Abstract.A lighting control method has been proposed which adjusts the circadian rhythms of office workers and eliminates a decrease in the arousal level in the afternoon by exposing a high intensity of light in the morning in order to improve their productivity. As a result, it was found that the task performance of the CPTOP test under 2,100 lx was significantly higher than that under 700 lx and more than a 9% improvement of task performance was achieved. Furthermore, a demonstration experiment has been conducted in order to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed lighting control method in actual office rooms. As a result, it was confirmed that the performance of their accounting work was over 10% higher than under normal conditions.

The authors have developed a performance test, CPTOP (Cognitive Performance Test of Productivity), which combines 11 basic task testss to evaluate intelligent abilities of office workers in order to quantitatively and objectively evaluate their productivity by controlling office environment. However, in the previous experiment, it was found that the results of CPTOP contain in-fluences of learning effect and variation of difficulties depending on each prob-lem set. In this study, therefore, subjective experiments have been conducted in order to compensate these influences and a correction method has been proposed.

Over the past sixteen years, newspaper PCSs (Production Control Systems) have been developed to support newspaper production, so that newspaper publishers can ofer the most up to date information to the greatest possible number of readers in a timely manner while keepingproduction costs low. Up to now, the chief goal has been to produce a predetermined number of copies of a stylized newspaper (using a set layout and set number of pages) as eflciently and accurately as possible. However, in today's information-oriented society, readers and advertising clients have come to expect low cost newspapers that reflect their various interests and demands. To satisJL these, a PCS should aim at providing a reliable and flexible production system that allows immediate changes in format and circulation volume according to article contents, as well as coordinated production (printing and delivery) between locally distributed printing plants.In this paper, a new newspaper PCS architecture and data-processing ana' networking techniques are discussed based on an autonomous decentralized system (ADS). The architecture provides a system that allows flexible change of the production schedule, while ensuring reliability, because it has autonomous Jiltering functions that distinguish between dyerent kinds of data, namely control data and man-machine data. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper company currently uses this highly efective system in its Setagaya printing plant.