Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Innovating Continuous Review Policies With Rfid, Angela Garza

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Inventory accuracy is critical for NASA astronauts in space. In 2004, astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) nearly had to de-man their outpost due to the fact the replenishment of consumables were uncertain. Automated Identification Technologies (AITs) such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can be utilized to minimize the occurrence of situations like this one. RFID has been used to aid inventory management systems by providing real time availability of the item information including location and status. The benefit of RFID over barcodes is immense as it allows users to employ continuous review models. Barcodes are only capable of …

Evaluation Of Optimization Algorithms For Improvement Of A Transportation Companies (In-House) Vehicle Routing System, Jian Han

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Vehicle routing problem (VRP) is the main issue of the transportation. It is becoming more and more popular. Trucking companies play an important role in the transportation industry. Most trucking companies are developing their own software to make profit. Often, the software is used for routing optimization models to minimize cost because the first work is organized over the road.

Linear Programming and saving heuristics are traditional algorithms for solving the vehicle routing problems. However, none of the companies want to make a decision of routing by calculating with mathematics models in their companies. So the vehicle routing software is …

Evaluating Obselete Inventory Policies In A Hospital's Supply Chain, Maurice D. Cavitt

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Numerous organizations are currently facing inventory management problems including distributing inventory on time and maintaining the appropriate inventory level to satisfy the end user. Organizations understand the importance of inventory accuracy as any error will increase the purchasing and holding costs affecting investment decisions. Lack of information about effective measures that will allow management to make important business decisions motivated this research to identify a decision criterion for warehouse management. A feasible solution of calculating the carrying cost ratio from purchasing and holding cost is the main objective of this thesis. The carrying cost ratio will allow managers to make …

A Predictive Modeling For Water Consumption And Wastewater Flow Management For A Food Processing Manufacturer, Jairo A. De Jesus

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The City of Cumming, GA, issues special permits for industrial users of sewer services, who meet one or more criteria of discharge regulations. The criteria includes discharge of 25,000 gallons per day or more of processed wastewater, the presence for the potential to inhibit the Advanced Water Reclamation Facility (AWRF) treatment processes, the potential to cause AWRF’s bio-solids to be contaminated, and other regulations. The Food Processing Manufacturer in this study is a meat processing facility (processes pork cooked sausage) and its operation and associated wastewater treatment plant meets at least one of the criteria requiring a special sewer service …

Design Of Assembly Lines With The Concurrent Consideration Of Productivity And Upper Extremity Musculoskeletal Disorders Using Linear Models, Zhan Xu

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The productivity of assembly lines is considerably affected by the health condition of assembly workers, and work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are common occupational diseases among assembly workers due to repetitive motions or heavy working loads. The conventional approaches to decreasing WMSD risks in the assembly lines include slowing the work-pace or applying job rotations. These adjustments usually focus on individual assembly workers at the station level but not the work allocation among the workers at the whole assembly line level, and thus may decrease the line productivity. To avoid these negative effects, some research started considering ergonomic characteristics at the …

Evaluation Of Periodontal Scaling Task And Development Of Force-Endurance Models For Simulated Scaling Task, Vettrivel Gnaneswaran

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Force exertion is critical in grasping and holding activities at sub-maximal levels. Exertion misjudgments lead to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) impairing performance and productivity. Published literatures on grasping have addressed the force balance and endurance issues for non-prehensile movements of hand. However, little information is available on the force exerted in precision gripping employed in health care. Professionals, especially dental hygienists, when treating patients adopt awkward postures for extended period leading to cumulative trauma. Literatures on cumulative trauma have identified force exertion to be an important risk factor. Lack of information on fatigue with precision gripping motivated this research to establish …

Information Quality On The World Wide Web: A User Perspective, Jaikrit Kandari

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Information Quality has emerged as an important measure for the success of Information Systems. At the same time the World Wide Web has established itself as the key infrastructure for information administration, exchange, and publication. Users are getting information from the web at the click of a button however they must filter sub-standard information before they can use quality content. Researchers have aimed to address this problem by suggesting various information quality frameworks. Research till date has seen twenty important Information Quality (IQ) frameworks emerge. These models though varied in their approach and application share a number of characteristics regarding …

Estimation Of Mechanical Properties Of Soft Tissue Subjected To Dynamic Impact, Mohamed R.S Amar

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study attempted to estimate the damping properties of human tissue by using spring and damper system as a model. Data of impacting human tissue at the deltoid area was used to obtain a continuous, second order system to represent the mass-spring-damper system. A discrete ARMA(2,1) model was fitted using the data obtained from experiments in which the deceleration of a pendulum impacting human shoulders in the area of the deltoid muscle was measured. The data of the deceleration was integrated twice to obtain estimates of displacement. The integration was done until the maximum displacement occurred at zero velocity.

An …

Using A Quality Based Analytic Hierarchy Process To Do Decision-Making Analysis In Transportation, Dejing Kong

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The automated identification technology, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), provides the potential to reduce costs in the transportation operations. Local Department of Transportation (DOT) offices have to carefully consider technologies such as RFID when considering their use for operation such as Right of Way (ROW) property control. ROW operations require strategic planning in that inventory and access rights can be contestable in a myriad of situations. This research investigates the comprehensive impacts of using RFID systems for ROW inventory tracking. We utilize the House of Quality as a means to integrating strategic shareholders needs and their impact on the measurement of …

Comparison Of Classical Analytic Hierarchy Process (Ahp) Approach And Fuzzy Ahp Approach In Multiple-Criteria Decision Making For Commercial Vehicle Information Systems And Networks (Cvisn) Project, Liyuan Zhang

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has emerged as an important technology with many possible applications in a wide variety of fields. It is said that RFID can perform well in transportation system. Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles (NEDMV) is using this technique to perform an analysis on utilizing RFID license plates to assist with Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and Networks (CVISN) program with the cooperation of many other stakeholders. Previous House of Quality (HOQ) analysis evaluates stakeholders’ needs and provides the pairwise comparison values of six important technical requirements for each stakeholder. Based on these, this research aims to seek for …

Investigation Into Current Efficiency For Pulse Electrochemical Machining Of Nickel Alloy, Yu Zhang

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

INVESTIGATION INTO CURRENT EFFICIENCY FOR PULSE ELECTROCHEMICAL MACHINING OF NICKEL ALLOY

Yu Zhang, M.S.

University of Nebraska, 2010

Adviser: Kamlakar P. Rajurkar

Electrochemical machining (ECM) is a nontraditional manufacturing process that can machine difficult-to-cut materials. In ECM, material is removed by controlled electrochemical dissolution of an anodic workpiece in an electrochemical cell. ECM has extensive applications in automotive, petroleum, aerospace, textile, medical, and electronics industries.

Improving current efficiency is a challenging task for any electro-physical or electrochemical machining processes. The current efficiency is defined as the ratio of the observed amount of metal dissolved to the theoretical amount predicted from …

Preparation Of Coated Microtools For Electrochemical Machining Applications, Ajaya K. Swain

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

PREPARATION OF COATED MICROTOOLS FOR ELECTROCHEMICAL MACHINING APPLICATIONS

Ajaya K. Swain, M.S. University of Nebraska, 2010

Advisor: K.P. Rajurkar

Coated tools have improved the performance of both traditional and nontraditional machining processes and have resulted in higher material removal, better surface finish, and increased wear resistance. However, a study on the performance of coated tools in micromachining has not yet been adequately conducted. One possible reason is the difficulties associated with the preparation of coated microtools. Besides the technical requirement, economic and environmental aspects of the material and the coating technique used also play a significant role in coating microtools. …

A Methodology To Evaluate Obsolete Inventory In Health Care, Rama Thummalapalli

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Many organizations are currently facing inventory management problems such as distributing inventory on-time and maintain the correct inventory levels to satisfy the customer or end users. Organizations understand the need for maintaining the accurate inventory levels but sometimes fall short leading a wide performance gap in maintaining inventory accurately. The inventory inaccuracy can consume much of the investment on purchasing inventory and many times leads to excessive inventory. The research objective of thesis is to provide a decision making criteria to the management for closing or maintaining the warehouse based on basic purchasing and holding cost information. The specific objectives …

Study Of Micro Rotary Ultrasonic Machining, Aarati Sarwade

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Product miniaturization for applications in fields such as biotechnology, medical devices, aerospace, optics and communications has made the advancement of micromachining techniques essential. Machining of hard and brittle materials such as ceramics, glass and silicon is a formidable task. Rotary ultrasonic machining (RUM) is capable of machining these materials. RUM is a hybrid machining process which combines the mechanism of material removal of conventional grinding and ultrasonic machining. Downscaling of RUM for micro scale machining is essential to generate miniature features or parts from hard and brittle materials.

The goal of this thesis is to conduct a feasibility study and …

Adaptive Cutting Force Control For Process Stability Of Micro Ultrasonic Machining, Ala'a M. Al-Okaily

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The growing demand for miniaturized products motivates the advancement in micromanufacturing processes research and development. Micro Ultrasonic Machining (Micro USM) is a downscaled version of a macro USM process that is developed to fabricate complex features in chemically inert, nonconductive, hard, brittle materials such as quartz, glass, and ceramics. These materials have many applications in various fields such as optics, electronics, MEMS, and biotechnology. The micro USM process stability is hard to accomplish, because it is highly influenced by the accuracy of the machining system and the variation of the process control parameters. The repeatability of micro USM machined features …

The Use Of Factor Analysis In The Development Of Hand Sizes For Glove Design, Trevor M. Mclain

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Factor analysis was used to develop a more detailed description of the human hand to be used in the creation of glove sizes; currently gloves sizes are small, medium, and large. The created glove sizes provide glove designers with the ability to create a glove design that can provide fit to the majority of hand variations in both the male and female populations. The research used the American National Survey (ANSUR) data that was collected in 1988. This data contains eighty-six length, width, height, and circumference measurements of the human hand for one thousand male subjects and thirteen hundred female …

Evaluation Method For Strategic Investments, Olabode Alabi

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Real Options Analysis (ROA) has become a complimentary tool for engineering economics. It has become popular due to the limitations of conventional engineering valuation methods; specifically, the assumptions of uncertainty. Industry is seeking to quantify the value of engineering investments with uncertainty. One problem with conventional tools are that they may assume that cash flows are certain, therefore minimizing the possibility of the uncertainty of future values. Real options analysis provides a solution to this problem, but has been used sparingly by practitioners. This paper seeks to provide a new model, referred to as the Beta Distribution Real Options Pricing …