Digital Commons Network^™

An Interactive Decision Support System For Scheduling Fighter Pilot Training, Cuong T. Nguyen

Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. Air Force is developing Modular Aircraft Support System (MASS) program to replace the current Aerospace Ground Equipment (AGE). AGE supplies electricity, nitrogen, hydraulics and other support equipment to maintenance activities at the flight line. Current AGE makes up one-third of the deployment footprint. AGE is also mostly aircraft specific, and has reliability problems. The MASS alternative focuses on modularity based on a plug-and-play approach. The technological improvements and possible reduction in the footprint make MASS a good alternative. The AF has to determine now, whether MASS can supply similar functionality and decrease the deployment footprint to theater, while …

A Multiple Ant Colony Metaheuristic For The Air Refueling Tanker Assignment Problem, Ronjon Annaballi

Theses and Dissertations

The performance of the Nuclear Facility (NFAC) incident module in modeling a nuclear reactor accident is evaluated. Fallout predictions are compared with air concentration measurements of I-131 in Europe over a five-day period. Two categories of source term specifications are used: NFAC-generated source terms based on plant conditions and accident severity, and user-defined source terms based on specifying the release of I-131. The Atmospheric Transport Model Evaluation Study report source term provided the needed detailed release information. The Air Force Combat Climatology Center provided weather data covering Europe during the release's 11-day duration. For the NFAC-generated source terms as few …

Irrigation Scheduling Of Drip-Irrigated Tomatoes Using Class A Pan Evaporation, Öner Çeti̇n, Osman Yildirim, Demet Uygan, Hasan Boyaci

Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

This study was carried out to investigate the irrigation schedule of drip-irrigated tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum cv. Dual Large, F 1) using Class A pan evaporation. Tomatoes plants were grown in a clay soil in the experimental fields of the Research Institute of Rural Services in Eskişehir between 1998 and 2000. Irrigation water was applied as a certain ratio of Class A pan evaporation (k_{pc} = 0.50, 0.75, 1.00, and 1.25) with different irrigation intervals (2, 4, and 6 days). Significant differences in fruit yields were obtained between the treatments, except for in 1998. Maximum marketable fruit yield was found at …

Strategic Marketing Plan For San Antonio Urology Medical Group, Incorporated, Victor Choy Ching

Theses Digitization Project

San Antonio Urology Medical Group, Inc. (SAUMG) is a single speciality urologic practice in Southern California comprised of three urologists. The rapid changes occurring in healthcare must be analyzed and strategies developed to enhance the continued growth fo SAUMG and to shape its future.

Using Expert Systems For Simulation Modeling Of Patient Scheduling, Charles R. Standridge, Duane Steward

Peer Reviewed Articles

Modeling the scheduling of patient appointments is an important issue in simulating a health care delivery facility. A simulation model must include the control logic of appointment scheduling software and the explicit and implicit decision rules used by the human scheduler in selecting an appointment time. Expert systems provide one way of modeling such control logic and decision rules. We describe a structure for an expert system that models patient appointment scheduling and the integration of such an expert system within a simulation model. An example expert system for a small animal veterinary clinic is presented.

Master Scheduling At Entiat High School: An Ethnography Of Process And Practice, Evelyn M. Barnes

All Graduate Projects

The purpose of this Master's Project was to participate in, observe, and describe the process of master schedule creation as experienced in Entiat High School, a small high school in central Washington state. Included is a discussion of the challenges and concerns of creating a master schedule in a small high school. A model procedure, which can be utilized to create the annual master schedule regardless of format, is presented as a cooperative approach. Ideas on retooling the master schedule especially as it is related to current educational reform and restructuring are presented.

Block Scheduling: A Comparison Of Block Scheduling And Traditional Scheduling And Its Relationship To Student Achievement, Student Satisfaction And Teacher Methodology In A Junior-Senior High School In New Jersey, Thomas Matarazzo

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Phase Transitions In Project Scheduling, Willy Herroelen, Bert De Reyck

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Researchers in the area of artificial intelligence have recently shown that many NP-complete problems exhibit phase transitions. Often, problem instances change from being easy to being hard to solve to again being easy to solve when certain of their characteristics are modified. Most often the transitions are sharp, but sometimes they are rather continuous in the order parameters that are characteristic of the system as a whole. To the best of our knowledge, no evidence has been provided so far that similar phase transitions occur in NP-hard scheduling problems. In this paper we report on the existence of phase transitions …

Catca V Nav Canada, Innis Christie

Innis Christie Collection

Union grievance alleging breach of the Collective Agreement between The Treasury Board of Canada and The Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, signed August 30, 1991 for the period January 1, 1991 - December 31, 1993, as amended by the Memoranda of Understanding between The Canadian Air Traffic Control Association and NAV Canada dated December 13, 1996, which the parties agreed is the Collective Agreement that governs this matter, and in particular of Articles 16 and 17, in that the Employer advised that only two controllers would be permitted to be on leave during each shift cycle under the 1998 summer …

Effects Of Shiftwork On Air Force Aircraft Maintenance Personnel, Craig A. Campbell

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the effects of converting a large aircraft maintenance squadron from 8-hour shifts to 12-hour shifts. The squadron studied converted its 24- hour maintenance work force from three 8-hour work shifts to two 12-hour work shifts incrementally, with one section converting to 12-hour shifts in January, 1996, and the remaining section converting in July, 1996. Both sections remained on 12-hour shifts until September, 1997, when both sections converted back to a three shift 8-hour operation. Health and well being, on- and off-duty accident rates, day shift vs. night shift accident rates, and the effects of stress and fatigue …

The Scheduling Process In A Depot From The Brazilian Air Force, Fabricio J. Saito

Theses and Dissertations

The Brazilian Air Force (BAF) in its logistic structure contains 5 Air Logistic Centers (depots). This thesis concentrates its analysis on one of the most important BAF depots located at Sao Paulo (PAMASP). This thesis explores the scheduling process currently used in PAMASP. This thesis adopted a managerial approach in a sense that it looked to take a big picture of the current process. The researcher performed field interviews with the goal of describing the process. During the visit to PAMASP, the researcher also gathered problems related to the process. The recommendations stated on this study were based on the …

A Value Focused Thinking Approach To Academic Course Scheduling, Shane A. Knighton

Theses and Dissertations

In 1997, the School of Engineering of the United States Air Force Institute of Technology began exploring ways of automating the academic course scheduling process. The administration desired an expedient approach for course scheduling which supports the institute's mission of "providing scientific and technological education" to officers from all branches of military service, as well as international military forces. The scheduling approach needed to be flexible, efficient, and represent the institute's values and principles. Decision Analysis (DA) and specifically, Value Focused Thinking (VFT), is used to decompose the complex problem of academic course scheduling and determine the factors that are …

A Robust Unit Commitment Algorithm For Hydro-Thermal Optimization, Chao-An Li, R. B. Johnson, A. J. Svoboda, Chung-Li Tseng, E. Hsu

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a unit commitment algorithm which combines the Lagrangian relaxation (LR), sequential unit commitment (SUC), and optimal unit decommitment (UD) methods to solve a general hydro-thermal optimization (HTO) problem. We argue that this approach retains the advantages of the LR method while addressing the method''s observed weaknesses to improve overall algorithm performance and quality of solution. The proposed approach has been implemented in a version of PG&E''s HTO program, and test results are presented.

A Transmission-Constrained Unit Commitment Method, Chung-Li Tseng, Chao-An Li, S. S. Oren, C. S. Cheng, A. J. Svoboda, R. B. Johnson

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The paper presents a transmission-constrained unit commitment method using a Lagrangian relaxation approach. The transmission constraints are modeled as linear constraints based on a DC power flow model. The transmission constraints, as well as the demand and spinning reserve constraints, are relaxed by attaching Lagrange multipliers. The authors take a new approach in the algorithmic scheme. A three-phase algorithm is devised including dual optimization, a feasibility phase and unit decommitment. A test problem involving more than 2500 transmission lines and 2200 buses is tested along with other test problems

A Fast Parallel Algorithm To Recognize P4-Sparse Graphs, Rong Lin, Stephan Olariu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

A number of problems in mobile computing, group-based collaboration, automated theorem proving, networking, scheduling, and cluster analysis suggested the study of graphs featuring certain “local density” characteristics. Typically, the notion of local density is equated with the absence of chordless paths of length three or more. Recently, a new metric for local density has been proposed, allowing a number of such induced paths to occur. More precisely, a graphG is called P4-sparse if no set of five vertices inG induces more than one chordless path of length three. P4-sparse graphs generalize the well-known class of cographs corresponding to …

Scheduling And Sequencing Arrivals To A Stochastic Service System, Peter M. Vanden Bosch

Theses and Dissertations

Optimization of scheduled arrival times to an appointment system is approached from the perspectives of both queueing and scheduling theory. The appointment system is modeled as a one-server, first-come-first-served, transient queue with independent, distinctly distributed service times and no-show rates. If a customer does show, it is assumed to be punctual. The cost of operating the appointment system is a convex combination of customers' waiting times and the server's overtime. While techniques for finding the optimal static and dynamic schedules of arrivals have been proposed by other researchers, they mainly have focused on identical customers and strictly punctual arrivals. This …

Task Scheduling In Networks, Cynthia Phillips, Clifford Stein, Joel Wein

Dartmouth Scholarship

Scheduling a set of tasks on a set of machines so as to yield an efficient schedule is a basic problem in computer science and operations research. Most of the research on this problem incorporates the potentially unrealistic assumption that communication between the different machines is instantaneous. In this paper we remove this assumption and study the problem of network scheduling, where each job originates at some node of a network, and in order to be processed at another node must take the time to travel through the network to that node.

Our main contribution is to give approximation algorithms …

A Parallel Genetic-Neuro Scheduler For Job-Shop Scheduling Problems, H. C. Lee, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Despite relentless efforts on developing new approaches, there are still large gaps between schedules generated through various planning systems, and schedules actually used in the shop floor environment. An effective schedule generation is a knowledge intensive activity requiring a comprehensive model of a factory and its environment at all times. There are four main difficulties that need to be addressed. First, job shop scheduling belongs to a class of NP-hard problems. Second, it is a highly constrained problem that changes from shop to shop. Third, scheduling decisions depend upon other decisions which are not isolated from other functions. Thus, it …

On Cvt Minimization In Single Machine Scheduling., D. K. Manna Dr.

Doctoral Theses

Scheduling problens are quite common in real life. They arise whenever there is a need to plan execution of various tasks over time and therefore they play very important roles in commercial set-ups concerning manufacturing or service in the optimal use of resources and/or customers satisfaction. The theory of scheduling deals with the construction of suitable models and their analyses. Researchersattention was drawn to the study of scheduling problems using mathematical modeling, probably for the first time when Johnson (1954] published his famous work on flowshop problem. Since then, the study of scheduling problem and its context has gradually attracted …

G97-1324 Beef Cattle Implant Update, Dicky D. Griffin, Terry L. Mader

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension: Historical Materials

This NebGuide discusses the mechanism of action and use strategies for growth promoting implants, including expected responses and cost analysis.

Introduction

Growth promoting implants have been used extensively in beef production for over 30 years. Significant changes in implants and implanting strategies have occurred. Prior to 1987, available implants were estrogenic agents which metabolically enhanced nutrient use to enhance growth. These products improved feed efficiency 5-10 percent and daily gains from 5-15 percent. In 1987, the androgenic (tissue building) agent, trenbolone acetate, was approved for use in growth promoting implants. This compound had an additive effect with existing estrogenic implants. …

Short-Term Resource Scheduling With Ramp Constraints [Power Generation Scheduling], Chung-Li Tseng, Chao-An Li, A. J. Svoboda, R. B. Johnson

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper describes a Lagrangian relaxation-based method to solve the short-term resource scheduling (STRS) problem with ramp constraints. Instead of discretizing the generation levels, the ramp rate constraints are relaxed with the system demand constraints using Lagrange multipliers. Three kinds of ramp constraints, startup, operating and shutdown ramp constraints are considered. The proposed method has been applied to solve the hydro-thermal generation scheduling problem at PG&E. An example alone with numerical results is also presented

A Simulation Analysis Of The Impact Of Family Configuration On Virtual Cellular Manufacturing, Vijay R. Kannan

Management Faculty Publications

Past research has shown that it is possible to simultaneously achieve the setup efficiencies of traditional cellular manufacturing systems and the routeing flexibility of a job shop by viewing cells not as permanent, physical structures, but as temporary, 'virtual' entities. This research demonstrates that the advantages of virtual manufacturing cells can be obtained over a range of part family configurations. In particular, virtual cellular manufacturing is robust to changes in the number and size of families being processed. Further, the research shows that the benefits can be obtained under setup conditions impartial to a family-oriented part environment.

The Capacity Of The Air Force Satellite Control Network, Kwangho Jang

Theses and Dissertations

The daily mission objective of the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN) is to support communication with satellite systems. It is critical that the AFSCN operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Previous work on the satellite range scheduling problem has successfully scheduled over 90 percent of the satellite support requests. This research investigates the capacity of the AFSCN using an available satellite scheduling algorithm. This research has three objectives. The first objective is to be able to generate sample data sets which represent a day of satellite support requests for low, medium, and high altitude satellites. The …

Crisis Airlift Management: Effective Scheduling, David C. Penny

Theses and Dissertations

This is a report on the basis, data, findings, and models developed for US Transportation Command and Headquarters Air Mobility Command. Focusing on the dynamic scheduling problem that arises during management of airlift assets into space-constrained airfields during a crisis, this research explains the conditions surrounding this event, discusses several areas of potential cross-functional applications, presents analysis of current performance, and provides several modeling possibilities for schedule efficiency. Past research in the Flow Management Problem (an airline flow control issue) is extensive, but specific applications in crisis airlift are long in coming, primarily due to the complexity of the environment. …

Scalability In Real-Time Systems, Ramesh Yerraballi

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

The number and complexity of applications that run in real-time environments have posed demanding requirements on the part of the real-time system designer. It has now become important to accommodate the application complexity at early stages of the design cycle. Further, the stringent demands to guarantee task deadlines (particularly in a hard real-time environment, which is the assumed environment in this thesis) have motivated both practioners and researchers to look at ways to analyze systems prior to run-time. This thesis reports a new perspective to analyzing real-time systems that in addition to ascertaining the ability of a system to meet …

Development Of A Critical Path Method Specification And A Training Program For Use Of Cpm And Ktc, James D. Stevens, Donn E. Hancher, Ihab M. Hamdi

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Critical Path Method is a proven management technique used for determining the critical activities that would need additional care in any type of construction projects. The KTC requires that CPM schedules be used on selected highway projects. This research project offers a detailed idea on CPM scheduling application in highway construction projects, as well as current practices in other departments of transportation nationwide, together with specifications for proper application of CPM scheduling.

Procedures For Testing Deterministic Scheduling Models: A Dakota Case Study, Keith H. Mccready

Theses and Dissertations

The DAKOTA scheduling system has been proposed for use in the United States Air Forces Europe's (USAFE's) Operational Support Airlift (OSA) scheduling. This thesis examines the OSA scheduling topic and reviews the relevant literature on vehicle routing, concluding that exact methods are intractable for large problem sizes. Consequently, heuristic methods must be considered. This thesis takes a detailed look at the DAKOTA heuristic. It examines the concepts of Validation, Verification and Accreditation (VV&A), particularly as they apply to heuristics and algorithms. It then defines what measures of performance may prove useful in judging heuristics and algorithms in general, and details …

Security-Constrained Optimal Rescheduling Of Real Power Using Hopfield Neural Network, S. Ghosh, Badrul H. Chowdhury

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new method for security-constrained corrective rescheduling of real power using the Hopfield neural network is presented. The proposed method is based on solution of a set of differential equations obtained from transformation of an energy function. Results from this work are compared with the results from a method based on dual linear programming formulation of the optimal corrective rescheduling. The minimum deviations in real power generations and loads at buses are combined to form the objective function for optimization. Inclusion of inequality constraints on active line flow limits and equality constraint on real power generation load balance assures a …

Guidelines For Establishing Irrigation Scheduling Policies, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

Successful on-farm irrigation scheduling requires that water delivery projects adopt a service concept, and that water deliveries be made with a high degree of reliability. An arranged delivery schedule and seasonal volumetric allocations are additional requirements. Until these conditions are met, attempts to implement modern on-farm irrigation scheduling techniques to maximize water use efficiency, and to maximize yields will be only partially successful.

Why Schedules Slip: Actual Reasons For Schedule Problems Across Large Air Force System Development Efforts, William M. Cashman

Theses and Dissertations

The three main objectives of this research were to identify the actual reasons for schedule problems across large Air Force system development efforts, to quantity the importance of each category of reasons in terms of frequency and severity, and to demonstrate that the reasons for schedule problems are not program unique, but are common across system development efforts. To this end, this thesis contains a categorization and analysis of 549 reasons for schedule difficulties on 22 large Air Force Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) programs from 1981 to 1994. These aircraft, missile, aircraft equipment, aircraft upgrade, and simulator programs had …