Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Establishing Workload Limitations For Application In Human Systems Integration, Muhammet Servet Gulum

Masters Theses

"As the amount of technology involved in the typical workplace increases and standard operational procedures become increasingly sophisticated the danger of overloading an operator's mental resources is increasing. As much as these technological developments help operators with daily tasks, for example by providing information via monitors and wireless headsets; it also increased the mental workload due to the bombardment of information. Mental workload is commonly associated with information processing tasks, limits. With all the extra information inputs it is difficult to set limits where excessive information becomes dangerous. The workload optimization is critical as it directly affects system performance and …

Manual Handling Workload And Musculoskeletal Discomfort Among Warehouse Personnel, Terrance N. Knox

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSD), specifically physical and muscular discomfort in the upper arm, lower arm, thigh, lower leg, wrist, shoulders, back, or neck, are among the most frequently reported workplace injuries in the United States. The dearth of knowledge about the types of workloads that may contribute to the development of WRMSD was the impetus of this research. The study aimed to identify antecedents of WRMSD among warehouse workers in order to reduce WRMSDs and increase productivity as expressed in a systems perspective on industrial health. The research questions examined the prevalence of specific WRMSDs, the relationship of high-risk tasks …

Fusion Of Imprecise Qualitative Information, Florentin Smarandache, Xinde Li, Xianzhong Dai, Jean Dezert

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this paper, we present a new 2-tuple linguistic representation model, i.e. Distribution Function Model (DFM), for combining imprecise qualitative information using fusion rules drawn from Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) framework. Such new approach allows to preserve the precision and efficiency of the combination of linguistic information in the case of either equidistant or unbalanced label model. Some basic operators on imprecise 2-tuple labels are presented together with their extensions for imprecise 2-tuple labels. We also give simple examples to show how precise and imprecise qualitative information can be combined for reasoning under uncertainty. It is concluded that DSmT can deal …

Quality Analysis In Flexible Manufacturing Systems With Batch Productions, Junwen Wang

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

To improve product quality and reduce cost, batch production is often implemented in many exible manufacturing systems. However, the current literature does not provide any method to analyze the quality performance in a flexible manufacturing system with batch production.

In this research, we present an analytical method with closed-form formula to evaluate the quality performance in such systems. Based on the model, we discover and investigate monotonic and non-monotonic properties in quality to provide practical guidance for operation management. To improve product quality, we introduce the notions of quality improvability with respect to product sequencing. In addition, we develop the …

Observer-Dependent Model For Analyzing Subjective Parameters In Epidemiology, Milad Zarei

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Although medical technologies for preventing the contagion and spread of infectious diseases have improved steadily throughout the last century, new infectious diseases are still emerging and spreading swiftly. The modeling of infectious disease spread is crucial in addressing the lack of predictive ability in epidemiology. Managing the spread of infectious diseases requires processing quantitative epidemiological data and the ability to capture the dynamics of the infectious disease in order to provide a measure of control.

In this thesis, I have introducing cognitive biases in diseases spread modeling. For the first time, to the author's knowledge, the human subjective experience has …

Component Replacement Analysis For Electricity Distribution Systems Using Evolutionary Algorithms, Vasukumar Chenna

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The main objective of the electric power grid is to supply economical and reliable electricity to industrial, commercial, household, transportation, and other end-users, including agricultural, educational institutions and hospitals. The power system is a very large and complex network consisting of generation, transmission, and distribution systems. The main focus of the present research is in the area of power distribution systems. Almost all the areas of the power grid uses simpler radial distribution systems to distribute electricity to the end consumer, it is the final and therefore vital link between the consumer and the rest of the power grid. Therefore …

Periodic Resource Reallocation In Two-Echelon Repairable Item Inventory Systems, Hoong Chuin Lau, Jie Pan, Huawei Song

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Given an existing stock allocation in an inventory system, it is often necessary to perform reallocation over multiple time points to address inventory imbalance and maximize availability. In this paper, we focus on the situation where there are two opportunities to perform reallocation within a replenishment cycle. We derive a mathematical model to determine when and how to perform reallocation. Furthermore, we consider the extension of this model to the situation allowing an arbitrary number of reallocations. Experimental results show that the two-reallocation approach achieves better performance compared with the single-reallocation approach found in the literature. We also illustrate how …

Introducing Communication In Dis-Pomdps With Locality Of Interaction, Makoto Tasaki, Yuichi Yabu, Yuki Iwanari, Makoto Yokoo, Janusz Marecki, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Milind Tambe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Networked Distributed POMDPs (ND-POMDPs) can model multiagent systems in uncertain domains and has begun to scale-up the number of agents. However, prior work in ND-POMDPs has failed to address communication. Without communication, the size of a local policy at each agent within the ND-POMDPs grows exponentially in the time horizon. To overcome this problem, we extend existing algorithms so that agents periodically communicate their observation and action histories with each other. After communication, agents can start from new synchronized belief state. Thus, we can avoid the exponential growth in the size of local policies at agents. Furthermore, we introduce …