periodic computation that spans the efficiency frontier, the processing of each cohort is similar to the efficient processing of a single cohort, and the overall organizational structure is not even hierarchical. Received: 15 October 1994 / Accepted: 6 March 1997     

Preferences and information processing under vague information

The standard decision-theoretic model separates information and preferences. We argue that some behavioral phenomena in information processing (e.g., polarization) are closely related to this separation.We propose a model in which agents receive vague information, which they refine when they are required to make probabilistic judgments, or to take an action. By doing so, they also refine their beliefs about some traits or states (e.g., their information-processing ability), which affects their utility.     

INFORMATION PROCESSING IN STRATEGIC ALLIANCE BUILDING: A MULTIPLE-CASE APPROACH*

Strategic alliance building has proliferated in many industries in recent years. This research focuses on the dynamic aspects of the alliance building process that have been neglected in previous research. the study examines how organizations process information during strategic alliance building and how the effective management of uncertainty and equivocality is linked to alliance success. Analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from a multi-case study leads to a proposed model of information processing in strategic alliance building and research propositions. the research propositions suggest that strategic alliance success is facilitated or impeded by a number of factors including the selection of information-processing mechanisms, the management of alliance building momentum, political activity, and information-processing structure. These factors collectively form information-processing environments that are linked to the success or failure of the alliance. Successful alliance building efforts seem to require adaptive information-processing environments that alter information-processing mechanisms to match information-processing needs.     

Managerial costs for one-shot decentralized information processing

Radner (1993) proposed a model of decentralized associative computation as a means to understand information processing in organizations. In the model, in which an organization processes a single cohort of data, resources are measured by the number of managers. This paper (i) explains why resources should instead be measured by the time the managers are busy, (ii) shows that, nevertheless, the characterization of sufficient conditions for efficient networks in Radner (1993) and Keren and Levhari (1979) is valid for either measure, (iii) shows that measuring resources by the number of operations leads to sharper results on necessary conditions for efficiency, (iv) strengthens Radner's results on the irregularity of efficient hierarchies, and (v) compares the relative costs of parallelization under the two measures. Received: 28 February 1997 / Accepted: 30 September 1997     

Hierarchies and information-processing organizations

This paper analyzes organizational structures that minimize information processing costs for a specific organizational task. Organizations consist of agents of limited ability connected in a network. These agents collect and process information, and make decisions. Organizations implement strategies – mappings from environmental circumstances to decisions. The strategies are exogenously given from a class of “pie” problems to be defined in this paper. The notion of efficiency is lexicographic: the primary criterion is minimizing the number of agents, and the secondary criterion is minimizing the number of connections between the agents. In this modeling framework, efficient organizations are not hierarchical for a large number of problems. Hierarchies often fail to exploit fully the information processing capabilities of the agents because in a hierarchy, subordinates have a single superior. Received: 1 December 1995 / Accepted: 11 October 1998     

电气技术在智能建筑中的实践应用

智能建筑是利用系统集成的方法,将智能型电脑技术,通信技术,信息技术与建筑技术逐步有机地结合;可以对各种设备的自动监控信息进行分析、判断和处理;对信息资源的管理及对用户信息服务等要求达到安全、高效、方便、舒适、灵活和投资合理,因此智能型建筑更能体现出科学技术就是生产力。本文主要探讨电气技术在智能建筑中的应用与实践。     

Complex event processing in enterprise information systems based on RFID

Enterprises have to be increasingly agile and responsive to address the challenges posed by the fast moving market. With the software architecture evolving into service-oriented architecture (SOA), and the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID), event processing can fit well in enterprise information systems in terms of facilitation of event aggregation into high level actionable information, and event response to improve the responsiveness. To make it more applicable, the architecture of event processing in enterprise information systems is proposed; event meta model and context serve as the solid basis for event processing; the rules, operators and keys of complex event processing are defined. Especially, workflow model is firstly used to extract complex event pattern. We have implemented the event processing mechanism in enterprise information systems based on RFID, including the architecture, data structures, optimization strategies and algorithm. The performance evaluations show that the method is effective in terms of scalability and the capability of event processing. Complex event processing can improve operational performance and discover more actionable information, which is justified by application. Finally, lessons learned from the application are presented.     

Rationally inattentive macroeconomic wedges

This paper argues that the solution to a dynamic optimization problem of consumption and labor under finite information-processing capacity can simultaneously explain the intertemporal and intratemporal labor wedges. It presents a partial equilibrium model where a representative risk adverse consumer chooses information about wealth with limited attention. The paper compares ex-post realizations of models with finite and infinite capacity. The model produces macroeconomic wedges and measures of elasticity consistent with the literature. These findings suggest that aconsumption-labor model with information-processing constraints can explain the difference between predicted and observed consumption and employment behavior.     

飞机吹风试验模型机翼数控加工变形的控制

本文通过对飞机吹风试验模型机翼的数控工艺流程方案分析,结合目前现有的数控加工能力,针对机翼的主要工艺特点和数控加工难点,提出了此类零件在数控加工中的变形控制和难加工部分的关键工艺方法,为今后的试验吹风模型的高效生产奠定基础。     

珠海横琴热电公司电话客户服务系统设计探讨

伴随着计算机网络技术的发展成熟与计算机信息集成系统的广泛应用,企业之间的竞争也越来越激烈,已从原来的产品竞争发展到对企业的管理决策、服务、抢夺客户的竞争。如何在竞争激烈的环境中生存,留住老客户和发展更多新客户,成为企业一项重要的发展任务。因此,设计一个集语音自动处理、客户信息管理、产品信息管理、员工信息与业务管理于一体的企业电话客户服务管理信息系统,充分利用已有的电信资源与计算机技术并使之相融合,为客户与公司交流搭建一个高效的平台非常重要。     

AutoCAD Map 3D下建筑物点云数据的建模与管理

目前,三维激光技术的出现已经为空间三维信息的获取提供了全新的技术手段,为信息数字化发展提供了必要的生存条件。利用三维激光扫描仪获取的点云数据构建实体三维景观时,能够完整并高精度地重建扫描实物数据。本设计主要通过AutoCAD Map 3D软件,以复杂实体点云数据和CAD地形图为基础,制作了辽宁工程技术大学校园的三维立体图。文章详细介绍了通过AutoCAD Map 3D利用点云数据建模的过程,包括:点云数据的采集、点云数据的处理、模型的制作、校园三维图的渲染、地表DEM的建立和属性信息建立等。重点阐述在AutoCAD Map 3D环境下建筑物点云数据建模及属性信息的建立,最终实现了对校园三维景观的浏览和属性信息查询的功能。此功能的实现有助于学生、教职工及来访相关人员对校区布局及功能有方便、快捷、直观的认识,并为校园的数字化建设做一个铺垫。     

Efficiency and truthfulness with Leontief preferences. A note on two-agent,two-good economies

In exchange economies where agents have private information about their preferences, strategy-proof and individually rational social choice functions are in general not efficient. We provide a restricted domain, namely the set of preferences representable by Leontief utility functions, where there exist mechanisms which are strategy-proof, efficient and individually rational. In two-agent, two-good economies we are able to provide an even stronger result. We characterize the class of efficient and individually rational social choice functions, which are fully implementable in truthful strategies.Received: 28 April 2003, Accepted: 23 June 2003, JEL Classification: D51, D71The author thanks Matthew Jackson, Jordi Massó and James Schummer for fruitful discussions, William Thomson for many valuable comments on an earlier version. A particular thank to Salvador Barberá for his fundamental help.     

On economies of scope in communication

A classic puzzle in the economic theory of the firm concerns the fundamental cause of decreasing returns to scale. If a plant producing product quantityX at costC can be replicated as often as desired, then the quantityrX need never cost more thanrC. Traditionally the firm is imagined to take its identity from a fixednon-replicable input, namely a ‘top manager’; as more plants or divisions are added, the communication and computation burden imposed on the top manager (who has information not possessed by the divisions) grows more than proportionately. Decreasing returns are experienced as the top manager hires more variable inputs to cope with the rising burden. Suppose it turns out, however, that when the divisions are assembled, and are given exactly the same totally independent tasks that they fulfilled when they were autonomous, then asaving can be achieved if they adopt a joint procedure for performing those tasks rather than replicating their previous separate procedures. Then the top manager's rising burden must be shown to be particularly onerous—otherwise there may actually beincreasing returns. We show that for a certain model of the information-processing procedure used by the separate divisions and by the firm, there may indeed be such an odd unexpected saving. The saving occurs with respect to the size of the language in which members of each division, or of the firm, communicate with one another, provided that language is finite. If instead the language is a continuum then the saving cannot occur, provided that the procedures used obey suitable ‘smoothness’ conditions. We show that the saving for the finite case can be ruled out in two ways: by requiring the procedures used to obey a regularity condition that is a crude analogue of the smoothness conditions we impose on the continuum procedures, or by insisting that the procedure used be a ‘deterministic’ protocol. Such a protocol prescribes a conversation among the participants, in which a participant has only one choice, whenever that participant has to make an announcement to the others. The results suggest that a variety of information-processing models will have to be studied before the traditional explanation for decreasing returns to scale is understood in a rigorous way.     

公路工程信息化建设探讨

所谓信息化是指通过先进的现代化设备,将原本分散的单体通过技术手段组建成一个网络而进行的一种建设模型。随着科学技术的不断发展进步,人们的生活、学习受到信息化技术的巨大影响,从而使得信息化技术在现实生活中发挥着越来越重要作用。公路工程项目中各种数据和信息的采集、传输以及整理等随着公路行业的快速发展已经成为一项庞大的系统工程,因此,将信息化应用在公路工程建设中势在必行。     

论主动存储

提出了主动存储的概念，分析了主动存储的优越性以及传统存储企业融入供应链系统的重要性，指出信息实时收集和处理技术，计算机网络技术和系统控制技术是传统存储企业实施主动存储的必要条件。     

基于现代物流技术的精确保障及我军构建策略

阐述了基于现代物流技术精确保障的内涵;结合伊拉克战争美军的保障实践,昭示了精确保障正成为信息化战争保障的发展趋势;就如何实现我军装备、后勤传统保障模式向精确模式的转型,提出了构建策略.     

内河航运中RFID数据处理技术研究

正确的数据采集与处理方法将给后期的分析建模工作在质量上提供可靠的保证。内河中船舶种类繁多、船型大小不一,大、中型船舶装备有AIS、GPS等监测设备,为海事监管部门的监控管理带来了很多便利,小型船舶的检测手段单一简陋,不易监控,RFID技术以它超越传统自动识别技术的优势,弥补了这一缺陷。介绍多种内河船舶交通流检测技术,分析各检测技术的特点。重点分析RFID数据的特点、分类、处理的常规方法和机制。