Systems Engineering Commons^™

Determining Stakeholder Influence Using Input-Output Modeling, Patrick T. Hester, Kevin Macg. Adams

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Stakeholders are a vital element in all complex systems problems. They are customers, users, clients, suppliers, employees, and team members. They fund the system, design it, build it, operate it, use it, maintain it, and dispose of it. While many approaches exist for classifying and determining their attitudes, these approaches stop short of evaluating stakeholders in a holistic manner. This paper closes this research gap by developing the metric of stakeholder situation influence, a measure which allows for quantitative evaluation of stakeholder influence on a given problem. This measure is derived from Leontief Input-Output analysis. The developed approach extends previous …

Thinking Systemically About Complex Systems, Patrick T. Hester, Kevin Macg. Adams

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

As machine age problems have given way to systems age messes, the underlying complexity associated with understanding these situations has increased exponentially. Accordingly, the methods we use to address these situations must evolve as well. Unfortunately, many antiquated methods for dealing with situations remain prominent. Systems engineering, traditionally, is the practical application of procedural problem solving, typically geared toward the acquisition of large-scale systems. The underlying paradigm for solving these problems can be characterized as systematic thinking. While quite appropriate for machine age problems, this approach lacks the theoretical rigor to deal with systems age messes. Thus, a new paradigm …

The Role Of Team Preparation Processes And Task Conflict On Virtual Team Performance, Pilar Pazos, Ana María Canto

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study is to increase our understanding of the factors contributing to team performance in global virtual teams. We report on a study on global virtual teams involved on applied projects in industry. Team members differed in location and nationalities. This paper examines the relationships between goal commitment, planning and conflict. Data were collected from 34 teams in an international Master program in Quality Management, Safety and Environmental Impact hosted in Bolivia and Chile. Students were from nine different countries in South America. Students were assigned to teams of size 3 and participated in 15-week project as …

A Mathematical Modeling Framework For Phlebotomist Scheduling And Blood Draw Assignments In Laboratory Medicine, Laquanda T. Leaven

Dissertations

Laboratory services in healthcare delivery systems play a vital role in inpatient care. Studies have shown that laboratory data affects approximately 65% of the most critical decisions on admission, discharge, and medication. Laboratory testing accounts for approximately 10% of hospital billing. Reducing laboratory costs would contribute to reducing total healthcare cost, which is one of the major goals for the U.S. healthcare delivery system. This research focuses on improving the performance of the hospital laboratory in a large hospital system. The intention of this study is to identify and then optimize the most critical stage to improve the entire laboratory …

The Enterprise Aid Methodology: Concepts, Thomas J. Meyers, Patrick T. Hester

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The Enterprise AID − for assessment, improvement, and design − methodology is a systems science-, operational test and evaluation-, and multicriteria decision analysis-based approach to design and deployment of performance measurement systems (PMSs) tailored to specific enterprises pursuing any or all of enterprise assessment, improvement, or design. Its two phases of design and deployment sprang from designers’ inductively generated and now prototyped response to a gap they recognized between performance measurement capabilities required by contemporary enterprises and those offered by contemporary PMSs. This paper illustrates key concepts underlying AID, while a companion document, The Enterprise AID methodology: Application, draws from …

Assessment Of Neck And Shoulder Muscle Coactivations And The Effect On The Musculoskeletal System, Regina Derria Pope-Ford

Dissertations

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) constitute one of the most important occupational health issues in healthcare workers who are susceptible to upper extremity disorders. Yet MSDs in the healthcare professions have not been studied extensively beyond the lower back. The focus population for this research is the field of dentistry where neck and shoulder disorders have been documented to have a high prevalence. Though quantitative data has been collected, many prior studies have focused on self-reported information. The goal of this research is to provide insight into the inter-relationship of muscles in the upper extremities. One way to accomplish this is to …

Quantitative Analyses Of Acceptable Noise Level For Air Conduction Listening, Bankole K. Fasanya

Dissertations

This study was conducted to develop quantitative models for Acceptable Noise Level (ANL) under air conduction (AC) listening conditions. Experimental results on the effects of frequency bandwidths on ANL under two listening conditions involving earphones and loudspeaker (sound field) with high and low frequencies and babble noise and white noise revealed: (a) there are statistically significant interactions among the background noise types, the background noise frequency bandwidths and signal source; (b) background noise and noise frequency bandwidths have effects on listener discriminability bias toward the noise and the signal intensity; (c) different listening conditions had different ANL thresholds; and (d) …

The Root Cause Of Failure In Complex It Projects: Complexity Itself, Kaitlynn M. Whitney, Charles B. Daniels

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Increased demand for better technology and perpetual global expansion continue to provide developers with many project opportunities for success, as well as failure. While no industry is immune from project failure, the Information Technology (IT) industry is shown to be more susceptible to risk and failure than those of other industries. Agile project management, which facilitates adaptation to changing circumstances and alleviates rigid formal controls, has become more popular in the software development industry though is not entirely compatible with traditional project management approaches.In this paper we will examine the primary causes of IT project management failure stated in modern …

Reference Modelling In Support Of M&S—Foundations And Applications, Andreas Tolk, Saikou Diallo, Jose Padilla, H. Herencia-Zapana

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Whether by design or by practice, systems engineering (SE) processes are used more and more often in Modeling and Simulation (M&S). While the two disciplines are very close, there are some differences that must be taken into account in order to successfully reuse practices from one community to another. In this paper, we introduce the M&S System Development Framework (MS-SDF) that unifies SE and M&S processes. The MS-SDF comprises the SE processes of requirements capture, conceptual modelling, and verification and validation (V&V), and extends them to M&S. We use model theory as a deductive apparatus in order to develop the …

A Mechanism Design Approach To Bandwidth Allocation In Tactical Data Networks, Ankur Mour

Open Access Theses

The defense sector is undergoing a phase of rapid technological advancement, in the pursuit of its goal of information superiority. This goal depends on a large network of complex interconnected systems - sensors, weapons, soldiers - linked through a maze of heterogeneous networks. The sheer scale and size of these networks prompt behaviors that go beyond conglomerations of systems or `system-of-systems'. The lack of a central locus and disjointed, competing interests among large clusters of systems makes this characteristic of an Ultra Large Scale (ULS) system. These traits of ULS systems challenge and undermine the fundamental assumptions of today's software …

Employing Learning To Improve The Performance Of Meta-Raps, Fatemah Al-Duoli, Ghaith Rabadi

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In their search for satisfactory solutions to complex combinatorial problems, metaheuristics methods are expected to intelligently explore the solution space. Various forms of memory have been used to achieve this goal and improve the performance of metaheuristics, which warranted the development of the Adaptive Memory Programming (AMP) framework [1]. This paper follows this framework by integrating Machine Learning (ML) concepts into metaheuristics as a way to guide metaheuristics while searching for solutions. The target metaheuristic method is Meta-heuristic for Randomized Priority Search (Meta-RaPS). Similar to most metaheuristics, Meta-RaPS consists of construction and improvement phases. Randomness coupled with a greedy heuristic …

An Intuitive Design Pattern For Sequentially Estimating Parameters Of A 2k Factorial Experiment With Active Confounding Avoidance And Least Treatment Combinations, H.-S. Jacob Tsao, Minnie Patel

Faculty Publications

2k Full factorial designs may be prohibitively expensive when the number of factors k is large. The most popular technique developed to reduce the number of treatment combinations is the fractional factorial design; confounding in estimating the model parameters naturally results in various resolution and aberration levels. While very useful, these resolution levels may not satisfy experimenters’ requirements for estimatibility and cost reduction. For example, while Resolution V ensures a common requirement that no two-factor interactions are confounded, it also imposes an often undesired restriction that a main effect cannot be confounded with a three-factor interaction, which may very well …

Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division Engagement Systems (G) Department Development Of A Plan To Maintain, Expand, And Create Corporate Knowledge, Luis J. Rodriguez

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation presents the implementation of an organizational study in a technical organization that provides basic information for proper decision making to establish, continue, nurture, modify, transfer or terminate a Knowledge Management (KM) practice. Different aspects of an organization influence the capability to create and retain knowledge. Understanding the factors and the environment of the KM problem in an organization is essential for a successful plan and execution of knowledge creation, transfer and retention. The study purpose was to describe the contextual situation of the organization in terms of Human, Structural and Relational Capital; identify critical knowledge for the organization …

System Governance Analysis Of Complex Systems, Behnido Y. Calida

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research was to develop and deploy a systems-based framework for analysis of complex governance systems using a multimethodology research design. Two research gaps motivated this research: (1) lack of an integrated conceptualization of a system governance construct, (2) an absence of studies that consider both the governed and governing systems as well as the emergent interactions that arise from within complex governance systems.

The research focused on three primary questions: (1) What are the distinctive characteristics of governance?; (2) What system-based framework can be developed for analysis of governance in complex systems?, and (3) What results …

Cytoskeletal Strains In Modeled Optohydrodynamically Stressed Healthy And Diseased Biological Cells, Sean S. Kohles, Yu Liang, Asit K. Saha

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Controlled external chemomechanical stimuli have been shown to influence cellular and tissue regeneration/degeneration, especially with regards to distinct disease sequelae or health maintenance. Recently, a unique three-dimensional stress state was mathematically derived to describe the experimental stresses applied to isolated living cells suspended in an optohydrodynamic trap (optical tweezers combined with microfluidics). These formulae were previously developed in two and three dimensions from the fundamental equations describing creeping flows past a suspended sphere. The objective of the current study is to determine the full-field cellular strain response due to the applied three-dimensional stress environment through a multiphysics computational simulation. In …

Leveraging Carbon Financing To Enable Accountable Water Treatment Programs, Evan A. Thomas

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article outlines the technical premise and policy considerations surrounding the first program to generate carbon finance for drinking water treatment.

The Factors Behind A Successful Implementation Of Electronic Health Records Systems, Anjee Gorkhali

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This research explores the role that budget for Information System (IS) and technical expertise of healthcare service provider staff play on the successful leap from a partial to exhaustive implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHR) Systems. Technical expertise in Information Systems might not be easily measurable directly, but there are a number of indicators that could be used as a proxy, such as: Information System (IS) Department Budget, number of IS staff and the extent of technical trainings provided by the IS department to the clinical staff. This research study hypothesizes that quality technical trainings conducted by an IS department …

Systems Engineering Applications For Small Business Innovative Research (Sbir) Projects, Phillip J. O'Connell

Theses and Dissertations

This research defined Systems Engineering applications for Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) projects and answered five research questions addressing the essential elements and application of SE processes within the SBIR community. The research identified that current DoD and Air Force SE Policy do not specifically address SBIR projects. This research identified the need to tailor a SE approach for SBIR projects as overarching policy is not applicable in all cases. The culmination of this effort defined the current SE tasks applicable for the SBIR community.

A Model For Optimizing The Allocation Of Ethanol Production In The U.S., Anali Huggins

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In the last five years, fuel prices have fluctuated from 2.86$/gallon to 3.87$/gallon which represents an increase of 35%. This situation has collocated the ethanol manufacturing in an advantageous situation. However, a major problem that is faced by the ethanol producers is the high cost of transportation. The objective of this thesis study is to determine the optimal allocation of ethanol production in the U.S. in 2009 that minimizes the transportation cost. This thesis is based on the application of a linear programing model. The thesis is focused on two questions. The first is the optimal allocation of ethanol between …

Measuring Sustainability, Evan A. Thomas

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The World Health Organization estimates that 884 million people do not have access to safe sources of drinking water. Meanwhile, about half of the world's population continues to use unsustainable, biomassbased energy sources for indoor fuel, leading to extensive deforestation, harmful indoor air emissions, and in many cases upper respiratory disease and high commodity costs for impoverished families. Exacerbating these problems are the international effects of climate change, expected to significantly impact developing countries by changing water and energy quality and availability. International development organizations work tirelessly to address these challenges. However, many efforts struggle with achieving long-term sustainability; many …