Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Polyxpress Usability Testing, Chloe Erdie

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

This paper investigates different usability testing methods, and details a final usability testing procedure for the PolyXpress application. Usability testing varies greatly and depends on the size, scope, and budget of a project. Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, says usability testing generally involves finding test users, asking the users to perform representative tasks with the design, and observing/documenting what happens. There are three main types of usability testing methods: traditional, discount, and going-out-of-business. The methods range in scale, complexity, and cost. This paper specifically details the unique combination of the three main methods that should be used as the ...

A Stand-Alone Methodology For Data Exploration In Support Of Data Mining And Analytics, Michael Gage

Master's Theses and Project Reports

With the emergence of Big Data, data high in volume, variety, and velocity, new analysis techniques need to be developed to effectively use the data that is being collected. Knowledge discovery from databases is a larger methodology encompassing a process for gathering knowledge from that data. Analytics pair the knowledge with decision making to improve overall outcomes. Organizations have conclusive evidence that analytics provide competitive advantages and improve overall performance. This paper proposes a stand-alone methodology for data exploration. Data exploration is one part of the data mining process, used in knowledge discovery from databases and analytics. The goal of ...

Manufacturing Strategy & Operations: Reflections On Key, Lorraine Mcgrath

Books/Book chapters

This chapter evaluates the current issues and challenges in defining a company’s manufacturing strategy and its production operations in consideration of the contemporary shift to low cost manufacturing locations. Competitive priorities of cost, quality, delivery and flexibility are reviewed. The structural and infrastructure elements of a manufacturing strategy are outlined. Mitigating risks in a global arena are reviewed. Collaborative efforts, including the cultural and personality issues of being human are included in the discussion of managing diversity in such a highly competitive and challenging enterprise resource planning environment.

Where Next For Supply Chain Management?, Des Lee

Books/Book chapters

Supply chain management (SCM) has been so successful that it is largely taken for granted. Its success has been built on improving three key flows – of product, of money and of information – and on one core principle – core competence. What next for SCM? This article outlines the vulnerabilities that are embedded in modern supply chains and the unintended consequences of outsourcing activities that are not core competences. These consequences are global and have the potential to undermine past achievements. Finally, broad suggestions are made as to how these issues can be addressed and the areas on which supply chain management ...

Has Supply Chain Management Lost Its Relevance?, Natalie Descheres

Books/Book chapters

The context of business has changed dramatically over the last 15 years. The definition of need satisfaction, the shift from “dot to web” competition and the embedding of the organisation into a wider political and societal environment has transformed SCM contributions and the meaning of work for employees. Interdependence must evolve from the do-it-alone approach and yet the ashes are not proving fertile ground. In many ways, traditional models of management have not kept up with the changes and are taken aback by the complexity that surrounds us. Complexity is however not a feature of our world, but one of ...

The Impact Of Case-Mix On Timely Access To Appointments In A Primary Care Group Practice, Asli Ozen, Hari Balasubramanian

Hari Balasubramanian

No abstract provided.

Research On Development And Application Of Simulated Night Vision Enhancement Systems, Linzhen Nie

Mechanical Engineering Dissertations

Poor visibility due to darkness is believed to be one of the main causes for the high rate of night driving accidents.

Night vision enhancement systems (NVESs) have been developed to improve visibility at night through supplementing drivers' direct vision with additional information shown on a display, rather than replacing drivers' direct vision. Existing studies have shown that NVESs may increase recognition distance, but may also increase drivers' mental and visual distraction (eyes-off-road). Each scan of the display of the night vision enhancement system involves some visual and mental cost to the driver. Automatic pedestrian warnings (APWs) have been integrated ...

The People Dimension In Logistics And Supply Chain Management – Its Role And Importance, Edward Sweeney

Books/Book chapters

It is widely recognised that the effective application of logistics and supply chain management (SCM) has a vital role to play in European economic recovery. Experience suggests that success in achieving higher levels of supply chain integration (SCI) depends on both physical and technical components (the hard-wiring), as well as human and behavioural components (the soft-wiring). There is significant evidence that the latter has been largely neglected by the logistics and SCM community. Furthermore, it appears that the majority of supply chain improvement initiatives by practitioners have been primarily concerned with technological, structural and process issues. This chapter argues that ...

East Tennessee Children's Hospital Lean, Eddie D. Eatherly, Catherine Julson, Kelsey Tjader, Jack Smodic, Lanier Loftin

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

Supply Chain "Mega-Trends": Current Status And Future Trends, Edward Sweeney

Practitioner Journals

The supply chain management (SCM) concept has become embedded in the thinking of many organisations in recent years. Originally introduced by management consultants in the early 1980s, SCM has a strong focus on integration of processes across functions within firms, as well as between the organisations that comprise the wider extended enterprise. There is a significant body of research to support the notion that the consistent delivery of value to customers is predicated on higher levels of intra-firm and inter-firm integration. Putting the supply chain integration (SCI) concept into practice is critically dependent on the ability of firms to manage ...

The Evaluation Of Software Quality, Dhananjay Gade

Industrial and Management Systems Engineering -- Dissertations and Student Research

Software Quality comprises all characteristics and significant features of a product or an activity which relate to the satisfaction of given requirements. The totality of characteristics of a software product depends upon its ability to satisfy given needs: for example (a) the degree to which software possesses a desired attribute or combination of attributes. (b) The degree to which a customer or user perceives that software meets their expectations, (c) the characteristics of software that determine the degree to which the software in use will meet the customer expectation. This study has three objectives. The first objective is to identify ...

A New Versatile Electronic Speckle Pattern Interferometer For Vibration Measurements, Viswanath Bavigadda (Thesis)

Doctoral

Electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) has been widely used for vibration amplitude and phase measurements. Conventional ESPI systems are bulk and expensive and need careful alignment of all the optical components which is a time consuming task. To overcome these problems alternative compact ESPI systems were developed using fibre-optical components or holographic optical elements (HOEs). The fibre-optic based ESPI systems suffer from random phase fluctuations induced by environmental temperature changes. Hence HOEs can be used as more powerful alternative optical elements to design ESPI systems. The time average ESPI method is widely used for vibration studies. The time average method ...

Techno-Economic Feasibility Study Of Ammonia Plants Powered By Offshore Wind, Eric R. Morgan

Open Access Dissertations

Ammonia production with offshore wind power has the potential to transform energy and fertilizer markets within the United States. The vast offshore wind resource can be converted directly into liquid ammonia using existing technologies. The liquid ammonia can then be transported around the country via rail, truck, barge or pipeline and used as either a fertilizer or a fuel. This thesis reviews the technologies required for all-electric, wind-powered ammonia production and offers a simple design of such a system. Cost models based on the physical equipment necessary to produce ammonia with wind power are developed; offshore wind farm cost models ...

Container Handling Algorithms And Outbound Heavy Truck Movement Modeling For Seaport Container Transshipment Terminals, Mazen I. Hussein

Theses and Dissertations

This research is divided into four main parts. The first part considers the basic block relocation problem (BRP) in which a set of shipping containers is retrieved using the minimum number of moves by a single gantry crane that handles cargo in the storage area in a container terminal. For this purpose a new algorithm called the look ahead algorithm has been created and tested. The look ahead algorithm is applicable under limited and unlimited stacking height conditions. The look ahead algorithm is compared to the existing algorithms in the literature. The experimental results show that the look ahead algorithm ...

Sustainable Purchasing Practices: An Investigation Into Current Industry Awareness And Practice, Frank Palisi, Kathryne Newton, Edward Sweeney

Conference papers

This research study illustrates the importance of sustainable purchasing practices for organizations in the U.S. distribution industry and answers several important questions: what is the current awareness of U.S. organizations regarding sustainable purchasing practices; to what extent are U.S. organizations evaluating, selecting, and retaining suppliers based upon sustainable purchasing practices; and to what extent are sustainable purchasing practices being implemented by the U.S. organizations under study? With an ever increasing global economy, is it critically important for organizations to put in place sustainability practices; the biggest impact organizations can make is often in an organization’s ...

Capacity Planning For Elderly Care In Ireland Using Simluation Modeling, Mohamed Ragab, Waleed Abo-Hamad, Amr Arisha

Conference papers

Global population aging is creating an immense pressure on healthcare facilities making them unable to cope with the growing demand for elderly healthcare services. Current demand-supply gaps result in prolonged waiting times for patients and substantial cost burdens for healthcare systems due to delayed discharges. This paper describes a project aimed at presenting modeling and simulation to address elderly care pathways within the Irish healthcare sector. The management of frail patients admitted to acute hospitals and the introduction of the new intermediate care beds are alternative interventions that healthcare executives are interested in simulating to examine their impact on the ...

Design Strategies For A Drinking Cup To Accommodate Hand Tremor, Ehsan Abbaszadeh

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

Hand tremor is an involuntary muscle movement, trembling, or shaking of the hands. Caused by either essential tremor (ET) or Parkinson's disease, tremors often affect daily activities including feeding, drinking, typing, and writing. To reveal the design strategies to diminish effects of hand tremor in handheld devices, and in particular a drinking cup in this research, an experimental framework based on vibrations and dynamics has been developed with inspiration from the well-known gyroscopic boat stabilizers, i.e. Schlick stabilizers, in which a high speed rotating disk has been used as a source of angular momentum, producing a resistive gyroscopic ...

Applications Of Cobb-Douglas Production Function In Construction Time-Cost Analysis, Ashkan Hassani

Construction Systems -- Dissertations & Theses

Cobb-Douglas Production Function was widely used in economics and productivity studies across many sectors. The function’s quantitative modeling of resource inputs and production outputs is appealing to the research domain of construction management. In this thesis we explored this function’s application in construction schedule crashing and project risk analysis related to duration of construction projects. Existing research on construction time-cost tradeoff issues rarely explore the origin of the crashing cost which is defined as the cost needed to shorten the project to the desired duration. In the existing literature crashing cost function was either assumed without much justification ...

Machining Stability Of Wire Edm Of Titanium, Farnaz Nourbakhsh

Industrial and Management Systems Engineering -- Dissertations and Student Research

This work presents an experimental investigation of wire electro-discharge machining (WEDM) of titanium alloy. The outstanding characteristics of titanium alloys such as their compatibility and noticeable physical, mechanical and biological performances has led to increased application of them in various industries especially in biomedical industries over the last 50 years. However, due to low thermal conductivity of titanium and its alloys and their reactivity with cobalt in most tool materials, there are some difficulties in machining titanium and its alloys by conventional machining. On the other hand, unconventional machining processes especially Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM) are more appropriate techniques ...

Three-Dimensional Indoor Rfid Localization System, Jiaqing Wu

Industrial and Management Systems Engineering -- Dissertations and Student Research

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an information exchange technology based on radio waves communication. It is also a possible solution to indoor localization. Due to multipath propagation and anisotropic interference in the indoor environment, theoretical propagation models are generally not sufficient for RFID-based localization. In fact, the radio frequency (RF) signal distribution may not even be monotonic and this makes range-based localization algorithms less accurate. On the other hand, range free localization algorithms, such as k Nearest-Neighbor (kNN), require reference tags to be spread throughout the whole three-dimensional (3D) space which is simply not practical. In this work, a hybrid ...