Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Performance Analysis Of Organizations As Complex Systems., William C. Harrington Jr.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides a method for evaluating the difference in performance after an organization makes a change while considering the stochastic nature in which it operates. A procedure that uses simulation to estimate outcomes by adjusting controllable parameters and leaving uncontrolled parameters unadjusted is proposed. As healthcare organizations are considered as highly complex systems, a case study involving a scheduling tactic change in the mother-baby service line of a hospital is used to demonstrate application of this procedure. The goal in the case study was to reduce delays in transitioning care of mother patients from the labor and delivery unit …

Simulation Modeling For Energy Consumption Of Residential Consumers In Response To Demand Side Management., Prajwal Khadgi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Energy efficiency in the electricity distribution system continues to gain importance as demand for electricity keeps rising and resources keep diminishing. Achieving higher energy efficiency by implementing control strategies and demand response (DR) programs has always been a topic of interest in the electric utility industry. The advent of smart grids with enhanced data communication capabilities propels DR to be an essential part of the next generation power distribution system. Fundamentally, DR has the ability to charge a customer the true price of electricity at the time of use, and the general perception is that consumers would shift their load …

Optimal Disposition Decisions For A Remanufacturing System Considering Time Value Of Products, Mostafa Pazoki, Walid Abdul-Kader

Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Publications

This paper studies disposition decisions of cores where the value of returns deteriorates over time. Mainly in disposition decisions, a remanufacturer is interested to determine how many units to remanufacture and to salvage. To address this research problem along with value deterioration of returns, a rough-cut mathematical model is developed by considering various parameters of interest such as selling price, salvage value and remanufacturing rate with the aim to maximize total profit. Due to uncertainty limitations, the model can provide decision-makers with relevant insights about disposition decisions. Simulation modeling techniques are used to validate the proposed model. Numerical examples are …

A Simulation Model For Decision Support In Business Continuity Planning, Marissa Anne Mosunich

Master's Theses

Enterprises with a global supply network are at risk of lost revenue as a result of disruptive disasters at supplier locations. Various strategies exist for addressing this risk, and a variety of types of research has been done regarding the identification, assessment and response to the risk of disruption in a supply chain network.

This thesis establishes a decision model to support Business Continuity Planning at the first-tier supplier level. The decision model incorporates discrete-event simulation of supply chain networks (through Simio software), Monte Carlo simulation, and risk index optimization. After modeling disruption vulnerability in a supply chain network, costs …

Optimal Energy Management System For A Net Zero Building Using Multi-Agent Systems Approach, Arzhang Ghassemi Pashakalaei

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Buildings have a significant impact on energy usage and the environment. Much of the research in architectural sustainability has centered on economically advanced countries because they consume the most energy and have the most resources. However, sustainable architecture is important in developing countries, where the energy consumption of the building sector is increasing significantly. The aims of this Thesis are investigating using the hybrid system, which formed by interconnecting two source of renewable energy as solar (PV arrays) and wind (turbine) along with city grid for compensation purposes wherever it is required. In this Thesis, after literature review, we consider …

Spare Parts On Demand Using Additive Manufacturing : A Simulation Model For Cost Evaluation., Stefan Jedeck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Little is known about the impact of additive manufacturing in the spare part supply chain. A few studies are available, but they focus on specific parts and their applications only. A general model, which can be adapted to different applications, is nonexistent. This dissertation proposes a decision making framework that enables an interested practitioner/manager to decide whether using additive manufacturing to make spare parts on demand is economical when compared to conventional warehousing strategy. The framework consists of two major components: a general discrete event simulation model and a process of designing a wide range of simulation scenarios. The goal …

Guidelines For Scheduling In Primary Care: An Empirically Driven Mathematical Programming Approach, Hyun Jung Alvarez Oh

Doctoral Dissertations

Primary care practices play a vital role in healthcare delivery since they are the first point of contact for most patients, and provide health prevention, counseling, education, diagnosis and treatment. Practices, however, face a complex appointment scheduling problem because of the variety of patient conditions, the mix of appointment types, the uncertain service times with providers and non-provider staff (nurses/medical assistants), and no-show rates which all compound into a highly variable and unpredictable flow of patients. The end result is an imbalance between provider idle time and patient waiting time. To understand the realities of the scheduling problem we analyze …

Experimental And Numerical Study Of High-Speed Friction Stir Spot Welding Of Advanced High-Strength Steel, Utsab Karki

Theses and Dissertations

With the desire to lighten the frame while keeping or increasing the strength, Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) have been developed for use in the automotive industry. AHSS meet many vehicle functional requirements because of their excellent strength and acceptable ductility. But joining AHSS is a challenge, because weldability is lower than that of mild steels. Friction stir spot welding (FSSW) is a solid state joining process that can provide a solution to the weldability issues in AHSS, but FSSW has not been studied in great detail for this application. In this work, Si3N4 tools were used for FSSW experiments on …

Compressibility Measurement And Modeling To Optimize Flow Simulation Of Vacuum Infusion Processing For Composite Materials, Paul Hannibal

Theses and Dissertations

Out-of-autoclave manufacturing processes for composite materials are increasing in importance for aerospace and automotive industries. Vacuum Infusion processes are leading the push to move out of the autoclave. An understanding of the various process parameters associated with resin infusion is necessary to produce quality product. Variance in compaction, resin, and vacuum pressures are studied, concentrating on developing a compaction pressure profile as it relates to fiber volume fraction. The purpose of this research is twofold: (1) to show and quantify the existence of a resin pressure gradient in compression testing using rigid tooling, and (2) to use measured test data …

A Framework For Safety Training Using Virtual Reality Software, Rana Riad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Safety training is a vital component to the well-being of individuals in all industries. With technology advancing at the current pace, conventional training methods are no longer the most effective way to communicate information. There is a strong need for safety training that incorporates new methods and forms of communication to obtain higher levels of comprehension. Virtual reality systems offer a highly customizable and interactive form of delivering information to users. This research addresses major gaps in the field of safety training using virtual reality systems and provides a design framework for creating a virtual safety-training system. A model for …

Strategies To Improve The Efficiency Of Emergency Medical Service (Ems) Systems Under More Realistic Conditions, Kanchala Sudtachat

All Dissertations

Emergency medical service (EMS) systems provide medical care to pre-hospital patients who need rapid response and transportation. This dissertation proposes a new realistic approach for EMS systems in two major focuses: multiple unit dispatching and relocation strategies. This work makes recommendations for multiple-unit dispatch to multiple call priorities based on simulation optimization and heuristics. The objective is to maximize the expected survival rate. Simulation models are proposed to determine the optimization. A heuristic algorithm is developed for large-scale problems. Numerical results show that dispatching while considering call priorities, rather than always dispatching the closest medical units, could improve the effectiveness …

Modeling A Severe Supply Chain Disruption And Post-Disaster Decision Making With Application To The Japanese Earthquake And Tsunami, Cameron A. Mackenzie, Kash Barker, Joost R. Santos

Cameron A. MacKenzie

Modern supply chains are increasingly vulnerable to disruptions, and a disruption in one part of the world can cause supply difficulties for companies around the globe. This article develops a model of severe supply chain disruptions in which several suppliers suffer from disabled production facilities and firms that purchase goods from those suppliers may consequently suffer a supply shortage. Suppliers and firms can choose disruption management strategies to maintain operations. A supplier with a disabled facility may choose to move production to an alternate facility, and a firm encountering a supply shortage may be able to use inventory or buy …

A Methodology For Designing Airports For Enhanced Security Using Simulation, Oliver Nwofia, Christopher A. Chung

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

With the advent of the new security measures, today’s airports have become increasingly complex and congested. Air and passenger traffic continues to increase; consequently, the need for intelligent design concepts is required. Unlike all other existing airport designs that focused exclusively on operational performance, this study focused on the development of a new airport terminal design methodology that takes a proactive approach to minimizing the effects of security disruptions while simultaneously maximizing operational performance and passenger flow. The study addressed the impact of security operations on both the design of airport facilities and passenger flows, and discussed options and scenarios …

East Tennessee Children's Hospital Lean, Eddie D. Eatherly, Catherine Julson, Kelsey Tjader, Jack Smodic, Lanier Loftin

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

A Methodology For Scheduling Operating Rooms Under Uncertainty, Marbelly Paola Davila

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

An operating room (OR) is considered to be one of the most costly functional areas within hospitals as well as its major profit center. It is known that managing an OR department is a challenging task, which requires the integration of many actors (e.g., patients, surgeons, nurses, technicians) who may have conflicting interests and priorities.

Considering these aspects, this dissertation focuses on developing a simulation based methodology for scheduling operating rooms under uncertainty, which reflects the complexity, uncertainty and variability associated with surgery.

We split the process of scheduling ORs under uncertainty into two main components. First, we designed a …

Capacity Planning For Elderly Care In Ireland Using Simluation Modeling, Mohamed Ragab, Waleed Abo Hamad, Amr Arisha

Conference papers

Global population aging is creating an immense pressure on healthcare facilities making them unable to cope with the growing demand for elderly healthcare services. Current demand-supply gaps result in prolonged waiting times for patients and substantial cost burdens for healthcare systems due to delayed discharges. This paper describes a project aimed at presenting modeling and simulation to address elderly care pathways within the Irish healthcare sector. The management of frail patients admitted to acute hospitals and the introduction of the new intermediate care beds are alternative interventions that healthcare executives are interested in simulating to examine their impact on the …

Improving Health Care Quality And Safety: The Development And Assessment Of Laparoscopic Surgery Instrumentation, Practices And Procedures, Bernadette Mccrory

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Adverse events due to medical errors are a leading cause of death in the United States exceeding the mortality rates of motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS. Improvements can and should be made to reduce the rates of preventable surgical errors since they account for nearly half of all adverse events within hospitals. Although minimally invasive surgery has proven patient benefits such as reduced postoperative pain and hospital stay, its operative environment imposes substantial physical and cognitive strain on the surgeon increasing the risk of error. In order to mitigate errors and protect patients, a multidisciplinary approach was taken …

A Study Of Queuing Theory In Low To High Rework Environments With Process Availability, Adam J. Brown

Theses and Dissertations--Manufacturing Systems Engineering

In manufacturing systems subject to machine and operator resource constraints the effects of rework can be profound. High levels of rework burden the resources unnecessarily and as the utilization of these resources increases the expected queuing time of work in process increases exponentially. Queuing models can help managers to understand and control the effects of rework, but often this tool is overlooked in part because of concerns over accuracy in complex environments and/or the need for limiting assumptions. One aim of this work is to increase understanding of system variables on the accuracy of simple queuing models. A queuing model …

Evaluating The Consequences Of An Inland Waterway Port Closure With A Dynamic Multiregional Interdependence Model, Cameron A. Mackenzie, Kash Barker, F. Hank Grant

Cameron A. MacKenzie

As intermodal hubs connecting barge, train, and truck transportation modes, inland ports play an important role in U.S. and global commerce. Like coastal ports, inland ports face the risk of malevolent attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. However, most port impact studies focus on the consequences of one of these disruptive events suddenly closing a coastal port. This paper examines the economic impact of suddenly closing an inland port by combining a simulation and a multiregional input-output model. The simulation models how companies may react if an inland waterway port suddenly closes, and the multiregional dynamic inoperability input-output model quantifies …

Simulation-Based Optimisation Model For The Lean Assessment In Sme: A Case Study, Amr Arisha, Amr Mahfouz, John Shea

Conference papers

Due to their space limitation and small production scale, small and medium enterprises (SME) are vulner-able to rapid changes. Lean principles are considered as effective improvement approach to eliminate sys-tem’s waste and inefficiencies. Although much of the academic materials have addressed the lean practic-es into large, global companies, they can still be adjusted to SMEs. Risks are usually associated with lean implementation process due to the drastic required changes in business policies and operations. Simulation can be successfully used to predict the impact of the proposed changes ahead of the implementation which helps to mitigate risks. Integrating simulation with optimization …

Anticipating U.S. Population-Level Health And Economic Impacts Using Discrete-Event Simulation To Guide Health Policy Decisions, Odette Reifsnider

All Dissertations

This dissertation presents two applications of discrete-event simulation (DES) to represent clinical processes: (1) a model to quantify the risk of the maternal obese and diabetic intrauterine environment influence on progression to adult obesity and diabetes, and (2) a model to evaluate health and economic outcomes of different smoking cessation strategies. The first application considers the public health impact of the diabetic and obese intrauterine environment's effect on the prevalence of diabetes and obesity across subsequent generations. We first develop a preliminary DES model to investigate and characterize the epidemiology of diabetes during pregnancy and birth outcomes related to maternal …

Development Of An Optimal Replenishment Policy For Human Capital Inventory, Bruce A Holt

Doctoral Dissertations

A unique approach is developed for evaluating Human Capital (workforce) requirements. With this approach, new ways of measuring personnel availability are proposed and available to ensure that an organization remains ready to provide timely, relevant, and accurate products and services in support of its strategic objectives over its planning horizon. The development of this analysis and methodology was established as an alternative approach to existing studies for determining appropriate hiring and attrition rates and to maintain appropriate personnel levels of effectiveness to support existing and future missions.

The contribution of this research is a prescribed method for the strategic analyst …

Evaluation System Design And Academic Performance Analysis Using Clustering And Simulation, Volkan Cakir

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The starting point of this study was to understand the possible causes of evaluation system change in a military academic environment. With that motivation the objectives of this study were defined as examining student profiles in a military academy, establishing the nature of academic performance, comparing student groups that were identified by course scores, analyzing student performance changes over time and developing a manageable evaluation system and curriculum by comparing different scenarios.

An analysis was performed on the literature on academic performance prediction, cluster analysis methodologies and their development, and specifically summarized cluster analytic academic performance studies where these two …

Discrete Event Simulation Manual: Manufacturing Applications, Brian T. Hughes

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Simulation, specifically discrete event simulation, is a useful tool for industrial and manufacturing engineers when dealing with system analysis. Currently, manufacturing engineers are only exposed to simulation for only a few weeks of their curriculum at Cal Poly. A series of labs are directed by a teacher’s assistant on how to complete a successful simulation experiment. However, there is no text available for student use during this demanding learning period. The simulation learning process involves learning a software program called ProModel, which students with little experience are expected to code, run, and interpret data from complex systems. By creating a …

Police Operations Simulation, Robert Mcgee

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In this report, the author explains the process of creating the Police Operations Simulation, shows step-by-step how it works, and statistically analyzes the results from SLOPD’s own proposed and current schedules. The data-gathering from the department and the simulation itself will receive the bulk of the coverage in this report, followed by sample results from SLOPD and a business plan for future sale to other departments.

Using the given numbers, it appears that the proposed schedule will result in significantly improved coverage for the city of San Luis Obispo. While any increase in the number officers on patrol tends to …

A Methodology To Stabilize The Supply Chain, Alfonso Sarmiento

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today's world, supply chains are facing market dynamics dominated by strong global competition, high labor costs, shorter product life cycles, and environmental regulations. Supply chains have evolved to keep pace with the rapid growth in these business dynamics, becoming longer and more complex. As a result, supply chains are systems with a great number of network connections among their multiple components. The interactions of the network components with respect to each other and the environment cause these systems to behave in a highly nonlinear dynamic manner. Ripple effects that have a huge, negative impact on the behavior of the …

Course Portfolio - Discrete Event Simulation, Paul Savory

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

This course portfolio, written by Dr. Paul Savory, provides an overview of his Discrete Event Simulation course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. It offers an overview of the course goals, a summary of the classroom activities for achieving them, and a detailed assessment of student learning. He highlights his introduction of the simul8 programming environment to his students. In addition to exploring his students’ learning, Dr. Savory also explores different approaches for documenting his teaching by including multimedia clips (video and audio), uses graphs, uses color, and incorporates images. The resulting portfolio is one that can be reviewed, shared, and …

Dod Acquisition Workforce Education: An Sba Education Case Study, Richard Davenport

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Department of Defense (DoD) M&S education task force is in the process of studying the Modeling and Simulation (M&S) education of the acquisition workforce. Historically, DoD acquisition workforce education is not referred to as education, but rather what the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) refers to as "practitioner training, career management, and services." The DAU is the organization primarily responsible for training the DoD acquisition corps in conjunction with service schools and strategic partners in the civilian sector. DAU programs primarily focus on program management, contracting, and management of logistics across the system life cycle. Further, the examples and cases …

Presence-Dependent Performance Differences Between Virtual Simulations And Miniature Worlds, Andre Huthmann

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of simulation is to avoid reality-based constraints by the implemen-tation of a synthetic model. Based on this advantage, interactive simulations have conquered all areas of applications from acquisition, and training, to research. Simulation results are transferred in many ways into reality and conclusions are drawn from the simulation to the application. Many anecdotal observations on human-in-the-loop simulations have shown a significant difference in actor behavior between simulations and reality-based applications. It seems that the factors that makes simulation so attractive, namely the absence of constraints and especially of imminent danger for persons and equipment, influence the behavior and …

Modeling Systems For Optimal Resource Allocation, Scheduling, And Decision Making, Esengul Tayfur

All Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the resource requirements and scheduling problem for logistic systems. We investigate solutions to this problem in two different logistic systems: logistic system of the health care facilities during emergency evacuations and delivery and distribution system of production industries. All hospitals must have an evacuation plan to ensure the safety of patients and prevent the loss of life. However, hospital operators have not been able to quantify how resource availability, the cost of acquiring those resources, and evacuation completion time are related. This research addresses this problem and contributes two methodologies to solve this problem. In the …