Business Commons^™

Meal Duration: Implications For Restaurant Revenue Management, Dale F. Billings

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A comprehensive revenue management strategy addressing space, product, price and time, has been shown to increase profits within the hospitality sector. While the literature shows that the restaurant industry has frequently addressed space, product, and price when looking at financial strategy, the effect of the variable of time on revenue generation has not been adequately studied. Restaurants shy away from the practice of using time as a commodity, particularly regarding meal duration, due to fears of reducing customer satisfaction.

This project explores the use of time as a commodity in restaurant revenue management. In particular, it examines consumers’ feelings about …

Automation Of Data Analysis In Formula 1, Adam Joseph Mourad, Prescott Jeanne Delzell, Patrick Conner Mccabe

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This paper explores economic solutions for Formula 1 racing companies who are interested in data visualization tools. The research was conducted on the current development of data gathering, data visualization, and data interpretation in Formula 1 racing. It was found that a large chunk of racing companies within the league needs an affordable, effective, and automated visualization tool for data interpretation. As data collection in Formula 1 arises, the need for faster and more powerful software increases. Racing companies profit off-brand exposure and the more a racing team wins, the more exposure they receive. The goal of the paper focuses …

Two Essays On Distribution, Fulfillment And Pricing Decisions For Retailers With E-Commerce Channel, Khosro Pichka

Theses and Dissertations

E-commerce has grown rapidly in the past decade. In 2015, e-commerce was accounted for 7.2 percent of all retail sales in the U.S., which is massively higher than 0.2 percent in 1998 (U.S. Department of Commerce 2017). Worldwide e-commerce sales also show the same trend and reached $2.356 trillion in 2018 and are expected to grow steadily (Statista 2017). This trend has impacted major areas of operations management including supply chain management and revenue management. Today, e-commerce companies cannot satisfy their customers’ demand using traditional distribution systems. Therefore, retailers with e-commerce channels (e-tailers), cooperate with third party logistic service providers …

A Transdisciplinary Collaboration And Innovation Education Model And Experience, Brian Laduca, Michelle Hayford, Adrienne Ausdenmoore, Jerome Yorke, Kevin Hallinan, Rebecca Blust, Anne R. Crecelius, Philip Appiah-Kubi, Jennifer Katz-Buonconintro, Jana Bennett, Jackie Marshall Arnold, Connie L. Bowman, Castel Sweet

Engineering Management and Systems Faculty Publications

As the interconnectedness of the world grows, the need to prepare college students capable of addressing complexity likewise grows. In this context, the University of Dayton has developed and tested a transdisciplinary model for education. This model links multiple classes from different disciplines via a common theme and within a common space. It also employs an educational model premised on the following trajectory: disciplinary content development / transdisciplinary observation (empathy); transdisciplinary disruption leading to “A-Ha” observations which transform the disciplinary directions; and lastly transdisciplinary informed design and research. Central to this model is a 3,500 square foot common space used …

The Business Case For Industrial Safety: Revealing The Comprehensive Value Of Ergonomic Investments For Manufacturing Enterprises In Industry 4.0, Shane Stan

Honors Theses

How can today’s manufacturing enterprises construct, implement, and optimize modern safety initiatives in a manner that will present maximum return on investment and facilitate enterprise growth? Furthermore, how can these manufacturers assure individual ergonomic investments become part of a larger strategy to facilitate organizational change in safety? This work addresses these questions by placing industrial ergonomics in a business improvement context which comprehensively presents the financial returns and growth opportunities poised by modern safety initiatives. Additionally, to further strengthen the business case for industrial safety, an ergonomic action planning framework is established to guide the creation of holistic safety programs …

Prioritizing Strategic Cyberspace Lethality, Andrew J. Schoka

Military Cyber Affairs

The primary concern of United States national security policy, as detailed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, has shifted from asymmetrical counter-insurgency operations to countering inter-state strategic competition by rogue regimes and revisionist powers. This doctrinal shift has prompted an increased emphasis on military lethality, particularly in strategic-level cyberspace operations intended to counter open challenges to the global security environment and United States preeminence. Drawing from the theory of constraints in industrial engineering and Bayesian search theory in operations research, this paper identifies the key organizational constraints that hinder the lethality of the Department of Defense’s strategic-level cyberspace operations units …

Data-Driven Predictive Maintenance Scheduling Policies For Railways, Pedro Cesar Lopes Gerum, Ayca Altay, Melike Baykal-Gürsoy

Supply Chain Management

Inspection and maintenance activities are essential to preserving safety and cost-effectiveness in railways. However, the stochastic nature of railway defect occurrence is usually ignored in literature; instead, defect stochasticity is considered independently of maintenance scheduling. This study presents a new approach to predict rail and geometry defects that relies on easy-to-obtain data and integrates prediction with inspection and maintenance scheduling activities. In the proposed approach, a novel use of risk-averse and hybrid prediction methodology controls the underestimation of defects. Then, a discounted Markov decision process model utilizes these predictions to determine optimal inspection and maintenance scheduling policies. Furthermore, in the …

Generalized Relay Network Design And Collaborative Dispatching In Truckload Transportation, Amin Ziaeifar

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

The truckload industry faces a serious problem of high driver shortage and turnover rate which is typically around 100\%. Among the major causes of this problem are extended on-the-road times where drivers handle several truckload pickup and deliveries successively; non-regular schedules and get-home rates; and low utilization of drivers dedicated time. These are by-and-large consequences of the driver-to-load dispatching method, which is based on point-to-point dispatching or direct shipment from origin-to-destination, commonly employed in the industry. In this dissertation, we consider an alternative dispatching method that necessitates careful design of an underlying network. In this scheme, a truckload on its …

Paints-R-Us Term Project, Tyler Campbell, Skye Gilbreth, Michael Oluwole, Elijah Raffo, Brad Unruh

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

This project will consider a linear product mix optimization problem for a fictional paint company, Paints-R-Us. Paints-R-Us is a wholesale paint manufacturer located in the Pacific Northwest. The Global Production Manager, Steve Brush, has been tasked with maximizing Paints-R-Us’s profit in the upcoming quarter. Steve Brush oversees the global production plan, and in collaboration with the production planners will develop a production plan which optimizes the profits that Paints-R-Us can create in the quarter accounting for the following criteria:

• Demand in the given quarter for each of the 5 paint types that Paints-R-Us produces • The warehousing storage capacity …

Identifying And Quantifying Personnel Skills Gaps, Martin Joseph Mckenney

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

One of the issues organizations face is identifying the required skills needed for a position and then evaluating whether their personnel have these skills or if there is a “skills gap”. The skills gap is the distance between the position requirements and the skills currently possessed by the worker in that position. While multiple models have been created over the years to address facets of the problem, none of them provide a comprehensive framework to clearly identify the required skills and worker qualifications and then evaluate the degree of similarity. A composite skills gap model has been developed using the …

A Comparison Of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory, The Analytic Hierarchy Process, The Analytic Network Process, And New Hybrid Approaches For A Case Study Involving Radon, Jesse Ray Toepfer

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the use of three new combinational hybrid approaches to solve a rational decision problem. Even though Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the Analytic Network Process (ANP), are all long established theories, their practical applications continue to grow and generate new knowledge. As a case study approach, there exists a knowledge gap concerning the use of these MCDM methods in the area of environmental remediation, and more especially, in situations that involve radioactive materials. From this, and as borne out by the literature review discussed herein, a problem statement is thus …

Identifying Relationships Of Interest In Complex Environments By Using Channel Theory, Andreas Bildstein, Junkang Feng

Communications of the IIMA

Complex environments show a high degree of dynamics caused by vital interactions between objects within those environments and alterations through which the set of objects and their characteristics within those environments go over time. Within this work, we show that we can tame the level of complexity in dynamic environments by identifying ‘relationships of interest’ between objects in such environments. To this end, we apply the theory of Information Flow, also known as Channel Theory, to the application area of smart manufacturing. We enhance the way how the Channel Theory has been applied so far by using an …

Systems Approach To Evaluating Mih-Cp (Mobile Integrated Healthcare – Community Paramedicine): A Case Study Of East Baton Rouge Parish (Ebrp) Emergency Medical Services (Ems) Community Paramedicine Program Initiative, Oluwakemi Aiyedun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study applied a holistic method of healthcare program assessment, known as systems approach, to evaluate the efficacy of the East Baton Rouge Parish (EBRP) EMS Community-integrated Health Program (CIHP). The author developed assessment metrics following the Quadruple Aim Framework: IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) Triple Aim + Provider Experience.

Results showed that the CP program in this study delivers high ratings on patient experience and provided a 51% return on investment (ROI) through reduced emergency service utilization, ED visits and inpatient hospital admissions. However, findings did not demonstrate meaningful improvement in patients’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and self-efficacy …

Operational Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Inferential, Sequential, And Adversarial Approaches, Andrew J. Keith

Theses and Dissertations

Modern security threats are characterized by a stochastic, dynamic, partially observable, and ambiguous operational environment. This dissertation addresses such complex security threats using operations research techniques for decision making under uncertainty in operations planning, analysis, and assessment. First, this research develops a new method for robust queue inference with partially observable, stochastic arrival and departure times, motivated by cybersecurity and terrorism applications. In the dynamic setting, this work develops a new variant of Markov decision processes and an algorithm for robust information collection in dynamic, partially observable and ambiguous environments, with an application to a cybersecurity detection problem. In the …

Systemic Risk In Financial Networks, Tathagata Banerjee

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

In this dissertation, I have used the network model based approach to study systemic risk in financial networks. In particular, I have worked on generalized extensions of the Eisenberg--Noe [2001] framework to account for realistic financial situations viz. pricing of corporate debt while accounting for network effects, asset liquidation mechanisms during fire sales, dynamic clearing and impact of contingent payments such as insurance and credit default swaps. First, I present formulas for the valuation of debt and equity of firms in a financial network under comonotonic endowments. I demonstrate that the comonotonic setting provides a lower bound to the price …

Correlation-Sensitive Next-Basket Recommendation, Duc Trong Le, Hady Wirawan Lauw, Yuan Fang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Items adopted by a user over time are indicative ofthe underlying preferences. We are concerned withlearning such preferences from observed sequencesof adoptions for recommendation. As multipleitems are commonly adopted concurrently, e.g., abasket of grocery items or a sitting of media consumption, we deal with a sequence of baskets asinput, and seek to recommend the next basket. Intuitively, a basket tends to contain groups of relateditems that support particular needs. Instead of recommending items independently for the next basket, we hypothesize that incorporating informationon pairwise correlations among items would help toarrive at more coherent basket recommendations.Towards this objective, we develop a …

Minimodal: Dimensional Domain Of Miniature Shipping Containers For Intermodal Freight Transportation, Lee Stapley

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This study explores the feasibility of miniature shipping container usage within existing intermodal transportation (IT) supply chains. Smaller intermodal container shipments may help realign freight shipments with the most efficient transportation mode, rail. These containers embolden the dimensional domain (DD) of shipping. The shipping container dimensional domain (container size variation and modal fluidity) is widespread and results in shipments that are often larger or more infrequent than needed. The DD impacts transport mode, shipping frequency, shipment velocity, intermodal supply chain accessibility, and regional shipping networks. This study suggests that container size impacts the DD and, therefore, mode choice. As miniature …

Transportation Safety Performance Of Us Bus Transit Agencies And Population Density: A Cross-Sectional Analysis (2008-2014), Ilker Karaca, Peter T. Savolainen

Ilker Karaca

The paper examines the transportation safety performance of transit agencies providing public bus service in the US by using data from the National Transit Database (NTD)

Uses NTD data for a seven-year period from 2008 to 2014 • 3,853 observations for 651 public transportation agencies in 50 states

Seven types of bus transit fatalities and injuries (including passengers, operators, pedestrians, bicyclists)

Main explanatory variable: urban density obtained from the US Census figures

Other explanatory variables: total agency revenue miles, unlinked passenger trips, agency fleet size, and urban population

Intelligent Software Tools For Recruiting, Swatee B. Kulkarni, Xiangdong Che

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

In this paper, we outline how recruiting and talent acquisition gained importance within HRM field, then give a brief introduction to the newest tools used by the professionals for recruiting and lastly, describe the Artificial Intelligence-based tools that have started playing an increasingly important role. We also provide further research suggestions for using artificial intelligence-based tools to make recruiting more efficient and cost-effective.

Table Of Contents Jitim Vol 28 Issue 2, 2019

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Table of Contents JITIM 2, 2019

A Longitudinal Analysis Of The Impact Of The Indicators In The Networked Readiness Index (Nri), Satya Pratipatti, Ahmed Gomaa

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

World Economic Forum publishes the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) annually, to reflect the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) status of different countries. The NRI is developed by aggregating 53 indicators. The study identifies the most critical indicators to focus on, to improve the NRI status of countries at different stages of economic development. It uses data from 117 countries and analyzes the changes in the indicators along with their impacts between the years 2012 and 2016. The study explores the differences between countries by grouping them into four groups based on their NRI status. The analysis identifies six indicators with …

Coordinating Supply And Demand On An On-Demand Service Platform With Impatient Customers, Jiaru Bai, Kut C. So, Christopher S. Tang, Xiqun Chen, Hai Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We consider an on-demand service platform using earning sensitive independent providers with heterogeneous reservation price (for work participation) to serve its time and price sensitive customers with heterogeneous valuation of the service. As such, both the supply and demand are "endogenously'' dependent on the price the platform charges its customers and the wage the platform pays its independent providers. We present an analytical model with endogenous supply (number of participating agents) and endogenous demand (customer request rate) to study this on-demand service platform. To coordinate endogenous demand with endogenous supply, we include the steady-state waiting time performance based on a …

Investigating Consumer Satisfaction Towards Mobile Marketing, Dr Surabhi Singh

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The extensive applications of mobile phones are visible in global companies for the marketing of their products. The popularity of mobile marketing is increasing considerably. This paper has provided insights into the perspectives of consumer attitude towards mobile marketing in India. The companies will develop an understanding of how mobile marketing influence consumer attitudes. The scale of measurement used for Attitudes was Likert scale and explained the consumer's behavior towards mobile marketing. The factors identified through the study will provide insights into Consumer buying behavior via mobile platforms. The analytical tool SPSS has been used for analysis by using methods …

Benchmarking Oecd Countries’ Sustainable Development Performance: A Goal-Specific Pca Approach, Shyam Lamichhane

Master's Theses

In this thesis, the current status of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries’ sustainable development performance towards reaching the recently announced 2030 Agenda (17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)) was investigated. Over 90 social, economic and environmental sustainability indicators were considered for the performance assessment of OECD countries towards reaching the targeted SDGs. The current weighted averaging approach used in the recent SDG Index and Dashboards Report was used as the benchmark and its limitations were discussed. To overcome the limitations, a novel Goal Specific Principal Component Analysis (GS-PCA) approach was proposed to create composite sustainability index …

Crude Oil Price Prediction With Decision Tree Based Regression Approach, Engu Chen, Xin James He

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Crude oil is an essential commodity for industry and the prediction of its price is crucial for many business entities and government organizations. While there have been quite a few conventional statistical models to forecast oil prices, we find that there is not much research using decision tree models to predict crude oil prices. In this research, we develop decision tree models to forecast crude oil prices. In addition to historical crude oil price time series data, we also use some predictor variables that would potentially affect crude oil prices, including crude oil demand and supply, and monthly GDP and …

College Choice Criteria Utilizing Conjoint Analysis Enabled On A Saas Platform, Alison Munsch

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

College enrollments and low to moderate household incomes are stagnating while tuition costs are increasing. The New York State Legislature enacted the nation’s first tuition-free degree program, the Excelsior Scholarship, designed to make a college education more affordable to middle class families. This legislation can impact what institution of higher education students will choose upon high school graduation. In order to understand the choice criteria for selecting an institution of higher education, a research study was conducted among a representative sample of high school upper classmen and parents of this respondent segment. The data collection and analysis were accomplished using …

The Use Of Generic Scripting In Certain Application Development Projects, Vance Allen Etnyre, Jian Denny Lin, Nanfei Sun

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This article discusses generic scripting, a useful scripting technology for developing applications. In its simplest use, generic scripting can be used as a documentation tool to replace flowcharting or pseudocode. in certain situations, generic scripting can lead directly to a working application without the need to write, compile and test a new program. Generic scripting is discussed as a tool which can be used in logical design, detailed design and implementation of a new application. An example is presented to show how generic scripting can be used by non-programmers to simplify the development of applications. This example is used to …

Essays On Time Series And Machine Learning Techniques For Risk Management, Michael Kotarinos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Capital Asset Pricing Model combined with the Sharpe ratio is a standard method for choosing assets for selection in a portfolio. However, this method has many structural issues and was designed for a time when high dimensional computing was in its infancy. An alternative to these methods using a mix of Multi-Level Time Series Clustering, the MACBETH algorithm and traditional time series techniques was constructed that minimized data loss and allow for customized portfolio construction for investors with different risk profiles and specialized investment needs. It was shown that these methods are adaptable to cloud computing environments and allow …

Optimization Of Automated Guided Vehicles (Agv) Fleet Size With Incorporation Of Battery Management, Ahmed Hamdy

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

An important aspect in manufacturing automation is material handling. To facilitate material handling, automated transport systems are implemented and employed. The AGV (automated guided vehicle) has become widely used for internal and external transport of materials. A critical aspect in the use of AGVs is determining the number of vehicles required for the system to meet the material handling requirements.

Several models and simulations have been applied to determine the fleet size. Most of these models and simulations do not incorporate the battery usage of the vehicles and the effect it can have on the throughput and the number of …

Knowledge Sharing And Creative Confidence In Promoting Employees’ Creative Behavior, Elnaz Dario

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of knowledge sharing and creative confidence on the relationship between organizations’ creative environment and employees’ creative behavior. This study individually assesses the relationship between factors from heterogeneous survey participant data and compares the result for two groups; engineers and non-engineers. A theoretical framework is adopted to explain how a creative climate stimulates an individual’s creative behavior and how this relationship is moderated and mediated by knowledge sharing and creative confidence. This is a relatively unexplored concept in the current literature. The results demonstrated that knowledge sharing and creative confidence significantly …