http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/7919 Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:29:54 GMT 2013-06-19T18:29:54Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78490 Operational efficiency through resource planning optimization and work process improvement Balwani, Siddharth (Siddharth Vashdev) This thesis covers work done at National Grid to improve resource planning and the execution of pipeline construction and maintenance work carried out at the yards. Resource Planning, the art of picking the right jobs for the right days and assigning the right crews to them while meeting constraints of regulation, customer service, and safety at the minimum cost is an extremely difficult problem. This is exacerbated by the fact that there needs to be enough slack in the system to deal with one or more pipeline leaks that may be called in. At the execution stage, when the jobs are carried out by crews, the lack of standardization in work processes dealing with granting and approval of overtime, productivity tracking, data collection, and imperfect alignment of incentives make it difficult to get the best work from the crews. These issues lead to high levels of overtime at yards, which are the major source of costs for gas operations for the company. We propose the Resource Allocation and Planning Tool (RAPT) accompanied by yard level process management to improve operations performance. To automate short term planning, RAPT includes a two stage stochastic optimization model to perform job scheduling and crew assignment in the presence of a variable number of emergency leaks, thus creating optimal daily and weekly plans with minimal overtime costs. The tool also serves as a business intelligence platform, providing a companywide view of gas operations efficiency and as a decision aid, enabling management to predict the impact of management policies on field operations. The execution of work was improved by the creation of new processes for scheduling, crew data entry, overtime approval, incorporating accountability and oversight at multiple levels. This work has enabled more consistent processes, better overtime and productivity management, and the ability to understand and track deviations. These changes are currently being piloted at yards across the company and the initial results are very encouraging. As a direct result of this work, National Grid has the potential to achieve up to 65% reduction in overtime, saving the company a substantial amount of money. Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division; and, (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; in conjunction with the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-85). Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78490 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78148 Approximating the performance of a last mile transportation system Wang, Hai, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Last Mile Problem (LMP) refers to the provision of travel service from the nearest public transportation node to a home or office. We study the supply side of this problem in a stochastic setting, with batch demands resulting from the arrival of groups of passengers at rail stations or bus stops who request last-mile service. Closed-form bounds and approximations are derived for the performance of Last Mile Transportations Systems as a function of the fundamental design parameters of such systems. An initial set of results is obtained for the case in which a fleet of vehicles of unit-capacity provides the Last Mile service and each delivery route consists of a simple round-trip between the rail station and bus stop and the single passenger's destination. These results are then extended to the general case in which the capacity of a vehicle is an arbitrary, but typically small (under 10) number. It is shown through comparisons with simulation results, that a particular strict upper bound and an approximate upper bound, both derived under similar assumptions, perform consistently and remarkably well for the entire spectrum of input values and conditions simulated. These expressions can therefore be used for the preliminary planning and design of Last Mile Transportation Systems, especially for determining approximately resource requirements, such as the number of vehicles/servers needed to achieve some pre-specified level of service. Thesis (S.M. in Transportation)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 113). Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78148 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77876 Do job-seekers benefit from contacts? : a direct test Lan, George While it is intuitively plausible that using contacts in job search benefits a job-seeker, there is still both theoretical disagreement and inconclusive empirical evidence on why a job-seeker's social capital is associated with her labor-market outcomes (for reviews, see Mouw 2003, 2006). We take an important step toward identifying the source of this association by proposing a direct test for whether or not a job-seeker benefits from using her social networks. This direct test holds an important advantage over an indirect test proposed by Mouw (2003). By using a within-individual fixed-effects methodology, the direct test rules out most sources of between-individual heterogeneity (Yakubovich 2005). Therefore, its results are not influenced by the quality of the measures used to assess a job-seeker's social capital. Using unique data on university graduates' successful and unsuccessful job-searches, we show that, for job-seekers who use contacts to search for jobs, that method leads to better labor-market outcomes than formal methods do. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the literature on job search and social networks. Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-32). Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77876 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77863 The role of aerospace and mitre corporations in Air Force R & D. Flam, Paul Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. Thesis. 1965. M.S.; Bibliography: leaves 200-203. Fri, 01 Jan 1965 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77863 1965-01-01T00:00:00Z