This thesis aims to benchmark the Overall Equipment Effectiveness of the production and maintenance strategy for a company in the small to midsize enterprise, going through an expansion phase and at the same time starting to implement Total Productive Maintenance along with the organisation. The purpose is to give guidance through benchmarking maintenance for the future and during the start-up of the maintenance organisation. This study was formed with two research questions about the Overall Equipment Effectiveness at the production and how a future digital measuring of the Overall Equipment Effectiveness can occur. Interviews and questionnaires were held along with observations of the production to answer the questions. The result was an Overall Equipment Effectiveness of 46,44 % and needs and requirements from the organisation while digitally measuring in production. The outcome is a benchmark of the maintenance system and a scalable maintenance strategy with a holistic viewpoint. / Målet med det här examensarbetet är att presentera en underhållsstrategi för ett litet till medelstort bolag som genomgår en expansionsfas och samtidigt startar implementeringen av Totalt Produktivt Underhåll inom organisationen. Syftet är att hitta ett riktmärke och kunna guida underhållsarbetet i framtiden och under uppstarten av en underhållsorganisation. Det gjordes genom två frågeställningar; om vad Anläggningseffektivitets värdet i produktion är samt hur digital mätning av Anläggningseffektivitet i framtiden bör gå till. Både intervjuer och frågeformulär har använts för datainsamling samt observationer av produktion för att kunna fastställa svar till frågeställningarna. Resultatet är ett riktmärke av Anläggningseffektivitet på 46,44 % samt behov och önskemål från organisationen vid digital mätning i produktion. Utfallet är ett riktmärke för underhållssystemet och en skalbar underhållsstrategi med holistiskt perspektiv.

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Comparison between GPU and CPU particle systems.Computer games have used particle systems for visualeffects such as weather, smoke, fog, etc and it’s relatively low costto implement. There are a mixture of different techniques usedto render particle systems, usually CPU heavy implementationsor a GPU based one.In this study we developed two rendering techniques for aparticle system, instancing and stream-out, and compare theirperformance. As almost as expected we saw that the stream-outtechnique that is GPU based outperformed instancing when wetested using none intractable particle systems. We have furthereddiscussed both advantages and disadvantages in other scenarios.

This study examined how Math-Curriculum Based Measurement (M-CBM) benchmark assessment scores predict fifth grade math Standards of Learning (SOL) assessment scores.  Three school districts participated in the study by providing student data on math benchmark assessments and fifth grade math SOL assessment scores. Scores were organized and analyzed to determine the level of prediction between the two data sets. The results of the study indicated that M-CBM benchmark assessments were good predictors of fifth grade math SOL assessment scores. A second purpose of the study was to measure the differences in the capacity of three different M-CBM benchmark assessments in predicting fifth grade math SOL assessment scores. The three school districts used M-CBM benchmark assessments that varied in the method of creation and the type (commercial, teacher created, released test item) to develop the assessments. The findings show the M-CBM benchmark assessments created by teachers were better predictors of student scores on the fifth grade math SOL assessment followed by released test items and the commercially developed assessments. The third goal of the research study was to determine if there were differences in costs associated with three different M-CBM benchmark assessments. The reported costs for each of the three assessment types were analyzed but the gross cost per student did not accurately reflect the total costs involved in creating, operating, and/or maintaining the M-CBM benchmark assessment systems in any of the three districts. A literature review identified contributions in the field in the areas of assessment, Curriculum Based Measurement (CBM), and predicting student performance. The research design was quantitative and the school district data collected was over the 2009-2010 school year.  Recommendation for future research was to focus on the implementation methods and utilization of M-CBM benchmark assessments by teachers to modify instruction. Possible research on how the benchmark data can be utilized or converted into a practical classroom predictor of SOL assessment outcomes was recommended also. / Ed. D.

An effective tool used by planners and policy makers in public health, such as Center for Disease Control (CDC), to curtail spread of infectious diseases over a given population is contagion diffusion simulations. These simulations model the relevant characteristics of the population (age, gender, income etc.) and the disease (attack rate, etc.) and compute the spread under various configuration and plausible intervention strategies (such as vaccinations, school closure, etc.). Hence, the model and the computation form a complex agent based system and are highly compute and resource intensive. In this work, we design a benchmark consisting of several kernels which capture the essential compute, communication, and data access patterns for such applications. For each kernel, the benchmark provides different evaluation strategies. The goal is to (a) derive alternative implementations for computing the contagion by combining different implementation of the kernels, and (b) evaluate which combination of implementation, runtime, and hardware is most effective in running large scale contagion diffusion simulations. Our proposed benchmark is designed using C++ generic programming primitives and lifting sequential strategies for parallel computations. Together, these lead to a succinct description of the benchmark and significant code reuse when deriving strategies for new hardware. For the benchmark to be effective, this aspect is crucial, because the potential combination of hardware and runtime are growing rapidly thereby making infeasible to write optimized strategy for the complete contagion diffusion from ground up for each compute system. / Master of Science