Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 32-33). / Delivering quality user experience is the most critical goal of any product development and marketing team in any organization. With the advancement of technologies in the fields of data science and data computation, it is now possible to know users more efficiently and create solutions that satisfy their needs to the fullest. In this thesis, I explore how the digital e-commerce and online content provider companies are utilizing many different personalization methods which are helpful in increasing the rate of successful transactions, however, a similar trend is not visible in SaaS applications. Cloud computation has made software both easily accessible and replaceable, putting a lot of stress on both the value of the product as well as the user experience. Many software companies still follow the traditional approach of creating static personas for product design and marketing purposes and create one fits all solution. Machine/application data, which is continuously generated by the software applications, tracking each and every user activity, can be extremely useful in understanding the user behavior and thus giving companies the ability to create more personalized and adaptive solutions. I explore data generated about a pedagogical website at MIT which is used to support instruction in computation-open to students from all the departments. I applied machine learning algorithms to show that there are different clusters/classes of students in a class. By tracking student activity and performance on class website, it can be predicted which class they belong to. This information can be used to develop customized solutions for all the students. / by Priya Kher. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 57-69). / This thesis assesses the status of sustainable development in Indonesia, identifies the systemic barriers, and offers holistic development pathways toward sustainability. The framework employed in this research looks at the interactions between the economy, employment, and environment while taking into account the forces of technology and globalization. It concludes that the development in Indonesia is not yet on a sustainable path. The economy is performing well and unemployment is low, but inequality is very high, capacity to adapt is low, and the environment is quickly degrading. The major barrier towards sustainability are fundamentally politics: messy decentralization, pervasive corruption, and persistent elite capture. Other systemic barriers are the low level of education, fragmented innovation system, and low awareness of sustainability issues. To make progress towards sustainability, the systemic barriers must be cleared. Local governments need to be made clean and competent; lifelong learning systems established; local innovations boosted; pollutions prevented at the source using technological or organizational innovations; and awareness of sustainability issues raised. The findings in this thesis are summarized and mapped to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in the concluding chapter. / by Aditya Yodha. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 52). / There are numerous methodologies that organizations employ during concept development cycles. These range from agile, waterfall, point-based designs etc. One of the emerging such methodologies is called Set-Based Design (SBD). There has been flurry of research conducted into SBD process. Most of the documentations about SBD highlight its general principles and characteristics. In this thesis, I have taken a more focused approach by targeting planning and concept development phases in particular. Rules to select or deselect concepts have been extensively discussed in this research followed by providing an effective structure to implement SBD in concept development process. The form and function distinction during the concept development cycle has been clearly examined and documented. The research has been conducted independent of any organization or product type and therefore is applicable to any product development scenario and can be easily adopted by any organization. / by Muhammad Farzan Tariq. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 57-58). / In this thesis, we first present a model and analysis of a two-machine continuous-time, continuous-material, mixed-state transfer line with an allowance for negative inventory. The production line consists of two-machines separated by a storage area with a maximum storage level N, and minimum storage level -[infinity]. In other words, inventory level is allowed to be negative, while the first machine can be blocked, the second machine is never starved. This new model is based on unreliable machines, to represent a system of stochastic supply and demand with the possibility of backlog. / by Xiaoliang Yao. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Page 72 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 69-71). / The goal of this thesis is to understand the complexity of configuring and managing variants in Simulink, a model-based design tool that is used in different industries such as automotive, aerospace, and healthcare; and to simplify it by analyzing its capabilities and proposing different solutions using different modeling, workflow and visualization techniques. Models play a major role in system engineering. Model-based development methods have gained widespread adoption in the past two decades. Simulink has been used by thousands of engineers around the world to design and simulate engineering systems. Any improvement in Simulink directly simplifies engineers' workflows and enables them to achieve their tasks more efficiently and effectively. I have studied variability concepts and use cases of configurators in different domains such as (1) personal customization of products (mass customization), (2) choice navigation in retail, and (3) software and model-based design tools. This has enabled me to understand complexities of configurators in different domains, and learn how some of the complexities have been addressed or managed. I conclude that the variant support in Simulink lacks some capabilities to fully support variability for large real-world applications in industry. To improve Simulink variant configuration and management, I propose solutions based on "feature modeling" and "interactive configurator" concepts. Use of "Binary Decision Diagrams" is recommended to achieve higher runtime performance when using interactive configurators for large modular systems and large teams. Also, I propose different visualization techniques to enable model designers to understand variant relationships in the model, check whether they have modeled the variants properly, and help them to further modularize their systems. / by Mojdeh Shakeri. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 67-68). / The Internet of Things (IoT) provides interconnectivity of physical devices with the Internet, allowing it to be remotely controlled by the users. Devices are now able to generate their own content about the usage and operations, providing deeper insights by revealing the hidden patterns. IoT is affecting virtually all industries and has a tremendous impact on the way we do business, specifically where marketing is concerned. Traditional ways of marketing were revolutionized by Digital Marketing around a decade ago. Now is the time when IoT is going to disrupt the marketing space by providing the access to information regarding how, where, and why the products are being purchased and used. Marketers would now be able to make data driven strategic decisions to refine their product in order to reduce friction in customer experience. loT opens up a wide landscape of opportunity for brands to incorporate and respond to customer's need on the real-time basis and target the customers with right message, at the right time at a right place. Thesis report would provide an overview of the current state of the loT industry, its technology stack and how a company can make use of the IoT in marketing. The thesis also shed light on different monetization models and pricing models along with the important considerations for designing a strategy for product development and launch. Application of IoT in different industry is highlighted along with example to show how companies have adopted the newer ways to interact with customers. / by Swati Shah. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 63-66). / In India, the inability to prove one's identity is one of the biggest barriers that prevents the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies. India is a country with 1.3 billion residents in over 640,000 villages. The Indian government spends $50 billion on direct subsidies (food coupons for rice, cooking gas, etc.) every year. Both public and private agencies in India require proof of identity before providing services or benefits to those living in India. Until the introduction of the Aadhaar program, there was no verifiable identity number program that both residents and agencies could use. As a result, every time Indian residents tried to receive benefits, they had to undergo an arduous personal identification process. What made it even more difficult was that the various service providers had different document and information requirements. This made it especially hard for India's poor residents, who often lacked documentation and found it difficult to access services. The Unique Identification (Aadhaar) project was created in order to provide every resident of India with a unique identification number that can be used to access a variety of services and benefits. The project enables residents in India to receive food coupons, receive cooking gas deliveries, open checking accounts, apply for loans, insurance, pensions, property deeds, etc. In addition, the program makes it possible for the Indian government to make sure that welfare benefits go directly to the right person. Aadhaar is a centralized approach to provide identification and benefits to the citizens of India. It is plagued with some problems typical to a centralized system such as central authority, data privacy etc. In this thesis, we explore the Blockchain technology to improvise Aadhaar, a centralized paradigm to a de-centralized one. I have explored the ways in which the current welfare services could be evolved on the re-imagined Aadhaar system with Blockchain.. / by Karan Sachan. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 35-36). / In many service operations settings, the difficulty of jobs is unpredictable. Examples include police officers or paramedics routinely responding to calls with only limited understanding of the situations awaiting them. In such settings, a worker may occasionally encounter a critical incident (CI), defined as a task or situation which is sufficiently disturbing to challenge or overwhelm the workers' usual coping mechanisms. We study the impact of complex, stress-inducing tasks on operational task performance of the ambulance crew at the London Ambulance Services (LAS). Our metric for operational performance is cycle times, an important driver of system utilization. Shorter cycle times indicate better performance. From analyzing the LAS data, we found that following a Cl, a crew's cycle times increase and the effect gets worse for teams which face more CIs within the same shift. We find that this effect is non-uniform over sub-components of cycle times. In particular, the impact is more significant on operational performance of complex and less standardized tasks. We also did a robustness check for varying definitions of a Cl and the results hold and are consistent. / by Atikha Rizwan. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page 42). / The days of having one single career path are no longer the norm. Today, it is far more common for people to change careers at least once in their lifetime. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker holds ten different jobs before the age of forty (BLS, 2017). This thesis explores the journeys of nonlinear career changers with diverse backgrounds to gain an understanding of the challenges encountered before, during, and after their career transitions. For the purposes of this study, a nonlinear career changer is defined as an individual who has changed his or her job function and industry. The human-centered design process was used during this study to identify user needs, and design and develop solutions. The user interviews revealed that people had difficulty identifying jobs that their current skills could transfer over to, lacked knowledge of the training required to become a qualified candidate, and struggled to find mentors they could confide in during the process. There is currently no well-known service in the market that addresses these pain points. The proposed solution is a service that provides recommendations for different careers, highlights transferrable skills, and provides detailed guidance on how to achieve a job in the new industry. The guidance includes skills the individual will need to acquire, courses that map to those skills, and mentors who have successfully switched careers and can provide an authentic perspective about a specific job and industry. / by Anna Maria Phan. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 78-79). / Vehicle Electrification is a leading technology in transportation sector towards sustainability and green earth. One of the threats to this fast-growing energy revolution is the Li-ion batteries - especially the concerns related to the safety of these batteries due to the increasing trend of energy density. As a result, during crash accidents, the possibility of fire accidents and explosions are significantly higher. Of the many affected stakeholders due to this safety issue, the auto insurance industries are the notable ones, who in the case of an accident, can end with large insurance losses. Hence the motive of this thesis is to leverage numerical modeling techniques developed at the Impact and Crashworthiness Lab (ICL) at MIT on the deformation and failure of Li ion batteries subjected to mechanical abuse conditions, to address the challenges of the auto insurance industries. This work includes three key deliverables. Firstly, a qualitative risk analysis of failure modes at cell, module and battery pack level using FMEA to identify high risk failure modes. Secondly, to analyze one of the high-risk failure modes using numerical models. Thirdly, construction of the failure envelope at cell and module level to establish design guidelines on how much local deformation will a given battery can withstand before initiating an internal damage that can lead to short circuit. Potential areas of applying these approaches and more research works required in this direction have been discussed. / by Aswini Narayana Prasad. / S.M. in Engineering and Management