Engineering Commons^™

Adaptive Nonlinear Optimization Methodology For Installed Capacity Decisions In Distributed Energy/Cooling Heat And Power Applications., Carl Randolph Hudson

Doctoral Dissertations

Evaluation of potential cooling, heating and power (CHP) applications requires an assessment of the operations and economics of a particular system in meeting the electric and thermal demands of a specific end-use facility. Given the electrical and thermal load behavior of a facility, the tariff structure for grid-supplied electricity, the price of primary fuel (e.g., natural gas), the operating strategy and characteristics of the CHP system, and an assumed set of installed CHP system capacities (e.g., installed capacity of prime mover and absorption chiller), one can determine the cost of such a system as compared to reliance solely on traditional, …

A Statistical Based Model To Manage Perishable Goods Within A Cold Supply Chain, Amanda Rhiana Hicks

Masters Theses

"Cold chain" management, the management of a temperature sensitive supply chain, has its own particular set of logistical challenges and issues when compared to a non-temperature sensitive supply chain. Current supply chain management techniques and tools that are utilized today in industry do not take this unique set of challenges into account. This thesis will focus on how using a model that has been built upon the theories of statistical process control techniques that does take the challenges into account, when monitoring and evaluating in-transit shipment of perishable goods throughout the cold supply chain, can assist in continuously improving the …

Simulating Discriminatory Profiling, Oscar Neal

Masters Theses

There is a concern that racial profiling is being used to invoke searches and stops in spite of its violation of the fourth amendment. Simulation methods are used to study the correlation test of stops, searches and citations with race, age, and gender. The design uses sensitivity analysis of inputs to determine their relationship to outputs statistics of a police department's citations and stops. Experimental results are than used to verify and predict departmental bias. A simulation program written in Visual Basic is used as a tool to explore simulation techniques. A formulation of simulation uses in studying discriminatory profiling …

Guidelines To Select A Computerized Maintenance Management System, Dattaraj Kamalapurkar

Masters Theses

In today's highly competitive global economy, maintenance personnel are presented with more difficult challenges than at any previous point in time. In order to meet these challenges, many maintenance managers tend to rely . on Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). When properly selected and implemented, CMMS is one of the most powerful cost reduction tools in any organization. However in reality, many CMMS implementations fail rather than achieve success. While there are many contributing factors, one major factor that greatly impacts successful implementation is selecting the right CMMS system. With more than 200 CMMS systems to choose from, selecting the …

Leveraging Itil To Govern Aoc Information Technology, Robert V. Weaver Iii

Theses and Dissertations

The Air Operations Center (AOC) is a complex system of systems that is resistant to traditional engineering controls and management strategies. The US Air Force (USAF) seeks to transform its antiquated AOC Information Technology (IT) management function into an agile enterprise capable of leveraging cutting-edge technology by aligning the AOC's infrastructure with its organizational strategies and vision. The USAF calls this effort a transformation. Private industry calls it IT Governance. To achieve AOC IT Governance, the USAF must stop managing infrastructure components and start managing IT services. IT Service Management abstracts business processes from the technology supporting them by creating …

Effect Of Sound Cue Frequency Filters On Front/Back Localization Performance For Three-Dimensional Verbal And Non-Verbal Warnings, Angelica A. Hernandez

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

In aviation, as technology becomes more advanced and more demands are placed on the human operator, warnings have become an important part of display design. Although warnings have made a significant contribution to safety, problems still plague their design. Recent technological advances have been able to give sounds and warnings a three-dimensional quality (3D). This technology enables a person to perceive sound from any direction around the listener without having the sound physically come from that direction. Three-dimensional sounds have been shown to improve target acquisition and collision avoidance in flight (Oving & Bronkhorst, 1999), and may have other future …

Combat Identification With Sequential Observations, Rejection Option, And Out-Of-Library Targets, Timothy W. Albrecht

Theses and Dissertations

This research extends a mathematical framework to select the optimal sensor ensemble and fusion method across multiple decision thresholds subject to warfighter constraints for a combat identification (CID) system. The formulation includes treatment of exemplars from target classes on which the CID system classifiers are not trained (out-of-library classes) and enables the warfighter to optimize a CID system without explicit enumeration of classifier error costs. A time-series classifier design methodology is developed and applied, yielding a multi-variate Gaussian hidden Markov model (HMM). The extended CID framework is used to compete the HMM-based CID system against a template-based CID system. The …

Establishment Of A System Operating Characteristic For Autonomous Wide Area Search Vehicles, Brian A. Kish

Theses and Dissertations

The optimal employment of autonomous search and destroy vehicles is addressed. The results apply to air, land, or water vehicles with 1, k, or infinite warheads. The specific scenarios considered involve an air vehicle searching a battle space for stationary targets in the presence of false targets. Encounters are modeled with uniform, Poisson, and normal distributions. Linear and circular search patterns are examined. All relevant parameters are extracted from intelligence information, the sensor performance specification, and the air vehicle performance specification. Analytic system effectiveness measures are derived using applied probability theory. The effectiveness measures derived in this dissertation handle time-varying …

On The Design For Flexibility Of Manufacturing Systems : A Stochiastic Approach, Nathapol Areeratchakul

Dissertations

Flexibility has emerged as one of the most strategic imperatives for company viability in today's fast paced economy. This realization has stimulated extensive research efforts in this area most of which have focused mainly on defining flexibility and its attributes, the need for flexibility and how to measure it. Nevertheless, despite the considerable amount of publications regarding flexibility and its related subjects, insufficient attention has been given to the optimality of the design for flexibility and the inherent needs to meet uncertainty. Bridging this gap is the intent of this work.

In this dissertation, developed analytical models are for the …

A Multi-Factor Model For Evaluating Manufacturing Defect Opportunities In Six Sigma Analysis, Karthikeyan Sundaram

Theses

Six Sigma Quality Analysis provides a structured method for manufacturing quality problems and defect opportunities to be defined, measured, analyzed, improved, and controlled. The technique is now being widely used in both the manufacturing and service industries to evaluate the classical "defects per million" metric. An underlying assumption of classical Six Sigma Analysis is that all defects contribute equally to the derivation of the defect rate. In the thesis, it is proposed that this assumption skews and often distorts the derived defect rate. Using classical Six Sigma the user is able to list a large number of often border-line defect …

The Use Of Capacity And Inventory In A Rate-Based Planning And Scheduling System To Achieve Strategic Goals In Industrial Applications, Chad Aaron Toney

Doctoral Dissertations

In pull or lean manufacturing, the final production schedule is in the form of takt time (drumbeat). All internal and external suppliers are driven by pull signals to feed the production rate. However, variability can be a problem for this drumbeat as the plan should not change more than the ability of the suppliers’ capability to respond. The supply chain should have sufficient flexibility to react quickly to changes in demand, while minimizing week-to-week production variability.

Current planning and scheduling systems do not produce a plan that minimizes fluctuations. If the schedule is frozen for several periods, they are slow …

A Conceptual Framework For Analysis Of System Safety Interoperability Of United States Navy's Combat Systems, Showkat Shanaz Alborzi

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Today's political and military reality requires the optimal use of our legacy systems. The objective is to maximize the effectiveness of our operations by efficient allocation, placement and the use of our forces and war-fighting systems. The synergism drawn from the capabilities of the legacy complex systems enables today's war-fighting needs to be met without substantial increase in cost or resources. This synergism can be realized by the effective integration and interoperation of legacy systems into a larger, more complex system of systems.

However, the independently developed legacy systems in this new tactical environment often have different data types, languages, …

Dynamic Lot Sizing With Batch Ordering Using Simulated Annealing, Ahmed Ibrahim Hassan Aly

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Risk Management For The Construction Of Power Plants In Egypt, Amir Ibrahim Abouseif

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Predicting The Cost Per Flying Hour For The F-16 Using Programmatic And Operational Variables, Eric M. Hawkes

Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzes operational and programmatic data from all Air National Guard and 13 of 14 active duty F-16C/D Fighter Wings (FW) from 1998 to 2004 in search of explanatory variables that influence a wing's Cost Per Flying Hour (CPFH). Using data from both the Air Force Total Ownership Cost database and from the Air Force Knowledge Systems database, this research evaluates the predictive ability of the following nine explanatory variables: aircraft age, average sortie duration, MajCOM, base location, utilization rate, percent engine type, percent block, percent deployed, and previous year's CPFH, the last four of which were previously untested. …

Categorizing High Energy Laser Effects For The Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manual, James A. Markham

Theses and Dissertations

With the high risk and cost in fielding High Energy Laser (HEL) weapon systems, the development process must include computer simulation models of weapon system performance from the engineering level up to predicting the military worth of employing specific systems in a combat scenario. This research effort focuses on defining how to measure lethality for HEL weapons in an Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL) scenario. In order to create an effective measure for direct comparison between the emerging laser weapon system and existing conventionally delivered weapons, lase time in seconds is presented as a measure comparable to rounds required to cause …

Executable Model Development From Architectural Description With Application To The Time Sensitive Target Problem, Luis M. Diaz Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations

As the Department of Defense (DoD) moves to a capabilities-based approach for requirements definition and systems development, it has become necessary to conceptualize and evaluate our needs at the System of Systems (SoS) level. Desired capabilities are often achievable only through seamless integration of many different systems. As the classical systems engineering approaches are not suited to effectively handle the complexity of SoS level concepts, an architectures-driven approach has emerged as a way of defining and evaluating these new concepts. While the use of architectures for documenting and tracking interfaces and interoperability concerns is generally understood, architectural analysis and the …

The Effect Of Level Of Automation And Operator-To-Vehicle Ratio On Operator Workload And Performance In Future Uav Systems, Ryan J. Wasson

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

The military intends to increase the number of UAVs in service while at the same time reducing the number of operators (Dixon, Wickens & Chang; 2004). To meet this demand, many of the current UAV operator functions will need to be automated. How automation is applied to modern systems is not fixed. Levels of automation exist along a continuum from fully manual to fully automatic. Two proposed levels of automation for future UAV systems are Management by Consent (MBC), where the operator selects the task to be executed, and Management by Exception (MBE), where the computer selects the task to …

Development Of A Statistical Model For Process Control To Eliminate Sink Marks In Injection Molded Products, Kurt Frederick Hayden

Masters Theses

Customer demands for high-quality, defect-free injection-molded products are ever increasing. In order to satisfy these quality requirements, much effort is spent monitoring and controlling variable data such as cycle time, part weight, and dimensions. Attribute defects such as sink or splay are often overlooked in the development of process control systems. However, customers reject products because of these attribute defects. Industrial control systems based upon process variables and product design variables can detect conditions that may result in the molding of products with attribute defects. The systems can then correct the process prior to the molding of these defective products. …

A Method For Classification Analysis On Simultaneous Product Defects, Jason S. Trahan

Masters Theses

There have been many advancements that share similar tools and techniques that help reduce the manufacture of nonconformities. These include computer-aided analysis, design reviews, total quality management, multivariate analysis, process monitoring and control, and root cause analysis to mention a few.

This work details the methodology developed for manufacturing companies to predict attribute defects. Injection molding was used to demonstrate the proposed methodology. Data were collected on a variety of tool design and construction attributes thought to affect the performance of a tool. The independent variables consisted of categorical and numerical data types. The dependent variable was a nominal four-tuple …

Modeling Multilevel Supply Chain Systems To Optimize Order Quantities And Order Points Through Mathematical Models, Discrete Event Simulation And Physical Simulations, Alok K. Verma

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Managing supply chains in today's distributed manufacturing environment has become more complex. To remain competitive in today's global marketplace, organizations must streamline their supply chains. The practice of coordinating the design, procurement, flow of goods, services, information and finances, from raw material flows to parts supplier to manufacturer to distributor to retailer and finally to consumer requires synchronized planning and execution. Efficient and effective supply chain management assists an organization in getting the right goods and services to the place needed at the right time, in the proper quantity and at acceptable cost. Managing this process involves developing and overseeing …

A Systems Methodology For Measuring Operational Organization Effectiveness: A Study Of The Original Equipment Computer Manufacturing Industry, 1948 To 2001, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Optimizing operational organizational effectiveness is the central, although often unstated, goal of engineering management and systems engineering research and applications. Two fundamental problems remain to be addressed in pursuit of this goal. First, despite over fifty years of research in various disciplines, there is still no universally accepted definition of organizational effectiveness. Second, no methodology exists to identify the domains, dimensions, and determinants of operational organizational effectiveness and dynamically model operational organizational effectiveness within a given population.

This research synthesizes a systems engineering methodology for identifying the domains, dimensions, and determinants of and dynamically modeling operational organizational effectiveness for an …

Quantifying Vulnerability To Critical Infrastructure, Barry Charles Ezell

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Military and civilian leaders have the responsibility to protect our Nation's critical infrastructure, communities, and symbols of American power from terrorists, home and abroad, as well as from natural disasters. To this end, assessments are conducted to reduce vulnerability. The literature offers multiple definitions of vulnerability and measurement has not been adequately addressed. Thus, the purpose of this research has been to develop and deploy a systems-based model that quantifies vulnerability to critical infrastructure. This research defines critical infrastructure vulnerability as a measure of the susceptibility of critical infrastructure to threat scenarios. Vulnerability is a function of (1) threat scenario, …

Output Analysis And Comparison Of Deployment Models With Varying Fidelity, Matthew M. Gill

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the changes in insights that result from using different types of models to assess the capability of deploying the Stryker Brigade within specific timeline goals. The thesis uses as its primary base a study conducted in 2002 by USTRANSCOM to evaluate the ability of Stryker to meet stated deployment timeline goals. Specifically, the author compares the outputs from four different models as they change over three different deployment scenarios and 10 different routes. The study investigates the relationships among the outputs of spreadsheet models, spreadsheet models with elements of variability added, and low- and high-level discrete-event simulations. …

A Qualitative Study Of Industry And Air Force Commodity Council Processes, Robert J. Irvine

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to compare industry and Air Force commodity council processes. More specifically, this research used a survey to gather strategic sourcing philosophies and procedures (with respect to small business participation in procurement strategies) from successful industry firms. Industry source selection documentation, applicable government contracting guidelines, and a literature review of strategic sourcing materials were also reviewed. The current Air Force commodity council process and associated historical documents were then studied using a business process modeling tool. It was determined that the Air Force process differs from industry in how small business participation is addressed, the …

Determining Pacaf Transportation Alternatives To The General Purpose Vehicle, Andrew H. Pate

Theses and Dissertations

Vehicle fleets under gird the mission of Air Force bases. Under funding for vehicle replacement requirements raised concerns and has led to purchasing alternative vehicles classified as equipment items to supplement budget shortfalls. In order to effectively use funds and meet mission requirements, Pacific Air Force (PACAF) commanders need an adjustable multifactor decision tool that will allow them to make an informed purchasing decision from among appropriately classified equipment item vehicles. This research will discuss existing regulatory restrictions to alternative transportation purchases, consider available alternative vehicles, and determine the attributes important to vehicle purchases. A review of current Air Force …

A Study To Determine Damage Assessment Methods Or Models On Air Force Networks, Lisa S. Thiem

Theses and Dissertations

Damage assessment for computer networks is a new area of interest for the Air Force. Previously, there has not been a concerted effort to codify damage assessment or develop a model that can be applied in assessing damage done by criminals, natural disasters, or other methods of damaging a computer network. The research undertaken attempts to identify if the Air Force MAJCOM Network Operations Support Centers (NOSC) use damage assessment models or methods. If the Air Force does use a model or method, an additional question of how the model was attained or decided upon is asked. All information comes …

Developing New Multidimensional Knapsack Heuristics Based On Empirical Analysis Of Legacy Heuristics, Yong Kun Cho

Theses and Dissertations

The multidimensional knapsack problem (MKP) has been used to model a variety of practical optimization and decision-making applications. Due to its combinatorial nature, heuristics are often employed to quickly find good solutions to MKPs. While there have been a variety of heuristics proposed for the MKP, and a plethora of empirical studies comparing the performance of these heuristics, little has been done to garner a deeper understanding of heuristic performance as a function of problem structure. This dissertation presents a research methodology, empirical and theoretical results explicitly aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of heuristic procedural performance as a function …

Optimization Model For Base-Level Delivery Routes And Crew Scheduling, Young-Ho Cha

Theses and Dissertations

In the U.S. Air Force, a Logistic Readiness Squadron (LRS) provides material management, distribution, and oversight of contingency operations. Dispatchers in the LRS must quickly prepare schedules that meet the needs of their customers while dealing with real-world constraints, such as time windows, delivery priorities, and intermittent recurring missions. Currently, LRS vehicle operation elements are faced with a shortage of manpower and lack an efficient scheduling algorithm and tool. The purpose of this research is to enhance the dispatchers' capability to handle flexible situations and produce "good" schedules within current manpower restrictions. In this research, a new scheduling model and …

Modeling And Analysis Of Clandestine Networks, Clinton R. Clark

Theses and Dissertations

Since Sept. 11, 2001, there has been great interest in the military and intelligence communities in using Social Network Analysis (SNA) to support the disruption and destruction of global terrorist networks. SNA results, however, tend to be descriptive and are limited due to the lack of advantageous properties of the relationship measures applied to the arcs in a social network. Further, SNA techniques generally focus on a single network context while real relationships are based in multiple contexts. This thesis develops a new proxy measure of pair-wise potential influence between members of a network, a Holistic Interpersonal Influence Measure (HIIM). …