Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Service Flow Networks For Functional Design Of Distribution Centers, Michael Schmidt, Detlef Spee, Michael Ten Hompel

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

This work deals with the determination of an approach for concept planning of distribution centers. For this purpose, the "Distribution Center Design Process" is defined. Solution concepts for logistics centers are developed and evaluated in an eight-step process. In particular, it will be focused on formalization of the functional area, which has not been considered scientifically, yet. This results, among other things, in the definition of services and basic transformation properties of handling units. These can be used to create and semantically test service flow networks, which describe the functional sequence and transformations of service objects in distribution centers.

Progress In Autonomous Picking As Demonstrated By The Amazon Robotic Challenge, Dominik Colling, Jonathan Dziedzitz, Kai Furmans, Patric Hopfgarten, Kai Markert

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

The automation of the picking process is a longheld dream in intra-logistics. while the expert judgment in recent years was, that there is no immediate applicability to be expected for applications in areas, where the variety of products is high. However, the recent advances in computer science, mechanical engineering and material handling systems design have moved the field substantially forward. In this article we want to show, how the Amazon Robotic Challenge has driven this development process and how capable the technology is. The Amazon robotic Challenge (ARC) and its increasingly difficult challenges are described first. Then the applied technology …

The Small World Of Material Handling Research, Parag J. Siddique, Kevin Gue, Md Salahuddin Ayuby

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Using data from 88 journals over an 8 year period, we investigate the relationships among researchers in material handling. We apply social network analysis to measure many attributes of the network, including papers published each year, papers published per author, number of collaborators per author, strength of collaboration between authors, and how influential an author is in the network. We observe that collaboration patterns in material handling follow a scale-free structure in the presence of some hub-like researchers. According to social network theory, these hub researchers facilitate rapid dissemination of knowledge in the network. We conclude that the scientific community …

A Design Methodology To Optimize Supply Chain Network Performance, Dheeraporn Nippaya, J. David Porter

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Organizations are constantly looking for new ways to reduce costs while still providing high customer service levels to face stringent competitive environments and the ever- increasing market globalization. An alternative these organizations can pursue to respond to these challenges and to gain a competitive differentiation is to optimize their supply chain network (SCN). This research aims to develop an effective SCN design strategy to locate facilities (i.e., plants and distribution centers) and to balance the allocation of customers to these facilities to satisfy capacity limitations and customer demands with minimum total cost and maximum level of service. It is anticipated …

Economic And Performance Analysis Of Dual-Bay Vertical Lift Modules, Fabio Sgarbossa, Martina Calzavara, Alessandro Persona

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Warehouse picking is one of the most time and cost consuming activities in a warehouse, often requiring the presence of human operators, who travel within the aisles to retrieve the items needed by the customers. Several studies demonstrate that the travelling activity can represent even the 50% of the total picking time, with a subsequent creation of a separate storage and picking area for small objects. In the last years, new solutions for order picking systems have been developed, especially for small items. One of these solutions requires Vertical Lift Modules (VLMs), storage columns with extractable trays. In this paper, …

Collaborative Bots In Distribution Centers, Russell D. Meller, Dima Nazzal, Lisa M. Thomas

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

This research investigates the business case for using autonomous collaborative robots (“bots”) in warehouses. Bots are designed to work collaboratively with human workers in warehouses to fill orders, primarily in e-commerce environments. In order-picking applications, a bot knows the location of every item in the warehouse, and when an item needs to be picked for an order, the bot navigates to that item and waits. Human workers are assigned to patrol specific zones, and when they see a bot waiting, the worker walks to the bot, reads the instructions off the screen, executes the task, and moves on. The bot …

A Performance Calculator For Shuttle-Based Storage And Retrieval System Design, Banu Yetkin Ekren, Anil Akpunar, Tone Lerher

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

In this study, we present an analytical model based tool that can estimate critical performance measures from a pre-defined shuttle-based storage and retrieval system (SBS/RS) design. SBS/RS is relatively a new automated storage and retrieval technology and mostly used for mini-load material handling. In this study, we develop an open queuing network model based tool estimating critical performance measures: the mean travel time of lifts/shuttles, utilization of lifts/shuttles, amount of energy consumption and energy regeneration per transaction, waiting times and number of jobs waiting in queues, etc., from a pre-defined SBS/RS design. By the developed tool, one can evaluate an …

Urban Parcel Logistics Hub And Network Design: The Impact Of Modularity And Hyperconnectivity, Benoit Montreuil, Shannon Buckley, Louis Faugere, Reem Khir, Shahab Derhami

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

This paper examines how exploiting the hyperconnectivity and modularity concepts underpinning the Physical Internet enables the parcel logistics industry to meet the worldwide challenges to efficiently and sustainably offer faster and more precise deliveries across urban agglomerations, notably across the world’s megacities. It emphasizes disruptive transformations of package logistics hubs and networks, such as multi-tier world pixelization, multi-plane parcel logistics web, smart dynamic parcel routing and hub-based consolidation, and modular parcel containerization.

Dynamic Batching For Order Picking In Warehouses, Jelmer Pier Van Der Gaast, Bolor Jargalsaikhan, Kees Jan Roodbergen

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

Dynamic batch picking is characterized by combining product demand from multiple customer orders into one pick tour where new orders are continuously received. Using modern order-picking aids, updated picking instructions can be included in the current pick tours which allows pickers to be re-routed to pick for new orders even when they already started a pick tour. We develop a mathematical model for dynamic batch picking that minimizes the order throughput time of incoming customer orders. In case of new order arrivals, we can quickly re-optimize the model and determine new updated pick tours. This allows for short order throughput …

Influential Factors In Consumer's Adoption Of Innovative Products, Mahdokht Kalantari

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the challenges involved with the process of diffusion of innovations in the contexts of innovative educational materials and technological innovations.

Chapters 2 and 3 discuss building and using Online Brand Communities (OBCs) to disseminate innovative math educational materials. OBCs are known to be important platforms where consumers can communicate with the brand as well as other consumers. Through the effective use of these platforms, brands could accelerate the process of diffusion of their innovations. However, OBCs will not survive if consumers do not get engaged and participate in these communities. The purpose of this section of the …

The Impact Of Machine Learning Algorithms On Benchmarking Process In Healthcare Service Delivery, Egbe-Etu Emmanuel Etu

Wayne State University Theses

Currently, organizations have adopted and implemented a variety of innovative quality management philosophies, approaches, and techniques to stay competitive in an ever-changing global economy. Benchmarking is one of such techniques deployed by organizations to stay competitive. The motivation for this research stems from a real-world problem being faced by hospitals in the healthcare industry who have amassed a ton of data and want to embark on benchmarking project to assess the performance of the emergency departments due to challenges faced with poor management of operations which has led to high patient boarding rates, high patient wait-times, poor quality service, low …

Differences In The Throughput Performance Of The Warehouse Depending On The Quality Of The Calculation Parameters, David Sourek

15th IMHRC Proceedings (Savannah, Georgia. USA – 2018)

This article explores the quality level of the parameters that are used to determine the throughput performance of the warehouse. In our model case, this is a rack warehouse where the storage and picking of goods is ensured by forklifts. All kind of goods are stored on pallets. The aim of our research is to assess to what extent the quality level (accuracy) of the description of warehouse processes influences the accuracy of the determination of the throughput performance of the warehouse. In the first part of the article, we defined the parameters and the ways in which different levels …

Computational Intelligence Methods For Predicting Fetal Outcomes From Heart Rate Patterns, Vinayaka Nagendra Harikishan Gude Divya Sampath

Masters Theses

"In this thesis, methods for evaluating the fetal state are compared to make predictions based on Cardiotocography (CTG) data. The first part of this research is the development of an algorithm to extract features from the CTG data. A feature extraction algorithm is presented that is capable of extracting most of the features in the SISPORTO software package as well as late and variable decelerations. The resulting features are used for classification based on both U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) categories and umbilical cord pH data. The first experiment uses the features to classify the results into three different …

Transmission Line Inspection Using Suspended Robot: Cost Effective Analysis And Operational Routing Identification, Balaji Rathinam Nagarajan

Masters Theses

"High voltage transmission lines form a crucial part of the energy infrastructure of a country. Effective maintenance is required to maintain its reliability and reduce the probability of the occurrence of the outage. Conventionally, the routine inspection of the transmission line was conducted by linemen with the assistance of hot stick and helicopter, which is considered dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive.

In this thesis, we focus on the initial study of seeking the state of the art robotics technology to by largely replace human beings in transmission line inspection. The existing robotics technologies that are interested by utility companies, as well …

Analyzing Sensor Based Human Activity Data Using Time Series Segmentation To Determine Sleep Duration, Yogesh Deepak Lad

Masters Theses

"Sleep is the most important thing to rest our brain and body. A lack of sleep has adverse effects on overall personal health and may lead to a variety of health disorders. According to Data from the Center for disease control and prevention in the United States of America, there is a formidable increase in the number of people suffering from sleep disorders like insomnia, sleep apnea, hypersomnia and many more. Sleep disorders can be avoided by assessing an individual's activity over a period of time to determine the sleep pattern and duration. The sleep pattern and duration can be …

Data Driven Decision Making Tools For Transportation Work Zone Planning, Samareh Moradpour

Doctoral Dissertations

"This research provides tools and methods for integrating stakeholder input and crash data analytics to better guide transportation engineers in effective work zone design and management. Three key contributions are presented: the importance of stakeholder input in traffic management strategies, application of data mining and pattern recognition to identify high-risk drivers in work zones, and the use of multinomial logistic regression (MLR) as a tool to understand key findings from historic crash data. Work zone signage is mandated by the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), but the current configurations are often criticized by the driving public and state …

การประยุกต์ใช้สารหล่อเย็นน้อยที่สุดในการกลึงชิ้นงานดรัมไฮคลัช, ณัฐรดา ขำจีน

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

การกลึงเป็นกระบวนการหลักที่ใช้ในการแปรรูปชิ้นส่วนยานยนต์ และจากความต้องการผลผลิตที่มากขึ้น จึงต้องใช้ความเร็วในการตัด และอัตราการป้อนตัดที่สูง ซึ่งการตัดดังกล่าวทำให้อุณหภูมิในการตัดสูง เป็นสาเหตุให้อายุการใช้งานของมีดตัดลดลง ไม่เพียงส่งผลกระทบต่อคุณภาพผิวของชิ้นงานแล้ว ยังส่งผลให้อัตราการผลิตต่ำลงด้วย จากการหยุดเครื่องจักรเพื่อทำการเปลี่ยนมีดตัดใหม่ ดังนั้นการใช้การใช้สารหล่อเย็น (คูลแลนท์) เป็นวิธีหนึ่งที่นิยมใช้เพื่อช่วยลดอุณหภูมิที่เกิดขึ้นขณะตัด ลดอัตราการสึกหรอของมีดตัด ช่วยยืดอายุการใช้งานของมีดตัด และชิ้นงานได้คุณภาพตามที่ต้องการ อย่างไรก็ตามใช้การใช้สารหล่อเย็นก็ไม่ได้เป็นทางเลือกที่ดีเสมอไป จากต้นทุนที่สูงและปัญหาด้านสิ่งแวดล้อม ดังนั้นการใช้เทคนิค MQL จึงเป็นทางเลือกหนึ่งที่เริ่มใช้มากขึ้นในปัจจุบัน เพื่อแก้ปัญหาที่กล่าวมาข้างต้น งานวิจัยนี้ได้เสนอการใช้เทคนิค MQL มาใช้ทดแทนการตัดแบบเปียกที่ใช้ในกระบวนการผลิตปัจจุบัน โดยนำมาประยุกต์ใช้ เพื่อศึกษาเงื่อนไขการตัดที่เหมาะสมสำหรับวัสดุเหล็กคาร์บอนเกรด SAPH370 ด้วยเครื่องมือตัดคาร์ไบด์ โดยเงื่อนไขการตัดที่เหมาะสมจะพิจารณาจากปริมาณสารหล่อเย็นน้อยที่สุด และอายุการใช้งานของมีดตัดสูงสุด ภายใต้ความขรุขระผิวเฉลี่ย (Ra) ไม่เกิน 1.2 ไมโครเมตร จากงานวิจัยนี้ได้เสนอเงื่อนไขการตัดที่เหมาะสมที่อัตราการป้อนตัด 0.10 มิลลิเมตรต่อรอบ ความเร็วในการตัด 300 เมตรต่อนาที และปริมาณการใช้สารหล่อเย็น 5 มิลลิเมตรต่อชั่วโมง

Augmenting Incident Command System For Improved Emergency Response, Meenakshi Nagarajan

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Incident Command System provides a framework for commanders to manage an incident. However, maintaining good situation awareness in an emergency situation is often challenging to the Incident Commander. Stress may result in task fixation which may cause the commander to miss critical information and can eventually lead to poor decisions. The proposed augmented decision support system, with an integrated knowledge base, enhances the commander's decision making and situation awareness by presenting the information that may have been missed. The system has been evaluated to investigate its utility in chemical hazard scenarios. The system was used by experienced Incident Commanders to …

Two Essays On Whole Farm Modeling And Crop Marketing In Western Kentucky, Benjamin A. Martin

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

This thesis is composed of two essays that investigate whole farm planning and crop marketing in western Kentucky. In the first essay, contracting decisions between food corn producers and a mill are analyzed to observe factors affecting the bushel amount farmers contract. Unbalanced panel data containing seven years’ worth of pricing and contract information are used with a fixed-effects model to generate parameter estimates and quantify their effect on bushels contracted. It was found that contract attributes, market condition, and relationship-specific assets had a significant effect on producers’ food corn contracting decisions. The second essay utilizes mixed-integer programming to optimize …

An Engineering Analytics Based Framework For Computational Advertising Systems, Mengmeng Chen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Engineering analytics is a multifaceted landscape with a diversity of analytics tools which comes from emerging fields such as big data, machine learning, and traditional operations research. Industrial engineering is capable to optimize complex process and systems using engineering analytics elements and the traditional components such as total quality management. This dissertation has proven that industrial engineering using engineering analytics can optimize the emerging area of Computational Advertising. The key was to know the different fields very well and do the right selection. However, people first need to understand and be experts in the flow of the complex application of …

The Design, Test And Evaluation Of A Sensing System For Process Analytical Technology (Pat), Trevor Murphy

Theses

Increased globalisation and competitiveness has given rise to a more dynamic and diverse global market that has begun to place incredible strain on manufacturing supply chains. Conventional manufacturing methods such as the batch manufacturing methods employed largely by the materials processing industries i.e. pharmaceuticals, polymers and magnesium processing plants are ill-suited to cope with the demands of today. As products evolve with technological advancements they become more complex to produce and require alternative approaches to manufacturing to ensure product quality while reducing costs and increasing manufacturing efficiencies.

A potential solution to the growing demands on today's supply chain is process …

Regression Analysis Of Factors Impacting Problem Solving Engagement Within Lean Systems Implementation, David M. Parsley Ii

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Organizations around the world have attempted to implement the concepts of the Toyota Production System (TPS), commonly referred to as Lean, with limited sustainable success. The central principles of TPS, continuous improvement and respect for people, are grounded in the Japanese values of Monozukuri and Hitozukuri. Monozukuri deals with creating or making a product, while Hitozukuri conveys the idea of developing people through learning. In order for organizations to adopt these values they must have a system that engages employees at all levels in applying problem solving to improve their work. This research uses organizational assessments obtained from a variety …

A Methodology On Weapon Combat Effectiveness Analytics Using Big Data And Live, Virtual, Or/And Constructive Simulations, Won Jung Ii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Weapon Combat Effectiveness (WCE) analytics is very expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous in the real world because we have to create data from the real operations with a lot of people and weapons in the actual environment. The Modeling and Simulation (M&S) of many techniques is used for overcoming these limitations. Although the era of big data has emerged and achieved a great deal of success in a variety of fields, most WCE research using the Defense Modeling and Simulation (DM&S) techniques were studied without the help of big data technologies and techniques. The existing research has not considered various …

Comparative Analysis Of The Effects Of Virtual Reality Active Video Game And Controller-Free Active Video Game Play On Physiological Response, Perceived Exertion, And Hedonic Experience, Shanon Wooden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Over 60% of US adults are overweight or obese. Sedentary lifestyles are considered major contributors to the high rates and increasing prevalence of obesity. Physical activity is a critical component in shifting from sedentary lifestyles. Studies indicate that less than half of U.S. adults meet the CDC/ACSM physical activity recommendations. Interactive video games can increase PA, but no study has yet assessed physiologic effort, hedonics, and perceived exertion for playing immersive virtual reality (VR) and controller-free screen-based active video games (AVGs), compared to treadmill walking and resting. We ran 25 subjects (9 female, 16 male) in 10-minute sessions of five …

A Framework For Prioritizing Opportunities Of Improvement In The Context Of Business Excellence Model In Healthcare Organization, Alia Aldarmaki

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In today's world, the healthcare sector is facing challenges to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. More and more improvement projects are being adopted to enhance healthcare services, making it more patient-centric, and enabling better cost control. Healthcare organizations strive to identify and carry out such improvement initiatives to sustain their businesses and gain competitive advantage. Seeking to reach a higher operational level of excellence, healthcare organizations utilize business excellence criteria to conduct assessment and identify organizational strengths and weaknesses. However, while such assessments routinely identify numerous areas for potential improvement, it is not feasible to conduct all …

Technology Foresight: A Bibliometric Analysis To Identify Leading And Emerging Methods, Elizabeth Gibson, Tugrul U. Daim, Edwin Garces, Marina Dabic

Engineering and Technology Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Foresight studies provide essential information used by the government, industry and academia for technology planning and knowledge expansion. They are complicated, resource-intensive, and quite expensive. The approach, methods, and techniques must be carefully identified and selected. Despite the global importance of foresight activities, there are no frameworks to help one develop and plan a proper foresight study. This paper begins Keywords: technology foresight; strategic foresight; adaptive foresight; Social Network Analysis (SNA); bibliometric tools; data mining; text mining. to close this gap by analyzing and comparing different schools of thought and updating the literature with the most current tools and methods. …

The Effect Of Task Load, Automation Reliability, And Environment Complexity On Uav Supervisory Control Performance, Sarah M. Sherwood

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Over the last decade, military unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have experienced exponential growth and now comprise over 40% of military aircraft. However, since most military UAVs require multiple operators (usually an air vehicle operator, payload operator, and mission commander), the proliferation of UAVs has created a manpower burden within the U.S. military. Fortunately, simultaneous advances in UAV automation have enabled a switch from direct control to supervisory control; future UAV operators will no longer directly control a single UAV subsystem but, rather, will control multiple advanced, highly autonomous UAVs. However, research is needed to better understand operator performance in a …

Inspection Process Flow Development For A Warehouse, Pahalawaththage Perera

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The project is based on a medical device outsourcing company in the US. In 2018 the company added a 44,000 sq ft new warehouse. With the scales of growth and market competition, it has come to a need to optimize production capacity to achieve 98% monthly on time delivery target. Optimizing production capacity comes with efficiently managing operations that impact overall product lead time. A primary factor that impacts the overall product lead time is production preparation time. Production preparation time is impacted by lead times of 3 operations managed by the new warehouse - Receiving Inspection, Incoming Inspection, and …

Minimizing Commute Distance For Small Groups: A Linear Programming Approach, Kevin Payne, Kritika Kumari, Levi Huddleston, Rabi Hassan

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

This paper aims to minimize total drive time between members and their respective group leader. Given a limit on group size and days available, how can a formulation of a group occur such that the sum of the total drive time is minimized. To accomplish this task a Linear Program (LP) is implemented that includes three sets of binary decisions variables summing to 4100 variables and a variety of constraints summing between 4200 and 4341 depending on the constraints enforced. For 200 members and 15 leaders the minimized average commuting time was found to be between 4.99 and 5.36 minutes …

Reflections On Teaching System Dynamics Modeling To Secondary School Students For Over 20 Years, Diana Fisher

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper contains the description of a successful system dynamics (SD) modeling approach used for almost a quarter-century in secondary schools, both in algebra classes and in a year-long SD modeling course. Secondary school students have demonstrated an ability to build original models from the news, write technical papers explaining their models, and present a newfound understanding of dynamic feedback behavior to an audience. The educational learning theory and instructional methods used for both the algebra and modeling courses are detailed, with examples. Successful student SD modeling experiences suggest the SD approach can expand the sophistication of topics that secondary …