Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

A Novel Approach Towards Usability Studies For Visual Search Tasks In Graphical User Interface Applications Using The Activity Theory Approach, Tirthankar Sengupta

Theses

The field of Human Computer Interaction still strives for a generalized model of visual search tasks (icon search, menu search, text search, label search, search through hypertext and feature recognition). The existing models of visual search, in spite of being impressive, are limited under certain perspectives due to lack of generality. The thesis tries to provide a holistic approach for the modeling of visual search tasks in graphical user interfaces from the Activity Theory (AT) perspective with the aim of rendering a theoretical bridge between HCI and Psychology. A detailed review of literature from the variegated discipline contributing to the …

Simulation Modeling For Integrated E-Supply Chain Management, Pornsarun Wirojanagud

Theses

E-supply chain management is an emerging area of interest as companies begin to explore the Internet's potential to restructure supply chain relationships. The environmental impact of e-supply chain management is a critical issue towards sustainability. This thesis discusses and models an integrated e-supply chain network accounting for material and information flows throughout the supply chain in order to analyze the environmental implications and tradeoffis with other system characteristics. The network structure has complex interactions between various entities. In order to understand and analyze dynamic performance, a discrete-event simulation approach is utilized. An integrated tool was developed using the Arena simulation …

Development And Integration Of A Decision Support System For Electronic Outsourcing Into Telemanufacturing Service Provider, Vikram Batra

Theses

The use of computers and Information Technology enables manufacturers, especially small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) to improve productivity and increase manufactuning flexibility. Telemanufactuning or manufacturing in virtual environment is one of the infrastructures that facilitate the use of information superhighways and computer technology to attain these goals. Broadly defined, Telemanufactuning is the utilization of services accessed via communication networks and across information superhighways to perform in real time, operations and processes essential to the design and production of items. It can be a key enabler for decentralized manufacturing using global resources and expert design teams. In addition to updating …

Assessing The Impact Of Design For Environment Guidelines : A Case Study Of Office Telephones, Hussam Fawzi Al-Okush

Theses

This research addresses a fundamental question: How much of the improvement in a product's environmental performance is directly attributable to the Design for Environment (DFE) tools and guidelines, and how much results simply from other design objectives or enabling technologies? The research examines four generations of a business telephone over the last thirty years, including the current generation, which has been designed using DEE guidelines. A lifecycle assessment (LCA) and demanufacturing analysis were performed on each of the first three generations to determine various technology and non-DEE trends. This information was used to forecast the progression to a 1997 non-DEE …

Metrics For Estimating The Product Disassembly Effort, Pradeep Kumar Yedlarajaiah

Theses

The concepts of environmentally friendly manufacturing and ecological reuse of materials have resulted in an increase in the number of disposed products that are disassembled. Moreover, the imposition of EPA regulations is forcing companies to invest in methods for protecting the environrnent. The first strategy in this vein is material recycling. The issue of recycling became important because of the limited landfill space, diminishing natural resources, environmental pollution due to dumping of products containing hazardous materials. Likewise, it is projected that the cost of extracting materials from natural resources is going to be much more expensive when compared to reclaiming …

Loss Detection In The Dairy Industry., Michael Quealy

Theses

In any waste management program, the primary objective must be minimizing product loss without having an affect on product quality. Good waste management is recognized as good manufacturing practice and optimizes the processes to gain the highest possible yield from the available raw materials. A good waste management program must involve the daily monitoring of effluent from the plant for volume and strength. This data needs to be analyzed sufficiently to obtain clear pictures of what problems are present and where they are originating. If this is achieved then the task of reducing the product loss is made much easier. …

A Study To Analyze And Improve Mechanical And Electro-Mechanical Designs Using Design For Quality Manufacturability (Dfqm) Technique, Bhavani P. Veerapaneni

Theses

The competitive nature of modern manufacturing demands that an innovative approach be used to build advanced and robust designs. Shortening the product development time, which is the period from initial design to full production, is a priority to most manufacturers today. Design for Quality Manufacturability (DFQM) is a methodology to address manufacturing / assembly quality issues during product design. As a consequence DFQM helps shorten the product development time.

The DFQM methodology addresses the issue of quality manufacturability (QM) - the likely hood that defects will occur during the manufacture of a product in a standard plant. The DFQM architecture …

A Decision Support System For The Equipment Selection Of Robotic Manufacturing Cells, Lars Johan Resare

Theses

Considering the principles of concurrent engineering, a Decision Support System (DSS) is developed to aid in the equipment selection of robotic manufacturing cells. The objective is to synchronously and simultaneously select proper equipment for the cell to provide efficient performance, subject to operational and budgetary constraints.

The DSS consists of several modules, including a data base that houses the specifications of equipment available in the market place, a first cut selection module, and an optimization engine. In its development, the optimization scheme utilizes analytical models and algorithms that capture different sources of variability in production, such as tolerances, clearances and …

Analysis Of Surface Texture Parameters And Cutting Forces In Milling Operations, Preetesh U. Munshi

Theses

It has been known and understood that milling is quite a complicated process being a multi-point cutting tool operation. Each Surface texture is complex and requires different functions of forces to get the optimized Surface Texture. The challenge faced here is to devise any form of relation between the Surface Texture and the Milling Operating parameters (Spindle Speed, Feed rate, Depth of Cut), Cutting forces and the Milling Operating parameters and also between the Surface Texture and the Cutting Forces.

This Research study was conducted to determine the effect of the Operating Parameters on Surface Texture and Cutting forces and …

Design Improvement Using Reverse Analysis In Design For Quality Manufacturability, Vikram V. Datla

Theses

The competitive needs of modern manufacturing demands that innovative approaches be used to gain an edge over the competitors. least Product design is one of the key dimensions wazzu in which companies can excel. Shortening the product design cycle so as to rapidly launch defect free products, is the goal of most companies. Design for Quality Manufacturability (DFQM) is a technique used to evaluate the quality manufacturability of a product at the design stage, so as to eliminate quality problems during production.

DFQM provides a means for relating the activities of quality improvement, product design and manufacturability analysis. The basis …

Design, Simulation And Fabrication Of A Mems In-Situ Contactless Sensor To Detect Plasma Induced Damage During Reactive Ion Etching, Subramanian Ganesh

Theses

The present trend in the semiconductor industry is towards submicron devices. An inevitable process technique in achieving this is by reactive ion etching of the polysilicon gate. During RIE, the gate oxide may get damaged due to several causes. One of the main causes of the damage is the non-uniformity of the plasma. It is reported that these plasma inconsistencies are mainly due to electrode design and that they create spatial plasma potential fluctuation. These fluctuations are reported to be in the range of 10-20 Volts. By providing an in-situ monitoring of the wafers, the reliability of the device could …

Measuring The Need For Manufacturing Flexibility And Evaluating Its Economic Benefits, Navin Karwande

Theses

Flexible systems are known of enabling organizations to take advantage of diversified products, low volume production items with short life-cycles. They also improve the ability to respond to market changes. Flexibility has thus become a strategic manufacturing need in recent years.

Because of the high initial capital outlay involved, the selection of the appropriate flexible solution has become a critical issue. This thesis proposes a methodology to determine the most cost effective and feasible flexibility strategy. A flexibility audit is developed to analyze and evaluate the changes taking place in a facility's environment. These changes and a measurement scheme is …

Integrating Key Functions In Product Development : A Conceptual Product Development Model For The Korean Context, Jong-Wook Kim

Theses

The high-tech market is characterized by market uncertainty, technology uncertainty and rapid change. To survive in this risky high-tech market, a company must create competitively effective product development practices that meet its own unique needs and circumstances.

One effective practice is cross-functional integration in the product development process. The advantages of integration include a shortened time to market, successful transformation of research results to production, productivity improvement, innovation project success, and high-quality problem solutions. However, these advantages are rarely obtained in the current product development practices of Korean companies. Their product development efforts are generally characterized by time consuming sequential …

Analysis Of A Design For Its Quality Manufacturability In Terms Of Misalignments And Fastener Related Problems, Abhinav Dhar

Theses

This study analyzes the relationship between design parameters established at the initial stage of the design process and the manufacturing quality problems that manifest themselves during production. Specifically, we study the relationship between design features and the occurrence of misalignment defects and fastener related problems.

This outcome of this work is a methodology, Design for Quality Manufacturability (DFQM). DFQM addresses the likelihood that defects will occur during the manufacture of a product in a standard plant. This is based on the premise that defects in assembled products are often influenced by some features of the design and/or assembly process. These …

Effects Of Ergonomic Worksite Changes On Risks For Cumulative Trauma Disorders Of The Upper Body In An Assembly And Press Operation Job, David B. Mahone

Theses

Cumulative trauma of the upper body is associated with a variety of individual and job factors. An effort to optimize the human-hardware interface to minimize cumulative trauma is favored. Workers in a set of jobs had complained about hand/wrist and shoulder discomfort. One job was selected for testing alternate machine controls and worksite layout. Electromyography was used to test muscle activity, and photogoniometry was used to measure posture.

For the group of ten worker-subjects, statistically significant decreases in hand/wrist and shoulder muscle activity were found. A marginal, but significant increase in neck muscle activity was also found. When one subject …

Building Oriented Surface Generation Through Iges Specification, Jujiang Bao

Theses

This thesis focuses the use of Initial Graphics Exchange Specification to generate automatically three dimensional surfaces. Currently, different CAD systems utilize their own data formats to generate graphic databases which are not compatible with one another. Besides, most of the existing CAD systems require an interactive data input process which is very much time consuming. In order to solve above problems, an efficient algorithm has been developed in this research to automatically generate portable graphic database following ICES specifications. This portable graphic database can be adopted by different commercial CAD/CAM systems. Using the proposed method, the current design process can …

Development Of An Intelligent Geometry Measurement Procedure For Coordinate Measuring Machines, Tae-Sung Kim

Theses

A Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM) is a highly accurate electronic scale for the automatic measurement of 2 and 3 dimensional geometries. In a typical operation the CMM measures a set of user defined points, and then utilizes some internal logic to ascertain whether the inspected part meets the specifications. CMMs have received widespread acceptance among the manufacturing community, and in many instances are required as per supplier contract. Applications of CMMs vary from the measurement of simple 2D parts to complex 3D spatial frames (as for example in their use to measure the integrity of automobile frames). The primary objective …

Simulation Study For The Effect Of Dependencies In Queueing Systems, Yitao Bai

Theses

Few theoretical results have been obtained in the literature for the effects of dependencies between random variables on the performance of queueing systems. This thesis aims at investigating this issue via simulation. Several dependencies are studied in detail, including dependencies between interarrival times, between interarrival time and service time, between service times and dependencies between different stages in networks of queues. We define several classes of dependent random variables and study their correlation coefficients, then we apply them to single and multiple station service systems. Comparisons with the independent case, for which the explicit form solution are available, are made …

Measures For Estimating The Need For Flexibility In A Manufacturing Facility, Raghu Chilukuri

Theses

Manufacturing technology is in the midst of on-going developments stemming from rapid improvements in machine tools, computers and robots. These developments present engineers with greater challenges and opportunities in designing more complex and productive systems. The concept of flexibility was defined by authors like Jaikumar, Son & Park, and Buzacott. The various challenges can be partly over come by building flexibility into the various systems. Various operational or raw measures are described as they help managers to understand the kind and extent of flexibility embedded in their production process and allow them to make informal judgement on new equipment.

Various …

Design For Quality Manufacture : Formulation Of The Macro Architecture For A Dfqm Methodology, Shrad Prasad

Theses

The focus of the available techniques in concurrent engineering for the development and improvement of the design of a product, has been in the areas of product assemblability and manufacturability. These techniques are concerned with the reduction of the cost associated with the manufacture and handling of the product.

The Design For Quality Manufacturability focuses on the quality manufacturability issue of the product design. A macro architecture is developed for the introduction of a new methodology to evaluate designs based on the quality manufacturability of these designs. A set of defects occurring at the assembly stage of the manufacture of …

Clustering Algorithm For Local Area Network Design In A Cim Environment, A. C. Manjunath

Theses

Communication systems have come to be regarded as being one of the most important aspects in manufacturing enterprises in recent years. It continues to offer enormous potential for improving the efficiency of manufacturing enterprises through Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM). It is true however that this potential cannot be realized by developments on the communications front alone. Strategic and economic considerations in installing a communications system in a manufacturing environment is of vital significance.

This thesis, at the outset attempts to bring out some of the issues in the area of communications (research), specifically in relation to CIM. A perception of …

Analytical Methodology For Atm Control Panel Design, Donald C. Johnson

Theses

This thesis presents a methodology for control panel design and layout along with a case study of an automated teller machine (ATM). A predictive model of human endurance and fatigue is developed from anthropometric, biomechanical and kinematics research. The layout problem is formulated to assign controls to locations to minimize the fatigue imposed on an operator performing a known set of tasks. A family of optimal and near-optimal layouts are found using conventional algorithms. The final hardware design refinements are suggested by human factors concerns. Ergonomic guidelines are also proposed for software aspects of the design. The methods and guidelines …

A Modified M/G/1/N System And Its Application, Bernice Annette Figueroa

Theses

We study a single server queueing system with finite buffer, Poisson arrivals and exceptional service requirements for the first customer in each busy period. The system is studied as a Markov Chain and the limiting probability distributions are obtained. The explicit form sorution for the queue length distribution, blocking probability, waiting time distribution as well as the busy period are derived through the Laplace-Stieltjes transform method. These results are then applied to a tandem system with a finite buffer in front of the first station and no intermediate buffer between the two stations. Finally, similar results are obtained for the …

Controlling Hazards Associated With Confined Spaces, Srinivas S. Varahabhotla

Theses

Work in Confined Spaces poses special health and safety problems. To avoid the serious consequences which may follow poorly planned or poorly supervised confined space work, a comprehensive program of recognition, evaluation and control of potential dangers must be developed.

The work force should be aware of the extreme dangers associated with confined space and of the procedures and equipment used to overcome these dangers effectively and safely.

The purpose of this thesis is to present the hazardous conditions in a confined space and different means of overcoming these dangers which are not readily apparent. It shows how confined spaces …

Manufacturing Automation Protocol Implementation Guide, Richard H. Infantino

Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a starting point for individuals seeking information on the Manufacturing Automation Protocol (MAP) Specification. This thesis is designed to be as comprehensive as possible, yet, still basic enough to be understood by an individual who may not be familiar with computers and networks, and how they function. The intent is to progress gradually from basic networking concepts and characteristics, to defining network requirements, and finally to network design and installation. At the conclusion of the paper is an Organized Method Approach to MAP network design and installation that could serve as a …

Simulation Based Modeling And Scheduling Of A Generalized Flow- Line, Srinivas Anne

Theses

Simulation is a state of art technique, widely used to analyze the behavior of complex and dynamic real time systems. This study consists of two parts. The first part involves in the development of a simulation model of a real time flow line, used to assemble Printed Circuit Boards. The desired performance measures of the system, like, utilization, starving, blocking, failure and maintenance are recorded. The model developed can be used as a test pad to analyze scheduling rules and heuristics. This is illustrated in the second part of the study which consists of studying the behavior of the Apparent …

A Study Of The Effect Of Flexibility On Manufacturing Performance, Prashanth B. Nagendra

Theses

Manufacturing flexibility has been a major topic of research in recent years. Researchers and managers are concerned about the role of flexibility in manufacturing performance. The strategic and economic impact of flexibility is of vital importance for managers in today's competitive industry.

This thesis initially provides an in-depth.perception of the prior research conducted in the area of manufacturing flexibility. Manufacturing flexibility, in this study, has been classified into four major types. Simple definitions and operational measures are provided for each of these primary types. The different factors effecting these flexibilities are identified. A new concept called the Cause-Effect-Flexibility-Technology diagrams based …

Robotic Safety Utilizing A Safety Engineering Approach, Brian Gallagher

Theses

Robotic safety is examined and explained using a safety engineering perspective. After reviewing robot fundamentals and defining the need for safety, hazard assessment and risk analysis techniques are studied. Reasons for a comprehensive robot safety program are discussed. Currently available accident statistics are examined to better understand the hazards associated with robot installations. Robotic safety procedures and methods are listed which can help reduce the severity or frequency of hazards. Various safeguarding sensors and types are analyzed for they are the "last line of defense" to reduce hazards to an acceptable level. The American Robot Safety Standard, ANSI/RIA R15.06 - …

Simulation And Off-Line Programming Of Robotic Workcells, Krishnaprasad V. Kamisetty

Theses

A typical, complex robotic workcell, namely NJIT's Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) cell has been designed, modelled and simulated to bridge the gap between design and its implementation. McDonnell Douglas' (McAuto) PLACE, BUILD, COMMAND and ADJUST have been used to simulate entire cycle of the NJIT's FMS cell. Various aspects such as "Cycle Time Analysis", robot reachability of various positions in the cell and "Collision Detection" have also been studied and analyzed.

The ease of effecting any modifications to the existing workcell design has been demonstrated. The NJIT's FMS cell consists of the GE P-50 robot, the IBM 7535 robot, the …

Feasibiltiy, Planning, And Justification Of Fms : A Case Study, Joo Hwan Kim

Theses

FMS production technology, because of its ability to adjust to changes in product demands and produce at competitive costs even on small runs and at above quality levels, has caused its adoption by the major automobile manufacturers. These attributes are of particular interest to Korean automobile manufacturers who due to a small home market need to manufacture in relative small quantities and to export.

This paper considers how such a technology can be implemented. It discusses the key factors to be considered such as strategy, selection and design of the appropriate hardware and software, required organizational changes, and its economic …