Engineering Commons^™

Plan Estratégico Para El Posicionamiento Competitivo De Maderas El Vergel Ltda, Juan Felipe Mateus De Armas, Aura Natalia Aguilera Urrego

Ingeniería Industrial

Este proyecto tuvo como objetivo establecer qué plan estratégico competitivo podría implementar Maderas El Vergel Ltda. para posicionarse en el sector maderero colombiano. Para ello se realizó una caracterización de la situación actual y las tendencias del mercado maderero colombiano, una evaluación de la productividad y competitividad actual de la empresa y el diseño de estrategias que mediante un despliegue táctico permitan a la gerencia de la empresa definir la ruta de trabajo a implementar para lograr el fin propuesto y hacer un adecuado control gerencial por medio de indicadores que le permitan realizar seguimiento y control de la ejecución …

Eye-Tracking To Evaluate Trust In Human-Atr Interaction, Samuel Francis Adelman

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Human collaboration with targeting aids have allowed analysts to achieve a greater level of coordination and productivity in a variety of fields. This project investigates the impact that an Assisted Target Recognition (ATR) algorithm’s false alarm rate and the task Target of Interest (TOI) level has on user-system trust and use in a targeting decision task. Previous studies suggest that an increased number of false alarms in an ATR task negatively impacts analyst trust in the system. This study will further contribute to this research, aiming to provide a better framework for appropriate tolerance levels within ATR algorithms, utilizing pre-truthed …

An Approach To Cluster And Benchmark Regional Emergency Medical Service Agencies, Swetha Kondapalli

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Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers are the first responders for an injured patient on the field. Their assessment of patient injuries and determination of an appropriate hospital play a critical role in patient outcomes. A majority of states in the US have established a state-level governing body (e.g., EMS Division) that is responsible for developing and maintaining a robust EMS system throughout the state. Such divisions develop standards, accredit EMS agencies, oversee the trauma system, and support new initiatives through grants and training. But to do so, these divisions require data to enable them to first understand the similarities between …

Enabling Flexibility Through Strategic Management Of Complex Engineering Systems, Walter Louis Barnes Ii

Doctoral Dissertations

”Flexibility is a highly desired attribute of many systems operating in changing or uncertain conditions. It is a common theme in complex systems to identify where flexibility is generated within a system and how to model the processes needed to maintain and sustain flexibility. The key research question that is addressed is: how do we create a new definition of workforce flexibility within a human-technology-artificial intelligence environment?

Workforce flexibility is the management of organizational labor capacities and capabilities in operational environments using a broad and diffuse set of tools and approaches to mitigate system imbalances caused by uncertainties or changes. …

Integrating Resilience Into Military Infrastructure Mission Assurance Assessments And Decision Making, John Richards

Doctoral Dissertations

“This research created the Mission Assurance Resilience Matrix, a decision framework that integrates existing infrastructure assessment methods with emerging resilience research to model resilience under uncertainty as part of a detailed infrastructure management system. This framework enables military decision makers to easily visualize deficiencies in infrastructure resilience and assess where to most efficiently allocate resources. This research further extends results by including modules on training and education as a component of the scope of work.

There are three significant contributions of this research. The first identifies the gaps of how and where modeling under uncertainty, infrastructure systems management, and resilient …

The Impact Of E-Commerce On The Development Of Entrepreneurship In Saudi Arabia, Khulood Al-Mani

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This paper is based on a Ph.D. study investigating the critical challenges facing e-commerce adoption by entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, identifying the major driving factors, barriers, motivations, perceived advantages, potential problems and some practical solutions as well as future expectations from entrepreneurs’ perspectives. From the study findings, a set of practical recommendations were derived for the government, entrepreneurs and investors in Saudi Arabia to consider, to promote ecommerce entrepreneurship in the county.

The research was undertaken using a qualitative approach. Data collection techniques involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews, with (1) e-commerce entrepreneurs, and (2) government authorities, educational initiatives and private support …

Determinants Of Startup Funding: The Interaction Between Web Attention And Culture, Jie Ren, Viju Raghupathi, Wullianallur Raghupathi

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Technology empowers entrepreneurs to pursue alternative funding through platforms like crowdfunding. This research explores significant startup funding factors using Crunchbase. Controlling for common factors (acquisition/funding-rounds/IPO), the research uniquely focuses on web attention - the visibility on social media - and its impact on funding. It also examines the moderating influence of startup’s home country culture (individualism/collectivism). Findings show stronger positive impact of web attention on startup funding for collectivist countries. While individualistic investors value personal goals, collectivists value collaborative goals - inclinations that align with crowdfunding behavior. Therefore while increasing web attention, crowdfunding efforts can be targeted towards collectivist countries.

Table Of Contents Jitim Vol 29 Issue 1, 2020

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Table of contents

Assessment Of The Needs Of Ict Skills On Employability In Smes: A Vft Approach, Renatus Michael Mushi

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

the globalised economy comes with extra demand of ICT skills among the graduates. This is due to the demand if ICT technicalities in performing a number of basic activities in the workplaces. Majority of studies which concentrate with ICT skills on employability deals with technical enterprises. In non-technical companies such as construction, manufacturing and agriculture, ICT is studied as among the basic skill-set of graduates. However, recently, there has been special demand of graduates with basic ICT knowledge on recruitment processes. This indicates the growing demand of basic ICT skills among a broad range of professions. However, the type of …

Evaluating Students Information System Success Using Delone And Mclean’S Model: Student’S Perspective, Majaliwa Mkinga, Herman Mandari

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

System success is considered to be an important element in accomplishing the goals of the organization; therefore evaluation of system success needs to be done in order to ensure that investment in Information System is successful. Most of Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) in Tanzania have adopted the use of IS in providing service to their customers. Nevertheless, there is less evidence that system success evaluation has been done in order to identify the desired characteristics which could make IS more effective. Due to that, this study evaluates the effectiveness of Student Information System (SIS) used at the Institute of Finance …

Table Of Contents Jitim Vol 29 Issue 2, 2020

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Table of contents

Table Of Contents Jitim Vol 29 Issue 3, 2020

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Table of contents

Tolerance Intervals For Time Series Models And Specifying Trimming/Winsorizing Cutoffs, Kedai Cheng

Theses and Dissertations--Statistics

Confidence intervals are used to capture a parameter of interest, usually a mean or a quantile, at a specified confidence level. Prediction intervals are another practical interval that aim at making sound predictions of future values with some confidence. Although these are useful inference tools, neither of them gives people a plausible range of the sampled population. Tolerance intervals are such an inference tool that captures a specified proportion of the sampled population at a predetermined confidence level. In this dissertation, tolerance intervals for an autoregressive process with order p are constructed. In addition, a method of utilizing tolerance interval …

Real-Time Assembly Operation Recognition With Fog Computing And Transfer Learning For Human-Centered Intelligent Manufacturing, Wenjin Tao, Md Al-Amin, Haodong Chen, Ming-Chuan Leu, Zhaozheng Yin, Ruwen Qin

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In a human-centered intelligent manufacturing system, every element is to assist the operator in achieving the optimal operational performance. The primary task of developing such a human-centered system is to accurately understand human behavior. In this paper, we propose a fog computing framework for assembly operation recognition, which brings computing power close to the data source in order to achieve real-time recognition. For data collection, the operator's activity is captured using visual cameras from different perspectives. For operation recognition, instead of directly building and training a deep learning model from scratch, which needs a huge amount of data, transfer learning …

Computational Model For Neural Architecture Search, Ram Deepak Gottapu

Doctoral Dissertations

"A long-standing goal in Deep Learning (DL) research is to design efficient architectures for a given dataset that are both accurate and computationally inexpensive. At present, designing deep learning architectures for a real-world application requires both human expertise and considerable effort as they are either handcrafted by careful experimentation or modified from a handful of existing models. This method is inefficient as the process of architecture design is highly time-consuming and computationally expensive.

The research presents an approach to automate the process of deep learning architecture design through a modeling procedure. In particular, it first introduces a framework that treats …

Development Of A System Architecture For The Prediction Of Student Success Using Machine Learning Techniques, Tatiana A. Cardona

Doctoral Dissertations

“ The goals of higher education have evolved through time based on the impact that technology development and industry have on productivity. Nowadays, jobs demand increased technical skills, and the supply of prepared personnel to assume those jobs is insufficient. The system of higher education needs to evaluate their practices to realize the potential of cultivating an educated and technically skilled workforce. Currently, completion rates at universities are too low to accomplish the aim of closing the workforce gap. Recent reports indicate that 40 percent of freshman at four-year public colleges will not graduate, and rates of completion are even …

An Approach To System Of Systems Resiliency Using Architecture And Agent-Based Behavioral Modeling, Paulette Bootz Acheson

Doctoral Dissertations

”In today’s world it is no longer a question of whether a system will be compromised but when the system will be compromised. Consider the recent compromise of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton emails as well as the multiple Yahoo breaches and the break into the Target customer database. The list of exploited vulnerabilities and successful cyber-attacks goes on and on. Because of the amount and frequency of the cyber-attacks, resiliency has taken on a whole new meaning. There is a new perspective within defense to consider resiliency in terms of Mission Success.

This research develops a …

Understanding Visual Representation Of Imputed Data For Aiding Human Decision-Making, Ryan M. Thompson

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The effectiveness of representing higher dimensional data on a two-dimensional visualization was required to be studied in the development of a novel data imputation method, Continuous Imputation With Association Rules (CIWAR). When the CIWAR method is used to impute missing data, the method generates additional metadata that increases each imputed data point's dimensionality. Potential use cases for CIWAR include situations where imputed data would be analyzed by individuals with little or no data analytic experience or situations where imputed data would be used to aid high-stress time-critical human decision processes. A study was conducted to assess the effect of the …

Assessment Of Heat Stress For Outdoor Work Conditions In Saudi Arabia, Jamal Alanazi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Outdoor workers have an increased risk of heat stress in Saudi Arabia since it is one of the hottest places in the Middle East. Recently, the government decided to limit outdoor work hours during the months of June, July, and August every year, and banned working under the direct sunlight from 12:00 to 03:00 p.m., although outdoor workers in the petroleum, natural gas, or emergency maintenance work industries are exempt from this prohibition. Traditionally, the efforts by safety and health professionals to mitigate work-related heat injury has been directed toward the assessment of environmental heat stress (e.g., wet-bulb globe temperature), …

Energy Forensics Analysis, Rupa Das

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The energy consumed by a building can reveal information about the occupants and their activities inside the building. This could be utilized by industries and law enforcement agencies for commercial or legal purposes. Utility data from Smart Meter (SM) readings can reveal detailed information that could be mapped to foretell resident occupancy and type of appliance usage over desired time intervals. However, obtaining SM data in the United States is laborious and subjected to legal and procedural constraints. This research develops a user-driven simulation tool with realistic data options and assumptions of potential human behavior to determine energy usage patterns …

Evaluation Of Fitts’ Throughput As A Possible Performance Measure For Manual Assembly Tasks, Pradyumna Bettagere Jagadish

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Assembly lines are the backbone of the manufacturing sector. Workers at the assembly lines are expected to perform fast pace hand-arm exertions with precision and accuracy. To protect the workers from injuries, OSHA mandates the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) including gloves. Certain assembly operations require the use of special gloves. Some of these gloves can inhibit hand performance, further increasing the task difficulty. The Index of Difficulty (ID) is a metric measured in ‘bits’ quantifies task difficulty through the quotient of target width and target motion, i.e., distance travelled. The time required to complete the target motion is …

A Study Of Impact Protection Of Metacarpal Gloves, Faisal Mohammed Alessa

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Work-related wrist, hand, and finger injuries are highly prevalent in manufacturing and extractive industries. An analysis of mining-related hand injury data from over the past two decades (Alessa et al., 2020) showed that hand injuries caused by insufficient protection against impact loads (e.g. struck by accidents) were categorized with high severity. Existing literature lacks clear classification and quantification methods for the protection provided by impact-resistant gloves (i.e. metacarpal gloves). A new method to establish a quantitative measure of performance for commonly used metacarpal gloves was developed and evaluated.

In the first specific aim, an experimental study using cadaveric hand specimens …

Evaluation Of Object Attributes To Study Speed-Accuracy Trade-Off Of Gloves Using Iso 9241-411 Standard, Isha Gaut

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Selection of appropriate gloves plays an important role in the overall comfort and productivity of workers. Currently, there are no standards and/or guidelines available to systematically evaluate the glove performance based on speed-accuracy trade-off. The ISO 9241-411 standard which is based on Fitts’ Law has been extensively used in the literature to measure speed-accuracy trade-off in terms of throughput in the virtual environments. This study was aimed at developing guidelines for implementing ISO 9241-411 standard in the physical environment so that it can be used to estimate (and compare) throughputs of safety gloves. Specifically, the various physical attributes of objects …

Evaluation Of Control Strategies For Overhead Work Using Electromyography Of Rotator Cuff Muscles, Hossein Motabar

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) of shoulder have a significant impact on overall health and economics in the industrialized nations. Rotator cuff is the most frequently injured region in the shoulder complex. Overhead work is considered as one of the most predominant causes of rotator cuff injuries. The workers in construction, automotive, and aerospace industries are routinely exposed to overhead exertions. Elimination of overhead work is nearly impossible due to various task and technology constraints. Therefore, appropriate intervention strategies based on the engineering and administrative controls opt to be used to prevent the hazardous impact of overhead exertions. The objective of …

Assess The Performance Against Ets And Pm1 And Evaluate The Users’ Experiences Of Comfort Of Nasal Filters, Ibrahim Almuhaidib

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Many cities around the world experience severe air pollution. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 7 million people die annually from exposure to small airborne Particulate Matter (PM) that is found in atmospheric pollution. Particulate matter in atmospheric pollution is one of six classifications of common air pollutants and is typically referred to as PM₁ and PM_2.5. Particulates designated as PM₁ and PM_2.5 refer to particles having aerodynamic diameters of 1 or 2.5 micrometer (µm), respectively. These size ranges of particles are the most commonly found in air pollution. It is hard to differentiate …

Route Planning For Long-Term Robotics Missions, Christopher Alexander Arend Tatsch

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Many future robotic applications such as the operation in large uncertain environment depend on a more autonomous robot. The robotics long term autonomy presents challenges on how to plan and schedule goal locations across multiple days of mission duration. This is an NP-hard problem that is infeasible to solve for an optimal solution due to the large number of vertices to visit. In some cases the robot hardware constraints also adds the requirement to return to a charging station multiple times in a long term mission. The uncertainties in the robot model and environment require the robot planner to account …

Transit Agencies Performance Assessment And Implications, Parisa Hajibabaee

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Although most transit systems operate in small urban and rural areas in the United States, these systems have rarely received the same attention as their urban counterparts, both in terms of ensuring the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations and understanding the factors that affect their performance. This thesis's main goals are to assess the performance of rural and small urban public transit agencies and help them evaluate adopting a ridehailing program, thereby improving their performance. We applied operations research and decision-making tools to two public transit projects in small urban and rural areas. The first project focuses on three …

Capital Equipment Upgrade Strategy In The Context Of Servitization, Muztoba Ahmad Khan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Building on manufacturing servitization and Product-Service Systems (PSS) business models, the midlife equipment upgrade services introduce promising alternative to traditional equipment replacement, which is often capital intensive and time consuming. Midlife upgrade describes the process of improving the performance of and adding new functional capabilities into equipment during their active usage period by embedding technological innovation while satisfying evolving customers’ preferences over time. This strategy, however, has thus far been discussed primarily from a conceptual perspective in literature, and the state of the art lacks empirical evidence regarding the potential and outcome of successful midlife upgrades. Additionally, explorative studies report …

Implications Of Variability Of Electromyographic Measurements For Assessing Localized Muscle Fatigue, Hamad Nasser Alasim

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The impact of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) is enormous due to a combination of direct and indirect costs associated with healthcare, lost workdays and human suffering. Because of the established relationship between Localized Muscle Fatigue (LMF) development and WMSDs, and in order to reduce and/or prevent WMSDs in workplaces, different fatigue assessment methods have been developed. Surface Electromyography (SEMG) is a commonly used LMF assessment technique. The SEMG signals are typically analyzed in time and frequency domains to predict LMF based on a relative change with respect to initial, or under no-fatigue conditions. Quantifying such change, however, relies on the …

Metaheuristics For The Generalized Quadratic Assignment Problem, Roseline Mostafa

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The generalized quadratic assignment problem (GQAP) is the task of assigning a set of facilities to a set of locations such that the sum of the assignment and transportation costs is minimized. The facilities may have different space requirements, and the locations may have varying space capacities. Also, multiple facilities may be assigned to each location such that space capacity is not exceeded. In this research, an application of the GQAP is presented for assigning a set of machines to a set of locations on the plant floor. Two meta-heuristics are proposed for solving the GQAP: tabu search (TS) and …