Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Acuta Enews December 2010, Vol 39, No. 12

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Thanks …

Sustainable Climate Control For Mid-Rise Office Building In The Salt Lake Valley, Philip M. Coleman

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This report examines the sustainability of Trane’s EarthWiseTM climate control systems in the Salt Lake Valley (and the United States Mountain West in general). A simulation is performed to determine the best climate control system for a LEED Silver, 5-story tenant office building. This new building is a duplication of a pre-existing building. The climate control system installed at the preexisting building is used as a baseline against which three (3) alternative systems are compared. The social, ecological, and economic impact of each alternative is examined to determine which is the most sustainable. Since the baseline system is a proven …

Automation Of Pillow Speaker Button Testing To Avoid Repetitive Strain Injuries In Testing Technicians, Tyler P. Finnegan

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Abstract Anacom MedTek, a medical device company, produces pillow speakers as their main product line. Pillow speakers are a healthcare communications tool that allow for hospital patients to control many entertainment and environmental components of the hospital room from one controller. These pillow speaker devices have anywhere from 3 to 27 metal dome key cap buttons based on their customization. Before they can be shipped to a customer, each button must be tested to ensure that it is functioning properly. This test is currently done manually by a testing technician. With so many buttons to be tested for each unit …

Pull Production System Training Guide, Adem Bilgutay

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This book is a series of lessons designed to train operators and managers in pull manufacturing. It begins with a description of the different forms of waste that a system can help to identify and eliminate. The second section details the kanban as a system for controlling flow and as a powerful tool for identifying problems. It will describe the many different variations of kanban that exist to control flow in different production environments and the calculations that allow them to be used effectively. The final section will detail the activities that an operator should engage in when there is …

Expansion In Existing And Future Franchises, Shane Hart, Daniel Jeng

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Zensho Group has recently acquired the restaurant US based chains CoCo’s and Carrows but has not been able to affirm the same growth as the company has established in its home country of Japan. In order to fulfill their need to grow, extensive market analysis and research needs to be done. An expansion eastward and the introduction of their flagship restaurant chain, Sukiya, would offer growth potential. Determining the best locations for these new stores is the goal of this project. Low cost and high market penetration potential will be used to recommend the ideal locations that will benefit the …

A Practical Approach To Computer Donation Supply Chain For Non-Profit Organizations, John Jacob Burrell, Adam Robert Carpenter

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The United States today has a plethora of unused electronic equipment. This equipment comes from universities, small businesses, corporations, and many other sources. This project looks at the best way to put this equipment back to use for the remainder of its usable life by donating it to non-profit organizations in need. In order to complete this project it was necessary to research the areas of Supply Chain Management, Operations Research, and Engineering Economics. The approach for this specific project first involves analyzing the current donation process at California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, and its ability to …

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 …

Barriers And Best Practices For Material Management In The Healthcare Sector, Carlos Callender, Scott Erwin Grasman

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The primary focus of the healthcare sector has been to provide patients with the best quality of care. Recently, the escalating cost of supplies and the severe competition among healthcare providers has significantly increased the pressure on material managers to operate more cost-efficiently without compromising high patient care standards. While other sectors have experienced success through the deployment of supply chain management practices, the healthcare sector has not seen major improvements in this area; however, in spite of the uniqueness and complexity of the healthcare supply chain, opportunities for improvements are plentiful. This article provides an assessment of material management …

Finite Horizon Markov Control With One-Step Variance Penalties, Abhijit Gosavi

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Variance-penalized Markov decision processes (MDPs) for an infinite time horizon have been studied in the literature for asymptotic and one-step variance; in these models, the objective function is generally the expected long-run reward minus a constant time the variance, where variance is used as a measure of risk. for the finite time horizon, asymptotic variance has been considered in Collins [1], but this model accounts for only a terminal reward, i.e., reward is earned at the end of the time horizon. in this paper, we seek to develop a framework for one-step variance in the finite time horizon in which …

A Reinforcement Learning Approach For Inventory Replenishment In Vendor-Managed Inventory Systems With Consignment Inventory, Zheng Sui, Abhijit Gosavi, Li Lin

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In a Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) system, the supplier makes decisions of inventory management for the retailer; the retailer is not responsible for placing orders. There is a dearth of optimization models for replenishment strategies for VMI systems, and the industry relies on well-understood, but simple models, e.g., the newsvendor rule. in this article, we propose a methodology based on reinforcement learning, which is rooted in the Bellman equation, to determine a replenishment policy in a VMI system with consignment inventory. We also propose rules based on the newsvendor rule. Our numerical results show that our approach can outperform the newsvendor. …

Analysis Of Part Consolidation Techniques For Automotive Body In White Panels Based On Advanced Sheet Metal Forming Technologies, Harish Thiruvengadam

All Theses

The automotive industry is looking to move from mass production to mass customization in order to manufacture and sell a variety of products in different markets on a global scale. This requires a robust and cost effective manufacturing system which would help design new products in the shortest possible lead time. This thesis tries to investigate the current sheet metal forming process for body in white, identify the limitations and propose an alternative which would help the industry cut down product lead time and costs. Decision making tools are used to identify the technical requirements of a BIW manufacturing system …

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 …

Combining Mobile Technologies For Accurate, Open Source, Privacy Sensitive, Zero Cost, Location Determination, Seamus Rooney

Doctoral

Determining the location of an object or individual using a mobile device (e.g. cell phone) is an important aspect of modern information gathering. Various solutions have been proposed which all have their strengths and weaknesses. To date, no solution has been devised for a mobile device that will work effectively in multiple environments and without assistance from network-provider connections1. To address this, it is argued that the current state of the art can be advanced using a hybrid approach that combines a number of sensor technologies to provide a more reliable, and accurate mobile location determination that functions in multiple …

A Meta-Analysis Of Human Factors Analysis And Classification System Causal Factors: Establishing Benchmarking Standards And Human Error Latent Failure Pathway Associations In Various Domains, Katherine Berry

All Dissertations

Many models of accident investigation have been created and have served as the basis for other tools and techniques. One of the most prominent techniques, Reason's Swiss Cheese Model (1990), is based on the idea of active and latent failures. Expanding on this idea, the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) was created with the idea to associate contributing factors and errors (Wiegmann & Shappell, 2003).
While HFACS has been frequently applied in the field of aviation in literature, other industry types are under-represented. Seventeen data sources encompassing various industry types were collected and included in this dissertation analysis. …

A Comparative Study Of Diversity In Evolutionary Algorithms, Jayakanth Jayachandran, Steven Corns

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

For many evolutionary algorithms a key obstacle to finding the global optima is insufficient solution diversity, causing the algorithm to become mired in a local optimum. Solution diversity can be influenced by algorithm parameters including population size, mutation operator and diversity preservation techniques. This study examines the combined effect of population size, mutation value and the geography imposed by the combinatorial graphs on a set of five standard evolutionary algorithm problems. a tradeoff can be seen between the initial diversity of the population size, introduction of new diversity from mutation, and the preservation of diversity from combinatorial graph. with an …

A Dynamic Approach To Determine The Product Flow Nature In Apparel Supply Chain Network, Mohammed Marufuzzaman, Ahmed M. Deif

Industrial Technology and Packaging

This paper presents a novel metric, product flow number, to determine the product flow nature across the supply chain of apparel industries. The metric is based on mapping the dynamics of fluid flow across a pipe to product flow across a supply chain. Numerical analysis is conducted to examine the impact of the different metric parameters on the product flow. Results showed that smooth dynamics can be achieved through scaling production and extending delivery times, while undesirable dynamics are tied to complex product designs and increasing number of suppliers. Finally, the paper demonstrated how the new metric can be used …

An Investigation Of Metaheuristics Using Path- Relinking On The Quadratic Assignment Problem, Thashika Rupasinghe

All Dissertations

The Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP) is a widely researched, yet complex, combinatorial optimization problem that is applicable in modeling many real-world problems. Specifically, many optimization problems are formulated as QAPs. To resolve QAPs, the recent trends have been to use metaheuristics rather than exact or heuristic methods, and many researchers have found that the use of hybrid metaheuristics is actually more effective. A newly proposed hybrid metaheuristic is path relinking (PR), which is used to generate solutions by combining two or more reference solutions. In this dissertation, we investigated these diversification and intensification mechanisms using QAP. To satisfy the extensive …

Comprehensive Thermal Modeling Of Power Split Hybrid Power-Train And Electronics, Abdel Mayyas

All Dissertations

Hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) uses both internal combustion engine (ICE) with an electric system. The combination of the electric power train with the ICE is intended to achieve both better fuel economies than the conventional vehicles and better performance. Several types of HEV exist with different layouts. Recent HEVs' make use of regenerative braking, which converts the vehicles' kinetic energy into electric energy instead of wasting it as heat as conventional brakes do. A hybrid-electric is more fuel efficient than ICE and has less environmental impact.
The new HEV with its new Key Characteristics and Configurations (i.e. Mechanical complexity, Multiple …

Order Picking And Storage Using Stackable Pallets In A Warehouse, Ahmed Hassan Aly

All Dissertations

Quarter Billion dollars could be saved annually by double stacking pallets. A forklift storing 100 double stacked pallets saves 2.5 working hours versus single pallets. More than one billion pallets and cases handled between Wal-Mart distribution centers according to BEA White Paper (2006) [1], assume only 500 million were stackable pallets. This translates to 12.5 million working hours. If a forklift driver earns $20 per hour, then $250 million can be saved.
Moreover, handling double stacked pallets takes up to 46 % of total time to pick and store. This is a significant element that was ignored in literature. All …

Modeling Microbial And Nutrient Dynamics In Zero-Discharge Aquaculture Systems, Kendall Kirk

All Dissertations

A finite element, finite difference model was developed to predict nutrient and microbial dynamics in recirculating aquaculture systems. Total ammonia nitrogen, nitrite, nitrate, chemical oxygen demand, and dissolved oxygen concentrations are predicted in addition to growth and decay of algae, Nitrosomonas, Nitrobacter, denitrifying heterotrophs, and aerobic heterotrophs. Inputs to the model include temperature, photosynthetically available radiation, feed application rate, pH, aeration/mixing energy, water exchange configuration, water exchange rate, tilapia biomass, and dissolved oxygen concentration. Up to 10 exchanged units may be included, user-definable as continuous stirred tank reactors or sequencing batch reactors. Demonstration of the model's utility was demonstrated through …