Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Evolving Neural Networks Applied To Predator-Evader Problem, Shivakumar Viswanathan, Ilker Ersoy, Filiz Bunyak, Cihan H. Dagli

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

The creation of strategies to meet abstract goals is an important behavior exhibited by natural organisms. A situation requiring the development of such strategies is the predator-evader problem. To study this problem, Khepera robots are chosen as the competing agents. Using computer simulations the evolution of the adaptive behavior is studied in a predator-evader interaction. A bilaterally symmetrical multilayer perceptron neural network architecture with evolvable weights is used to model the “brains” of the agents. Evolutionary programming is employed to evolve the predator for developing adaptive strategies to meet its goals. To study the effect of learning on evolution a …

Exploring Participation Processes For Technology Development: Case Studies Of Biotechnology Research And Development Projects In Thailand, Omjai Yuktavetya

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

There is increased awareness in the organizational and management literature that participation can make contributions in technology development. One of the problems in developing biotechnology in Thailand is that only a small portion of publicly funded research and development projects directly result in commercial success. Among the reasons cited (TDRI 1992a) is a lack of collaboration between various stakeholders; therefore, an effective technology policy to support their participation is needed. This research explores current participation processes in biotechnology research and development projects in Thailand in which there were different perspectives among various stakeholders. The quantitative and qualitative methodologies developed here …

Development Of A Hierarchical Model-Based Decision Support System (Dss) For Production Planning And Control Systems, Khaled Mohamed Sami Abdel-Hamid

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Gap Analysis On The Product And Organization Levels For Benchmarking Industrial Enterprises, Hany Mohie El Din Awadain

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Effectiveness Of An On-Line Graduate Engineering Management Course, Rosemarie Maffei Evans, Madison Daily, Susan L. Murray

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the summer of 1997, the Engineering Management Department of the University of Missouri-Rolla's (UMR) began offering its first Internet-based graduate level course. This course, Advanced Production Management, was designed to utilize a combination of Internet-based tools, such as EMail and Chat rooms to create a alternative means for the delivery of course material. This paper will draw these following conclusions from more than a year of research, which included over 100 students in six different course offerings. First, the Internet-based students performed equally as well as the control group students. Second, students tend to have exaggerated time requirement expectations …

Industrial Engineering Made Simple, Deena Daggett, Sema E. Alptekin

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Many high school students these days do not quickly recognize or identify Industrial Engineering (IE) procedures, practices, and products. Recruitment of qualified students into IE programs requires continuous planning, publicizing, and networking. Traditional recruitment efforts have included high school visits, brochures & flyers, and university-sponsored workshops. However, these techniques have only achieved mediocre success. Currently, a need exists for new promotional materials that utilize visual tools and provide a “hands-on” approach. We have developed several exercises that successfully introduce IE. Two such exercises are explained in this paper. The first exercise demonstrates the differences between Assembly line and Cellular Manufacturing …

Acuta Enews June 1999, Vol.28, No. 6

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Winners Announced in Student Papers Contest

Conference Offers Many Choices

Dues Notices Mailed

Does It Make Sense?

Board Report

Share Your Expertise

DC at a Glance

Positions Available

Welcome New Members

A Five-Year Development Plan For The California Aviation Database, H.-S. Jacob Tsao

Faculty Publications

The California Aviation Database (CAvD) project was suggested by Caltrans Aeronautics Program to fulfill a need of the planners involved in aviation system planning and programming activities to locate and access aviation data and information in an efficient and comprehensive way. CAvD is being implemented in the form of an Internet website and is currently intended as a five-year project. However, the development can be accelerated, and the duration will depend on the available resources. CAvD is a joint project between the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Its primary …

Management Information System For Iso 9000, Reem Mahmoud Abdel Motaal

Archived Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Moving Transportation Toward Sustainable Development: The Need For A Paradigm Shift, Bahador Ghahramani, Stephen A. Raper

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Despite progress in controlling exhaust emissions, the increase of cars on the road will surpass progress in emission control technology. The automobile is currently responsible for 50% of world fossil fuel consumption, 15-20% of CO₂ emissions worldwide and overwhelming particulate air pollution in many urban centers. Current efforts in emissions control have been focused on improving the efficiency of fuels and automobiles and their emissions. However, as a mode of transportation, the automobile is one of the most inefficient, both in environmental and economic costs. Even the most efficient cars developed today will still significantly contribute to the amount …

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 …

Acuta Enews May 1999, Vol. 28, No. 5

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In This Issue

Board Approves Slate of Nominees

Moderators & Monitors Needed in Nashville!

Board Report

Who Pays for Cellular Calls?

DC at a Glance

Positions Available

Welcome New Members

Simulation Modeling Presentations: The Life Cycle, Edward Yellig, Paul Savory

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

A typical large scale simulation modeling project spans many months and encompasses activities such as problem definition, data collection, model development, experimentation, and scenario analysis. During the life cycle of a simulation project, numerous presentations are made to many different types of audiences. The purpose of these presentations will vary from seeking project approval, requesting information, discussing simulation model features, verifying the model, validating the model, presenting the experimental results, and offering model conclusions. This paper will discuss presentation techniques we used during a year-long simulation-modeling project. We will highlight techniques used for defining the purpose of each presentation, identifying …

Use Of Feedforward Neural Networks For Machine Vision Calibration, Mark B. Lynch, Cihan H. Dagli, Mahesh Vallenki

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Machine vision calibration is an important step to obtaining usable measurements in inspection and automation operations. Conventional calibration techniques require the development of elaborate mathematical models and have prior knowledge of many parameters. Creating a suitable model and obtaining reasonable values for some calibration parameters is often difficult and error prone. In this article, a neural network approach is presented as an indirect non-linear optimization method to machine vision calibration. This approach does not require a mathematical model be developed nor any prior knowledge about the setup or calibration parameters. A universal calibration approach is developed and utilized in various …

Graphical Display And Data Structure For Virtual Prototyping, David William Manry

Doctoral Dissertations

One of the goals of engineering firms is to bring better products to market faster. Although concurrent engineering can aid in this endeavor, it requires that all areas of an organization work simultaneously. Thus, current product data must be accessible to everyone.

Virtual prototyping allows this simultaneous exchange of information. Virtual prototyping not only replaces the physical model in product development with a virtual model, but also it goes further by allowing data associated with each part of the model to be accessed. This data is not limited to just geometric properties but could contain other quantifiable properties, such as …

Acuta Enews April 1999, Vol.28, No. 4

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In This Issue

Calling-Party-Pays Cellular to Get Legislative Push from Cellular Industry

Midwest Local Events

Achievements Award Nominations

Van Houweling to Speak on Internet2

Michael Zastrocky Described Enterprise 2004

Board Report

Near-TV-Quality Over Net

DC at a Glance

Positions Available

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Acuta Enews March 1999, Vol.28, No. 3

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Austin Peay Survives Tornado

Nominate Now for Board of Directors

Tips to Make Your Presentation Better

President's Message

ACUTA Spring Seminars

Preparing Competitive Proposals

Board Report

DC at a Glance

Positions Available

Welcome New Members

Multi-Discipline Network Vulnerability Assessment, Karilynne Wallace

Theses and Dissertations

Air Force Space Command has a mission to provide real-time, survivable, and enduring communications, surveillance, environmental monitoring, navigation, and warning....according to Air Force Space Handbook - A War Fighters Guide to Space. In order to prevent disruption of the critical networks in Space Command, a vulnerability assessment must be performed. The set of components called a vulnerability set, which could cause network disruption, must be identified and prioritized. In order to move beyond subjective prioritization, implementation of a quantitative methodology that measures the value of each vulnerability set is needed. This thesis proposes a technique for vulnerability assessment of a …

Decision Analysis Methodology To Evaluate Organization, Shawn C. Thompson

Theses and Dissertations

The organizational structure of the civil engineer squadron's operations flight has undergone numerous changes over the last fifty years. Today the structure of the flight to the element level is mandated by Air Force Instructions; however, each unit is given the flexibility to organize below the element level. Most civil engineer units are struggling through the decision of how to organize their flights without a sound methodology to guide their efforts. Providing such a methodology is the objective of this thesis. To accomplish the objective, the history behind the operations flight structure was researched. In addition to this historical research, …

Visualizing Early-Stage Breast Cancer Tumors In A Mammographic Environment Through A 3-Dimensional Mathematical Model, Christopher B. Bassham

Theses and Dissertations

In response to the insidious and deadly nature of breast cancer and the less-than-perfect detection ability of mammography, we develop a mathematical model as a foundation to the long-term goal of improving early breast cancer detection. By using modeling and simulation to construct an accurate breast cancer tumor model, we hope to solve the problems associated with mammogram misdiagnosis and, perhaps as a by-product, lend insight to tumor development dynamics. The final tumor model, written in MATLAB, provides realistic tumor growth and 2-dimensional visualization of 3-dimensional structures. Earlier modeling attempts capture slices of the tumor in the 2-dimensional growth spaces. …

Dynamic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (Uav) Routing With A Java-Encoded Reactive Tabu Search Metaheuristic, Kevin P. O'Rourke

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper we consider the dynamic routing of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) currently in operational use with the US Air Force. Dynamic vehicle routing problems (VRP) have always been challenging, and the airborne version of the VRP adds dimensions and difficulties not present in typical ground-based applications. Previous UAV routing work has focused on primarily on static, pre-planned situations; however, scheduling military operations, which are often ad-hoc, drives the need for a dynamic route solver that can respond to rapidly evolving problem constraints. With these considerations in mind, we examine the use of a Java-encoded metaheuristic to solve these …

Implementation Of The Metaheuristic Tabu Search In Route Selection For Mobility Analysis Support System, David M. Ryer

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis employs a reactive tabu search heuristic implemented in the Java programming language to solve a real world variation of the vehicle routing problem with the objective of providing quality routes to Mobility Analysis Support System (MASS). MASS is a stochastic simulation model used extensively by Air Mobility Command (AMC) to analyze strategic airlift capabilities and future procurement decisions. This dynamic real world problem of strategic and tactical airlift possesses a number of side constraints such as vehicle capacities, route length and time windows in a sizeable network with multiple depots and a large fleet of heterogeneous vehicles. Finding …

A Bayesian Decision Model For Battle Damage Assessment, Daniel W. Franzen

Theses and Dissertations

Battle damage assessment (BDA) is critical to success in any air campaign. However, Desert Storm highlighted numerous deficiencies in the BDA process, and operations since Desert Storm continue to point out weaknesses. We present a review of the Phase I BDA decision, or physical damage assessment, and model the decision process using a Bayesian belief network. Through subject matter expert (i.e., the targeteers) elicitation sessions, imagery was found to be critically important to the BDA process yet this information is generally not retained. This use of "perfect information" is delineated in the BDA process models. We proposed a methodology based …

The Quota Allocation Model: The Linear Optimization Of A Markov Decision Process, David A. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

One of the many needs of the Air Force is advanced technical degrees. These degrees can be acquired in three ways: the Air Force can directly recruit personnel with the required degrees; Air Force personnel can obtain them during off duty time from local civilian colleges near their base; or the Air Force can provide advanced academic degrees (AADs) through the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) or AFIT-sponsored programs. In 1995, the AFIT Commandant initiated a re-engineering study to review the AFIT mission. One of the initiatives of that study was the Quota Allocation Model (QuAM). The QuAM model …

Strategic Effects Of Airpower And Complex Adaptive Agents: An Initial Investigation, Thomas R. Tighe

Theses and Dissertations

US airpower theory and doctrine depend on the concept that the destruction of a few key targets or centers of gravity can unravel the enemy's physical ability to wage war or break his will to prosecute the war. This synergistic decimation of the enemy's effectiveness and resistance to our political will is known as Strategic Effects. These strategic effects are very difficult to quantify and are not directly accounted for in current DoD computer models. Since these computer models are used to aid with decisions about force structure and budget priorities, many believe that the Air Force's greatest potential contribution …

Modeling And Analysis Of Aerial Port Operations, Timothy W. Albrecht

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this thesis effort is gaining useful insight into aerial port operations by employing an animated simulation. Understanding airfield capacity, resources, and functioning allows greater accuracy and efficiency in both planning for future force structures and matching mobility assets with commanders' objectives. Two current simulations, ACE (Airfield Capacity Estimator) and BRACE (Base Resource Allocation and Capabilities Estimator), model mobility activities at the base level with some deficiencies. The model proposed by this thesis, APOM (Aerial Port Operations Model), will provide the mobility analyst an animated simulation with two, new measures of aerial port operations; a real-time estimate of …

Quality Function Deployment From An Operations Research Perspective, Eve M. Burke

Theses and Dissertations

The methodology of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is compared to operations analysis standards. Of special concern is how Air Combat Command (ACC) uses QFD for the Modernization Planning Process (MPP). ACC digresses from the traditional use of QFD for incorporating quality into manufacturing processes to use it as a planning tool. ACC's goal in implementing QFD is to incorporate the demands of the Air Force mission into the modernization planning effort. ACC's use of QFD to identify and quantify current deficiencies and quantify the value of alternative future solutions has led to the investigation of inconsistencies with QFD, both generally …

A Comparison Of Genetic Algorithm Parametrization On Synthetic Optimization Problems, Mehmet Eravsar

Theses and Dissertations

Meta-heuristics have been deployed to solve many hard combinatorial and optimization problems. Parameterization of meta-heuristics is an important challenging aspect of meta-heuristic use since many of the features of these algorithms cannot be explained theoretically. Experiences with Genetic Algorithms (GA) applied to Multidimensional Knapsack Problems (MKP) have shown that this class of algorithm is very sensitive to parameterization. Many studies use standard test problems, which provide a firm basis for study comparisons but ignore the effect of problem correlation structure. This thesis applies GA to MKP. A new random repair operator, which projects infeasible solutions into feasible region, is proposed. …

Pilot Inventory Complex Adaptive System (Picas): An Artificial Life Approach To Managing Pilot Retention, Martin P. Gaupp

Theses and Dissertations

The retention of skilled pilots continues to be a problem that plagues the United States Air Force. After spending millions of dollars on training and education, it is disheartening to see the mass exodus of experienced aviators from the Air Force that has been occurring in the past decade. Many blame the economy, others the Air Force itself but few are able to accurately predict how or why they are all leaving. The current personnel models do not adequately determine retention rates. Complex adaptive systems theory, however, might provide some insight. By modeling the system at the pilot's level, allowing …

An Approach For Tasking Allocated Combat Resources To Targets, David A. Koewler

Theses and Dissertations

Tasking allocated combat aircraft to strike targets is a complicated and time-consuming process for combat planners. Currently, the process of scheduling missions is a two to four day process. To be able to respond quickly to the changing conditions of the battlefield, the military needs to compress the time that this process requires. Despite efforts to develop computer-based tools to automatically plan missions, combat planners still manually perform most of the tasking and scheduling of aircraft and targets. Unfortunately some of the tools currently available are perceived to be complicated and time consuming to use by the planners. They also …