The relationship between information-theoretic and chaos-theoretic measures of the complexity of manufacturing systems

摘要

A number of measures of the complexity of manufacturing systems and supply chains have been proposed and applied. This paper presents some preliminary findings on the relationships between the measures arising from information theory and chaos theory. Both sets of measures quantify the rate at which a manufacturing system loses information. This paper introduces a means of calculating the feasible schedule horizon of a system, based on information-theoretic measures of complexity. By comparing with the schedule, it is possible to calculate the feasible schedule horizon. Chaos-theoretic measures of information decay can also be applied to calculate the feasible horizon of a schedule, as well as its period. These findings are illustrated by actual data on stock holdings. The paper concludes with some research objectives.