The companies ought to care about OEE because it is a measure that shows the effect of the performance and quality related losses on the system or equipment. In order to improve OEE, they focus on defining the losses under each OEE elements and try to eliminate these losses.This study aims to enhance raw material inventory management in order to eliminateinventory management related losses and improve OEE.  Lack of raw material and improperstorage of raw material are main problems related to inventory management. A model isdeveloped and tested in order to prevent these problems and eliminate these losses.Performance rate can be improved by preventing idle time due to lack of raw material, andquality rate can be improved by standardization and improving raw material storageprocedure. In the result of model testing, it is shown that raw material inventory managementhas an effect on OEE and OEE can be improved by enhancing raw material inventorymanagement.

The study uses Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) as a method to analyse the economicand environmental impact of carbon dioxide (CO2e) emission abatement projects in theCanadian residential sector. It includes the more traditional environmental andeconomic criteria, yet it incorporates a behavioural component to the analysis. Adetailed account of the environmental specifications, emission reductions, and economicconsiderations of 11 abatement projects are used as input for the CEA. In addition,behavioural variables, such as disposable income, home ownership, and home repairskills, are taken into account to complement the study.The results indicate that the implementation of several of these carbon abatementprojects, such as insulating hot water pipes, replacing incandescent light bulbs,installing a programmable thermostat, etc. can bring about large emission reductionstogether with a net economic benefit, and in most cases, without altering the levels ofcomfort. This method can serve as a template for the evaluation of other related projectswithin the climate change mitigation context in Canada and in other countries, in anattempt to increase adoption rates of such projects.

How to allocate resources in the health care sector is academically dealt with within the subject of health economics. Economic evaluations are within this area used to compare the costs and effects of medical interventions with the purpose to help decision makers decide how to allocate resources. Oxygen deficiency in the foetus during birth can lead to severe life long injuries in the child. In high-risk deliveries, it is therefore considered necessary to use foetal surveillance with a scalp electrode and the choice is between surveillance with internal cardiotocography (CTG) and surveillance with ST analysis. The standard procedure is in most hospitals currently CTG, which records the foetal heart rate and the uterine contractions. The second strategy, in this thesis referred to as ST analysis, complements CTG with foetal electrocardiography(ECG) and ST analysis. The objective of this report is to from a societal perspective determine the cost-effectiveness of using ST analysis in complicated deliveries, compared to the use of CTG alone. A cost-utility analysis was performed based on a probabilistic decision model incorporating the relevant strategies and outcomes. The costs and effects of the two different treatment strategies were compared in a decision tree. Discounted costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) were measured and simulated over a life-time perspective. The analysis resulted in an incremental effect of 0.005 QALYs for the ST analysis strategy, when compared to the CTG strategy. ST analysis was also associated with a €30 lower cost. Thus, CTG is dominated by the ST analysis strategy. The probability that ST analysis is the cost-effective alternative is high for all values of willingness-to-pay for a QALY, which means that a decision to implement the ST analysis strategy based on the results of this thesis would be surrounded by a low degree of uncertainty.

Behovet av högkvalitativ vård i relation med begränsade resurser har lett till en utveckling av disciplinen hälsoekonomi, vars syfte är att uppnå en effektiv resursfördelning inom sjukvården. Då sjuksköterskan utgör en av sjukvårdens största resurser finns det forskning som visar att sjuksköterskor kan göra påverkan inom hälsoekonomi och uppmuntras samtidigt till en större ekonomisk medvetenhet. Syftet var att beskriva faktorer som kan ge hälsoekonomisk påverkan utifrån sjuksköterskans omvårdnadsåtgärder. En litteraturöversikt gjordes genom en systematisk sammanställning och analys av vetenskapliga artiklar. Resultatet visade att faktorer som patientcentrerat omvårdnadsarbete, patientsäker omvårdnad, bra samordning, personalsäkerhet i samband med omvårdnadsåtgärder samt eftersträvan av bra kompetens och kritiskt förhållningssätt, kan ge en hälsoekonomisk påverkan utifrån sjuksköterskans omvårdnadsåtgärder. Sjuksköterskan kan också bidra genom att tillämpa de förutsättningar som sjukvården som organisation bidrar med i form av att följa riktlinjer. Därmed kan hälsoekonomiska förutsättningar uppnås genom sjuksköterskans omvårdnadsåtgärder, utan att det försummar vårdkvaliteten, vilket innebär att sjuksköterskor bör uppmuntras till en större hälsoekonomisk medvetenhet. Då hälsoekonomi kan påverkas utifrån omvårdnadsåtgärder bör mer forskning inom detta område eftersträvas. / The need for high quality care in relation to limited resources led to development of the discipline of health economics, which aims to achieve an efficient allocation of resources in health care. Nurses are one of the largest health care resources and there is research showing that nurses can make impact in health economics and encouraged simultaneously to a greater financial awareness. The aim was to describe factors that may cause health economic influences from nursing interventions. A literature review was done by a systematic compilation and analysis of scientific articles. The results showed that factors such as patient-centered care, ensuring good and safe care, good coordination, personnel safety associated with nursing intervention and striving for good skills and critical approach, can provide health economics influences based on nursing intervention. The nurse can also help by applying the conditions that health care organization is contributing in terms of following the guidelines. Health economic conditions can be achieved by the nursing intervention without neglecting her care quality, which means that nurses should be encouraged to greater health economic awareness. Health economics can be influenced by nursing interventions; therefore more research in this field would be required.

The abatement of ground-level ozone has been a priority of air pollution policy because of its harmful effects on human health, ecosystems, and climate. The responsiveness of ozone to emissions of its principal precursors, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), is known to depend nonlinearly on spatially and temporally variable factors. Given this variability, scientific understanding of ozone formation processes can facilitate the development of sensible control policies. This thesis applies a high-order sensitivity analysis technique, the Decoupled Direct Method in Three Dimensions (HDDM-3D), to examine ozone response to precursor emissions during summertime air pollution episodes in the southeastern United States. HDDM-3D is shown to accurately capture ozone response within an underlying air quality model, even over large ranges of emission perturbations. Nonlinearity of response is quantified, and nonlinear terms are applied to examine how estimates of sensitivity and source attribution respond to uncertainty in an emissions inventory. Ozone production regime is assessed using both HDDM-3D and species indicator ratios and found to be primarily NOx-limited outside urban centers. However, ozone response to region-wide emissions does not necessarily correspond to its sensitivity to local controls, hindering the usefulness of bipartite ozone regime classification. Significant heterogeneity of ozone response to NOx is found even over small spatial scales of emission origin, a potential complication often ignored in atmospheric modeling and emissions trading mechanisms. Atmospheric sensitivity analysis is linked with a comprehensive menu of potential control measures to demonstrate potential integration of scientific and economic considerations for control strategy formulation. Cost-optimized strategies are identified for attainment of federal ozone standards in Macon, Georgia, and for minimizing potential population exposure to unhealthful concentrations of ozone.

This dissertation aims at developing and testing a new method that can better capture preferences for multistate health profiles. The motivation arose from the failure of the QALY (Quality-Adjusted Life Year) model in adequately capturing preferences in multistate health profiles. The current QALY-based technique captures preferences for multistate health profiles by evaluating each health state in the profile independently of other states. As the past literature showed, this additive independence condition does not hold in practice and hence such approach is inadequate. To address this issue, this study proposes a novel approach to measure preferences for multistate health profiles by looking at two consecutive health states at a time. It hypothesizes that an evaluation of the future health state is dependent or "conditioned" on the level of the preceding, or current, health state. Characteristics of the current health state that are suspected to impact the resulting conditional preference scores for future health state are systematically explored in a carefully designed empirical study. The interested factors include duration of the current health state, direction of change and amplitude of change between the current and future health states. A 2

In recent years, critical habitat has been subject to a great deal of controversy and numerous lawsuits. Critical habitat is an integral part of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that serves not only to protect the species and its habitat but may also help the recovery of the species. Critical habitat has been the subject of a large number of recent lawsuits. These lawsuits arise from conservation groups, forcing the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to designate critical habitat and from developmental groups, claiming that the economic analyses used by the FWS during the designation of critical habitat are faulty. The economic analyses that are currently being done by the FWS are quantifying the costs of critical habitat to the extent possible while virtually making no effort to quantify the benefits of critical habitat. This potentially biased economic analysis can skew public opinion by presenting an unbalanced result from the analysis. Therefore, this thesis presents a methodology for comprehensively identifying and quantifying, where possible, the costs and benefits of critical habitat.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death among the world and it has an increasing share among all causes of death. Economical burden of cancer is increasing especially in high and middle-income countries. Leaving cancer in competitive markets would lead to inefficiencies / hence governments should intervene in the market and make public decisions in struggling cancer. Among all cancer types breast cancer has the highest incidence and mortality rates in females. Causes of breast cancer still remains indeterminate and only way to cope with breast cancer are by early diagnoses. Early diagnoses can best be achieved by regular mammography screenings. This study analyzes the possible outcomes of implementing regular breast cancer mammography screening program in Turkey. A simulation model is constructed and run for 10 years, to obtain the costs and benefits of such a screening program. Costs of such a program include the screening costs and costs due to abnormal mammograms. Benefits, on the other hand are reduced treatment costs due to early diagnosis, reduced mortality and morbidity. Simulation model is run for 11 different screening strategies for determining the optimal screening strategy in terms of screening interval and minimum age to screen. The necessary data is obtained from hospital records, Cancer Early Diagnosis and Treatment Center records, IMF, WHO and TUIK databases and literature. Results of the simulation suggest that women over 40 in Turkey should be screened biennially for economical efficiency.

The current air traffic management system has primarily evolved via incremental changes around historic control, navigation, and surveillance technologies. As a result, the system as a whole is not capable of handling air traffic capacities well beyond current levels, despite recent developments, such as ADS-B, that could potentially enable new concepts of operation. Methods of analyzing air traffic for safety and performance have also evolved around current-day operating constructs. Thus, attempts to examine future systems tend to use different analysis methods developed for each. Most notably, questions of 'locus of control' - whether the control should be centralized or de-centralized and distributed - have no common framework by which to judge relative costs and benefits. For instance, a completely centralized control paradigm is commonly asserted to provide an airspace-wide optimal traffic management solution due to a more complete picture of the state of the airspace, whereas a completely decentralized control paradigm is commonly asserted to provide a more user-specific optimal traffic management solution, to distribute the traffic management workload, and potentially be more robust. Given the disparate nature of these assertions and the different types of evaluations commonly used with each, some shared framework must be established to allow comparisons between very different control paradigms. The objective of this thesis was to construct a formal framework to examine the relative costs and benefits of shifting the locus of control in a novel air traffic management environment. This framework provides useful definitions and quantitative measures of flexibility and robustness with respect to various control paradigms ranging between, and including, completely centralized and completely decentralized concepts of operation. Multi-agent dynamic analysis and simulation was used to analyze the range of dynamics found in the different control paradigms. In addition, futuristic air traffic management concepts were developed in sufficient detail to demonstrate the framework. In other words, the objectives were met because the framework was demonstrated to have the ability to identify (or dispel) hypotheses about the relative costs and benefits of locus of control.

A growing number of transportation agencies have begun to manage selected ancillary transportation assets systematically--culverts, guardrails, pavement markings, sidewalks and curbs, street lighting, traffic signals, traffic signs, utilities and manholes, earth retaining structures, and environmental mitigation features. Given prevailing budget limitations, several agencies are interested in prioritizing these assets for inclusion in their existing management systems. This paper discusses critical elements of a framework for assessing the risks, benefits and costs of incorporating ancillary assets in existing Transportation Asset Management programs. The paper reviews some basic elements of a risk theory, examines risk applications in transportation asset management, water mains, and storm water management, and identifies the basic elements of a risk-benefit-cost framework for prioritizing ancillary assets for management. These elements can be used as a basis for developing a decision analysis framework to make a business case for the formal management of ancillary transportation assets and to prioritize them for inclusion in existing Transportation Asset Management programs. Using these elements, we have developed a risk ranking model that can be used by transportation officials to prioritize their ancillary asset classes for management. A demonstration of the model is presented in this paper to show its effectiveness. The study concludes that tracking and documentation of ancillary transportation asset failures would help agencies better understand the risks associated with failure. Tracking and documenting the failures of ancillary transportation assets would also help in identifying trends/probability of failure as well as quantifying the consequences associated with these failures. Such information could also be used to estimate risk factors to prioritize individual asset classes for inclusion in existing management systems.