Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Reconciling Discontinuities And Disruptions: The Construction Of An Integrated Typology, David Jeffery Kern

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Radical innovations are often characterized by a rapid shift from one dominant design to another. The theories of discontinuous and disruptive innovation present two important and independent explanations for why these shifts occur. This research tests the usefulness of combining these two theories into a single integrated typology. First, a typology is constructed that classifies shifts in dominant designs according to the theories of discontinuous and disruptive innovation. Next, the usefulness of this typology is tested with a taxonomy derived from 100 randomly selected shifts in dominant designs from across a broad range of industries. This research reconciles the theories …

Using Abet Assessment Requirements As A Catalyst For Change: Enhancing And Streamlining The Engineering Management Undergraduate Program At Missouri S&T, Stephen A. Raper, Susan L. Murray, Christa Moll Weisbrook, William Daughton

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Engineering Management (EM) undergraduate degree program at Missouri University of Science & Technology (formerly University of Missouri-Rolla) was the first program of its kind. The program started over 40 years ago and it is one of only five ABET accredited undergraduate EM programs [1]. The initial degree program included a senior year of management courses in conjunction with three years of courses in common engineering disciplines such as mechanical, electrical, and civil engineering. In the 1990s the program underwent a major restructure and students combined core engineering management classes with an emphasis area inside the department. Industrial, manufacturing, packaging, …

A Model For Coordination And Management Of Resources For Multiple Sections Of An Active Learning Style Freshman Course, Jean Nocito-Gobel, Amy Thompson, Carl Barratt, Michael Collura

Engineering and Applied Science Education Faculty Publications

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract.

Much research in recent years has verified that an active learning style approach to freshman engineering design courses adds value to undergraduate engineering programs and improves retention rates. Many universities have established First Year Programs to coordinate the activities and classes for first year students. However, not all universities have the funds to establish programs separate from disciplinary programs. How can faculty that are not assigned to a First Year Program efficiently manage multiple sections of a hands-on course with limited resources? …

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Rfid Tag Readability Issues With Palletized Loads Of Consumer Goods, Jay Singh, Eric Olsen, Keith Vorst, K. Tripp

Industrial Technology and Packaging

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an automatic identification technology, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags. This technology is being used in enterprise supply chain management-related applications to improve the efficiency of inventory tracking and management. However, this technology has not been able to realize its promised potential because of several factors, such as lack of congruous worldwide standards, privacy issues and less than perfect read rates in supply chain applications. This research aimed to evaluate the readability issues commonly faced by tagged cases of palletized consumer products. The variables studied in this research were …

What New Faculty Need To Know, But Don't Know To Ask, Susan L. Murray, Elizabeth A. Cudney, Suzanna Long, Katie Grantham

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A smooth transition to life at an academic institution and the surrounding community is essential to the professional careers of new faculty members. The transition begins during the hiring process and startup package negotiations. Once at an institution, aspects of academia including teaching, proposal writing, and the tenure process inevitably generate issues and concerns for new faculty members. Research has shown that mentoring new faculty members early in their academic career can have significant impact on professional success. This is especially true at a research-based institution where the demands of funded scholarship add an extra level of complexity. A survey …

Development Of Gis-Based Chemical Distribution Maps From Sprayer Performance Data, Joe D. Luck, Santosh Pitla, Rodrigo S. Zandonadi, Scott A. Shearer

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Presentations and White Papers

Pesticide application is an essential practice on farms in Kentucky where glyphosate resistant crops and no-till farming strategies are becoming more popular. Off-rate pesticide application errors are the result of incorrect concentrations applied to an area of the field and may result from velocity changes along the spray boom while the sprayer is turning, pressure changes across the width of the spray boom, and changes in effective boom height due to undulating terrain. In an attempt to estimate potential errors resulting from sprayer turning movements, a method was developed to compare the differences in application areas between control sections across …

Cut Crop Edge Detection Using A Laser Sensor, Santosh Pitla, Joe D. Luck, Scott A. Shearer

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Presentations and White Papers

An off-the-shelf low cost laser sensor was tested and evaluated both in laboratory and field conditions. The sensor identified the angular and straight edges of the laboratory test surface and replicated the straight edge profile with an error of 4%. In field conditions, the sensor identified three types of cut crop edges (wheat, alfalfa and corn) and replicated distinct shapes (triangle, curved and rectangular edges). The sensor was tested at two sensor path offset distances and three tractor/sensor speeds (3.2, 6.4 and 9.6 km/h). In all test runs the sensor detected the cut-crop edges. Standard deviations and RMSE values in …

Guidance Directrix Generation Using Laser Sensors, Santosh Pitla, Joe D. Luck, Scott A. Shearer

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Presentations and White Papers

A sensor array consisting of two laser sensors was utilized to determine the guidance directrix (offset distance-d, heading angle-ø) that are required as reference inputs for an automated guidance system. The sensor array was evaluated in both laboratory and field conditions. Under laboratory conditions the sensor array replicated the physical profile of the target surface with a 4% error in determining the heading angle. Field tests were conducted in two types of crops; corn and alfalfa. The sensor array identified the cut-crop edge profile ahead of the tractor and replicated distinct shapes of the cut-crop edge. RMSE values in determining …

Optimizing Replenishment Order Quantities In Uncoordinated Supply Chains, Atipol Kanchanapiboon

Dissertations

Many modern supply chains can be described as a series of uncoordinated suppliers. That is each supplier establishes their individual inventory and production policies on both the input and output sides. In these supply links there is minimal coordination between suppliers, and typically only prices and delivery guarantees are contracted. As a consequence, the inventory behavior and associated costs do not exhibit standard patterns. This makes it difficult to model and optimize these chains using classical inventory models. The common approach, therefore, for evaluating uncoordinated supply chains is to use Supply Chain Analytics software. These retrieve operational data from Enterprise …

Performance Analysis Of Coal-Fired Boiler And Natural Gas Fired Boiler At Morehead State University, Devender Banne

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Science & Technology at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science by Devender Banne on May 4, 2009.

Acuta Enews May 2009, Vol 38, No. 5

ACUTA Newsletters

In This Issue

Report from Annual Conference in Altanta

See the Conference on Your Desktop

Tech talk: Revisiting the iPhone in an Ever-careful way............ Kevin Tanzillo, Dux PR

From ACUTA Headquarters: What's New with Social Networking at ACUTA?... Jeri Semer, CAE, Exec. Dir.

DC update .........Dave Ostrom, Washington state University (retired)

lnfo Links ............ Randy Hayes, Univ. of Northern lowa

Board Report, April............ Riny Ledgerwood, San Diego state University

Free Cabling Resource Guide

Another Great Conference, More Terrific Prizes!

Welcome New Members

Check lt Out: RFls/RFPs, Job Postings, Press Releases, Special. Deals!

Annual Conference Photo Supplement

Distribution Tridimensionnelle De La Lumière Dans Une Strucutre De Tête D’Adulte Dérivée D’Un Acte Irm: Approche Par La Méthode De Monte Carlo, Chemseddine Mansouri, Jean-Pierre L'Huillier, Nasser H. Kashou

Biomedical, Industrial & Human Factors Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

High-Rate Channel Catfish Fingerling Production In The Partitioned Aquaculture System, Tim Wells

All Theses

The objective of this 4-year research project was to evaluate the performance of channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) fingerling production in the Partitioned Aquaculture System (PAS). The goal was to demonstrate production of 80-gram minimum sized fingerlings in a single growing season, allowing for 100% market-size fish production after one additional season in the grow-out PAS.
A series of 2-inch airlift pumps fed by a single 3-hp low-head blower was found to be capable of supplying sufficient water flow-rate (in 2005, 2006, and 2007) of gpm per container to 9 cohorts. A series of 0.75-hp axial flow pumps (in 2005, 2006, …

An Agent-Based Commodity Trading Simulation, Shih-Fen Cheng, Yee Pin Lim, Chao-Chi Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, the study of trading in electronic markets has received significant amount of attention, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence and electronic commerce. With increasingly sophisticated technologies being applied in analyzing information and making decisions, fully autonomous software agents are expected to take up significant roles in many important fields. This trend is most obvious in the financial domain, where speed of reaction is highly valued and significant investments have been made in information and communication technologies.Despite the successes of automated trading in many important classes of financial markets, commodity trading has lagged behind, mainly because of …

Design Of A Multi-Echelon Global Supply Chain Network With Microsoftå¨ Excel Premium Solver Plataform, Wilder Ferreira

All Theses

I designed a global supply chain distribution model of one single product, with the objective of minimizing the costs of transportation, handling materials, duties and tariffs, production, and fixed infrastructure. The distribution network has a combination of manufacturing facilities (fixed and to-be-determined), warehouses (to-be-determined), distribution centers (to-be-determined), and customer zones at fixed locations. This network design is similar to the mathematical mixed-integer linear model from Tsiakis, Shah and Pantelides (2001). This model has been implemented in Microsoft Excel, using the Standard Simplex method from Frontline, Inc. This model optimizes the number of facilities worldwide (multi-echelon) along with the flow of …

Development Of The Integrated Censored Robust-Tolerance Engineering Design Systems Via Improved Response Surface Modeling, Abdul-Baasit Shaibu

All Dissertations

In this dissertation, we intend to integrate censoring into robust-tolerance engineering using improved dual response surface modeling. This is perhaps the first attempt in the quality control literature. In the literature, response surface models have largely been restricted to second order (or quadratic) models and robust-tolerance designs have been restricted to situations involving complete observations. We intend to show that higher order response surface models can be more powerful in terms of prediction ability, and are therefore more reliable than the preferred quadratic models in the general context of robust design. We will also consider formulating robust and tolerance designs …

Distributed Constraint Optimization With Structured Resource Constraints, Akshat Kumar, Boi Faltings, Adrian Petcu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Distributed constraint optimization (DCOP) provides a framework for coordinated decision making by a team of agents. Often, during the decision making, capacity constraints on agents' resource consumption must be taken into account. To address such scenarios, an extension of DCOP-Resource Constrained DCOP - has been proposed. However, certain type of resources have an additional structure associated with them and exploiting it can result in more efficient algorithms than possible with a general framework. An example of these are distribution networks, where the flow of a commodity from sources to sinks is limited by the flow capacity of edges. We present …

Dynamic Programming Approximations For Partially Observable Stochastic Games, Akshat Kumar, Shlomo Zilberstein

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Partially observable stochastic games (POSGs) provide a rich mathematical framework for planning under uncertainty by a group of agents. However, this modeling advantage comes with a price, namely a high computational cost. Solving POSGs optimally quickly becomes intractable after a few decision cycles. Our main contribution is to provide bounded approximation techniques, which enable us to scale POSG algorithms by several orders of magnitude. We study both the POSG model and its cooperative counterpart, DEC-POMDP. Experiments on a number of problems confirm the scalability of our approach while still providing useful policies.

Constraint-Based Dynamic Programming For Decentralized Pomdps With Structured Interactions, Akshat Kumar, Shlomo Zilberstein

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Decentralized partially observable MDPs (DEC-POMDPs) provide a rich framework for modeling decision making by a team of agents. Despite rapid progress in this area, the limited scalability of solution techniques has restricted the applicability of the model. To overcome this computational barrier, research has focused on restricted classes of DEC-POMDPs, which are easier to solve yet rich enough to capture many practical problems. We present CBDP, an efficient and scalable point-based dynamic programming algorithm for one such model called ND-POMDP (Network Distributed POMDP). Specifically, CBDP provides magnitudes of speedup in the policy computation and generates better quality solution for all …

Characterization Of Pet Samples Processed In An Rf Oxygen Discharge, Russell L. Rhoton

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

A radio frequency plasma (13.56 MHz) was used to modify the surface of a poly (ethylene terepthalate) (PET) sample. The plasma was generated in a pure oxygen process atmosphere at pressures of 100 mTorr, and 2.0 Torr at output powers of 250 Watts and 500 Watts.

Optical emission spectroscopy (OES) was used to characterize the plasma/sample interaction. Spectra were measured from 250 nm to 900 nm during each of the processing sessions.

The spectra showed changes depending upon the pressure of the plasma. Molecules of OH and atomic oxygen were observed at low pressures (100 mTorr), whereas CO and atomic …

Acuta Enews April 2009, Vol 38, No. 4

ACUTA Newsletters

ln This lssue

From the President.. .....Corinne Hoch, Columbia Univ., ACUTA President

Board Report......... Riny Ledgerwood, San Diego State Univ., ACUTA Secretory/Treasurer

Tech Talk: After a Long Dry Spell, We Find a Good Acronym ....... Kevin Tanzillo, Dux PR

Corporate Liaison Committee

DC Update ................ Dave Ostrom, Washington State Univ. (retired)

"Financial Crisis Activity in Washington" Newsletter for ACUTA Members

Turning Business Relationships into Partnerships ..... Don Leone, Siemens Enterprise Communications

Q & A from the ACUTA Listserv

lnfo Links .......... Randy Hayes, Univ. of Northern lowa

Welcome New Members

Check lt Out: Press Releases...Job Postings...RFls/RFPs

Recent Progress In Acoustic Travel-Time Tomography Of The Atmospheric Surface Layer, Vladimir E. Ostashev, Sergey N. Vecherin, D. Keith Wilson, Astrid Ziemann, George H. Goedecke

United States Army: Publications

Acoustic tomography of the atmospheric surface layer (ASL) is based on measurements of the travel times of sound propagation between sources and receivers which constitute a tomography array. Then, the temperature and wind velocity fields inside the tomographic volume or area are reconstructed using different inverse algorithms. Improved knowledge of these fields is important in many practical applications. Tomography has certain advantages in comparison with currently used instrumentation for measurement of the temperature and wind velocity. In this paper, a short historical overview of acoustic tomography of the atmosphere is presented. The main emphasis is on recent progress in acoustic …

A Sensitivity Analysis Of Scheduling Changes On Flight Training Resource Utilization Using Discrete Event Simulation, Melissa A. Findlay

Master's Theses - Daytona Beach

This study presented a scheduling model of the Flight Training Department at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University's Daytona Beach Campus built using ARENA 12.0. The purpose of the study was to determine if the Flight Training Department system was sensitive to changes in the resources available to students in Flight Training Device (FTD) course modules. Historical data from the Flight Training Department was used to build the model. As no significant difference was found between the actual real world system and the model for the number of active students and for the time it took students to complete the program, the …

Assessment Of Superstructure Ice Protection As Applied To Offshore Oil Operations Safety, Charles C. Ryerson

United States Army: Publications

Offshore oil exploration and production operators in high latitude regions recognize icing as a seasonal challenge. Icing is often accepted as an inconvenience, but that tolerance can rapidly become a safety hazard that requires solutions. This report evaluates the superstructure and atmospheric icing hazard on offshore platforms and supply boats with location and operation on the structure. It also explains the potential impact of icing on these locations and operations by icing type: sea spray, snow, glaze, rime, frost, and sleet. Fourteen ice protection technology categories are identified for anti-icing, deicing, and ice detection. These technologies include chemicals, icephobic coatings, …

Optimizing Service Systems Based On Application-Level Qos, Qianhui Liang, Xindong Wu, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Making software systems service-oriented is becoming the practice, and an increasingly large number of service systems play important roles in today's business and industry. Currently, not enough attention has been paid to the issue of optimization of service systems. In this paper, we argue that the key elements to be considered in optimizing service systems are robustness, system orientation, and being dynamic and transparent. We present our solution to optimizing service systems based on application-level QoS management. Our solution incorporates three capabilities, i.e., 1) the ability to cater to the varying rigidities on Web service QoS in distinct application domains …

Design-An Opportunity In Reducing Corrugated Fiberboard Carbon Footprint, Jay Singh, R. Kisch, J. Chhun, Eric Olsen

Industrial Technology and Packaging

Telescoping Half Slotted Containers (HSC) and Diagonal Corner Bliss style containers are popular choices for packaging agricultural products such as apples, pears, citrus, potatoes, garlic and most vegetables. This study evaluated two unique corrugated container designs, Kisch Full Circle Tray (FCT) and Single V Kisch Bliss, which are both viable designs available to replace the presently used styles of boxes for produce distribution. This paper presents the compression strength results of Telescoping HSC containers as compared to two possible replacements and the Diagonal Corner Bliss designs when stored under standard, refrigerated and tropical conditions. It also compares the material savings …

Flexography Printing Performance Of Pla Film, J. Jacobson, Malcom Keif, Xiaoying Rong, Jay Singh, Keith Vorst

Industrial Technology and Packaging

During the past decade polylactide acid (PLA) polymer has been the subject of numerous researches aimed at comparing it with traditional petroleum based polymers for many packaging applications. PLA is biodegradable and derived from agricultural by-products such as corn starch or other starch-rich substances like maize, sugar or wheat.While PLA is currently being used in many packaging applications with well documented performance, little work has been done comparing printing processes and performance. This study presents PLA printing performance and sustainability findings using the common flexography printing process. Various analytical methods were used to evaluate performance and provide recommendations for optimized …

On The Role Of Assertions For Conceptual Modeling As Enablers Of Composable Simulation Solutions, Robert Dennis King

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This research provides a much needed systematic review of the roles that assertions play in model composability and simulation interoperability. In doing so, this research contributes a partial solution to one of the problems of model composability and simulation interoperability—namely, why do simulation systems fail to achieve the maximum level of interoperability possible? It demonstrates the importance of the assertions that are made during model development and simulation implementation, particularly as they reflect the unique viewpoint of each developer or user. It hypothesizes that it is possible to detect composability conflicts by means of a four-step process developed by the …

Investigating The Relationship Between An It Project Manager's Emotional Intelligence And The Customer's Perception Of Success, William Jacob Lamarsh Ii

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This research focuses on the intersections of Project Management, Information Technology (IT), and Emotional Intelligence. The Project Management Institute (PMI) created the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, which is one of the most highly regarded and sought after professional certifications (Project Management Institute 2005, p. 15-18). This certification acknowledges the holder as a knowledgeable practitioner in Project Management. The purpose behind Project Management is to obtain requirements, sometimes fluid at best, and develop solutions that are traceable by schedule and cost controls. This approach allows a Project Manager to monitor and control the project through successful completion. However, the PMI …

Towards The Quantitative Analysis Of The Connectivity Value Of Networked Operations, Dean Deller

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

While the nature of and the approach to command and control is evolving in order to meet the challenges of Information Age warfare, the essential functions that must be accomplished remain constant. One of those essential functions is the arrangement of the assets within a combat force. Certainly, the many different ways to arrange a given set of assets will have different impacts on the combat effectiveness of the force. Some arrangements will enable self-synchronization, while other arrangements will impede it. How then, should an Information Age combat force be organized in order to optimize its effectiveness?

The concept of …