Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Case Study: Cooling Channels For Material Testing Applications Using Laser Powder Bed Fusion, Benjamin M. Doane, Ryan P. O'Hara, K. Liu, Carl R. Hartsfield

Faculty Publications

Additive Manufacturing continues to gain a reputation as a key technology that will have a major impact on all aspects of mechanical engineering. The United States Air Force’s (USAF) Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), based in Dayton, Ohio, has expanded its AM-focused education and R&D capabilities with the purchase of a Laser Powder Bed Fusion system from Germany’s Concept Laser.

A Multi-Level Longitudinal Investigation Of Transformational Leadership Influence On Team Members Development In Engineering Project Teams, Nathapon Siangchokyoo

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the current study is to contribute to the existing Transformational Leadership literature. Despite the overwhelming support that Transformational Leadership theory has garnered over the recent years, the underlying mechanisms and processes by which these leaders exert influence on their followers have yet to be adequately examined. More importantly, while the majority of advances in leadership research can largely be attributed to traditional areas of management and social sciences, studies of leadership in the context of engineering still remain relatively unexplored. Drawing on previous empirical research as well as the concept of Core Self-Evaluations, this study sets out …

Manufacturing Process Simulation – On Its Way To Industrial Application, Dennis Otten, Tobias A. Weber, Jan-Christoph Arent

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Manufacturing process simulation (MPS) has become more and more important for aviation and the automobile industry. A highly competitive market requires the use of high performance metals and composite materials in combination with reduced manufacturing cost and time as well as a minimization of the time to market for a new product. However, the use of such materials is expensive and requires sophisticated manufacturing processes. An experience based process and tooling design followed by a lengthy trial-and-error optimization is just not contemporary anymore. Instead, a tooling design process aided by simulation is used more often. This paper provides an overview …

A System Dynamics Innovation Diffusion Model Applied To Carbon Nanotube Manufacturing, Frances G. Mackinnon

Theses and Dissertations

The transition of advanced technologies from their nascent state to viable commercial entities is a critical step in assuring the United States' national technological superiority and support is often required to incubate such technological developments. We propose a spiral development to investigate the possible scenarios, underlying economics, and risk associated with scaling up carbon nanotube (CNT) production to a commercially viable scale. As the first stage of this proposed effort, this study characterizes the potential scenarios by which a CNT manufacturing company can generate positive annual net revenue and potentially be considered a competitive manufacturer of CNT products on an …

An Analysis Of Major Acquisition Reforms Through Text Mining And Grounded Theory Design, Amanda L. Mcgowin

Theses and Dissertations

Cost growth is an established phenomenon within Defense Acquisition that the US Government has attempted to abolish for decades through seemingly endless cycles of reform. Dozens of experts and senior leaders within the acquisition community have published their notions on the reasons for cost growth, nevertheless, legislation has yet to eradicate this presumed conundrum. For this reason, this research is aimed at identifying existing trends within past major Defense Acquisition Reform legislation, as well as in a compendium of views from leaders within the Defense Acquisition community on the efficacy of acquisition reform, to determine the possible disconnect. To accomplish …

A Study Of The Air Force Airworthiness Assessment Process With Recommendations For Reusable Launch Vehicles, Austin A. Troya

Theses and Dissertations

Flight safety is a critical design and engineering consideration within the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and particularly the United States Air Force (USAF). This study conducts an independent evaluation of the airworthiness assessment process used by the United States Air Force’s Engineering Directorate through modeling and simulation. The airworthiness process is examined for its ability to effectively verify sound engineering design and efficiency with respect to the implementation of new software-based assessment tools and its impact on timeliness of reviews and resource utilization. Simulation results guide recommendations for reducing non-value-added activities and strategic leveling of resource demands to …

Experimental Designs, Meta-Modeling, And Meta-Learning For Mixed-Factor Systems With Large Decision Spaces, Zachary C. Little

Theses and Dissertations

Many Air Force studies require a design and analysis process that can accommodate for the computational challenges associated with complex systems, simulations, and real-world decisions. For systems with large decision spaces and a mixture of continuous, discrete, and categorical factors, nearly orthogonal-and-balanced (NOAB) designs can be used as efficient, representative subsets of all possible design points for system evaluation, where meta-models are then fitted to act as surrogates to system outputs. The mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulations used to construct first-order NOAB designs are extended to solve for low correlation between second-order model terms (i.e., two-way interactions and quadratics). The …

An Open Source Approach To Social Media Data Gathering, Anthony J. Kallhoff

Theses and Dissertations

Modern usage of social media affords the military intelligence and analytic communities novel approaches to gather information. However, the tools and resources to develop these methodologies are still maturing. Furthermore, current data acquisition tools are not available to the DoD for all social media platforms. This thesis addresses a small subset of this problem by developing an open source methodological approach to collect and manage data from a popular social media site that has previously been inaccessible to defense intelligence organizations. This approach was operationalized via the R package called instaExtract, and an exemplar analysis was performed to demonstrate its …

Communication And Biodegradable Packaging Relationship: A Paradigm For Final Disposal, Breno Luiz Ottoni, Rafael Mattos Deus, José Alcides Gobbo Junior, Ângela Maria Grossi De Carvalho, Rosane Aparecida Gomes Battistelle

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Solid waste generation is estimated to increase from 1.3 billion to 2.2 billion tons by 2025, causing environmental, social, and consequently public health problems. The biggest problem in this regard involves the inadequate disposal of waste, and in emerging countries like Brazil, it is sorted less waste for recycling or composting. In this context, plastic packaging is more complex due to the high polymer composition, as well as low recycling rates. Bioplastics appear as alternatives because they are mostly biodegradable. Given the various functions of packaging and a systematic review of the literature, the aim of this study was to …

Efficient Redundancy Techniques In Cloud And Desktop Grid Systems Using Map/G/C-Type Queues, Srinivas R. Chakravarthy, Alexander Rumyantsev

Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering Publications

Cloud computing is continuing to prove its flexibility and versatility in helping industries and businesses as well as academia as a way of providing needed computing capacity. As an important alternative to cloud computing, desktop grids allow to utilize the idle computer resources of an enterprise/community by means of distributed computing system, providing a more secure and controllable environment with lower operational expenses. Further, both cloud computing and desktop grids are meant to optimize limited resources and at the same time to decrease the expected latency for users. The crucial parameter for optimization both in cloud computing and in desktop …

Sensel Morph: Product Communication Improvement Initiative, Kasper W. Lui-Delange, Samuel Distler, Rafael Paroli

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Sensel is a startup company that recently launched their first product. The Morph is a multi-functional touch interface that interacts with a wide range of software through touching enabled silicon overlays. The support documentation was believed to cause confusion, which is leading to limited sales and increased returns. We focused on the structures of its website and product documentation, which were initially developed without end user testing. Our team explored Sensel’s current state to develop two multiphase design alternatives. These designs provide multiple user-facing testing frameworks as well as determine the root-cause of the Morph’s current communication issues. The designs …

Improving Warehouse Capacity For Synergy Manufacturing, Brian Garcia

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This report aims to aid Synergy Manufacturing (a well-recognized producer of high-performance components for off-roading vehicles) to improve in-house production capacity in wake of an expanded facility space and substantial increase in the number of current available products over the span of a few years. Current warehouse issues include struggling to meet demand, high inventory, and an unsafe overcrowding of WIP on the floor space. The steps taken to resolve these issues are to collect setup times, operational times, total process times, machine tool usage, and flow process from a selected group of five high-demand items from Synergy Manufacturing’s current …

Building A Database For A Startup: Boltabout, Danielle Tran

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

BoltAbout is a young start-up based out of San Luis Obispo, CA. Their primary business is renting out bikes via monthly-subscription with the opportunity to lease to own. BoltAbout has seen great success over the past 2 years and is looking to expand. The company currently has 200 bikes, but the demand is far outweighing the supply. The CEO of BoltAbout hopes to grow to grow the company’s inventory to 500 bikes by the end of 2017 and 1500 by the end of the school year. As the company continues to expand, it will need to be able to accurately …

Crystal Engineering Manufacturing Facility Analysis, Maximiliano Cortes, Eric Dustin Kornrumpf, Sthefano Alvarado

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This report will encompass a two-quarter long senior project effort to provide a recommendation for the client, Crystal Engineering. Crystal Engineering is currently in the process of introducing three new products, one now and two within the next six months. However, their existing lines already occupy the available production space and as a result, they are unable to determine how to effectively incorporate new production lines within the facility. Therefore, the main objectives of this project were to deliver several facility redesign layouts backed by a holistic justification for each. The formulation of the facility redesign layouts incorporated several industrial …

Student Shop Access And Inventory Control In The College Of Architecture And Environmental Design Shops, Ryan Raj Mattel, Chris Steven Chen, Kevin Michael Gallagher

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The Cal Poly College of Architecture and Environmental Design shops, directed by David Kempken, give the opportunity for thousands of students to use the “Learn By Doing” philosophy and operate various machinery, tooling, and devices to complete projects inside and outside of the classroom. These students are able to check out tools and machinery to complete these projects on a weekly basis. This report will discuss the complexities and shortcomings of the current database system, FileMaker Pro, that is used for these transactions. The report will furthermore discuss the design and methodology of replacing this system with an improved integrated …

Reducing Same Day Missed Appointments, Lucas Madison, Tyler Moore, Jolani Chun-Moy

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Radiology Associates (RA) is a diagnostic imaging center that offers high-quality, digital medical imaging and interventional radiology services for patients, physicians and healthcare organizations across the Central Coast. They are an ongoing problem that involves a considerable portion of their patients not showing up for their appointments Our project aims to reduce same day missed appointments at Radiology Associates. Radiology Associates currently has a no-show rate of 13.48%. They lose approximately $240 for every same day missed appointment. Our goal was to find new ways to reduce their no-show rate to 8%. Based on our calculations, Radiology Associates could save …

Quadratic Two-Stage Stochastic Optimization With Coherent Measures Of Risk, Jie Sun, Li-Zhi Liao, Brian Rodrigues

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

A new scheme to cope with two-stage stochastic optimization problems uses a risk measure as the objective function of the recourse action, where the risk measure is defined as the worst-case expected values over a set of constrained distributions. This paper develops an approach to deal with the case where both the first and second stage objective functions are convex linear-quadratic. It is shown that under a standard set of regularity assumptions, this two-stage quadratic stochastic optimization problem with measures of risk is equivalent to a conic optimization problem that can be solved in polynomial time.

The Developmental Test Scheduling Problem, Joseph E. Schoenbeck

Theses and Dissertations

Developmental testing of aircraft systems in the United States Air Force requires a complex set of resources for each test. The optimal scheduling of those resources is the job of the 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base. With more than 20 different Combined Task Forces requesting resources for roughly 300 flying missions each week, manual scheduling is a difficult task. The current process takes a team of schedulers several days to get a workable result from which they can start tailoring the final schedule. While concepts and techniques can be taken from industry scheduling problems, the body of …

Effect Of Anthropometric Variability On Middle-Market Aircraft Seating, Tara C. Sriram

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

A middle-of-market aircraft, or MoMA, is defined as an aircraft capable of flying 180-250 passengers without refueling for 2,300-5,800 miles(~2,000-5,000 nautical miles). As the name suggests, middle-of-market aircraft are positioned in between the market segments served by narrow body (single-aisle) and wide body (twin-aisle) aircraft. This paper presents the findings of a study on the effect of anthropomorphic variability on economy class seating on middle-market aircraft currently in service. The study found that among 130 middle-market LOPAs, the mean seat pitch was greater for US airlines than for Asian airlines. Furthermore, the sampled Asian airlines had a higher preference …

Subjectivity In Failure Mode Effects Analysis (Fmea) Severity Classification Within A Reliability Centered Maintenance (Rcm) Context, Marc Banghart, Kari Babski-Reeves, Linkan Bian, Lesley Strawderman

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

This research paper investigated subjectivity in the severity rating of failure modes within a risk analysis process. Although several risk analysis processes can be utilized, the study considered the application of Failure Modes Effects Analysis (FMEA) or Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) due to its common use within the Aerospace Industry. The study investigated both differences in severity selection given varying amounts of experience as well as any association between severity selection and the provided input information. The main goal of the research was to investigate the impact of data quality on severity selection and to identify factors …

Collaborative Appearance-Based Place Recognition And Improving Place Recognition Using Detection Of Dynamic Objects, Juan Pablo Munoz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation makes contributions to the problem of Long-Term Appearance-Based Place Recognition. We present a framework for place recognition in a collaborative scheme and a method to reduce the impact of dynamic objects on place representations. We demonstrate our findings using a state-of-the-art place recognition approach.

We begin in Part I by describing the general problem of place recognition and its importance in applications where accurate localization is crucial. We discuss feature detection and description and also explain the functioning of several place recognition frameworks.

In Part II, we present a novel framework for collaboration between agents from a pure …

Integrated Cooperation And Competition In Multi-Agent Decision-Making, Kyle Hollins Wray, Akshat Kumar, Shlomo Zilberstein

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Observing that many real-world sequential decision problems are not purely cooperative or purely competitive, we propose a new model—cooperative-competitive process (CCP)—that can simultaneously encapsulate both cooperation and competition.First, we discuss how the CCP model bridges the gap between cooperative and competitive models. Next, we investigate a specific class of group-dominant CCPs, in which agents cooperate to achieve a common goal as their primary objective, while also pursuing individual goals as a secondary objective. We provide an approximate solution for this class of problems that leverages stochastic finite-state controllers.The model is grounded in two multi-robot meeting and box pushing domains that …

Resource-Constrained Scheduling For Maritime Traffic Management, Lucas Agussurja, Akshat Kumar, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We address the problem of mitigating congestion and preventing hotspots in busy water areas such as Singapore Straits and port waters. Increasing maritime traffic coupled with narrow waterways makes vessel schedule coordination for just-in-time arrival critical for navigational safety. Our contributions are: 1) We formulate the maritime traffic management problem based on the real case study of Singapore waters; 2) We model the problem as a variant of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP), and formulate mixed-integer and constraint programming (MIP/CP) formulations; 3) To improve the scalability, we develop a combinatorial Benders (CB) approach that is significantly more effective than …

Dispatch Guided Allocation Optimization For Effective Emergency Response, Supriyo Ghosh, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Effective emergency (medical, fire or criminal) response iscrucial for improving safety and security in urban environments. Recent research in improving effectiveness of emergency management systems (EMSs) has utilized data-drivenoptimization models for efficient allocation of emergency response vehicles (ERVs) to base locations. However, thesedata-driven optimization models either ignore the dispatchstrategy of ERVs (typically the nearest available ERV is dispatched to serve an incident) or employ myopic approaches(e.g., greedy approach based on marginal gain). This resultsin allocations that are not synchronised with the real evolution dynamics on the ground or can be improved significantly.To bridge this gap, we make the following contributions: …

Scalable Urban Mobile Crowdsourcing: Handling Uncertainty In Worker Movement, Shih-Fen Cheng, Cen Chen, Thivya Kandappu, Hoong Chuin Lau, Archan Misra, Nikita Jaiman, Randy Tandriansyah Daratan, Desmond Koh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this article, we investigate effective ways of utilizing crowdworkers in providing various urban services. The task recommendation platform that we design can match tasks to crowdworkers based on workers’ historical trajectories and time budget limits, thus making recommendations personal and efficient. One major challenge we manage to address is the handling of crowdworker’s trajectory uncertainties. In this article, we explicitly allow multiple routine routes to be probabilistically associated with each worker. We formulate this problem as an integer linear program whose goal is to maximize the expected total utility achieved by all workers. We further exploit the separable structures …

Risk-Sensitive Stochastic Orienteering Problems For Trip Optimization In Urban Environments, Pradeep Varakantham, Akshat Kumar, Hoong Chuin Lau, William Yeoh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Orienteering Problems (OPs) are used to model many routing and trip planning problems. OPs are a variantof the well-known traveling salesman problem where the goal is to compute the highest reward path thatincludes a subset of vertices and has an overall travel time less than a specified deadline. However, the applicabilityof OPs is limited due to the assumption of deterministic and static travel times. To that end, Campbellet al. extended OPs to Stochastic OPs (SOPs) to represent uncertain travel times (Campbell et al. 2011). Inthis article, we make the following key contributions: (1) We extend SOPs to Dynamic SOPs (DSOPs), …

Assessment And Comparison Of Aviation Manufacturing Industries Throughout Mexico And Brazil, Omar E. Morsi, Kelly A. Whealan-George, Aaron D. Clevenger

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

This literature review serves to provide insight and understanding in regards to the evolving aviation manufacturing industry throughout the globe and more specifically, Mexico and Brazil. Increased demand for aircraft units both in the commercial and private sectors have led to unprecedented expansions in aircraft manufacturing across the industry. In order to illuminate certain potentials and current growth levels of such industries, this review will delve into an array of information and specifications in regards to economic, political, and cultural influences throughout both Mexican and Brazilian markets respectively. In conclusion, the review will identify the transformation of an aviation manufacturing …

Smart Travel, Apoorva Sulakhe

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

The purpose of this poster is to further explore the idea of a “SMART” travel app. To design an app that is self-monitoring, that could analyze data and present the best travel options for customers in terms of available providers, price and time. Not only should the app be beneficial to customers but it should also be beneficial to providers. Through a series of analysis, questionnaires and eye tracking experiments our team was able to design an app that will provide customers with the information needed to make a well-informed decision on how to travel from point A to B, …

Developing A High-Dimensional Dataset Of The Changes In Ion Channels Expression Level At The Cholinergic Boutons In Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Joshua Harris

The University Honors Program

ALS, or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, is a neurodegenerative disease that causes motor neuron degeneration. Affecting nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, this disease eventually leads to respiratory muscle failure and death. Although ALS is fairly uncommon, our lack of information on how ALS develops drives the need for further study. In the Neuro Engineering, Rehabilitation, and Degeneration laboratory at Wright State University, immunohistochemical data has been collected on a mouse model (SOD1-G93A) throughout their lifespan to better examine the neurological effects of ALS. To better organize and interpret the data, a high-dimensional dataset was created in this project …

Communication Based Control For Dc Microgrids, Mahmoud S. Saleh, Yusef Esa, Ahmed Mohamed

Publications and Research

Centralized communication-based control is one of the main methods that can be implemented to achieve autonomous advanced energy management capabilities in DC microgrids. However, its major limitation is the fact that communication bandwidth and computation resources are limited in practical applications. This can be often improved by avoiding redundant communications and complex computations. In this paper, an autonomous communication-based hybrid state/event driven control scheme is proposed. This control scheme is hierarchical and heuristic, such that on the primary control level, it encompasses state-driven local controllers, and on the secondary control level, an event-driven MG centralized controller (MGCC) is used. This …