Management: A continuing bibliography with indexes

This biliography lists 919 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in 1981

Management: A continuing bibliography with indexes, March 1983

This bibliography lists 960 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in 1982

Risk Analysis of Emergency Supply Chains

Unknowns and uncertainties are integral to any disaster relief operation. Activities of the emergency supply chain are usually performed in highly volatile environments and are prone to risks. Due to the complexity of the operating relief environment, relief organizations can only anticipate some supply chain disruptions. As such, they must take a comprehensive and proactive approach to uncertainties to manage multiple unexpected events. Therefore, this research aims to develop a comprehensive framework for risk management in emergency supply chains. This study adopts a comprehensive and rigorous procedure to explore the risk factors and mitigation strategies for emergency supply chains. The research design is divided into three phases; first, the risk factors and mitigation strategies are collected through an extensive literature review; next, the risk factors and risk mitigation strategies are verified with experts through high-level surveys and semi-structured interviews. Finally, based on the weight of risk factors estimated using the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, risk factors mitigation strategies to overcome the risk factors are prioritized using the fuzzy technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution that considers uncertainty and impreciseness rather than a crisp value. This study found and verified 28 emergency supply chain risk factors, which are categorised into two main categories: internal and external risks; four sub-categories: demand, supply, infrastructural, and environmental risks; and 11 risk types: forecast, inventory, procurement, supplier, quality, transportation, warehousing, systems, disruption, social, and political risks. War and terrorism, the impact of follow-up disasters, poor relief supplies, and sanctions and constraints that hinder stakeholder cooperation and coordination are the most significant risks. Finally, eight risk factor mitigation strategies; strategic stock, prepositioning of resources, collaboration and coordination, flexible transportation, flexible supply bases, logistics outsourcing, flexible supply contracts, and risk awareness/knowledge management were proposed and prioritised to overcome the risk factors so decision-makers can focus on these mitigation strategies. This study provides a more efficient, effective, robust, and systematic way to overcome risk factors and improve the effectiveness of emergency supply chains in disaster relief operations. This study is the first to objectively identify, categorise, and analyse emergency supply chains’ risk nature and frequency. Practitioners and policymakers can use the research findings to spot significant risk factors and appropriate mitigation strategies to reduce their effects. The risk profile will be a new database of risk factors affecting the emergency supply chain and allow stakeholders to immediately identify the disrupted emergency supply chain component

Advanced risk management in offshore terminals and marine ports

This research aims to propose a Risk Management (RM) framework and develop a generic risk-based model for dealing with potential hazards and risk factors associated with offshore terminals' and marine ports' operations and management. Hazard identification was conducted through an appropriate literature review of major risk factors of these logistic infrastructures. As a result in the first phase of this research a Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchal Process (FAHP) method was used for determining the relative weights of the risk factors identified via the literature review. This has led to the development of a generic risk -based model which can help related industrial professionals and risk managers assess the risk factors and develop appropriate strategies to take preventive/corrective actions for mitigation purposes, with a view of maintaining efficient offshore terminals' and marine ports' operations and management. In the second phase of the research the developed risk-based model incorporating Fuzzy Set Theory (FST), an Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach and the IDS software were used to evaluate the risk levels of different ports in real situations using a case study. The IDS software based on an ER approach was used to aggregate the previously determined relative weights of the risk factors with the new evaluation results of risk levels for the real ports. The third phase of the research made use of the Cause and Consequence Analysis (CCA) including the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) and Event Tree Analysis (ETA) under a fuzzy environment, to analyse in detail the most significant risk factors determined from the first phase of the research, using appropriate case-studies. In the fourth phase of the research an individual RM strategy was tailored and implemented on the most significant risk factor identified previously. In the last phase of the research and in order to complete the RM cycle, the best mitigation strategies were introduced and evaluated in the form of ideal solutions for mitigating the identified risk factors. All methods used in this research have quantitative and qualitative nature. Expert judgements carried out for gathering the required information accounted for the majority of data collected. The proposed RM framework can be a useful method for managers and auditors when conducting their RM programmes in the offshore and marine industries. The novelty of this research can help the Quality, Health, Safety, Environment and Security (QHSES) managers, insurers and risk managers in the offshore and marine industries investigate the potential hazards more appropriately if there is uncertainty of data sources. In this research with considering strategic management approaches to RM development the proposed RM framework and risk based model contribute to knowledge by developing and evaluating an effective methodology for future use of the RM professionals

Multi-attribute tradespace exploration for survivability

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-249).Survivability is the ability of a system to minimize the impact of a finite-duration disturbance on value delivery (i.e., stakeholder benefit at cost), achieved through (1) the reduction of the likelihood or magnitude of a disturbance, (2) the satisfaction of a minimally acceptable level of value delivery during and after a disturbance, and/or (3) a timely recovery. Traditionally specified as a requirement in military systems, survivability is an increasingly important consideration for all engineering systems given the proliferation of natural and artificial threats. Although survivability is an emergent system property that arises from interactions between a system and its environment, conventional approaches to survivability engineering are reductionist in nature. Furthermore, current methods neither accommodate dynamic threat environments nor facilitate stakeholder communication for conducting trade-offs among system lifecycle cost, mission utility, and operational survivability. Multi-Attribute Tradespace Exploration (MATE) for Survivability is introduced as a system analysis methodology to improve the generation and evaluation of survivable alternatives during conceptual design. MATE for Survivability applies decision theory to the parametric modeling of thousands of design alternatives across representative distributions of disturbance environments. To improve the generation of survivable alternatives, seventeen empirically-validated survivability design principles are introduced. The general set of design principles allows the consideration of structural and behavioral strategies for mitigating the impact of disturbances over the lifecycle of a given encounter.(cont.) To improve the evaluation of survivability, value-based metrics are introduced for the assessment of survivability as a dynamic, continuous, and path-dependent system property. Two of these metrics, time-weighted average utility loss and threshold availability, are used to evaluate survivability based on the relationship between stochastic utility trajectories of system state and stakeholder expectations across nominal and perturbed environments. Finally, the survivability "tear(drop)" tradespace is introduced to enable the identification of inherently survivable architectures that efficiently balance performance metrics of cost, utility, and survivability. The internal validity and prescriptive value of the design principles, metrics, and tradespaces comprising MATE for Survivability are established through applications to the designs of an orbital transfer vehicle and a satellite radar system.by Matthew G. Richards.Ph.D

Management: A bibliography for NASA managers

This bibliography lists 731 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System in 1990. Items are selected and grouped according to their usefulness to the manager as manager. Citations are grouped into ten subject categories: human factors and personnel issues; management theory and techniques; industrial management and manufacturing; robotics and expert systems; computers and information management; research and development; economics, costs and markets; logistics and operations management; reliability and quality control; and legality, legislation, and policy