Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Prioritizing Strategic Cyberspace Lethality, Andrew J. Schoka

Military Cyber Affairs

The primary concern of United States national security policy, as detailed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, has shifted from asymmetrical counter-insurgency operations to countering inter-state strategic competition by rogue regimes and revisionist powers. This doctrinal shift has prompted an increased emphasis on military lethality, particularly in strategic-level cyberspace operations intended to counter open challenges to the global security environment and United States preeminence. Drawing from the theory of constraints in industrial engineering and Bayesian search theory in operations research, this paper identifies the key organizational constraints that hinder the lethality of the Department of Defense’s strategic-level cyberspace operations units …

Generalized Relay Network Design And Collaborative Dispatching In Truckload Transportation, Amin Ziaeifar

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

The truckload industry faces a serious problem of high driver shortage and turnover rate which is typically around 100\%. Among the major causes of this problem are extended on-the-road times where drivers handle several truckload pickup and deliveries successively; non-regular schedules and get-home rates; and low utilization of drivers dedicated time. These are by-and-large consequences of the driver-to-load dispatching method, which is based on point-to-point dispatching or direct shipment from origin-to-destination, commonly employed in the industry. In this dissertation, we consider an alternative dispatching method that necessitates careful design of an underlying network. In this scheme, a truckload on its …

Minimodal: Dimensional Domain Of Miniature Shipping Containers For Intermodal Freight Transportation, Lee Stapley

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This study explores the feasibility of miniature shipping container usage within existing intermodal transportation (IT) supply chains. Smaller intermodal container shipments may help realign freight shipments with the most efficient transportation mode, rail. These containers embolden the dimensional domain (DD) of shipping. The shipping container dimensional domain (container size variation and modal fluidity) is widespread and results in shipments that are often larger or more infrequent than needed. The DD impacts transport mode, shipping frequency, shipment velocity, intermodal supply chain accessibility, and regional shipping networks. This study suggests that container size impacts the DD and, therefore, mode choice. As miniature …

Application Of Big Data Analytics In Agriculture Supply Chain Management, Sankara Narayanan Mangalam Ananthapadmanabhan

Master's Theses

The increasing trend in frequency of natural disasters in tandem with globalization of business makes the agricultural supply chain significantly vulnerable to disruption. This thesis presents a pragmatic approach for creating a Business Continuity Model that can notify supply chain planners when there is an increase in risk of agriculture supply chain disruption due to natural disasters. The methodology presented in this thesis applied big data analytics and machine learning algorithms along with agriculture product related exponential decay function to create a regionalized composite risk score, that incorporated both direct and indirect risk associated with the Agriculture Fresh Supply Chain. …

Bmap/G/C Queueing Model With Group Clearance Useful In Telecommunications Systems – A Simulation Approach, Srinivas Chakravarthy, Alexander Rumyantsev

Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering Publications

Queueing models in which customers or messages arrive in batches with inter-arrival times of batches possibly correlated and services rendered in batches of varying sizes play an important role in telecommunication systems. Recently queueing models of BMAP/G/1-type in which a new type of group clearance was studied using embedded Markov renewal process as well as continuous time Markov chain whose generator has a very special structure. In this paper, we generalize these models to multi-server systems through simulation approach. After validating the simulation model for the single server case, we report our simulated results for much more general situations.

Data Visualization Of Treatment Outcomes For Tuberculosis Patients, Joy Jenkins

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease, and different treatments have been discovered over the years. However, patients may develop various drug resistance levels that affect the likelihood of becoming cured or dying. In this study, we sought to employ data visualization to explore the relationship between treatment trajectory, as indicated by smear and culture results in the follow-up tests and patient outcomes. A large sample of patients have been broken down by demographics including age, gender, and drug resistance status. Sankey diagrams were used to visualize the pathway progression of the patients over time split between two time periods- months 0-6 …

Smart Flow Facility Analysis, Chantal Ann George, Pete Suktankar, Eric Wilson, Matthew Geiger

Senior Design Project For Engineers

The SMART Flow Design Team has been tasked in providing a physical layout for a single building facility used to consolidate three separate business units. The objective for the new facility will be to manufacture, receive, ship, and store the company's finished products. When designing the physical layout, the team must take into consideration stable and seasonal business volumes, current and future volume demand growth, designated inbound, outbound, and storage areas, and product turn rates. All specifications must be met while determining an efficient flow of goods. The team has designed indoor and outdoor layouts using Microsoft Visio, performed various …

Foster Care Support Foundation Volunteer And Capital Outreach Analysis, Abeer Bhatti, Alexandro Martinez, Sunny Patel, Desmond Vail

Senior Design Project For Engineers

Care Support Foundation (FCSF) provides free goods to children in Georgia. Annually, 11,000 volunteers are needed to deal with the massive influx of donations and fundraising events. Through our analyses, we aim to make recommendations to the FCSF, which can help raise funds and implement mitigating strategies that would increase funds and improve the foundation.

Supply Chain Network Analysis For Outboard Motors At Motor Boaters Usa, Seyedalireza (Ali) Ghiasi, Chase Griffith, Djanene Manuel, Yesenia Pérez, Alvand Rafiee

Senior Design Project For Engineers

Motor Boaters USA found themselves possibly spending too much on their current network distribution of small and large outboard motors and requested new distribution alternatives for the U.S. Through past network distribution data analysis, the team devised 3 scenarios it believed would provide one or more cost effective distribution networks applicable to the request. Through what-if analysis, the teams' calculations produced solid results, which were then presented to Motor Boaters USA for reflection and possible implementation.

Biologically Inspired Design Of Context-Aware Smart Products, Ang Liu, Ivan Teo, Diandi Chen, Stephen Lu, Thorsten Wuest, Zhinan Zhang, Fei Tao

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and cyber–physical sys-tems (CPSs) has paved the way for the increasing popularity of smart products. Context-awareness isan important facet of product smartness. Unlike artifacts, various bio-systems are naturally characterizedby their extraordinary context-awareness. Biologically inspired design (BID) is one of the most commonlyemployed design strategies. However, few studies have examined the BID of context-aware smart prod-ucts to date. This paper presents a structured design framework to support the BID of context-awaresmart products. The meaning of context-awareness is defined from the perspective of product design.The framework is developed based on the theoretical foundations …

Pharmaceutical Scheduling Using Simulated Annealing And Steepest Descent Method, Bryant Jamison Spencer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In the pharmaceutical manufacturing world, a deadline could be the difference between losing a multimillion-dollar contract or extending it. This, among many other reasons, is why good scheduling methods are vital. This problem report addresses Flexible Flowshop (FF) scheduling using Simulated Annealing (SA) in conjunction with the Steepest Descent heuristic (SD).

FF is a generalized version of the flowshop problem, where each product goes through S number of stages, where each stage has M number of machines. As opposed to a normal flowshop problem, all ‘jobs’ do not have to flow in the same sequence from stage to stage. The …

Material Interactions And Self-Assembly In Inkjet Printing, Karam Nashwan Al-Milaji

Theses and Dissertations

Inkjet printing has attracted much attention in recent years as a versatile manufacturing tool, suitable for printing functional materials. This facile, low-cost printing technique with high throughput and accuracy is considered promising for a wide range of applications including but not limited to optical and electronic devices, sensors, solar cells, biochips, and displays. The performance of such functional devices is significantly influenced by the deposit morphology and printing resolution. Therefore, fabrication functional devices with precise footprints by inkjet printing requires deep understanding of ink properties, material interactions, and material self-assembly.

In conventional inkjet printing process, where sessile droplets are directly …

Maximizing Financial Benefit Of Lean Six Sigma Projects Through Optimized Selection Criteria, Colin Wasiloff

Operations Research and Engineering Management Theses and Dissertations

As evolving threats across the globe keep pace with increasing budget constraints, the US Army’s major subordinate commands and their sub-organizations are constantly challenged to do more with less. Resources such as human capital, information technology, facilities, and budgeted funding are stretched as thin as ever, while requirements to serve the Warfighter remain paramount. Each dollar of financial benefit gained through cost reduction efforts at the US Army can affect the Warfighter directly. Budgeted money saved or avoided is reprogrammed both locally and atop the hierarchy at the Department of Treasury to serve the Warfighter better.

Ordinal Logistic Regression was …

Modular Crates – A Holistic Design Approach For Optimizing Cube Size In Industrial Packaging, Marshal Louie, Kumar B

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Global market is a field where all industries strive to provide personalized product for every customer demand in order to compete with their competitors in the business battlefield. Product personalization varies with customer to customer which increases the product variety. When the product size variability is vast, producing packages for every individual product is not only difficult but also increases the design time, production time, total manufacturing cost and inventory cost. For the present scenario, Industrial packages does not opt customizability for variable product sizes. Customized package for personalized product is achievable only by redesigning the existing distribution package with …

Effective Resource Utilization In Arkansas Public Schools, Ryan Sanders

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Teacher pay in Arkansas public schools varies widely from district to district across the state. This pay discrepancy is driven by both the funds available to a district and by how these funds are allocated. There is a standard per student budget given to districts across the state, but this budget can be supplemented by additional property taxes collected on property within a district. This leaves districts with more highly valued property at an advantage. Districts are free to allocate their budget for teacher pay as they see fit, with constraints on number of students per teacher and minimum teacher …

Repeatability Case Study Of The 3d Printer In The School Of Engineering And Applied Science Lab, Naif Faleh S. Albaiji

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

3DP (three-dimensional printing) technologies have become more than just a tool to help companies with prototyping and designing in the pre-production stage. Some firms have already implemented 3DP technology to produce parts and end-use products. However, there are several challenges and barriers that this technology must overcome to replace traditional manufacturing methods. One of the most significant obstacles associated with 3D printing is its low level of accuracy in variable repeatability when it comes to making separate batches of the same product. There are several arguable reasons behind this variation. Some of the factors that can influence repeatability are the …

Predictive Models For Charitable Giving Using Machine Learning Techniques, Leily Farrokhvar, Azadeh Ansari, Behrooz Kamali

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Private giving represents more than three fourths of all U.S. charitable donations, about 2% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Private giving is a significant factor in funding the nonprofit sector of the U.S. economy, which accounts for more than 10% of total GDP. Despite the abundance of data available through tax forms and other sources, it is unclear which factors influence private donation, and a reliable predictive mechanism remains elu- sive. This study aims to develop predictive models to accurately estimate future charitable giving based on a set of potentially influential factors. We have selected several factors, including unemployment …

Identification Of Reverse Engineering Candidates Utilizing Machine Learning And Aircraft Cannibalization Data, Marc Banghart

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

As military aircraft continue to remain in service and age, cannibalization of parts is increasing. Proactive identification of parts that are at high risk for cannibalization will inform engineering processes such as reverse engineering, thus allowing potentially reducing lead time to develop new parts. The research objective was to develop a causal structure that can be used for prediction of when cannibalization actions may occur. Bayesian networks allow encoding of causality between various descriptive features given a data set. The method utilized a tabu search algorithm, identified the underlying causal structure and the associated node probabilities. The method is then …

A Multi-Period Facility Location Model For Service Organizations Operating In A Competitive Environment., Sven W. Brose

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis develops a multi-period, mathematical programming location model for facilities operating in a competitive environment. The objective is to maximize the profit in a variable demand environment. The solution of the problem can either be done in a robust or in a dynamic manner. A robust solution methodology forecasts the demand for all the periods in the planning horizon and provides a robust solution that may be suboptimal for any given period, but optimal when all the periods are taken into consideration. A problem with this approach is that it requires accurate forecast of demand for multiple periods into …

Decomposition Algorithms In Stochastic Integer Programming: Applications And Computations., Babak Saleck Pay

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation we focus on two main topics. Under the first topic, we develop a new framework for stochastic network interdiction problem to address ambiguity in the defender risk preferences. The second topic is dedicated to computational studies of two-stage stochastic integer programs. More specifically, we consider two cases. First, we develop some solution methods for two-stage stochastic integer programs with continuous recourse; second, we study some computational strategies for two-stage stochastic integer programs with integer recourse. We study a class of stochastic network interdiction problems where the defender has incomplete (ambiguous) preferences. Specifically, we focus on the shortest …

Mri Upgrades At Radiology Associates, Patrick Cheung, Charlene Donlon

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Problem Statement: The MRI machines at Radiology Associates are limiting the company’s ability to expand and compete within the local market. After discussing with technicians and managers at Radiology Associates, we decided to focus on hardware and software upgrades for the MRI machines. With 2 of the 3 locations purchasing new machines in the near future, our focus was on upgrades at the Santa Maria facility. The two machines at this location needed hardware and/or software upgrades to remain on par competitively both within the company and with local scanning options. Flexible coils are beneficial in terms of size, weight, …

Dynamic Warehouse Optimization Using Predictive Analytics., Parvaneh Jahani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The forward area is a small area of a warehouse with a low picking cost. Two approaches that are investigated for selecting the SKUs of this area and the allocated space are the static and the dynamic approaches. In the case that decisions about the forward area are made periodically (e.g. yearly) and the products' demand patterns are completely ignored, the FRP is static. We developed two heuristics that solve the large discrete assignment, allocation, and sizing problem simultaneously. Replenishing the same product in the same place of the forward area brings about a ``Locked" layout of the fast picking …

A General Code To Represent The Mathematical Life Cycle Cost Model Of Bridge, Bajel Mohammed Alshadeedi

Masters Theses

There are many factors that play a role in the overall cost of any bridge. The life cycle cost needs deep knowledge of bridge components to calculate its subcategories costs. The bridge life cycle cost is divided into; agency, user cost, and society costs. The agency cost includes the expected value of the final bridge construction cost, the inspection cost, better value of repainting cost, and replacing asphaltic deck cost. The user cost includes traffic delay cost and vehicle operation cost under different traffic conditions, accident cost, and failure cost. The society cost includes aesthetical and environmental impact. All costs …

Optimization Of Rfid System Coverage In A Manufacturing Environment, Scott D. Malatesta

Master's Theses

This paper compiles existing ideas, theories, and experiments across multiple disciplines to provide guidance for a company looking to implement an optimal RFID system in their production facility. The desire is to maximize the information received by the system while minimizing the cost. Four potential layouts of RFID antennas, two with overlapping antenna coverage and two with non-overlapping layouts, are first analyzed to understand the special coverage and the number of antennas required. The value of information is then quantified to determine whether higher coverage layouts are worth the additional costs associated with the higher number of antennas required. It …

Application Of Smart Factory Design In Nuclear Energy Industry With Focus On Safety, Olivia Crasta, Cem Yilmaz

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

Detecting Periods Of Flight With High Task Load, James R. Parkinson, Steven J. Landry, Quang Dao, Caitlin Surakitbanharn

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Tools that predict dangerous working conditions empirically in the cockpit could greatly improve aviation safety. In an effort to lay the groundwork for such tools, this study will investigate whether a link exists between task load and pilots’ control strategies, their biometric data, and their planes’ position data. Using X Plane simulation software, an experiment will be run in which licensed pilots will fly a 3-nautical-mile approach into Mineta San Jose International Airport 4 times, under different task load conditions. During the flight, participants’ pupil diameters will be recorded along with the simulated aircraft position data and cognitive control modes. …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Low Volume Dispensing With High Speed Dispensers, Sunny Agarwal

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

With the high pace of innovation in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, there has been an increasing demand for more energy efficient and environmental friendly products. This research relates to a complex process of fluid dispensing at low volumes on a printed circuit board. Currently, a more refined non-contact dispensing terminology named “Streaming” is widely used to stream out material at low volumes for various applications. The key solution is to frame a dispensing method that lends itself most closely to the requirements of a specific production process.

This study represents a detailed approach of dispensing low volumes of materials in …

Applying Sustainability From A Systems Perspective:, Timothy Brophy

Master's Theses

Becoming sustainable is no longer an option. Current industry methods will not be able to support the necessary changes our growing society demands. In order to keep up with ever increasing demands industry will be aimed toward making major system changes toward a fully sustainable model. As of right now only basic sustainability actions have been put in place. Industry needs to make a strategic change toward resilient systems with an end goal of evolving into fully biomimic systems. This thesis covers a brief history of production leading to the Industrial Revolution which created a need for increased sustainability efforts. …

Manufacturing Execution System (Mes) An Examination Of Implementation Strategy, Riley F. Elliott

Master's Theses

The priorities of executing the manufacturing orders generated by an MRP system are often in operational conflicts with the dynamics of the manufacturing floor. It is not uncommon for a given manufacturing order to reach the shop floor several weeks or longer after being "opened" by an MRP system where it may face a chaotic case of large queues, machine down-time, parts shortage, scrap problems and other resource management constraints. Many companies have resorted to the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software solution to resolve these problems. This method first gained popularity in mid-90’s within the semiconductor industry. An MES approach …