Engineering Commons^™

Risk Mitigation In The Supply Chain Caused By Multitple Phase-In And Phase-Out Components Using Simio Simulation, Anabel Renteria Marquez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Manufacturing is constantly changing, adapting to new technologies and making improvements on their products design, while dealing with engineering design changes can represent an improvement or savings to the company it can also end up as a huge risk of disruption in the Supply Chain if there is not a safety phase-in and phase-out components transition because the network became more complex and affected processes needs to be revalidated, here comes the importance to set up an strategy to mitigate any possible risk and maximize total revenue.

A case study for a two tiers level Supply Chain system is evaluated …

Healthcare Utilization Awareness And Labor Monitoring Methodology: A Theoretical I.M.S.E. Approach To Risk Minimization And Human Metrics Capturing In The Nursing Workforce, Luis Reyes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The healthcare industry is so complex and dynamic that the development of any tool designed to promote positive patient outcomes nearly requires the developer to be an actual healthcare practitioner. Many healthcare tools exists that initially give the perception that there will be no future requirements that may hinder the tools' integrity, but more often than not, the unexpected occurs. The future is one unpredictable element of life that most engineers wish they could capture with optimal precision. I.M.S.E. (Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering) applications do not assist with fortune telling, but they do assist with creating robust tools designed …

A Cubesat Communication System Development For Gto Mission, Ashiqur Rahman

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Tracking, telemetry and command (TT&C) systems on traditional small satellites have advanced significantly in last few decades. The capabilities, requirements and expectations of the communication system have been increased significantly for the smaller satellites. Small satellites are now performing the tasks near to the bigger satellites which increases the dependency on the communication system in terms of reliability and data management. This Thesis paper will focus on development of the communication system of a 1U cube Satellite named Orbital Factory II (OFII). The satellite will be launched into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) onboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas …

A Novel Approach To Control Corrosion Behaviour On Bio Materials Using Taguchi Method (Design Of Experiments), Sai Dhiresh Kilari

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the present work, the Taguchi method, from the design of experiment (DOE) has been used to optimize the dip testing method to test the corrosion resistance of bio degradable materials such as PLA (Polylactic acid)and PCL (Polycaprolactone). A L9 (9) orthogonal array of Taguchi design was used, which involves nine experiments for three parameters (pH, sample, temperature) with three levels was used. Corrosion resistance in various pH change of HCL solution was evaluated by dip tests at various temperatures. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) is performed on the obtained measured data and S/N (signal to noise) ratios. The lower the …

Design Of Experiments-Based Scara Robot Parameter Evaluation For Embedding Electronics Into 3d Print, Sreekara Charith Boppana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Additive manufacturing processes combined with enhanced technologies for electronics production enables a highly flexible manufacturing of personalized 3D electronic devices. Due to the enormous progress within the last years, these technologies made their way from prototyping towards manufacturing. The growing request for products manufactured in batch size, making use of a robot to incorporate the electronic components necessary to make functional 3-Dimensional-Structural Electronics will extend the mass production possibilities. There is significant interest in automation of a process is which parameters are influential in the occurrence of assembly defects and which adjustments should be made to those variables to reduce …

Optimal Energy Management System For A Net Zero Building Using Multi-Agent Systems Approach, Arzhang Ghassemi Pashakalaei

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Buildings have a significant impact on energy usage and the environment. Much of the research in architectural sustainability has centered on economically advanced countries because they consume the most energy and have the most resources. However, sustainable architecture is important in developing countries, where the energy consumption of the building sector is increasing significantly. The aims of this Thesis are investigating using the hybrid system, which formed by interconnecting two source of renewable energy as solar (PV arrays) and wind (turbine) along with city grid for compensation purposes wherever it is required. In this Thesis, after literature review, we consider …

Enhancing Surface Finish Of Fused Deposition Modeling Parts Through Targeted Chemicals And Design Of Experiments, Saurabh Nayyar Nayyar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) is one of the most popular rapid prototyping (RP) technologies due to its low operational cost, high fabrication speed, and range of applications served. However, FDM fabricated parts generally have poor surface finish quality which have limited their utilization in end-use applications. To enhance surface quality of FDM materials, several researchers have regulated key process parameters using the FDM material, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), with varying results. The main goal of this research is to investigate the effects of a post-fabrication chemical treatment process on the surface roughness for FDM parts of the FDM material ULTEM. …

A Cell Formation Algorithm For Sequential Processes With Alternative Machine Selection In The Automotive Lighting Industry, Victor Manuel Loya Garnica

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

At the present time, there are more than 12 big companies dedicated to design and produce OEM lighting systems for cars and trucks. The manufacturing processes for headlamps, tail lamps and any other exterior vehicle lighting are very common in the auto industry. Still, every automotive lamp assembly is different from brand to brand and even between the different vehicle models. Indeed, there are car headlamps with less than 30 sub-components and others with up to 300 elements. This implies creating diverse part numbers which share or hold varying manufacturing methods within a specific facility. Management of the plant resources …

Part Detection And Classification Using Integrated Machine Vision And Knowledge Based Expert System, Cristian Giovanni Lopez Ulloa

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Manufacturing cost is a topic of interest in the automotive manufacturing industry. Even though rework and repair methods are acceptable processes in manufacturing, there is little investigation done on the classification and cost parameters of a repairable or re-workable part. Having a non-conforming part indicates a loss in revenue to a manufacturing company, thus the need to repair or rework the part. Repair and rework processes take non-conforming products of a manufacturing line and bring the parts back to conforming stage. In this study, the proposed system establishes a connection between detection of defects, classification of them based on defect …

E-Quality Control Using 3d Reconstruction And 3d Measurement, Jun Zheng

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Recently more and more industrial applications use image acquisition to improve product manufacturing. The observed growth in the last few years is mainly due to the great advances in acquisition devices which are now affordable for more industrialists. Moreover, the increasing demands in the quality requirements of the products are a great stimulus to apply vision tools which allow a better understanding of the impact of the manufacturing process on the product quality. Vision tools have been used in many industrial fields. But the traditional 2D vision is not as reliable as 3D measurement due to the limitations of the …

Decision Making Model For Foreign Object Debris/Damage (Fod) Elimination In Aeronautics Using Quantitative Modeling Approach, Jose Jaime Lafon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

(FOD) Foreign Object Debris/Damage has been a costly issue for the commercial and military aircraft manufacturers at their production lines every day. FOD can put pilots, passengers and other crews' lives into high-risk. FOD refers to any type of foreign object, particle, debris or agent in the manufacturing environment, which could contaminate/damage the product or otherwise undermine quality standards. Nowadays, FOD is currently addressed with prevention programs, elimination techniques, and designation of FOD areas, controlled access to FOD areas, restrictions of personal items entering designated areas, tool accountability, etc. All of the efforts mentioned before, have not shown a significant …

Design Of A Biomass-To-Biorefinery Logistics System Through Bio-Inspired Metaheuristic Optimization Considering Multiple Types Of Feedstocks, Isidoro Trueba

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Bioenergy has become an important alternative source of energy to alleviate the reliance on petroleum energy. Bioenergy offers significant potential to mitigate climate change by reducing life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions relative to fossil fuels. The Energy Independence and Security Act mandate the use of 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels including 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels by the year 2022. It is clear that Biomass can make a substantial contribution to supplying future energy demand in a sustainable way. However, the supply of sustainable energy is one of the main challenges that mankind will face over the coming decades. …

Prediction Of Foreign Object Debris/Damage (Fod) Type For Elimination In The Aeronautics Manufacturing Environment Through Logistic Regression Model, Natalia V. Espino

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Foreign Object Debris/Damage (FOD) is a costly and high-risk problem that aeronautics industries such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, among others are facing at their production lines every day. They spend an average of $350 thousand dollars per year fixing FOD problems. FOD can put pilots, passengers and other crews' lives into high-risk. FOD refers to any type of foreign object, particle, debris or agent in the manufacturing environment, which could contaminate/damage the product or otherwise undermine quality control standards. FOD can be in the form of any of the following categories: panstock, manufacturing debris, tools/shop aids, consumables and trash. Although …

Optimization Of Bioprinting Process Using Design Of Experiments (Doe) And Taguchi Method, Maria Veronica Gonzalez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

At this time there is a need for new fabrication techniques for engineering complex biological structures related to regenerative medicine, in vitro tissue analysis, and pharmaceutical testing with the purpose of placing specific cells in specific target locations. Right now, there is no enough conventional cell seeding methods that can achieve it. In order to achieve it, bio-fabrication, which is a delivery mechanism capable of placing biomaterials, cells, and bioactive macromolecules in specific target locations, comes to play an important role in this area. Among different approaches, bioprinting is one of the most useful processes that use drop-on-demand delivery mechanisms …

A Quantitative Approach Using An Axiomatic Design Framework To A Medication Distribution System, Pepito Raguini

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As the need to minimize medication errors drives many medical facilities to come up with robust solutions to the most common error that affects patient's safety, these hospitals would be wise to put a concerted effort into finding methodologies that can facilitate an optimized medical distribution system. If the hospitals' upper management is looking for an optimization method that is an ideal fit, it is just as important that the right tool be selected for the application at hand. In the present work, we propose the application of Axiomatic Design (AD), which is a process that focuses on the generation …

Prediction Of Foreign Object Debris/Damage Fod Type Based In Human Factors For Aeronautics Using Logistic Regression Model, David Ricardo Romo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Foreign Object Debris/Damage (FOD) has been an issue for military and commercial aircraft manufacturers since the early ages of aviation and aerospace. Currently, aerospace is growing rapidly and the chances of FOD presence are growing as well. One of the principal causes in manufacturing is the human error. The cost associated with human error in commercial and military aircrafts is approximately accountable for 4 billion dollars per year. This problem is currently addressed with prevention programs, elimination techniques, and designation of FOD areas, controlled access, restrictions of personal items entering designated areas, tool accountability, and the use of technology such …

Optimization Of Biomass Logistics System Using Genetic Algorithm And Particle Swarm Optimization For Biofuel Production, Ethel Regina Martinez-Schabez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As time goes by, Renewable Energy keeps proving to be an important and potential replacement for fossil fuels. All the different types of Renewable Energy offer a relief to the environmental aftermaths of the prolonged reliance on fossil fuel energy. Bioenergy is one of the types of Renewable Energy that can help by minimizing the emissions of fossil fuels. The Energy Independence and Security Act mandates the use of 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels including 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels by the year 2022. Biomass and Biofuels can clearly become a significant aid to sustainably supply energy in …

An Approach To Power Efficiency Determination In The Solar Energy Systems Using Central Composite Design And Box-Behnken Design, Juan Venegas Mendez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

We are living in an industrialized world that relies on fossil fuels. The ways, in which these fossil fuels have damaged the earth, in special the environment is worth of special attention and corrective actions. In our days, the climate change (global warming) it is becoming the number one topic. These changes are affecting our health, comfort and our way of living. Solar systems have been working among us since several years, but the truth is that most of us really don't understand how they work and more important, how they work in time in different conditions. Solar panels are …

Decision Rule Induction For Service Sector Using Data Mining- A Rough Set Theory Approach, Zhonghua Hu

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nowadays, data mining is more widely used than ever before; not only by the academic area, but also in the industry and business area. Apart from execution of business processes, the creation of knowledge base and its utilization for the benefit of the organization is becoming a strategy tool to compete. Despite of having ever growing data bases, the problem is that the finance company fails to fully capitalize the true benefits which can be gained from this great wealth of information. The data mining technology instead of classic statistical analysis is developed to help the people to discover the …

Identification Of Rework Station Location To Enhance Reworkability Using Design For Disassembly, Juan Alejandro Saavedra

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Rework stations are commonly established as part of each assembly stations causing the material flow of the process to be constantly interrupted. Another option is to place the rework station at the end of the production, but this is not cost effective. This breakeven point between reworkability and cost methodology has been proposed in this thesis to identify the location of a single rework station in an assembly line in order to enhance reworkability using the Design for Disassembly (DfD) principles. The methodology uses the 17 guidelines of DfD in a manufacturing scenario in order to propose a reworkability index …

New Mathematical And Evolutionary Optimization Methods To Achieve Fair Division In Multi-Agent Resource Allocation, Emmanuel Gurrola Molina

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The problem of resource allocation among a group of agents naturally arises in a wide range of real-life events. The subject has earned popularity across the disciplines of Economics, Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence Operations Research and Social Welfare. This resource allocation problem can be commonly referred to as Multi-Agent Resource Allocation (MARA). This work considers a MARA problem where a central agent decides to allocate a set of divisible and non-divisible goods. MARA is considered to be part of an interdisciplinary research area in which the literature is vast and rapidly developing. However, most of the available literature mainly focuses …

Implementation Of Evolutionary Algorithms On The Power Industry And Aviation Security, Anuar Jesus Aguirre

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The main objective of the power electric power grid is to supply reliable electricity to all the customers. Customers could be industrial, commercial, household, transportation and others. The power grid is a complex and large, and it formed by the conjunction of the generation, transmission and distribution system. The present research is focused in power distribution system. A new component replacement analysis method to solve component replacement problems for complex electricity distribution systems using Genetic Algorithms is developed. In the present model a Taylor series expansion is used to approximate the associated opportunity cost for each component in the system. …

Enterprise Transformation Through A Zachman-Bayesian Framework To Improve Efficiency & Productivity, Ramakanth Gona

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Although organizations are aware of the benefits of enterprise architectures models, organizations have difficulties determining deficiencies in their business architecture. Organizational assessment tools often do not achieve expectations as sold to management. Performance measures often fail to properly represent necessary holistic measurements. Methods for capturing deficiencies in current business models and deterring improvements to optimize business processes are rare. This thesis develops a new experimental architecture modeling approach for enterprise transformations. The approach is efficient in capturing deficiencies and finding correlations which can become targeted goals for improvements. The Zachman enterprise architecture framework provides a holistic view of organizational models …

Indentifying And Understanding User Preferences In Generic Planning Tools, Grisel Ventura

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Planning is an important cognitive work activity. To support this complex task, the development of planning tools is important to support people during decision-making and problem-solving tasks. Nowadays, a large number of manual and electronic tools support this complex activity; manual and electronic planning tools aid people in creating strategies for effective work performance. However, there is limited information on the design of generic planning tools people use for their activities, and why people choose to use the planning tool they do. Some examples of generic tools for planning are calendars, checklists, agendas, etc.

To answer this question, this research …

Theoretical Exploratory Investigation On Reliability Of Advanced Ceramics By Discrete Element Simulation, Ana Laura Quezada Lara

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The increasing application of silicon nitride in biomedical and other engineering fields has elevated the necessity to understand its reliability. Due to the complexity of producing pure material researchers have been analyzing the behavior of the material with flaws. In this thesis several scenarios are simulated with the support of PFC2D to analyze microcrack propagation depending on the position, quantity and size of the voids to understand the effect each of the cases have on the material. A four point bending test was applied to each case twice recording the loading force. Having two runs allows doing a statistical analysis …

Optimization Models For The Economic And Non-Economic Level Of Repair Analysis, Carlos Marco Ituarte-Villarreal

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Every component, equipment or system will eventually fail. All failures produce a maintenance cost and, repair costs are especially hard to estimate ahead of time. Research shows that maintenance costs are the most substantial costs of development and use of equipment, reason why the cost of the product or equipment through its life is a major concern. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is to provide a new optimization model to determine the minimum cost maintenance policy for complex systems.

Renewable Energy Integration: An Approach For Micro-Grid Optimization., Nicolas Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores the Renewable Energy Integration Problem beginning with a literature review on the different sources of electrical energy classified as Non-Renewable and Renewable, stating that the integration of renewable sources within the pre-existing Power-Grids is a current worldwide problem that is being addressed with different approaches.

The impossibility to exactly model the different equations relating the electric output of the renewable energy sources as they relate with meteorological factors, makes the renewable sector a stochastic component of the overall mathematical model, where it can be concluded that most of the problem is in the area of the forecast. …

Observer-Dependent Model For Analyzing Subjective Parameters In Epidemiology, Milad Zarei

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Although medical technologies for preventing the contagion and spread of infectious diseases have improved steadily throughout the last century, new infectious diseases are still emerging and spreading swiftly. The modeling of infectious disease spread is crucial in addressing the lack of predictive ability in epidemiology. Managing the spread of infectious diseases requires processing quantitative epidemiological data and the ability to capture the dynamics of the infectious disease in order to provide a measure of control.

In this thesis, I have introducing cognitive biases in diseases spread modeling. For the first time, to the author's knowledge, the human subjective experience has …

Component Replacement Analysis For Electricity Distribution Systems Using Evolutionary Algorithms, Vasukumar Chenna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The main objective of the electric power grid is to supply economical and reliable electricity to industrial, commercial, household, transportation, and other end-users, including agricultural, educational institutions and hospitals. The power system is a very large and complex network consisting of generation, transmission, and distribution systems. The main focus of the present research is in the area of power distribution systems. Almost all the areas of the power grid uses simpler radial distribution systems to distribute electricity to the end consumer, it is the final and therefore vital link between the consumer and the rest of the power grid. Therefore …

E-Quality: Using Dimensional Index Values Towards Improving Classification Accuracy, Prashanth Devaram

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

E-quality is a process through which inspection of the process and quality of the part produced is done online resulting in the improvement of the process and reduction in the amount of time consumed for the overall process. Automated quality control involves using a methodology to classify the parts based on the dimensions of the features on a part. However, achieving 100% classification accuracy is not an easy task, especially in area of quality control where small differences in dimensions result in part fall into a different category. In this study, a novel approach for modifying the data before being …