Engineering Commons^™

Knowledge Management In New Product Development (Npd), Luca Maria Mancinelli

Theses

This thesis analyses features that, in New Product Development process (NPD), foster knowledge, and their contribution to the creation and application of knowledge with the aim of increasing both global performance and organizational effectiveness. Since knowledge is becoming more important to achieve competitive advantage, companies have already started to focus on their ability to generate new competencies and create new opportunities for producing new knowledge.

One of the issues compelling knowledge management understands what aspects of the organization's work system and organizational design affect its ability to acquire, create and apply knowledge. In fact, the way that workers are organized …

Start-Up And Open Innovation, Gonxhe Tali

Theses

Nowadays, in many industries the traditional research and development approach has become obsolete. For this reason, during the past two years companies started focusing on Startups and the Open Innovation. Firms should use internal and external relationships, ideas and paths in order to advance their organizational process and technology. Open Innovation combines all those ideas into a system and defines all the requirements for the new business model.

The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate how Startups successfully organize and manage open Innovation with large and small companies and to highlights the strengths, weaknesses, challenges and barriers faced by …

Halal Certification For An Industrial Machine Intended To Come In Contact With Food, Luca Caffarelli

Theses

Halal Certification is a worldwide recognition that the products are permissible under Islamic law. These products are thus edible, drinkable or usable by Muslims. It can be extended to industrial machinery and tools. This Certification must be issued by a Notified Body under the supervision of an IMAM. Focus of the Certification are GMPs and Food Contact Materials and Articles. Four main phases to achieve Certification (the scheme is the same of ISO 14001, ISO 18001 and ISO 9001):

• Pre-Audit - The activity is to evaluate the documentation describing our internal system.
• Audit - The activity is to evaluate how …

Applications Of Complex Network Analysis In Electric Power Systems, Mahmoud Saleh, Yusef Esa, Ahmed Mohamed

Publications and Research

This paper provides a review of the research conducted on complex network analysis (CNA) in electric power systems. Moreover, a new approach is presented to find optimal locations for microgrids (MGs) in electric distribution systems (EDS) utilizing complex network analysis. The optimal placement in this paper points to the location that will result in enhanced grid resilience, reduced power losses and line loading, better voltage stability, and a supply to critical loads during a blackout. The criteria used to point out the optimal placement of the MGs were predicated on the centrality analysis selected from the complex network theory, the …

Bridge Inspection: Human Performance, Unmanned Aerial Systems And Automation, Sattar Dorafshan, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have become of considerable private and commercial interest for a variety of jobs and entertainment in the past 10 years. This paper is a literature review of the state of practice for the United States bridge inspection programs and outlines how automated and unmanned bridge inspections can be made suitable for present and future needs. At its best, current technology limits UAS use to an assistive tool for the inspector to perform a bridge inspection faster, safer, and without traffic closure. The major challenges for UASs are satisfying restrictive Federal Aviation Administration regulations, control issues in …

Risk Assessment Of Dropped Cylindrical Objects In Offshore Operations, Adelina Steven

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Dropped object are defined as any object that fall under its own weight from a previously static position or fell due to an applied force from equipment or a moving object. It is among the top ten causes of injuries and fatality in oil and gas industry. To solve this problem, several in-house tools and guidelines is developed over time to assess the risk of dropped objects on the sub-sea structures. This thesis focuses on compiling and comparing those methods in hope to improve the recommended practices available in the market. A simple modification is done on the in-house tools …

Design Of A Distributed Real-Time E-Health Cyber Ecosystem With Collective Actions: Diagnosis, Dynamic Queueing, And Decision Making, Yanlin Zhou

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, we develop a framework for E-health Cyber Ecosystems, and look into different involved actors. The three interested parties in the ecosystem including patients, doctors, and healthcare providers are discussed in 3 different phases. In Phase 1, machine-learning based modeling and simulation analysis is performed to remotely predict a patient's risk level of having heart diseases in real time. In Phase 2, an online dynamic queueing model is devised to pair doctors with patients having high risk levels (diagnosed in Phase 1) to confirm the risk, and provide help. In Phase 3, a decision making paradigm is proposed …

Bi-Directional Testing For Change Point Detection In Poisson Processes, Moinak Bhaduri

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Point processes often serve as a natural language to chronicle an event's temporal evolution, and significant changes in the flow, synonymous with non-stationarity, are usually triggered by assignable and frequently preventable causes, often heralding devastating ramifications. Examples include amplified restlessness of a volcano, increased frequencies of airplane crashes, hurricanes, mining mishaps, among others. Guessing these time points of changes, therefore, merits utmost care. Switching the way time traditionally propagates, we posit a new genre of bidirectional tests which, despite a frugal construct, prove to be exceedingly efficient in culling out non-stationarity under a wide spectrum of environments. A journey surveying …

Fundamental Tradeoffs In Estimation Of Finite-State Hidden Markov Models, Justin Le

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Hidden Markov models (HMMs) constitute a broad and flexible class of statistical models that are widely used in studying processes that evolve over time and are only observable through the collection of noisy data. Two problems are essential to the use of HMMs: state estimation and parameter estimation. In state estimation, an algorithm estimates the sequence of states of the process that most likely generated a certain sequence of observations in the data. In parameter estimation, an algorithm computes the probability distributions that govern the time-evolution of states and the sampling of data. Although algorithms for the two problems are …

Physical And Social Systems Resilience Assessment And Optimization, Daniel Romero Rodriguez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Resilience has been measured using qualitative and quantitative metrics in engineering,economics, psychology, business, ecology, among others. This dissertation proposes a resilience metric that explicitly incorporates the intensity of the disruptive event to provide a more accurate estimation of system resilience. A comparative analysis between the proposed metric and average performance resilience metrics for linear and nonlinear loss and recovery functions suggests that the new metric enables a more objective assessment of resilience for disruptions with different intensities. Moreover, the proposed metric is independent of a control time parameter. This provides a more consistent resilience estimation for a given system and …

The Role Of Criticality Of Gene Regulatory Networks On Emergent Properties Of Biological Systems, Hyobin Kim

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The relationship between criticality of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and dynamics of GRNs at a single cell level has been vigorously studied. However, the relationship between the criticality of GRNs and properties of multicellular organisms at a higher level has not been fully explored. Here we aim at revealing potential roles of the criticality of GRNs at a multicellular and hierarchical level, using a random Boolean network as a GRN. We perform three studies. Firstly, we propose a GRN-based morphogenetic model, and delve into the role of the criticality of GRNs in morphogenesis at a multicellular level. Secondly, we include …

Understanding The Decision-Making Process Of Local Level Emergency Managers And Future Impacts Of Social Data, Justin Taylor

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

During the course of a natural disaster, affected populations turn to different avenues to attempt to communicate their needs and locations while emergency managers are faced with the task of making quick decisions to aid in the response effort. The decisions that emergency managers face are affected by factors such as available resources, responder safety, and source of information. In this research, we interview emergency managers about the 2009 North American Ice Storm and a flooding event in late April of 2017 to understand the decisions made and the factors that affected these decisions. Using these interviews, a list of …

Developing An Hpv Infection Risk Prediction Model For Adult Females, Rachel Holmer

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly one in four people are currently infected with human papillomavirus (HPV) in the United States. Although most people with HPV never experience symptoms, there is a risk of developing different types of HPV-related cancers after infection. These cancers and other related diseases result in almost $8 billion spent annually for treatment. Currently, all boys and girls ages 11 or 12 years are recommended to receive HPV vaccination. Catch-up vaccines are recommended for males and females through the age of 21 and 26, respectively, if they did not get vaccinated …

Sparse Representation And Learning For Discriminative Eeg Source Imaging, Feng Liu

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

As a direct measurement modality of neural electrical firing patterns, electroencephalogram (EEG) has a much higher temporal resolution up to millisecond compared to positron emission topography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and it has become one of the popular neuroimaging tools to find signatures of brain diseases and to understand how the brain works. Other advantages of EEG include low cost, easy portability, and non-invasive. However, a limitation of EEG is its low spatial resolution since the measurement is on the scalp rather than inside the brain. Given the recorded scalp EEG data, to reconstruct the activated brain …

Effective Resource Utilization In Arkansas Public Schools, Ryan Sanders

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Teacher pay in Arkansas public schools varies widely from district to district across the state. This pay discrepancy is driven by both the funds available to a district and by how these funds are allocated. There is a standard per student budget given to districts across the state, but this budget can be supplemented by additional property taxes collected on property within a district. This leaves districts with more highly valued property at an advantage. Districts are free to allocate their budget for teacher pay as they see fit, with constraints on number of students per teacher and minimum teacher …

Developing An Ergonomic Model And Automation Justification For Industrial Spraying Operations: A Case Study, Anthony Woods

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Industrial spraying tasks prove to be some of the most dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs in the modern day. Although it is a ripe area for automation, justification methods do not typically account for the potential improvements in the ergonomics of a task from automating it. In addition, there is a gap in the ergonomics literature in formal methodologies to comprehensively evaluate an industrial spraying task ergonomically, including all relevant musculoskeletal elements. This research focuses on first developing a formal, comprehensive methodology for ergonomically evaluating industrial spraying tasks and attaining a final classification of the ergonomic ranking of the task. …

Analysis Of Verification And Validation Techniques For Educational Cubesat Programs, Noah Weitz

Master's Theses

Since their creation, CubeSats have become a valuable educational tool for university science and engineering programs. Unfortunately, while aerospace companies invest resources to develop verification and validation methodologies based on larger-scale aerospace projects, university programs tend to focus resources on spacecraft development. This paper looks at two different types of methodologies in an attempt to improve CubeSat reliability: generating software requirements and utilizing system and software architecture modeling. Both the Consortium Requirements Engineering (CoRE) method for software requirements and the Monterey Phoenix modeling language for architecture modeling were tested for usability in the context of PolySat, Cal Poly's CubeSat research …

Simulation-Based Analysis And Optimization Of The United States Army Performance Appraisal System., Lee A. Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, a discrete event simulation framework is considered to replicate the dynamics, structure, and regulatory constraints placed on the officers in the U.S. Army. Using performance appraisal data provided by the United States Army Human Resources Command, we create a multi-objective response function that quantifies the human behavior associated with evaluating subordinates. Utilizing simulation-optimization techniques for model validation enables estimating unknown input parameters, such as human behavior, based on historical data. Furthermore, the model allows users to analyze the effects of current constraints on the evaluation system and the effects of proposed personnel policy changes.The effectiveness of the …

Multi Self-Adapting Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm (Msapso)., Gerhard Koch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The performance and stability of the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm depends on parameters that are typically tuned manually or adapted based on knowledge from empirical parameter studies. Such parameter selection is ineffectual when faced with a broad range of problem types, which often hinders the adoption of PSO to real world problems. This dissertation develops a dynamic self-optimization approach for the respective parameters (inertia weight, social and cognition). The effects of self-adaption for the optimal balance between superior performance (convergence) and the robustness (divergence) of the algorithm with regard to both simple and complex benchmark functions is investigated. This work …

An Agent Based Model To Assess Crew Temporal Variability During U.S. Navy Shipboard Operations, Kevin Muhs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the factors that affect human performance variability as well as their temporal impacts is an essential element in fully integrating and designing complex, adaptive environments. This understanding is particularly necessary for high stakes, time-critical routines such as those performed during nuclear reactor, air traffic control, and military operations. Over the last three decades significant efforts have emerged to demonstrate and apply a host of techniques to include Discrete Event Simulation, Bayesian Belief Networks, Neural Networks, and a multitude of existing software applications to provide relevant assessments of human task performance and temporal variability. The objective of this research was …

Optimizing A System Of Electric Vehicle Charging Stations, Ukesh Chawal

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

There has been a significant increase in the number of electric vehicles (EVs) mainly because of the need to have a greener living. Thus, ease of access to charging facilities is a prerequisite for large scale deployment for EV. The first component of this dissertation research seeks to formulate a deterministic mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model to optimize the system of EV charging stations, the locations of the stations and the number of slots to be opened to maximize the profit based on the user-specified cost of opening a station. Despite giving the optimal solution, the drawback of MILP formulation …

Ultrasonic Nondestructive Evaluation Of Metal Additive Manufacturing., Venkata Karthik Nadimpalli

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) is increasingly being used to make functional components. One of the barriers for AM components to become mainstream is the difficulty to certify them. AM components can have widely different properties based on process parameters. Improving an AM processes requires an understanding of process-structure-property correlations, which can be gathered in-situ and post-process through nondestructive and destructive methods. In this study, two metal AM processes were studied, the first is Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing (UAM) and the second is Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF). The typical problems with UAM components are inter-layer and inter-track defects. To improve the …

Predicting The Impact Of Resource Delays On A Construction Project’S Critical Path Using Monte Carlo Simulation, Colby Weishaar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The construction industry is a complex and evolving industry, making the project manager’s job of planning, organizing, and making decisions a difficult one. One of the most difficult decisions throughout a project is determining what resources are needed to complete a task by the deadline. Uncertainties cause risks within the schedule often creating delays for which the project manager must develop a mitigation plan once risks are identified. After conducting a review of the literature, no research was found examining the use of an analytical model to estimate the delays caused within the resource allocation process. If an analytical model …

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 …

Optimal Allocation Of Resources In Reliability Growth, Mohammadhossein Heydari

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Reliability growth testing seeks to identify and remove failure modes in order to improve system reliability. This dissertation centers around the resource allocation across the components of a multi-component system to maximize system reliability. We summarize this dissertation’s contributions to optimal resource allocation in reliability growth.

Chapter 2 seeks to deploy limited testing resources across the components of a series-parallel system in effort to maximize system reliability under the assumption that each component’s reliability exhibits growth according to an AMSAA model with known parameters. An optimization model for this problem is developed and then extended to consider the allocation of …

Demonstrating Set-Based Design Techniques- A Uav Case Study, Colin Small

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Defense (DoD) and Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS) community seek to improve decision making in the Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) process by incorporating resilience and leveraging the capabilities of model-based engineering (MBE) early in the design process. Traditional tradespace exploration utilizing Point-Based Design (PBD) often converges quickly on a solution with subsequent engineering changes to modify the design. However, this process can lead to a suboptimal solution if an incorrect initial solution is chosen. Enabled by MBE, Set-Based Design (SBD) considers sets of all possible solutions and enables down-selecting possibilities to converge on a final solution. Using a …

A Multi-Objective Affinity-Based Savings Algorithm For Improving Processes In Centralized Warehousing Operations, Mckenlee M. Coco

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Traditional approaches to improving material management processes in warehousing operations tend to focus on one of three major areas: facility design, order picking and sorting, and order batching. In an effort to improve total system savings, a new affinity function is developed and applied to batching logic to create a multi-objective problem. The proposed multi-objective function incorporates user input to increase adaptability to changing demand and flexibility to changing requirements. Computational experience shows the new function leads to solutions that deviate no more than 25% from the most efficient distance based picking route by the same batching logic, while creating …

Essays On Applications Of Transportation Network Design And Optimization, Amirali Ghaharikermani

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we address different transportation problems. The three main outcomes are: designing a battery swap station network, studying gaps in Empty Container Management literature, designing a model with similar characteristics to the vehicle routing problem as well as implementation scenario for it to be applied for a real-world case.

For the designed battery swap station, a model is developed for customer demand satisfaction that permits construction of different types of BSS in the planning network. Our solution methodology is a Tabu Search algorithm combined with a dynamic programming initialization. Numerous tests showed that the proposed TS approach provides …

Convergent Set-Based Design In Integrated Analysis Of Alternatives: Designing Engineered Resilient Systems, Zephan Wright Wade

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a comprehensive package for understanding and expanding set-based design quantification through the definition and demonstration of Convergent set-based design (SBD). Convergent SBD is a technique developed for the Engineered Resilient Systems program sponsored by the Department of Defense. Convergent SBD contributes a repeatable methodology with the goal of mathematically eliminating inefficient sets. The study of Convergent SBD led to the development of dominance identification criteria equations using comparison of statistical means. The demonstration of Convergent SBD also illustrates the effect of mission resilience in the tradespace and the impact mission resilience has on preference. Finally, Convergent SBD …

Dispensing Medical Countermeasures In Public Health Emergencies Via Home Health Agencies And Points Of Distribution, Anna Hudgeons

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

A major concern regarding emergency preparedness on the state government level involves the handling and dispensing of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) of medicinal supplies. Each state is required to update and maintain a plan of action for dispensing SNS materials that would effectively provide care to the state’s population in times of distress. This research evaluates a state’s ability to dispense an adequate amount of medicine to her population in a timely manner, specifically after it has been received by the state government. Although simulation modeling has previously been utilized to replicate the dispensing process at pre-designated points of …