Engineering Commons^™

Environmental Savings Tracking System For Cisco Systems, Inc., Lauren J. Herrera

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This paper illustrates the research, methodology and design used to create an environmental savings tracking system, also known as the Green Dashboard, for Cisco Systems Inc.’s Green Initiatives Group to quantify and capture an annualized summary of savings from projects initiated within its Customer Value Chain Management Organization. It articulately describes the

methodology behind the selection of metrics and the design of the process required to collect and track these quantitative direct savings. As well as describes the benefits associated with implementing this system, such as shifting Cisco towards more sustainable products and increased customer satisfaction and investor relations by …

Recycling Made Easy: An Ergonomic Approach To Home Recycling And Trash Containers, Landon P. Boisclair

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The purpose of this project is to create an ergonomically sound recycling/trash container, with the ultimate hope of making the recycling process easier and more intuitive, thereby increasing recycling rates. Currently, while there are many recycling/trash containers available for purchase, there is no product that has a design without glaring ergonomic flaws. An ergonomic design and product prototype was created as a part of this project, and was subsequently tested against a conventional prototype model. The data collected from the experiments conducted suggests that the new ergonomic model makes the waste disposal process and the container transportation process easier, while …

Energy Audit And Optimization For "Arches Etc.", James Ross Dixon

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Arches etc. is a San Diego business, which specializes in the manufacture, distribution, and installation of custom designed doors, windows, mouldings, and hardware. Due to the recent economic downturn, which has hindered the construction industry, Arches etc. believed that an analysis and optimization of their energy usage would provide additional assistance towards their goal to lower overhead and maintain current operations.

To begin this task, a comprehensive energy audit was conducted to establish an initial state from which to base improvements. Arches etc.’s current monthly utility bill averages $996, which solidifies the accuracy of this project’s performed energy audit, estimating …

Digester Selection And Operation For Heybeli Island, Spencer Fackler, Joseph Violetti

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The Heybeli Digester project originated with Sema Alptekin in her personal research and was incorporated into a Senior Project opportunity at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The aim of this project was to select and design a plan for the use of a digester for the island of Heybeli, Turkey. The objective of this plan was to incorporate economic, social, and environmental justifications to evaluate if a digester would be a benefit to the community.

Systems Engineering analysis is a vital tool when working with complicated projects that include multiple systems interfacing with one another. Through the use …

Design For Manufacturing Of Sports Equipment, Cedrick Bit, Christopher L. Head

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The purpose of this project was to validate industrial designs for a product in its conceptual stage and suggest/implement design changes that suit the contracting company’s needs while assuring the product maintains its basic functional requirements. Techniques and methods used to validate the design include 3‐D solid modeling, physical product application using rapid prototyping to produce the product. Methods of design for manufacturing were analyzed in the design. Processes used in the validation and verification of the design include solid modeling design, methods of measurements, fixture design and manufacturing processes. Full design specifications and solid model files were finalized and …

The Optimal Warehouse Location For Cal Poly's Campus Dining, Robert Buie

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The Cal Poly Corporation and Campus Dining face the challenge of meeting the growth of students and dining venues on campus with the limited space capacity of their warehouse in building 19. Given a $250,000 budget, Campus Dining has an option to keep the warehouse at the current location at building 19 or moving the warehouse to building 82 off Mt. Bishop Road. Each warehouse location has its benefits as building 19 is in the center of campus and building 82 has much more shelving space than building 19. The objective of this project was to select the better choice …

Nonprofit Management Through Effective Database Utilization, Jennifer Muscat

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This project addresses problems found within a specific department within Lifewater International. Lifewater faces many unique challenges operating as a nonprofit. Like most nonprofits, elaborate costly solutions are simply not an option when solving department problems. This project addresses three interrelated problems within Lifewater’s Development and Communications Department. The three issues addressed are Volunteer Management, Donor Management, and Project Management. Each problem was examined to determine the areas for improvement that this project can handle and solve. Each problem was given an improved design. A Volunteer Management System was designed to increase volunteer utilization and appropriately match volunteers with appropriate …

Visual Representations Of Queried Database Results Using Google's Mapping Technologies, Steven Michael Kilbert

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Database queries have been used in business applications throughout the world to filter out specific information which is often used as a basis for making a decision. Despite the broad use of queries, there are only a limited number of ways to represent results, the most common being a dynaset, or results table. This paper describes the investigation of methods to create more visual representations of results using maps to show queried geospatial data. From these methods, applications were successfully developed to create customized maps in Google Earth and Google Maps based on queried geographical data from Microsoft Access databases. …

Non-Profit Management System For Friends Of The Elephant Seal, Matthew Justus, Robert Macasi, Jeff Zinn

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Friends of the Elephant Seal (FES) are a non-profit organization based in San Simeon, California. Their current method of tracking and reporting information is inefficient. A project was proposed to develop a new information management system for FES, install it at their office and provide training including a user manual. The project was divided into three parts: Database Design and Implementation; User Interface Design and Ergonomics; and User Manual & Help System.

The objective of the project was to design a user-friendly interface specifically for the FES worker that allowed for easy access to data entry functions, reporting functions and …

Digital Human Models Of People With Disabilities, Ron Hamameh

Wayne State University Theses

The current state-of-the-art in Digital Human Modeling (DHM) allows for full simulation and analysis of any task a person is required to perform at home, at work, in the military, in space, in sports, etc. The problem is that the software is missing a very important population: people with physical disabilities. What modifications and enhancements must be made to existing, commercially available DHM software to include this population?

Quality Analysis In Flexible Manufacturing Systems With Batch Productions, Junwen Wang

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

To improve product quality and reduce cost, batch production is often implemented in many exible manufacturing systems. However, the current literature does not provide any method to analyze the quality performance in a flexible manufacturing system with batch production.

In this research, we present an analytical method with closed-form formula to evaluate the quality performance in such systems. Based on the model, we discover and investigate monotonic and non-monotonic properties in quality to provide practical guidance for operation management. To improve product quality, we introduce the notions of quality improvability with respect to product sequencing. In addition, we develop the …

Knowledge Management Determinants Of Continuance Behavior: Evaluating The Air Force Knowledge Now Knowledge Management System, Eric Tucker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Knowledge management (KM) encompasses the set of capabilities, processes, tools, and techniques for the most effective use of knowledge by an organization. The goal of KM is to improve the organization's ability to create, transfer, retain, and apply knowledge. Knowledge management is a goal that many organizations seek to achieve. Organizations apply their strategies, plans, and implementation to achieve KM. Organizations use technology to implement their KM strategy. For some, this approach has worked well; however, for others, the results have fallen short. KM shortcomings revolve around employees' infrequent use of the technology. This research seeks to understand what influences …

Causal Product Knowledge Management, Yun Seon Kim

Wayne State University Dissertations

The US engineering industry base is facing a significant loss of knowledge due to large numbers of employees retiring in the next decade. Problems in various product developments including product design may arise when the expertise is no longer available or the knowledge is forgotten. Also, most of product design knowledge is not reusable, because product design knowledge in an organization remains un-codified. Generally, knowledge-based system can solve or infer these problems. However, knowledge-based systems have been developed solely through the use of rule-based approach, which allows for easy modeling of expert reasoning, but such an approach is not general …

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 …

Enterprise Business Alignment Using Quality Function Deployment, Multivariate Data Analysis And Business Modeling Tools, Diala Gammoh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation proposes two novel ideas to enhance the business strategy alignment to customer needs. The proposed business alignment clock is a new illustration to the relationships between customer requirements, business strategies, capabilities and processes. To line up the clock and reach the needed alignment for the enterprise, a proposed clock mechanism is introduced. The mechanism integrates the Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) with the House of Quality (HoQ). The relationship matrix inside the body of the house is defined using multivariate data analysis techniques to accurately measure the strength of the relationships rather than defining them subjectively. A statistical tool, …

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 …

Manual Handling Workload And Musculoskeletal Discomfort Among Warehouse Personnel, Terrance N. Knox

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSD), specifically physical and muscular discomfort in the upper arm, lower arm, thigh, lower leg, wrist, shoulders, back, or neck, are among the most frequently reported workplace injuries in the United States. The dearth of knowledge about the types of workloads that may contribute to the development of WRMSD was the impetus of this research. The study aimed to identify antecedents of WRMSD among warehouse workers in order to reduce WRMSDs and increase productivity as expressed in a systems perspective on industrial health. The research questions examined the prevalence of specific WRMSDs, the relationship of high-risk tasks …

Heat Stress Evaluation Of Protective Clothing Ensembles, Amanda Lee Pease

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Clothing directly affects the level of heat stress exposure. Useful measures to express the thermal characteristics are WBGT (wet bulb globe temperature) clothing adjustment factor (CAF) or apparent total evaporative resistance (R_e,T,_a). The CAF is assigned through laboratory wear trials following a heat stress protocol in which the air temperature and humidity are progressively increased until the participant clearly loses the ability to maintain thermal equilibrium. The critical condition is the point of thermal transition and from these conditions both the CAF and Re,T,a are computed. The first objective of this study is to compare the …

Task Analysis, Modeling, And Automatic Identification Of Elemental Tasks In Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery, Lavie Pinchas Golenberg

Wayne State University Dissertations

Robotic microsurgery provides many advantages for surgical operations, including tremor filtration, an increase in dexterity, and smaller incisions. There is a growing need for a task analyses on robotic laparoscopic operations to understand better the tasks involved in robotic microsurgery cases. A few research groups have conducted task observations to help systems automatically identify surgeon skill based on task execution. Their gesture analyses, however, lacked depth and their class libraries were composed of ambiguous groupings of gestures that did not share contextual similarities.

A Hierarchical Task Analysis was performed on a four-throw suturing task using a robotic microsurgical platform. Three …