Date of Graduation

5-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Industrial Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Pohl, Edward A.

Abstract

A decision-support tool designed specifically to be used by technical specialists is an aid that would be helpful to many different companies, departments and projects – regardless of industry. With the intent of making manual processes quicker, less error-prone, and more userfriendly, decision-support tools are becoming more desired as they grow increasingly more common in the business world today.
The decision-support tool created for the purpose of this project is not an exception to any of these reasons. The ALSTOM Transport Information Solutions Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) Shared Service Team bears the burden and tedious process of working with non-technical system design specialists on every potential new rail infrastructure that is considered for construction. This process is one that takes extra time out of a RAM Engineer's day to complete, because the RAM Engineer‟s approval of the new system structure and redundancies is imperative for the system to pass on to its next stage in development.
Not only is the RAM Engineer required to approve the new system, but if there are any areas that require re-evaluation or alteration to the design, the RAM Engineer will have to set aside additional time out of his/her schedule to re-examine the proposal once these changes have been made. This cycle continues until the project is deemed infeasible/terminated or until the RAM Engineer endorses it to the next step.
From this information it can be seen that improvements to the process could be made possible, if the probability increases that the RAM Engineer will approve the proposal after the first time he/she examines it. This would clearly cut down on extra time required by the RAM Engineer, who has a full work load of his/her own, in addition to speeding up the process of erecting new rail infrastructure. In turn, this would most likely increase customer satisfaction and revenue.
Through the course of an Engineering Internship at ALSTOM Transport in the RAM Shared Service Department, it was made apparent that a decision-support tool would have grounds for potentially improving this process. By alleviating some time and effort currently required by both the non-technical Design Specialists and the RAM Engineers, this tool would aim to eliminate some of the regressive iterations in the process while simultaneously decreasing the level of time dependency of one department on the other.

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