An Engineering Decision Support System, EDSS, was developed using Bayesian mathematics which incorporates knowledge and confidence components observed in alternative-criterion pair decision making. The separation of knowledge and confidence has been previously unaccounted for in decision-making methods. EDSS provides decision support to individuals or teams which must make choices between alternatives using alternative-criterion pair evaluations. Further, EDSS was instanciated into computer software. The EDSS decision support system was statistically tested using two variables, mechanical experience of the participants and the use of a decision method, at two different levels and in a replicated factorial experiment. The experiment consisted of teams of subjects solving a simple mechanical design problem. Data from the experiment was collected for eighteen different metrics in four categories. This research reports on each of eighteen metrics using the hypothesis that the use of EDSS will show improvements in, or positive impact on, the following four categories: the decision making productivity of idea processing, the decision-making process, the perception of the decisions made by the decision makers, and the ease of use of a computer decision support tool. Statistical results of the experiment showed that EDSS successfully matched ad-hoc and Pugh's decision matrix performance for sixteen of the eighteen metrics and statistically exceeded the remaining two. These two metrics are, the conduction of more evaluations of alternative-criterion pairs ,and increased problem understanding. This research also shows that a new alternative-criterion pair evaluation method has been successfully created that provides for: - A separation of knowledge and confidence in the Belief Model of decision making. - Decision results without complete evaluation of all alternative-criterion pairs. - Aggregation of preferences from team members. - A convenient means for investigating decision improvements. / Graduation date: 1997

Thesis (M.S. in Systems Engineering and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2009. / Thesis Advisor(s): Whitcomb, Clifford ; Papoulias, Fotis. "September 2009." Description based on title screen as viewed on 5 November 2009. Author(s) subject terms: Autonomous, unmanned vehicle, USV, UV sentry, model-based, multi-criteria, model-based decision making, MCDM, unmanned surface vessel, model-based systems engineering, MBSE, uncertainty. Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-92). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 215-226). Also available via the Internet.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1978 R36 / Master of Science

No description available.

The Comprehensive Environmental Decision Making (CEDM) paradigm developed through this research conceptualizes CEDM through a particular way of seeing a commitment to man's relationship with his environment. Previous research has explored CEDK but the idea remains ill-defined. The challenge in this research is to reestablish the guiding ideas of the government-environment-citizens matrix, while at the same time describe a meaning and means of operation suitable for environmental professionals working in industry today, where the man-environment commitment is critical to economic growth and environmental quality. In this research a meaning and means of operation begins with Lynton K. Caldwell's guiding ideas. As an avenue of implementation, government structures established through The National Environmental Policy Act and the Pollution Prevention Act provide policy reinforcement. Accepting policy as a CEDM avenue the requirements of environmental understanding, information and perception are developed through aspects of the environment and sustainable development with rational ecology ultimately providing the guideposts and criteria whereby CEDM may be judged. Citizens are those environmental professionals where an ethic is shaped through systems learning with the Environmental Management System used as a framework to establish the CEDM network of relationships in the workplace. The professional's socially binding value is hypothesized as an obligation not to do harm. With this value orientation, rational ethics and systems thinking provide guidelines that direct the professional in evaluating and optimizing policy and business structures. The CEDM paradigm is illustrated as a social choice mechanism suited to the 1990s and beyond by using case studies to apply policy directions.

Current life cycle assessment tools are often deficient in assisting design for sustainable manufacturing efforts. Integrating an improved assessment method into a decision support framework will provide a means for designers and engineers to better understand the impacts of their decisions. A unit process modeling-based sustainability assessment method is presented to assist design decision making by accounting for and quantifying economic, environmental, and social attributes. A set of these sustainability metrics is defined as a basis for comparison of component design alternatives. The method is demonstrated using two titanium component production alternatives that represent typical design for manufacturing scenarios. The modeling method significantly increases the resolution of sustainable manufacturing metrics over conventional assessment techniques, and is one aspect of the overall decision support framework developed. Additionally, fixed sum importance weighting, weighted sum modeling, and scenario analysis were selected as easily employed and transparent design decision techniques to provide the remaining elements of the framework. The demonstration of the decision support framework for titanium component manufacturing illustrates that the sequential approach developed can assist engineers in developing more sustainable components and products. / Graduation date: 2012

While many organizations claim to "put safety first," safety is rarely considered early in the design process when system-level architectural decisions are made. Instead, system design follows an abstraction-to-detail process to first meet functional and then performance requirements. Following this process, safety assurance occurs in the later stages of design through a rigorous expert review process. The significant cost of safety-based redesign and the growing complexity of engineered systems motivates a need for early design-stage fault analysis. This research presents a novel method of including safety into the model-based design and analysis of complex systems using low-fidelity behavior simulations. Specifically, this research demonstrates the adaption of the functional design process to explicitly include the system property of safety in the system representation. Next, early design fault analysis is extended to connect component failure behavior to system-level hazards. Finally, this research develops three methods of results clustering to provide different evaluation metrics of the system design. In summary, this research demonstrates a framework for incorporating safety into early design decision making. This research addresses safety and failure in the design of complex systems incorporating diverse technology domains as found in energy, transportation, and aerospace systems. / Graduation date: 2012

Orientadores: Osvair Vidal Trevisan, Boris Asrilhant / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Mecânica / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T11:45:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rodriguez_MonicaRebelo_D.pdf: 37752110 bytes, checksum: fe86a28596b16f107e45c39acbce7fdd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Há 10 anos da quebra do monopólio para a exploração e produção (E&P) de petróleo no Brasil o mercado se mostrou estável, competitivo e gerando resultados positivos que atraem o interesse das companhias nacionais e estrangeiras a investir no setor de "upstream". O processo de cessão de direitos e obrigações sobre as áreas de E&P é conduzido pela Agência Nacional de Petróleo, Gás Natural e Bio-combustíveis (ANP) por meio de licitação pública, com regras bem definidas, onde o vencedor assina um contrato de concessão com a ANP. Esta pesquisa apresenta e analisa o histórico destas licitações para áreas de exploração e produção e áreas inativas com acumulações marginais, dentro do cenário econômico brasileiro e do potencial exploratório do país, e compara o desempenho das empresas no Brasil e no Golfo do México Americano, segundo os investimentos realizados para aquisição dessas áreas. Apresenta, ainda, um modelo estocástico para estimava do valor dos blocos desenvolvido a partir das ofertas realizadas para áreas da Bacia de Campos em licitações pretéritas. Para analisar o nível de competição esperado para essas áreas, este estudo descreve também o desenvolvimento de um sistema especialista com a ferramenta Exsys Corvid®, baseado no julgamento de 36 especialistas da indústria do petróleo que trabalham em 20 companhias de pequeno, médio e grande porte. A aplicação desta metodologia permite que estas companhias estimem o nível de competição (alto, moderado, ou baixo) para áreas da Bacia de Campos. Conhecendo o valor das áreas e a estimativa do nível de competição, é possível subsidiar o processo decisório na elaboração de estratégias de oferta que permitam uma melhor alocção financeira dos recursos e a gestão ótima do portfólio exploratório pretendido pela companhia / Abstract: After 10 years of the ending of petroleum exploration and production (E&P) monopoly in Brazil, the market for those activities has shown to be stable and competitive, providing positive results which attracted both national and international investment for the upstream oil and gas sector. The regulatory agency promotes public licensing of E&P areas through a competitive sealed bid auction, whose rules are clear and known in advance by the companies. This research describes and evaluates the historical data for these E&P licensing, as well as for tenders of marginal oilfield accumulations, under the Brazilian economic scenario and the geologic potential of the country. It also compares oil companies performance regarding investment made in acquiring areas in Brazil to those in US-Gulf of Mexico. A stochastic model for block-value estimation is presented and applied to previous data from Campos Basin licensed areas. In order to estimate the level of competition expected for those areas, an expert system was built using Exsys Corvid®, based on the knowledge captured from 36 specialists in Brazilian public licensing working for 20 oil companies. The proposed methodology is applied to the case of Campos Basin areas and showed to properly estimate the levels of competition expected (high, moderate or low in the bid. By knowing the block-value and the expected level of competition, decision makers are better prepared for formulating bidding strategies that can result in better resources allocation and yield a better exploration portfolio management / Doutorado / Reservatórios e Gestão / Doutor em Ciências e Engenharia de Petróleo

Sustainability has been the focus of intense discussions over the past two decades, with topics around the entire product life cycle. In the manufacturing phase, research has been focused solely on environmental impact assessment or environmental impact and cost analysis in its assessment of sustainability. However, few efforts have investigated sustainable production decision making, where engineers are required to concurrently consider economic, environmental, and social impacts. An approach is developed to assess broader sustainability impacts by conducting economic assessment, environmental impact assessment, and social impact assessment at the work cell level. The results from the assessments are then integrated into a sustainable manufacturing assessment framework, along with a modified weighting method based on pairwise comparison and an outranking decision making method. The approach is illustrated for a representative machining work cell producing stainless steel knives. Economic, environmental, and social impact results are compared for three production scenarios by applying the sustainable manufacturing assessment framework. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to study the robustness of the results. For future research, it is desired that a tool which integrates manufacturing information system information and the sustainable manufacturing assessment approach can be built to assist production engineers in considering sustainability performance when making decisions. / Graduation date: 2012