Engineering Commons^™

Implementation Of A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (Mcda) Toolkit To Aid In Ranking Naval Mission Vessel Combinations With Uncertainty, Andrew R. Miller

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

United States (U.S.) military bases have largely been constructed outside of the contiguous United States (OCONUS) due to the need of close support logistics for conflicts and wars. In contrast, military bases within the contiguous United States (CONUS) have been constructed mostly due to economic and other related monetary factors. In addition to monetary concerns for the placement of military bases (specifically naval bases), there exists tactical, environmental, cultural, climate, logistical, and geographical issues that need to be fully considered before deciding on a naval installation location and the vessels to be stationed there. I will present a new toolkit …

Methodology To Perform Cyber Lethality Assessment, Matthew W. Zurasky

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) Lethality and Effectiveness Branch is the Navy’s subject matter experts (SME) on target vulnerability, weapon lethality, and weapon effectiveness. Branch personnel currently exercise expertise in the kinetic and directed energy weapon domains. When the Navy develops weapons in the kinetic and directed energy domains, there are clear and well established procedures and methodologies for performing target characterization that support weapon-target pairing. Algorithms exist to describe the likelihood of damage effects. It is natural that in the paradigm shift to cyberspace warfare that the Branch provide these same services to the warfighter in …

Emergency Diesel-Electric Generator Set Maintenance And Test Periodicity, Stephen John Fehr

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Manufacturer and industry recommendations vary considerably for maintenance and tests of emergency diesel-electric generator sets in emergency standby duty. There is little consistency among generator sets of similar technology, and manufacturers and their representatives often provide contradictory guidance. As a result, periodicity of emergency diesel-electric generator set maintenance and tests varies considerably in practice. Utilizing the framework proposed and tested by Fehr (2014), this research developed a parametric regression survival model of the reliability of modern diesel-electric generator sets in emergency standby duty as a function of maintenance, age, and cumulative run hours. A survival regression technique leveraging Cox’s (1972) …

Diversity Team Building: Impact On Virtual Team Performance, Nina C. Magpili-Smith

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Although organizations have addressed diversity issues at the organizational-level with resulting positive employee outcomes, lack of scholarly attention to team-level interventions remain. Team-level interventions would benefit organizations more directly as they address issues directly related to task accomplishment. Since diversity may lead to negative performance results for teams, a team building intervention based on the latest empirical research was developed and tested to address the potential performance losses associated to diversity in decision-making teams. The team building intervention provides six crucial elements, namely (1) direct experience of how deep-level team diversity affect team dynamics, (2) diversity education, (3) cultivation of …

A Hilbert Space Geometric Representation Of Shared Awareness And Joint Decision Making, Mustafa Canan

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Two people in the same situation may ascribe very different meanings to their experiences. They will form different awareness, reacting differently to shared information. Various factors can give rise to this behavior. These factors include, but are not limited to, prior knowledge, training, biases, cultural factors, social factors, team vs. individual context, time, resources, and technology. At the individual level, the differences in attaining separate actions by accessing shared information may not be considered as an anomaly from the perspective of rational decision-making. But for group behavior, reacting differently to the shared information can give rise to conflicts and deviations …

Initiating Event Analysis Of A Lithium Fluoride Thorium Reactor, Nicholas Charles Geraci

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study is to perform an Initiating Event Analysis for a Lithium Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) as the first step of a Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA). The major objective of the research is to compile a list of key initiating events capable of resulting in failure of safety systems and release of radioactive material from the LFTR.

Due to the complex interactions between engineering design, component reliability and human reliability, probabilistic safety assessments are most useful when the scope is limited to a single reactor plant. Thus, this thesis will study the LFTR design proposed by …

Impact Of A Localized Lean Six Sigma Implementation On Overall Patient Safety And Process Efficiency, Luvianca G. Gil-Moreno

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Continuous quality improvement tools have been widely used in the Healthcare Industry to increase efficiency and patient safety as well as to reduce cost. This research explores the impact of a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) process improvement initiative on the overall process efficiency and patient safety in the Labor and Delivery (L+D) units of a large hospital provider. This study focuses on the application of a modeling and simulation methodology to investigate the influence of a localized process improvement intervention on the overall L+D unit output by considering patient flow, system capacity, and unit performance. The simulation models capacity profiles …

Role Of Requirements Engineering In Software Project’S Success, Sujatha Alla

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Despite considerable time and resources spent on the initiation phase of software projects, discrepancies often exist between formal project documentation, customer requirements, and final project specifications. Such discrepancies in the requirements management process can have a very negative impact on final project outcomes. A Business Requirements Document (BRD) constitutes the formal software requirements documentation, which typically includes stakeholders’ needs and expectations and project scope while providing a clear project roadmap and project plan. According to IEEE standards, a BRD should be a structured document that includes specific elements such as functional and technical requirements while incorporating certain traits such as …

A Predictor Analysis Framework For Surface Radiation Budget Reprocessing Using Design Of Experiments, Patricia Allison Quigley

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Earth’s Radiation Budget (ERB) is an accounting of all incoming energy from the sun and outgoing energy reflected and radiated to space by earth’s surface and atmosphere. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) Surface Radiation Budget (SRB) project produces and archives long-term datasets representative of this energy exchange system on a global scale. The data are comprised of the longwave and shortwave radiative components of the system and is algorithmically derived from satellite and atmospheric assimilation products, and acquired atmospheric data. It is stored as 3-hourly, daily, monthly/3-hourly, and monthly averages of 1°x1° …

Analysis Of Project Management System Structure Using The Viable System Model (Vsm), Joseph A. Sisti

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to explore the applicability of the Viable System Model as a framework for structural analysis of Project Management Systems using a case study approach. The research used a modified Viable System Model based on the work of Stafford Beer (1979) for the analysis of systems (organizations). The specific research questions explored in this research were: (1) How can the Viable System Model (VSM) be adapted for analysis of project management structure? And, (2) What results from exploration of the Viable System Model framework application to active project management structures?

The research used an exploratory …

Planning And Team Shared Mental Models As Predictors Of Team Collaborative Processes, Zikai Zhou

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This study evaluates the role of team planning and the similarity of team shared mental models (TSMMs) as predictors of two types of collaborative behaviors that are known to contribute to team performance. A computer-based Networked Fire Chief (NFC) simulation task was used as a testing environment for emergent and dynamic situations. The relationships among team planning, similarity of task-focused team shared mental models (TASKTSMMs), similarity of team-focused team shared mental models (TEAMTSMMs), team backup behaviors, and implicit coordination were tested. This study provides evidence for the mediation effect of similarity of TASKTSMMs between team planning and team backup behaviors, …