Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons™

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Full-Text Articles in Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering

Assessing Values-Based Sourcing Strategies In Regional Food Supply Networks: An Agent-Based Approach, Caroline C. Krejci, Michael C. Dorneich, Richard T. Stone Sep 2019

Assessing Values-Based Sourcing Strategies In Regional Food Supply Networks: An Agent-Based Approach, Caroline C. Krejci, Michael C. Dorneich, Richard T. Stone

Richard T. Stone

The recent increase in demand for regionally produced food has resulted in a need for more efficient distribution methods. To connect regional food producers and consumers, intermediated regional food supply networks have developed. The intermediary, known as a regional food hub, serves as an aggregation point for products and information. It may also act as a filter to ensure that the requirements of both producers and consumers are consistently met. This paper describes an empirically based agent-based model of a regional food network in central Iowa that is intermediated by a food hub. The model was used to test a ...

The Use Of Sacrificial Support Structures In A Rapid Machining Process, Wutthigrai Boonsuk, Matthew C. Frank Sep 2019

The Use Of Sacrificial Support Structures In A Rapid Machining Process, Wutthigrai Boonsuk, Matthew C. Frank

Wutthigrai Boonsuk

Rapid prototyping techniques for CNC machining have been developed in an effort to produce functional prototypes in appropriate materials. One of the major challenges is to develop an automatic fixturing system for the part during the milling process. The current proposed method, sacrificial support fixturing, is similar to the support structures used in existing rapid processes, such as Stereolithography. During the machining process, the sacrificial supports emerge incrementally and, at the end of the process, are the only entities connecting the part to the stock material. In this paper, we propose methodologies for the design of sacrificial support structures for ...

Optimizing Ensemble Weights For Machine Learning Models: A Case Study For Housing Price Prediction, Mohsen Shahhosseini, Guiping Hu, Hieu Pham Jul 2019

Optimizing Ensemble Weights For Machine Learning Models: A Case Study For Housing Price Prediction, Mohsen Shahhosseini, Guiping Hu, Hieu Pham

Mohsen Shahhosseini

Designing ensemble learners has been recognized as one of the significant trends in the field of data knowledge especially in data science competitions. Building models that are able to outperform all individual models in terms of bias, which is the error due to the difference in the average model predictions and actual values, and variance, which is the variability of model predictions, has been the main goal of the studies in this area. An optimization model has been proposed in this paper to design ensembles that try to minimize bias and variance of predictions. Focusing on service sciences, two well-known ...

Transportation Safety Performance Of Us Bus Transit Agencies And Population Density: A Cross-Sectional Analysis (2008-2014), Ilker Karaca, Peter T. Savolainen Jul 2019

Transportation Safety Performance Of Us Bus Transit Agencies And Population Density: A Cross-Sectional Analysis (2008-2014), Ilker Karaca, Peter T. Savolainen

Ilker Karaca

The paper examines the transportation safety performance of transit agencies providing public bus service in the US by using data from the National Transit Database (NTD)

Uses NTD data for a seven-year period from 2008 to 2014 • 3,853 observations for 651 public transportation agencies in 50 states

Seven types of bus transit fatalities and injuries (including passengers, operators, pedestrians, bicyclists)

Main explanatory variable: urban density obtained from the US Census figures

Other explanatory variables: total agency revenue miles, unlinked passenger trips, agency fleet size, and urban population

Decision Science For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Feb 2019

Decision Science For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Operations research, also known as management science or decision science, is a mathematics-based discipline that draws from engineering, information systems, management, public policy and planning. OR enables individuals and organizations to make better decisions regarding manufacturing and logistics, service provision and strategy design. My particular interest in OR focuses on the needs of mission-driven and resource-constrained organizations that serve urban communities. In my talk I will describe how OR can use qualitative and quantitative analysis through meaningful engagement of communities to enable creative identification, formulation and solution of complex problems for local impact and social justice. Specific applications I'm ...

Assessment And Comparison Of Aviation Manufacturing Industries Throughout Mexico And Brazil, Omar E. Morsi, Kelly A. Whealan-George, Aaron D. Clevenger Aug 2018

Assessment And Comparison Of Aviation Manufacturing Industries Throughout Mexico And Brazil, Omar E. Morsi, Kelly A. Whealan-George, Aaron D. Clevenger

Aaron D. Clevenger

This literature review serves to provide insight and understanding in regards to the evolving aviation manufacturing industry throughout the globe and more specifically, Mexico and Brazil. Increased demand for aircraft units both in the commercial and private sectors have led to unprecedented expansions in aircraft manufacturing across the industry. In order to illuminate certain potentials and current growth levels of such industries, this review will delve into an array of information and specifications in regards to economic, political, and cultural influences throughout both Mexican and Brazilian markets respectively. In conclusion, the review will identify the transformation of an aviation manufacturing ...

Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau Jul 2018

Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau

Michael P. Johnson

Community operational research (Community OR), and its disciplinary relation, community-based operations research, has an increasingly high profile within multiple domains that benefit from empirical and analytic approaches to problem solving. These domains are primarily concentrated within nonprofit services and local development. However, there are many other disciplinary and application areas for which novel applications and extensions of COR could generate valuable insights. This paper identifies a number of these, distinguishing between ‘emerging trends’ (mostly in well-studied areas of operations research, management science and analytics) and ‘new frontiers’, which can be found in traditions not commonly oriented towards empirical and analytic ...

Jan 2018

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Localized Interventions, Appropriate Methods, Social Impact, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Community-engaged operations research is an extension of multiple OR/MS traditions to support participatory research, localized impact and social change. It applies critical thinking, evidence-based policy analysis, community participation and decision modeling to local interventions. It emphasizes the needs, voices and values of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. It rests on a foundation of meaningful engagement with communities. Through a survey of current scholarship in two complementary areas of inquiry, ‘community operational research’ (referring to work by primarily European researchers) and ‘community-based operations research’ (referring to work by primarily American researchers), I develop principles for community-engaged OR, present critical questions that ...

Structuring Financial Incentives For Residential Solar Electric Systems, Kevin C. Van Blommestein, Yonghee Cho, Tugrul U. Daim, Paul Sklar Dec 2017

Structuring Financial Incentives For Residential Solar Electric Systems, Kevin C. Van Blommestein, Yonghee Cho, Tugrul U. Daim, Paul Sklar

Joseph Cho

This paper introduces a simple methodology to aid in the decision of how to distribute financial incentive funding for residential solar electric systems in order to maximize demand. Incentive funding can be used more effectively if adjusted according to the decrease in price and the increase in demand of solar electric systems. The decision of how to reduce these incentives due to changing annual funds, while increasing or even maintaining the growth of solar electric system demand, is of great interest to policymakers and public benefit funded program administrators. In order to aid in this process, a three step methodology ...

What Is Community Operational Research?, Gerald Midgley, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau Dec 2017

What Is Community Operational Research?, Gerald Midgley, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau

Michael P. Johnson

Community Operational Research (Community OR) has been an explicit sub-domain of OR for more than 30 years. In this paper, we tackle the controversial issue of how it can be differentiated from other forms of OR. While it has been persuasively argued that Community OR cannot be defined by its clients, practitioners or methods, we argue that the common concern of all Community OR practice is the meaningful engagement of communities, whatever form that may take – and the legitimacy of different forms of engagement may be open to debate. We then move on to discuss four other controversies that have ...

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Current Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Nov 2017

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Current Applications, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Community-engaged operations research is an extension of multiple OR/MS traditions to support participatory scholarship, localized impact and social change. It applies critical thinking, evidence-based policy analysis, community participation and decision modeling to local interventions. It emphasizes the needs, voices and values of disadvantaged and marginalized populations. Through a survey of current scholarship in two complementary areas of inquiry, ‘community operational research’ (referring to work by primarily UK-based researchers) and ‘community-based operations research’ (referring to work by primarily US-based researchers), we develop principles for community-engaged OR, present critical questions that represent opportunities to expand the impact of this work, and ...

From Estimation To Optimization Via Shrinkage, Danial Davarnia, Gerard Cornuejols Oct 2017

From Estimation To Optimization Via Shrinkage, Danial Davarnia, Gerard Cornuejols

Danial Davarnia

We study a class of quadratic stochastic programs where the distribution of random variables has unknown parameters. A traditional approach is to estimate the parameters using a maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) and to use this as input in the optimization problem. For the unconstrained case, we show that an estimator that shrinks the MLE towards an arbitrary vector yields a uniformly better risk than the MLE. In contrast, when there are constraints, we show that the MLE is admissible.

Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright Oct 2017

Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright

Michael P. Johnson

Nonprofits face gaps in organizational capacity, including program design and evaluation, but previous research suggests that capacity-building exercises have a positive effect. We describe a data analytics training workshop with staff from Boston-area nonprofits reflecting a wide range of sectors. Through analysis of participant work on case studies provided by the instructor, we examine how participants made sense of training materials, the various strategies employed by participants to solve three case study problems, and participant feedback about the session. Our findings provide a basis for novel interventions in community based operations research.

All Models Are Wrong; Some Models Are Harmful, David Hunt, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Oct 2017

All Models Are Wrong; Some Models Are Harmful, David Hunt, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

We like to think that CBOR involves the application of analytical methods to "do good" locally, and, most will agree these efforts are "doing good". However, what is meant by "doing good" and how do we know when our models are not "doing good" and may in fact be doing harm? Some philosophers consider happiness as the only good, and utilitarianism is based on maximizing happiness. But maximizing happiness can create winners and losers, and are we really "doing good" as long as the pluses outweigh the minuses? This presentation will explore these topics using examples drawn from CBOR.

Aug 2017

Decision Modeling For Housing And Community Development: A Methodology For Evidence-Based Urban And Regional Planning, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Urban community development corporations and other local institutions routinely face challenging problems in housing and economic development that require substantial expertise in data analytics and decision modeling. Recent research, inspired by local responses to the housing foreclosure crisis, and developed in cooperation with Boston-area CDCs, has resulted in a collection of applications that can assist CDCs and similar organizations to design local interventions for acquisition and redevelopment of housing. This paper describes these applications. The first of these is values and objective design, i.e. the process of identifying decision opportunities. The second of these is data analytics, or the ...

Simultaneous Convexification Of Bilinear Functions Over Polytopes With Application To Network Interdiction, Danial Davarnia, Jean-Philippe Richard, Mohit Tawarmalani Jul 2017

Simultaneous Convexification Of Bilinear Functions Over Polytopes With Application To Network Interdiction, Danial Davarnia, Jean-Philippe Richard, Mohit Tawarmalani

Danial Davarnia

We study the simultaneous convexification of graphs of bilinear functions $g^k({x};{y}) = {y}^{\intercal} A^k {x}$ over ${x} \in \ensuremath{\Xi} = \{ {x} \in [0,1]^n \, | \, E{x} \geq {f} \}$ and ${y} \in \Delta_m = \{ {y} \in {R}_+^{m} \, | \, {1^{\intercal}y} \leq 1 \}$. We propose a constructive procedure to obtain a linear description of the convex hull of the resulting set. This procedure can be applied to derive convex and concave envelopes of certain bilinear functions, to study unary expansions of integer variables in mixed integer bilinear sets, and to obtain convex hulls of sets with ...

Lean Energy Analysis: Identifying, Discovering And Tracking Energy Savings Potential, J. Kelly Kissock, John Seryak Mar 2017

Lean Energy Analysis: Identifying, Discovering And Tracking Energy Savings Potential, J. Kelly Kissock, John Seryak

J. Kelly Kissock

Energy in manufacturing facilities is used for direct production of goods, space conditioning, and general facility support such as lighting. This paper presents a methodology, called lean energy analysis, LEA, for graphically and statistically analyzing plant energy use in terms of these major end uses.

The LEA methodology uses as few as 60 easily obtainable data points. Multivariable change-point models of electricity and natural gas use as functions of outdoor air temperature and production data are developed. The statistical models are used to subdivide plant energy use into facility, space-conditioning and production-related components.

These breakdowns suggest the savings potential from ...

Improving Compressed Air Energy Efficiency In Automotive Plants: Practical Examples And Implementation, Nasr Alkadi, J. Kelly Kissock Mar 2017

Improving Compressed Air Energy Efficiency In Automotive Plants: Practical Examples And Implementation, Nasr Alkadi, J. Kelly Kissock

J. Kelly Kissock

The automotive industry is the largest industry in the United States in terms of the dollar value of production [1]. U.S. automakers face tremendous pressure from foreign competitors, which have an increasing manufacturing presence in this country. The Big Three North American Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)-General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler-are reacting to declining sales figures and economic strain by working more efficiently and seeking out opportunities to reduce production costs without negatively affecting the production volume or the quality of the product. Successful, cost-effective investment and implementation of the energy efficiency technologies and practices meet the challenge of ...

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Opportunities, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Feb 2017

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Opportunities, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Scholars in multiple disciplines intersecting operations research have developed theory and applications to address the question, how can the decision sciences develop new ways to solve problems of special interest to organizations and individuals situated in geographically, economically and socially circumscribed communities? The motivation for this work is the belief that mission-driven and resource-constrained nonprofit organizations, and underrepresented, underserved, or vulnerable populations may have special needs for analytic and empirical problem-solving methods that have traditionally received less emphasis in traditional operations research and management science research and teaching. Scholarship in this area, alternatively labeled ‘community operational research’ (mostly in the ...

Pro Bono Analytics: A Program By Informs To Match Members Willing To Volunteer Their Analytical Skills With Nonprofit Organizations Working In Underserved Areas Or With Underserved Populations [Poster], Rina Schneur, Victoria Chen, Jim Cochran, Terry Cryan, Arnold Greenland, David Hunt, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Paul Rubin Nov 2016

Pro Bono Analytics: A Program By Informs To Match Members Willing To Volunteer Their Analytical Skills With Nonprofit Organizations Working In Underserved Areas Or With Underserved Populations [Poster], Rina Schneur, Victoria Chen, Jim Cochran, Terry Cryan, Arnold Greenland, David Hunt, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Paul Rubin

Michael P. Johnson

•INFORMS members (and non-members) volunteer to work with charitable organizations
•Charitable organizations (non-profits) request analytics help
•Pro Bono Analytics committee assists non-profits with formulation & scoping
•Volunteers provide service free (except expenses)
•Win-Win:
- Clients get helpful analytics
- Volunteers get experience and do something charitable

Measuring Success: Community Analytics For Local Economic Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Sandeep Jani Sep 2016

Measuring Success: Community Analytics For Local Economic Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Sandeep Jani

Michael P. Johnson

Main Street organizations are community-based nonprofits across the USA dedicated to local economic development through physical improvements, technical assistance to businesses, marketing and placebuilding. In this paper we identify metrics associated with success in local economic development and generate decision opportunities for improved program design and implementation. Our community partners, Main Street organizations in the city of Boston, want to ensure that data they collect about their service areas can help them measure progress towards achieving their individual goals as well as identify programs and initiatives that make best use of their resources and expertise. Using a mixed methods, inductive ...

Attending To Scientific#12; Practices Within Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Chandra Anne Turpen, Andrew R. Elby Jun 2016

Attending To Scientific#12; Practices Within Undergraduate Research Experiences, Gina M. Quan, Chandra Anne Turpen, Andrew R. Elby

Gina Quan

Ford (2015) argues for viewing “scientific practice” not as a list of particular skills, but rather, more
holistically as “sets of regularities of behaviors and social interactions” among scientists. This
conceptualization of scientific practices foregrounds how they meaningfully connect to one another and are
purposefully employed in order to explain nature. We apply this framework in the context of undergraduate
research experiences (UREs) to understand the early forms of student engagement in scientific practices,
and how these specific forms of engagement may be consequential for students’ future participation. Using
video from interviews with students and research mentors, we argue that ...

Mar 2016

Community-Based Operations Research: Data Analytics And Decision Modeling For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

‘Community-based operations research’ is an extension of multiple traditions in OR/MS to produce research for local change. CBOR attempts to incorporate critical thinking, evidence-based policy design and prescriptive decision modeling. This presentation introduces a theory of CBOR and reviews current applications to support a collection of new scholarship. These applications include foreclosure response, vacant land management and local economic development. We conclude with suggestions to expand the field of CBOR.

On Convergence Analysis Of Dual Proximal-Gradient Methods With Approximate Gradient For A Class Of Nonsmooth Convex Minimization Problems, Sanming Liu, Zhijie Wang, Chongyang Liu Jan 2016

On Convergence Analysis Of Dual Proximal-Gradient Methods With Approximate Gradient For A Class Of Nonsmooth Convex Minimization Problems, Sanming Liu, Zhijie Wang, Chongyang Liu

Chongyang Liu

In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing a nonsmooth convex objective which is the sum of a proper, nonsmooth, closed, strongly convex extend real-valued function with a proper, nonsmooth, closed, convex extend real-valued function.

Guidelines For Using Process Mapping To Aid Improvement Efforts, Paul Savory, John Olson Dec 2015

Guidelines For Using Process Mapping To Aid Improvement Efforts, Paul Savory, John Olson

John Olson

Process mapping is an easy-to-visualize method for people to analyze and agree on the most efficient routes for reengineering or improving a process. It aids in determining redundant tasks, uncovering hidden interactions between processes and people, and focusing on the processes that serve customers, improve quality, and generate income. This paper presents guidelines for using process mapping as an improvement tool. It is based on the authors’ experiences in aiding a variety of healthcare, service, and manufacturing companies.

Cracking The Shell To Student Learning: An Innovative Instructional Approach, John Olson, Paul Savory Dec 2015

Cracking The Shell To Student Learning: An Innovative Instructional Approach, John Olson, Paul Savory

John Olson

Management and Industrial Engineering courses is motivating students to learn and apply the quantitative and managerial aspects of the material. The aim of our educational methodology is to not only teach and reinforce the core principles of the disciplines, but to have students develop a set of skills that will make them competitive in the classroom and the workforce. Teaching is why a university exists. As a result, the objective of our instructional approach is to attract and retain dedicated students to the fields of Operations Management and Industrial Engineering and to keep those students competitive and in focus with ...

A Hybrid Approach Of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Theory And Dematel Method To Prioritize Selection Criteria Of Bank Branches Locations, Amin Vafadarnikjoo, Mohammadsadegh Mobin, Sajjad Allahi, Ali Rastegari Oct 2015

A Hybrid Approach Of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set Theory And Dematel Method To Prioritize Selection Criteria Of Bank Branches Locations, Amin Vafadarnikjoo, Mohammadsadegh Mobin, Sajjad Allahi, Ali Rastegari

Optimally locating new bank branches is a strategic decision in banking industry in order to stay competitive. The importance of this issue is primarily due to the fact that locating branches in appropriate sites is one of the main factors in absorbing and satisfying bank customers. This results in a core benefit for banks, particularly in a vibrant competition. In addition, without a set of well-chosen selection criteria and their prominence, the goal of locating suitable sites for bank branches would not be efficiently achieved. In this research, six most widely used criteria for bank branch location consideration are obtained ...

A Servqual Model Approach Integrated With Fuzzy Ahp And Fuzzy Topsis Methodologies To Rank Life Insurance Firms, Mahdi Saeedpoor, Amin Vafadarnikjoo, Mohammadsadegh Mobin, Ali Rastegari Oct 2015

A Servqual Model Approach Integrated With Fuzzy Ahp And Fuzzy Topsis Methodologies To Rank Life Insurance Firms, Mahdi Saeedpoor, Amin Vafadarnikjoo, Mohammadsadegh Mobin, Ali Rastegari

Ranking life insurance firms, particularly regarding customer-oriented criteria, has become a significant research priority of many insurance research centers. This is mainly due to the effective role of life insurance in improving the capital market and the role of service quality in customer satisfaction. This issue has remained one of the major topics associated with insurance industry which has not been sufficiently explored in the literature. This study aims at prioritizing insurance firms which hold the majority proportion of Iran's total life insurance market. Life insurers are assessed and ranked with regard to 5 criteria of customer service quality ...

A Meta-Heuristic Approach To Locate Optimal Switch Locations In Cellular Mobile Networks, Amin Vafadarnikjoo, Seyyed Mohammad Ali Khatami Firouzabadi, Mohammadsadegh Mobin, Afshan Roshani Oct 2015