Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Shift Scheduling Optimization For Psu Library, Aayushi Gupta, Anju Babu, Lipishree Vrushabhendra, Shivani Purwar, Shravankumar Doosa

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Scheduling is important in any business as it creates an order and flow ensuring that all the tasks are covered at appropriate times. According to experts, scheduling determines the economics of a job, the quality of the team, and the skill-building and motivation of professionals doing the work. Therefore, it is essential to have optimized staff schedules to meet the requirements of staff availability, tasks coverage, shift equity and staff preferences. Though staff scheduling is of such prime importance, it is mostly implemented in traditional ways of manually creating spreadsheets and web calendars proving to be laborious and often leaving …

Technology Foresight: A Bibliometric Analysis To Identify Leading And Emerging Methods, Elizabeth Gibson, Tugrul U. Daim, Edwin Garces, Marina Dabic

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Foresight studies provide essential information used by the government, industry and academia for technology planning and knowledge expansion. They are complicated, resource-intensive, and quite expensive. The approach, methods, and techniques must be carefully identified and selected. Despite the global importance of foresight activities, there are no frameworks to help one develop and plan a proper foresight study. This paper begins Keywords: technology foresight; strategic foresight; adaptive foresight; Social Network Analysis (SNA); bibliometric tools; data mining; text mining. to close this gap by analyzing and comparing different schools of thought and updating the literature with the most current tools and methods. …

Reflections On Teaching System Dynamics Modeling To Secondary School Students For Over 20 Years, Diana Fisher

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper contains the description of a successful system dynamics (SD) modeling approach used for almost a quarter-century in secondary schools, both in algebra classes and in a year-long SD modeling course. Secondary school students have demonstrated an ability to build original models from the news, write technical papers explaining their models, and present a newfound understanding of dynamic feedback behavior to an audience. The educational learning theory and instructional methods used for both the algebra and modeling courses are detailed, with examples. Successful student SD modeling experiences suggest the SD approach can expand the sophistication of topics that secondary …

Organics To You - Optimization Of Produce Bins, Rassaniya Lerdphayakkarat, Chuan Chieh Lu, Jon Roschke, Juliana Suzuki, Jessie Truong

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Organics to You (www.organicstoyou.org ) is a produce delivery company that focuses on bringing organic local food from local farms straight to the homes, schools, and businesses of its clients. Each week a "Small Bin" is created using different varieties of local produce from various farms. Customers receive a bin that contains 12-14 varieties of produce with 2-6 "servings" of each variety (e.g., 1 melon, 4 apples, 1 head of lettuce, 2 lbs potatoes, etc).

Our objective is to optimize the contents of the “Small Bin”. The decision we want to make is how much of each variety do …

Optimizing Student Workforce Scheduling At Psu Office Of Information Technology (Oit), Agam Ebramsyah, Aishwarya Joy, Cody Miller, Jake Stevens, Priyanka Patil

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

A significant challenge for businesses of any size, is generating a work schedule that ensures adequate personnel coverage to ensure all aspects of the business are properly staffed, while preventing waste produced from having an excess number of employees working at a given time. The decision to manually create spreadsheets and work schedules that take into account availability, staffing requirements, and cost efficiency can become overwhelming and labor intensive. For Portland State University's Office of Information Technology (OIT), there is a significant challenge in scheduling student workers, while ensuring staffing requirements are met, student work hour restrictions are observed, and …

Technology Trajectory Mapping Using Data Envelopment Analysis: The Ex-Ante Use Of Disruptive Innovation Theory On Flat Panel Technologies, Dong-Joon Lim, Timothy R. Anderson

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this paper, we propose a technology trajectory mapping approach using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) that scrutinizes technology progress patterns from multidimensional perspectives. Literature reviews on technology trajectory mappings have revealed that it is imperative to identify key performance measures that can represent different value propositions and then apply them to the investigation of technology systems in order to capture indications of the future disruption. The proposed approach provides a flexibility not only to take multiple characteristics of technology systems into account but also to deal with various tradeoffs among technology attributes by imposing weight restrictions in the DEA model. …

A Framework For Technology Transfer Potential Assessment, Judith Estep, Tugrul U. Daim

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper is motivated by a need to move research into application, specifically in the utility industry. There are many challenges facing the industry: an aging infrastructure, a growing population, and aggressive energy efficiency targets are just a few examples. Many technologies exist or are in development but the rate at which they are being adopted is slow. Despite a clear need to apply research results to the utility industry, a cursory review of how research proposals are evaluated within the utility industry confirms that technology transfer is only peripherally addressed. In addition, there is no mechanism to quantitatively assess …

Comparative Analysis For Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping, Byung Sung Yoon, Antoine J. Jetter

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) is a semi-quantitative system modeling technique that is used in technology management to capture, synthesize and analyze expert and stakeholder knowledge for the purpose of technology assessment, product planning, and scenario studies. The resulting FCM models are generated in interviews, focus groups, or workshops and represent complex and dynamic systems as elements (so-called concepts) and cause-and-effect relationships. Researchers often compare FCM to investigate cognitive differences between individuals or groups, identify unique perspectives on a specific topic, or track changes in knowledge (i.e. learning). Using a variety of metrics, comparison studies investigate diverse characteristics of FCMs, such …

Technology Planning For Emerging Business Model And Regulatory Integration: The Case Of Electric Vehicle Smart Charging, Kelly Cowan, Tugrul U. Daim

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Smart grid has been described as the Energy Internet: Where Energy Technology meets Information Technology. The incorporation of such technology into vast existing utility infrastructures offers many advantages, including possibilities for new smart appliances, energy management systems, better integration of renewable energy, value added services, and new busiss models, both for supply-and demand-side management. This paper proposes to build upon existing roadmapping processes by considering an integrated set of factors, including policy issues, that are specifically tuned to the needs of smart grid and have not generally been considered in other types of roadmapping efforts. It will also incorporate expert …

Consistency Thresholds For Hierarchical Decision Model, Mustafa S. Abbas, Dundar F. Kocaoglu

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The objective of this research is to establish consistency thresholds linked to alpha (α) levels for HDM's (Hierarchical Decision Model) judgment quantification method. Measuring consistency in order to control it is a crucial and inseparable part of any AHP/HDM experiment. The researchers on the subject recommend establishing thresholds that are statistically based on hypothesis testing, and are linked to the number of decision variables and a level. Such thresholds provide the means with which to evaluate the soundness and validity of an AHP/HDM decision. The linkage of thresholds to a levels allows the decision makers to set an appropriate inconsistency …

Exploring The Adoption And Use Of The Smartphone Technology In Emerging Regions: Case Of Saudi Arabia, Fahad Aldhaban, Tugrul Unsal Daim, Robert R. Harmon

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper starts with a preliminary theoretical research model which is developed based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). A number of qualitative methods, namely brainstorming, focus group and individual interviews, have been conducted to evaluate, select and validate the existing factors, as well as introduce new factors, to identify only the most related factors to be included in the preliminary research model. A survey questionnaire has been developed and validated to survey general users of the Smartphone in Saudi Arabia. A web-based survey has been designed and sent through email to 5,000 randomly selected …

A Model Of Academic Community Entrepreneurship (Ace): Initiation, Innovation, And Impacts Of Picmet, Min-Seok Cha

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Entrepreneurship is the process of creating problem solving system that generate knowledge and provide value. It is also seen as an innovation engine. It could be applied in many fields including academic community. This attempt of creating academic community can be view as an academic entrepreneurship. The impactful process of academic entrepreneurship is worthwhile to be noticed and shared. Because PICMET has shown a model of building a sustainable scholar community and its coordinating organization in the international level, it could be a successful case of academic community entrepreneurship (ACE) Model. ACE is focused on creating new value of academic …

Technology Readiness, Market Readiness And The Triple Bottom Line: An Empirical Analysis Of Innovating Startups In An Incubator, Rainer Hasenauer, Andreas Gschöpf, Charles Weber

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper shares the experiences of INITS, a business incubator located in Vienna, Austria, which consults to startup firms in Austria and (with partners) in Europe. INITS has investigated the technology readiness levels and market readiness levels of 57 startup firms in a variety of industries, who are engaged in social or environmental entrepreneurship, where the impact motive prevails over the profit motive. Thus, INITS provides 57 longitudinal case studies of social and environmental innovation in startup firms that have gone through the complete incubation process. Thirteen of these cases underwent an 'open incubation' process developed by INITS. INITS has …

Survey Of Value Assessment Programs Within Transportation Construction Projects In U.S, Rafaa Khalifa, Robert Stewart

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

In order to deliver transportation project on time and within budget, project planners and decision makers need to understand the desirable outcomes of projects or programs to make intelligent decisions. In addition, they also need effective tools and techniques to guide those decisions. In development of a guide that identifies available tools and techniques to foster useable and improved practices for key stakeholders of transportation projects, this paper as a preliminary study assessed current utilization of project delivery value improvement programs such as value engineering (VE), risk analysis/management (RA/RM) and constructability reviews (CR) for transportation projects. To determine whether states …

Managing The Ethical And Risk Implications Of Rapid Advances In Artificial Intelligence: A Literature Review, Taylor Meek, Husam Barham, Nader Beltaif, Amani Kaadoor, Tanzila Akhter

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The development of emergent technologies carries with it ethical issues and risks. We review ways to better manage the ethical issues and risks of one emerging technology: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Depending on how AI's development is managed, it may have beneficial and/or deleterious effects. The processing capacity of Tianhe-2, the world's fastest supercomputer, by some measures, exceeds the processing capacity of a single human brain. but at a prohibitive processing/power consumption ratio and physical size. Given the current pace of AI R&D activities, some estimates in the literature suggest that the technology could become capable of self-determination and super intelligence …

A Hierarchical Decision Model (Hdm) For Exploring The Adoption Of Electronic Health Records, Caroline Mudavadi, Liliya Hogaboam, Tugrul Unsal Daim

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Information systems have been making a noticeable entrance in the healthcare, although their adoption has been slow. This paper examines the factors influencing the electronic healthcare records (EHR) adoption by modeling behavioral intention of physicians towards EHR adoption. Three main criteria: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and external factors along with the subcriteria, are studied by the authors. Analytical hierarchical process (AHP) model is tested through the expert judgment quantification of physicians in Portland metro area. The results showed high importance of the Perceived Ease of Use criteria on the behavioral intensions of physicians towards EHR adoption. Search ability …

Impacts To Productivity In Metal Stud Framing, And The Hanging And Finishing Of Gypsum Drywall, Gerald H. Williams Jr., Timothy R. Anderson

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Stud Framing, Drywall, and Tape and Finishing trade-work is a major component of every building project. Labor productivity is the largest single variable affecting of the Framing and Drywall contractors' cost of performance. In spite of these facts, no major study of labor productivity in this major construction trade has previously been done. This study was undertaken to fill this gap in the literature; specifically to investigate external impacts to labor productivity in this construction sector. The study measured the impact of thirty-eight (38) variables on 226 separate projects. The study found that poor quality design documents, unexpected labor congestion, …

Technology Evaluation Of Robotics Technology In Power Industry, Byung Sung Yoon, Judith Estep, Terry Oliver, Robert Grizzi

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The electric power utilities as important social infrastructures should be operated stably without any failure in supply of electricity. For stable operation, it is necessary to input huge amount of resource and investment throughout power generation, transmission and distribution facilities. Particularly, constant inspection and maintenance of the facilities requires highly skilled manpower and advanced technologies. In spite of endless efforts, the electric power industry is facing serious challenges from social, economic and environmental problems. In this regard, a number of robotic systems have been tested and applied for inspection and maintenance in nuclear power plants and high voltage power transmission …

Understanding Risk Perception Using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, Pei Zhang, Antoine J. Jetter

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

When making decision that can have far-researching effects, such as governmental policies or decisions on new technologies, decision-makers use their understanding of the risks that are associated with their choices to guide their decisions. Measuring how people perceive risks can be helpful for understanding and possibly improving the decision-making process. Building on a review of existing methods for investigating risk perceptions, this paper suggests Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM) as a method for investigating differences in risk perception among stakeholders and stakeholder groups. The approach is illustrated with an example of wildfire risk perceptions. Results suggest that FCM can contribute to …

Decision-Making Model On Dslr Camera Choosing For 18 ∼ 30 Years Old College Students, Pei Zhang, Chih-Jen Yu, Jiabing Zhang, Monticha Khammuang, Dundar F. Kocaoglu

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

A 3-level Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM) 111 is established in this paper to help 18-30 year old college students make a decision of choosing a desirable digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) from 5 famous DSLR camera manufacturers. The HDM has been utilized in this paper, because it measures the relative contribution of each criterion to the final decision based on quantified judgments of the respondents. A group of experts, consists of 12 male and 9 female provided their quantified judgements with different weighted value in each element at each level of the decision hierarchy. By applying desirable functions, there was …

Developing A Hierarchical Decision Model To Evaluate Nuclear Power Plant Alternative Siting Technologies, Marwan Mossa Lingga

Dissertations and Theses

A strong trend of returning to nuclear power is evident in different places in the world. Forty-five countries are planning to add nuclear power to their grids and more than 66 nuclear power plants are under construction.

Nuclear power plants that generate electricity and steam need to improve safety to become more acceptable to governments and the public. One novel practical solution to increase nuclear power plants' safety factor is to build them away from urban areas, such as offshore or underground. To date, Land-Based siting is the dominant option for siting all commercial operational nuclear power plants. However, the …

Consistency Analysis For Judgment Quantification In Hierarchical Decision Model, Mustafa Sulaiman Abbas

Dissertations and Theses

The objective of this research is to establish consistency thresholds linked to alpha (α) levels for HDM’s (Hierarchical Decision Model) judgment quantification method. Measuring consistency in order to control it is a crucial and inseparable part of any AHP/HDM experiment. The researchers on the subject recommend establishing thresholds that are statistically based on hypothesis testing, and are linked to the number of decision variables and (α) level. Such thresholds provide the means with which to evaluate the soundness and validity of an AHP/HDM decision. The linkage of thresholds to (α) levels allows the decision makers to set an appropriate inconsistency …

Exploratory Study Of The Adoption And Use Of The Smartphone Technology In Emerging Regions: Case Of Saudi Arabia, Fahad Abdulaziz Aldhaban

Dissertations and Theses

Users' acceptance of a new information technology (IT) is considered to be a key determinant factor of its success. Also, studying users' adoption and use of new IT plays an important role in determining users' needs and reducing business risk, especially in industry segments with rapid changes in IT such as Smartphone technology. Such rapid evolution is influencing consumers' behaviors, their daily lifestyle, the manner of conducting their activities and their ways of consuming and using information.

Smartphone technology holds a promising future with an expected global market that could reach US $258 billion by the end of year 2015 …

On Valuing Biopharmaceutical Product Pipelines: An Effectuation Model And Evidence, Mark J. Ahn, Anne S. York, Wei Wu, Yulianto Suharto, Tugrul Unsal Daim

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

New creative approaches are needed to manage emerging biotechnology innovations, regulations, and payor environments to enhance product pipeline productivity, valuation, and risk management. Biopharmaceutical firms must make dynamic resource allocation decisions on their relative levels of internal R&D and external strategic alliances in furthering their pipelines. As the predominant method of using discounted cash flow (DCF) methodologies may lead to chronic underinvestment and performance, we evaluated the integration of traditional DCF with an effectuation model of analysis. Unlike traditional financial models that begin with the end goal of assumed known cash flows and recursively solve for portfolio optimization, the effectuation …

The Prediction Predicament, William "Ike" Eisenhauer

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

The article focuses on the prediction of predicament in terms of forecasting at industrial engineering level. Topics discussed include business optimize resources via forecasting; audience who cannot comprehend the methodology used for forecasting in healthcare operations; and use of forecasting for performance measurement.

If You Commit, That Old Gown Looks Just Fine, William "Ike" Eisenhauer

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, the author discusses issues pertaining to improvement of health systems, comparing the systems with Victorian ball gown. He states that significant elements of the improvement processes of the systems like removal of clutter, and workflow and paperwork, and mentions roles of industrial and systems engineering beyond business process improvement. He highlights the need of commitment for improving the systems by business enterprises.

Cloud Service Adoption Decision, Greg Wease, Chih-Jen Yu, Kwasi Boateng, Leong Chan

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many organizations with an IT infrastructure consisting of a combination of hardware and software, look for ways to achieve greater efficiencies, cost-savings associated with maintenance and upkeep, ease of use, while maintaining a great level of security. The main idea behind this research paper is to better understand the decision-making process with respect to how an IT organization evaluates its needs and chooses between different computer-hosting environments, i.e.: public cloud, private cloud, hybrid – combination of public and private cloud, lastly, an in-house platform, which is hosted internal to the organization and/or via a datacenter. A widely-accepted definition of “Cloud …

Assessing The Effectiveness Of Big Data Initiatives, Nayem Rahman, Fahad Aldhaban

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is a great enthusiasm with the prospect of big data among business and industry leaders, academia and researchers. A lot of big data tools and technologies have emerged recently to capture, store, process and analyze big data. One remarkable achievement is that a handful of open source technologies have been introduced by Apache Hadoop Foundation that allows any organization to undertake big data projects. Many big data projects have been implemented during the last few years. This paper explores the benefits achieved with those projects. Big data has been applied in diverse fields including scientific and medical discovery projects, …

Supporting Sustainable Technology Cluster Development: A Performance Measurement Problem, Elizabeth Gibson

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Managers require metrics to measure organizational performance. However, metrics used by organizations that support technology cluster development are poorly understood in the literature. The most frequently referenced indicator for cluster development is regional economic and jobs data. These macro level indicators are not sufficient to measure the performance inside the cluster, leaving champions and policy makers to struggle with ad-hoc trial and error experimentation. The difficulty in defining and developing a performance measurement system is addressed. This paper lays the groundwork for improved approaches towards measuring the performance of technology cluster initiatives.

Siting A Wind Farm In Oregon: Considering A Hierarchical Decision Model With Four Scenarios, Diane Yates

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper primarily serves two purposes: first, it looks to develop a methodology that takes scenarios and certain hard-to-measure intangibles such as politics, social impact, and even religion; as well as more tangible and measurable variables such as environmental impacts, cost and types of materials, storage and wind turbine technologies, to name a few, that then could be used as input to a decision-making model on where to build a wind farm. The hierarchical decision model (HDM) then analyzes these variables, based on an independent judging panel, in order to come up with a recommendation for the best site on …