OBJECT ORIENTED DESIGN OF A MULTILEVEL HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE

Multilevel hierarchical control has been placed in a well-defined conceptual and mathematical framework in the sixties and culminated in the publication of the book by Mesarovic et al. (1970). The concept of hierarchy was clarified by identifying three notions of levels: • The organizational level, the echelon. • The level of decision complexity, the layer, i.e., vertical decomposition of decision rules. • The level of description (refinement), the stratum. Much of the work in control systems and in organization theory deals with the first two types or with a combination of both of them. For example, the hierarchical decision structure of Valavanis and Saridis (1992) can be thought of as a layered one, which is mapped onto a hierarchical physical architecture of the echelon type. The layers support the concept of Increased Precision with Decreasing Intelligence. (Saridis, 1989). It is a particularly effective conceptualization, especially when considering systems where hardware and software are closely integrated such as intelligent robotic systems. A new problem that has began to appear recently- at least at the conceptual level- is the desig