Businesses are constantly striving for a competitive edge in the economy, and data-driven decision making is crucial to achieve this goal. Four data mining tools, principal component analysis, cluster analysis, recursive partitioning, and discriminant analysis, were used to explore the major factors that contribute to ends down in a rotor spinning manufacturing process. Principal component analysis was used to explore the research question about whether the large number of cotton properties used to classify cotton could be reduced to a significant few. Cluster analysis was used to gain insight about whether there were groups of gins, counties, or classing offices that produced better raw material than others and led to less ends down. The important research question of what raw material properties were affecting ends down was explored with both recursive partitioning and discriminant analysis. Additional research investigated the effect of cotton variety and atmospheric conditions on spinning productivity. Each of the four data mining tools used was informative and offered a different perspective to the overall research question. Several significant factors emerged including humidity, temperature, %DP 555, and uniformity in addition to micronaire and the color properties (+b and Rd). With these results the researcher developed an improvement plan for better control and increased spinning productivity in future operations. A designed experiment is necessary to thoroughly investigate the impact of certain factors beyond the exploratory conclusions obtained from this study.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-10292008-165755 |
| Date | 24 November 2008 |
| Creators | Daley, Caitlin Marie |
| Contributors | Dr. Timothy Clapp, Dr. Jeff Joines, Dr. Jeff Thompson |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-10292008-165755/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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