Digital Commons Network^™

Identifying Ways That Institutional Staffing And Scheduling Committees Engage Nursing Staff In Resource Allocation At The Unit And Institutional Levels, Kevin M. Shimp

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Final Clinical Projects, 2016-2019

The American Nurses Association (ANA) recommends that at least fifty percent direct care providers are involved in staffing and scheduling decisions at the institutional level (ANA Staffing, 2015). This recommendation coincides with Magnet recommendations for the staff most impacted by staffing levels. Magnet organizations are recognized for superior nursing processes and quality patient care, which lead to the highest levels of safety, quality, and patient satisfaction (ANCC, 2015). Existing research, largely at the unit level, shows that registered nurses in acute care environments have higher general work satisfaction and morale when they are engaged in decision making around staffing (Ellerbe …

Methodologies For Solving Integrated Transportation And Scheduling Problems, Fereydoun Adbesh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes novel solution techniques to optimize two real-world problems in the area of scheduling and transportation. We first consider a model for optimizing the operations of dredges. In this problem, scheduling and assignment decisions are integrated across a finite planning horizon. Additional constraints and problem elements explicitly considered include, but are not limited, to environmental work window restrictions, budget limitations, dredge operation rates and schedule-dependent dredge availability. Our approach makes use of Constraint Programming (CP) to obtain quality and robust solutions within an amount of time small enough to be useful to practitioners. The expanded feature set of …

Lean Construction Teaching Module: Push/Pull Planning, James M. Iroz

Construction Management

The Construction Management Department at California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo has taken interests into the topics of Lean Construction to be a part of its curriculum. Lean Construction is a methodology in the built environment that tries to establish a leaner and more efficient work place in the industry. Within this broad spectrum of methodology, scheduling and more specifically, “push pull scheduling” is one of its many trademark applications. As the demand for more efficient projects rise, it is increasingly important for the next generation of construction students to be aware and educated with efficient skills. This experimental …

Project Management: Skills, Tools, And Knowledge Construction Professionals Consider Important For Keeping Projects On Schedule, Lyle Scott Davies

Theses and Dissertations

Project managers have a major role in the construction and completion of projects. Much of their work consists of reviewing, clarifying, and coordinating information required by the field management and subcontractors performing the work on the job site. The assistance they give with the transfer of information helps with successfully completing projects. For many people, the largest indicator that a project was successful is that construction activities were completed on schedule. While finishing on schedule may be the primary focus of those involved with construction activities, projects still struggle to finish on time. The purpose of this study is to …

Optimization Of Residential Battery Energy Storage System Scheduling For Cost And Emissions Reductions, Zachary Olivieri

Theses

The introduction of dynamic electricity pricing structures such as Time of Use (TOU) rates and Day Ahead Pricing (DAP) in residential markets has created the possibility for customers to reduce their electric bills by using energy storage systems for load shifting and/or peak load shaving. While there are numerous system designs and model formulations for minimizing electric bills under these rate structures the use of these systems has the potential to cause an increase in emissions from the electricity system. The Increase in emissions is linked to the difference in fuel mix of marginal generators throughout the day as well …

Influencing Factors For Academic Tracking In High School Mathematics, Matthew Minowitz

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

The research question addressed in this capstone thesis is: What are prominent influencing factors related to academic tracking in mathematics? The thesis discusses influencing factors through a qualitative analysis of archival school data, student surveys, and student interviews. The research takes place in a “fringe rural” suburban public high school of a Midwest city with graduating class sizes between 200 and 250 students. This research identifies factors which have influenced student placement into high school mathematics tracks which are one year behind grade-level and two years ahead of grade-level. Conclusions from the study include findings related to family influences (eg. …

Readiness For Improving Safe Care Delivery Through Web-Based Hospital Nurse Scheduling & Staffing Technology: A Multi-Hospital Approach, Lisa Massarweh

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

Hospital scheduling and staffing practices are linked to patient safety, nurse satisfaction, and cost outcomes (Steege & Rainbow, 2017). Staffing, while complex, is ultimately central to the overall success of the hospital. Demands to eliminate events that cause death or serious harm, produce high patient satisfaction scores while maximizing workforce productivity, test any administrator’s skillset. Providing qualified staff in the right place at the right time can be challenged by restrictive union contracts, variable patient acuities, staff attendance, and mandated staffing ratios. These demands may lead to overtime utilization. There is a growing understanding of the negative effects of healthcare …

Mechanism Design For Strategic Project Scheduling, Pradeep Varakantham, Na Fu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Organizing large scale projects (e.g., Conferences, IT Shows, F1 race) requires precise scheduling of multiple dependent tasks on common resources where multiple selfish entities are competing to execute the individual tasks. In this paper, we consider a well studied and rich scheduling model referred to as RCPSP (Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem). The key change to this model that we consider in this paper is the presence of selfish entities competing to perform individual tasks with the aim of maximizing their own utility. Due to the selfish entities in play, the goal of the scheduling problem is no longer only …

Balancing And Sequencing Of Mixed Model Assembly Lines, Anas Alsayed Alghazi

All Dissertations

Assembly lines are cost efficient production systems that mass produce identical products. Due to customer demand, manufacturers use mixed model assembly lines to produce customized products that are not identical. To stay efficient, management decisions for the line such as number of workers and assembly task assignment to stations need to be optimized to increase throughput and decrease cost. In each station, the work to be done depends on the exact product configuration, and is not consistent across all products. In this dissertation, a mixed model line balancing integer program (IP) that considers parallel workers, zoning, task assignment, and ergonomic …

Virtualization Of Closed-Loop Sensor Networks, Priyanka Dattatri Kedalagudde

Masters Theses

The existing closed-loop sensor networks are based on architectures that are designed and implemented for one specific application and require dedicated sensing and computational resources. This prevents the sharing of these networks. In this work, we propose an architecture of virtualization to allow sharing of closed-loop sensor networks. We also propose a scheduling approach that will manage requests from competing applications and evaluate their impact on system utilization against utilization achieved by more traditional, dedicated sensor networks. These algorithms are evaluated through trace-driven simulations, where the trace data is taken from CASA’s closed-loop weather radar sensor network. Results from this …

Maximizing Operating Room Performance Using Portfolio Selection, Vivek Reddy Gunna, Amin Abedini, Wei Li

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

The operating room (OR) is responsible for most hospital admissions and is one of the most cost and work intensive areas in the hospital. From recent trends, we observe an ironic parallel increase among expenditure and waiting time. Therefore, improving OR scheduling has become obligatory, particularly in terms of patient flow and benefit. Most of the hospitals rely on average patient arrivals and processing times in OR planning. But in practice, variations in arrivals and processing times causes high instability in OR performance. Our model of optimization provides OR schedules maximizing patient flow and benefit at a fixed level of …

An Optimization Model For Operating Room Scheduling To Reduce Blocking Across The Perioperative Process, Amin Abedini, Wei Li, Honghan Ye

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Operating room (OR) scheduling is important. Because of increasing demand for surgical services, hospitals must provide high quality care more efficiently with limited resources. When constructing the OR schedule, it is necessary to consider the availability of downstream resources, such as intensive care unit (ICU) and post anaesthesia care unit (PACU). The unavailability of downstream resources causes blockings between every two consecutive stages. In this paper we address the master surgical schedule (MSS) problem in order to minimize blockings between two consecutive stages. First, we present a blocking minimization (BM) model for the MSS by using integer programming, based on …

Augmenting Decisions Of Taxi Drivers Through Reinforcement Learning For Improving Revenues, Tanvi Verma, Pradeep Varakantham, Sarit Kraus, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Taxis (which include cars working with car aggregation systems such as Uber, Grab, Lyft etc.) have become a critical component in the urban transportation. While most research and applications in the context of taxis have focused on improving performance from a customer perspective, in this paper,we focus on improving performance from a taxi driver perspective. Higher revenues for taxi drivers can help bring more drivers into the system thereby improving availability for customers in dense urban cities.Typically, when there is no customer on board, taxi driverswill cruise around to find customers either directly (on thestreet) or indirectly (due to a …

Building Efficient Large-Scale Big Data Processing Platforms, Jiayin Wang

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

In the era of big data, many cluster platforms and resource management schemes are created to satisfy the increasing demands on processing a large volume of data. A general setting of big data processing jobs consists of multiple stages, and each stage represents generally defined data operation such as ltering and sorting. To parallelize the job execution in a cluster, each stage includes a number of identical tasks that can be concurrently launched at multiple servers. Practical clusters often involve hundreds or thousands of servers processing a large batch of jobs. Resource management, that manages cluster resource allocation and job …

The Hidden Costs Of Scheduling: Temporal Structure Reduces Task Enjoyment And Contracts Time, Gabriela Nicole Tonietto

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Time is an important but limited resource, and consumers are constantly looking for ways to get more from their time. This has led to the popularity of scheduling as a strategy to help consumers manage and organize their time. Although scheduling is both highly recommended and widely adopted, surprisingly little is known about the psychological effects of scheduling. In this dissertation, I explore the potential effects of scheduling for task enjoyment, perceived time, and time consumption, finding that scheduling may have some important hidden costs. In the first chapter, I examine the effect of scheduling leisure activities. While prior research …

Nursing Assignments Based On Patient Acuity: The Road To Nursing Job Satisfaction, Kristina Tomic

Evidence-Based Practice Project Reports

Challenges in the healthcare industry, including nursing shortages and low nursing retention, have resulted in nurses’ job dissatisfaction. Improving work environment and workload can lead to improved and equitable nursing shift assignments, which may improve nursing job satisfaction. The purpose of this EBP project was to (a) implement a patient acuity tool in the hospital unit, (b) assess its effectiveness in appropriating nursing shift assignments, and (c) evaluate its effect on nursing job satisfaction. The Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) Model was used as a guide to facilitate the transition of the best evidence into practice. As suggested within the evidence, …

Percussion Instruction In Beginning Band For Programs With A Single Teacher, Micah A. Martin

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

PERCUSSION INSTRUCTION IN BEGINNING BAND

FOR PROGRAMS WITH A SINGLE TEACHER

An Abstract of the Thesis by

Micah A. Martin

The primary purpose of this study was to find the best methods for developing students into total percussionists in beginning band programs with only one band director on staff. A total percussionist is defined as one who is capable of playing keyboard percussion, snare drum, timpani, and the accessory instruments. The study consists of a survey to assess individual approaches to percussion instruction in beginning band.

A questionnaire was developed using Google Forms and a link was emailed to band …

Multi-Objective Dynamic Economic Dispatch With Demand Side Management Of Residential Loads And Electric Vehicles, Mohammad Rasoul Narimani, Fnu Maigha, Jhi-Young Joo, Mariesa Crow

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a multi-objective optimization method based on the normal boundary intersection is proposed to solve the dynamic economic dispatch with demand side management of individual residential loads and electric vehicles. The proposed approach specifically addresses consumer comfort through acceptable appliance deferral times and electric vehicle charging requirements. The multi-objectives of minimizing generation costs, emissions, and energy loss in the system are balanced in a Pareto front approach in which a fuzzy decision making method has been implemented to find the best compromise solution based on desired system operating conditions. The normal boundary intersection method is described and validated.

Decision Support Models For A Few Critical Problems In Transportation System Design And Operations, Ran Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Transportation system is one of the key functioning components of the modern society and plays an important role in the circulation of commodity and growth of economy. Transportation system is not only the major influencing factor of the efficiency of large-scale complex industrial logistics, but also closely related to everyone’s daily life. The goals of an ideal transportation system are focused on improving mobility, accessibility, safety, enhancing the coordination of different transportation modals and reducing the impact on the environment, all these activities require sophisticated design and plan that consider different factors, balance tradeoffs and maintaining efficiency. Hence, the design …

Comparing Critical Chain Project Managemenet With Critical Path Method: A Case Study, Behzad Montazeri

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Scheduling is a major task in project management. The current scheduling technique, Critical Path Method (CPM), has been widely applied for several decades, but a large number of projects fail to be completed on time and schedule delays occur in many projects. This raises question about the validity of the current project scheduling system. Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM), derived from Theory of Constraints, is a relatively new alternative approach toward scheduling projects. This study compared CCPM and CPM to determine which scheduling method delivers a shorter project duration and has a better usage of resources. A scheduling software called …

Interference Mitigation, Resource Allocation And Channel Control Techniques For 4g And Beyond Systems, Mustafa Harun Yilmaz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The usage of the wireless communication technologies have been increasing due to the benefits they provide in our daily life. These technologies are used in various fields such as military communication, public safety, cellular communication. The current systems might not be sufficient to meet the increasing demand. Therefore, the new solutions such as the usage of smart antennas have been proposed to satisfy this demand. Among different solutions, cognitive heterogeneous networks (HetNets) have been recently introduced as a promising one to meet the high user demand. In cognitive Hetnets, there are secondary base stations (SBSs) with secondary users (SUs) and …

Editor's Section: A Guide To Scheduling The Afa-Niet, Daniel Cronn-Mills

Daniel Cronn-Mills, Ph.D.

At the request of the DSR-TKA executive board, this article is presented in Speaker & Gavel so the AFA-NIET process explained here has a permanent record in forensic archives.

Scheduling Strategies For Construction Project Managers Toward On Time Delivery, Paul Shamp

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Construction management projects involve complex, dynamic environments resulting in uncertainty and risk, compounded by demanding time constraints. Research indicated project managers have struggled to identify best practices for scheduling construction projects via critical path methodologies while searching for tools to increase timely job completions and budget profits. The purpose of this single case study was to explore the strategies that construction project managers used to manage scheduled construction project delivery on time. The constructivist philosophical worldview was used as the framework for this study. Data were collected from semistructured interviews from 7 project managers from 5 different construction companies selected …

A Data-Aware Cognitive Engine For Scheduling Data Intensive Applications In A Grid, Vijaya Nagarajan, Maluk Mohamed Mulk Abdul

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Data-intensive applications produce huge amounts of data that need to be stored, analyzed, and interpreted. A data grid serves as a cost-effective infrastructure for solving these data-intensive applications. Existing scheduling strategies are best suited for handling compute-intensive applications, although they lack in performance while handling data-intensive applications. In this work, a novel mechanism of incorporating cognitive science in a data grid is proposed for scheduling data-intensive workflows. A unique model is derived in which a cognitive engine (CE) is built into the middleware of the data grid. The intelligent agents present in the CE handle the request for data sets …

Decentralized Scheduling For Many-Task Applications In The Hybrid Cloud, Brian Lyle Peterson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While Cloud Computing has transformed how we solve many computing tasks, some scientific and many-task applications are not efficiently executed on cloud resources. Decentralized scheduling, as studied in grid computing, can provide a scalable system to organize cloud resources and schedule a variety of work. By measuring simulations of two algorithms, the fully decentralized Organic Grid, and the partially decentralized Air Traffic Controller from IBM, we establish that decentralization is a workable approach, and that there are bottlenecks that can impact partially centralized algorithms. Through measurements in the cloud, we verify that our simulation approach is sound, and assess the …

Minimizing Scheduling Overhead In Lre-Tl Real-Time Multiprocessor Scheduling Algorithm, Hitham Seddig Alhassan Alhussian, Mohamed Nordin Bin Zakaria, Fawnizu Azmadi Bin Hussin

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, we present a modification of the local remaining execution-time and local time domain (LRE-TL) real-time multiprocessor scheduling algorithm, aimed at reducing the scheduling overhead in terms of task migrations. LRE-TL achieves optimality by employing the fairness rule at the end of each time slice in a fluid schedule model. LRE-TL makes scheduling decisions using two scheduling events. The bottom (B) event, which occurs when a task consumes its local utilization, has to be preempted in order to resume the execution of another task, if any, or to idle the processor if none exist. The critical (C) event …

Autopath: Harnessing Parallel Execution Paths For Efficient Resource Allocation In Multi-Stage Big Data Frameworks, Han Gao, Zhengyu Yang, Janki Bhimani, Teng Wang, Jiayin Wang, Ningfang Mi, Bo Sheng

Zhengyu Yang

Using Whole School Cluster Grouping To Differentiate Instruction More Effectively In Elementary Schools, Crystal Machado

Crystal Machado