GESTÃO ESTRATÉGICA E O USO DO BALANCED SCORECARD

Em um ambiente onde o processo de mudança é contínuo, a sobrevivência das empresas tornou-se uma tarefa complexa e difícil. A continuidade dos negócios está associada à implementação de uma estratégia competitiva, que depende fundamentalmente da viabilidade de sua implementação, e da forma como a organização desenvolve seus sistemas de informações gerenciais. Porém utilizar-se de estratégias bem fundamentadas, não basta para obter sucesso, é necessário saber executá-las e usar de ferramentas que forneçam meios para medir o seu desempenho. Este artigo faz uma abordagem sobre o processo estratégico, iniciando com um breve histórico da questão estratégica, passando para conceitos de planejamento estratégico e estratégia competitiva, onde finalmente traz o Balanced Scorecard como meio de gestão por indicadores estratégicos, uma ferramenta que traduz a visão da empresa e seus objetivos em uma série de indicadores financeiros e não-financeiros, alicerçados sobre quatro perspectivas distintas que são: a perspectiva financeira, a perspectiva do cliente, a perspectiva de processos internos e a perspectiva de aprendizado e crescimento

Steam Oxidation of Aluminide-Coated and Uncoated TP347HFG Stainless Steel under Atmospheric and Ultra-Supercritical Steam Conditions at 700 °C

The efficiency of ultra-supercritical (USC) steam power plants is limited by the materials properties, in particular, the steam oxidation resistance of the currently used steels at temperatures higher than 600 °C. Under these conditions, steam oxidation results in the development of thick oxide scales which spall and can accumulate in tube bends leading to blockage, overheating and premature creep rupture, as well as erosion of downstream components such as steam valves and turbine blades. Most published work related to oxidation testing is carried out at atmospheric pressure, with significantly less testing of austenitic steels in supercritical steam, and rarely including protective coatings. Indeed, the effect of high-pressure steam in the oxidation process is not quite understood at present. This paper covers a comparison of the behaviour of TP347HFG stainless steel at 700 °C under atmospheric pressure and 25 MPa, with and without slurry-applied diffusion aluminide coatings. The results show a very protective behaviour of the aluminide coatings, which develop a very thin Al-rich protective oxide, and no significant difference between the two environments. In contrast, the uncoated steel exhibited a different behaviour. Indeed, under atmospheric pressure after 3000 h, very thin scales, rich in Cr and not surpassing 5 to 10 µm in thickness, covered the samples along with some much thicker Fe-rich oxide nodules (up to 150 µm). However, under 25 MPa, a thick multilayer scale with a non-homogeneous thickness oscillating between 10 to 120 µm was present. A microstructural investigation was undertaken on the oxidised uncoated and coated substrates. The results suggest that pressure increases the oxidation rate of the chromia former steels but that the oxidation mechanism remains the same. A mechanism is proposed, including early detachment of the outer growing scales under supercritical pressure