Finite, uncertain, and increasingly expensive
energy resources require a better understanding of energy
utilization in all sectors of the national economy including agriculture. A significant portion of energy used
in agriculture is required for the manufacturing, installation, transporting, and operation of irrigation systems.
Quantification of the amounts of energy used...
This thesis describes a Systemic Vulnerability Identification and Remediation (SVIR) methodology that identifies human fallibilities and errors in complex technical processes, and recommends remediations for the errors, based on human factors principles and guidelines. The objectives of the research described in the thesis are the development of the methodology and...
The implementation of concurrent engineering into many large
companies has greatly improved their product development processes.
These companies have seen significant gains in quality and customer
satisfaction with reduced product costs, defects, and time-to-market
(Lake, 1992). Many large companies have successfully employed this
relatively new product development philosophy. However, smaller...
Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) have provided
significant increase in manufacturing productivity over the
last two decades. This has been achieved because CMS can
overcome the problems due to frequent setups, high in-process
inventories, long throughput times and complex
planning and coordination commonly associated with a batch-type
manufacturing operation. The underlying...
In this research, an analytical model for analyzing a production line consisting of a series
of automated workstations with infinite buffers is developed. Automated workstations are
assumed to have deterministic processing times, and independent exponentially
distributed operating time between failures and repair times. The analytical model starts
with existing results...
Significant improvements in manufacturing productivity has resulted from
implementing cellular manufacturing systems (CMSs) in small to medium sized batch-oriented
manufacturing systems. The work reported in this thesis illustrates the effect of
cell locations in dealing with the processes of machine duplication and part
subcontracting under budgetary restrictions. In addition, this...