Jacob Hawke, a documentary photographer, returns to his long forsaken West Virginia hometown roots to document the activities of a Christian serpent handling church, of which his father is pastor. Jacob, a non-believer, is caught in an emotional vortex consisting of his hatred for his father (whom he abandoned after his mother was killed in a serpent-handling incident) and his growing attraction to Minnie, an enigmatic member of the Signs Following Church. Jacob is slowly lured by the strength of faith demonstrated by the community and must come to terms with his relationship with his father and make a crucial decision about his future.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) have claimed many advantages over traditional job shop processes. Some of the advantages reported by several users of CMS are reduction in throughput time, reduction in WIP inventory, improvement in product quality, faster response time to customer orders, shorter move distances, increase in manufacturing flexibility, and greater job satisfaction. In its implementation, CMS organizes a production floor into manufacturing cells. Hence, the important issue that needs to be addressed first is the cell formation (CF) problem. CF deals with the identification of part families, machine groups, and allocation of part families and machine groups to cells or vice versa. In the past, most studies in CF have assumed that the location of a cell is known a priori and a unique route exists between two cells. However, in an actual manufacturing environment, alternative locations are available for locating each cell. Similarly, when the capacity of the material handler being used is limited, alternative routes may have to be used to move part loads between two cells. In this research, the issues dealing with alternative cell locations and alternative routes of material handling equipment are investigated. In addition, several other important factors common to CF are also considered. These include machine capacity limitations, batches of part demands, non-consecutive operations of parts, and maximum number of machines assigned to a cell. A mathematical model is first formulated to represent the research problem. The model is a binary and general integer non-linear programming model, and it belongs to the class of NP-hard problem. Therefore, a higher level heuristic algorithm, based on the concept known as tabu search, is developed to efficiently solve the problems with industry merit. Incorporating the features associated with the tabu search, resulted in developing six different versions of the heuristic solution algorithm. The six heuristics are tested on twenty small problems, and the quality of their solutions is evaluated by investing significant effort to find their optimal solutions. The evaluation shows that the heuristics are highly effective. The solutions obtained from the heuristics have average percentage deviation of less than 3% from the optimal solutions. The heuristics are also tested on their performances with medium and large problems. By using a statistical experiment that is based on randomized block design, the performance of the six heuristics is compared. Three different problem structures, ranging from 4 parts to 30 parts and from 3 locations to 9 locations are used in the experimentation. The experiment reveals that in general, the tabu search based-heuristic using fixed tabu list size and long-term memory based on minimal frequency strategy is preferred to other heuristics as the problem size increases. / Graduation date: 2000

AbstractTitleComplaints Handling and Social MediaPurposeThe purpose of the project is to describe how companies conduct complaints handling in socialmedia and how they listen, talk and energize with the help of social media in terms of complaintshandling.Research QuestionsHow do companies perform complaints handling in social media? How do companies listen, talkand energize in social media in terms of complaints handling?Theory and ConceptsComplaints handling; encouraging customers to voice a complaint; the role of front-lineemployees in complaints handling; the role of compensation in complaints handling; socialmedia and relationship marketing; listening in social media; talking in social media; energizingon social mediaMethodologyThe study is descriptive with deductive approach. The research is qualitative and the researchstrategy is one-to-one interviews. Interviews were conducted with social media representatives ofBeeline, SAS supermarkets’ chain and Figaro restaurant group in Armenia.ConclusionsFrom the research it was concluded that SAS supermarkets’ chain and Figaro restaurant group interms of complaints handling mainly embrace the relationship potentials social media provides.That is they listen to complaints on social media; they always response to complaints either bytaking proactive measures or describing the situation; however, they do not energize customerswith stories about successful complaints handling experiences. While, in terms of complaintshandling, Beeline does not use the tools of listening, talking and energizing properly. It was alsoconcluded that both SAS supermarkets’ chain and Figaro restaurant group conduct complaintshandling in social media environment mainly in accordance to theories about how successfulcomplaints handling can be done, while Beeline does not.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2000. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 291-301).

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S. in Systems Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Dan C. Boger, J.L. Fobes. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-67). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Systems Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Dan C. Boger, J.L. Fobes. "September 2003." Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-67). Available also online as a PDF file via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.S. in Mechanical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Potis A. Papoulias. Includes bibliographical references (p. 95-96). Also available online.