In this thesis we present an integrated formulation for production planning, facilities layout and process selection and provide two heuristics for solving the integrated problem. The traditional solution procedures to each of the subproblems are discussed. The decisions modeled in these three problems are interrelated and, in some cases, share overlapping data requirements. The integrated formulation provided is a mixed integer program. Solving this mixed integer program optimally is a hard problem. Thus, in this thesis we only provide heuristic solutions. An optimal branch and bound algorithm is suggested. Both heuristic solutions are demonstrated on a sample problem. The results of testing eight problems is recorded. Further suggestions for improving the heuristic solutions are also provided.

Published Article / Typography and layout are two powerful graphic tools in print advertising. They are used to arrest the attention of the target market by creating a positive association, a controversy or stimulate some kind of intellectual game. This means that much of the message has already been conveyed by creatively expanding and diversifying the conventional values embedded in certain graphic means and basing the advertisements on prevailing textual norms and our past experiences before the message itself has even been read, by just focusing on the typography used (e.g. compare the text layout and typography of a newspaper or a cell phone SMS). Based on a randomly selected South African dataset, aspects of the graphological options with their functional values will be described.

published_or_final_version / Industrial Engineering / Master / Master of Science in Engineering

The University of the Witwatersrand Research Report (MA in Industrial/Organisational Psychology) June 2017 / Numerous studies have shown that the office workspace environment can have an effect on employees’ performance, satisfaction, psychological wellbeing, and other such factors. As such office workspace design has gained more traction in international research and amongst organisations globally. The office space is an organisation’s second largest expense, it is therefore pertinent that organisations, who have chosen to focus on the office to enhance employee wellbeing, choose the most appropriate and optimal environment for their employees. One of the methods to ensure employees are satisfied with the space is to utilise a user-centred approach that allows employees the opportunity to comment on the space and to communicate their needs for the space. A South African organisation that has chosen to develop its space was a health insurance company that was undergoing a workspace redesign for their new buildings. The aim of this research report was to make use of a mixed method design that may have assisted the company, and the other parties involved, in gaining greater insight into whether the layout change had performed its functions effectively, as well as to ensure that the layout had accomplished the company’s goals. The research report focused on the following variables: psychological wellbeing, physical wellbeing, work engagement, job satisfaction, perceived productivity (performance), satisfaction with the workspace layout, and collaboration/interaction. The study consisted of 158 participants. The results of the study had indicated that there was a main effect relationship between department/team groups and job satisfaction. Other results of the study had found that satisfaction with the workplace layout was related to psychological wellbeing, job satisfaction, work engagement, and productivity. The results revealed that the higher the employees’ satisfaction with the workplace layout, the higher their psychological wellbeing, job satisfaction, work engagement and productivity. The qualitative component resulted in themes that were explored both theoretically and inductively. After analysis of the themes, four main themes were devised. Based on exploration of these themes it became apparent that satisfaction with one’s workplace can be contingent on factors such as, noise and distractions, privacy, operational technology (e.g. it software/hardware/systems and WIFI), functional and up-to-date technical equipment, facility accessibility, honouring of commitments/meeting expectations of the space, personal feelings and attitudes towards change and flexibility, time consumption of activities surrounding flexibility, storage facilities that are accessible, territorialism or sabotage, and interaction/communication. / MT 2018

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

A common problem when running Web-based applications is how to scale-up the database. The solution to this problem usually involves having a smart Database Administrator determine how to spread the database tables out amongst computers that will work in parallel. Laying out database tables across multiple machines so they can act together as a single efficient database is hard. Automated methods are needed to help eliminate the time required for database administrators to create optimal configurations. There are four operators that we consider that can create a search space of possible database layouts: 1) denormalizing, 2) horizontally partitioning, 3) vertically partitioning, and 4) fully replicating. Textbooks offer general advice that is useful for dealing with extreme cases - for instance you should fully replicate a table if the level of insert to selects is close to zero. But even this seemingly obvious statement is not necessarily one that will lead to a speed up once you take into account that some nodes might be a bottle neck. There can be complex interactions between the 4 different operators which make it even more difficult to predict what the best thing to do is. Instead of using best practices to do database layout, we need a system that collects empirical data on when these 4 different operators are effective. We have implemented a state based search technique to try different operators, and then we used the empirically measured data to see if any speed up occurred. We recognized that the costs of creating the physical database layout are potentially large, but it is necessary since we want to know the "Ground Truth" about what is effective and under what conditions. After creating a dataset where these four different operators have been applied to make different databases, we can employ machine learning to induce rules to help govern the physical design of the database across an arbitrary number of computer nodes. This learning process, in turn, would allow the database placement algorithm to get better over time as it trains over a set of examples. What this algorithm calls for is that it will try to learn 1) "What is a good database layout for a particular application given a query workload?" and 2) "Can this algorithm automatically improve itself in making recommendations by using machine learned rules to try to generalize when it makes sense to apply each of these operators?" There has been considerable research done in parallelizing databases where large amounts of data are shipped from one node to another to answer a single query. Sometimes the costs of shipping the data back and forth might be high, so in this work we assume that it might be more efficient to create a database layout where each query can be answered by a single node. To make this assumption requires that all the incoming query templates are known beforehand. This requirement can easily be satisfied in the case of a Web-based application due to the characteristic that users typically interact with the system through a web interface such as web forms. In this case, unseen queries are not necessarily answerable, without first possibly reconstructing the data on a single machine. Prior knowledge of these exact query templates allows us to select the best possible database table placements across multiple nodes. But in the case of trying to improve the efficiency of a Web-based application, a web site provider might feel that they are willing to suffer the inconvenience of not being able to answer an arbitrary query, if they are in turn provided with a system that runs more efficiently.

Lau Chun Ming. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-125). / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Overview --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Static Plant Layout Problem --- p.1 / Chapter 1.3 --- Dynamic Plant Layout Problem --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4 --- Example Problem of SPLP --- p.4 / Chapter 1.5 --- Formulation of SPLP --- p.7 / Chapter 1.6 --- Example Problem of DPLP --- p.8 / Chapter 1.7 --- Mathematical Model of DPLP --- p.12 / Chapter 1.8 --- Characteristics of the DPLP --- p.13 / Chapter 1.9 --- Constrained Dynamic Plant Layout Problem (CDPLP) --- p.14 / Chapter 1.10 --- Mathematical Model of CDPLP --- p.14 / Chapter 1.11 --- Objective of the Research --- p.15 / Chapter 1.12 --- Conclusion --- p.16 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Literature Review --- p.17 / Chapter 2.1 --- Overview --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2 --- Static Plant Layout Problem (SPLP) --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- The optimal algorithms / Chapter 2.2.2 --- The sub-optimal algorithms / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Construction algorithms / Chapter 2.2.4 --- Improvement algorithms / Chapter 2.3 --- Dynamic Plant Layout Problem (DPLP) --- p.21 / Chapter 2.4 --- Conclusion: --- p.26 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Genetic Algorithms in DPLP --- p.27 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction of Genetic Algorithms --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2 --- Genetic Algorithms in DPLP --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Encoding of a solution / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Fitness function / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Crossover operator / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Selection scheme / Chapter 3.2.5 --- Replacement and reproduction / Chapter 3.2.6 --- Mutation / Chapter 3.2.7 --- Initialization of parent pool / Chapter 3.2.8 --- Termination criterion / Chapter 3.3 --- Summary of the Proposed Method --- p.50 / Chapter Chapter 4: --- Computational Result of GA in DPLP --- p.51 / Chapter 4.1 --- Overview --- p.51 / Chapter 4.2 --- Characteristics of the Testing Problems --- p.51 / Chapter 4.3 --- Mathematical Model of DPLP for the Testing Problem --- p.52 / Chapter 4.4 --- The Design of Experiment --- p.53 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- The experiment / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Generating the initial layouts: / Chapter 4.5 --- Result: --- p.56 / Chapter 4.6 --- Analysis of Results --- p.60 / Chapter 4.6.1 --- 6department problems / Chapter 4.6.2 --- 15and 30 department problems / Chapter 4.7 --- Conclusion --- p.66 / Chapter Chapter 5: --- Constrained Dynamic Plant Layout Problem --- p.68 / Chapter 5.1 --- Overview --- p.68 / Chapter 5.2 --- The Mathematical Model of CDPLP --- p.69 / Chapter 5.3 --- Properties of CDPLP --- p.69 / Chapter 5.4 --- The Proposed GA on CDPLP --- p.71 / Chapter 5.4.1 --- Introduction / Chapter 5.4.2 --- Procedure / Chapter 5.4.3 --- Properties of dynamic programming under the dummy periods / Chapter 5.4.4 --- Properties of the proposed GA under the dummy periods / Chapter 5.4.5 --- The maximum number of iteration for the procedure / Chapter 5.5 --- Design of Experiment --- p.78 / Chapter 5.6 --- Result of Experiment on CDPLP --- p.81 / Chapter 5.7 --- Analysis of Results --- p.91 / Chapter 5.7.1 --- Type 1 budget (self): / Chapter 5.7.2 --- The average cost of the test / Chapter 5.8 --- Conclusion: --- p.93 / Chapter Chapter 6: --- Conclusion --- p.94 / Appendix A: The Improved Implementation for Conway and Venkataramanan's GA --- p.96 / Appendix B: Computational Result for CDPLP --- p.98 / Bibliography --- p.122

<p>Mälarplast är ett företag som tillverkar plastprodukter till olika kunder. De har tillverkning i både termo- och härdplast. De har en relativt stor maskinpark med stor variation i möjlighet att tillverka både stora och små detaljer. Företaget är ett familjeföretag som tills för en tids sedan har drivits enbart av grundaren. Men för en tid sedan tog sonen över VD-posten och försöker standardisera och effektivisera företaget och tillverkningen. Uppgiften för examensarbetet har varit att till en början göra en nulägesanalys för ordergången och produktionen med inriktningen på termoplast-sidan. Efter att nuläget var kartlagt så började arbetet med att se till vilka förbättringar som var möjliga. Arbetet med förbättringsförslag börjar med en litteraturstudie på olika verktyg och metoder som är grunder i förbättring och effektivisering. För att sedan se till vilka Mälarplast skulle kunna använda sig av.</p>

<p>In this thesis, the focus is on creating a wrapper between MATLAB and the Cadence Virtuoso design environment. The central idea is to use the wrapper and write the code for an entire analog layout as scripts in MATLAB. Basically, we will implement a set of necessary commands for performing the most fundamental tasks in layout generation from within MATLAB.</p>

<p>Syftet med denna uppsats är att ta reda på hur tidskriftsredaktioner utformar sina omslag efter målgrupp. Detta har undersökts genom kvalitativa intervjuer med chefredaktörer, art directors och redaktörer vid sju olika tidskriftsredaktioner. Dessa resultat har kompletterats med en analys av 19 olika tidskriftsomslag. Analysen är genomförd som en slags överblick där de olika omslagen granskats utifrån teorier om de olika element som förekommer på ett tidskriftsomslag. Dessa har sedan sammanställts i tabeller där eventuella likheter och skillnader framträder tydligare.</p><p>Resultaten från denna undersökning visar att tidningar som måste sälja bra i butik alla utformar sina omslag på liknande sätt. Man gör målgruppsundersökningar och vet mycket om målgrupperna. Däremot vet man egentligen inte exakt vad som attraherar målgruppen eftersom det kan bero på en mängd olika faktorer om en tidskrift köps eller inte. Därför använder man sig mycket av klassiska teorier om vad som gör ett omslag säljande och följer en känsla chefredaktör eller AD har om vad som är ett bra omslag. Ju bredare målgrupp en tidning har desto rörigare är omslaget. Tidskrifter som vill verka lite mer exklusiva har mer stilrena omslag.</p>