Thomas Sloan

University of Massachusetts Lowell | UML · Department of Operations and Information Systems

Lecture capture technologies (LCT) such as Echo360, Mediasite, and Tegrity have become very popular in recent years. Many studies have shown that students favor the use of such technology, but relatively little research has studied the impact of LCT on learning. This article examines two research questions: (1) whether the use of LCT actually enhan...

Long-term organisational viability and competitiveness should not be evaluated solely in terms of financial measures. Investors, policy makers and other stakeholders increasingly seek to evaluate performance with respect to sustainability – the environmental, social and economic performance of an organisation. But measuring and improving the sustai...

The authors report the results of a cross-class project involving sophomore-level students in an Operations Analysis (OA) class with junior-level students in an Operations Management (OM) class. The students formed virtual teams and developed a simulation model of a call center. The OM students provided the management expertise, while the OA studen...

Equipment replacement is a fact of life in every industrial setting, and this paper seeks to answer the question: How can firms and policy makers effectively balance environmental and economic concerns with respect to replacement decisions? A replacement model which includes both economic and environmental factors is presented. One must decide whet...

More than ever before, health care providers are under intense pressure to control costs. Medical devices represent a significant 'hard' cost, with worldwide spending exceeding USD 235 billion. A growing number of health care providers are engaging in the practice of reprocessing-sterilizing and reusing medical devices labelled only for a single us...

More than ever before, health care providers are under intense pressure to control costs. Medical devices represent a significant 'hard' cost, with worldwide spending exceeding USD 235 billion. A growing number of health care providers are engaging in the practice of reprocessing—sterilizing and reusing medical devices labelled only for a single us...

This paper examines a single-stage production system that deteriorates with production ac-tions, and improves with maintenance. The condition of the process can be in any of several discrete states, and transitions from state to state follow a semi-Markov process. The firm can produce multiple products, which differ by profit earned, expected proce...

Traditionally, the problems of equipment maintenance scheduling and production scheduling in a multi-product environment have been treated independently. In this paper, we develop a Markov decision process model that simultaneously determines maintenance and production schedules for a multiple-product, single-machine production system, accounting f...

In many manufacturing environments, equipment condition has a significant impact on product quality, or yield. This paper presents a semi-Markov decision process model of a single-stage production system with multiple products and multiple maintenance actions. The model simultaneously determines maintenance and production schedules, accounting for...

This paper examines a single-stage production system that manufactures multiple products under deteriorating equipment conditions. The machine condition worsens with production, and improves with maintenance. The condition of the process can be in any one of several discrete states, and transitions from state to state follow a semi-Markov process....

This paper examines a single-stage production system that manufactures multiple products under deteriorating equipment condition. The machine condition worsens with production, and improves with maintenance. The condition of the process can be in any of several discrete states, and transitions from state to state follow a semi-Markov process. In ma...

Healthcare expenditures in the US are approaching 2 trillion dollars, and hospitals and other healthcare providers are under tremendous pressure to rein in costs. One cost-saving approach which is gaining popularity is the reuse of medical devices which were designed only for a single use. Device makers decry this practice as unsanitary and unsafe,...

In many environments, product yield is heavily influenced by equipment condition. Despite this fact, previous research has either focused on the issue of maintenance, ignoring the effect of equipment condition on yield, or has focused on the issue of production, omitting the possibility of actively changing the machine state. We formulate a Markov...

Shop-floor control has long been recognized as an important tool in improving manufacturing performance, an issue of great importance in the highly competitive semiconductor industry. Despite theoretical evidence of the benefits of certain kinds of scheduling policies, a wide disparity in shop-floor control practices exists in the industry. To bett...

This paper proposes a data reduction and hypothesis testing methodology that can be used to perform hypothesis testing with data commonly collected in benchmarking studies. A reduced-form performance vector and a reduced-form set of decision variables are constructed using the multivariate data reduction techniques of principal component analysis a...

Yield is one of the most important measures of manufacturing performance in the semiconductor industry, and equipment condition plays a critical role in determining yield. Researchers and practitioners alike have traditionally treated the problems of equipment maintenance scheduling and production dispatching independently, ignoring how equipment c...

In this paper, we develop a semi-Markov decision process model of a single-machine production system with multiple products and multiple repair actions. The model simultaneously determines maintenance and production schedules, accounting for the fact that equipment condition can affect the yield of different products differently. After examining st...

Universities have been using the Internet as the backbone of distance education for the past 15 years, but Web 2.0 tools are literally changing the face of distance learning. Which tools are useful and which are not yet worth the investment of one's time? In this paper, we discuss some of the available Web 2.0 tools, describe how they are used, and...