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

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / Page 49 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (page [48] ). / Electrosorption technology is currently gaining significant tractions as a viable separation technique due to its low energy consumption, its intrinsic reversibility and its reagent free nature. As most companies thrive towards a more sustainable approach, electro-chemical based process become more and more attractive. The group of Prof. Hatton of the Chemical Engineering department at MIT has improved further the state of the art of electro-chemical technologies by using functionalized metallocene-based pseudo-capacitors. Their research demonstrates that the technology they developed can selectively remove specific compounds such as carboxylates, sulfonates, phosphonates and potentially heavy metals. The aim of this thesis is to help the technology find a first market fit and build the foundation for a successful scale-up by defining its positioning within the treatment train of the production of the identified markets. Two main markets were identified. The selection of each market was based on the price of the end-product, the size and growth of the market and the numbers of applications and potential customers. The lactic acid and the lithium carbonate markets were selected. Both are growing markets sustaining a real demand over the years to come with very promising and diversified applications. We collected real-life feedbacks and identified the pain points in each respective industry by conducting interviews with professionals in the field. Several unmet needs and possible alignments with the benefits brought by the selective electrosorption technology were identified thanks to this endeavor. New potential production lines were proposed. The new innovative treatment line allows for the simplification of the process train, a reduction of the chemical and reagent needed and a likely decrease in solid waste and wastewater volume. / by Adrien A. Moreau. / S.M. in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2018. / "June 2018." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / The $17 billion U.S. skincare industry negatively impacts women's health. It sets unrealistic beauty standards and ideals that are meant to influence consumers' product choices. Skincare products are unevenly regulated, and many formulations contain chemicals that harm individuals' health and end up in toxic landfills and watersheds. Skincare companies offer products with ingredients that are not verified or tested for safety or efficacy. Additionally, skincare products have historically been created for fictional archetypes, and insufficient attention has been paid to consumer's unique and changing skin needs. The short-term and long-term health outcomes resulting from skincare product usage affect divergent populations differently, due to the behavioral differences between women of different ages, ethnicities, and geographic locations, as well as other demographic and psychographic factors. This thesis examines these factors and looks beneath the skin of the industry, challenging the current modus operandi of its players. Using data mining techniques, the correlation between these factors are identified and used to predict skincare product waste. Unsupervised learning is used to group skincare consumers by their consumption behavior, as opposed to their demographics. A diverse sample of skincare consumers was chosen to score the skincare products in their everyday routine with both an individual health and environmental safety score. One solution supported by the research is innovation and new companies that are focused on customer education, ingredient transparency, and the measurement of individual safety outcomes resulting from skincare product usage. / by Meghan Maupin. / 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 67-69). / In the past decade, the cost associated with processing the human genome has decreased at a rate that is outpacing Moore's Law. The first human genome was sequenced in 2001, the culmination of a ten-year effort at a program cost of $2.7 billion. This has increased the accessibility of genomics research and enabled rapid development of adjacent biotechnologies and new genetic treatments. The Broad Institute, responsible for analyzing the first human genome, has remained at the center of this rapidly growing industry. Broad Genomics, a 200+ person division of the Broad Institute, is focused on the high-quality delivery of genomic data and data science. Over the past five years, Broad Genomics has been the largest producer of human genomic information in the world. Processing more than 1.5 million samples from over 50 countries. While conducting research for this thesis, Broad Genomics sequenced its 100,000th human genome. Shortly after the division's inception in 2012, Broad Genomics implemented the Dynamic Work Design and Visual Management method developed by Nelson Repenning, the MIT Sloan School of Management Distinguished Professor of System Dynamics and Organization Studies and Associate Dean of Leadership. This method offers a new approach to designing work that is both effective and engaging, while ensuring daily operational work is directly linked to the high-level strategic goals of the Broad Genomics organization. Positive operational results of this intervention for whole genome and exome sequencing were published in a case study in 2017. In the interim, continued iteration on this implementation has resulted in an integrated system of three primary levels of Visual Management boards within the organization. The goal of this research was to assess the continued alignment with the principles of Dynamic Work Design and to assess their effectiveness through an integrated system of boundary objects architected through multiple functional levels of the Broad Genomics organization. Additionally, the research evaluates the harmonization of Dynamic Work Design with principles and frameworks of knowledge boundaries and boundary objects as well as recent team dynamics and people analytics research. / by Benjamin Linville-Engler. / S.M. in Engineering and Management