Call Center Scheduling: Federal Reserve Bank

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

09fedschedulingClient: 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. Continue reading →

Posted in Dallas-Ft. Worth Area, Final report, Finance, Optimization, Presentation, Scheduling | Leave a comment

Assessing the Effectiveness of the Dallas Police Dept.’s First Offender Programs

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

policebadge1Client: 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. Continue reading →

Posted in Dallas-Ft. Worth Area, Data envelopment analysis (DEA), Final report, Government, Operations, Statistical Methods | Leave a comment

Convenience Store Staff Scheduling

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

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. Continue reading →

Posted in Dallas-Ft. Worth Area, Final report, Integer programming, Retail, Scheduling, Simulation, United States | Leave a comment

MCI Private Network Model Design: Digital DS-3 Cross Connects

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

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.

Posted in Final report, Telecommunications, United States | Leave a comment

Improving Emergency Room Effectiveness via Process Simulation

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

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.

Posted in Dallas-Ft. Worth Area, Final report, Healthcare, Simulation | Leave a comment

NASA Production Center Process Improvements

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

Client: National Aeronautics and Space  Administration
Team:  Chris Genda, Loan Ngoyen, Valerie Vlahos, John Williams
Faculty advisor: Dr. Richard Barr     Year: 1997
Documents:    Final presentation

The present operations procedures used by the NASA Manufacturing Di­vision has room for improvement in the following areas: information accuracy within the INFISY system and tracking machine downtime, departmental com­munication, job scheduling at each work center, and estimating job cost and completion time. Due to the combined errors and problems mentioned within the Division, several effects are obvious.

The inaccurate use of the INFISY system has led to an incomplete historical data set, which has greatly affected the forecasting of completion times of jobs. This is apparent in the very large negative variances (actual-estimated time). The high percentages of those not logged out on INFISY have led to part mislocation. Job scheduling is diffi­cult without tracking intermediate completion dates. Not monitoring machine down time leads to possible higher repair costs than sometimes purchasing a new machine. Under the current use and application of the INFISY software, job scheduling and forecasting are not optimized as needed. Addressing these issues gradually will improve the production operation. Continue reading →

Posted in Forecasting, Houston, Presentation, Scheduling, Statistical Methods | Leave a comment

Baylor Cardiac Patient Flow Simulation

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

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. Continue reading →

Posted in Final report, Healthcare, Simulation | Leave a comment

Juliette Fowler Homes

Posted on June 5, 2009 by anny

Client: Juliette Fowler Homeshands
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.

Posted in Healthcare, Integer programming, Optimization, United States | Leave a comment

Raytheon Software Procurement Model

Posted on May 23, 2009 by admin

raytheonClient: 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. Continue reading →

Posted in Defense, Final report, Inventory management, Optimization, Presentation, Texas | Comments Off on Raytheon Software Procurement Model

Post-Game Campus Evacuation Simulation

Posted on May 12, 2009 by admin

smuparking08Client: SMU Parking Department
Team: Conner Huckaby, Katelyn Pratt, Sarah Rives
Faculty: Prof. Richard Barr      Year: 2007
Documents: final report, final presentation

SMU will finish the construction of the Binkley parking garage in the summer of 2008.  This new facility will open 850 new parking spaces on campus.  However, the Binkley garage opening will cause new traffic troubles on campus because this parking structure is located kiddy-corner to Moody Garage, which has 830 parking spaces.
In the 2008 fall football season, SMU could see full parking facilities due to the combination of student, faculty, and visitor parking.  Currently, SMU expects a car at the top of Moody garage to take 45 minutes to exit campus.  But this 45 minute benchmark was calculated without taking into consideration the new Binkley garage.  If both garages are full, how will traffic exit campus? Furthermore, how fast can both garages empty out? Is there a way to route traffic through campus in order for individual cars to exit campus quickly and with as little blockage and waiting time as possible? Continue reading →

Posted in Campus, Education, Simulation, Traffic management | Comments Off on Post-Game Campus Evacuation Simulation