Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Using Value-Focused Thinking For Engineered Resilient Systems, Colin A. Small

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The DoD needs their systems to be resilient in the face of an ever changing world. To increase resilience in future systems the DoD has created a program called Engineered Resilient Systems. Resilience can be broken down into two parts, mission and platform resilience. Mission resilience is the ability of a system to repel, resist, absorb, and recover from environments and threats that occur on planned missions. Platform resilience is the ability of a system platform to adapt to new missions and new threats.

The University of Arkansas department of Industrial Engineering is working for the ERS program researching resilience. …

Improving Reliability Of Medical Device Tracking Using Unique Device Identification, John A. Bonfanti

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The term “disruptive innovation” has been the buzzword of industries looking to create technological advancements in their respective fields ever since the term was first coined in 1995. In order to invest in the future of the industry, companies are beginning to focus on new, innovative ideas that come into the market as a low-cost alternative to the sustaining innovations currently in place. Similar business-models can be seen in the healthcare industry, as physicians look to disruptive innovations to provide methods of diagnosis and treatment that are easier to perform and maintain. Companies, from medical device manufacturers to the hospitals …

Modeling The Impact Of Rfid Technology On The Healthcare Supply Chain, Travis B. Peter

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Due to increasing competition in the healthcare industry, healthcare providers must find ways to reduce their costs of operation or potentially lose customers to more affordable options. For many years, the healthcare supply chain has significantly lagged behind the retail supply chain in terms of supply chain efficiency. Certain disruptive technologies that have become widespread in the retail supply chain have yet to be integrated by a significant number of healthcare providers, and as a result, there are large opportunities for improvements in the healthcare supply chain that could lead to both cost and time savings. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) …

Statistical Learning Tools With Food Science, Jessica C. Hacker

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The food science discipline has many issues requiring research within academia in order to protect the food that gets distributed from industry. The team within the Center for Food Safety at the University of Arkansas’ Division of Agriculture has been studying the gastrointestinal microbial community in broiler chickens in order to control pathogenic bacteria and improve gut health within the chickens to promote a healthy adult microbiota. This has many positive effects on the quality of the chickens. The team performs a standard method of analysis on every experiment run within a software called QIIME to determine if a treatment …

Developing A Risk Analysis Model To Improve Study Abroad Awareness, Tyler Spain

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As international education opportunities increase in popularity among U.S. college students (McMurtrie, 2007), it is becoming more and more necessary for study abroad organizations to be aware of the risks students face as they travel abroad. While some international cities are riskier than others, it can be difficult to distinguish between cities which truly carry a high degree of risk for visiting students, and which cities are only perceived to be risky based on various personal misconceptions. The University of Arkansas Office of Study Abroad & International Exchange currently lacks a way to quantifiably analyze the risk of study abroad …

Developing A Logistics Risk Assessment Tool, Daniel C. Fritsche

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Economies around the world have thrived in the wake of the development and keen understanding of effective supply chain management practices. As a result, organizations have become more dependent on other organizations to move their products and services to completion due to complex sourcing and shipping arrangements that have precipitated from the formation of sophisticated supply chains. A supply chain is in general a flow of products or services. When this flow is disrupted or halted, disastrous consequences can ensue. In the worst cases, such as with a disaster relief organization like the American Red Cross, disruptions in supply chains …

Engineered Resilient Systems Model Applied To Network Design, Zephan W. Wade

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS) is a Department of Defense (DoD) program focusing on the effective and efficient design and development of resilient complex engineered systems throughout their lifecycle. There is growing literature with qualitative definitions of resilience and quantitative models for systems, but these focus typically on systems with one performance measure. In application, many systems have multiple functions and multiple performance measures. This research uses a quantitative resilience framework for ERS that includes system design options, reliability, external threats, vulnerabilities, responses, and consequences assessed on multiple system performance measures. This paper applies the ERS framework to designing resilient networks.

Predicting Nonadherence Behavior Towards Mammography Screening Guidelines, Brian L. Trussell

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The goal of this research is to examine factors associated with nonadherence behavior toward mammography screening among U.S. women. The 2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey data was used for this study, allowing the model to represent a robust sample. A logistic regression model was developed to gain an understanding of influencing factors, including demographic, health-related and behavioral characteristics. Further analysis with logistic regression models stratified by age were conducted to control for the effect of age. The results show that demographic and health related information such as income, number of children, and BMI category can help intervention …

Baseball Portfolio Optimization, Keegan Henderson

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Portfolio optimization techniques are methods used to determine the best set of stocks in which to invest. Mean-variance optimization, one method of portfolio optimization, attempts to find the set of portfolios that have the maximum expected return at each level of risk (Jorion, 1992). Another technique, Monte Carlo simulation, uses random number generation to create a probability distribution of potential returns (Kwak & Ingall, 2007). This can be used to determine the risk of potential investments not returning a certain desired amount (Thompson & McLeod, 2009). Though traditionally used in the world of finance, these tools can also be utilized …

Modeling Supply Chain Resiliency, Jeff A. Hazel

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Engineered Resilient Systems (ERS) is a Department of Defense (DoD) program focusing on the effective and efficient design and development of complex engineered systems throughout their life cycle. There is a growing literature with qualitative definitions of resilience and quantitative models for systems with one performance measure. This paper uses a quantitative resilience framework (the Framework for ERS) that includes system design options, reliability, threats, vulnerabilities, responses, and consequences assessed in multiple system performance measures. The framework assists in establishing a model for any system to evaluate resiliency. This paper applies this framework using Multiple Objective Decision Analysis (MODA) to …

Essays In Physicians Preference Items And Inventory Management Within The Healthcare Supply Chain, Mohammad A. Shbool

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work is composed of a number of topics in the healthcare area, which are approached separately with appropriate methodologies. The two topics deal with physician preference items via two different approaches. The first one investigates stock keeping unit (SKU) proliferation in healthcare organizations due to physician preference items (PPI). It captures perspectives of physicians and supply chain professionals about this problem through two surveys. The second topic builds a decision-making framework for the PPI selection process that can be used by healthcare organizations to make more objective decisions. A Multi-criteria decision making technique is implemented to illustrate the framework.

A Tabu Search, Augment-Merge Heuristic To Solve The Stochastic Location Arc Routing Problem, Tiffany L. Yang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The location arc routing problem (LARP) is a network optimization problem combining strategic facility location decisions and tactical or operational vehicle routing decisions for customer demand located on arcs of a network. The LARP seeks to locate facilities, or depots, and create vehicle delivery routes to minimize costs. The total cost is comprised of three components: fixed facility locations costs, fixed route creation (or vehicle acquisition) costs, and variable arc traversal costs. The applications of the LARP are varied and often include public services such as mail delivery, garbage collection, and street sweeping. In all of these applications, the magnitude …

Risk Estimation Toward A Natural History Model For Low Grade Glioma Patients, Anh Thi Hoang Pham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Glioma is a common type of primary brain tumor that represents 28% of all brain tumors and 80% of malignant tumors. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gliomas account for 53%, 35% and 29% of all brain tumors (68%, 74% and 81% of malignant brain tumors) among children (aged 0-14), teenagers (aged 15-19) and young adults, respectively. Gliomas are often diagnosed through radiological imaging and histopathology. There are two main groups of gliomas following World Health Organization’s classification: Low grade gliomas (LGG), or grade I and II gliomas; and high grade gliomas …

Use Of Response Surfaces In The Design Of A Simple Step Stress Accelerated Test Plan, Alexander H. Wong

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In designing accelerated testing plans, cost is a factor that is missing in much of the literature. This paper explicits considers cost by developing an optimization model with the objective to minimize costs for a simple step stress accelerated test plan. Two methodologies are employed. One is an optimization approach in which an attempt is made to quantify the behavior of a series-parallel hardware system over all stages of testing using a response surface, and then an optimization model is used to determine the settings for stresses and failure mode modifications for all stages of testing prior to the start …

Using Precision Agriculture Field Data To Evaluate Combine Harvesting Efficiency, Justin Carroll

Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology Undergraduate Honors Theses

Soybean crops must be harvested during a limited time period using expensive combines and associated equipment. Maximizing combine field efficiency, the ratio of the actual harvesting capacity to theoretical harvesting capacity, is an important objective of machinery managers. Spatial and temporal yield data from a 2012 CaseIH 8120 Axial-Flow combine equipped with a 30-foot MacDon D-65 Draper header and the Case-IH Advanced Farming System (AFS) yield monitoring system were used to examine field efficiency when harvesting soybean in three Arkansas Delta irrigated soybean fields during the 2015 season. Time efficiencies (TE) in the three fields ranged from 72.9 to 85.8% …

Modeling Information Reliability And Maintenance: A Systematic Literature Review, Daysi A. Guerra Garcia

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Operating a business efficiently depends on effective everyday decision-making. In turn, those decisions are influenced by the quality of data used in the decision-making process, and maintaining good data quality becomes more challenging as a business expands. Protecting the quality of the data and the information it generates is a challenge faced by many companies across all industrial sectors. As companies begin to use data from these large data bases they will need to begin to develop strategies for maintaining and assessing the reliability of the information they generate using this data. A considerable amount of literature exists on data …

College Football Rankings: Maximum Flow Model, Jaymin Patel

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

College football is a very popular sport in the United States. There is much debate over the college football rankings every week. A maximum flow network is implemented into the CMS+ rankings to observe the effects it has on the college football rankings.

Simulation Analysis On Alternatives To Accelerate The Passenger Flow In Security Checkpoints, Maria Luisa Janer Rubio

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study consists of discrete event simulation analysis of two alternative solutions designed to mitigate the congestion of passengers in the exit roller area of the security checkpoints. We study the particular case of Orlando International Airport, where this problem is prominent due to the high proportion of passengers who travel for leisure purposes. We developed three simulation models to represent the current configuration and the two alternative solutions. We compare the solutions to the current configuration by observing the response of the passenger throughput and passenger system time when performing a sensitivity on the percentage of passengers throughput. We …

Preventive Maintenance Decision Modeling In Health And Service Systems, Mahboubeh Madadi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the preventive maintenance decision modeling in healthcare and service systems. In the first part of this dissertation, some issues in preventive health decisions for breast cancer are addressed, and in the second part, the required characteristics for preventive maintenance of an unreliable queuing system are derived.

Adherence to cancer screening is the first issue that is addressed in this dissertation. Women’s adherence or compliance with mammography screening remained low in the recent years. In this dissertation, we first develop a design-based logistic regression model to quantify the probability of adherence to screening schedules based on women’s …

Understanding Technology Diffusion And Spatial Accessibility In The Home Healthcare Industry, Mehmet Serdar Kilinç

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Home healthcare is becoming an important alternative to institutionalized care. It not only reduces costs but also increases health outcomes and patient satisfaction. However, the availability and efficiency of home healthcare services need to be improved as the aging population increases in the US. Hence, understanding home healthcare utilization and access are the essential steps to develop strategies ensuring effective and sustainable services to patients.

This research aims to study two main issues in the US home healthcare system: diffusion and long-term impacts of home telehealth and potential spatial accessibility of home healthcare services. Home telehealth is a promising technology …

An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search Heuristic For The Inventory Routing Problem With Time Windows, Mina Hadianniasar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research addresses an integrated distribution and inventory control problem which is faced by a large retail chain in the United States. In their current distribution network, a direct shipping policy is used to keep stores stocked with products. The shipping policy specifies that a dedicated trailer should be sent from the warehouse to a store when the trailer is full or after five business days, whichever comes first. Stores can only receive deliveries during a window of time (6 am to 6 pm). The retail chain is seeking more efficient alternatives to this policy, as measured by total transportation, …

Creating Quality Metrics For The Capital Facilities Delivery Industry, Kelsey D. Lamb

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A standard for industry-wide quality metrics, similar to safety metrics, for the capital facilities delivery industry is investigated and developed with the goal to motivate industry-wide adoption of this new quality metric program. A survey of the literature found key differences between capital facilities and other industries, mainly that other industries focus on the quality of the product while capital facilities focus on maintaining the cost and schedule of a project. Creating a framework that can be used across the industry can potentially lead to uniform improvement of quality for the entire industry. Quality is defined for the capital facilities …

Value Focused Inland Waterway Infrastructure Investment Decisions, Othman Boudhoum

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Maritime transportation functions as the backbone of world trade. The U.S. inland waterway transportation system is comprised of 12,000 miles of navigable waterways that connect and move freight between the global supply chain and thirty eight States. When investing in inland waterway infrastructure, we should aim to maximize all benefits associated with the investment including flood protection, water supply, hydropower generation, recreation, and environmental impact benefits. We formulate an initial qualitative value model for the inland waterway infrastructure investment decision based on a value-focused thinking approach which allows us to holistically evaluate project investment alternatives. Given limited resources, a portfolio …

Analysis Of Portable Charging Systems For Mobile Devices Utilizing Today's Technology, Dylan Ashley

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

With the progression of technological advances, electronic devices are becoming increasingly smaller while simultaneously becoming increasing powerful. Consumer demand for a cheaper, longer lasting battery life challenges today’s engineers to continually develop a battery and its circuitry with increasing efficiency without compromising performance. Developing an affordable, efficient external battery pack has been the marketable solution, but the question is whether or not the existing external battery packs available are meeting the wants and desires of the end consumer. The answer is partially in that my research confirms that the current solution is not ideal; however, efficiency has been increased as …

Comparison Of Low-Temperature Co-Fired Ceramic And Direct Bonded Copper For Single Ended Primary Inductance Topology, Kristopher Cody Johnson

Electrical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

This work examines the thermal dissipation characteristics of Low-Temperature Co-fired Ceramic (LTCC) and Direct Bonded Copper (DBC) with the implementation of a Single Ended Primary Inductance Converter (SEPIC) topology. The advantages and disadvantages of the two substrates will be explored in addition to a description of the design and control of the SEPIC. It will be shown that the DBC implementation is superior with regards to thermal dissipation, but that LTCC has advantages in high- density packaging, RF applications, and embedded components. These substrates and converters provide many advantages in industrial applications that include automotive and grid level implementations. Additional …

Maritime Transportation Research Bank, Valeria A. Remon Perez

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The maritime transportation system is an important component of the United States’ (U.S.) economy, from commerce activities to freight movement to disaster’ relief. The annual impact of the maritime transportation system on the U.S. national economy is reported as approximately $649 billion of the total U.S. gross domestic product (U.S. Department of Transportation Maritime Administration, n.d.). This impact is attributed to activities related to the movement of goods and people. Indeed, the maritime transportation system plays an important role in international trade by transporting goods such as coal and farm products, which are common commodities for foreign and domestic commerce …

Prioritizing Interdictions On A Shortest Path Network, Hayden D. Summerhill

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

We consider a variant to the shortest path network interdiction problem with symmetric information from Israeli and Wood (Networks 40, 97-111,2002) which arises in the context of nuclear smuggling prevention. In the basic shortest path interdiction problem, an interdictor has a limited number of interdictions with which he can lengthen arcs in a network in order to maximize the length of the network’s shortest path. This thesis considers the case in which the interdictor does not make all of the interdictions at once. Rather, the interdictor must make the interdictions over a set number of periods. Each period has a …

Sensitivity Analysis Of Dredge Fleet Scheduling, Kaitlin Denny

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Each year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is tasked with conducting maintenance dredging at hundreds of project sites throughout the country. The USACE must take into account factors such as environmental windows, increased transportation distances, increased operational time because of reduced vessel speeds, and personnel availability constraints. Environmental windows are intended to minimize the environmental impact of dredging while protecting biological resources and their habitats from potentially detrimental effects. The objective of this research is to perform sensitivity analysis of the performance of this model (cubic yards dredged) and how it is impacted by individual environmental window elimination …

Inventory Management And Control "For A Cause", John Michael Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Companies today are changing the culture of business and beginning to involve more than just labor and money in overall decisions. Just as sustainability issues and humanitarian logistics are gaining popularity, so is the idea of using business to make a difference on society in addition to making a profit. As companies position themselves across the globe to make an impact, they employ people in third-world environments that create uncertainties on both the supply and demand sides. Also, the idea of strategically planning work with the goal of minimizing costs has been replaced by companies wanting to give more work …

Incorporating Environmental And Social Factors Into Decision-Making Of An Oil And Gas Industry To Improve Sustainability, Gaurav Dabhadkar

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The energy industry (including the oil and gas industry) is facing unparalleled scrutiny and demands from stakeholders including investors, regulators (industry and environmental), communities, and other stakeholders. Sustainable development is one of the major concerns of the oil and gas industry. Companies are seeking to increase sustainability of their operations by considering environmental and Social concerns in addition to economic concerns. Oil and gas companies need to take decisions at different stages of the product life cycle (e.g. planning, design, exploration, production, and clean-up) which have direct or indirect impact on the organization's objectives. Addressing economic, technical, Social, and environmental …