The presented doctoral thesis is focused on solving reliability of operation and optimization of maintenance of rotary machines. In the theoretical part, the RCM method is analyzed in detail including several available modifications of this method. Furthermore, the most commonly used methods of technical diagnostics are presented. The practical part is focused on the design of a new methodology based on the RCM method.

The diploma thesis deals the risk management during order processing in the engineering company Balák stroje Tišnov Ltd., a producer of custom machines. The aim of the diploma theses is to identify and evaluate the risks that may arise during the order processing. A partial aim is to propose a list of recommendations to minimize the most serious risks. The thesis is divided into three parts, where the first part of the thesis is focused on theoretical basis. The second part – analytical part contains the introduction of the company, the research part, description of the order processing and risks identification and evaluation, using selected methods – FMEA and Ishikawa diagram. The last part contains proposals for mitigating the most serious risks.

There is much dialogue in the global aviation industry about Safety Management Systems (SMS) and how it should be integrated across all domains of the industry including aircraft design, production, flight operations, overhaul and maintenance, suppliers, service providers, airports, and so forth (Johnson, 2012). Regulators have made significant progress in recent years to implement ICAO’s SMS into airlines, albeit as a required or recommended practice. More recently the regulators are seeking to implement SMS into the aircraft manufacturing and aircraft maintenance domains. This research reviewed regulatory publications from multiple countries to assess the technical makeup of SMS, and understand what regulators are requiring, or recommending, and when. It was found that global regulators accept the ICAO published definition of SMS, but different regulators have varying approaches regarding implementation. However, they are consistent in initially targeting airlines for SMS implementation. SMS comments range from “The best thing since sliced bread” to “Worst thing since the creation of the FAA; I don’t need anyone telling me what’s safe when I already know it; waste of time and money”. This investigation experimented with field tests to connect the engineering, production and airline domains into one ICAO SMS model. Results indicate that because the different domains are risk-specific, the application of one safety risk management model to all domains is not viable. The SMS model applies to airlines because airlines’ primary risk is about operational safety. Aircraft production and maintenance is about production risk – therefore the risk model must be centric to process risk. Field test 3 tailored the ICAO SMS risk architecture to assess and mitigate process risk as applicable to the aircraft manufacturing and maintenance. Although the SMS architecture was usable, the content and focus was significantly adjusted to be production process-risk centric, to the point where the term “SMS’ was deemed out of place. The resulting model was therefore named Production Risk Management System (PRMS). Following the emergence of PRMS from field tests, this investigation reviewed industry, research and regulatory arguments for and against SMS in the airline industry, and correlated those arguments with the benefits and non-benefits of PRMS for the manufacturing and aircraft maintenance domains. The researcher advocates PRMS as a viable model that meets ICAO SMS-like architecture for aircraft production and maintenance. Methods were identified for developing and implementing PRMS, and for evaluating its ROI. If and when “SMS” is truly mandated in these domains, the researcher proposes PRMS as a viable model that should be considered. Furthermore, the researcher proposes that PRMS can be an effective production risk management system that can enhance the organization’s existing QMS, regardless of “SMS” regulations.

La planification urbaine regroupe les moyens institutionnels mis en œuvre pour gérer les évolutions urbaines. Au cours du temps, les documents de planification urbaine français ont vu leurs objectifs évoluer en vue d’une gestion plus maîtrisée des espaces urbanisés (lois SRU et Grenelle). Aussi, la question de la protection de l’environnement et des espaces a été renforcée par la législation européenne qui a obligé certains documents d’urbanisme à intégrer une évaluation environnementale (en 2001 pour l’Europe, applicable en France en 2005). Cette thèse propose une démarche d’évaluation complémentaire aux systèmes d’indicateurs des évaluations des Plans Locaux d’Urbanisme et plus largement de questionner l’impact des PLU sur le territoire urbanisé. En effet, les indicateurs des évaluations des PLU semblent renseigner plus sur les performances durables des villes que sur la qualité du dispositif d’urbanisme règlementaire. La démarche proposée se base sur la création d’un corpus d’indicateurs devant montrer les effets du PLU par rapport à des « critères » qui sont du ressort de l’urbanisme règlementaire (zonage, contraintes formelles du bâti et d’aménagement de la parcelle, équipements publics et aménités urbaines) et de « l’urbanisme durable » (au sens des lois SRU et Grenelle). Enfin, l’agrégation des indicateurs par analyses multicritères et statistiques permettront aux rédacteurs des PLU de disposer d’un outil de compréhension des règles complexes ainsi que d’un outil d’aide à la décision, en vue de faciliter les choix d’évolution du zonage et des règlements. La démarche est appliquée au PLU de Toulouse. / Urban planning includes the institutional means used to control urban development. Over the years, the French urban plans saw their goals modified towards a more controlled urban space management (SRU and Grenelle laws). Besides, environmental and spatial protection issues were reinforced by European legislation, which made the environmental assessment compulsory for some plans (in 2001 for Europe, applied in France in 2005). This PhD research aims to propose a complementary assessment approach to the current indicators contained in the local plan’s assessments, and, more broadly, to question the impacts of the local plans on urban areas. In fact, the local plan indicators seem to be more adapted for a city sustainability performance analysis than for an analysis of the quality of the regulations contained in the plans. This approach starts with the creation of a set of indicators, which are expected to show the effects of the local plan, focusing on “regulatory planning criteria” (zoning, constraints for a building shape and parcel layout, public facilities and amenities) and “sustainable planning” (based on the SRU and Grenelle laws definitions). Finally, the aggregation of the indicators, by the use of multicriteria and statistical analysis, will supply regulatory planners not only with a tool for better understanding of the complex regulations but also a decision aiding tool, whose purpose is to facilitate the choices planners have to make for the evolution of the zoning and the regulation. The local plan of the city of Toulouse will be used as a case study to show the application of the approach.

O presente trabalho apresenta um modelo de aplicação de ferramentas de projeto integradas ao longo das fases de desenvolvimento de produto, neste caso, aplicadas na melhoria do produto suporte para fixação de cilindro de gás natural veicular. O foco do trabalho é apresentar a integração de ferramentas nas fases de Projeto Informacional, Projeto Conceitual e Projeto Detalhado do Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos. Entende-se por integração a escolha de ferramentas que permitam conduzir o fluxo de informação ao longo das fases de desenvolvimento de produtos, de tal forma que a informação de saída de uma ferramenta seja a informação de entrada da ferramenta subseqüente. As ferramentas integradas a partir da fase de Projeto Informacional foram a Pesquisas de Mercado Qualitativa e Quantitativa, com a finalidade de identificar as demandas dos clientes. As demandas dos clientes foram os dados de entrada da Matriz da Qualidade (Quality Function Deployment - QFD), resultando nos requisitos do produto e suas respectivas especificações-meta. A partir dos requisitos do produto, diferentes conceitos (configurações) foram gerados, apoiados pela Matriz Morfológica no Projeto Conceitual. Na seqüência utilizou-se a ferramenta de Projeto de Experimentos (Design of Experiments - DOE) para avaliar a estimativa de preço frente às possíveis configurações do produto. Com a Matriz de Pugh, alternativas de conceito de produto foram avaliadas possibilitando a escolha do melhor conceito de produto. No Projeto Detalhado, foi aplicada ferramenta de Análise dos Modos de Falha e seus Efeitos (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis - FMEA), utilizado de forma integrada com o QFD, para identificar as falhas atuais e potenciais e seus efeitos em sistemas e processo. Em função das demandas identificadas, foram definidas e implementadas melhorias no produto. Observou-se a adequabilidade destas ferramentas de projeto para aplicação de forma integrada, garantindo um fluxo contínuo de informações rastreáveis e que tendem a levar à uma reduzida chance de perdas ao longo do processo. / There are few examples in literature about the integration of project tools along the product development phases. The main research objective in thesis is to integrate some tools that facilitate the information flow along the product development phases, more specifically in Informational Project, Conceptual Project and Detailed Project phases. The product improvement “support for Vehicular Natural Gas” was the object of study in thesis. The main idea is that the information output from one tool is the input information of the subsequent tool. Starting from the Informational Project phase it was performed qualitative and quantitative market researches with the purpose of identifying the customers' demands for the studied product. The customers’ demands were the entrance data of the QFD (Quality Function Deployment) tool resulting in the product requirements and their respective specifications-goal. In Concept Project the product requirements were converted in functions and further different concepts were generated through the Morphologic Analysis. In the sequence, it was used the DOE (Design for experiments) tool to evaluate the estimate price to the possible products' configurations. The Pugh Matrix tool was used for concepts evaluation and choice. The FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) tool integrated with QFD was useful for current and potential failures identification and impact analysis in the system and process. With the application of these five tools the users’ demands were identified and improvements to the product were performed. The chosen tools proved to be adequate for integration, assuring that a continuous trackable information flow was attained with presumable reduced information loss, along the Product Development Process phases.

Abstract The goal of this research is to advance the state of the art in bulk power system reliability assessment. Bulk power system reliability assessment is an important procedure at both power system planning and operating stages to assure reliable and acceptable electricity service to customers. With the increase in the complexity of modern power systems and advances in the power industry toward restructuring, the system models and algorithms of traditional reliability assessment techniques are becoming obsolete as they suffer from nonrealistic system models and slow convergence (even non-convergence) when multi-level contingencies are considered and the system is overstressed. To allow more rigor in system modeling and higher computational efficiency in reliability evaluation procedures, this research proposes an analytically-based security-constrained adequacy evaluation (SCAE) methodology that performs bulk power system reliability assessment. The SCAE methodology adopts a single-phase quadratized power flow (SPQPF) model as a basis and encompasses three main steps: (1) critical contingency selection, (2) effects analysis, and (3) reliability index computations. In the critical contingency selection, an improved contingency selection method is developed using a wind-chime contingency enumeration scheme and a performance index approach based on the system state linearization technique, which can rank critical contingencies with high accuracy and efficiency. In the effects analysis for selected critical contingencies, a non-divergent optimal quadratized power flow (NDOQPF) algorithm is developed to (1) incorporate major system operating practices, security constraints, and remedial actions in a constrained optimization problem and (2) guarantee convergence and provide a solution under all conditions. This algorithm is also capable of efficiently solving the ISO/RTO operational mode in deregulated power systems. Based on the results of the effects analysis, reliability indices that provide a quantitative indication of the system reliability level are computed. In addition, this research extends the proposed SCAE framework to include the effects of protection system hidden failures on bulk power system reliability. The overall SCAE methodology is implemented and applied to IEEE reliability test systems, and evaluation results demonstrate the expected features of proposed advanced techniques. Finally, the contributions of this research are summarized and recommendations for future research are proposed.

There is much dialogue in the global aviation industry about Safety Management Systems (SMS) and how it should be integrated across all domains of the industry including aircraft design, production, flight operations, overhaul and maintenance, suppliers, service providers, airports, and so forth (Johnson, 2012). Regulators have made significant progress in recent years to implement ICAO’s SMS into airlines, albeit as a required or recommended practice. More recently the regulators are seeking to implement SMS into the aircraft manufacturing and aircraft maintenance domains. This research reviewed regulatory publications from multiple countries to assess the technical makeup of SMS, and understand what regulators are requiring, or recommending, and when. It was found that global regulators accept the ICAO published definition of SMS, but different regulators have varying approaches regarding implementation. However, they are consistent in initially targeting airlines for SMS implementation. SMS comments range from “The best thing since sliced bread” to “Worst thing since the creation of the FAA; I don’t need anyone telling me what’s safe when I already know it; waste of time and money”. This investigation experimented with field tests to connect the engineering, production and airline domains into one ICAO SMS model. Results indicate that because the different domains are risk-specific, the application of one safety risk management model to all domains is not viable. The SMS model applies to airlines because airlines’ primary risk is about operational safety. Aircraft production and maintenance is about production risk – therefore the risk model must be centric to process risk. Field test 3 tailored the ICAO SMS risk architecture to assess and mitigate process risk as applicable to the aircraft manufacturing and maintenance. Although the SMS architecture was usable, the content and focus was significantly adjusted to be production process-risk centric, to the point where the term “SMS’ was deemed out of place. The resulting model was therefore named Production Risk Management System (PRMS). Following the emergence of PRMS from field tests, this investigation reviewed industry, research and regulatory arguments for and against SMS in the airline industry, and correlated those arguments with the benefits and non-benefits of PRMS for the manufacturing and aircraft maintenance domains. The researcher advocates PRMS as a viable model that meets ICAO SMS-like architecture for aircraft production and maintenance. Methods were identified for developing and implementing PRMS, and for evaluating its ROI. If and when “SMS” is truly mandated in these domains, the researcher proposes PRMS as a viable model that should be considered. Furthermore, the researcher proposes that PRMS can be an effective production risk management system that can enhance the organization’s existing QMS, regardless of “SMS” regulations.

The constant modification of software during its life cycle poses many challenges for developers and testers because changes might not behave as expected or may introduce erroneous side effects. For those reasons, it is of critical importance to analyze, test, and validate software every time it changes. The most common method for validating modified software is regression testing, which identifies differences in the behavior of software caused by changes and determines the correctness of those differences. Most research to this date has focused on the efficiency of regression testing by selecting and prioritizing existing test cases affected by changes. However, little attention has been given to finding whether the test suite adequately tests the effects of changes (i.e., behavior differences in the modified software) and which of those effects are missed during testing. In practice, it is necessary to augment the test suite to exercise the untested effects. The thesis of this research is that the effects of changes on software behavior can be computed with enough precision to help testers analyze the consequences of changes and augment test suites effectively. To demonstrate this thesis, this dissertation uses novel insights to develop a fundamental understanding of how changes affect the behavior of software. Based on these foundations, the dissertation defines and studies new techniques that detect these effects in cost-effective ways. These techniques support test-suite augmentation by (1) identifying the effects of individual changes that should be tested, (2) identifying the combined effects of multiple changes that occur during testing, and (3) optimizing the computation of these effects.

O presente trabalho apresenta um modelo de aplicação de ferramentas de projeto integradas ao longo das fases de desenvolvimento de produto, neste caso, aplicadas na melhoria do produto suporte para fixação de cilindro de gás natural veicular. O foco do trabalho é apresentar a integração de ferramentas nas fases de Projeto Informacional, Projeto Conceitual e Projeto Detalhado do Processo de Desenvolvimento de Produtos. Entende-se por integração a escolha de ferramentas que permitam conduzir o fluxo de informação ao longo das fases de desenvolvimento de produtos, de tal forma que a informação de saída de uma ferramenta seja a informação de entrada da ferramenta subseqüente. As ferramentas integradas a partir da fase de Projeto Informacional foram a Pesquisas de Mercado Qualitativa e Quantitativa, com a finalidade de identificar as demandas dos clientes. As demandas dos clientes foram os dados de entrada da Matriz da Qualidade (Quality Function Deployment - QFD), resultando nos requisitos do produto e suas respectivas especificações-meta. A partir dos requisitos do produto, diferentes conceitos (configurações) foram gerados, apoiados pela Matriz Morfológica no Projeto Conceitual. Na seqüência utilizou-se a ferramenta de Projeto de Experimentos (Design of Experiments - DOE) para avaliar a estimativa de preço frente às possíveis configurações do produto. Com a Matriz de Pugh, alternativas de conceito de produto foram avaliadas possibilitando a escolha do melhor conceito de produto. No Projeto Detalhado, foi aplicada ferramenta de Análise dos Modos de Falha e seus Efeitos (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis - FMEA), utilizado de forma integrada com o QFD, para identificar as falhas atuais e potenciais e seus efeitos em sistemas e processo. Em função das demandas identificadas, foram definidas e implementadas melhorias no produto. Observou-se a adequabilidade destas ferramentas de projeto para aplicação de forma integrada, garantindo um fluxo contínuo de informações rastreáveis e que tendem a levar à uma reduzida chance de perdas ao longo do processo. / There are few examples in literature about the integration of project tools along the product development phases. The main research objective in thesis is to integrate some tools that facilitate the information flow along the product development phases, more specifically in Informational Project, Conceptual Project and Detailed Project phases. The product improvement “support for Vehicular Natural Gas” was the object of study in thesis. The main idea is that the information output from one tool is the input information of the subsequent tool. Starting from the Informational Project phase it was performed qualitative and quantitative market researches with the purpose of identifying the customers' demands for the studied product. The customers’ demands were the entrance data of the QFD (Quality Function Deployment) tool resulting in the product requirements and their respective specifications-goal. In Concept Project the product requirements were converted in functions and further different concepts were generated through the Morphologic Analysis. In the sequence, it was used the DOE (Design for experiments) tool to evaluate the estimate price to the possible products' configurations. The Pugh Matrix tool was used for concepts evaluation and choice. The FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) tool integrated with QFD was useful for current and potential failures identification and impact analysis in the system and process. With the application of these five tools the users’ demands were identified and improvements to the product were performed. The chosen tools proved to be adequate for integration, assuring that a continuous trackable information flow was attained with presumable reduced information loss, along the Product Development Process phases.

Classic parametric statistical tests, like the analysis of variance (ANOVA), are powerful tools used for comparing population means. These tests produce accurate results provided the data satisfies underlying assumptions such as homoscedasticity and balancedness, otherwise biased results are obtained. However, these assumptions are rarely satisfied in real-life. Alternative procedures must be explored. This thesis aims at investigating the impact of heteroscedasticity and unbalancedness on effect sizes in two-way fixed-effects ANOVA models. A real-life dataset, from which three different samples were simulated was used to investigate the changes in effect sizes under the influence of unequal variances and unbalancedness. The parametric bootstrap approach was proposed in case of unequal variances and non-normality. The results obtained indicated that heteroscedasticity significantly inflates effect sizes while unbalancedness has non-significant impact on effect sizes in two-way ANOVA models. However, the impact worsens when the data is both unbalanced and heteroscedastic. / Statistics / M. Sc. (Statistics)