Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

A Method To Improve The Sustainment Of Systems Based On Probability And Consequences, Michael Ashton Gaintner

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The FROST Method is presented which improves the efficiency of long-term sustainment of hardware systems. The FROST Method makes sustainment and scheduling decisions based on the minimization of the expected value of current and future costs. This differs from current methods which tend to base decisions not on the expected value of costs, but on the expected inventory demand found through projections using data which is often inaccurate.

Distributions are used to account for randomness and inaccuracy in inputs such as failure rates and vendor-claimed dates for end of production. A Monte Carlo technique is then used to convert these …

Towards An Organizational Strategic Vitality Theory: A Study Of A Public Sector Board Of Directors, Keith L. Woodman

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Boards of directors govern practically all organizations of significant size in the public and private sector. Improving the understanding of how boards function is critical because when boards fail, the results can be devastating. Little is understood about the functioning of boards of directors in the public sector, which accounts for a significant amount of the gross national product of the world's economy. The author observed a public sector board of directors for one year. Using the grounded theory research method to analyze the observations, he generated a theory of organizational strategic vitality that describes how a board of directors …

An Integrated Decision Support Framework For Remanufacturing In The Automotive Industry, Akhilesh Kumar

Wayne State University Dissertations

In today's global economy, firms are seeking any and every opportunity to differentiate from competitors by reducing supply chain costs and adding value to end customers. One increasingly popular option, under growing consumer awareness and increasing legislation, is to reintegrate returned products into the supply chain to achieve economic benefits as well as improve sustainability. An important class of such "reverse" goods flows has to do with remanufacturing (reman), which refers to activities that restore returned products ("cores") or their major modules to operational condition for using in place of new product or distributing through other channels (e.g., spare parts). …

Quality Costing Knowledge, Attitudes, And Perceptions In A Small Manufacturing Company, Adam M. Benner

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The purpose of this research was to identify and assess employee knowledge, attitude, and perception of quality costing in a manufacturing company. The company selected for this research was a small manufacturer of agricultural processing equipment with an undeveloped quality management program. A quality costs questionnaire was discovered from a review of the literature and was slightly modified to gather data from a sample of company employees. The following information was collected from employees: knowledge of common quality costing terminology, attitude towards quality and non-quality concepts, and perception of departments associated with quality costs and the scale of quality costs …