No description available.

Thesis (M.S. in Systems Technology (Command, Control and Communications (C3)) --Naval Postgraduate School, June 2008. / Thesis Advisor(s): Pfeiffer, Karl D. ; Hocevar, Susan P. "June 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on August 22, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-130). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.S. in Management) Naval Postgraduate School, June 1997. / Thesis advisors, Nancy C. Roberts and Mark W. Stone. AD-A331 894. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-81). Also available online.

Thesis (M.A.)--Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 2001. / "May 2001." Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-76).

The focus of this study is on the application of cost-benefit analysis as a methodological technique for evaluating alternatives in the urban planning process. It is hypothesized that cost-benefit analysis, by identifying the effects and the incidence of various courses of action, provides a basis for objective evaluation of alternative plans. It is assumed that cost-benefit analysis, an economics tool, is a framework within which the various effects can be considered comprehensively. The method of study is primarily a critical review of the literature. Within the available time and resources, an attempt is made to apply the cost-benefit techniques to selected areas in the City of Vancouver. Because of the magnitude of the problem involved in the collection of considerable data, most of which is apparently unavailable in a readily applicable form, evidence for the verification of the hypothesis is largely drawn from the critical evaluation of the literature. The study first focusses on the general concept of cost-benefit analysis, as it appears to be traditionally applied, in a broad perspective of various methodological techniques of plan evaluation. A review of the cost-benefit techniques advanced by Nathaniel Lichfield, Jerome Rothenberg and James CT. Mao reveals the fact that there is a difference in their basic approach to urban development. Lichfield's "balance sheet" traces the effects of development in relation to the various sectors involved in the development process. Mao suggests that the repercussions be traced in relation to the basic objective of the project. Rothenberg is primarily concerned with the distribution of income among the relevant populations involved in the process of development. The authors point out the limitations of their techniques. There are many intangible and non-measurable items which are not treated by the authors. There is also the question of whether these tools are valid for evaluating urban plans. Though adequate data are not available to fully employ the above cost-benefit techniques, the limitations of the case studies, partly imposed by the theoretical formulation of these techniques lead to questions about the operational validity of these tools in evaluating the implications of these policies in the study areas. The study results reveal the practical problems encountered in obtaining comparable data, particularly on property value, social costs of slum living, and municipal expenditure and revenues for such small areas. A specific methodology needs to be developed for each to take these items into account. The problem of isolating certain effects and ascribing them to the redevelopment policy in the study areas is a critical one. Thus no valid conclusion with regard to the verification of the hypothesis can be drawn in the light of the case studies. It is concluded that the traditional concepts of "costs" and ""benefits" are not applicable in evaluating alternative urban plans and that cost-benefit analysis requires a broad interpretation as a framework within which the implications of a plan can be considered comprehensively and objectively in relation to the defined goals and objectives. The formulation of goals and objectives, it is evident, is an integral part of the analytical techniques. There are many intangible and non-measurable aspects which can not be treated adequately within the cost-benefit framework. However, one of the advantages of cost-benefit analysis is that the planners and the decision-makers may both become acquainted in greater detail with the trade-offs. Various other analytical methods lead to a more refined cost-benefit calculus for an objective evaluation of urban plans. It is important that the validity of methodological techniques should be judged not only by its operational aspects but also by its conceptual approach to achieve the goals of the urban planning process. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

Recently, formal methods have gained significant traction for describing, checking, and synthesizing the behaviors of cyber-physical systems. Among these methods, temporal logics stand out as they offer concise mathematical formulas to express desired system properties. In this thesis, our focus revolves around two primary applications of temporal logics in describing the behavior of autonomous system. The first involves integrating temporal logics with machine learning techniques to deduce a temporal logic specification based on the system's execution traces. The second application concerns using temporal logics to define traffic rules and develop a control scheme that guarantees compliance with these rules for autonomous vehicles. Ultimately, our objective is to combine these approaches, infer a specification that characterizes the desired behaviors of autonomous vehicles, and ensure that these behaviors are upheld during runtime. In the first study of this thesis, our focus is on learning Signal Temporal Logic (STL) specifications from system execution traces. Our approach involves two main phases. Initially, we address an offline supervised learning problem, leveraging the availability of system traces and their corresponding labels. Subsequently, we introduce a time-incremental learning framework. This framework is designed for a dataset containing labeled signal traces with a common time horizon. It provides a method to predict the label of a signal as it is received incrementally over time. To tackle both problems, we propose two decision tree-based approaches, with the aim of enhancing the interpretability and classification performance of existing methods. The simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed approaches. In the next study, we address the challenge of guaranteeing compliance with traffic rules expressed as STL specifications within the domain of autonomous driving. Our focus is on developing control frameworks for a fully autonomous vehicle operating in a deterministic or stochastic environment. Our frameworks effectively translate the traffic rules into high-level decisions and accomplish low-level vehicle control with good real-time performance. Compared to existing literature, our approaches demonstrate significant enhancements in terms of runtime performance. / 2025-01-17T00:00:00Z

No description available.

Lean construction is often suggested as way of enhancing the productivity of the construction industry. There are no clear definitions of lean construction, but it is often referred to as a construction management philosophy that aims to minimize waste and maximise customer value. Adopting lean construction in a project can be difficult and there are several critical factors for successful implementation; one of which is the use of lean construction practices. Lean construction practices are tools, techniques and strategies through which the principles of lean construction can be implemented. It has been pointed out that there is lack of information on the number of existing practices and their exact area of use. This master thesis report identified lean practices that have been implemented in commercial construction projects, and categorised them according to the phases of lean construction. The report also explored which lean production-planning-and-control- practices have been adopted by a commercial construction contractor. To identify the lean practices, a literature analysis was conducted based on the documents reviewed by Babalola et al. (2019) in their article ‘Implementation of lean practices in the construction industry: A systematic review’. This revealed 22 different lean practices that have been implemented in commercial construction projects, with the Last Planner System having been reported the most followed by Just in Time and Pull Scheduling. The literature analysis also resulted in the project delivery stages in which each identified practice had been adopted. This helped categorise the practices according to the phases of lean construction. The phases were defined by the conceptual framework ‘The Lean Project Delivery System’ as Project Definition, Lean Design, Lean Supply, Lean Assembly and Lean Use. The categorisation showed that (out of the 22 identified practices) 3 practices belong to the phase Project Definition, while 8, 9, 15 and 0 practices belong to the other phases respectively. To explore which lean production-planning-and-control-practices have been adopted by a commercial construction contractor, a case study was conducted of the production phase of a large-sized project referred to as Project X. Seven members of the production team were interviewed as to reveal the contractor’s working methods in the planning and control of production in terms of time, activity and logistics. The revealed working methods were then compared to 9 out of the 22 identified lean practices, since they were interpreted as production-planning-and-control-practices. This analysis showed that six of those practices were seemingly implemented in the production of Project X, while one was partially implemented and two were not implemented. / Lean byggproduktion föreslås ofta som ett sätt att öka produktiviteten i byggbranschen. Det finns inga tydliga definitioner av lean byggproduktion, men konceptet beskrivs ofta som en filosofi för byggledning som ämnar minimera avfall och maximera kundvärdet. Att anta lean byggproduktion i ett projekt kan vara svårt och det finns ett antal kritiska faktorer för lyckad implementering, varav en är användandet av lean byggverktyg. Lean byggverktyg är verktyg, tekniker och strategier genom vilka principerna av lean byggproduktion kan implementeras. Det har påpekats att det finns brist på information om antalet befintliga lean byggverktyg och deras användningsområden. Denna rapport identifierade lean verktyg som har implementerats i kommersiella byggprojekt, och kategoriserade de enligt faserna av lean byggproduktion. Rapporten utforskade också vilka lean verktyg för planering och styrning av produktion som har antagits av en kommersiell byggentreprenör. För att identifiera leanverktyg i kommersiella byggprojekt så genomfördes en litteraturanalys baserat på de dokument som granskats av Babalola et al. (2019) i deras artikel ‘Implementation of lean practices in the construction industry: A systematic review’. Detta avslöjade 22 olika lean byggverktyg som implementerats i diverse kommersiella byggprojekt, där Last Planner System har rapporterats mest följt av Just in Time och Pull Scheduling. Litteraturanalysen resulterade också i projektleveransstadierna där varje identifierat verktyg hade implementerats. Detta hjälpte att kategorisera verktygen enligt faserna av lean byggproduktion. Faserna definierades av det konceptuella ramverket ’The Lean Project Delivery System’ som Project Definition, Lean Design, Lean Supply, Lean Assembly och Lean Use. Kategoriseringen visade att (utav de 22 identifierade verktygen) 3 verktyg tillhör fasen Project Definition, medan de resterande faserna innefattar 8, 9, 15 respektive 0 verktyg. För att utforska vilka lean verktyg för planering och styrning av produktion som har antagits av en kommersiell byggentreprenör så utfördes en fallstudie av produktionsfasen av ett stort projekt såkallat Projekt X. Sju medlemmar av produktionsteamet intervjuades för att uppenbara entreprenörens arbetsmetoder vid planering och styrning av produktion beträffande tid, aktivitet och logistik. De uppenbarade arbetsmetoderna jämfördes sedan med 9 av de 22 identifierade leanverktygen eftersom just de tolkades som verktyg för planering och styrning av produktion. Denna analys visade att sex av dessa verktyg var till synes implementerade i produktionen av Projekt X, medan en var delvis implementerad och två inte alls implementerade.

This thesis discusses and demonstrates the benefits of simulating and optimising a manufacturing control system in order to improve flow of production material through a system with high variety low volume output requirements. The need for and factors affecting synchronous flow are also discussed along with the consequences of poor flow and various solutions for overcoming it. A study into and comparison of various planning and control methodologies designed to promote flow of material through a manufacturing system was carried out to identify a suitable system to model. The research objectives are; • Identify the best system to model that will promote flow, • Identify the potential failure mechanisms within that system that exist and have not been yet resolved, • Produce a model that can fully resolve or reduce the probability of the identified failure mechanisms having an effect. This research led to an investigation into the main elements of a Drum-Buffer-Rope (DBR) environment in order to generate a comprehensive description of the requirements for DBR implementation and operation and attempt to improve the limitations that have been identified via the research literature. These requirements have been grouped into three areas, i.e.: a. plant layout and kanban controls, b. planning and control, and c. DBR infrastructure. A DBR model was developed combined with Genetic Algorithms with the aim of maximising the throughput level for an individual product mix. The results of the experiments have identified new knowledge on how DBR processes facilitate and impede material flow synchronisation within high variety/low volume manufacturing environments. The research results were limited to the assumptions made and constraints of the model, this research has highlighted that as such a model becomes more complex it also becomes more volatile and more difficult to control, leading to the conclusions that more research is required by extending the complexity of the model by adding more product mix and system variability to compare results with the results of this research. After which it will be expected that the model will be useful to enable a quick system response to large variations in product demand within the mixed model manufacturing industry.

<p>U doktorskoj disertaciji su predstavljeni modeli za planiranje i upravljanje proizvodnim sistemom organizovanim putem virtuelnih proizvodnih ćelija. U modelima su razvijeni postupci određivanja dužine planskog perioda i broja faza obrade ili montaže. U modelima je razvijen postupak kreiranja virtuelnih proizvodnih ćelija imajući u vidu zahteve planskog i upravljačkog sistema. Modeli omogućuju rekonfiguraciju ćelija usled analize opterećenja tehnoloških sistema i mogućnosti realizacije terminskih planova proizvodnje. Modeli su ispitani na primerima dva proizvodna preduzeća sa teritorije Republike Srbije.</p> / <p>Doctoral dissertation presents models for production planning and control of<br />virtual manufacturing cells. Models present developed procedure for the<br />determination of the production planning period and the number of<br />processing or assembly stages. Models also present the process of creating<br />virtual manufacturing cells, bearing the requirements of the production<br />planning and control system.The models enable the reconfiguration of cells<br />due to the analysis of machines workload and due to the analysis of the<br />production schedule. The models were tested on the examples of two<br />production companies from the Republic of Serbia .</p>