Engineering Commons^™

High Temperature Filter Test Unit Upgrades, Blair Frandeen, Will Schill, Erick Shewmaker, Joshua Turgeon

Mechanical Engineering

The purpose of this project was to improve the existing High Temperature Filter Test Unit (HTTU) by optimizing performance and adding new features. These features include viewing ports and a camera system for observation of tests, a leak detection system, and a flame impingement system. Additional considerations included improving the current operation of the HTTU by reducing test time and energy loss. The HTTU is designed to test High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters at temperatures up to 1300 ˚F, creating conditions which simulate a fire in a chemical processing facility. The HTTU was originally built as a Cal Poly …

Manufacturing Execution System (Mes) An Examination Of Implementation Strategy, Riley F. Elliott

Master's Theses

The priorities of executing the manufacturing orders generated by an MRP system are often in operational conflicts with the dynamics of the manufacturing floor. It is not uncommon for a given manufacturing order to reach the shop floor several weeks or longer after being "opened" by an MRP system where it may face a chaotic case of large queues, machine down-time, parts shortage, scrap problems and other resource management constraints. Many companies have resorted to the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software solution to resolve these problems. This method first gained popularity in mid-90’s within the semiconductor industry. An MES approach …

Towards Operations Excellence: Optimising Staff Scheduling For New Emergency Department, Amr Arisha, Waleed Abo Hamad

Conference papers

This paper presents a case study of an Emergency Department of a public hospital in Dublin, and uses an integrated approach to determine optimal staffing levels to meet the challenges of its dynamic patient demand levels. A comprehensive stochastic model is developed to incorporate patients care pathways and the resources required along their treatment journeys. Analytical Hierarchical Process is utilised to enable decision makers to set their preferences for the facility’s strategic objectives. Evolutionary algorithms are applied to optimise staff schedules. The resulted optimized schedules maintains continuity of care delivery for patients while ensuring a balanced equilibrium among available staff.

Using Discrete Event Simulation To Improve The Patient Care Process In The Emergency Department Of A Rural Kentucky Hospital., Molly Cassaro Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The patient care process of a rural Kentucky hospital is a complex process that must be flexible in order to deal with a large variety of patient needs and a fluctuating patient volume where all patients are unscheduled. A simulation model of an average month in the emergency department was built using the Arena Simulation package. Methods for creating a simulation using Arena are included in this work. Statistics were generated from a number of different sources to create an accurate representation of the model. The Hospital reporting shows a need to improve on two quality measures being tracked, the …

Human Powered Helicopter: Spars, Jason Addy, Sterling Fuentes, Graham Garvin, Kenneth Girardin, Lipski Timonthy, Daniel Logue

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Abstract

Neal Saiki, a Cal Poly alumnus, donated a human powered helicopter to the Cal Poly Aircraft Design and Construction Club in Fall Quarter 2012. To achieve the requirements of the Igor Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition, this senior project was tasked with reducing the weight of the load-bearing spars without changing geometry.

The aluminum spars were replaced with carbon fiber. The spars were designed to maintain the bending and torsional stiffnesses. Twelve sections of carbon fiber tubes ranging from 8 to 12 ft in length and 2" to 3" in inner diameter were made using pre-preg carbon fiber wrapped …

S&G Metal Fab Battery Tray, Matthew Nartatez

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This report was written for the design of a battery tray and manufacturing process for S&G Metal Fab. The manufacturing steps of how to process the sheet metal to create the product are defined and documented in this report. This project began with constraints given by S&G and were all accomplished using coursework knowledge obtained as a manufacturing engineer student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. This report mainly covers parameters regarding the cutting, bending and, deforming of sheet metal to acquire the desired shapes and sizes. It also analyzes the costs that are associated with these processes and material. …

A Stand-Alone Methodology For Data Exploration In Support Of Data Mining And Analytics, Michael Gage

Master's Theses

With the emergence of Big Data, data high in volume, variety, and velocity, new analysis techniques need to be developed to effectively use the data that is being collected. Knowledge discovery from databases is a larger methodology encompassing a process for gathering knowledge from that data. Analytics pair the knowledge with decision making to improve overall outcomes. Organizations have conclusive evidence that analytics provide competitive advantages and improve overall performance. This paper proposes a stand-alone methodology for data exploration. Data exploration is one part of the data mining process, used in knowledge discovery from databases and analytics. The goal of …

The Effect Of 2d And 3d Menus On Memory Retention In User Interface Design, Angela Michelle Muscat

Master's Theses

The increasing use of 3D user interface elements, particularly 3D menus, demonstrates the need to expand research in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) as it pertains to 3D user interfaces. The results of this thesis contribute to the understanding of the cognitive impacts of using 3D menus. Multiple application areas for 3D menus have been identified where memory retention is a critical success factor, but little research has been done in the area of memory retention for 3D menus. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if the use of 3D carousel menus increases retention of information …

Applying Sustainability From A Systems Perspective:, Timothy Brophy

Master's Theses

Becoming sustainable is no longer an option. Current industry methods will not be able to support the necessary changes our growing society demands. In order to keep up with ever increasing demands industry will be aimed toward making major system changes toward a fully sustainable model. As of right now only basic sustainability actions have been put in place. Industry needs to make a strategic change toward resilient systems with an end goal of evolving into fully biomimic systems. This thesis covers a brief history of production leading to the Industrial Revolution which created a need for increased sustainability efforts. …

Hosx: Hospital Operations Excellence Model, Shivon S. Boodhoo

Dissertations

Hospital performance can be evaluated in four categories: (i) quality of care, (ii) process of care (iii) financial and (iv) operations productivity. Of these, ‘quality of care’ is the most widely reported and studied measure of performance, and focuses primarily on the clinical outcomes of the patient. In contrast, operations productivity and efficiency is the least studied measure, and currently there is limited ability to evaluate how efficiently the hospital has used its resources to deliver healthcare services. Cost containment in the healthcare industry is a challenging problem, and there is a lack of models and methods to benchmark hospital …

Innovation Measurement: A Decision Framework To Determine Innovativeness Of A Company, Kenny Phan

Dissertations and Theses

Innovation is one of the most important sources of competitive advantage. It helps a company to fuel the growth of new products and services, sustain incumbents, create new markets, transform industries, and promote the global competitiveness of nations. Because of its importance, companies need to manage innovation. It is very important for a company to be able to measure its innovativeness because one cannot effectively manage without measurement. A good measurement model will help a company to understand its current capability and identify areas that need improvement.

In this research a systematic approach was developed for a company to measure …

An Investigation Of The Impact Of Requirements Engineering Skills On Project Success, Cynthia Atkins

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A survey of project managers and requirements engineers was conducted to determine what skills, qualifications, and experiences were associated with project success. Survey results indicated that projects using Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions, use cases, and prototypes to engineer requirements were most successful. Other indicators of project success, according to participants, included an adequate allotment of time for requirements engineering—at least 15% of a project's time—and the use of project managers and requirements engineers with professional work experience. In particular, data indicated that Project Managers with at least five years of experience in Information Technology resulted in more successful projects.

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2013, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Senior Design Experience

Part of every UNLV engineering student's academic experience, the Senior Design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. Working in teams, the senior design project encourages students to use everything learned in the engineering and computer design programs to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

Beyond the classroom ...

Because of the requirement to work in teams, students also build good communication skills, presentation skills and even business writing skills. They also have to …

The People Dimension In Logistics And Supply Chain Management – Its Role And Importance, Edward Sweeney

Books/Book chapters

It is widely recognised that the effective application of logistics and supply chain management (SCM) has a vital role to play in European economic recovery. Experience suggests that success in achieving higher levels of supply chain integration (SCI) depends on both physical and technical components (the hard-wiring), as well as human and behavioural components (the soft-wiring). There is significant evidence that the latter has been largely neglected by the logistics and SCM community. Furthermore, it appears that the majority of supply chain improvement initiatives by practitioners have been primarily concerned with technological, structural and process issues. This chapter …

The Evaluation Of Software Quality, Dhananjay Gade

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

Software Quality comprises all characteristics and significant features of a product or an activity which relate to the satisfaction of given requirements. The totality of characteristics of a software product depends upon its ability to satisfy given needs: for example (a) the degree to which software possesses a desired attribute or combination of attributes. (b) The degree to which a customer or user perceives that software meets their expectations, (c) the characteristics of software that determine the degree to which the software in use will meet the customer expectation. This study has three objectives. The first objective is to identify …

Spatiotemporal Smoothing As A Basis For Facial Tissue Tracking In Thermal Imaging, Yan Zhou, Panagiotis Tsiamyrtzis, Peggy Lindner, Ilya Timofeyev, Ioannis Pavlidis

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Accurate tracking of facial tissue in thermal infrared imaging is challenging because it is affected not only by positional but also physiological (functional) changes. This paper presents a particle filter tracker driven by a probabilistic template function with both spatial and temporal smoothing components, which is capable of adapting to abrupt positional and physiological changes. The method was tested on tracking facial regions of subjects under varying physiological and environmental conditions in 25 thermal clips. It demonstrated robustness and accuracy, outperforming other strategies. This new method promises improved performance in a number of biomedical applications that involve physiological measurements on …

Optimizing Load Control For A Residential Microgrid In A Collaborative Environment, Majid Ahmadi

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Theses - Archive

This research is aimed to develop an analytical model for a Residential Microgrid under a collaborative environment. In order to maximize profit, Collaborative Consumption (C.C) as a community-based social agreement has been developed in a model to capture consumer behavior, and modeling Residential Microgrids in such environment has been investigated in this research for the first time. This study will introduce a framework for Residential Microgrids using a unique method of demand response based on the particular characteristics of residential loads. Moreover, such a framework enables consumers to participate actively in the supply side of the electricity market. Indeed, consumers …

Acuta Enews May 2013 Vol. 42, No. 5

ACUTA Newsletters

In this Issue...

1 ACUTA Honors 4 Schools, 3 Individuals

2 Convergence (or when the Stars Are Aligned)

2 View 8 Conference Session

Three Predictions for Higher Ed Residential Networking

3 Get Full Access to eSchool News Online

4 Info Links

5 Mobile Voice Policies Are MIA!

6 Board Report

6 Annual Dues Invoices Mailed May 1

7 Welcome New Members

7 Check It Out

8 Annual Conference Photo Section

Decision Support Tool For Operations Management Course And Instructor Scheduling, Morgan Ulesich

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The goal of this project is develop a decision support tool that will assist the Operations Management Department at the University of Arkansas with scheduling courses and instructors for the upcoming academic year. The staff of the department dreads this time each year because it takes countless hours to complete the daunting task. Creating an abstract mathematical model will assist the department in scheduling the courses. The model will have the ability to optimize the schedule of the courses and instructors from a large number of variables and constraints that the department requires. An optimization software package can solve the …

New Approach For Minimizing Human Errors In Hospital Operating Rooms By Using Rfid Alerting Systems, Hamid S. Ghoraishi

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Theses - Archive

Patient safety is an increasing concern in health care due to the fact the increasing number of medical errors. Most fatal medical errors happen in hospital operating rooms. This research proposes a unique approach that decreases medical errors in hospital operating rooms using an RFID-based technology to alert doctors and nurses when the wrong tool enters to the operating area, via text message.Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a portion of a new growth in the information era where items equipped with chips that can process data automatically will progressively become an essential part of everyday life. RFID permeates through many …

A Sustainability Based Framework To Make A Strategic Outsourcing Decision For Warehouses In The Electronics Industry, Chendur Murugananthan Anand

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Theses - Archive

Over the course of last decades, sustainability matured from an abstract concept to an important source of corporate legitimacy. Supply chain management plays an important role in shaping and framing sustainability, due to the high level of external value added in many industries (Hofmann, Busse, Bode, & Henke, 2013). It is critical to accurately monitor and determine inventory holding costs and its impacts on decision making as it can be a representation of almost half of the overall assets of an organization. The concept of outsourcing stems from the traditional make-or-buy and subcontracting questions that companies have dealt with for …

Tanker Acquisition: A Systems Engineering Perspective, Sarah Lynch, Alan R. Heminger, David D. Mattioda

Faculty Publications

A short examination of air refueling, specifically its past, present, and future, offers valuable insight into the developmental needs of this critical capability. This article seeks not only to showcase an appreciation for the roots of air refueling but also to high- light the requirement for sound systems engineering in conjunction with the creativity and willingness to take risks, as exhibited by our forefathers in the field. These attributes are vital to furthering air- refueling technologies and capabilities as well as refining the some- what flawed tanker-procurement process employed today.

Reliability Analysis Of Social Networks, Kellie R. Schneider

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The primary focus of this dissertation is on the quantification of actor interaction and the dissemination of information through Social networks. Social networks have long been used to model the interactions between people in various Social and professional contexts. These networks allow for the explicit modeling of the complex interrelations between relevant individuals within an organization and the role they play in the decision making process. This dissertation considers Social networks represented as network flow models in which actors have the ability to provide some level of influence over other actors within the network. The models developed incorporate performance metrics …

Capital Infusion, Dedication To Current Infrastructure And Workforce Development: The Three-Pronged Approach To Strategic Industrial Growth In Western New York, Clinton J. Ronan, Gina Pizziconi-Cupples

Industrial Technology Theses

One billion dollars in incentives (Cuomo, December 2012a) will infuse the opportunity for Western New York (WNY) industrial growth. It is critical two areas are carefully evaluated and supported in order to avoid a false start and accomplish a responsible, long term, reinvigorated economy: (1) leverage current viable infrastructure, specifically the Niagara Falls International Airport (NFIAP), and (2) ensure workforce development in lean operations is initiated immediately to complement technical expertise in order to recruit and sustain high paying employers. Case studies introduced in this thesis included the development of a similar regional airport compared to NFIAP as well as …

Demand Forecasting Using A Growth Model And Negative Binomial Regression Framework, Cally Yeru Ong, Murphy Choy, Michelle L. F. Cheong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we look at demand forecasting by using a growth model and negative binomial regression framework. Using cumulative sales, we model the sales data for different wristwatch brands and relate it to their sales and growth characteristics. We apply clustering to determine the distinctive characteristics of each individual cluster. Four different growth models are applied to the clusters to find the most suitable growth model to be used. After determining the appropriate growth model to be applied, we then forecast the sales by applying the model to new products being launched in the market and continue to monitor …

Implementation Of Slowly Changing Dimension To Data Warehouse To Manage Marketing Campaigns In Banks, Lihui Wang, Junyu Choy, Michelle L. F. Cheong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Management of updating and recording campaign leads in data warehouse of any banking environment is complex especially with multiple campaigns are active simultaneously. As a way to avoid overly contacting customers for sales-based marketing contacts, the concept of Recency Frame is introduced to “lock” the customers who are targeted in Sales-based campaign for a specified time period. During this Recency Frame, the customer cannot be targeted by other Sales-based campaign under the same channel. This approach increased the difficulties of managing the customers’ data with proper data updating and storing and procedures have to be placed and made sufficiently robust …

Master Physician Scheduling Problem, Aldy Gunawan, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We study a real-world problem arising from the operations of a hospital service provider, which we term the master physician scheduling problem. It is a planning problem of assigning physicians’ full range of day-to-day duties (including surgery, clinics, scopes, calls, administration) to the defined time slots/shifts over a time horizon, incorporating a large number of constraints and complex physician preferences. The goals are to satisfy as many physicians’ preferences and duty requirements as possible while ensuring optimum usage of available resources. We propose mathematical programming models that represent different variants of this problem. The models were tested on a real …

Evolution Of Medication Administration Workflow In Implementing Electronic Health Record System, Yuan-Han Huang

All Dissertations

This study focused on the clinical workflow evolutions when implementing the health information technology (HIT). The study especially emphasized on administrating medication when the electronic health record (EHR) systems were adopted at rural healthcare facilities. Mixed-mode research methods, such as survey, observation, and focus group, were used to investigate insightful interventions to compensate potential errors during the medication administration process. Research data were collected from three South Carolina small-scale rural hospitals over several clinical departments.
The major purposes of this study were two folds: (1) to assess medical staff's computer competency for the new IT system, and (2) to investigate …

Load Mixing To Improve Container Utilization, Crystal Wilson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The under utilization in trucking leads to nearly 5 billion gallons of wasted fuel annually. One way to recapture part of this waste is to use collaborative logistics. This research focuses on one specific aspect of collaborative logistics: load mixing. Load mixing is the idea of mixing two or more items of different weights in the same container to reduce the number of trucks needed.

Load mixing is similar to other packing problems such as the knapsack and container loading problems. However, traditional packing problems typically only assume a single type of capacity (e.g., weight), whereas load mixing must simultaneously …

Surveillance Planning Against Smart Insurgents In Complex Terrain, Nabil Lehlou

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study is concerned with finding a way to solve a surveillance system allocation problem based on the need to consider intelligent insurgency that takes place in a complex geographical environment. Although this effort can be generalized to other situations, it is particularly geared towards protecting military outposts in foreign lands. The technological assets that are assumed available include stare-devices, such as tower-cameras and aerostats, as well as manned and unmanned aerial systems. Since acquiring these assets depends on the ability to control and monitor them on the target terrain, their operations on the geo-location of interest ought to be …