Confronting an identity crisis - how to "brand" systems engineering

Systems Engineering is not a new discipline; the term has been in use since World War II. Yet, while there has been no shortage of definitions of the term over the years (not all of which are consistent), there is little consensus on the scope of Systems Engineering. This is particularly true in relation to other overlapping disciplines such as System Dynamics, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Project Management, Soft Systems Methodology, Specialist Engineering, and Control Theory, which share many of the origins and techniques of Systems Engineering. This paper presents a landscape of disciplines and suggests that INCOSE should “brand” Systems Engineering strategically, defining explicitly its position within this landscape including its points of parity (overlaps) and points of difference with other disciplines. Actively branding Systems Engineering will broaden its appeal and attract more interest from stakeholders outside the current Systems Engineering community. INCOSE’s “market share” relative to its biggest systems competitor—Project Management—is falling, so even though INCOSE membership is rising, more needs to be done to promote the profession

A Survey of Systems and Improvement Approaches for Psychological Healthcare

This paper reviews the literature to date that uses industrial and systems engineering and operations management methods to improve psychological healthcare in the military setting as well as in the civilian sector. The study findings are categorized using an Enterprise Architecture framework; the categorization highlights the enterprise architecting views that have been more thoroughly studied and those areas that have not been addressed as extensively by the present research. The review also found that methods based in industrial and systems engineering and operations management concepts related to improvements in policy may be developed more holistically in the both the military and civilian sectors. In conclusion, methods used to improve psychological healthcare in both sectors may be transferable across sectors and should be considered for to the improvement of psychological health at large

Global IT and IT-enabled services

Several topics that were covered during the IEEE Symposium on Advanced Management of Information for Globalized Enterprises (AMIGE) held in September 2008, in Tianjin, China, are presented. The symposium focused on the globalized information management, a multidisciplinary covering such fields as computer science, industrial engineering, information systems, management science and engineering, and operations management. The research in global IT and IT-enabled services covers a wide spectrum of topics that include business processes and management in a global setting, such as global workflow technologies and applications, global information system integration and interaction, and global knowledge management. One of the topics focused on the importance of business process modeling technologies and security requirements in order to derive a trust federation from formally described business process models.published_or_final_versionSpringer Open Choice, 21 Feb 201

DEPENDENCY DIRECTED BACKTRACKING IN GENERALIZED SATISFICING ASSIGNMENT PROBLEMS

Many authors have described search techniques for the satisficing assignment problem: the problem of finding an interpretation for a set of discrete variables that satisfies a given set of constraints. In this paper we present a formal specification of dependency directed backtracking as applied to this problem. We also generalize the satisficing assignment problem to include limited resource constraints that arise in operations research and industrial engineering. We discuss several new search heuristics that can be applied to this generalized problem, and give some empirical results on the performance of these heuristics.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

IMPROVING THE METHOD OF OPEN-PIT LIGNITE DEPOSITS DEVELOPMENT IN UKRAINE

Subject of the research is open-pit mining concerning a full- field industrial development of a number of lignite deposits; feasibility study has been performed for them as for the efficient environmental friendly processing of coal and associated minerals. Objective of the research is to develop both methodology and conceptual approaches to high-productive, economically viable, and environmental friendly methods for open-pit lignite mining in the context of suprasalt depressive basins. Task of the research is to analyze the current state of lignite mining in Ukraine; to characterize a new genetic Ukrainian coal type from geological and industrial viewpoint; to substantiate parameters of lignite open-pit mining on the basis of Novo-Dmytrivka mining and industrial district; to expand the capacities of lignite mining on the basis of Novo-Dmytrivka, Bantysh, Stepkivka, and Bereka deposits; to substantiate the integrated use of diverse rock masses in the context of the national economy; to use lignite in terms of its power; to produce montan wax; to apply sodium humite in the context of agriculture; to use overburden rocks for the construction of bordering dams of powerful water storages; and to develop recommendations concerning the design of Novo-Dmytrivka mining and industrial system with the integrated development of lignite and associated minerals. Methods of the research are: analytical estimation of resources of lignite deposits; geological and engineering-technical analysis; and integrated and feasibility studies of indices of mining and opening operations. Optimization of the process solutions relies upon the analysis of changes in rock mass coefficient use within the open-pit area in the context of complete land reclamation of the disturbed land and the development of new productive land instead of the littered territories. The updated research method is to determine the basic technological parameters of equipment taking into consideration significant water inflow in terms of working areas as well as the inflows effect on the output of the lignite open pit depending upon changes in the depth of mine workings. The carried out research helped study more thoroughly the geological and engineering-technical features of lignite deposits in Ukraine. Their geological structures, coal-bearing capacity and the coal grades, total reserves, and their commercial significance have been determined. Parameters of benches and working sites have been substantiated. The parameters make it possible to decrease the current volume of overburden rock mining and to transfer their maximum values to the final stage of the open pit operation. Rational systems of mining and transportation equipment for the development of the open-pit field in terms of criteria of capacity, efficiency, and power consumption have been substantiated involving different traffic flows of rock mass movement in open pits and at the surface. There were issued recommendations to design the development of Novo-Dmytrivka lignite deposit. Relying upon the analyzed deposits of north-west Donbas, it is expedient to develop the unified coal-mining complex for the processing of lignite and associated minerals to be used by plants of building materials and structures as well as chemical and metallurgical plants as the basic raw material. There has been substantiated a possibility of commercial development of a number of lignite deposits in Ukraine to develop mining and preproduction complex with coal output at the level of 9-10 min t/y and 23-24 min t/y of coaly mass as well as their processing by thermal power station which capacity is 1800-2400 MW; a plant to produce 15 thousand tons of montan wax a year; briquetting factory which capacity is 2 min t/y; and a concrete product plant to manufacture building structures with a capacity of 1 min of m2/y

AI and OR in management of operations: history and trends

The last decade has seen a considerable growth in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for operations management with the aim of finding solutions to problems that are increasing in complexity and scale. This paper begins by setting the context for the survey through a historical perspective of OR and AI. An extensive survey of applications of AI techniques for operations management, covering a total of over 1200 papers published from 1995 to 2004 is then presented. The survey utilizes Elsevier's ScienceDirect database as a source. Hence, the survey may not cover all the relevant journals but includes a sufficiently wide range of publications to make it representative of the research in the field. The papers are categorized into four areas of operations management: (a) design, (b) scheduling, (c) process planning and control and (d) quality, maintenance and fault diagnosis. Each of the four areas is categorized in terms of the AI techniques used: genetic algorithms, case-based reasoning, knowledge-based systems, fuzzy logic and hybrid techniques. The trends over the last decade are identified, discussed with respect to expected trends and directions for future work suggested

Dealing with abnormalities and deviations to enhance resilience in engineering Assets: A critical review from human factors and decision-making perspectives under complex operational contexts

With the growing scale of industrial demands, complexities, and uncertainties around asset engineering and operations due to advanced technology utilization, digitalization, sustainability, new operating models, etc., the sensitive role of abnormalities and deviations towards human safety, systems security, reliability and resilience of engineering assets and industrial systems are becoming even more significant for modern industrial sectors as well as societies in general. In these contexts, the abilities of operators to capture and sense-make early signals that emerge from engineering assets and systems need more attention since it enables them to enhance critical situation awareness (SA) during complex operations. This calls for proactive solutions that can integrate core data with operator knowledge using suitable logical approaches, particularly in a period where there is growing recognition that asset data can provide strong support for engineering and operational decisions in demanding contexts. Based on an ongoing research project, this paper sheds light on abnormalities and deviations; two specific attributes that should be better understood. The purpose is to explore how to capitalize them at very early sense-making stages to enhance situation awareness and thus resilience of dynamic and complex engineering assets and systems. Through a critical review of the current state of knowledge, together with industrial observations, this paper studies these core concepts in detail with due attention to the critical need of so-called priory contextual knowledge and hybrid contextual decision solutions. This R&D work explores proactive possibilities to mitigate inherent potentials for unwanted events and incidents to enhance resilience in the era of digital twins and cyber-physical systems, where complex technologies and operational demands generate new conditions for asset performance.publishedVersio

In loco intellegentia: Human factors for the future European train driver

The European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) represents a step change in technology for rail operations in Europe. It comprises track-to-train communications and intelligent on-board systems providing an unprecedented degree of support to the train driver. ERTMS is designed to improve safety, capacity and performance, as well as facilitating interoperability across the European rail network. In many ways, particularly from the human factors perspective, ERTMS has parallels with automation concepts in the aviation and automotive industries. Lessons learned from both these industries are that such a technology raises a number of human factors issues associated with train driving and operations. The interaction amongst intelligent agents throughout the system must be effectively coordinated to ensure that the strategic benefits of ERTMS are realised. This paper discusses the psychology behind some of these key issues, such as Mental Workload (MWL), interface design, user information requirements, transitions and migration and communications. Relevant experience in aviation and vehicle automation is drawn upon to give an overview of the human factors challenges facing the UK rail industry in implementing ERTMS technology. By anticipating and defining these challenges before the technology is implemented, it is hoped that a proactive and structured programme of research can be planned to meet them

Facility layout problem: Bibliometric and benchmarking analysis

Facility layout problem is related to the location of departments in a facility area, with the aim of determining the most effective configuration. Researches based on different approaches have been published in the last six decades and, to prove the effectiveness of the results obtained, several instances have been developed. This paper presents a general overview on the extant literature on facility layout problems in order to identify the main research trends and propose future research questions. Firstly, in order to give the reader an overview of the literature, a bibliometric analysis is presented. Then, a clusterization of the papers referred to the main instances reported in literature was carried out in order to create a database that can be a useful tool in the benchmarking procedure for researchers that would approach this kind of problems