Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Air Force Space Programs: Comparing Estimates To Final Development Budgets, Christopher Elworth, Edward D. White, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Gregory E. Brown

Faculty Publications

This article analyzes how development budget estimates, as reported in the Selected Acquisition Reports, change over time for primarily Air Force space programs. Government acquisition policy emphasizes the importance of developing an accurate point estimate for programs to ensure program budget efficiency; however, statistics imply space programs tend to underspend at the beginning of the program and to overspend at the end of Initial Operational Capability. This suggests new phasing methods that reflect the unique needs of space and perhaps other developmental-type programs by allocating more of the budget in later years rather than at the beginning of the program, …

Identifying Relationships Of Interest In Complex Environments By Using Channel Theory, Andreas Bildstein, Junkang Feng

Communications of the IIMA

Complex environments show a high degree of dynamics caused by vital interactions between objects within those environments and alterations through which the set of objects and their characteristics within those environments go over time. Within this work, we show that we can tame the level of complexity in dynamic environments by identifying ‘relationships of interest’ between objects in such environments. To this end, we apply the theory of Information Flow, also known as Channel Theory, to the application area of smart manufacturing. We enhance the way how the Channel Theory has been applied so far by using an …

Systems Approach To Evaluating Mih-Cp (Mobile Integrated Healthcare – Community Paramedicine): A Case Study Of East Baton Rouge Parish (Ebrp) Emergency Medical Services (Ems) Community Paramedicine Program Initiative, Oluwakemi Aiyedun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study applied a holistic method of healthcare program assessment, known as systems approach, to evaluate the efficacy of the East Baton Rouge Parish (EBRP) EMS Community-integrated Health Program (CIHP). The author developed assessment metrics following the Quadruple Aim Framework: IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) Triple Aim + Provider Experience.

Results showed that the CP program in this study delivers high ratings on patient experience and provided a 51% return on investment (ROI) through reduced emergency service utilization, ED visits and inpatient hospital admissions. However, findings did not demonstrate meaningful improvement in patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and self-efficacy …

Analyzing Failure Classifications For Patterns And Trends, Casey Eaton, Amanda Banks

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Application Of Acquisition Theory, Elizabeth Rose Cavin, Hillary Palmer, Paul Collopy

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of Nasa Affordability Culture And Implications On Engineering Management, Jonathon Sullivan, Christopher White

Von Braun Symposium Student Posters

No abstract provided.

Backhaul Profit Maximization Problem Instances, Yuanyuan Dong, Yulan Bai, Eli V. Olinick, Andrew Junfang Yu

Operations Research and Engineering Management

This archive contains data for the problem instances described in the technical report "An Empirical Study of Mixed Integer Programming Formulations of the Backhaul Profit Maximization Problem" by Yulan Bai and Eli V. Olinick.

An Empirical Study Of Mixed Integer Programming Formulations Of The Backhaul Profit Maximization Problem, Yulan Bai, Eli V. Olinick

Operations Research and Engineering Management

Solving an instance of the Backhaul Profit Maximization Problem (BPMP) requires simultaneously solving two problems: (1) determining how to route an empty delivery vehicle back from its current location to its depot by a scheduled arrival time, and (2) selecting a profit-maximizing subset of delivery requests between various locations on the route subject to the vehicle's capacity. We propose and test a series of enhancements to the node-arc and triples mixed integer programming formulations of BPMP found in the literature and develop a multi-criteria Composite Index Method (CIM) to evaluate the results. We find that CPLEX takes 5 to 34 …

Operational Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Inferential, Sequential, And Adversarial Approaches, Andrew J. Keith

Theses and Dissertations

Modern security threats are characterized by a stochastic, dynamic, partially observable, and ambiguous operational environment. This dissertation addresses such complex security threats using operations research techniques for decision making under uncertainty in operations planning, analysis, and assessment. First, this research develops a new method for robust queue inference with partially observable, stochastic arrival and departure times, motivated by cybersecurity and terrorism applications. In the dynamic setting, this work develops a new variant of Markov decision processes and an algorithm for robust information collection in dynamic, partially observable and ambiguous environments, with an application to a cybersecurity detection problem. In the …

Systemic Risk In Financial Networks, Tathagata Banerjee

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I have used the network model based approach to study systemic risk in financial networks. In particular, I have worked on generalized extensions of the Eisenberg--Noe [2001] framework to account for realistic financial situations viz. pricing of corporate debt while accounting for network effects, asset liquidation mechanisms during fire sales, dynamic clearing and impact of contingent payments such as insurance and credit default swaps. First, I present formulas for the valuation of debt and equity of firms in a financial network under comonotonic endowments. I demonstrate that the comonotonic setting provides a lower bound to the price …

Design And Validation Of A Modular Instrument To Measure Torque And Energy Consumption In Industrial Operations, Mary De La Cruz, Ramiro Gonzalez, Jesus A. Gomez, Atilano Mendoza, Javier A. Ortega

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

A modular torque measuring instrument capable of performing tapping torque tests (TTT) according to the ASTM D-5619 standard was designed, developed, and validated. With this new instrument, the performance of different lubricants can be evaluated in terms of frictional torque and energy consumption during tapping processes. This instrument can adapt onto any conventional milling machine or CNC machine and operate under various machining operations such as tapping, drilling, and other processes. To validate the design and performance of this new device, three commercially available lubricants were evaluated. From the three tested conditions, the results showed good repeatability, with consistent results …

Kidney-Related Operations Research: A Review, Mahdi Fathi, Marzieh Khakifirooz

BCoE Publications

Operations research and optimization in healthcare and disease modeling have received significant attention in the last three decades. This article surveys several perspectives of operations research techniques in kidney disease, such as graph theory, queueing theory, Markov chain, and phase-type distribution (PTD). The kidney-related problems include kidney exchange problem, the modeling of kidney disease progression, kidney transplantation, and the complex relationship between chronic kidney disease (gradual loss of kidney function over time) and acute kidney injury (sudden episode of kidney failure in a few hours or a few days). Each section is summarized by some discussion regarding the limitation of …

Extreme-Point Tabu Search Heuristics For Fixed-Charge Generalized Network Problems, Angelika Leskovskaya

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

While researchers have studied generalized network flow problems extensively, the powerful addition of fixed charges on arcs has received scant attention. This work describes network-simplex-based algorithms that efficiently exploit the quasi-tree basis structure of the problem relaxations, proposes heuristics that utilize a candidate list, a tabu search with short and intermediate term memories to do the local search, a diversification approach to solve fixed-charge transportation problems, as well as a dynamic linearization of objective function extension for the transshipment fixed-charge generalized problems. Computational testings for both heuristics demonstrate their effectiveness in terms of speed and quality of solutions to these …

Toolpath Planning Methodology For Multi-Gantry Fused Filament Fabrication 3d Printing, Hieu Trung Bui

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Additive manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized the way industries manufacture and prototype products. Fused filament fabrication (FFF) is one of the most popular processes in AM as it is inexpensive, requires low maintenance, and has high material utilization. However, the biggest drawback that prevents FFF printing from being widely implemented in large-scale production is the cycle time. The most practical approach is to allow multiple collaborating printheads to work simultaneously on different parts of the same object. However, little research has been introduced to support the aforementioned approach. Hence a new toolpath planning methodology is proposed in this paper. The objectives …

Dynamic Prediction Of Treatment Outcomes For Recurrent Tuberculosis Patients, Nicole Hayes

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease that affects people around the world, especially people in underdeveloped countries. TB is one of the top ten causes of death globally so improvement in understanding diagnosis and treatment of TB affected patients could lead to major improvements in world health. This thesis research evaluated relapse patients specifically, deeming a relapse patient as one who has either been cured or completed their last treatment and then is diagnosed with TB again.

This research uses dynamic predictive modeling, based upon the random forest algorithm, to predict treatment outcomes for recurrent TB patients using demographic and follow-up …

Probabilistic Models For Order-Picking Operations With Multiple In-The-Aisle Pick Positions, Jingming Liu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The development of probability density functions (pdfs) for travel time of a narrow aisle lift truck (NALT) and an automated storage and retrieval (AS/R) machine is the focus of the dissertation. The multiple in-the-aisle pick positions (MIAPP) order picking system can be modeled as an M/G/1 queueing problem in which storage and retrieval requests are the customers and the vehicle (NALT or AS/R machine) is the server. Service time is the sum of travel time and the deterministic time to pick up and deposit a pallet (TPD).

Our first contribution is the development of travel time pdfs for retrieval operations …

Evaluation Of Data Collection Operations For Real-Time Influenza Surveillance During An Emergency, Yuwen Gu

Dissertations

It is unclear how data collection operations for surveillance alter the disease portrayal that influenza reported trends attempt to provide during an emergency. This study developed a model that simulates the collection and testing of influenza specimens after an outbreak is declared in Michigan. It performed simulation based optimization to understand which operational factors affect the biases between the growth rates of original and observed influenza incidence trends, and to quantify the predictive power of the influenza incidence trends at different points of data collection. The results show that emergency driven high risk perception increases the reporting, which leads to …

Uncovering Underlying Features For State Transition Modeling, Ashkan Farahani

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Modeling of a dynamic system is the representation of the interconnectivity of system state variables and their evolutionary trajectory over time. In this dissertation, the terminology “state transition modeling” refers to a situation when the system state transitions and its evolution is unknown and needs to be estimated. There are situations in many application settings where one does not simply observe the behavior of the system, but also has a desire to take action, intervene, and manipulate one or more system variables, and is interested in seeing the causal effect of the intervention. These interventions within a purely observational setting, …

Mars Knot Positioning And Global Optimization, Xinglong Ju

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) is a statistical modeling approach with wide real-world applications. In the MARS model building process, knot positioning is a critical step that potentially affects the accuracy of the final MARS model. Identifying well-positioned knots entails assessing the quality of many knots in each model building iteration, which requires much computation efforts. By exploring the change in the residual sum of squares (RSS) within MARS, we find that local optima from previous iterations can be very close to those of the current iteration. In our approach, the prior change in RSS information is used to “warm …

Analyzing Collaboration In Food Assistance Networks Using Agent-Based Modeling, Joyita Mostafa

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

To address the issue of food insecurity, many small independent agencies, known as food pantries, collect and distribute donated food to food-insecure clients. However, the supply of donated food varies significantly from week to week, leading to frequent mismatches in supply and demand. One approach to addressing this problem is to facilitate greater food pantry collaboration, such that they are able to balance supply and demand among themselves. However, their interpersonal relationships and the additional costs associated with transshipments can be a barrier to collaboration. The objective of this research is to use modeling to gain a better understanding of …