Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Antiviral Resistance And Dynamic Treatment And Chemoprophylaxis Of Pandemic Influenza, Sandro Paz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Public health data show the tremendous economic and societal impact of pandemic influenza in the past. Currently, the welfare of society is threatened by the lack of planning to ensure an adequate response to a pandemic. This preparation is difficult because the characteristics of the virus that would cause the pandemic are unknown, but primarily because the response requires tools to support decision-making based on scientific methods. The response to the next pandemic influenza will likely include extensive use of antiviral drugs, which will create an unprecedented selective pressure for the emergence of antiviral resistant strains. Nevertheless, the literature has …

Improving The Air Mobility Command's Air Refueler Route Building Capabilities, Tanya E. Kannon

Theses and Dissertations

We consider the problem of routing an aircraft (receiver) from a starting location to a target and back to an ending location while maintaining a fuel level above a predetermined level during all stages of the route and avoiding threat and no-fly zones. The receiver is routed to air refueling locations to refuel as required. The development of the network requires the processing of threat and no-fly zones to create the set of nodes that includes the bases (starting and end locations), the targets, and air refueling locations in addition to the restricted zone nodes. We develop a greedy heuristic …

A Heuristic Approach To The Theater Distribution Problem, Emily K. Power

Theses and Dissertations

Analysts at USTRANSCOM are tasked with providing vehicle mixtures that will support the distribution of requirements as provided in the form of TPFDD. An integer programming model exists to search for optimal solutions to these problems, but it is fairly time consuming, and produces only one of potentially several good quality solutions. This research constructs a number of heuristic approaches to solving the TDP. Two distinct shipping methods are examined and applied through both constructive and probabilistic vehicle assignment processes. Multistart metaheuristic approaches are designed and used in conjunction with the constructive and probabilistic approaches. Random TPFDDs of size 20, …

Enhanced Vehicle Beddown Approximations For The Improved Theater Distribution Model, Jonathan D. White

Theses and Dissertations

Gathering insight into the theater distribution process can be a complex task, especially when estimating potential beddown solutions. Coming up with a low cost feasible mixture of cargo vehicles that will support distribution of military personnel and goods within theater is currently a high priority for force flow analysts at USTRANSCOM. In the past, analysts used a trial and error simulation process that was iterative and time consuming. Recent research has produced the Improved Theater Distribution Model (ITDM), which presents a less time consuming, more precise method to estimate beddown allocations. Improving on this research, two linear programming methods were …

Interface Evaluation For Open System Architectures, Joshua A. Burger

Theses and Dissertations

This research develops a deterministic interface evaluation framework (IEF) in support of the principles identified in the Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA). Interface evaluation in weapon system development requires a Decision Analysis (DA) method capable of handling a continuously growing alternative set and functioning with limited availability of senior decision makers. Value Focused Thinking (VFT) is selected as the best method for addressing the parameters of the framework. Inputs from the Medium Altitude Unmanned Aircraft System program office are used. An initial value threshold is established to guide open interface decisions, based on assessments of 15 historical decision scenarios. Open …

Exploring A Method To Quantitatively Measure Design Flexibility Early In The Defense Acquisition Life Cycle, Joseph S. Kim

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to demonstrate a methodology using an Epoch-Era Analysis to quantify and estimate the value of design flexibility early in the Department of Defense's (DOD) acquisition life cycle. This method was implemented using a possible replacement to the Air Force's fighter-trainer aircraft as a baseline and a set of future requirements that would change the baseline. An existing Cost Estimating Relationship tool was utilized in conjunction with a decision tree modeling approach to accommodate uncertain future needs. Sensitivity analysis was performed to identify model parameters with dominant effects on the recommended design strategies. The results …

Improving The Enterprise Requirements And Acquisition Model's Development Test And Evaluation Process Fidelity, Jason W. Sutherlin

Theses and Dissertations

Shrinking budgets and dynamic military conflicts have driven Department of Defense (DoD) leadership to reform how the military acquires weapon systems with the goal of decreasing program schedules and costs, while maximizing performance. With fifty years of reform, the DoD has been unable to adequately control program schedule objectives. Previous research attempted to support acquisition reforms through modeling and simulation. The Enterprise Requirements and Acquisition Model (ERAM) captures a program's progression through the Defense Acquisition Management System to gain insight into significant delays that impact program schedule and probability of completion. A past unexpected result included the insignificant impact that …

Fragment Capture Simulation For Manpads Test Arena Optimization, Michael J. Garee

Theses and Dissertations

The assessment of aircraft survivability against explosive munitions is an expensive undertaking. Test articles for both aircraft and weapon are scarce due to their high costs, leading to a limited supply of test data. The development of newer, hopefully more effective weaponry and protection measures continues despite the short supply of test data. Therefore, test organizations need to explore methods for increasing the quality of test results while looking for ways to decrease the associated costs. This research focuses on the Man-Portable Air-Defense System (MANPADS) as the weapon of choice and live- re arena testing as the experimental data source. …

Acuta Enews March 2014 Vol. 43, No. 3

ACUTA Newsletters

In this Issue...

1 Board of Directors 2014-15

2 Learning Analytics

3 Annual Conference 2014

4 Members Celebrate Anniversaries

6 WebRTC: DTMF and 911

7 Board Report

7 lt's a Girl!

8 lnfo Links

9 Welcome New Members

9 Check lt Out

A Control-Chart Based Method For Solder Joint Crack Detection - Conference Proceeding, Jianbiao Pan

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Many researchers have used different failure criteria in the published solder joint reliability studies. Since the reported time-to-failure would be different if different failure criteria were used, it would be difficult to compare the reported reliability life of solder joints from one study to another. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of failure criteria on the reported thermal fatigue life and find out which failure criterion can detect failure sooner. First, the application of the control-chart based method in a thermal cycling reliability study is described. The reported time-to-failure data were then compared based on four …

Design Of Transportation Process For Band Equipment, Marissa N. Blustein, Chris M. Kaye

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The following report documents the attempt to design a safe and reliable process for transporting Louder Space’s musical gear that requires minimal physical demand. Design specifications were derived from customer requirements as well as human factors principles. The transportation process was broken down into systematic process steps and standardized, making use of lean methodologies in order to reduce the number of non-value steps involved. Furthermore, a model portable storage unit for miscellaneous gear was developed to the specifications determined by the band using 3D modeling, as well as certain limiting constraints. Once the customer approved the prototype, the product was …

A Study Of The Relationship Between The Use Of Gis And Project Success In Selected Construction Organizations, Hamad Altuwaijri

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This survey research effort investigated the relationship between 11 selected Geographic Information System (GIS) functions and three (time, cost, and quality) highway and transportation construction-project success criteria. The population included engineers and information technology professionals in the United States who worked in the highway and transportation area. The sample included members of various appropriate email groups.

No significant relationship between GIS function use and construction project success criteria (time and cost) was found. The third success criterion (customers specification−quality) was not tested because of the lack of variability of the responses. There were significant differences between organizations that focused on …

Design And Implementation Of Iso:9001 Standards At Sigma 6 Electronics, Inc., Robert Kirkpatrick, Dylan Geisen, Simon Schermerhorn

Industrial Technology and Packaging

ISO 9001 certification is a very long process that can take even the most dedicated team years to complete. For smaller companies such a process could be costly, confusing, and arduous. While many resources exist, it takes nearly the same amount of effort to tailor fit the examples as it does to create a whole new set.

The purpose of this senior project is to research examples and help fit them to a small manufacturing company, Sigma 6 Electronics, Inc. An interlinked, or combined, quality manual/procedures were chosen to aid Sigma 6 Electronics through making the documentation clear and perfectly …

Sampled Fictitious Play For Multi-Action Stochastic Dynamic Programs, Archis Ghate, Shih-Fen Cheng, Stephen Baumert, Daniel Reaume, Dushyant Sharma, Robert L. Smith

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We introduce a class of finite-horizon dynamic optimization problems that we call multi-action stochastic dynamic programs (DPs). Their distinguishing feature is that the decision in each state is a multi-dimensional vector. These problems can in principle be solved using Bellman's backward recursion. However, complexity of this procedure grows exponentially in the dimension of the decision vectors. This is called the curse of action-space dimensionality. To overcome this computational challenge, we propose an approximation algorithm rooted in the game theoretic paradigm of Sampled Fictitious Play (SFP). SFP solves a sequence of DPs with a one-dimensional action-space, which are exponentially smaller than …

Development Of Safety Standards For Cubesat Propulsion Systems, Liam Jon Cheney

Master's Theses

The CubeSat community has begun to develop and implement propulsion systems. This movement represents a new capability which may satisfy mission needs such as orbital and constellation maintenance, formation flight, de-orbit, and even interplanetary travel. With the freedom and capability granted by propulsion systems, CubeSat providers must accept new responsibilities in proportion to the potential hazards that propulsion systems may present.

The Cal Poly CubeSat program publishes and maintains the CubeSat Design Specification (CDS). They wish to help the CubeSat community to safety and responsibly expand its capabilities to include propulsive designs. For this reason, the author embarked on the …

Acuta Enews February 2014 Vol. 43, No. 2

ACUTA Newsletters

In this Issue.,.

1 Benefitting from ACUTA

2 Thanks to Fall Seminar Exhibitors dt Sponsors

3 Collaboration Is Not Automatic

4 Webinar: IAM

5 Board Report

5 Discounted Dallas Mavericks Tickets

6 Two Top Legislatiott Issues Facing Higher Ed

7 lnfo Links

8 Welcome New Members

8 Check It Out

Scheduling And Resource Allocation In Wireless Sensor Networks, Yosef Alayev

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In computer science and telecommunications, wireless sensor networks are an active research area. Each sensor in a wireless sensor network has some pre-defined or on demand tasks such as collecting or disseminating data. Network resources, such as broadcast channels, number of sensors, power, battery life, etc., are limited. Hence, a schedule is required to optimally allocate network resources so as to maximize some profit or minimize some cost. This thesis focuses on scheduling problems in the wireless sensor networks environment. In particular, we study three scheduling problems in the wireless sensor networks: broadcast scheduling, sensor scheduling for area monitoring, and …

Building Thinc: User Incentivization And Meeting Rescheduling For Energy Savings, Jun Young Kwak, Debarun Kar, William Haskell, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Milind Tambe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents THINC, an agent developed for saving energy in real-world commercial buildings. While previous work has presented techniques for computing energy-efficient schedules, it fails to address two issues, centered on human users, that are essential in real-world agent deployments: (i) incentivizing users for their energy saving activities and (ii) interacting with users to reschedule key “energy-consuming” meetings in a timely fashion, while handling the uncertainty in such interactions. THINC addresses these shortcomings by providing four new major contributions. First, THINC computes fair division of credits from energy savings. For this fair division, THINC provides novel algorithmic advances for …

Extracting Product Development Intelligence From Web Reviews, Ismail Artun Yagci

Dissertations

Product development managers are constantly challenged to learn what the consumer product experience really is, and to learn specifically how the product is performing in the field. Traditionally, they have utilized methods such as prototype testing, customer quality monitoring instruments, field testing methods with sample customers, and independent assessment companies. These methods are limited in that (i) the number of customer evaluations is small, and (ii) the methods are driven by a restrictive structured format. Today the web has created a new source of product intelligence; these are unsolicited reviews from actual product users that are posted across hundreds of …

Performance Analysis And Scheduling Strategies For Ambulatory Surgical Facilities, Xuanqi Zhang

Dissertations

Ambulatory surgery is a procedure that does not require an overnight hospital stay and is cost effective and efficient. The goal of this research is to develop an ASF operational model which allows management to make key decisions. This research develops and utilizes the simulation software ARENA based model to accommodate: (a) Time related uncertainties – Three system uncertainties characterize the problem (ii) Surgery time variance (ii) Physician arrival delay and (iii) Patient arrival delay; (b) Resource Capture Complexities – Patient flows vary significantly and capture/utilize both staffing and/or physical resources at different points and varying levels; and (c) Processing …