Engineering Commons^™

Quantitative Methods For Select Problems In Facility Location And Facility Logistics, Bin Li

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presented three logistics problems. The first problem is a parallel machine scheduling problems that considers multiple unique characteristics including release dates, due dates, limited machine availability and job splitting. The objective of is to minimize the total amount of time required to complete work. A mixed integer programming model is presented and a heuristic is developed for solving the problem. The second problem extends the first parallel scheduling problem to include two additional practical considerations. The first is a setup time that occurs when warehouse staff change from one type of task to another. The second is a …

Improving The Truck Driver Job, Kerry Melton

Operations Management Presentations

Freight transportation has increased dramatically over the last 35 years as freight and shipment demand have expanded resulting in truck driver and equipment capacity issues and infrastructure problems. Freight transport tonnage in the U.S. is predominately truck transportation consisting of more than 70% of all freight distribution with a 25% growth expectation over the next 5 years. Within the trucking industry, over-the-road (OTR) truckload transportation consists of 50% of all truck tonnage shipped. Due to high OTR truckload demand, OTR driver capacity issues have plagued the truckload industry for years. Additionally, high OTR driver turnover and poor driver job retention …

Collaborative Robotic Path Planning For Industrial Spraying Operations On Complex Geometries, Steven Brown

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Implementation of automated robotic solutions for complex tasks currently faces a few major hurdles. For instance, lack of effective sensing and task variability – especially in high-mix/low-volume processes – creates too much uncertainty to reliably hard-code a robotic work cell. Current collaborative frameworks generally focus on integrating the sensing required for a physically collaborative implementation. While this paradigm has proven effective for mitigating uncertainty by mixing human cognitive function and fine motor skills with robotic strength and repeatability, there are many instances where physical interaction is impractical but human reasoning and task knowledge is still needed. The proposed framework consists …

Travel To Extraterrestrial Bodies Over Time: Some Exploratory Analyses Of Mission Data, Venkat Kodali, Rohith Kumar Reddy Duggirala, Richard S. Segall, Hyacinthe Aboudja, Daniel Berleant

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

This paper discusses data pertaining to space missions to astronomical bodies beyond earth. The analyses provide summarizing facts and graphs obtained by mining data about (1) missions launched by all countries that go to the moon and planets, and (2) Earth satellites obtained from a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) dataset and lists of publically available satellite data.

Analyzing The Fundamental Aspects And Developing A Forecasting Model To Enhance The Student Admission And Enrollment System Of Msom Program, Sultanul Nahian Hasnat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A forecasting model, associated with predictive analysis, is an elementary requirement for academic leaders to plan course requirements. The M.S. in Operations Management (MSOM) program at the University of Arkansas desires to understand future student enrollment more accurately. The available literature shows that there is an absence of forecasting models based on quantitative, qualitative and predictive analysis. This study develops a combined forecasting model focusing on three admission stages. The research uses simple regression, Delphi analysis, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and classification tree system to develop the models. It predicts that 272, 173, and 136 new students will apply, matriculate …

Airport Security Investment Model, Joshua Daniel Bolton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In an increasingly mobile and diverse world, it is difficult to quantify the risk, or danger, associated with traveling. Airports have suffered greatly for being unable to define potential risks and protect against them. Intelligent adversary risk is a complicated high-level issue for many airports. Airports are targeted because of the large amount of people in a confined space and the social, economic, and psychological impact of terrorist attacks on the American people. In the months following September 11th, 2001, the airline industry in the United States lost $1.1 billion in revenue. The American people stayed grounded, for fear of …

Systematic Review For Water Network Failure Models And Cases, Yufei Gao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As estimated in the American Society of Civil Engineers 2017 report, in the United States, there are approximately 240,000 water main pipe breaks each year. To help estimate pipe breaks and maintenance frequency, a number of physically-based and statistically-based water main failure prediction models have been developed in the last 30 years. Precious review papers focused more on the evolution of failure models rather than modeling results. However, the modeling results of different models applied in case studies are worth reviewing as well.

In this review, we focus on research papers after Year 2008 and collect latest cases without repetition. …

Methodologies For Solving Integrated Transportation And Scheduling Problems, Fereydoun Adbesh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes novel solution techniques to optimize two real-world problems in the area of scheduling and transportation. We first consider a model for optimizing the operations of dredges. In this problem, scheduling and assignment decisions are integrated across a finite planning horizon. Additional constraints and problem elements explicitly considered include, but are not limited, to environmental work window restrictions, budget limitations, dredge operation rates and schedule-dependent dredge availability. Our approach makes use of Constraint Programming (CP) to obtain quality and robust solutions within an amount of time small enough to be useful to practitioners. The expanded feature set of …

An Economic Analysis Of Residential Photovoltaic Systems With And Without Energy Storage, Rodney Moses Kizito

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Residential photovoltaic (PV) systems serve as a source of electricity generation that is separate from the traditional utilities. Investor investment into residential PV systems provides several financial benefits such as federal tax credit incentives for installation, net metering credit from excess generated electricity added back to the grid, and savings in price per kilowatt-hour (kWh) from the PV system generation versus the increasing conventional utility price per kWh. As much benefit as stand-alone PV systems present, the incorporation of energy storage yields even greater benefits. Energy storage (ES) is capable of storing unused PV provided energy from daytime periods of …

Decision Support System For Container Port Selection Using Multiple-Objective Decision Analysis, Rivelino De Icaza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ports are essential for maritime transportation and global supply chains since they are nodes that connect the sea- and land-based modes of transportation. With containerization and supply chains stimulating global trade, ports are challenged to adjust to changes in the market to create value to their customers. Therefore, this dissertation research focuses on the container port selection decision analysis to provide information to help shipping lines select the best port for their shipping networks. Since the problem is complex, dynamic, and involves multiple and conflicting criteria, the research proposes to use the multi-objective decision analysis with Value-Focused Thinking approach. The …

Models And Methodologies To Address Emerging Needs In Network And Supply Chain Optimization, Forough Enayaty Ahangar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we model three different security scenarios and propose solution methodologies to address each problem.

Chapter 2 presents a large-scale optimization approach for solving a dynamic bi-level network interdiction problem (NIP) in which interdiction activities must be scheduled in order to minimize the cumulative maximum flow over a finite time horizon. A logic-based decomposition (LBD) approach is proposed that utilizes constraint programming to exploit the scheduling nature of this dynamic NIP. Chapter 3 considers a set of centers to which content (e.g., data or smuggled items), are assigned to ensure availability. An interdictor (e.g., border security officials) attempts …

Is It We Or They? The Effect Of Identity On Collaboration And Performance In Buyer-Supplier Relationships, Siqi Ma

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In today’s scale-driven and technology-intensive global economy, collaboration becomes the supply chain’s core capability (Liker and Choi, 2004). A well-developed ability to create and sustain fruitful collaborations gives companies a significant competitive advantage (Kanter, 1994). Retailers are increasingly relying on their suppliers to reduce costs, improve quality, and develop new processes and products faster than their rivals’ vendors can. On the other hand, suppliers benefit from retailers that they are able to monitor store-level demand in real time in order to ensure the top-selling items are in-stock or the accuracy and timeliness of retailer’s demand forecast. Previous literature has shown …

Simulation Modeling Approach For Evaluating A Solution Designed To Alleviate The Congestion Of Passenger Flow At The Composure Area Of Security Checkpoints, Maria Luisa Janer Rubio

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In a previous study, we found that replacing the exit roller of a security checkpoint lane for a continuously circulating conveyor could potentially increase the throughput of passengers by over 28% while maintaining the TSA security-waiting time limit (Janer and Rossetti 2016). This study intends to expand this previous effort by investigating the impact of this circulating conveyor on the secondary screening related processes. Leone and Liu (2011) found that imposing a limit on the x-ray screening time, and diverting any item exceeding this limit to secondary screening, could decrease the waiting time by 43%. Our objective is to verify …

Essays In Measuring, Controlling, And Coordinating Supply Chain Inventory And Transportation Operations, Payam Parsa

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Supply chain collaboration programs, such as continuous replenishment program (CRP), is among the most popular supply chain management practices. CRP is an arrangement between two partners in a supply chain to share information on a regular basis for lowering logistics costs while maintaining or increasing service levels. CRP shifts the replenishment responsibility to the upstream partner to avoid the bullwhip effect across the supply chain. This dissertation aims to quantify, measure, and expand the benefits of CRP for the purpose of reducing logistics cost and improving customer service. The developed models in this dissertation are all applied in different case …

Personalized Decision Modeling For Intervention And Prevention Of Cancers, Fan Wang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Personalized medicine has been utilized in all stages of cancer care in recent years, including the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. Since prevention and early intervention are particularly crucial in reducing cancer mortalities, personalizing the corresponding strategies and decisions so as to provide the most appropriate or optimal medical services for different patients can greatly improve the current cancer control practices. This dissertation research performs an in-depth exploration of personalized decision modeling of cancer intervention and prevention problems. We investigate the patient-specific screening and vaccination strategies for breast cancer and the cancers related to human papillomavirus (HPV), representatively. Three popular …

Developing Sustainable Rice Production Through Image Classification, Parker R. Fitzgerald

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The agricultural industry’s continued success is critical to our future. However, many agricultural practices—specifically rice farming—are currently based on unsustainable methods. The processes used in rice farming consume water at an unsupportable rate, and, consequently, are serious contributors to rising emission levels. Several alternative growing methods have been introduced, and one of the most promising candidates is Alternative Wetting and Drying (AWD). An obstacle encountered by proponents of these methods comes in implementation. Studies have shown AWD is more successful in fields with higher leveling precision. The research in this study works to create a stepping stone for farmers to …

Exploring The Association Between Patient Waiting Time, No-Shows And Overbooking Strategy To Improve Efficiency In Health Care, Cam Tu M. Nguyen

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many primary care clinics are using overbooking as a strategy to mitigate the negative impacts on operations and performance caused by patient nonattendance of appointments, also known as “no-shows”. However, overbooking tends to increase patient waiting time and worker overtime. It is also acknowledged that patient waiting time is associated with no-show behavior, yet there is a lack of observational study to quantify the relationship. The overall goal of this research is to explore the relationships between patient waiting time, no-show behavior and overbooking strategy in terms of clinic performance. Arena® simulation software is used to create a discrete-event simulation …

Service Consistency In Vehicle Routing, Kunlei Lian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies service consistency in the context of multi-period vehicle routing problems (VRP) in which customers require repeatable services over a planning horizon of multiple days. Two types of service consistency are considered, namely, driver consistency and time consistency. Driver consistency refers to using the fewest number of different drivers to perform all of the visits required by a customer over a planning horizon and time consistency refers to visiting a customer at roughly the same time on each day he/she needs service. First, the multi-objective consistent VRP is defined to explore the trade-offs between the objectives of travel …

A Quantitative Model For Truck Parking Utilization With Hours Of Service Regulations, Alexis Christine Gaddy

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Continual growth in traffic volume on U.S. Highways and insufficient parking for commercial trucking vehicles has led to significant safety concerns for truck drivers. Hours of Service (HOS) regulations dictate driving and rest periods of truck drivers. When a truck driver must stop as designated by the HOS regulations and the nearest parking location is at capacity, the trucker must either continue driving past the HOS limit or park in an undesignated and possibly illegal or unsafe spot such as an off-ramp. The combination of these two variables play an important role in the safety of truck drivers on a …

Effective Supplier Quality Practices In The Construction Industry, Ashleigh Hegwood

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The dynamic and irregular nature of projects in the construction industry causes the complexity of supplier quality management (SQM). The Construction Industry Institute (CII) Research Team (RT) 308 is focused on achieving zero rework through effective supplier quality practices.

This honors thesis is an extension of RT 308’s project work. Its purpose is to look at current supplier evaluation practices within the construction industry, confirm arecommended supplier cutoff rating through data analysis, and determine if outliers in the data set could be normalized. A survey was developed in Qualtrics (an online survey software tool) and sent to CII members for …

Grouping Techniques To Manage Large-Scale Multi-Item Multi-Echelon Inventory Systems, Anvar Abaydulla

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Large retail companies operate large-scale systems which may consist of thousands of stores. These retail stores and their suppliers, such as warehouses and manufacturers, form a large-scale multi-item multi-echelon inventory supply network. Operations of this kind of inventory system require a large number of human resources, computing capacity, etc.

In this research, three kinds of grouping techniques are investigated to make the large-scale inventory system “easier” to manage. The first grouping technique is a network based ABC classification method. A new classification criterion is developed so that the inventory network characteristics are included in the classification process, and this criterion …

Safety Performance Prediction Of Large-Truck Drivers In The Transportation Industry, Emily Moneka Francis Xavier

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The trucking industry and truck drivers play a key role in the United States commercial transportation sector. Accidents involving large trucks is one such big event that can cause huge problems to the driver, company, customer and other road users causing property damage and loss of life. The objective of this research is to concentrate on an individual transportation company and use their historical data to build models based on statistical and machine learning methods to predict accidents. The focus is to build models that has high accuracy and correctly predicts an accident. Logistic regression and penalized logistic regression models …

The Effect Of Process Parameters And Surface Condition On Bond Strength Between Additively Manufactured Components And Polymer Substrates, Bharat Bhushan Chivukula

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Additive patching is a process in which printers with multiple axes deposit molten material onto a pre-defined surface to form a bond. Studying the effect of surface roughness and process parameters selected for printing auxiliary part on the bond helps in improving the strength of the final component. Particularly, the influence of surface roughness, as established by adhesion theory, has not been evaluated in the framework of additive manufacturing (AM). A full factorial design of experiments with five replications was conducted on two levels and three factors, viz., layer thickness, surface roughness, and raster angle to examine the underlying effects …

Wells Fargo, Samsung And Spacex: The Dos And Don’Ts Of Today’S Quality Environment, Jim Burgin

Operations Management Presentations

Quality is everywhere, and is so critical to your success. This webinar will use Toyota’s 14 Principles as the springboard to discuss teach points from my Quality Management class. The title mentions a few companies where good practices or challenging activities provide a road map to success or failure. Rest assured there are many more. Burgin uses stories and experiences from class to illustrate quality concepts.

Incorporating A New Class Of Uncertainty In Disaster Relief Logistics Planning, Emre Kirac

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among emergency managers in using Social data in disaster response planning. However, the trustworthiness and reliability of posted information are two of the most significant concerns, because much of the user-generated data is initially not verified. Therefore, a key tradeoff exists for emergency managers when considering whether to incorporate Social data in disaster planning efforts. By considering Social data, a larger number of needs can be identified in a shorter amount of time, potentially enabling a faster response and satisfying a class of demand that might not otherwise be discovered. However, …

Essays On Optimization And Modeling Methods For Reliability And Reliability Growth, Thomas Paul Talafuse

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes novel solution techniques in the realm of reliability and reliability growth. We first consider a redundancy allocation problem to design a system that maximizes the reliability of a complex series-parallel system comprised of components with deterministic reliability. We propose a new meta-heuristic, inspired by the behavior of bats hunting prey, to find component allocation and redundancy levels that provide optimal or near-optimal system reliability levels. Each component alternative has an associated cost and weight and the system is constrained by cost and weight factors. We allow for component mixing within a subsystem, with a pre-defined maximum level …

Risk Estimation Toward A Natural History Model For Low Grade Glioma Patients, Anh Thi Hoang Pham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Glioma is a common type of primary brain tumor that represents 28% of all brain tumors and 80% of malignant tumors. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gliomas account for 53%, 35% and 29% of all brain tumors (68%, 74% and 81% of malignant brain tumors) among children (aged 0-14), teenagers (aged 15-19) and young adults, respectively. Gliomas are often diagnosed through radiological imaging and histopathology. There are two main groups of gliomas following World Health Organization’s classification: Low grade gliomas (LGG), or grade I and II gliomas; and high grade gliomas …

Essays In Physicians Preference Items And Inventory Management Within The Healthcare Supply Chain, Mohammad A. Shbool

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work is composed of a number of topics in the healthcare area, which are approached separately with appropriate methodologies. The two topics deal with physician preference items via two different approaches. The first one investigates stock keeping unit (SKU) proliferation in healthcare organizations due to physician preference items (PPI). It captures perspectives of physicians and supply chain professionals about this problem through two surveys. The second topic builds a decision-making framework for the PPI selection process that can be used by healthcare organizations to make more objective decisions. A Multi-criteria decision making technique is implemented to illustrate the framework.

A Tabu Search, Augment-Merge Heuristic To Solve The Stochastic Location Arc Routing Problem, Tiffany L. Yang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The location arc routing problem (LARP) is a network optimization problem combining strategic facility location decisions and tactical or operational vehicle routing decisions for customer demand located on arcs of a network. The LARP seeks to locate facilities, or depots, and create vehicle delivery routes to minimize costs. The total cost is comprised of three components: fixed facility locations costs, fixed route creation (or vehicle acquisition) costs, and variable arc traversal costs. The applications of the LARP are varied and often include public services such as mail delivery, garbage collection, and street sweeping. In all of these applications, the magnitude …

Modeling Supply Chain Resiliency, Jeff A. Hazel

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS) is a Department of Defense (DoD) program focusing on the effective and efficient design and development of complex engineered systems throughout their life cycle. There is a growing literature with qualitative definitions of resilience and quantitative models for systems with one performance measure. This paper uses a quantitative resilience framework (the Framework for ERS) that includes system design options, reliability, threats, vulnerabilities, responses, and consequences assessed in multiple system performance measures. The framework assists in establishing a model for any system to evaluate resiliency. This paper applies this framework using Multiple Objective Decision Analysis (MODA) to …