Proposing a virtual operations network to support a business policy for the medicinal and aromatic plants sector

This research found out a more robust conceptual basis behind three missing links concerning the requirement for a virtual operations network to support a business policy for the Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (MAP) sector. Industry was pictured from secondary data gathered from a 12 experts panel. The factors to configure a collaborative network, e.g. relationships and structure, enabled the operationalisation of a previously defined social platform. Requirements for information infrastructure, co-ordination and DSS were also expressed. Moreover, the role of enterprise knowledge to the formation of collaborative ventures helped the modelling of the social-momentum of the platform. Finally, it is argued (i) for the confirmation of a significant Operations Management contribution to defining a MAP policy and, (ii) for the outlining of a collaborative network representing an advance to the usually ambiguous prescriptions of virtual operations. An interview guide to run an empirical test could be generated as further work

Collaborative environment to support a professional community

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresRecent manufacturing roadmaps stress current production systems limitations, emphasizing social, economic and ecologic consequences for Europe of a non-evolution to sustainable Production Systems. Hence, both academic institutions and enterprises are committed to develop solutions that would endow enterprises to survive in nowadays’ extremely competitive business environment. A research effort is being carried on by the Evolvable Production Systems consortium towards attaining Production Systems that can cope with current technological, economical, ecological and social demands fulfilling recent roadmaps. Nevertheless research success depends on attaining consensus in the scientific community and therefore an accurate critical mass support is required in the whole process. The main goal of this thesis is the development of a Collaborative Environment Tool to assist Evolvable Production Systems consortium in such research efforts and to enhance Evolvable Assembly Systems paradigm dissemination. This work resulted in EASET (Evolvable Assembly Systems Environment Tool), a collaborative environment tool which promotes EAS dissemination and brings forth improvements through the raise of critical mass and collaboration between entities

Agilidade e resiliência na gestão da cadeia de abastecimento. Proposta de uma framework

Dissertação para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia e Gestão IndustrialAtualmente tem vindo a verificar-se um aumento da volatilidade dos mercados e da incerteza associada à procura dos clientes. Aliado a estes fatores é reconhecido que as cadeias de abastecimento, em que as organizações estão inseridas, são cada vez mais complexas resultando, também, num aumento do risco a que as cadeias de abastecimento estão sujeitas e na sua maior vulnerabilidade face à ocorrência de distúrbios. Assim, considera-se importante estudar a aplicação dos paradigmas ágil e resiliente na gestão das cadeias de abastecimento esperando que estes lhes tragam vantagens competitivas, uma vez que o paradigma ágil contribui para uma maior capacidade de resposta rápida ao cliente e o paradigma resiliente contribui para uma maior capacidade de recuperação dos efeitos negativos de um distúrbio. Nesta dissertação foi feita uma revisão estruturada da literatura, com o objetivo de aprofundar o conhecimento sobre os tópicos em estudo, nomeadamente, no que diz respeito a atributos e práticas de gestão que caracterizam os paradigmas. Esta revisão permitiu reunir as definições de cada paradigma, existentes na literatura, e elaborar uma análise comparativa. Com base na revisão da literatura foi desenvolvido um questionário que permitiu recolher a opinião de especialistas e de estudantes em Engenharia e Gestão Industrial no que diz respeito ao conjunto de atributos e práticas de gestão utilizado na implementação de cada um dos paradigmas analisados. Por fim, com base nos resultados obtidos a partir do tratamento estatístico das respostas ao questionário e na análise da revisão da literatura foi proposta uma framework com atributos e práticas de gestão que relaciona os paradigmas ágil e resiliente da cadeia de abastecimento. Espera-se que a framework contribua para compreender melhor os paradigmas, os atributos e práticas que os caracterizam, e a sua interação. Poderá, ainda, ajudar potenciais interessados na sua implementação numa cadeia de abastecimento

Guidelines for the usability evaluation of a BI application within a coal mining organization

Business Intelligence (BI) applications are consulted by their users on a daily basis. BI information obtained assist users to make business decisions and allow for a deeper understanding of the business and its driving forces. In a mining environment companies need to derive maximum benefit from BI applications, therefore these applications need to be used optimally. Optimal use depends on various factors including the usability of the product. The documented lack of usability evaluation guidelines provides the rationale for this study. The purpose is to investigate the usability evaluation of BI applications in the context of a coal mining organization. The research is guided by the question: What guidelines should be used to evaluate the usability of BI applications. The research design included the identification of BI usability issues based on the observation of BI users at the coal mining organization. The usability criteria extracted from the usability issues were compared and then merged with general usability criteria from literature to form an initial set of BI usability evaluation criteria. These criteria were used as the basis for a heuristic evaluation of the BI application used at the coal mining organization. The same application was also evaluated using the Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI) standardised questionnaire. The results from the two evaluations were triangulated to provide a refined set of criteria. The main contribution of the study is the heuristic evaluation guidelines for BI applications (based on these criteria). These guidelines are grouped in the following functional areas: visibility, flexibility, cognition, application behaviour, error control and help, affect and BI elements.Information ScienceM.Sc. (Information Systems