Date of Graduation

5-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Industrial Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Nachtmann, Heather

Abstract

Each year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is tasked with conducting maintenance dredging at hundreds of project sites throughout the country. The USACE must take into account factors such as environmental windows, increased transportation distances, increased operational time because of reduced vessel speeds, and personnel availability constraints. Environmental windows are intended to minimize the environmental impact of dredging while protecting biological resources and their habitats from potentially detrimental effects. The objective of this research is to perform sensitivity analysis of the performance of this model (cubic yards dredged) and how it is impacted by individual environmental window elimination and changes in the available budget and dredge vessel resources. The first sensitivity analysis studies how the removal of an individual restricted period can lead to system wide productivity gains. The results indicate that the removal of a restricted period related to the California Least Tern on the Channel Harbor Island, CA job allows for the greatest improvement in cubic yards dredged with an increase of 16.60% over the baseline. The second sensitivity analysis examines the impact on the objective value (total cubic yards dredged) when the budget is increased or decreased by 10% and also altering the number of dredge resources between thirty lower production dredges and fifteen higher production dredges. The results show that an increase or decrease in the system budget has a much greater impact on the objective value whereas the number of dredge vessel resources and their production rates do not greatly affect the objective value. The sensitivity analyses performed in this honors thesis provides additional evidence to support the fact that dredge productivity gains can be realized when specific restricted periods are removed and/or the system budget is increased.

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