Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Group Facilitation, Terry Bresnick

Operations Management Presentations

As a management consultant, over the course of more than 40 years, I have facilitated more than 1500 workshops, seminars, and decision conferences. But when I think back on the times I was a college professor at West Point in the 70s, I often found myself in a position where in addition to teaching, I had to bring together and integrate the needs of very diverse groups of people. Typically, there was time pressure, the stakes were high, and the objectives of the participants conflicted. As an assistant professor, I had no real decision-making authority, but I could help the …

Improving Production Flexibility, Christopher T. Patrick, Conrad R. Troutman, Adam Glassman, Kaitlin Payne

Faculty Publications and Other Works -- Industrial & Information Engineering

Over the last year, Clayton has paired with the University of Tennessee in order to increase production rates at their Rutledge facility due to a high demand for their homes. Other concerns expressed by Clayton included high employee turnover, fluctuation in demand throughout the year, and lack of space within the facility. Several teams from the University were assigned to this location with the goal of observing and increasing throughput and flexibility within the facility while considering the previously stated issues.

A Biofuel Supply Chain Equilibrium Analysis With Subsidy Consideration, Amirsaman Hamzeh Bajgiran

Theses and Dissertations

Growing environmental concerns in the last few decades along with the energy security issues have led governments to take actions to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and enhance renewable energy usage, including biofuels. Enforcement of federal or state mandates and regulations that obligate a certain amount of biofuel production are one of the main levers that governments use to achieve their goals. In the U.S. as an example, Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requires the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, 21 billion gallons of which should be advanced biofuels derived from biostocks other than corn starch. …

A Microscopic Simulation Laboratory For Evaluation Of Off-Street Parking Systems, Yun Yuan

Theses and Dissertations

The parking industry produces an enormous amount of data every day that, properly analyzed, will change the way the industry operates. The collected data form patterns that, in most cases, would allow parking operators and property owners to better understand how to maximize revenue and decrease operating expenses and support the decisions such as how to set specific parking policies (e.g. electrical charging only parking space) to achieve the sustainable and eco-friendly parking.

However, there lacks an intelligent tool to assess the layout design and operational performance of parking lots to reduce the externalities and increase the revenue. To address …

Global Renewable And Nonrenewable Energy Use Impact Assessment Of U.S. Manufacturing: An Integrated Cradle-To-Gate Lca And Dea Approach, Bahadir Ezici

Master's Theses

In this thesis, U.S. manufacturing industries` global supply chain-linked energy use and economic output are investigated considering a total of 16 renewable and nonrenewable energy carriers. A multiregion input output (MRIO) framework is employed to conduct the global supply chain-linked energy use impact assessment. The study period was between 1995 and 2014 based on data availability. Thus, 20 MRIO models were developed. Each MRIO model consists of the 40 largest economies of the world and the rest of the world (ROW) as the 41st country. Each country’s economy was structured into 35 manufacturing and service industries based on the Worth …

Thermal Comfort In Heated-And-Ventilated-Only Warehouses, Christian Taber, Donald G. Colliver

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Building energy codes and standards contain minimum requirements that provide a path to energy efficient buildings and building systems. ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1 and the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) are the main national building code models in the United States. Both Standard 90.1 and the IECC are updated on three-year cycles with the goal of reducing building energy consumption.

Discrete Event Simulation And Cost Model For Optimization Of Manufacturing Resource Usages Associated With Implementation Of A Redesigned Product, Alexander Eierle

Theses and Dissertations

This paper demonstrates an approach to evaluating production factors related to schedule and resources based on changes to the production process. A discrete event simulation model was developed to evaluate different production factors, such as arrival times, number of entities, resource availabilities, and work in process (WIP) times, compared to the total yield at a production facility. This model helped to develop relationships between the required asset resource usages and the overall production resource allocation with the related effects to process wait times and production outputs. A comparative analysis with cost was performed to determine the effect that varied resources …

Teen Driver System Modeling: A Tool For Policy Analysis, Celestin Missikpode, Corrine Peek-Asa, Daniel V. Mcgehee, James Torner, Wayne Wakeland, Robert Wallace

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of teen deaths in spite of preventive efforts. Prevention strategies could be advanced through new analytic approaches that allow us to better conceptualize the complex processes underlying teen crash risk. This may help policymakers design appropriate interventions and evaluate their impacts.

Methods: System Dynamics methodology was used as a new way of representing factors involved in the underlying process of teen crash risk. Systems dynamics modeling is relatively new to public health analytics and is a promising tool to examine relative influence of multiple interacting factors in predicting a health …

Budget-Constrained Regression Model Selection Using Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming, Jingying Zhang

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Regression analysis fits predictive models to data on a response variable and corresponding values for a set of explanatory variables. Often data on the explanatory variables come at a cost from commercial databases, so the available budget may limit which ones are used in the final model.

In this dissertation, two budget-constrained regression models are proposed for continuous and categorical variables respectively using Mixed Integer Nonlinear Programming (MINLP) to choose the explanatory variables to be included in solutions. First, we propose a budget-constrained linear regression model for continuous response variables. Properties such as solvability and global optimality of the proposed …

Table Of Contents Jitim Vol 27 Issue 3, 2018

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Table of Contents

Classifying Interdependencies In The Food And Agriculture Critical Infrastructure Sector, John Doerpinghaus

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work classifies examples of infrastructure interdependencies found in the food and agriculture critical infrastructure sector. Interdependencies are identified through an examination of rice and poultry agriculture throughout the state of Arkansas. The subtleties of interdependence examples in the food and agriculture sector are inadequately captured by the well-studied interdependence classification taxonomies. Through 39 interviews, we develop an understanding of the subtle temporal, geographic, and productivity scales of interdependence in over 100 examples and present five new, distinct classifications of interdependence: (1) dynamic physical, (2) dynamic geographic, (3) deadline, (4) delay, and (5) human, economic, and natural resource interdependencies. An …

Crude Oil Prices Forecasting: Time Series Vs. Svr Models, Xin James He

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

This research explores the weekly crude oil price data from U.S. Energy Information Administration over the time period 2009 - 2017 to test the forecasting accuracy by comparing time series models such as simple exponential smoothing (SES), moving average (MA), and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) against machine learning support vector regression (SVR) models. The main purpose of this research is to determine which model provides the best forecasting results for crude oil prices in light of the importance of crude oil price forecasting and its implications to the economy. While SVR is often considered the best forecasting model in …

Midpoint And Endpoint Sustainability Assessment Of U.S. And China Manufacturing: A Comparative Mrio+Recipe Analysis, Mustafa Saber

Master's Theses

Manufacturing is among the most important industries for an economy, which creates value-added, fosters innovation, stimulates employment and economic growth. Therefore, manufacturing industries are crucial for a country’s sustainable development not only for economic reasons but also for social (.e.g. employment, tax, etc.) and environmental ones. Thus, manufacturing activities’ contribution to the economy is critically related with environmental and social impacts. Sustainable economic growth is essential and necessary for a country to provide all necessary goods and services to its growing population.

And, this is highly linke with the creation of new jobs and in this context, manufacturing jobs have …

Real-Time Heuristics And Metaheuristics For Static And Dynamic Weapon Target Assignments, Alexander G. Kline

Theses and Dissertations

The problem of targeting and engaging individual missiles (targets) with an arsenal of interceptors (weapons) is known as the weapon target assignment problem. This problem has been well-researched since the seminal work in 1958. There are two distinct categories of the weapon target assignment problem: static and dynamic. The static weapon target assignment problem considers a single instance in which a known number of incoming missiles is to be engaged with a finite number of interceptors. By contrast, the dynamic weapon target assignment problem considers either follow on engagement(s) should the first engagement(s) fail, a subsequent salvo of incoming missiles, …

System Engineering Analysis Of Terraforming Mars With An Emphasis On Resource Importation Technology, Brandon Wong

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

This project uses System Engineering principles to delve into the viability of different methods for Terraforming Mars, with a comparison between Paraterraforming, Terraforming and Bioforming. It will then examine one subsystem that will be integral to the terraforming process, which is the space infrastructure necessary to import enough gases to recreate Earth’s atmosphere on Mars. It will analyze the viability of Chemical Rockets, Nuclear Rockets, Space Elevators, Skyhooks, Rotovators, Mass Drivers, Launch Loops and Orbital Rings for this subsystem and provide recommendations for an implementation plan.

Integrated Reward Scheme And Surge Pricing In A Ride-Sourcing Market, Hai Yang, Chaoyi Shao, Hai Wang, Jieping Ye

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Surge pricing is commonly used in on-demand ride-sourcing platforms (e.g., Uber, Lyft and Didi) to dynamically balance demand and supply. However, since the price for ride service cannot be unlimited, there is usually a reasonable or legitimate range of prices in practice. Such a constrained surge pricing strategy fails to balance demand and supply in certain cases, e.g., even adopting the maximum allowed price cannot reduce the demand to an affordable level during peak hours. In addition, the practice of surge pricing is controversial and has stimulated long debate regarding its pros and cons. To address the limitation of current …

Heuristic Algorithm To Minimize Total Weighted Tardiness On The Unrelated Parallel Machine With Sequence Dependent Setup And Future Ready Time, Tzu Yi Li

Theses and Dissertations

This study presents a heuristic algorithm to minimize total weighted tardiness on unrelated parallel machines with sequence-dependent setup time and future ready time. We propose a new rule based on Apparent Tardiness Cost (ATC). The performance of the rule is evaluated on unrelated parallel machines. In order to solve a problem, we use a look-ahead method and a job-swap method. When a machine becomes idle, the heuristic compares the jobs on the machine and selects the one with the smallest total tardiness value to carry out a process.

The propose heuristic is divided into three stages: The first stage employs …

In Silico Analysis Of Advanced Processing Methods For Light-Weight Alloys Powders, Marjan Nezafati

Theses and Dissertations

Light-weight Al and Mg-based metal-matrix nanocomposites (MMNCs) are lauded as one of the most promising structural materials for vehicle, military, and construction applications. These MMNCs are often synthesized using the powder metallurgy (PM) process under liquid nitrogen cryogenic environments to control the grain sizes. It is believed that proper incorporation of the nitrogen species into the bulk lattice during processing could strongly enhance the mechanical properties of MMNCs by forming N-rich dispersoids. In this work, using the density-functional theory (DFT), the adsorption, absorption and diffusion behavior of nitrogen molecule/atoms have been studied and related to t Al and Mg MMNC …

Credit Assignment For Collective Multiagent Rl With Global Rewards, Duc Thien Nguyen, Akshat Kumar, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Scaling decision theoretic planning to large multiagent systems is challenging due to uncertainty and partial observability in the environment. We focus on a multiagent planning model subclass, relevant to urban settings, where agent interactions are dependent on their collective influence'' on each other, rather than their identities. Unlike previous work, we address a general setting where system reward is not decomposable among agents. We develop collective actor-critic RL approaches for this setting, and address the problem of multiagent credit assignment, and computing low variance policy gradient estimates that result in faster convergence to high quality solutions. We also develop difference …

Design And Implementation Of Decision Support For Traffic Management At Multipurpose Port Gates, Ketki Kulkarni, Hoong Chuin Lau, Hai Wang, Sathyavarathan Sivabalasingam, Trong Khiem Tran

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Effective traffic management can help port operators gain a competitive edge in service level and efficient use of limited resources. One critical aspect of traffic management is gate operations management, ensuring a good customer experience to logistic carriers and considering the impact of congestion in and around the port. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a decision support tool to help gate operators plan for future scenarios with fluctuating demand and limited resources. We propose a simulation optimization framework which incorporates theoretical results from queuing theory to approximate complex multi-lane multi-server systems. Our major contribution in …

Data Center Holistic Demand Response Algorithm To Smooth Microgrid Tie-Line Power Fluctuation, Ting Yang, Yingjie Zhao, Haibo Pen, Zhaoxia Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the rapid development of cloud computing, artificial intelligence technologies and big data applications, data centers have become widely deployed. High density IT equipment in data centers consumes a lot of electrical power, and makes data center a hungry monster of energy consumption. To solve this problem, renewable energy is increasingly integrated into data center power provisioning systems. Compared to the traditional power supply methods, renewable energy has its unique characteristics, such as intermittency and randomness. When renewable energy supplies power to the data center industrial park, this kind of power supply not only has negative effects on the normal …

Introduction To Data Analytics And Emerging Real-World Use Cases, Art Chaovalitwongse

Operations Management Presentations

Data analytics is a rapidly emerging interdisciplinary research area that involves advances in engineering, computer science, statistics and operations research. This webinar is focused on introducing the foundation of data analytics and emerging real-world use cases of data analytics. This presentation will begin with a discussion of the mathematical and statistical modeling aspects of various levels of data analytics (i.e., descriptive, predictive and prescriptive). In this webinar, you will hear an overview of data analytics in real world problems ranging from healthcare analytics, retail analytics and financial analytics.

Smart Disease Prevention App: Informing The Public In Their Own Geographic Location, Apoorva Sulakhe, Shafali Rana, Zoe Disori, William Nogay, Kyle Plummer, Meredith Shannon, Morgan Young, Alyssa Zielinski, Vincent G. Duffy

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Apoorva Sulakhe and Shefali Rana are graduate students in the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue. They have both been teaching assistants under their coauthor, Dr. Vincent Duffy, while supervising multiple projects. Coauthors Zoe Disori, William Nogay, Kyle Plummer, Meredith Shannon, Morgan Young, and Alyssa Zielinski are listed in alphabetical order. They were all seniors in School of Industrial Engineering at the time of this project in 2017. The purpose of their study, described in this article, was to develop an application to provide users with accurate information about diseases spreading in their geographic locations.

Cost Benefit Analysis Of Led Vs Florescent Lighting, Kurtis Clark, Phillip Humphrey

Student Research

Over the last few years, the state of Oklahoma has been looking at ways to reduce expenses to address concerns about a budget deficit. There have been efforts made to reduce expenses due to the use of energy. It has been said, when the lights are on, work is getting done. Running lights is therefore the cost of doing business. Our research examines the question, “is there a way to provide better lighting while operating at a lower cost.” This research examines the current lighting at Southwestern State University, primarily fluorescent lighting (FL), and a cost benefit analysis of switching …

Analysis Of Parkinson's Disease Data, Ram Deepak Gottapu, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we investigate the diagnostic data from patients suffering with Parkinson's disease (PD) and design classification/prediction model to simplify the diagnosis. The main aim of this research is to open possibilities to be able to apply deep learning algorithms to help better understand and diagnose the disease. To our knowledge, the capabilities of deep learning algorithms have not yet been completely utilized in the field of Parkinson's research and we believe that by having an in-depth understanding of data, we can create a platform to apply different algorithms to automate the Parkinson's Disease diagnosis to certain extent. We …

Densenet For Anatomical Brain Segmentation, Ram Deepak Gottapu, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Automated segmentation in brain magnetic resonance image (MRI) plays an important role in the analysis of many diseases and conditions. In this paper, we present a new architecture to perform MR image brain segmentation (MRI) into a number of classes based on type of tissue. Recent work has shown that convolutional neural networks (DenseNet) can be substantially more accurate with less number of parameters if each layer in the network is connected with every other layer in a feed forward fashion. We embrace this idea and generate new architecture that can assign each pixel/voxel in an MR image of the …

Early Detection Of Disease Using Electronic Health Records And Fisher's Wishart Discriminant Analysis, Sijia Yang, Jian Bian, Zeyi Sun, Licheng Wang, Haojin Zhu, Haoyi Xiong, Yu Li

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is a simple and effective technique for pattern classification, while it is also widely-used for early detection of diseases using Electronic Health Records (EHR) data. However, the performance of LDA for EHR data classification is frequently affected by two main factors: ill-posed estimation of LDA parameters (e.g., covariance matrix), and "linear inseparability" of the EHR data for classification. To handle these two issues, in this paper, we propose a novel classifier FWDA -- Fisher's Wishart Discriminant Analysis, which is developed as a faster and robust nonlinear classifier. Specifically, FWDA first surrogates the distribution of "potential" inverse …

Multi-Objective Evolutionary Neural Network To Predict Graduation Success At The United States Military Academy, Gene Lesinski, Steven Corns

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents an evolutionary neural network approach to classify student graduation status based upon selected academic, demographic, and other indicators. A pareto-based, multi-objective evolutionary algorithm utilizing the Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm (SPEA2) fitness evaluation scheme simultaneously evolves connection weights and identifies the neural network topology using network complexity and classification accuracy as objective functions. A combined vector-matrix representation scheme and differential evolution recombination operators are employed. The model is trained, tested, and validated using 5100 student samples with data compiled from admissions records and institutional research databases. The inputs to the evolutionary neural network model are used to classify …

System Of Systems Architecting Problems: Definitions, Formulations, And Analysis, Hadi Farhangi, Dincer Konur

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The system of systems architecting has many applications in transportation, healthcare, and defense systems design. This study first presents a short review of system of systems definitions. We then focus on capability-based system of systems architecting. In particular, capability-based system of systems architecting problems with various settings, including system flexibility, fund allocation, operational restrictions, and system structures, are presented as Multi-Objective Nonlinear Integer Programming problems. Relevant solution methods to analyze these problems are also discussed.

A Mathematical Framework On Machine Learning: Theory And Application, Bin Shi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation addresses the research topics of machine learning outlined below. We developed the theory about traditional first-order algorithms from convex opti- mization and provide new insights in nonconvex objective functions from machine learning. Based on the theory analysis, we designed and developed new algorithms to overcome the difficulty of nonconvex objective and to accelerate the speed to obtain the desired result. In this thesis, we answer the two questions: (1) How to design a step size for gradient descent with random initialization? (2) Can we accelerate the current convex optimization algorithms and improve them into nonconvex objective? For application, …