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Dottorato di Ricerca in Ingegneria Meccanica, XXVIII Ciclo, a.a. 2015-2016 Università della Calabria

This thesis concerns the results of a simulation study that has involved the Surgical Department and Intensive Care Unit of a public healthcare facility located in South Italy. After a preliminary work devoted to map the processes and after data collection and analysis, Lean Tools have been studied before and simulation models have been developed after. The models, that have been validated by stakeholders and through comparison with real data, can be used for evaluating actual and maximum capacities but also for testing alternative scenarios before the implementation in the real system. Moreover, thanks to the model parametrization, the proposed tools can be easily adopted in other similar facilities or for evaluating different configurations in terms of resources allocation and availability. In addition, the simulation models have been equipped with build-in functions implementing the “pull method” and "kanban" from Lean Management practices showing that substantial performance improvements can be achieved . The most healthcare organizations push patients from one area to another, from wards to operating blocks, without knowing when the patient will be treated. Instead, according the pull method, thanks to a definitive scheduling and some basic preconditions such as continuous checking and resources availability, patients are pulled when they are actually needed and as a result wastes are reduced and productivity is enhanced. The effects of the pull method implementation are accurately investigated in the simulated environment that has served as playground to assess the potential impact of the proposed approach. Regarding Intensive Care Unit, the staff works under enormous stress and the workload has continued to increase during the last years. Usually this type of environment creates an atmosphere of frustration and anxiety for all staff due to particulars conditions of patients. In this particular scenario, the Intensive Care Unit team that we presented in this research work was introduced to the results of the simulation and to the Lean concepts through dedicated training courses. The Lean methods and tools as well as simulation results were successfully transferred to the real system with a relevant increase of the overall performances. The implementation of Lean methods and tools can help any organization to launch its Lean transformation and improvement. This is even more important for Hospitals that cannot continue to operate as they have done in the past. The hospitals need to ensure their processes with much more value added work and such work must be totally directed on patients. Dottorato di Ricerca in Ingegneria Meccanica, XXVIII Ciclo, a.a.2015-2016 Università della Calabria

The chapter presents the general architecture of the CTSIM framework that is an advanced solution for cooperative training of car terminal operators. This chapter is mostly focused on the vehicle simulator and on the operator simulator that are mainly addressed to drivers and parkers operators. Indeed, the analysis of car terminals operational processes has clearly shown that their performance has a direct influence upon the overall system performances. Before going into the substance of the CTSIM design and development, a preliminary study of the state of art has been carried out. The literature review has confirmed that Modeling & Simulation has been profitably used for operators training in port environments. Indeed, many simulators are currently available for training of different operators, namely ships pilots, forklift operators, Reach Stacker operators, Straddle Carrier operators, Gantry Crane operators, Offshore Crane operators, Tower Crane operators, etc. However, there is a lack of research in the field of 3D Virtual Simulators for operators working in car terminals. Moreover the analysis of the current procedures used in car terminals has further validated the research idea CTSIM relies on confirming the potential benefits of Modeling & Simulation in such a dynamic and complex environment. In such a context, the high number of procedures that each person has to learn and how workers interact each other are relevant, therefore CTSIM is a modular simulators system composed by three interoperable simulators: an Operator Simulator, a Ship Simulator and a Vehicle Simulator. The Vehicle Simulator is able to simulate a medium car, a truck (tractor and trailer) and all the procedures performed by a driver in a car terminal while the Operator Simulator simulates with a high accuracy all the movements and gestures of a parker thanks to a technical solution which the Kinect, a tracking glove and a joystick are part of. The simulators that are part of CTSIM are integrated according to the paradigms of distributed simulation so as to be able to interact each other sharing the same virtual environment. The connection is guaranteed by a TCP/UDP protocol also able to work on separated computers; this way it is possible to have more than one Vehicle Simulator and more than one Operator Simulator for cooperative training. Dottorato di Ricerca in Ingegneria Meccanica, XXII Ciclo, a.a. 2014 Università della Calabria

La progettazione e la valutazione delle prestazioni di impianti industriali e relativi componenti e sistemi è molto complessa, specialmente nei territori in cui i rischi naturali, come ad esempio quello sismico, sono rilevanti. L’ingegneria industriale classifica come NaTech tutti gli eventi naturali che possono produrre incidenti rilevanti in un impianto, ovvero che possono causare, a seguito del rilascio di sostanze pericolose tossiche e infiammabili, seri rischi per l’ambiente circostante e la popolazione. Nel presente lavoro viene esaminato, con riferimento all’area industriale di Termoli (Molise), il supporto per la valutazione del rischio che può essere offerto ai decisori e gestori delle aree industriali da un approccio integrato tra geologia applicata, geotecnica e ingegneria strutturale. La stretta interrelazione tra le analisi dei dati geologici, idrogeologici e geotecnici e la corretta impostazione degli obiettivi da conseguire in prospettiva sismica restituisce risultati conformi alle più recenti normative e alle esigenze degli specialisti di ingegneria strutturale anche operando con risorse limitate.

Il lavor intende proporre la valutazione delle problematiche e le ricadute dell'applicazione di approcci multicriterio nel caso di decisioni in realtà industriali comportanti, in particolare, l'interferenza con i processi produttivi ed investimenti di medie entità. Il caso allo studio riguarda l'opportunità o meno di realizzare una riconfigurazione del layout aziendale, con particolare riferimento ad una riorganizzazione e possibile ampliamento del magazzino prodotti finiti che non snaturasse l'attuale disposizione dei reparti e mantenesse le reti di approvvigionamento dei servomezzi ai reparti produttivi. nel lavoro sono state valutate le problematiche emerse nel corso del procesos di supporto alle decisioni che, se da un lato hanno richiesto un'attenta considerazione del contesto decisionale, dall'altro hanno richiesto un'attenta conasiderazione del contesto decisionale, dall'altro hanno permesso di avvicinare gli attori aziendali progressivamente alla soluzione che, alla fine, ha trovato un'effettiva implementazione nel sistema.