Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Truckload Carrier Selection, Routing And Cost Optimization, Zhixin Han

Masters Theses

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the routing decision combined with common carrier selection for dedicated contract carriers to reduce full truckload routing cost on pickup and delivery service within time windows in a multiple depots scenario. Mixed Integer Programming and some heuristic algorithms such as the genetic algorithm and annealing algorithm have been successfully used to solve vehicle routing problems for a long time, but researchers seldom simultaneously focus on issues of carrier selection, multiple depots, time window, and the government regulations for a dedicated contract carrier. Therefore, this thesis involved constraints of pickup and delivery with …

Heuristic Solution For Separated Manufacturing Process, James Dee Davis

Masters Theses

Downtime is a major issue for manufactures. Downtime may occur from breakdowns, quality issues, lack of manpower, lack of materials, or in this case a lack of storage containers. A manufacturing system was studied that consists of an injection machine that supplies two assembly lines. The injection machine suffered from frequent downtime from lack of containers. The process was analyzed for root cause of downtime. After analysis of the system it was found that the injection process had high variability in production quantity and quality. The scheduling scheme called for production until all available containers were full regardless of actual …

Economic And Environmental Optimization In The Supply Of Switchgrass In Tennessee, Jia Zhong

Masters Theses

The low efficiency of collection, storage and transportation in the switchgrass supply chain has hindered the commercialization of a switchgrass-based biofuel industry, even given its ecological and environmental advantages in carbon sequestrate, soil quality, water use, and pollution pressure. Thus, designing a switchgrass-based supply chain balancing both environmental and economic performance is important to expedite the development of the cellulosic biofuel industry to meet the national energy plan.

The objectives of this study are to 1) determine economic cost and multiple environmental outcomes in feedstock supply chains and 2) identify the relation between the economic and environmental performances. The first …

Integration Of Maintenance Into Design And Sustainability Of Buildings, Dinesh Reddy Patlolla

Masters Theses

Custodial maintenance is an important aspect of operational maintenance in a facility. Custodial maintenance improves an organization's discipline, performance and keeps surroundings healthy. That being said maintaining clean surroundings involves considerable cost. Custodial maintenance cost forms significant portion of building budgets, however these costs are often neglected. This research deals with the identification of variables that affect maintenance costs in a facility and reduction of maintenance costs. The minimization of cost is done by giving the administrator or facilities manager the option of selecting alternatives in frequency of maintenance, level of maintenance and the number of people required to complete …

Modelling Supercomputer Maintenance Interrupts: Maintenance Policy Recommendations, Jagadish Cherukuri

Masters Theses

A supercomputer is a repairable system with large number of compute nodes interconnected to work in harmony to achieve superior computational performance. Reliability of such a complex system depends on an effective maintenance strategy that involves both emergency and preventive maintenance. This thesis analyzes the maintenance records of four supercomputers operational at The National Institute of Computational Science located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. We propose to use the generalized proportional intensities model (GPIM) to model the maintenance interrupts as it can capture both the reliability parameters and maintenance parameters and allows the inclusion of both emergency and preventive maintenance. …

Value Stream Segmentation And New Product Development, Richard Lee Vaughn

Masters Theses

This research paper expands upon prior research into the pursuit of the successful new product launch. It reviews the evolution of how new product launches were handled in the past and the best practices used today. The article “Value Stream Segmentation Focuses on Customer Needs” expands upon the success and failure of the practices and poses a new concept for future new product launches. The concept of “value stream segmentation” is how a company should use value stream mapping to streamline its processes to achieve a successful new product launch. By analyzing and segmenting market requirements, a business that is …