After a mobile communication device (MCD), such as a smartphone or tablet, has been sold to the public, the customer may find that there is a defect. Each MCD is sold with a warranty that covers the repair of manufacturing defects and is supported by the MCD manufacturer. A third...
Engineering design projects are implemented to accomplish a variety of goals in organizations. As the complexity of each project grows, the risk and uncertainty accompanying each project increases as well. As a result project managers must identify potential risks to projects and create plans to avoid realized risks leading to...
The rapid advancement of manufacturing has led to the creation of a myriad of technologies that facilitate the analysis and simulation of manufacturing processes. These technologies have become a pivotal component in maintaining and improving processes in today’s complex manufacturing environments. Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is one such technology that...
Projects and Project Management (PM) are increasingly becoming an integral part of how businesses operate and create value. Project-oriented industries such as IT and software development, construction, health care, public sector, and universities, are expected to contribute up to $20.2 trillion USD to the Global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by...
Nonprofit organizations are feeling increased pressure to demonstrate their service’s impacts to their investors. Social return on investment is a tool that measures the social efficiency, or social return, of services by calculating a social return ratio. While social return on investment has seen increasing use by nonprofit organizations, a...
Manufacturing industry drives economic activity and growth around the world, but manufacturing activities consume large amounts of material, energy, and labor resources. Therefore, the impacts of manufacturing need to be accounted for and reduced. Direct benefits of manufacturing are products and income, which, in turn, influence the lives of people...
Continues improvement of industrial systems require constant measuring process variation and eliminating extraneous variation whenever possible to push the target measures as close to the ideal value as possible. Statistical Processes Control (SPC) technique is a very efficient statistical technique for monitoring and controlling processes variation. In recent years an...
Product development in the 21st century requires integrating sustainability performance evaluation with product design and manufacturing activities. A variety of factors, including climate change, public awareness, and increasingly strict regulations have compelled companies to design and manufacture more sustainable products. While the design phase typically accounts for only 5-7% of...
This thesis uses a hedonic price model to estimate the value of water for irrigation in Deschutes County, Oregon. The analysis uses a dataset comprising information on 2,274 agricultural parcels across the County. Uniquely, the analysis successfully utilizes assessor-determined real market values in the place of actual land sales. A...
The Formula Student Team Global Formula Racing from Oregon State University implemented an air suspension system in their 2017 combustion powered vehicle, mainly to save weight. This thesis covers the performance evaluation of such system by comparison to conventional coil over shocks. Utilizing two different Formula Student style courses, three...
Organizations are constantly looking for innovative strategies to face more stringent competitive environments and the ever increasing market globalization. An alternative these organizations can pursue to respond to these challenges is to optimize their supply chain network (SCN). Important considerations when optimizing a SCN involve determining locations for plants and...
The demand from consumers for more sustainable products, and the need to comply with government regulations motivates manufacturers to evaluate their operations for opportunities to reduce environmental impact and improve economic competitiveness. Manufacturers have actively improved the sustainability performance of their products through the use of sustainability assessment methods and...
It is expected that information taught in the context of school will ultimately transfer to workplace settings. To support this transition, educators and researchers advocate for organizing foundational ideas, or concepts, in specific domains of knowing. In the domain of transportation engineering, knowing of concepts, which include "big ideas" such...
The application of lean to new product development (NPD) processes has been claimed to generate positive impact on NPD performance. There are very few empirical studies, however, on how organizations should apply lean practices or on the exact nature of the impact of lean on NPD performance. To further understand...
The use of fossil fuels and their related impact on the environment and global warming have encouraged societies to pursue more sustainable and renewable alternatives, e.g., forest-based bio-oil. Thus, a vital need to decrease the level of greenhouse gas emissions and the tendency of nations to reduce their dependency on...