Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

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 …

Evaluating The Impact Of Adopting 3d Printing Services On The Retailers, Sharareh Rajaei Dehkordi

Dissertations

As additive manufacturing technology becomes more responsive to consumers’ demand, one important question for the retailers is whether they should provide 3D printing services in their brick-and-mortar store in addition to the traditional off-the-shelf product? If so, what should be the retailers pricing scheme to achieve a higher profit? What should be the optimal inventory level of off-the-shelf products? What is the optimal capacity of 3D printers? In this study, stochastic models are examined to capture the joint optimal 3D product price and capacity of 3D printers to maximize retailer’s expected profit while considering consumer product choices. Moreover, a stochastic …

Appointment Planning And Scheduling In Primary Care, Babak Hoseini

Dissertations

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) puts greater emphasis on disease prevention and better quality of care; as a result, primary care is becoming a vital component in the health care system. However, long waits for the next available appointments and delays in doctors offices combined with no-shows and late cancellations have resulted in low efficiency and high costs.

This dissertation develops an innovative stochastic model for patient planning and scheduling in order to reduce patients’ waiting time and optimize primary care providers’ utility. In order to facilitate access to patients who request a same-day appointment, a new appointment system is …

Decision Models For Fast-Fashion Supply And Stocking Problems In Internet Fulfillment Warehouses, Jingran Zhang

Dissertations

Internet technology is being widely used to transform all aspects of the modern supply chain. Specifically, accelerated product flows and wide spread information sharing across the supply chain have generated new sets of decision problems. This research addresses two such problems. The first focuses on fast fashion supply chains in which inventory and price are managed in real time to maximize retail cycle revenue. The second is concerned with explosive storage policies in Internet Fulfillment Warehouses (IFW).

Fashion products are characterized by short product life cycles and market success uncertainty. An unsuccessful product will often require multiple price discounts to …

Airspace Analysis For Greener Operations: Towards More Adoptability And Predictability Of Continuous Descent Approach (Cda), Emad Ali Alharbi

Dissertations

Continuous Descent Approach (CDA), also known as Optimized Profile Descent (OPD), is the advanced flight technique for commercial aircraft to descend continuously from cruise altitude to Final Approach Fix (FAF) or touchdown without level-offs and with- or near-idle thrust setting. Descending using CDA, aircraft stays as high as possible for longer time thereby expanding the vertical distance between aircraft's sources of noise and ground, and thus significantly reducing the noise levels for populated areas around airports. Also, descending with idle engines, fuel burn is reduced resulting in reduction of harmful emissions to the environment and fuel consumption to air carriers. …

Design And Optimization Of An Explosive Storage Policy In Internet Fulfillment Warehouses, Sevilay Onal

Dissertations

This research investigates the warehousing operations of internet retailers. The primary physical process in internet retail is fulfillment, which typically involves a large internet fulfillment warehouse (IFW) that has been built and designed exclusively for online sales and an accompanying parcel delivery network. Based on observational studies of IFW operations at a leading internet retailer, the investigations find that traditional warehousing methods are being replaced by new methods which better leverage information technology and efficiently serve the new internet retail driven supply chain economy. Traditional methods assume a warehouse moves bulk volumes to retail points where the bulks get broken …

Collaborative Rescheduling Of Flights In A Single Mega-Hub Network, Sufian Ikhmeis

Dissertations

Traditionally, airlines have configured flight operations into a Hub and Spoke network design. Using connecting arrival departure waves at multiple hubs these networks achieve efficient passenger flows. Recently, there has been much growth in the development of global single mega-hub (SMH) flight networks that have a significantly different operating cost structure and schedule design. These are located primarily in the Middle East and are commonly referred to as the ME3. The traditionalist view is that SMH networks are money losers and subsidized by sovereign funds.

This research studies and analyzes SMH networks in an attempt to better understand their flight …

Extracting Product Development Intelligence From Web Reviews, Ismail Artun Yagci

Dissertations

Product development managers are constantly challenged to learn what the consumer product experience really is, and to learn specifically how the product is performing in the field. Traditionally, they have utilized methods such as prototype testing, customer quality monitoring instruments, field testing methods with sample customers, and independent assessment companies. These methods are limited in that (i) the number of customer evaluations is small, and (ii) the methods are driven by a restrictive structured format. Today the web has created a new source of product intelligence; these are unsolicited reviews from actual product users that are posted across hundreds of …

Performance Analysis And Scheduling Strategies For Ambulatory Surgical Facilities, Xuanqi Zhang

Dissertations

Ambulatory surgery is a procedure that does not require an overnight hospital stay and is cost effective and efficient. The goal of this research is to develop an ASF operational model which allows management to make key decisions. This research develops and utilizes the simulation software ARENA based model to accommodate: (a) Time related uncertainties – Three system uncertainties characterize the problem (ii) Surgery time variance (ii) Physician arrival delay and (iii) Patient arrival delay; (b) Resource Capture Complexities – Patient flows vary significantly and capture/utilize both staffing and/or physical resources at different points and varying levels; and (c) Processing …

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 …

The Floating Contract Between Risk-Averse Supply Chain Partners In A Volatile Commodity Price Environment, Mojisola Kike Otegbeye

Dissertations

In this dissertation, two separate but closely related decision making problems in environments of volatile commodity prices are addressed. In the first problem, a risk-averse commodity user's purchasing policy and his risk-neutral supplier's pricing decision, where the user can purchase his needs through contract with his supplier as well as directly from the spot market, are analyzed. The commodity user is assumed to be the supplier's sole client, and the supplier can always expand capacity, at a cost to the user, to accommodate the user's demand in excess of initially reserved capacity.

In the more generalized second problem, both parties …

Resource Assignment In Short Life Technology Intensive (Slti) New Product Development (Npd), Randy A. Reagan

Dissertations

Enterprises managing multiple concurrent New Product Development (NPD) projects face significant challenges assigning staff to projects in order to achieve launch schedules that maximize financial returns. The challenge is increased with the class of Short Life Technology Intensive (SLTI) products characterized by technical complexity, short development cycles and short revenue life cycles. Technical complexity drives the need to assign staffing resources of various technical disciplines and skill levels. SLTI products are rapidly developed and launched into stationary market windows where the revenue life cycle is short and decreasing with any time-to-market delay. The SLTI-NPD project management decision is to assign …

End-Of-Life Analysis Of Nanotechnology Products, Sun Olapiriyakul

Dissertations

Previous research has shown that thermodynamic properties including melting point and specific heat capacity of nanomaterials may be higher than that of their corresponding bulk materials. The melting point elevation and specific heat capacity enhancement of nanomaterials may result in increased energy consumption and waste gases emission at the end-of-life (EOL) stage where the products containing nanomaterials are recycled by high temperature metal recovery (HTMR) process.

In this dissertation, the effect of physical characteristics of nanomaterials, referred to as physicochemical parameters, on their melting temperature and specific heat capacity was investigated. In addition, physical, chemical, and thermodynamic properties of nanomaterials …

Water Purification In Haiti : An Engineers Without Borders Project, Melissa Valoura

Theses

The objective of this thesis was to present the necessary steps to help a town in Haiti develop an organization focused on improving their water quality. It goes through the technology needed to create the organization and explains the procedures for implementing a charitable project in a foreign country. A narrative of the student project in Milot, Haiti, where students from the New Jersey Institute of Technology's Engineers Without Borders Chapter implemented a water purification project, explains the course of action that was taken and gives an example of a successful project. A summary of Haiti and its history paints …

Optimizing Replenishment Order Quantities In Uncoordinated Supply Chains, Atipol Kanchanapiboon

Dissertations

Many modern supply chains can be described as a series of uncoordinated suppliers. That is each supplier establishes their individual inventory and production policies on both the input and output sides. In these supply links there is minimal coordination between suppliers, and typically only prices and delivery guarantees are contracted. As a consequence, the inventory behavior and associated costs do not exhibit standard patterns. This makes it difficult to model and optimize these chains using classical inventory models. The common approach, therefore, for evaluating uncoordinated supply chains is to use Supply Chain Analytics software. These retrieve operational data from Enterprise …

Service Supply Chain Management : A Hierarchical Decision Modeling Approach, Roger Angel Solano-Cayama

Dissertations

A Service Supply Chain (SSC) may be described as a network of service provider facilities (in-house or outsourced), each of which is able to process one or more service tasks on an as needed basis. Two key characteristics of a SSC are (i) the business service is decomposable into several sequential tasks that can be processed by different service providers, and (ii) the primary capacity resource is skilled labor. SSCs are increasingly being developed by companies that experience a high variability of demand for their services (e.g., loan processing, analytical consulting services, emergency repair crews, claims processing, etc.). Typically, the …

Modeling Inventory And Responsiveness Costs In A Supply Chain, Robert Nearier

Dissertations

Evaluation of supply chain performance is often complicated by the various interrelationships that exist within the network of suppliers. Currently many supply chain metrics cannot be analytically determined. Instead, metrics are derived from monitoring historical data, which is commonly referred to as Supply Chain Analytics. With these analytics it is possible to answer questions such as: What is the inventory cost distribution across the chain? What is the actual inventory turnover ratio? What is the cost of demand changes to individual suppliers? However, this approach requires a significant amount of historical data which must be continuously extracted from the associated …

Determining Continual Improvement Process Methods Within Quality Management Systems, Diane M. Bové

Theses

Institutionalized standards require organizations to actively define and implement quality management systems, which includes active participation in continual improvement efforts. Interpretations and practices vary on implementation methodology.

Traditional views of quality do not integrate the technical disciplines into a defined science which would support a standardized approach for continual improvement implementation.

In order to optimize improvement efforts, a conceptual hypothesis is proposed to integrate quality through combining and collaborating implementation efforts of engineering, control, assurance, improvement and costs. The purpose of this thesis is to establish a roadmap to assist in choosing effective quality improvement methodologies and toolsets that assist …

On The Design For Flexibility Of Manufacturing Systems : A Stochiastic Approach, Nathapol Areeratchakul

Dissertations

Flexibility has emerged as one of the most strategic imperatives for company viability in today's fast paced economy. This realization has stimulated extensive research efforts in this area most of which have focused mainly on defining flexibility and its attributes, the need for flexibility and how to measure it. Nevertheless, despite the considerable amount of publications regarding flexibility and its related subjects, insufficient attention has been given to the optimality of the design for flexibility and the inherent needs to meet uncertainty. Bridging this gap is the intent of this work.

In this dissertation, developed analytical models are for the …

A Multi-Factor Model For Evaluating Manufacturing Defect Opportunities In Six Sigma Analysis, Karthikeyan Sundaram

Theses

Six Sigma Quality Analysis provides a structured method for manufacturing quality problems and defect opportunities to be defined, measured, analyzed, improved, and controlled. The technique is now being widely used in both the manufacturing and service industries to evaluate the classical "defects per million" metric. An underlying assumption of classical Six Sigma Analysis is that all defects contribute equally to the derivation of the defect rate. In the thesis, it is proposed that this assumption skews and often distorts the derived defect rate. Using classical Six Sigma the user is able to list a large number of often border-line defect …

Investigating Graphical User Interface Usability On Task Sequence And Display Structure Dependencies, Tirthankar Sengupta

Dissertations

Designing Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) requires the consideration of task sequence requirements (sequence of operations arising from task structures and application constraints) and display structure (layout of the elements of the interface) relationships. The basic purpose was to understand the usability differences of the interfaces through efficiency, motor performance, and search performance.

Thirty-two subjects performed experiments in four groups. The experiments differed in display structure and compatibility of task sequences. Subject mouse actions, mouse coordinates and eye positions were recorded. The derived measures, click efficiency, mouse traversal and eye visits to different areas of interest (namely the tool, object, and …

Simulation Analysis Of Anti-Rollover Mechanism For Vehicles, Mohib L. Raid

Theses

Rollover accidents are considered the most significant safety problems for all classes of light vehicles, especially pickups, Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV), Light Truck Vehicle (LTV) and vans. The main objective of the research is the design of a new mechanism able to keep the vehicle stable under various road conditions and high speeds, to prevent the vehicle from rolling over and to maintain the stability for the vehicle by creating an anti-rolling torque on the vehicle body capable of turning the vehicle smoothly to stable position.

Human Factors Approach Towards Improving Readability Of Bus Schedules, Anand Tharanathan

Theses

Due to an increasing concern over the readability of existing bus schedules of a public transportation agency the schedule format was redesigned. Two prototype schedules were designed based on the gathered information from the literature survey, focus group meetings and data from other public transportation agencies' schedules. One of the prototypes was designed by giving primary importance to the direction of travel and was named the directional prototype schedule. The other prototype was designed by giving primary importance to the day of the week, and was named weekday / weekend prototype schedule. A time based laboratory experiment and a subjective …

Supply Chain Risk Analysis, Venkata R. Kallepalli

Theses

A new decision support system is proposed and developed that will help sustaining business in a high-risk business environment. The system is developed as a web application to better integrate the supply chain entities and to provide a common platform for performing risk analysis in a supply chain. The system performs a risk analysis and calculates risk factor with each activity in the supply considering its interrelationship with other activities. Bayesian networks along with fault tree structures are embedded in the system and logical rules are used to perform a qualitative fault tree analysis, as the data required to calculate …

Case Studies In Disassembly Process Planning, Riteshkumar Dhimmar

Theses

The rapid advancement in technology started in last century and still continuing resulted in decreased life cycle of electronic products. It also resulted in increased product disposal rate and filling land fill space faster causing shortage of such space and consequently creates major environmental problems. So, since couple of decade environmental concern has focused on production process and environmental regulations imposed by government has watched industrial pollution. With government regulations to control environmental problems; consumers are also aware of adverse effects of product disposal forcing manufacturer to become more responsible for safe product disposal and recycling of used product.

A …

Supply Chain Risk Mitigation, Roshan R. Pai

Theses

In recent years, especially post 9/11, there has been an increasing awareness for securing business supply chains against probable disruptions. With globalization and lean inventories, the efficiency of supply chain has greatly enhanced over the years, but at the expense of new vulnerabilities. Supply chain vulnerabilities have resulted in disruptions to the economic stability and security. As a result, risk analysis and mitigation has now grown to become one of the key links to business stabilization. To ensure business continuity, it is necessary to identify key assets (physical and operational) within the supply chain and secure them against probable threats. …

Modeling And Analysis Of Hospital Facility Layout Problem, Amol Shrikrishna Padgaonkar

Theses

The optimal solution to any facility layout problem is an important aspect and a major concem as it involves significant material handling and transportation cost. The objective is to arrange the departments within the predefined facility boundaries in the way that the interaction between the functions is efficient and the overall movement cost is minimized. While facility layout problems have traditionally focused on manufacturing facilities, there has been little work on analyzing layouts for hospitals. The thesis focuses on hospital facility layout problems (HLP) to (i) minimize the movements of patients and (ii) minimize the movements of accompanying resources such …

Integrating Tolerances In G And M Codes Using Neural Networks, Vijay Kumar Sundareshan

Theses

Continuous integrated solutions from CAD down to the preparation of NC programs were developed in the recent years. However, if tolerances should be considered, the interaction of human experts is still necessary. A way to fill this gap in the production process is shown in this thesis. The study builds a relationship between the given design tolerances and including these tolerances in machining by generating respective G and M codes. The study focuses on physical phenomena and their inter-relationship while manufacturing. For example how the speed of machining, torque, power, depth of cut, etc. influences machining under specified tolerances. Artificial …

Analysis Of Costs And Delivery Intervals For Multiple-Release Software, High-Way Sun

Dissertations

Project managers of large software projects, and particularly those associated with Internet Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Customer (B2C) applications, are under pressure to capture market share by delivering reliable software with cost and timing constraints. An earlier delivery time may help the E-commerce software capture a larger market share. However, early delivery sometimes means lower quality. In addition, most of the time the scale of the software is so large that incremental multiple releases are warranted.

A Multiple-Release methodology has been developed to optimize the most efficient and effective delivery intervals of the various releases of software products, taking into consideration …

A Conceptual Framework Of Cost/Benefit Justification For Ergonomic Projects To Reduce Musculoskeletal Disorders In The Workplace, Nitipong Boon-Long

Dissertations

A framework for justifying ergonomic projects to the overall cost savings is developed which estimates the extent of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) exposures to a specific industry. A cost structure is developed to estimate the investment needed for an ergonomics program and the costs related to MSDs problems including workers' compensation costs, work-related costs, and labor turnover costs. Data was adopted from sources including Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP-3), and estimates suggested in OSHA's former Ergonomics Standard. Top fifteen manufacturing industries with the highest MSDs rates were selected to apply the framework. Results showed …