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Title: Decision making in a non-profit engineering environment

Thesis/Dissertation ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/510338· OSTI ID:510338
 [1]
  1. New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces, NM (United States)

A conceptual management framework is developed and applied in a science and engineering organization located within a non-profit, public institution. The goal of this research is to select a set of projects whose combined contributions to the organization's strategic interests satisfy sponsor desires and can be completed within existing time and resource constraints. The development of the rationale for project selection and implementation within the plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory is studied. This includes the integration of prioritization decision tools, optimization techniques, and advanced planning and scheduling tools. The Nuclear Materials Technology Division is the custodian of the plutonium facility, whose mission is to develop, demonstrate, and deploy technologies necessary to address the nation`s and world`s plutonium problems. This includes management of nuclear weapon stockpile components, stabilization of plutonium residues, clean-up of contaminated soils and facilities, support to non-proliferation and arms control initiatives, and the eventual disposition of surplus plutonium. In this study, projects are evaluated against selection criteria deemed to be of critical program importance. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is used to evaluate and rank the importance of the suite of candidate projects. Because individual projects may be of interest to a number of business sectors and sponsors, the approach must be capable of using funding sources in an integrated manner in order to meet overall facility and program strategies. Finally, project planning and scheduling tools are integrated into the decision network in order to ensure that appropriate resource leveling occurs and that the actual project selection takes into account the temporal relationships among available resources.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-36
OSTI ID:
510338
Report Number(s):
LA-13312-T; ON: DE97008354; TRN: 97:014547
Resource Relation:
Other Information: DN: Thesis submitted to New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces, NM (US); TH: Thesis (Ph.D.); PBD: Jun 1997
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English