Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Constrained Multi-Group Project Allocation Using Mahalanobis Distance, Abdulaziz Saud Alkabaa

Doctoral Dissertations

Optimal allocation is one of the most active research areas in operation research using binary integer variables. The allocation of multi constrained projects among several options available along a given planning horizon is an especially significant problem in the general area of item classification. The main goal of this dissertation is to develop an analytical approach for selecting projects that would be most attractive from an economic point of view to be developed or allocated among several options, such as in-house engineers and private contractors (in transportation projects). A relevant limiting resource in addition to the availability of funds is …

Integrating The Cost Of Quality Into Multi-Products Multi-Components Supply Chain Network Design, Waleed Abdussalam Gueir

Doctoral Dissertations

More than ever before the success of a company heavily depends on its supply chain and how efficient the network. A supply chain needs to be configured in such a manner as to minimize cost while still maintaining a good quality level to satisfy the end user and to be efficient, designing for the network and the whole chain is important. Including the cost of quality into the process of designing the network can be rewording and revealing. In this research the concept of cost of quality as a performance measure was integrated into the supply chain network designing process …

Development Of Instrumentation And Control Systems For An Integral Large Scale Pressurized Water Reactor, Matthew Rowland Morrow Lish

Doctoral Dissertations

Small and large scale integral light water reactors are being developed to supply electrical power and to meet the needs of process heat, primarily for water desalination. This dissertation research focuses on the instrumentation and control of a large integral inherently safe light water reactor (designated as I²S-LWR) which is being designed as part of a grant by the U.S. Department of Energy Integrated Research Project (IRP). This 969 MWe integral pressurized water reactor (PWR) incorporates as many passive safety features as possible while maintaining competitive costs with current light water reactors. In support of this work, the …

Retail Analytics And Optimization For Store-Wide Shelf-Space Management, Tulay Flamand

Doctoral Dissertations

A major constituent of modern-time economies, retailing is a vibrant business sector that is marked by high competition, tight profit margins, novel business strategies in online and in-store environments, and demanding consumers. Driven by massive volumes of point-of-sale data, retail analytics has become instrumental for unveiling better managerial practices. Our research falls under the umbrella of retail shelf space management. In self-service outlets, shelf space constitutes a scarce resource and its management is central to ensuring an attractive shopping experience and a profitable business. We investigate how, under a given store layout, the allocation of product categories can be optimized …

Stochastic Network Design: Models And Scalable Algorithms, Xiaojian Wu

Doctoral Dissertations

Many natural and social phenomena occur in networks. Examples include the spread of information, ideas, and opinions through a social network, the propagation of an infectious disease among people, and the spread of species within an interconnected habitat network. The ability to modify a phenomenon towards some desired outcomes has widely recognized benefits to our society and the economy. The outcome of a phenomenon is largely determined by the topology or properties of its underlying network. A decision maker can take management actions to modify a network and, therefore, change the outcome of the phenomenon. A management action is an …

The Effect Of Interruptions On Primary Task Performance In Safety-Critical Environments, Cheryl Ann Nicholas

Doctoral Dissertations

Safety critical systems in medicine utilize alarms to signal potentially life threatening situations to professionals and patients. In particular, in the medical field multiple alarms from equipment are activated daily and often simultaneously. There are a number of alarms which require caregivers to take breaks in complex, primary tasks to attend to the interruption task which is signaled by the alarm. The motivation for this research is the knowledge that, in general, interrupting tasks can have a potentially negative impact on performance and outcomes of the primary task. The focus of this research is on the effect of an interrupting …

Design, Implementation, And Evaluation Of A User Training Program For Integrating Health Information Technology Into Clinical Processes, Ze He

Doctoral Dissertations

Health information technology (IT) implementation can be costly, and remains a challenging problem with mixed outcomes on patient safety and quality of care. Systems engineering and IT management experts have advocated the use of sociotechnical models to understand the impact of health IT on user and organizational factors. Sociotechnical models suggest the need for user-centered implementation approaches, such as user training and support, and focus on processes to mitigate the negative impact and facilitate optimal IT use during training. The training design and development should also follow systematic processes guided by instructional development models. It should take into account of …

A Tool Kit For Building Hbcu Technology Transfer Supply Chain Networks Using An Advanced Planning System, Clovia Hamilton

Doctoral Dissertations

This mixed methods study describes the development of a university technology transfer that Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) can use to become more self-reliant financially. HBCUs lag behind their peer non-HBCUs because historically they have been under-served and were originally established largely as teaching and blue collar trade schools. Increased involvement in research oriented activities such as technology transfer will likely enable HBCUs to grow into new or stronger research institutions. The literature review revealed several problem areas with non-HBCUs university technology transfer include: (1) lack of quality standard benchmarks; (2) resource planning issues; (3) processing delays; and (4) …

Forecasting Employee Turnover In Large Organizations, Xiaojuan Zhu

Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers and human resource departments have focused on employee turnover for decades. This study developed a methodology forecasting employee turnover at organizational and departmental levels to shorten lead time for hiring employees. Various time series modeling techniques were used to identify optimal models for effective employee-turnover prediction based on a large U.S organization's 11-year monthly turnover data. A dynamic regression model with additive trend, seasonality, interventions, and a very important economic indicator efficiently predicted turnover. Another turnover model predicted both retirement and quitting, including early retirement incentives, demographics, and external economic indicators using the Cox proportional hazard model. A variety …

High Reliability Organizational Suggestions To Reduce The Risk Of Hospital-Associated Infections, Sandra Catrice Affare

Doctoral Dissertations

Over 1.7 million hospital-associated infections (HAIs), resulting in 99,000 deaths, occur each year in the United States. HAIs are defined as infections that occur within 48 hours of hospital admission without evidence of the infection being present or incubating at the time of admission. HAIs are a major concern to the medical community due to the potential loss of life and high costs. Healthcare providers should be accountable for reducing the rates of HAIs and society needs to hold them accountable for the safe implementation and outcomes of the services they provide.

A high-reliability organization (HRO) is commonly described as …

Empirical Analysis To Investigate The Influence Of Cultural Dimensions On Risk-Taking Behavior Among Hispanic And Non-Hispanic Construction Workers In United States, Kaveri Ajit Thakur

Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this research was to investigate the influence of cultural dimensions on risk-taking behavior among construction workers. Following a comprehensive literature review, a conceptual model was presented to evaluate `Intended Behavior in Risky Situations' in construction work environment. While the differences in risk-taking behaviors is generally acknowledged, the influence of culture is overlooked very easily. A total of 94 responses were collected from construction sites in the Knoxville Tennessee area by means of a questionnaire based on the conceptual model factors. The final sample consisted of 89 responses was evaluated using Partial lease Square - Structural Equation Modeling. …

Role Of Low Carbon Energy Technologies In Near Term Energy Policy, Olaitan P. Olaleye

Doctoral Dissertations

In the first part of this thesis, we use a multi-model framework to examine a set of possible future energy scenarios resulting from R&D portfolios of Solar, Nuclear, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), Bio-Fuels, Bio-Electricity and Batteries for electric transportation. We show that CCS significantly complements Bio-Electricity, while most of the other energy technology pairs are substitutes. From the probabilistic analysis of future energy scenarios we observe that portfolios with CCS tend to stochastically dominate those without CCS; portfolios with only renewables tend to be stochastically dominated by others; and that there are clear decreasing marginal returns to scale. We …

Applications Of Simulation And Optimization Techniques In Optimizing Room And Pillar Mining Systems, Angelina Konadu Anani

Doctoral Dissertations

"The goal of this research was to apply simulation and optimization techniques in solving mine design and production sequencing problems in room and pillar mines (R&P). The specific objectives were to: (1) apply Discrete Event Simulation (DES) to determine the optimal width of coal R&P panels under specific mining conditions; (2) investigate if the shuttle car fleet size used to mine a particular panel width is optimal in different segments of the panel; (3) test the hypothesis that binary integer linear programming (BILP) can be used to account for mining risk in R&P long range mine production sequencing; and (4) …

A Domain Independent Method To Assess System Of System Meta-Architectures Using Domain Specific Fuzzy Information, Louis Edward Pape Ii

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research proposes a domain independent method to build and assess systems of systems (SoS) architecture models. A simplified meta-architecture containing each component system's participation and a first order, binary, system-to-system interface is proposed. The method describes how to elicit desired SoS attributes from stakeholders. Measures of the attributes depend on systems' participation and interfaces, that is, on the SoS architecture. The goal is to model a realizable SoS configuration, optimized over multiple attributes. Key attribute measures are combined in a fuzzy inference system to assess an overall fitness measure for any SoS in the meta-architecture. A genetic algorithm is …

Approximation For Single-Channel Multi-Server Queues And Queuing Networks With Generally Distributed Inter-Arrival And Service Times, Carlos Roberto Chaves

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation is divided into two papers. The first paper is related to developing a closed-form approximation for single-channel multiple-server queues with generally distributed inter-arrival and service times, which are often found in numerous settings, e.g., airports and manufacturing systems. Unfortunately, exact models for such systems require distributions for the underlying random variables. Further, data for fitting distributions is sometimes not available, and one only has access to means and variances of the underlying input random variables. Under heavy traffic, excellent approximations already exist for this purpose. In the first paper, a new approximation method for medium traffic is presented. …

Multi-Level Evolutionary Algorithms Resource Allocation Utilizing Model-Based Systems Engineering, Bhanuchander Reddy Poreddy

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research presents an innovative approach to solve the resource allocation problems using Multi-level Evolutionary Algorithms. Evolutionary Algorithms are used to solve resource allocation problems in different domains and their results are then incorporated into a higher level system solution using another Evolutionary Algorithm to solve base camp planning problems currently faced by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Two models are introduced to solve two domain specific models: a logistics model and a power model. The logistic model evaluates routes for logistics vehicles on a daily basis with a goal of reducing fuel usage by delivery trucks. The evaluation includes …