Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Inventory Management And Control "For A Cause", John Michael Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Companies today are changing the culture of business and beginning to involve more than just labor and money in overall decisions. Just as sustainability issues and humanitarian logistics are gaining popularity, so is the idea of using business to make a difference on society in addition to making a profit. As companies position themselves across the globe to make an impact, they employ people in third-world environments that create uncertainties on both the supply and demand sides. Also, the idea of strategically planning work with the goal of minimizing costs has been replaced by companies wanting to give more work …

Sensitivity Analysis Of Dredge Fleet Scheduling, Kaitlin Denny

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Each year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is tasked with conducting maintenance dredging at hundreds of project sites throughout the country. The USACE must take into account factors such as environmental windows, increased transportation distances, increased operational time because of reduced vessel speeds, and personnel availability constraints. Environmental windows are intended to minimize the environmental impact of dredging while protecting biological resources and their habitats from potentially detrimental effects. The objective of this research is to perform sensitivity analysis of the performance of this model (cubic yards dredged) and how it is impacted by individual environmental window elimination …

Modeling New Product Success From Component Measures Of Product Advantage: A Model Utilizing Automated Text Classification And Sentiment Analysis, Ashley Nolen Akerman

Dissertations

What attributes of products are most associated with product success from the perspective of the consumer and how is this association affected by the technology level of the product offering? Creating successful new products is an imperative for long term survival for businesses. Past research has focused on the perspectives of manufacturers to understand product attributes that comprise the construct described as product advantage. This study investigated the components of product advantage from the perspective of the consumer and the significance of each component in explaining variance in product success.

A methodology and two classification toolsets were developed for the …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Solving Multi-Vehicle Profitable Tour Problem Via Knowledge Adoption In Evolutionary Bi-Level Programming, Stephanus Daniel Handoko, Abhishek Gupta, Chen Kim Heng, Hoong Chuin Lau, Yew Soon Ong, Puay Siew Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Profitable tour problem (PTP) belongs to the class of vehicle routing problem (VRP) with profits seeking to maximize the difference between the total collected profit and the total cost incurred. Traditionally, PTP involves single vehicle. In this paper, we consider PTP with multiple vehicles. Unlike the classical VRP that seeks to serve all customers, PTP involves the strategic-level customer selection so as to maximize the total collected profit and the operational-level route optimization to minimize the total cost incurred. Therefore, PTP is essentially the knapsack problem at the strategic level with VRP at the operational level. That means the evolutionary …

Energy Harvesting And Storage: The Catalyst To The Power Constraint For Leveraging Internet Of Things (Iot) On Trains, Kelechi Nwogu

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The success of Wireless Sensor Networks is heavily constrained by its reliance on storage technology like batteries, which are a finite resource. Whilst the number of transistors in an IC doubles every 18 months, the energy density of batteries is relatively flat during the same time period. This is a key challenge in leveraging the Internet of Things on trains.

The gravity of this problem is increased by an order of magnitude when the network is to be scaled up to hundreds or thousands of nodes. Comprehensive research and development efforts have been devoted to building ultra-low power sensors. These …

Engineering Hospital Discharge Instructions: An Eye-Tracking Based Study, Haley Marie Vaigneur

All Theses

With new healthcare reform initiatives, (e.g., the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) hospitals have additional requirements to reduce avoidable readmissions. This results in identifying the needs for improving the hospital discharge process, improving care transitions and discharge instructions, and increasing overall patient health literacy. In terms of discharge instructions, one of the most influential factors to patients' understanding and compliance with their prescribed health regimen is the document's readability. The study goal is to examine how adjusting the discharge instructions' reading level and using human factors design guidelines can influence a novice user's ability to read, comprehend, and recall …

Incorporating Environmental And Social Factors Into Decision-Making Of An Oil And Gas Industry To Improve Sustainability, Gaurav Dabhadkar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The energy industry (including the oil and gas industry) is facing unparalleled scrutiny and demands from stakeholders including investors, regulators (industry and environmental), communities, and other stakeholders. Sustainable development is one of the major concerns of the oil and gas industry. Companies are seeking to increase sustainability of their operations by considering environmental and Social concerns in addition to economic concerns. Oil and gas companies need to take decisions at different stages of the product life cycle (e.g. planning, design, exploration, production, and clean-up) which have direct or indirect impact on the organization's objectives. Addressing economic, technical, Social, and environmental …

Using The Triple Bottom Line To Select Sustainable Suppliers For A Major Oil And Gas Company, Pandarinath Adarsh Sunkari

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Companies have primarily been focusing on the financial bottom line i.e., on increasing profits by increasing revenues and reducing costs. With high energy usage and environmental change posing threats to the environment and business operations, companies are now considering sustainability. Since some global suppliers have low cost labor, Social well-being and human development has also emerged as major goals of a company performing global operations. Focusing on these three goals is termed the "Triple Bottom Line" (TBL). We study and explore the TBL benefits that could be realized by an oil and gas company by focusing on sustainable suppliers. A …

Development Of A Tridimensional Measuring Application For Ipads, Michael Casebolt, Nicolas Kouatli, Jack Mullen

Computer Science and Software Engineering

In today’s fast-paced distribution centers workers and management alike are constantly searching for the quickest and most efficient way to package items for distribution. Even with the advancement of app-oriented solutions to a variety of problems across many industries there is a distinct unmet need in distribution environments for an application capable of increasing the efficiency and accuracy of packaging items. This senior project focused on the development and testing of an application utilizing the Structure Three Dimensional Sensor and a 4th generation iPad to scan an object or group of objects to be packaged and determine the overall dimensions …

Incentive-Based Negotiation Model For System Of Systems Acquisition, Nil Kilicay-Ergin, Cihan Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lack of collaboration between individual systems and systems of systems (SoS) program management is identified as one of the leading problems in SoS acquisition. This is especially a major concern in acknowledged SoS where a designated SoS program management has no authority over the constituent systems. Therefore, it is important to consider mechanisms to persuade individual systems to participate in the SoS development. In SoS where individual systems have their own self-interests, negotiation becomes an important mechanism to increase participation in SoS development. Another mechanism, incentives, is used in a wide range of applications to improve performance and collaboration. In …

Near-Optimal Decentralized Power Supply Restoration In Smart Grids, Pritee Agrawal, Akshat Kumar, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Next generation of smart grids face a number of challenges including co-generation from intermittent renewable power sources, a shift away from monolithic control due to increased market deregulation, and robust operation in the face of disasters. Such heterogeneous nature and high operational readiness requirement of smart grids necessitates decentralized control for critical tasks such as power supply restoration (PSR) after line failures. We present a novel multiagent system based approach for PSR using Lagrangian dual decomposition. Our approach works on general graphs, provides provable quality-bounds and requires only local message-passing among different connected sub-regions of a smart grid, enabling decentralized …

Managing The Economic Constraints Of Foundries And Fabless Enterprises, Charles M. Weber, Jiting Yang

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents an empirically grounded model, which links organizational learning to pattern-specific fixed costs. The approach described in this paper helps fab managers make fundamental strategic decisions concerning product design and product mix by engaging in scenario planning. Four critical aspects of managing pattern-specific fixed cost are analyzed in detail – sensitivity to time, design cost and production volume; platform designs; process postponement solutions; and design penalties. The model suggests that fabless enterprises and foundries must collaborate extensively on the design and realizations of product platforms for state-of-the-art integrated circuit products to remain economically viable.

Modeling Expected Travel Distances For A Common Warehouse Design With Multiple Docks, Mahmut Tutam

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis develops expected travel distance expressions for both single- and dual-command operations in a unit-load warehouse design with multiple docks. Storage racks are aligned perpendicular to the wall containing docks. Results are presented for continuous and discrete formulations. Because of the importance of how docks are located on a wall, different dock locations are investigated, including uniformly distributed docks along one wall, specified distances between adjacent docks located symmetrically about the mid-point of a warehouse wall, and any distribution of locations along one wall. Among the results obtained, we find that the width-to-depth ratio of the storage area (commonly …

Considerations For Introducing And Practicing Wellness In Harp Pedagogy And Performance, Alexandra Haile Calvert

Music Theses & Dissertations

Movement, breath, and intense focus are crucial to the playing of any musical instrument. In addition, these are important areas in many wellness methods. Many harpists are prone to injury from playing, moving their harps, sitting with poor posture, and not warming up the body before playing. By considering and incorporating the wellness practices of ergonomics, Alexander Technique, yoga, meditation, and constructing a conducive learning and practicing environment, the risk of injury may be lowered for harpists. The purpose of this study is to research and present various methods in which harpists can prevent injury. This study will assess the …

Linear Programming Methods For Identifying Solvable Cases Of The Quadratic Assignment Problem, Lucas Waddell

All Dissertations

This research effort is concerned with identifying and characterizing families of polynomially solvable instances of the celebrated NP-hard quadratic assignment problem (qap). The approach is novel in that it uses polyhedral methods based on an equivalent mixed 0-1 linear reformulation of the problem. The continuous relaxation of this mixed 0-1 form yields a feasible region having extreme points that are both binary and fractional. The solvable instances of concern essentially possess objective function structures that ensure a binary extreme point must be optimal, so that the linear program solves the qap. The ultimate contribution of this work is the unification …

Simulation-Based Optimization Of Mitigation Strategies For Pandemic Influenza., Arsalan Paleshi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Millions of people have been infected and died as results of influenza pandemics in human history. In order to prepare for these disasters, it is important to know how the disease spreads. Further, intervention strategies should be implemented during the pandemics to mitigate their ill effects. Knowledge of how these interventions will affect the pandemic course is paramount for decision makers. This study develops a simulation-based optimization model which aims at finding a combination of strategies that result in the best value for an objective function of defined metrics under a set of constraints. Also, a procedure is presented to …

Arbitrary Category Classification Of Websites Based On Image Content, Anton Akusok, Yoan Miche, Juha Karhunen, Kaj Mikael Björk, Rui Nian, Amaury Lendasse

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This Paper Presents a Comprehensive Methodology for General Large-Scale Image-Based Classification Tasks. It Addresses the Big Data Challenge in Arbitrary Image Classification and More Specifically, Filtering of Millions of Websites with Abstract Target Classes and High Levels of Label Noise. Our Approach Uses Local Image Features and their Color Descriptors to Build Image Representations with the Help of a Modified K-Nn Algorithm. Image Representations Are Refined into Image and Website Class Predictions by a Two-Stage Classifier Method Suitable for a Very Large-Scale Real Dataset. a Modification of an Extreme Learning Machine is Found to Be a Suitable Classifier Technique. the …

Predicting Bundles Of Spatial Locations From Learning Revealed Preference Data, Truc Viet Le, Siyuan Liu, Hoong Chuin Lau, Ramayya Krishnan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose the problem of predicting a bundle of goods, where the goods considered is a set of spatial locations that an agent wishes to visit. This typically arises in the tourism setting where attractions can often be bundled and sold as a package to visitors. While the problem of predicting future locations given the current and past trajectories is well-established, we take a radical approach by looking at it from an economic point of view. We view an agent's past trajectories as revealed preference (RP) data, where the choice of locations is a solution to an optimisation problem according …

Direct: A Scalable Approach For Route Guidance In Selfish Orienteering Problems, Pradeep Varakantham, Hala Mostafa, Na Fu, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We address the problem of crowd congestion at venues like theme parks, museums and world expos by providing route guidance to multiple selfish users (with budget constraints) moving through the venue simultaneously. To represent these settings, we introduce the Selfish Orienteering Problem (SeOP) that combines two well studied problems from literature, namely Orienteering Problem (OP) and Selfish Routing (SR). OP is a single agent routing problem where the goal is to minimize latency (or maximize reward) in traversing a subset of nodes while respecting budget constraints. SR is a game between selfish agents looking for minimum latency routes from source …