Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Optimizing Student Workforce Scheduling At Psu Office Of Information Technology (Oit), Agam Ebramsyah, Aishwarya Joy, Cody Miller, Jake Stevens, Priyanka Patil

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

A significant challenge for businesses of any size, is generating a work schedule that ensures adequate personnel coverage to ensure all aspects of the business are properly staffed, while preventing waste produced from having an excess number of employees working at a given time. The decision to manually create spreadsheets and work schedules that take into account availability, staffing requirements, and cost efficiency can become overwhelming and labor intensive. For Portland State University's Office of Information Technology (OIT), there is a significant challenge in scheduling student workers, while ensuring staffing requirements are met, student work hour restrictions are observed, and …

Organics To You - Optimization Of Produce Bins, Rassaniya Lerdphayakkarat, Chuan Chieh Lu, Jon Roschke, Juliana Suzuki, Jessie Truong

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Organics to You (www.organicstoyou.org ) is a produce delivery company that focuses on bringing organic local food from local farms straight to the homes, schools, and businesses of its clients. Each week a "Small Bin" is created using different varieties of local produce from various farms. Customers receive a bin that contains 12-14 varieties of produce with 2-6 "servings" of each variety (e.g., 1 melon, 4 apples, 1 head of lettuce, 2 lbs potatoes, etc).

Our objective is to optimize the contents of the “Small Bin”. The decision we want to make is how much of each variety do …

A Systems-Based Framework For Design And Analysis Of An R And D Structure, Polinpapilinho F. Katina, Charles B. Keating, Luna M. Magpili

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

A critical challenge for managerial effectiveness and competitive advantage in research and development (R and D) organizations is developing an appropriate structural configuration. However, in finding an appropriate structural configuration, R and D managers are faced with unprecedented levels of uncertainty, ambiguity, and accelerating complexity, coupled with demands for increased productivity. This paper develops a systems-based framework to support rigorous design, analysis, and transformation of the structure for R and D organizations. The framework development includes: (1) a review of the literature for the nature and role of the structure in R and D management; (2) setting of the R …

Forecasting Us Army Enlistment Contract Production In Complex Geographical Marketing Areas, Joshua L. Mcdonald, Edward D. White, Raymond R. Hill, Christian Pardo

Faculty Publications

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an improved method for forecasting the US Army recruiting. Design/methodology/approach: Time series methods, regression modeling, principle components and marketing research are included in this paper. Findings: This paper found the unique ability of multiple statistical methods applied to a forecasting context to consider the effects of inputs that are controlled to some degree by a decision maker. Research limitations/implications: This work will successfully inform the US Army recruiting leadership on how this improved methodology will improve their recruitment process.
Practical implications: Improved US Army analytical technique for forecasting recruiting goals.

An Optimization Model For Operating Room Scheduling To Reduce Blocking Across The Perioperative Process, Amin Abedini, Wei Li, Honghan Ye

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Operating room (OR) scheduling is important. Because of increasing demand for surgical services, hospitals must provide high quality care more efficiently with limited resources. When constructing the OR schedule, it is necessary to consider the availability of downstream resources, such as intensive care unit (ICU) and post anaesthesia care unit (PACU). The unavailability of downstream resources causes blockings between every two consecutive stages. In this paper we address the master surgical schedule (MSS) problem in order to minimize blockings between two consecutive stages. First, we present a blocking minimization (BM) model for the MSS by using integer programming, based on …

Assimilation Of Tracking Technology In The Supply Chain, Rahul Basole, Maciek Nowak

Information Systems and Operations Management: Faculty Publications & Other Works

While tracking technology has become increasingly accessible, firms still struggle with deploying these technologies into the supply chain. Using the complementary perspectives of transaction cost and institutional theory, we develop an understanding of how supply network, product, and environmental characteristics jointly impact tracking technology assimilation. We empirically test our model on a global dataset of 535 supply chain executives and decision makers. The results suggest that assimilation is frequently initiated by an external stakeholder in a firm's supply chain and that firms must develop strong collaborative ties with their partners in order to take full advantage of this technology.

The Long Term Effects Of An Aging Fleet On Operational Availability And Cost: Evidence From The Us Coast Guard, Christopher W. Lavin, Robert M. Mcnab, Ryan S. Sullivan

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper empirically examines whether the aging of a fleet affects operational availability and operating cost using a unique data-set on the 117 47-foot Motor Lifeboats (MLBs) of the United States Coast Guard (USCG). Procured from 1997 to 2003, the 47-foot MLB is the standard lifeboat of the USCG and all 117 MLBs remain in service. The aging of the MLB fleet has resulted in higher annual operating costs and lower operational availability, although the nature of this relationship remains unclear. Our estimation strategy utilizes an error components estimator to examine these issues. We employ three variants of the dependent …

Sensitivity Analysis Method To Address User Disparities In The Analytic Hierarchy Process, Marie Ivanco, Gene Hou, Jennifer Michaeli

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Decision makers often face complex problems, which can seldom be addressed well without the use of structured analytical models. Mathematical models have been developed to streamline and facilitate decision making activities, and among these, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) constitutes one of the most utilized multi-criteria decision analysis methods. While AHP has been thoroughly researched and applied, the method still shows limitations in terms of addressing user profile disparities. A novel sensitivity analysis method based on local partial derivatives is presented here to address these limitations. This new methodology informs AHP users of which pairwise comparisons most impact the derived …

Human-Intelligence/Machine-Intelligence Decision Governance: An Analysis From Ontological Point Of View, Faisal Mahmud, Teddy Steven Cotter

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The increasing CPU power and memory capacity of computers, and now computing appliances, in the 21st century has allowed accelerated integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into organizational processes and everyday life. Artificial intelligence can now be found in a wide range of organizational processes including medical diagnosis, automated stock trading, integrated robotic production systems, telecommunications routing systems, and automobile fuzzy logic controllers. Self-driving automobiles are just the latest extension of AI. This thrust of AI into organizations and everyday life rests on the AI community’s unstated assumption that “…every aspect of human learning and intelligence could be so precisely described …

Complex Adaptive Behavior Of Hybrid Teams, Mustafa Canan, Andres Sousa-Poza, Anthony Dean

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The challenges in uncertain, dynamic and complex military operation environments exceed the problem-solving capabilities of individuals. Problem-solving has become a team task. These [hybrid] teams, which typically include machine and human elements, utilize autonomy and artificial intelligence to enhance the quality of actionable information and decision-making capabilities in solving complex problems. For this to be effective, shared mental models must be developed by teams. This demands adaptive behavior of team members to establish a common understanding, and its members to respond to the changes in complex dynamic environments.

In this paper, we introduce a mathematical formalization of an interaction platform …