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Articles 91 - 120 of 164

Full-Text Articles in Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering

Evolution Of Medication Administration Workflow In Implementing Electronic Health Record System, Yuan-Han Huang May 2013

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

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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 …

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Robust Parameter Design In Complex Engineering Systems:, Gregory Boylan May 2013

Robust Parameter Design In Complex Engineering Systems:, Gregory Boylan

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Many industrial firms seek the systematic reduction of variability as a primary means for reducing production cost and material waste without sacrificing product quality or process efficiency. Despite notable advancements in quality-based estimation and optimization approaches aimed at achieving this goal, various gaps remain between current methodologies and observed in modern industrial environments. In many cases, models rely on assumptions that either limit their usefulness or diminish the reliability of the estimated results. This includes instances where models are generalized to a specific set of assumed process conditions, which constrains their applicability against a wider array of industrial problems. However, …

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Managing Elective And Non-Elective Case Assignments For An Operating Room Suite, Narges Hosseini Dec 2012

Managing Elective And Non-Elective Case Assignments For An Operating Room Suite, Narges Hosseini

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The success of operating room management depends on all levels of decision making, from strategic to tactical and operational decisions. One key decision in systems with block booking is to assign sufficient amount of block time to surgeons and surgery groups. While the typical method of block assignment identifies the share of surgery groups from OR times based on average of past usage, this method does not count for the difference between cost of under and overtime. One of the goals of this research is to develop a decision framework for block assignment. This work is presented in chapter two. …

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Flow Behavior Modeling And Process Control Of Electrically-Assisted Forming (Eaf) For Sheet Metals In Uniaxial Tension, Joshua Jones Dec 2012

Flow Behavior Modeling And Process Control Of Electrically-Assisted Forming (Eaf) For Sheet Metals In Uniaxial Tension, Joshua Jones

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This work studies the influence of an applied electrical current on magnesium sheet metal and introduces models which are successful in predicting the deformation behavior (i.e. material flow stress, local material strain, and thermal response). Also, this work examined the theory of electroplasticity by studying prior proposed theories and by quantifying the prior theories potential for improved dislocation mobility. From this analysis, a single dominant mechanism is determined and the theory of electroplasticity is explained using this single mechanism. The theory discussed in this work is supported by experimental testing and microstructure analysis.
In addition to studying the exact electroplastic …

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Updated Force Model For Milling Nickel-Based Superalloys, Andrew Henderson Dec 2012

Updated Force Model For Milling Nickel-Based Superalloys, Andrew Henderson

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Nickel-based superalloys are commonly used in applications which require high strength and resistance to creep and oxidation in extreme conditions. All nickel-based superalloys are considered difficult to machine; however, cast gamma-prime-strengthened nickel-based superalloys are more difficult to machine than common nickel-based superalloys. Machining comprises a significant portion of manufacturing processes and with advancements in technology and material properties, the methods and models used must be adapted in order to keep pace.
In this research, correlations are made, using fundamental principles, between measurements made with on-machine touch probes and the cutting tool's wear state, those correlations are used in an adaptive …

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Integrated Production And Distribution Problem With Single Perishable Product, Wennian Li Dec 2012

Integrated Production And Distribution Problem With Single Perishable Product, Wennian Li

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This dissertation investigated the extension of the Integrated Production and Distribution Scheduling Problem (IPDSPP) using a variety of perishable products, applying the JIP principle and make-to-order strategy to integrate the production and distribution schedules. A single perishable product with a constant lifetime after production was used in the model discussed here. The objective of the problem was to find the solution that results in minimal system total transportation costs while satisfying customer demand within a fixed time horizon. In the solution, the fleet size, vehicle route and distribution schedule, plant production batch size and schedule were determined simultaneously. This research …

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Supply Chain Network Design: Risk-Averse Vs. Risk-Neutral Decision Making, Alireza Madadi Dec 2012

Supply Chain Network Design: Risk-Averse Vs. Risk-Neutral Decision Making, Alireza Madadi

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Recent events, such as the Heparin tragedy, highlight the necessity for designers and planners of supply chain networks to consider the risk of disruptions in spite of their low probability of occurrence. One effective way to hedge against supply chain network disruptions is to have a robustly designed supply chain network. This involves strategic decisions, such as choosing which markets to serve, which suppliers to source from, the location of plants, the types of facilities to use, and tactical decisions, such as production and capacity allocation. In this dissertation, we focus on models for designing supply chain networks that are …

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A Process Analysis Of Engineering Problem Solving And Assessment Of Problem Solving Skills, Sarah Grigg Dec 2012

A Process Analysis Of Engineering Problem Solving And Assessment Of Problem Solving Skills, Sarah Grigg

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In the engineering profession, one of the most critical skills to possess is accurate and efficient problem solving. Thus, engineering educators should strive to help students develop skills needed to become competent problem solvers. In order to measure the development of skills, it is necessary to assess student performance, identify any deficiencies present in problem solving attempts, and identify trends in performance over time. Through iterative assessment using standard assessment metrics, researchers/instructors are able to track trends in problem solving performance across time, which can serve as a gauge of students' learning gains.
This research endeavor studies the problem solving …

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Districting And Dispatching Policies To Improve The Efficiency Of Emergency Medical Service (Ems) Systems, Damitha Bandara Aug 2012

Districting And Dispatching Policies To Improve The Efficiency Of Emergency Medical Service (Ems) Systems, Damitha Bandara

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The major focus of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) systems is to save lives and to minimize the
effects of emergency health incidents. The efficiency of the EMS systems is a major public concern. Thus,
over the past three decades a significant amount of research studies have been conducted to improve the performance
of EMS systems. The purpose of this study is also to improve the performance of EMS system.
The contribution of this research towards improving the performance of EMS systems is twofold. One area
is to implement optimal or near optimal dispatching strategies for EMS systems and the other …

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Thermo-Mechanical Modeling Of The Electrically-Assisted Manufacturing (Eam) Technique During Open Die Forging, Wesley Salandro Aug 2012

Thermo-Mechanical Modeling Of The Electrically-Assisted Manufacturing (Eam) Technique During Open Die Forging, Wesley Salandro

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This thesis contains all of the steps which allow the Electrically-Assisted Manufacturing (EAM) technique to be experimentally explored and analytically modeled for an electrically-assisted forging operation. Chapter 1 includes the problem statement, proposed solution, and literature reviews on EAM. Chapter 2 describes a thorough background on the EAM technique, highlights prior EAM research, and explains the research approach taken for this thesis. The coupled thermo-mechanical modeling strategy, along with the introduction of the Electroplastic Effect Coefficient (EEC) is provided in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 explains the two different approaches to determine the EEC profiles when modeling a particular metal. The …

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Prognostic And Health-Management Oriented Fuel Cell Modeling And On-Line Supervisory System Development, Xian Zhang Aug 2012

Prognostic And Health-Management Oriented Fuel Cell Modeling And On-Line Supervisory System Development, Xian Zhang

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Of the fuel cells being studied, the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is viewed as the most promising for transportation. Yet until today, the commercialization of the PEMFC has not been widespread in spite of its large expectation. Poor long term performances or durability, and high production and maintenance costs are the main reasons. For the final commercialization of fuel cells in the transportation field, durability issues must be addressed, while costs should be further brought down. At the same time, health-monitoring and prognosis techniques are of great significance in terms of scheduling condition-based maintenance (CBM) to minimize repair …

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A New Metaheuristic Algorithm Motivated By The Rooting Phenomena In Plants, Behzad Nemati May 2012

A New Metaheuristic Algorithm Motivated By The Rooting Phenomena In Plants, Behzad Nemati

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In this thesis, we present a new metaheuristic algorithm for analyzing challenging optimization problems. Initial testing reveals the potential for the algorithm, which is based on the rooting phenomena found in plants in nature, to quickly produce effective solutions to challenging combinatorial optimization problems in the class NP. We present computational results describing the proposed metaheuristic's efficacy for an important class of scheduling problems and discuss areas of future work and application.

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Research And Development Effort In Developing The Optimal Formulations For New Tablet Drugs, Zhe Li May 2012

Research And Development Effort In Developing The Optimal Formulations For New Tablet Drugs, Zhe Li

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Seeking the optimal pharmaceutical formulation is considered one of the most critical research components during the drug development stage. It is also an R&D effort incorporating design of experiments and optimization techniques, prior to scaling up a manufacturing process, to determine the optimal settings of ingredients so that the desirable performance of related pharmaceutical quality characteristics (QCs) specified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can be achieved. It is widely believed that process scale-up potentially results in changes in ingredients and other pharmaceutical manufacturing aspects, including site, equipment, batch size and process, with the purpose of satisfying the clinical …

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A System-Generated Password And Mnemonic Approach To Optimize The Security And Usability Of Text-Based Passwords, Sanjaykumar Ranganayakulu May 2012

A System-Generated Password And Mnemonic Approach To Optimize The Security And Usability Of Text-Based Passwords, Sanjaykumar Ranganayakulu

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In this study a novel password generation policy called the system-generated password and mnemonic was designed and implemented. The intent of this policy was to optimize both the security and usability of text-based passwords. After implementing the policy we evaluated its usability and compared it with three other existing policies: user-generated password, system-generated password and user-generated mnemonic for a system-generated password. In order to have a fair comparison among the policies we maintained a constant level of security of 30±2 entropy as dictated by NIST level 2 standards.
The study involved 64 participants, equally divided into four groups, 16 in …

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Algebraic Approaches To Stochastic Optimization, Katherine Hastings May 2012

Algebraic Approaches To Stochastic Optimization, Katherine Hastings

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The dissertation presents algebraic approaches to the shortest path and maximum flow problems in stochastic networks. The goal of the stochastic shortest path problem is to find the distribution of the shortest path length, while the goal of the stochastic maximum flow problem is to find the distribution of the maximum flow value. In stochastic networks it is common to model arc values (lengths, capacities) as random variables. In this dissertation, we model arc values with discrete non-negative random variables and shows how each arc value can be represented as a polynomial. We then define two algebraic operations and use …

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A Comprehensive Human Factors Analysis Of Off-Duty Motor Vehicle Crashes In The United States Military, Rebecca Iden May 2012

A Comprehensive Human Factors Analysis Of Off-Duty Motor Vehicle Crashes In The United States Military, Rebecca Iden

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Researchers have always had great interest in traffic safety and the phenomenon of motor vehicle crashes (MVCs). Though scores of service members are severely injured or killed in off-duty MVCs each year, few studies have addressed the MVC phenomenon within the military population and none have conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the causal factors associated with MVCs involving military personnel.
The main purpose of this dissertation was to gain a greater understanding of the causal factors associated with serious and fatal off-duty personal MVCs for military service members with the ultimate goal of preventing future losses. The HFACS-MVC framework was …

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Extending Origami Technique To Fold Forming Of Sheet Metal Products, Ala Qattawi Jan 2012

Extending Origami Technique To Fold Forming Of Sheet Metal Products, Ala Qattawi

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This dissertation presents a scientific based approach for the analysis of folded sheet metal products. Such analysis initializes the examination in terms of topological exploration using set of graph modeling and traversal algorithms. The geometrical validity and optimization are followed by utilizing boundary representation and overlapping detection during a geometrical analysis stage, in this phase the optimization metrics are established to evaluate the unfolded sheet metal design in terms of its manufacturability and cost parameters, such as nesting efficiency, total welding cost, bend lines orientation, and maximum part extent, which aides in handling purposes. The proposed approach evaluates the design …

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The Effects Of Weather Recognition Training On General Aviation Pilot Situation Assessment And Tactical Decision Making When Confronted With Adverse Weather Conditions, Chansik Kim Aug 2011

The Effects Of Weather Recognition Training On General Aviation Pilot Situation Assessment And Tactical Decision Making When Confronted With Adverse Weather Conditions, Chansik Kim

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Previous general aviation (GA) accident studies showed that decision errors were more associated with fatal GA accidents than other kinds of human errors, and weather related accidents, especially continued visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), remained the major cause of fatal GA accidents. Thus, finding the underlying causes of GA pilots' decision errors and continued VFR flight into adverse weather conditions are needed to reduce weather related GA accidents as well as fatal GA accidents.
Causal factors and hypotheses of weather related GA accidents show that knowledge, experience, motivation, and weather information frequently have been referred …

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Metaheuristics For Hub Location Models, Ornurai Sangsawang Aug 2011

Metaheuristics For Hub Location Models, Ornurai Sangsawang

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In this research, we propose metaheuristics for solving two p-hub median problems.. The first p-hub median problem, which is NP-hard, is the uncapacitated single p-hub median problem (USApHMP). In this problem, metaheuristics such as genetic algorithms, simulated annealing and tabu search, are applied in different types of representations. Caching is also
applied to speed up computational time of the algorithms. The results clearly demonstrate that tabu search with a permutation solution representation, augmented with caching is the highest performing method, both in terms of solution quality and computational time among these algorithms for the USApHMP. We also investigate the performance …

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Anticipating U.S. Population-Level Health And Economic Impacts Using Discrete-Event Simulation To Guide Health Policy Decisions, Odette Reifsnider Aug 2011

Anticipating U.S. Population-Level Health And Economic Impacts Using Discrete-Event Simulation To Guide Health Policy Decisions, Odette Reifsnider

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This dissertation presents two applications of discrete-event simulation (DES) to represent clinical processes: (1) a model to quantify the risk of the maternal obese and diabetic intrauterine environment influence on progression to adult obesity and diabetes, and (2) a model to evaluate health and economic outcomes of different smoking cessation strategies. The first application considers the public health impact of the diabetic and obese intrauterine environment's effect on the prevalence of diabetes and obesity across subsequent generations. We first develop a preliminary DES model to investigate and characterize the epidemiology of diabetes during pregnancy and birth outcomes related to maternal …

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Improving Quality Of Service In Ems Systems By Reducing Disparities Between Service Zones, Sunarin Chanta Aug 2011

Improving Quality Of Service In Ems Systems By Reducing Disparities Between Service Zones, Sunarin Chanta

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Emergency medical service (EMS) systems respond to emergency or urgent calls so as to provide immediate care, such as pre-hospital care and/or transportation, to hospitals. Care must be provided in a timely manner; in fact quality of service is usually directly associated with response time. To reduce the response time, the number and location of vehicles within the service area are important variables. However with limited capacity, increasing the number of vehicles is often an infeasible alternative. Therefore, a critical design goal is to decide at which facilities stations should be located in order to serve as much demand as …

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Impact Of High-Speed Inkjet On Digital Printing And Traditional Offset Lithography, Caroline Sellars May 2011

Impact Of High-Speed Inkjet On Digital Printing And Traditional Offset Lithography, Caroline Sellars

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This thesis was prepared in order to examine the impact of high-speed inkjet printing on the offset lithography market within the commercial printing and publishing segments. Digital printing has become more widespread in recent years, but high-speed inkjet is making advances in its capabilities and technologies. With the printing industry evolving and print consumers preferring shorter print runs and in a shorter amount of time, print technologies are evolving to meet these needs. Print-on-demand is growing tremendously in the publishing industry, and personalization and 1-to-1 marketing is growing in the commercial printing segment as well. Market demand is changing in …

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Modeling And Optimization Of Stochastic Process Parameters In Complex Engineering Systems, Paul Goethals May 2011

Modeling And Optimization Of Stochastic Process Parameters In Complex Engineering Systems, Paul Goethals

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For quality engineering researchers and practitioners, a wide number of statistical tools and techniques are available for use in the manufacturing industry. The objective or goal in applying these tools has always been to improve or optimize a product or process in terms of efficiency, production cost, or product quality. While tremendous progress has been made in the design of quality optimization models, there remains a significant gap between existing research and the needs of the industrial community. Contemporary manufacturing processes are inherently more complex - they may involve multiple stages of production or require the assessment of multiple quality …

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Pilot Weather Decision Making And The Influence Of Passenger Pressure, Jaclyn Baron May 2011

Pilot Weather Decision Making And The Influence Of Passenger Pressure, Jaclyn Baron

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The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of social pressure on general aviation (GA) pilots' weather decision making. Data have shown that GA accidents associated with visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) are more likely to result in fatalities than other types of GA accidents. This problem is compounded by the addition of passengers, who have been found to be present onboard during VFR into IMC accidents more frequently than in other types of GA accidents. The question is whether passengers influence a pilot's decision to continue flight into adverse weather. The extent …

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A Decision Support System For Assessing Conveyance Options And Modeling Passenger Flow In Airport Terminals, Ping-Nan Chiang May 2011

A Decision Support System For Assessing Conveyance Options And Modeling Passenger Flow In Airport Terminals, Ping-Nan Chiang

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This dissertation focuses on the use of passenger conveyance systems and modeling passenger flow in airport terminals. The successfully designed airport concourse must perform at a level that meets the needs of its users - the passengers. In this research, we propose a database design methodology that allows key conveyance statistics to be analyzed within specific locations across the airport terminal. Using passenger conveyance observations collected at five North American airports, the database enables airport planners, operators and consultants to assess passenger behavior and conveyance device performance. Results from this section of the research were in direct support of the …

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Micro Feature Enhanced Sinter Bonding Of Metal Injection Molded (Mim) Parts To A Solid Substrate, Thomas Martens May 2011

Micro Feature Enhanced Sinter Bonding Of Metal Injection Molded (Mim) Parts To A Solid Substrate, Thomas Martens

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In metal injection molding (MIM), fine metal powders are mixed with a binder and injected into molds, similar to plastic injection molding. After molding, the binder is removed from the part, and the compact is sintered to almost full density.
The obstacle to sinter bonding a MIM part to a conventional (solid) substrate lies in the sinter shrinkage of the MIM part, which can be up to 20%, meaning that the MIM part shrinks during sintering, while the conventional substrate maintains its dimensions. This behavior would typically inhibit bonding and/or cause cracking and deformation of the MIM part. It is …

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Tight Polyhedral Representations Of Discrete Sets Using Projections, Simplices, And Base-2 Expansions, Stephen Henry May 2011

Tight Polyhedral Representations Of Discrete Sets Using Projections, Simplices, And Base-2 Expansions, Stephen Henry

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This research effort focuses on the acquisition of polyhedral outer-approximations to the convex hull of feasible solutions for mixed-integer linear and mixed-integer nonlinear programs. The goal is to produce desirable formulations that have superior size and/or relaxation strength. These two qualities often have great influence on the success of underlying solution strategies, and so it is with these qualities in mind that the work of this dissertation presents three distinct contributions.
The first studies a family of relatively unknown polytopes that enable the linearization of polynomial expressions involving two discrete variables. Projections of higher-dimensional convex hulls are employed to reduce …

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In-Wheel Coupled Suspenison And Drive System For Attitude Control And Vehicle Propulsion, Robert Clippard May 2011

In-Wheel Coupled Suspenison And Drive System For Attitude Control And Vehicle Propulsion, Robert Clippard

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The automotive marketplace is a volatile and dynamic system driven by consumer desires, marketing, fuel prices, technology, and legislation. Recently many of these factors have culminated in a common effort to encourage hybrid and electric vehicle development. The technology for electric vehicles has finally found enough maturity to be implemented into consumer based vehicles from hybrid SUVs to high performance sports cars. This expansion in available propulsion systems and vehicle architectures has spurred research and development into new and novel approaches for propulsion as well as systems to provide increased ride comfort.
This work presents a dual electric motor drive …

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Analysis Of Part Consolidation Techniques For Automotive Body In White Panels Based On Advanced Sheet Metal Forming Technologies, Harish Thiruvengadam Dec 2010

Analysis Of Part Consolidation Techniques For Automotive Body In White Panels Based On Advanced Sheet Metal Forming Technologies, Harish Thiruvengadam

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The automotive industry is looking to move from mass production to mass customization in order to manufacture and sell a variety of products in different markets on a global scale. This requires a robust and cost effective manufacturing system which would help design new products in the shortest possible lead time. This thesis tries to investigate the current sheet metal forming process for body in white, identify the limitations and propose an alternative which would help the industry cut down product lead time and costs. Decision making tools are used to identify the technical requirements of a BIW manufacturing system …

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A Meta-Analysis Of Human Factors Analysis And Classification System Causal Factors: Establishing Benchmarking Standards And Human Error Latent Failure Pathway Associations In Various Domains, Katherine Berry Dec 2010

A Meta-Analysis Of Human Factors Analysis And Classification System Causal Factors: Establishing Benchmarking Standards And Human Error Latent Failure Pathway Associations In Various Domains, Katherine Berry

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Many models of accident investigation have been created and have served as the basis for other tools and techniques. One of the most prominent techniques, Reason's Swiss Cheese Model (1990), is based on the idea of active and latent failures. Expanding on this idea, the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) was created with the idea to associate contributing factors and errors (Wiegmann & Shappell, 2003).
While HFACS has been frequently applied in the field of aviation in literature, other industry types are under-represented. Seventeen data sources encompassing various industry types were collected and included in this dissertation analysis. …

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