On information structures and nonsequential stochastic control

In many of the present controlled large scale systems communication and com puter networks detection networks manufacturing systems economic systems database systems power systems etc information is decentralized Further more in the abovementioned systems it may be impossible to order the control actions a priori independently of the set of control laws that determines these actions Such systems are called nonsequential The theory of nonsequential stochastic controlled systems is at a very early stage of development In this pa per we rst present a survey of existing results on nonsequential systems within the framework of Witsenhausen s intrinsic model then we discuss some open problems arising from the research performed so far