Industrial Engineering and Management
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Design of an ISO-9000 Quality System
The primary thrust of this project was to assist National Standard Company in the design and development of an ISO-9000 quality system. This included a multi-tiered approach, including quality manual, standard procedures, work instructions, and forms and records. Numerous alternative approaches were studied and evaluated with management participation. A system was then designed that was in concert with the company's other plants, including those overseas. The system designed was still individualistic enough to meet the needs of the sponsoring plant. In addition to the system design, a primary product of the project was presentation of a documentation system to allow the company to track locations and monitor the accuracy of all documents in the plant. The documentation was indexed and cross-referenced back to the ISO-9000 standard. Software was generated to realize the documentation system.
Sponsor: National Standard Company
PI: Kenneth E. Case
RAs: Stephen D. Sackett and Brian Eaton
In February 1995, the School of Industrial Engineering and Management at OSU began working on the CATT program. The CATT program addresses the problems associated with Continuous Acquisition and Logistic Support (CALS). CATT stands for Computer Assisted Technology Transfer. The purpose of this program is to investigate and improve the processes that Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) go through when bidding on and executing a contract with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) to produce a product or services for United States Air Force. This program is specifically with the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC), which has as one of it's responsibilities the maintenance and upgrade of the KC-135 airframe. This airframe, originally brought into service in the 1950's, will stay in service through the year 2040. As this airframe ages, parts on the airframe must be removed and upgraded with new parts. OC-ALC and DLA would like to procure as many parts as possible from SMEs specifically in areas such as Oklahoma. Many SMEs do not bid, nor do they manufacture, products for OC-ALC simply because of the difficulties associated with Federal contracting. Bluntly, many SMEs do not want to work with the Federal Government. As a result, the cost of procuring some parts is extremely high. This program is specifically focused on determining what the barriers are to an SME bidding on and successfully completing a contract and trying to remove as many barriers as possible. One of the mechanisms to remove the barriers is to use Electronic Commerce (EC) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI).
These technologies allow the bid process to occur electronically as well as the transmission of technical data packages and payment to the contractee. One of our efforts will be to help implement EC/EDI technology in SMEs. An opportunity that CATT will explore is the use of Virtual Enterprises (VE) to successfully complete a part. For the CATT program, a VE is a loosely structured group of companies that come together for the sole purpose of producing a part for DLA and OC-ALC. How this group forms and works together is not yet known. The purpose of coming together as a VE is because, alone, none of the companies could completely produce the parts. The School of Industrial Engineering and Management is addressing a number of different issues in this program. Specifically, we are looking at four different issues: (1) We are creating a fairly complex database of engineering firms that can assist SMEs with the technical expertise necessary to successfully manufacture a product. These engineering firms can provide expertise in the area of EC/EDI, CAD/CAM, reengineering of parts, etc. (2) We are creating a method to determine the critical features of a part. We are also creating a method to capture the processes needed to manufacture these critical features and the logic necessary to link the critical features to the available processes. (3) The IE&M faculty, along with Jim Henderson and the Oklahoma Center for Integrated Design and Manufacturing (OCIDM), are developing a database of SMEs within the state that can manufacture parts for OC-ALC. This complex database is currently focusing only on the manufacture of mechanical piece parts. (4) The faculty is developing a SLAM¨-based simulation model of the procurement process. This model will be used to ascertain the major bottlenecks and to permit modeling of "to be" situations. The CATT contract started in February 1995, and IE&M actually began work on it in May. The work will be completed by the end of September.
Sponsors: Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center and the Defense Logistics Agency
PIs: Tim Greene, David Pratt, and John Nazemetz
Jim Henderson (OCIDM)
RAs: Susan Hoefler and David Hartmann
A Framework for Integrated Production Planning and Scheduling in a Hybrid Assembly Job Shop Environment Under Uncertainty
This joint project involving OU and OSU proposes to integrate fast simulation, process planning, multiple criteria optimization, and stochastic programming with scheduling and sequencing techniques to develop a "maximal" production management methodology. The main focus of the research being conducted at OSU is the development of rapid performance prediction tools. The ongoing research is concerned with the development of fast simulation recursion models for various production network topologies (parallel machines, split/merge nodes, assembly nodes, etc.) and the investigation of a new hybrid fast/event-oriented simulation strategy. In addition, simple, yet reasonably accurate analytical queuing approximations are being studied and extended for use in a production control framework. Four faculty members and several graduate students from the School of Industrial Engineering at OU are involved in this joint project.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation
PI: Manjunath Kamath
RAs: Ram Sreenivasan and Krista Erickson
A Modeling Environment to Support Rapid Reconfiguration of Manufacturing Systems
The main thrust of the research is to identify and confront the major unanswered questions associated with the development of a comprehensive modeling and analysis environment for use in rapidly reconfiguring the many elements of a complete manufacturing system. These areas correspond to two new business processes required to fully exploit such environments: (1) the development and maintenance of highly reusable, tool-independent system representations, and (2) the development of tools and methodologies to derive maximum utility from such representations. This project builds upon previous research in the Center for Computer Integrated Manufacturing involving the construction of a Òbase modelÓ that supports modeling across several problem domains using multiple analysis and optimization tools.
Sponsor: National Science Foundation
PIs: Manjunath Kamath and David Pratt
RAs: Dursun Delen, Ralph Fernandes, Baskar Krishnamoorthy, Girish Shirhatti, Shankar Sivaramakrishnan, and Jianmin Xu
Enhancement of Manufacturing Systems Engineering Education
Two areas are being specifically targeted for enhancement. The first is the continuation of the development of an advanced modeling and simulation environment for the analysis and design of modern manufacturing systems. This software environment will facilitate the dissemination of the results of the Center for Computer Integrated Manufacturing's advanced modeling research program into the classroom and industry. Secondly, several curriculum enhancements are being made in manufacturing systems engineering to incorporate the conceptual and methodological advancements that have been made while pursuing research in modeling and simulation.
Sponsors: AT&T Foundation and Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education
PIs: Manjunath Kamath and David B. Pratt
RAs: Dursun Delen, Ralph Fernandes, Krishnakant Tekriwal, and Ning So
Critical Issues and Challenges of Organizational and Cultural Change in a Large, Complex Medical Care and Training System
This joint research project with the College of Arts and Sciences focuses on identifying the critical issues and challenges faced by teaching and research hospitals in the current context of health care reform; describing the various improvement interventions attempted; and assessing the legitimacy, practicality, and efficacy of those interventions.
Sponsor: The University Hospitals
PIs: Paul Rossler
Ken Kiser (College of Arts and Sciences)
Industrial Assessment Center
The Industrial Assessment Center works with small to medium sized manufacturing plants to reduce their energy and waste management costs. The program is free of charge and has been in existence for 15 years. Approximately 500 manufacturing plants in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas have been aided. Energy and waste savings totaling more than $4 million have resulted.
Sponsor: U.S. Department of Energy
PI: Wayne Turner
RAs: Clint Christenson, Eric Woodruff, Javier Mont, Lonnie Fields, and Ojas Wadivkar
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