Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Bridging Models And Real-World Performance: Capturing Represented, Hidden, And Unrepresented Dynamics In Complex Systems, Dixizi Liu

All Dissertations

Complex systems often depend on adaptive performance that is difficult to capture using structured data or formal models alone. This dissertation asks how predictive modeling, coordination-cost measurement, and simulation can be integrated to better represent the visible, hidden, and unrepresented dynamics that shape real-world system performance.

Sterile Processing Departments (SPDs) provide the empirical context for this work because they support safe and timely surgical care while operating under high workload variability, time pressure, and tight coordination with operating rooms. Hospitals rely on SPDs to clean, assemble, sterilize, and deliver surgical instrument trays so surgeries can start on time and proceed …

Human-Centered Design Of Extended Reality For Learning Adoption, Effectiveness, And Collaborative Training Performance, Bhargav Upadhyay

All Dissertations

Extended reality (XR) technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) can be used for technical training to help students learn and practice complex tasks in a safe digital environment. Despite known benefits evidence is required to explore the effectiveness of these technologies to support student learning outcomes. Furthermore, technical training programs need evidence about when these tools improve learning, what are the barriers to adoption of these technologies, and how training should be designed by leveraging these technologies. This dissertation examined how XR technologies can support higher education and workforce training, specifically focusing on barriers and facilitators to …

Barriers To Modernizing Aviation Maintenance Technician Education To Meet Emerging Industry Needs, Durwa Chavan

All Theses

Modernizing aviation maintenance education is essential to keep pace with emerging technologies, including electric propulsion systems and advanced avionics. As aircraft systems become more digitized and interconnected, there is a growing demand for qualified technicians who can conduct advanced diagnostics and maintenance. However, training programs have not kept pace with these technological shifts, creating a gap between workforce preparation and industry needs.

Using a qualitative research approach, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with industry professionals, educators, and regulatory personnel to identify gaps in existing training programs and Airman Certification Standards (ACS). This study addresses the disconnect between current aviation maintenance …

Multi-Stage Stochastic Programming For Disaster Relief Logistics Under Forecast Uncertainty, Sudhan Bhattarai

All Dissertations

Hurricanes are among the most destructive annual disasters in the United States, presenting interdependent challenges for evacuation planning and relief-supply logistics. Coordinating evacuation and relief operations is crucial to ensure the timely and effective movement of at-risk populations and the delivery of essential supplies. This dissertation develops and evaluates three progressively advanced multi-stage stochastic programming (MSSP) frameworks that integrate evacuation and relief-item pre-positioning while explicitly accounting for uncertainty in hurricane forecasts.

Chapter 1 introduces a fully adaptive MSSP model for the integrated hurricane relief logistics and evacuation planning (IHRLEP) problem. The model simultaneously optimizes evacuation flows and inventory pre-positioning over …

Understanding The Elements Of Sterile Processing Workflow: Or, Sterilization And Personnel, Sayed Rezwanul Islam

All Dissertations

The Sterile Processing Department (SPD), also known as the Central Sterile Services Department (CSSD), is an essential part of hospitals and healthcare facilities and is responsible for ensuring the cleanliness, sterility, and proper functioning of medical instruments. Sterile processing departments (SPDs) are key drivers of productivity, effectiveness, safety, and infection control in hospitals. A well-designed SPD workflow can enhance patient safety, reduce operating room (OR) delays, and improve productivity. To understand the flow of sterile processing and interactions between the OR and SPD, process maps and task analyses were developed through direct observations of the basic SPD functions: decontamination, assembly, …

Data-Driven Stochastic Programming For Disaster Housing Logistics Planning, Sheng-Yin Chen

All Dissertations

This dissertation develops an integrated modeling and solution framework for direct temporary disaster housing logistics under demand uncertainty. The proposed framework addresses the problem from short-term, long-term, and computational perspectives. First, a two-stage chance-constrained stochastic programming (TSCC) model is developed for short-term housing logistic planning, with demand scenarios generated via a data-driven spatial regression model that captures the relationship between housing demand, hazard exposure, and socioeconomic factors. A case study based on Hurricane Ian demonstrates that the TSCC model outperforms deterministic and traditional scenario-based models in both solution quality and robustness. Second, to address long-term housing logistics planning, a multi-horizon …

Advancing Life Cycle Assessment For Environmental Sustainability Of Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Composites (Cfrps)), Hao Chen

All Dissertations

Carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composites (CFRPs) have emerged as promising materials, particularly for lightweight applications, with the potential to reduce environmental impacts across multiple sectors, including automotive, aerospace, and renewable energy. However, fully realizing their sustainability potential requires a more comprehensive and context-specific understanding of their environmental performance throughout the entire life cycle—from raw material production to end-of-life management.

This dissertation advances life cycle assessment (LCA) practices for CFRPs by addressing key challenges across multiple phases of the CFRP life cycle. First, I conducted a critical review and meta-analysis of carbon fiber manufacturing, revealing substantial variability in reported data on energy …

Replacement Optimization For Offshore Wind Turbine Farms, Morteza Soltani

All Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with devising optimal replacement policies for offshore wind turbines with a focus on minimizing the costs associated with major component replacements and production losses due to downtime. Like their onshore counterparts, offshore wind turbines are subject to progressive degradation due to normal operations, as well as the influence of dynamic environmental conditions that influence their rate of degradation. Due to their proximity, wind farm turbines share common environmental conditions, as well as specialized maintenance resources. Their common exposure to the environment and need to share resources introduce both stochastic and economic dependence between the wind turbines. …

Human Comfort Modeling, Measurement, And Improvement In Human–Robot Collaboration, Yuchen Yan

All Dissertations

A dissertation is proposed to explore human comfort in human-robot collaboration (HRC) through modeling, prediction, and enhancement methodologies. Human comfort is a crucial yet underexplored factor in HRC, directly influencing task efficiency, trust, and overall collaboration effectiveness. Understanding the influential factors, developing computational models, and refining methods to improve human comfort in HRC are essential steps toward advancing the field of collaborative robotics. To address these challenges, multiple studies have been conducted. A series of experimental studies were performed to investigate how robot motion-based parameters affect human comfort in HRC. These studies examined both analytical comfort modeling approaches and physiological …

Optimizing Park Locations While Considering Resident Behavior, Lu Liu

All Theses

Urban parks and green-spaces significantly enhance community well-being by improving physical health, mental wellness, and environmental quality. Given these extensive benefits, ensuring fair and widespread access to urban parks represents a critical priority in urban planning. Despite the advantages of parks, optimizing their location poses unique and complex challenges distinct from traditional facility location problems, such as those involving emergency services or schools. The core distinction arises from the decentralized nature of residents’ park selection behaviors. Unlike centralized allocations typically managed by public administrators, park usage decisions are driven by individual preferences and behaviors. This decentralized decision-making introduces two additional …

Multistage Random Key Genetic Algortihm Optimization For Scheduling Flexible Flow Lines With Sequence Depenedent Setup Times, Aadithan Anbuvanan

All Theses

This thesis proposes a new variation to the Random Key Genetic Algorithm (RKGA) for scheduling optimization in flexible flow line manufacturing with sequence dependent setup times. The proposed RKGA representation decodes scheduling information independently at each stage, unlike the traditional RKGA, which is only sequenced based on the first stage, limiting flexibility. The proposed method's performance is compared to the traditional method with varying numbers of jobs and stages. It is compared regarding performance ratio and statistical significance of differences through the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. Results show that the proposed RKGA outperformed traditional RKGA in high complexity (8 Stage …

An Emergency Response System To Assist The Movement Of Vehicles During Emergency Operations In Urban Transportation Networks, Jamal Nahofti Kohneh

All Dissertations

Emergency responders need to arrive at the emergency scene as soon as possible, but operating vehicles under emergency conditions can pose a risk to both the responders and other road users, potentially resulting in crashes or delays in emergency operations. In this research, an emergency response system is proposed to assist emergency and non-emergency response vehicles (ERVs and non-ERVs) during emergency operations in a connected vehicle environment. This system collects the information from connected ERVs and non-ERVs, utilizes this information as inputs in the proposed models, and sends instruction messages back to vehicles. The proposed models provide the fastest ERV …

Identification And Validation Of A Measurement Of Emergency Physician Workload During End Of Shift Patient Handoffs, Steven Foster

All Dissertations

Recent increases in emergency physician (EP) workload have been identified as contributors to increased EP burnout, increased staff attrition, decreased patient safety, and increased patient admission rates. Patient handoffs have been extensively researched as critical points in patient care, with existing research primarily focusing on communication errors and interventions designed to standardize handoff communication protocols.

While end of shift handoffs in hospital emergency departments (EDs) intuitively represent a transfer of patient caseload from an outgoing EP to an incoming EP, there is a fundamental lack of literature examining how such handoffs contribute to EP workload, and a similar lack of …

Opioid Overdose Epidemic Modeling, Chelsea Spence

All Dissertations

The opioid overdose crisis in the United States has led to thousands of lost lives and thousands more people struggling with opioid dependence. Disease modeling allows researchers to examine the course that the disease may take and to investigate policies to determine the effects they may have. Disease models can be used to model non-communicable diseases and have been used to study opioid use disorder. Many types of disease models exist with their own inherent benefits and drawbacks.

In this dissertation, we provide a scoping review of the disease models that have been used to study the opioid overdose epidemic. …

Exploring Healthcare Chatbot Information Presentation: Applying Hierarchical Bayesian Regression And Inductive Thematic Analysis In A Mixed Methods Study, Samuel Nelson Koscelny

All Theses

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, significantly increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, which are leading causes of death in the United States. While contributing to over 691,000 deaths in 2021 alone in the United States (U.S.), it also imposes immense economic burden on the healthcare system, costing approximately $131 billion annually. One way to address this issue is for increased self-care behaviors and medication adherence, both of which require sufficient health literacy. Despite the importance of health literacy, 90% of U.S. adults struggle with health-related subjects. Overcoming the issues associated with health literacy requires addressing the …

Understanding The Challenges To Robotic-Assisted Surgery Adoption From The Perspectives Of The Human-Robot Interaction, Built Environment, And Training, Patrick A. Fuller

All Theses

Introduction: Robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) is a form of minimally invasive surgery that is increasing in both its adoption and development due to many perceived advantages such as tremor reduction and motion scaling. However, RAS is still relatively new and there are a variety of novel barriers and challenges to the adoption of these platforms. Objectives: This study aims to understand how the integration of RAS platforms impacts the interactions and outcomes of interactions between surgical team members to explore the barriers from three aspects critical to facilitating Robotic-assisted-surgery (RAS) adoption: the human-robotic interaction, built environment, and RAS training. Future …

Modeling Of Multi-Period Disaster Logistics Planning In The State Of South Carolina, Emma Simon

All Theses

South Carolina is one of the most vulnerable states in the United States to the impact of hurricanes. Currently, when threatened with a natural disaster such as a hurricane, the state government makes many vital decisions based on knowledge and experience. In this study, the distribution of disaster relief commodities to meet immediate needs is analyzed through two models for the case of South Carolina to generate an optimal logistics strategy that considers the social vulnerability of affected populations. The first model is a multi-objective pre-disaster logistics model that uses a four-index formulation for the multiple trip vehicle routing problem. …

Depression And Anxiety: Investigating The Impacts Of Scheduling On The Mental Health Of Healthcare Workers During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Christofer Gonzaga

All Theses

Depression is a growing problem in the United States and has ballooned into a globally recognized mental health issue that affects shift workers in various fields (Lee et al., 2017). Rates of depression and anxiety have been shown to be substantially increasing and the COVID-19 pandemic amplified this prevalence of depression and anxiety. In the United States, the prevalence of depression symptoms was more than 3- fold higher during COVID-19 compared to before the pandemic (Ettman et al., 2020). The delivery of healthcare services is an ongoing and dynamic process, requiring clinicians to work in various shifts to ensure the …

Application Of An Information Gain Model In A Motor Learning Task: An Application In A Laparoscopic Surgical Skills Task, Matthew Ball

All Theses

Psychomotor skills are comprised of physical movements and mental adaptations of movements to complete a task, generally using complex tools or components. Laparoscopic surgery training tasks are a prime example of tasks requiring psychomotor skills due to their demand for both fine hand movements and constant mental adaptation to the changing environment of the human body. A typical evaluation of these skills can be accomplished using learning curves, a graphical representation of skill growth in which a performance metric is plotted over a time experience metric. Previously, in the literature, several learning curves have been generated from the performance within …

Barriers To Integrating Magnetic Resonance Imaging Systems In Emergency Medical Service Ambulances For Stroke Care, Arvind Kolangarakath

All Theses

Stroke is a life-threatening condition that can cause permanent damage by stopping blood flow in the brain. Quick and precise intervention is imperative, as every second lost increases tissue deterioration and impacts patient outcomes. Several technological advancements such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), have revolutionized stroke care by enabling more accurate and quicker diagnoses in hospitals. Portable head MRI scanners with lower magnetic fields are a recent innovation capable of providing neuroimaging at the point of care within hospital settings. Integrating such a device into ambulances could potentially enhance stroke care during transit, facilitating prompt diagnosis and prognosis. However, few …

Variability In Anesthesia And Its Implications For Improving Patient Safety, Joshua Michael Biro

All Dissertations

Improving patient safety in anesthesia has proven to be an arduous and challenging task. Despite the many strategies and interventions to improve patient safety that have been employed, patient harm in anesthesia remains a problem. The struggle to reduce patient harm in anesthesia is both attributable to and representative of the complexity of the anesthesia system. In navigating this complex system, anesthesia providers have different approaches to how they accomplish their work, which results in variability in anesthesia practice. This variability provides an immense challenge to designing and implementing efforts to improve patient safety, as rigid interventions are often met …

Examining Individuals' Use Of The Internet For Healthcare Activities Over Time: Statistical Analysis Of Nhis Data, Zachary Junkins

All Theses

Telehealth is an increasingly important component of healthcare services. Telehealth services may present an opportunity to increase the equity, accessibility, and effectiveness of healthcare. As such, it is critical that telehealth design focus on reducing the barriers to access and usability that may impair some telehealth users. I utilized data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and multiple logit regression models focused on different aspects of telehealth in order to determine demographic characteristics, behaviors, or opinions which may predict groups that are likely to face a barrier to using telehealth services. This analysis provides an exploratory look at the …

Studying Pedestrian’S Unmarked Midblock Crossing Behavior On A Multilane Road When Interacting With Autonomous Vehicles Using Virtual Reality, Fengjiao Zou

All Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the challenge of pedestrian interaction with autonomous vehicles (AVs) at unmarked midblock locations where the right-of-way is unspecified. A virtual reality (VR) simulation was developed to replicate an urban unmarked midblock environment where pedestrians cross a four-lane arterial roadway and interact with AVs. One research goal is to investigate the impact of roadway centerline features (undivided, two-way left-turn lane, and median) and AV operational schemes portrayed through on-vehicle signals (no signal, yellow negotiating indication, and yellow/blue negotiating/no-yield indications) on pedestrian crossing behavior. Results demonstrate that both roadway centerline design features and AV operations and signaling show …

Network Effects Of Emergency Department Clinician Strain And Patient Congestion, Aisha Nelson

All Theses

We develop a discrete-event simulation model to study how staffing strain affects patient outcomes across a network of Emergency Departments (EDs). The aim is to observe how clinician staffing and transfers throughout the system affect the system’s behavior. We will study the network of the seven EDs in the Prisma Health-Upstate system. Patient acuity and resource need are stratified using the five-level Emergency Severity Index (ESI). Patient flow data within and between EDs are collected from EPIC, staffing data from ShiftAdmin, and environmental COVID-19 prevalence data from the Department of Health and Environmental Control. Time periods include the Omicron wave …

Mapping Information Flows That Support Adaptive Capacity In The Sterile Processing Department (Spd), Jacob Hionis

All Theses

The Sterile Processing Department (SPD) is the part of the hospital that is responsible for decontaminating, assembling, and sterilizing surgical trays for use in the Operating Rooms (ORs). Errors in the SPD can lead to delayed surgeries or patient harm. The SPD is a complex system, with multiple interconnected subdepartments and roles. Complex systems require coordination between stakeholders. This study aims to discover how an organization can adapt to scale, and how information flows support these adaptations. In this study, observations, semi-structured interviews, and on-the-job interviews were conducted with members across the SPD and OR to elicit pressures, adaptations, and …

Essays On Perioperative Services Problems In Healthcare, Amogh S. Bhosekar

All Dissertations

One of the critical challenges in healthcare operations management is to efficiently utilize the expensive resources needed while maintaining the quality of care provided. Simulation and optimization methods can be effectively used to provide better healthcare services. This can be achieved by developing models to minimize patient waiting times, minimize healthcare supply chain and logistics costs, and maximize access. In this proposal, we study some of the important problems in healthcare operations management. More specifically, we focus on perioperative services and study scheduling of operating rooms (ORs) and management of necessary resources such as staff, equipment, and surgical instruments. We …

Design And Operations Of A New Facility In A Next Generation Logistic System Based On Horizontal Collaboration, Dilhani Marasinghe

All Dissertations

The growing amount of freight combined with systemic inefficiencies are stressing current logistic systems. Including horizontal collaboration in the future could provide significant help but this strategy will require several new types of facilities. The most flexible type of horizontal collaboration, however, required freight routing decisions to be made dynamically, in real time, and based on last minute information. This research explores one new facility type operating in this environment that handles a high throughput of pallets or pallet-like containers. A key design feature is how much storage these facilities should have to better coordinate outbound loads. The approach taken …

Optimal Global Supply Chain And Warehouse Planning Under Uncertainty, Avnish Kishor Malde

All Dissertations

A manufacturing company's inbound supply chain consists of various processes such as procurement, consolidation, and warehousing. Each of these processes is the focus of a different chapter in this dissertation.

The manufacturer depends on its suppliers to provide the raw materials and parts required to manufacture a finished product. These suppliers can be located locally or overseas with respect to the manufacturer's geographic location. The ordering and transportation lead times are shorter if the supplier is located locally. Just In Time (JIT) or Just In Sequence (JIS) inventory management methods could be practiced by the manufacturer to procure the raw …

Adaptive Design And Flexible Approval Of Clinical Trials, Saeid Delshad Sisi

All Dissertations

Dose-finding clinical trials are among the most critical cornerstones of the healthcare system. In this broad research area, there are many decision making problems that are extremely challenging to address. However, a small improvement may result in significant benefits to the society. Dose-finding clinical trials are extremely expensive and require multiple time-consuming and complicated R&D phases. Despite all the costs and the long time these trials need to conclude (on average over ten years for each new drug/technology), only less than 15\% of these trials successfully end up in a new approved drug entering the market. This problem is even …

Generating Sex Trafficking Networks From Text Documents, Maria Diaz

All Theses

Qualitative coding is a long and strenuous process that requires a well-skilled investigator. Natural language processing techniques have made leaps and bounds as far as usability and application domain, although it does not work for every task. In this work, we have created a natural language processing framework to help qualitative coders automatically obtain the nodes and node arcs from federal case files, dockets, and indictments within a sex trafficking network. The produced nodes and arcs allows us to perform network modeling by providing us with the information needed to create network structures that can then be used for interdiction …