Decision-focussed resource modelling for design decision support

Resource management including resource allocation, levelling, configuration and monitoring has been recognised as critical to design decision making. It has received increasing research interests in recent years. Different definitions, models and systems have been developed and published in literature. One common issue with existing research is that the resource modelling has focussed on the information view of resources. A few acknowledged the importance of resource capability to design management, but none has addressed the evaluation analysis of resource fitness to effectively support design decisions. This paper proposes a decision-focused resource model framework that addresses the combination of resource evaluation with resource information from multiple perspectives. A resource management system constructed on the resource model framework can provide functions for design engineers to efficiently search and retrieve the best fit resources (based on the evaluation results) to meet decision requirements. Thus, the system has the potential to provide improved decision making performance compared with existing resource management systems

Resource Modelling: The Missing Piece of the HTA Jigsaw?

Within health technology assessment (HTA), cost-effectiveness analysis and budget impact analyses have been broadly accepted as important components of decision making. However, whilst they address efficiency and affordability, the issue of implementation and feasibility has been largely ignored. HTA commonly takes place within a deliberative framework that captures issues of implementation and feasibility in a qualitative manner. We argue that only through a formal quantitative assessment of resource constraints can these issues be fully addressed. This paper argues the need for resource modelling to be considered explicitly in HTA. First, economic evaluation and budget impact models are described along with their limitations in evaluating feasibility. Next, resource modelling is defined and its usefulness is described along with examples of resource modelling from the literature. Then, the important issues that need to be considered when undertaking resource modelling are described before setting out recommendations for the use of resource modelling in HTA

An approach to resource modelling in support of the life cycle engineering of enterprise systems

Enterprise modelling can facilitate the design, analysis, control and construction of contemporary enterprises which can compete in world-wide Product markets. This research involves a systematic study of enterprise modelling with a particular focus on resource modelling in support of the life cycle engineering of enterprise systems. This led to the specification and design of a framework for resource modelling. This framework was conceived to: classify resource types; identify the different functions that resource modelling can support, with respect to different life phases of enterprise systems; clarify the relationship between resource models and other modelling perspectives provide mechanisms which link resource models and other types of models; identify guidelines for the capture of information - on resources, leading to the establishment of a set of resource reference models. The author also designed and implemented a resource modelling tool which conforms to the principles laid down by the framework. This tool realises important aspects of the resource modeffing concepts so defined. Furthermore, two case studies have been carried out. One models a metal cutting environment, and the other is based on an electronics industry problem area. In this way, the feasibility of concepts embodied in the framework and the design of the resource modelling tool has been tested and evaluated. Following a literature survey and preliminary investigation, the CIMOSA enterprise modelling and integration methodology was adopted and extended within this research. Here the resource modelling tool was built by extending SEWOSA (System Engineering Workbench for Open System Architecture) and utilising the CIMBIOSYS (CINI-Building Integrated Open SYStems) integrating infrastructure. The main contributions of the research are that: a framework for resource modelling has been established; means and mechanisms have been proposed, implemented and tested which link and coordinate different modelling perspectives into an unified enterprise model; the mechanisms and resource models generated by this research support each Pfe phase of systems engineering projects and demonstrate benefits by increasing the degree to which the derivation process among models is automated

Resource modelling in a circular economy context

The concept of the circular economy (CE) is increasingly suggested as a means of reducing environmental impacts and resource use of production and consumption through CE strategies like reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling. However, an increase in “circularity” does not guarantee an improvement in the use of resources over the lifecycle of a product. Transitions towards a more circular economy therefore need to be supported by quantitative assessments that can guide companies and policymakers in choosing appropriate strategies to implement. However, different methods vary in terms of their scope and focus, and therefore convey different types of information about the system investigated. This thesis aims to contribute towards improved knowledge about a number of methods that can evaluate how CE strategies affect resource use, specifically focusing on CE indicators and dynamic material flow analysis (MFA). The work presented builds on two studies. Article I is a review and mapping of the flows and processes that CE indicators capture in the product lifecycle. The indicators are also applied to a wide number of cases to determine how the indicators differ and to identify their potential limitations. In article II a dynamic MFA model is developed and applied to a multiple reuse and recycling case of lithium-ion batteries. The study examines how this circular solution could affect raw material and battery flows over time. Finally, the two studies are synthesised into a method comparison of CE indicators and dynamic MFA. The comparison focuses on similarities and differences between the methods with regards to the object of study, how temporal aspects are represented, system boundaries, and the type of results provided. While CE indicators provide information on variations of resource use over the product lifecycle, dynamic MFA informs on how CE strategies can affect stocks and flows of products and materials over time. Amongst other things, the results emphasise the importance of capturing the temporal dynamics of material flows when evaluating CE strategies, e.g. how the availability of secondary resources could change over time or assessing how a transition towards a more circular economy can play out over time

Operating theatre modelling: integrating social measures

Hospital resource modelling literature is primarily focussed on productivity and efficiency measures. In this paper, our focus is on the alignment of the most valuable revenue factor, the operating room (OR) with the most valuable cost factor, the staff. When aligning these economic and social decisions, respectively, into one sustainable model, simulation results justify the integration of these factors. This research shows that integrating staff decisions and OR decisions results in better solutions for both entities. A discrete event simulation approach is used as a performance test to evaluate an integrated and an iterative model. Experimental analysis show how our integrated approach can benefit the alignment of the planning of the human resources as well as the planning of the capacity of the OR based on both economic related metrics (lead time, overtime, number of patients rejected) and social related metrics (personnel preferences, aversions, roster quality)

A robust digital image watermarking using repetition codes against common attacks

Digital watermarking is hiding the information inside a digital media to protect for such documents against malicious intentions to change such documents or even claim the rights of such documents. Currently the capability of repetition codes on various attacks in not sufficiently studied. In this project, a robust frequency domain watermarking scheme has been implemented using Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT). The idea of this scheme is to embed an encoded watermark using repetition code (3, 1) inside the cover image pixels based on Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) embedding technique. The proposed methods have undergone several simulation attacks tests in order to check up and compare their robustness against various attacks, like salt and pepper, speckle, compress, Gaussian, image contrast, resizing and cropping attack. The robustness of the watermarking scheme has been calculated using Peak Signal-To-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Normalized Correlations (NC). In our experiments, the results show that the robustness of a watermark with repetition codes is much better than without repetition code

Harmonised Principles for Public Participation in Quality Assurance of Integrated Water Resources Modelling

The main purpose of public participation in integrated water resources modelling is to improve decision-making by ensuring that decisions are soundly based on shared knowledge, experience and scientific evidence. The present paper describes stakeholder involvement in the modelling process. The point of departure is the guidelines for quality assurance for `scientific` water resources modelling developed under the EU research project HarmoniQuA, which has developed a computer based Modelling Support Tool (MoST) to provide a user-friendly guidance and a quality assurance framework that aim for enhancing the credibility of river basin modelling. MoST prescribes interaction, which is a form of participation above consultation but below engagement of stakeholders and the public in the early phases of the modelling cycle and under review tasks throughout the process. MoST is a flexible tool which supports different types of users and facilitates interaction between modeller, manager and stakeholders. The perspective of using MoST for engagement of stakeholders e.g. higher level participation throughout the modelling process as part of integrated water resource management is evaluate

Resource Modelling for the QC Laboratory at XYZ Pharmaceuticals in Southern Africa

Quality control (QC) laboratories are critical components in drug manufacturing and running them efficiently contributes to better, consistent supply of cost-effective quality products, while also and preventing deaths due to untimely delivery or unavailability of medicines. Having a resource modelling tool to estimate resources needed to handle a particular demand in a given system is essential for efficient running of QC laboratory. This study was done to establish such a model at XYZ Pharmaceuticals. The list of all products manufactured by XYZ Pharmaceuticals Southern Africa was reviewed; and product families for all products were identified. Analysts’ hands on time (HOT) to process one sample of each of the product families was estimated. The number of analysts required to support the workload at XYZ Pharmaceuticals was calculated using the HOTs for the different product families and the Maslaton’s Calculation Model. A baseline resource model was established

A Real-world Case Study of Process and Data Driven Predictive Analytics for Manufacturing Workflows

We present a novel application of business process modelling and simulation of manufacturing workflows. Using formal methods, we produce correct-by-construction executable models that can be simulated in an interleaved way. The simulation draws advanced analytics from live IoT monitoring as well as an ERP system to provide predictive business intelligence. We describe our process and resource modelling efforts in the context of a collaborative project with two manufacturing partners. We evaluate our results based on the improvement of the scheduling accuracy for real production flows