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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Two-Stage Network Design In Humanitarian Logistics., Seyed Soroush Moeini May 2014

Two-Stage Network Design In Humanitarian Logistics., Seyed Soroush Moeini

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes can cause multiple deaths, injuries, and severe damage to properties. In order to minimize the impact of such disasters, emergency response plans should be developed well in advance of such events. Moreover, because different organizations such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments, and militaries are involved in emergency response, the development of a coordination scheme is necessary to efficiently organize all the activities and minimize the impact of disasters. The logistics network design component of emergency management includes determining where to store emergency relief materials, the corresponding quantities and distribution to the affected areas …


Predictions Of Nox Emissions In Pulverized Coal Combustion., Niko Hachenberg 1981- May 2014

Predictions Of Nox Emissions In Pulverized Coal Combustion., Niko Hachenberg 1981-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research work was to develop a transferable mathematically simple model which gives the possibility to make fast and easy predictions regarding the NOx emission behavior of a broad–spectrum of coals within a certain combustion environment. In this context, this thesis is a further step of a common ongoing investigation focused on predicting NOx emissions from self–sustaining, pulverized coal combustion in dry bottom firing systems. A comprehensive literature research focused on already published NOx prediction approaches from scientific publications based on fundamental quantitative relationships or empirical algorithms and statistical relationships was also carried out in this context. …


Implications Of Additive Manufacturing On Complexity Management Within Supply Chains In A Production Environment., Andre Kieviet May 2014

Implications Of Additive Manufacturing On Complexity Management Within Supply Chains In A Production Environment., Andre Kieviet

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on developing a generic framework for using additive manufacturing as an appropriate production method to address the management of complexity in supply chains. While several drivers such as changing customer demand patterns and intensifying global competition increase product complexity, the available number of product variants and related processes within the supply chain itself increase costs and dilute scale effects. Several concepts and tools like mass customization, modularization, and product platforms have been developed in the past decades, but most of them focus on the product structure. Currently, there is no comprehensive tool set developed in the field …


Supply Chain Flexibility In The Special Purpose Vehicle Industry., Florian J. Loderbauer 1982- May 2014

Supply Chain Flexibility In The Special Purpose Vehicle Industry., Florian J. Loderbauer 1982-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Supply chains of the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) industry are complex and with many constraints. Since the SPV industry is a special field of operation, there is no classical supply chain strategy which is appropriate. It is possible to apply concepts of industries with similar requirements but there is a high loss of time and money because these classical concepts do not fit to the SPV industry. Even strategies of the conventional automobile industry cannot be transferred. Therefore, there is the need to develop a supply chain concept for companies of the SPV industry. As a first step, basic knowledge …


A Mathematical Programming Approach For Dispatching And Relocating Ems Vehicles., Farshad Majzoubi 1983- May 2014

A Mathematical Programming Approach For Dispatching And Relocating Ems Vehicles., Farshad Majzoubi 1983-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We consider the problem of dispatching and relocating EMS vehicles during a pandemic outbreak. In such a situation, the demand for EMS vehicles increases and in order to better utilize their capacity, the idea of serving more than one patient by an ambulance is introduced. Vehicles transporting high priority patients cannot serve any other patient, but those transporting low priority patients are allowed to be rerouted to serve a second patient. We have considered three separate problems in this research. In the first problem, an integrated model is developed for dispatching and relocating EMS vehicles, where dispatchers determine hospitals for …


Early Detection And Control Of Potential Pandemics., Shengpeng Jin May 2014

Early Detection And Control Of Potential Pandemics., Shengpeng Jin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over the centuries, human beings have been inflicted with a variety of contagious diseases, resulting in tens of millions of respiratory illnesses and deaths worldwide. Early detection of disease spread facilitates timely responses that can greatly reduce its impact on a population. Therefore, this early information is a major public health objective and is crucial for policy makers and public health officials responsible for protecting the public from the spread of contagious diseases. Current indicators of the spread of contagious outbreaks lag behind its actual spread, leaving no time for a planned response. The studies of Christakis et al. in …


After Sales Supply Chain Risk Management., Steffen Luksch May 2014

After Sales Supply Chain Risk Management., Steffen Luksch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lean supply chains with cost optimized production and logistics processes in the automotive industry have become a benchmark for other industries. Short delivery times, low inventories and high availability are parameters which assume a robust supply chain. In industrial practice we see, however, that in the After Sales business particularly related to the supply of automotive spare parts, that there are always unforeseen delays in delivery. In order to avoid service level losses on the focal firm level due to missing parts it is necessary to understand the risk structure on the supplier side. For this reason, a risk model …


Pavement Deterioration Modeling And Design Of A Composite Pavement Distress Index For Kentucky Interstate Highways And Parkways., Chenglong Luo May 2014

Pavement Deterioration Modeling And Design Of A Composite Pavement Distress Index For Kentucky Interstate Highways And Parkways., Chenglong Luo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pavement deterioration is one of the most important driver for prioritizing pavement management and preservation (PMP) projects. The primary goal of this thesis is to provide reasonable predictive functions from multiple linear regression (MLR) models and artificial neural networks (ANN) that can be adopted by Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC). Furthermore, we use analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to design a composite pavement distress index in order to help Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) prioritizing PMP projects based on 11 different distress indices. Numerical results show that the MLR models provide relatively high R square values of approximately 0.8. Both MLR and ANN …


A Novel Numerical Framework For Simulation Of Multiscale Spatio-Temporally Non-Linear Systems In Additive Manufacturing Processes., Nachiket Patil May 2014

A Novel Numerical Framework For Simulation Of Multiscale Spatio-Temporally Non-Linear Systems In Additive Manufacturing Processes., Nachiket Patil

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

New computationally efficient numerical techniques have been formulated for multi-scale analysis in order to bridge mesoscopic and macroscopic scales of thermal and mechanical responses of a material. These numerical techniques will reduce computational efforts required to simulate metal based Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes. Considering the availability of physics based constitutive models for response at mesoscopic scales, these techniques will help in the evaluation of the thermal response and mechanical properties during layer-by-layer processing in AM. Two classes of numerical techniques have been explored. The first class of numerical techniques has been developed for evaluating the periodic spatiotemporal thermal response involving …


A Heuristic Algorithm For Determining The Part Set In A Powder-Bed Additive Manufacturing Machine., Sonja Dieder May 2014

A Heuristic Algorithm For Determining The Part Set In A Powder-Bed Additive Manufacturing Machine., Sonja Dieder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this research is to develop a procedure for the placement of a priority part into a planned build in a powder-bed additive manufacturing machine. Toward that goal, a heuristic procedure was developed that seeks to maximize the revenue in a scheduled build, subject to due-date constraints; i.e., all parts with the closest due date will not only be included in the build, but will be placed near the bottom of the build. Likewise, any part in the scheduled build that does not have an immediate due date is a candidate for removal in order to accommodate a …


Simulation Model For Optimization Of A Landside Harbor Logistic Chain Of Container Terminals., Klaus Striegel May 2014

Simulation Model For Optimization Of A Landside Harbor Logistic Chain Of Container Terminals., Klaus Striegel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The world wide transportation of all kind of goods with containers is a fast growing business. The challenge is to transport in the shortest time to the lowest cost. The vessels therefore become bigger and bigger. The biggest vessel with 16000 TEU is since December 2012 in service. But the next generation with 18000-22000 TEU is already being built. This raises questions in acceleration of loading and unloading process, the handling in the yards of the harbors and the transportation of the containers to Hinterland. The most common way is still to transport the container from the yard by truck, …


Successful Organizational Change: Aligning Change Type With Methods, Serina Al-Haddad Jan 2014

Successful Organizational Change: Aligning Change Type With Methods, Serina Al-Haddad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The motivation behind this research is the prevalence of challenges and ambiguity associated with successful organizational change and the numerous available approaches in dealing with these challenges and ambiguity. Many definitions and methods have been suggested to manage change; however, organizations still report a high failure rate of their change initiatives. These high failure rates highlight the continuing need for research and investigation, and imply a lack of a valid framework for managing successful organizational change. This dissertation critically reviews the concept of having one change approach as the “silver-bullet”. In pursuit of this goal, this research contributes a roadmap …


Shop Scheduling In The Presence Of Batching, Sequence-Dependent Setups And Incompatible Job Families Minimizing Earliness And Tardiness Penalties, Patricia Buchanan Jan 2014

Shop Scheduling In The Presence Of Batching, Sequence-Dependent Setups And Incompatible Job Families Minimizing Earliness And Tardiness Penalties, Patricia Buchanan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The motivation of this research investigation stems from a particular job shop production environment at a large international communications and information technology company in which electro-mechanical assemblies (EMAs) are produced. The production environment of the EMAs includes the continuous arrivals of the EMAs (generally called jobs), with distinct due dates, degrees of importance and routing sequences through the production workstations, to the job shop. Jobs are processed in batches at the workstations, and there are incompatible families of jobs, where jobs from different product families cannot be processed together in the same batch. In addition, there are sequence-dependent setups between …


An Unsupervised Consensus Control Chart Pattern Recognition Framework, Siavash Haghtalab Jan 2014

An Unsupervised Consensus Control Chart Pattern Recognition Framework, Siavash Haghtalab

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Early identification and detection of abnormal time series patterns is vital for a number of manufacturing. Slide shifts and alterations of time series patterns might be indicative of some anomaly in the production process, such as machinery malfunction. Usually due to the continuous flow of data monitoring of manufacturing processes requires automated Control Chart Pattern Recognition(CCPR) algorithms. The majority of CCPR literature consists of supervised classification algorithms. Less studies consider unsupervised versions of the problem. Despite the profound advantage of unsupervised methodology for less manual data labeling their use is limited due to the fact that their performance is not …


A Framework For The Development Of A Model For Successful, Sustained Lean Implementation And Improvement, Julie Sisson Jan 2014

A Framework For The Development Of A Model For Successful, Sustained Lean Implementation And Improvement, Julie Sisson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lean is a business philosophy focused on shortening lead times by removing waste and concentrating on value-added processes. When implemented successfully, it not only allows for cost reduction while improving quality, but it can also position a company to achieve tremendous growth. The problem is that though many companies are attempting to implement lean, it is estimated that only 2-3% are achieving the desired level of success. The purpose of this research is to identify the key interrelated components of successful lean transformation. To this end, a thorough literature review was conducted and the findings indicate six key constructs that …


A Curricula Assessment And Improvement Quantitative Model For Higher Education: A Design For Six Sigma Methodology, Abdullah Halawany Jan 2014

A Curricula Assessment And Improvement Quantitative Model For Higher Education: A Design For Six Sigma Methodology, Abdullah Halawany

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Curricula assessment is an integrated process to assist higher education institutions in addressing the challenges in a designated field of study and in exploring the opportunities to better educate and prepare their students for an increasingly complex world. Although assessment as a topic has been researched extensively, there has been a lack of quantitative tools that address the requirements of many of the stakeholders that may be critical to the curriculum design and assessment processes. This research proposes the utilization of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) to develop a quantitative model for curriculum assessment and improvement for higher education institutions. …


Facilitating Information Retrieval In Social Media User Interfaces, Anthony Costello Jan 2014

Facilitating Information Retrieval In Social Media User Interfaces, Anthony Costello

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As the amount of computer mediated information (e.g., emails, documents, multi-media) we need to process grows, our need to rapidly sort, organize and store electronic information likewise increases. In order to store information effectively, we must find ways to sort through it and organize it in a manner that facilitates efficient retrieval. The instantaneous and emergent nature of communications across networks like Twitter makes them suitable for discussing events (e.g., natural disasters) that are amorphous and prone to rapid changes. It can be difficult for an individual human to filter through and organize the large amounts of information that can …


Cost-Sensitive Learning-Based Methods For Imbalanced Classification Problems With Applications, Talayeh Razzaghi Jan 2014

Cost-Sensitive Learning-Based Methods For Imbalanced Classification Problems With Applications, Talayeh Razzaghi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Analysis and predictive modeling of massive datasets is an extremely significant problem that arises in many practical applications. The task of predictive modeling becomes even more challenging when data are imperfect or uncertain. The real data are frequently affected by outliers, uncertain labels, and uneven distribution of classes (imbalanced data). Such uncertainties create bias and make predictive modeling an even more difficult task. In the present work, we introduce a cost-sensitive learning method (CSL) to deal with the classification of imperfect data. Typically, most traditional approaches for classification demonstrate poor performance in an environment with imperfect data. We propose the …


Inventory Management Problem For Cold Items With Environmental And Financial Considerations, Ali Hajiaghabozorgi Jan 2014

Inventory Management Problem For Cold Items With Environmental And Financial Considerations, Ali Hajiaghabozorgi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The overarching theme of this dissertation is analytically analyzing the cold supply chain from a financial and environmental perspective. Specifically, we develop inventory policy models in the cold supply chain that consider holding and transportation unit capacities. The models provide insights for the decision maker on the tradeoff between setting order quantities based on the cost or the emission function. In Chapter 2, we review two major bodies of literature: 1) supply chain design, and 2) sustainability in supply chain design. We benefit from this literature review to map the current body of research on traditional supply chain for further …


A Framework For Measuring And Analyzing Customer Satisfaction At Computer Service Company Using Lean Six Sigma, Mohammed Abboodi Jan 2014

A Framework For Measuring And Analyzing Customer Satisfaction At Computer Service Company Using Lean Six Sigma, Mohammed Abboodi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The computer service industry has been expanding dramatically due to the increase in the number of computing machineries in the last two decades. The entrance of large size companies in the market and the release of online tools that have the ability for diagnosing and troubleshooting hardware and software issues have boosted the competition. In the meantime, many of the small and medium size companies find themselves unable to keep their customers satisfied since their competitors provide high quality service with lower cost. The lack of a good measurement system to assess and analyze the satisfaction level with the provided …


A Holistic Framework For Transitional Management, Ahmed Elattar Jan 2014

A Holistic Framework For Transitional Management, Ahmed Elattar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For all business organizations, there comes a time when a change must take place within their eco-system. It consumes a great deal of thought and planning to ensure that the right decision is made as it could alter the entire course of their business for a number of years to come. This change may appear in the form of a brilliant CEO reaching the age of retirement, or an unsuccessful Managing Director being asked to leave before fulfilling the term of her contract. Regardless of the cause, a transition must occur in which a suitable successor is chosen and put …


A Framework For Assessing The Quality And Effectiveness Of A National Employment System: A Case Study Of Saudi Arabia, Hemaid Alsulami Jan 2014

A Framework For Assessing The Quality And Effectiveness Of A National Employment System: A Case Study Of Saudi Arabia, Hemaid Alsulami

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

National employment systems have been established in several countries to tackle the unemployment dilemma between citizens while the labor market flooded by expatriates. Lack of performance measurement indices among these systems caused failure to provide jobs to citizens and caused a state of confusion and dissatisfaction among employing entities. In Saudi Arabia, unemployment rate has increased in the last few decades and have since become a very political issue for the Saudi government. Compared to other countries, the problem is different since many expatriates in Saudi Arabia are already employed in their markets while citizens are seeking jobs. In Saudi …


A Framework For Workforce Management An Agent Based Simulation Approach, Mario Marin Jan 2014

A Framework For Workforce Management An Agent Based Simulation Approach, Mario Marin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today's advanced technology world, enterprises are in a constant state of competition. As the intensity of competition increases the need to continuously improve organizational performance has never been greater. Managers at all levels must be on a constant quest for finding ways to maximize their enterprises' strategic resources. Enterprises can develop sustained competitiveness only if their activities create value in unique ways. There should be an emphasis to transfer this competitiveness to the resources it has on hand and the resources it can develop to be used in this environment. The significance of human capital is even greater now, …


Stochastic Optimization For Integrated Energy System With Reliability Improvement Using Decomposition Algorithm, Yuping Huang Jan 2014

Stochastic Optimization For Integrated Energy System With Reliability Improvement Using Decomposition Algorithm, Yuping Huang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

As energy demands increase and energy resources change, the traditional energy system has been upgraded and reconstructed for human society development and sustainability. Considerable studies have been conducted in energy expansion planning and electricity generation operations by mainly considering the integration of traditional fossil fuel generation with renewable generation. Because the energy market is full of uncertainty, we realize that these uncertainties have continuously challenged market design and operations, even a national energy policy. In fact, only a few considerations were given to the optimization of energy expansion and generation taking into account the variability and uncertainty of energy supply …


Assessing Safety Culture Among Pilots In Saudi Airlines: A Quantitative Study Approach, Mohammad Alsowayigh Jan 2014

Assessing Safety Culture Among Pilots In Saudi Airlines: A Quantitative Study Approach, Mohammad Alsowayigh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In high- risk industries, such as aviation, safety is a key for organization survivor. Most accidents involve human losses and bring substantial cost to organizations. Accidents can devastate the reputation and profitability of any organization. In aviation, more than 80% of aircraft accidents are related to human errors. Safety culture has substantial impact on the success of any organization. Employees' performance and behaviors are influenced by their perception of safety culture within their organization. In the aviation industry, pilots are considered the last resort to prevent accidents or mishaps in the air or ground. The focus on pilots' perception of …


Relaxation Adaptive Memory Programming For The Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem, Robert Christopher-Lee Riley Jan 2014

Relaxation Adaptive Memory Programming For The Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem, Robert Christopher-Lee Riley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The resource constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) is one of the most intractable problems in operations research; it is NP-hard in the strong sense. Due to the hardness of the problem, exact solution methods can only tackle instances of relatively small size. For larger instances commonly found in real applications heuristic solution methods are necessary to find near-optimal solutions within acceptable computation time limits. In this study algorithms based on the relaxation adaptive memory programming (RAMP) method (Rego, 2005) are developed for the purpose of solving the RCPSP. The RAMP algorithms developed here combine mathematical relaxation, including Lagrangian relaxation and …


Xqx Based Modeling For General Integer Programming Problems, Vijay P. Ramalingam Jan 2014

Xqx Based Modeling For General Integer Programming Problems, Vijay P. Ramalingam

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

We present a new way to model general integer programming (IP) problems with in- equality and equality constraints using XQX. We begin with the definition of IP problems folloby their practical applications, and then present the existing XQX based models to handle such problems. We then present our XQX model for general IP problems (including binary IP) with equality and inequality constraints, and also show how this model can be applied to problems with just inequality constraints. We then present the local optima based solution procedure for our XQX model. We also present new theorems and their proofs for our …


Neuromodulation Based Control Of Autonomous Robots On A Cloud Computing Platform, Cameron Muhammad Jan 2014

Neuromodulation Based Control Of Autonomous Robots On A Cloud Computing Platform, Cameron Muhammad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the advancement of neurobiologically plausible models and computer networking has resulted in new ways of implementing control systems on robotic platforms. The work presents a control approach based on vertebrate neuromodulation and its implementation on autonomous robots in the open-source, open-access environment of robot operating system (ROS). A spiking neural network (SNN) is used to model the neuromodulatory function for generating context based behavioral responses of the robots to sensory input signals. The neural network incorporates three types of neurons- cholinergic and noradrenergic (ACh/NE) neurons for attention focusing and action selection, dopaminergic (DA) neurons for rewards- and …


Model-Based Systems Engineering Approach To Distributed And Hybrid Simulation Systems, John Pastrana Jan 2014

Model-Based Systems Engineering Approach To Distributed And Hybrid Simulation Systems, John Pastrana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

INCOSE defines Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) as "the formalized application of modeling to support system requirements, design, analysis, verification, and validation activities beginning in the conceptual design phase and continuing throughout development and later life cycle phases." One very important development is the utilization of MBSE to develop distributed and hybrid (discrete-continuous) simulation modeling systems. MBSE can help to describe the systems to be modeled and help make the right decisions and partitions to tame complexity. The ability to embrace conceptual modeling and interoperability techniques during systems specification and design presents a great advantage in distributed and hybrid simulation systems …


A Framework Of Critical Success Factors For Business Organizations That Lead To Performance Excellence Based On A Financial And Quality Systems Assessment., Melissa Francisco Jan 2014

A Framework Of Critical Success Factors For Business Organizations That Lead To Performance Excellence Based On A Financial And Quality Systems Assessment., Melissa Francisco

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the most important tasks that business leaders undertake in order to achieve a superior market position is strategic planning. Beyond this obligation, business owners desire to maximize profit and maintain steady growth. In order to do this, resources must be invested in the most efficient way possible in order to achieve performance excellence. Adjusting business operations quickly, however, especially in times of economic uncertainty, is extremely difficult. Business leaders therefore need insight into which elements of organizational improvement are most effective in order to strategically invest their resources to achieve superior performance in the most efficient way possible. …