Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / Surgical technicians at Naval hospitals provide a host of services related to surgical procedures that include handing instruments to surgeons, assisting operating room nurses, prepping and cleaning operating rooms, and administrative duties. At the Naval Medical Center San Diego (NMCSD), there are 83 surgical technicians that must be scheduled for these duties. The three military and one civilian hospital interviewed for this thesis manually schedule these duties. Weaknesses of these manual schedules exposed during interviews at these hospitals include assignment inequities and the time needed to create them. This thesis reports on an optimization based and spreadsheet implemented tool developed to schedule surgical technicians for both daily and weekly duties at a Naval hospital. We demonstrate the tool for the surgical technician department at NMCSD. The schedulers at NMCSD verify the utility of the developed tool and cite a drastic reduction in the time required to generate timely, equitable, and accurate schedules. The study also investigates historical operating room usage data and makes suggestions for improving scheduling practices based on these data. / Commander (Select), United States Navy

Logistics Operations Command and Control Capability Concept (LOCCC), developed by Jeff Grelson in 2000, introduces a new distribution principle to combat elements. This concept employs a supporting logistics unit in a general support role and controls it by a unique command center in order to minimize the footprint left by logistics, improve logistic and tactical responsiveness, and reduce the "iron mountain" on the battlefield. This thesis revisits the mathematical models and algorithms developed by Major Thomas Lenhardt to model LOCCC. We preprocess the network topology in order to convert it into an equivalent, simplified network that is computationally tractable with the existing optimization model by using exact and heuristic algorithms. We show that the simplifications and enhancements we propose help us to obtain much faster and better quality solutions than using the original, non-simplified networks. For example, in a ten-minute run, we can obtain a solution that is 98% better in some cases. We also apply the model to a Turkish Infantry Brigade to evaluate LOCCC with sustainment requirements and transportation assets of the Turkish Army.

With the drastic increase in the demand for air travel, taxiway aircraft traffic scheduling is becoming increasingly important in managing air traffic. In order to reduce traffic congestion on taxiways, this thesis proposes a tool for air traffic controllers to use in decision making: a taxiway air traffic model developed using Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) that can be applied to a rolling time horizon. The objective of this model is to minimize the total taxi time, and the output is a schedule and route for each aircraft. This MIP model assumes that only the origin and destination of each aircraft is fixed; due to some uncertain factors in the air arrival and departure process, it allows for the departure time and arrival time to vary within a certain time window. This MIP model features aircraft type, and also incorporates runway crossings and runway separations. The model is programmed using C++ and Solved in CPLEX 12.1. Runways 26R and 26L of George Bush International Airport are used to find solutions. The author presents a rolling horizon method by dividing the large scheduling issue into smaller time interval problems according to the scheduled times of departure or arrival. A bound is also proposed based on the discretized time interval problems. By using partial data from George Bush International Airport (IAH), solutions are obtained. The results are compared with the bound and show fairly high optimality. Compared with the previous research, this thesis presents a model with more flexibility by considering different operations. By using the rolling horizon method, the problem is broken into smaller units that can be solved efficiently without losing much optimality.

The problem of finding a shortest TDMA is formally described as anInteger Program (IP). A brief user manual explains how the attached implementation can be used to find an optimal size TDMA for any givenWSN and routing table, fulfilling the validity criteria.

Mine-mill production faces several operational difficulties, such as fluctuations in ore delivery from mines, random failure of machines, usage of stockpiles and storage bins, and changeover time when switching products. This study was initiated at a particular Canadian mining company. However, changes in the economic condition in the mining industry during 2008 have meant that circumstances have changed to the extent that this work should be seen as an illustration of methods rather than a study of the specific situation at the mining company. This mining company will remain unnamed throughout this thesis. The purpose of this research is to develop a series of production campaigns, each of which uses a specific draw scheme to coordinate the receiving of ore, maintenance planning and product scheduling. The approach includes a combination of mathematical programming model and a simulation model. The solution from the integer programming model is a set of campaigns that minimize the inventory levels of unprocessed ore, the number of days on shutdown, and the number of active piles required at any point in time. The simulation model uses this solution as its production scheduling input with integrated stochastic elements to evaluate mill system performance. In this thesis, the formulation of the mathematical programming model and construction of the simulation model, as well as the maintenance data analysis used as stochastic element of the model is discussed.

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