Institute for Systems Research Technical Reports
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/4376
This archive contains a collection of reports generated by the faculty and students of the Institute for Systems Research (ISR), a permanent, interdisciplinary research unit in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. ISR-based projects are conducted through partnerships with industry and government, bringing together faculty and students from multiple academic departments and colleges across the university.
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Item Integrated Product and Process Design Environment Tool for Manufacturing T/R Modules(1997) Karne, Ramesh K.; Lai, Hsing-Tsu; Dandekar, Swati V.; Baras, John S.; Ball, Michael O.; Bashyam, Sridhar; Trichur, Vinai S.; Karir, Manish; Kebede, Abraham; Williams, Jim; ISR; CSHCNWe present a decision making assistant tool for integrated product and process design environment for manufacturing applications. Specifically, we target microwave modules which use Electro-mechanical components and require optimal solutions to reduce cost, improve quality, and gain leverage in time to market the product. This tool will assist the product and process designer to improve their productivity and also enable to cooperate and coordinate their designs through a common design interface. We consider a multiobjective optimization model that determines components and processes for a given conceptual designs for microwave modules. This model outputs a set of solutions that are Pareto optimal with respect to cost, quality, and other metrics. In addition, we identify system integration issues for manufacturing applications, and propose an architecture which will serve as a building block to our continuing research in virtual manufacturing applications.Item Integrating Tradeoff Analysis and Plan-Based Evaluation of Designs for Microwave Modules(1996) Trichur, Vinai S.; Ball, Michael O.; Baras, John S.; Hebbar, Kiran; Minis, Ioannis; Nau, Dana S.; Smith, Stephen J.J.; ISRPreviously, we have described two systems, EDAPS and EXTRA, which support design and process planning for the manufacture of microwave modules, complex devices with both electrical and mechanical attributes. EDAPS integrates electrical design, mechanical design, and process planning for both mechanical and electrical domains. EXTRA accesses various component and process databases to help the user define design and process options. It then supports the user in choosing among these options with an optimization bases tradeoff analysis module.In this paper, we describe our current work towards the integration and enhancement of the capabilities of EDAPS and EXTRA. We integrate EXTRA's functionality with the initial design step of EDAPS. in the resultant system, the user, supported by an enhanced tradeoff analysis capability, can select and describe a promising preliminary design and process plan based on the analysis of a variety of alternatives from both an electrical and mechanical perspective. This preliminary design is then subjected top further analysis and refinement using existing EDAPS capabilities. In addition to the integration of these two systems, specific new functions have been developed, including tradeoff analysis over a much broader set of criteria, and the ability of the tradeoff module to query the process planner to determine costs of individual options.
Item Design for Manufacture by Multi-Enterprise Partnerships(1994) Nau, D.; Ball, Michael O.; Gupta, Sonjai K.; Minis, Ioannis; Zhang, G.; ISRRecent world-wide political and financial events have intensified the need to renew the competitiveness of the US manufacturing industry. The means for enabling competitiveness include fast response to the market needs for new designs and re-designs, and the ability to manufacture products at the right quality and at competitive costs. To pursue market and technology opportunities effectively, US commercial and defense industries will be relying increasingly on multi-enterprise partnerships [12]. Vertical partnering combines the strengths of multiple firms in product design, manufacture, after sales support and customer service, in order to launch superior products in the global market.To support effective partnering, new approaches will be needed for integrating the activities of design, planning, and production. Furthermore, it is important to address both the fundamental modeling of design, process planning, and production planning in ways that account for the capabilities of potential manufacturing partners, and the development of optimization procedures to address the underlying decision problems. This paper elaborates on these issues and discusses approaches for addressing them.
Item Building Decision Support Systems That Use Operations Research Models as Database Applications(1992) Ball, Michael O.; Datta, Anindya; Dahl, Roy; ISRIn this paper we address the problem of building decision support systems that make use of multiple operations research models as database application. The motivation for developing applications in a database environment is that, by doing so, the development effort can be substantially reduced, while, at the same time, the application inherits valuable database features. the paper contains two main contributions. First, we present a set of modeling constructs that should aid developers in structuring such applications and in carrying out the development process. Included in this material is a fairly comprehensive model for handling versions. Second, we discuss certain design alternatives and evaluate performance tradeoffs associated with hem. In addition, to evaluating the differences among competing database designs, we provide evidence that properly designed database applications, show little performance degradation over file based applications.Item MANDATE: MAnaging Networks using DAtabase TEchnology(1992) Haritsa, Jayant R.; Ball, Michael O.; Roussopoulos, N.; Datta, Anindya; ISRIn a recent opinion poll of telecommunications executives, enterprise network management was identified to be the top technological issue of the future. At present, however, there do not exist any viable solutions to this critical problem. Therefore, considerable research efforts are being focused on the development of effective network management tools. A management information database is the heart of a network management system - it provides the interface between all functions of the network management system, and therefore has to provide sophisticated functionality allied with high performance. In this paper, we describe MANDATE (MAnaging Networks using DAtabase TEchnology), a database system that is designed to effectively support the management of large networks of the future. MANDATE uses special characteristics of network management data and transactions, together with recent advances in database technology, to efficiently derive its functionality.