Client:
Team: Ava Damri, Calvin Smellage, Al Zinkand
Faculty advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2009
Documents: Final report (Word), final presentation (PPT)
Our team examines the evacuation of six cities in the Gulf Freeway area stretching from Galveston in the south, to League City in the north. Any model created to solve the problem of evacuating a large number of people in a short time would need to account for real world complexities, such as multiple on-ramps, carrying capacities of highways, and the time required to close on-ramps in an emergency situation. Read more…
Client: North Texas Food Bank
Team: Allison Griffin, Pragya Lohani, Megan Walker
Faculty advisor: Year: 2009
Documents: Report (Final report) Presentation (PPT)
The North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) is a non-profit hunger relief organization that distributes donated, purchased, and prepared foods through a network of feeding programs in 13 North Texas counties. From these counties nearly 700,000 individuals live below the federal poverty level. The North Texas Food Bank’s mission is to passionately pursue a hunger-free community; more specifically their “Close-the-Gap” initiative is to make 50 million meals available annually.1 This project seeks to solve one problem at the food bank that will hopefully help the organization achieve this goal more efficiently and quickly. Read more…
Client: US Treasury-Federal Reserve Bank
Team: Morgan Brunz, Brittany McCluskey
Faculty advisor: Dr. Siems, Barr
Documents: Final report (Word), final presentation (PPT)
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has a call center that responds to customer requests to change from receiving checks in the mail to direct deposit. The center’s call volume varies throughout the month and day. They have hired 23 permanent employees, and on a daily basis, they hire a different amount of temporary employees. Our goal is to determine the number of temporary employees they should hire each day and those employees’ schedules. We seek to minimize cost and maximize customer service. Read more…
Client: Dallas Police Department
Team: Kyle E. Kidd, Eric B. Lakey, S. Tyler Nau
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1995
Documents: Final report
The purpose of this study is to analyze historical data on the Dallas Police Department’s First Offender Programs in order to determine the effectiveness of the programs, and to develop a model to predict the probability of the program being successful for an offender. Using graphing techniques, statistical techniques and operations research techniques the sample was analyzed to reach conclusions about the efficiency of the two programs. Read more…
Client: Towers Perrin, TeePee Convenience Stores
Team: Eric Mentz, Greg Meurer
Faculty: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1995
Documents: Final report
Tee Pee is a United-States-based convenience store chain (renamed for confidentiality reasons) consisting of approximately 4000 stores. Tee Pee is in the process of developing a system for their individual store managers that would help them to adequately staff their stores based on customer flow and satisfaction.
The consultants at Towers Perrin formulated a manual model, which was developed into the Store Staffing Tool. We saw an opportunity to automate this model and develop an algorithm that would automatically assign employees to certain hours of the week, based on availability and competency. The resulting output of this algorithm not only shows the work schedule for the week; it also shows the staffing levels required, the total number of labor hours needed during the week, the overall labor cost of running that store for one week, and it highlights which employees are not being used adequately. Read more…
Client: MCI Communications Corp.
Team: Mona Abou-Sayed, Charlene Edwards, Scott Singleton
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1995
Documents: Final report
This project involved developing an optimized telecommunications-network design for a client of MCI Communications Corp. Requirements included determining the optimum number of nodes, their placement, and Digital Signal 3 (DS-3) lines need ed to connect all the cities and meet their demands while providing restoration capacity in the case of system component failures.
Several heuristics were used to find the initial placement of nodes and begin a cost minimization analysis. A mixed-integer programming model was developed and solved with Cplex, followed by manual adjustments to the node location assignments and network links. The optimal cost was found to be: $4,461,868, which could be improved with further development.
Client: Baylor University Medical Center
Team: Amy Haller, Chris Johnson, Christian Puryear, Adam Saucedo
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1996
Documents: Final report
Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) is a downtown-Dallas-based hospital with many satellite locations around the metroplex. In northeast Tarrant county, BIJMC acquired a small hospital in Grapevine. The Grapevine Hospital is a licensed 104-bed facility offering both in- and out-patient services. The Emergency Department (ED) at Baylor Grapevine is a six-bed unit catering primarily to urgent patients rather than trauma patients. Currently, this department is undergoing major changes in staffing and physical size. A new facility is under construction and will be completed in September 1996.
The administrators of the Grapevine Hospital recognized a potential problem and requested a tool to accurately simulate the work done in the ED. The purpose of this project is two-fold: 1) to determine the impact of staffing and/or facility changes on the efficiency of the ED, and 2) to gain a better understanding of the patient flow through the ED in order to reduce the occurrence of bottlenecks in the new facility. Consistently, the ED sees its largest number of patients on the weekend. On average, the ED services 110 patients each weekend.
Client: Baylor Heart Hospital
Team: Ashley Backwith, Steven Chapman, Ikechukwu Irozura, Kelly Nelson, Josh Urquhart
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1998
Documents: Final report
Baylor University Medical Center, a five-hospital complex located just north of downtown Dallas, is one of the leading tertiary care teaching and referral centers in Texas and the Southwest. Our project focused on the planned heart hospital, which is to be built across Worth Street from the main hospital tower. This eight-story facility would be financed and run jointly by Baylor and three major cardiac physician groups. The third floor of the hospital would house the cathology and electrophysiology labs that provide diagnostic tests and host several non-emergency procedures.
A team consisting of Baylor employees and the Healthcare Environmental Design architectural firm has been working on the floor plan and design of this facility. Since the project involves multi-million dollar expenditures from both the physicians and the hospital, and tasks that are vital to the welfare of cardiology patients will be performed there, the two sponsors want to insure the facility can handle the expected patient flow in the new heart hospital. As a result, our team has been asked to collect data, run a simulation for the new facility, and analyze the results. Read more…
Client: Juliette Fowler Homes
Team: Sonia Amin
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 1997
Documents:
Juliette Fowler Homes is a non-profit organization that operates the Pearl Nordan Care Center, an intermediate nursing care facility for senior residents with a capacity of 120 beds. An activities program is scheduled for residents on a weekly basis. Activities at nursing homes are important because they build self-confidence and keep residents alert. A good activities program will, therefore, ultimately promote a sense of well- being for the elderly. In designing a program, social services directors must also consider the significance of state regulations.
The first main research procedure was gathering information on a sample of residents from different functioning levels. Independent ratings were calculated in five need areas according to individual preferences (surveys), attendance histories, and expert opinions: Next, an optimization model was designed to create an activity schedule that maximizes the needs met under a given set of conditions. The results of the resident sample analysis reveal some discrepancies among expert views, resident views, and the actual appeal of activities. The mathematical model reports show which needs are barely met, under-met, and well- met in typical activities programs.
Client: Raytheon Corp.
Team: Ellen Cieszkiewicz, Chuck Haley, Heather Schofield
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr Year: 2008
Documents: Final report, final presentation
Raytheon supplies its customers, mainly the government, with programs they utilize for important projects. It is Raytheon’s job to not only purchase these programs but also keep them regularly updated. Some of the software vendors that Raytheon purchases licenses from include but are not limited to Sun Microsystems, Adobe and Oracle. Needed is a means of optimizing the licensing plan, which might save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Read more…