Motivation and benefits of implementation and certification according ISO 9001 – the Portuguese experience

The aim of the research is to analyze the different aspects associated with the motivation and benefits of certified ISO 9001 companies in Portugal. A total of 426 certified Portuguese companies were surveyed. The response rate was equal to 61.03 percent. Our results suggest that the main motivation for certification were “improvement of quality”, “improvement of company image”, “marketing advantage”, “give empowerment to workers / capturing workers knowledge” and “cost reduction”. The main benefits that Portuguese companies have gained from the referred certification have been, among others, the improvement of “procedures”, beneficial effect on the “company’s image”, the improvement of quality products/services, increase of the “customer satisfaction”, improvement of “on-time delivery”; improvement the “morale” of workers’ increase in productivity and decrease of “production costs”, among others. The surveyed firms belong only to the Minho region of the north of Portugal. This paper aims to provide a contribution to the research related to the motivation and benefits associated to the quality management systems. The selection of the motives and benefits were validated through statistical analysis and the relationship between expected and perceived benefits was discussed

The estimation of the return on firms’ investments – as to ISO 9001

The aim of this paper was to estimate the return on investment in QMS (quality management systems) certification undertaken in Portuguese firms, according to the ISO 9000 series. A total of 426 certified Portuguese firms were surveyed. The response rate was 61.03 percent. The different payback periods were validated through statistical analysis and the relationship between expected and perceived payback periods was discussed. This study suggests that a firm’s sector of activity, size and degree of internationalization are related to the length of the investment in QMS certification recovery period. Furthermore, our findings suggest, that the time taken to obtain the certification is not directly related to the economic component of the certification. The majority of Portuguese firms (58.9%) took up to three years to recoup their investment and 35.5% of companies said they had not yet recovered the initial investment made. The recoup of investment was measured by the increase in the number of customers and consequent volume of deliveries, improved profitability and productivity of the company, improvement of competitive position and performance (cost savings), reduction in the number of external complaints and internal defects/scrap, achievement of some important clientele, among others. We compared our work to similar studies undertaken in other countries. This paper provides a contribution to the research related to the return on investment for costs related to the certification QMS according to ISO 9000. This paper provides a valuable contribution to the field and is one of the first studies to undertake this type of analysis in Portugal

Process tracking for dynamic tuning applications on the grid

Los recursos computacionales requeridos por la comunidad científica para solucionar problemas son mayores que los ofrecidos por la infraestructura actual. La necesidad de mayores prestaciones se debe al constante progreso de la investigación, nuevos problemas o aumento del detalle en los problemas corrientes. Usuarios crean nuevos sistemas distribuidos en larga escala como sistemas Grid para lograr prestaciones deseadas. Sistemas Grid son generalmente construidos sobre los recursos computacionales disponibles como clusters, maquinas paralelas o dispositivos de almacenamiento distribuidos en diferentes organizaciones e interconectado por una red. Sintonizar aplicaciones en un sistema Grid no es fácil debido a las características de distribución de procesos en múltiples clusters controlados por diferentes sistemas de colas y heterogeneidad de la red de comunicaciones. Nosotros tenemos un entorno de monitorización, análisis y sintonización (MATE) que permite la sintonización dinámica de aplicaciones en entornos cluster. Debido a las muchas capas de software presente en sistemas Grid, dos ejecuciones de una misma aplicación pueden usar recursos distintos. Para sintonizar los procesos de la aplicación, nuestra herramienta debe localizar y seguir la ejecución de los procesos en el sistema. Nosotros llamamos eso como problema de localización de procesos. Este artículo presenta la integración de MATE con Gris y dos aproximaciones implementadas para solucionar el problema de localización de procesos dentro de sistemas Grid.The computational resources need by the scientific community to solve problems is beyond the current available infrastructure. Performance requirements are needed due constant research progress, new problems studies or detail increase of the current ones. Users create new wide distributed systems such as computational Grids to achieve desired performance goals. Grid systems are generally built on top of available computational resources as cluster, parallel machines or storage devices distributed within different organizations and those resources are interconnected by a network. Tune applications on Grid environment is a hard task due system characteristics like multi-cluster job distribution among different local schedulers and dynamic network bandwidth behavior. We had a Monitoring, Analysis and Tuning Environment (MATE) that allows dynamic performance tuning applications within a cluster. Due to the many software layers present on the grid, similar job submission may execute on different places. To tune application jobs, our tool needs to locate and follow the jobs execution within the system. We call this a process tracking problem. This paper presents MATE integration to the Grid and the two process tracking approaches implemented in order to solve the process tracking problem within Grid systemsVII Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y Paralelo (WPDP)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Process tracking for dynamic tuning applications on the grid

Los recursos computacionales requeridos por la comunidad científica para solucionar problemas son mayores que los ofrecidos por la infraestructura actual. La necesidad de mayores prestaciones se debe al constante progreso de la investigación, nuevos problemas o aumento del detalle en los problemas corrientes. Usuarios crean nuevos sistemas distribuidos en larga escala como sistemas Grid para lograr prestaciones deseadas. Sistemas Grid son generalmente construidos sobre los recursos computacionales disponibles como clusters, maquinas paralelas o dispositivos de almacenamiento distribuidos en diferentes organizaciones e interconectado por una red. Sintonizar aplicaciones en un sistema Grid no es fácil debido a las características de distribución de procesos en múltiples clusters controlados por diferentes sistemas de colas y heterogeneidad de la red de comunicaciones. Nosotros tenemos un entorno de monitorización, análisis y sintonización (MATE) que permite la sintonización dinámica de aplicaciones en entornos cluster. Debido a las muchas capas de software presente en sistemas Grid, dos ejecuciones de una misma aplicación pueden usar recursos distintos. Para sintonizar los procesos de la aplicación, nuestra herramienta debe localizar y seguir la ejecución de los procesos en el sistema. Nosotros llamamos eso como problema de localización de procesos. Este artículo presenta la integración de MATE con Gris y dos aproximaciones implementadas para solucionar el problema de localización de procesos dentro de sistemas Grid.The computational resources need by the scientific community to solve problems is beyond the current available infrastructure. Performance requirements are needed due constant research progress, new problems studies or detail increase of the current ones. Users create new wide distributed systems such as computational Grids to achieve desired performance goals. Grid systems are generally built on top of available computational resources as cluster, parallel machines or storage devices distributed within different organizations and those resources are interconnected by a network. Tune applications on Grid environment is a hard task due system characteristics like multi-cluster job distribution among different local schedulers and dynamic network bandwidth behavior. We had a Monitoring, Analysis and Tuning Environment (MATE) that allows dynamic performance tuning applications within a cluster. Due to the many software layers present on the grid, similar job submission may execute on different places. To tune application jobs, our tool needs to locate and follow the jobs execution within the system. We call this a process tracking problem. This paper presents MATE integration to the Grid and the two process tracking approaches implemented in order to solve the process tracking problem within Grid systemsVII Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y Paralelo (WPDP)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Automatic dynamic tuning of parallel/distributed applications on computational grids

Descripció del recurs: el 23 de febrer de 2010Las aplicaciones paralelas presentan diversos problemas de prestaciones al ser cambiadas para ejecutar en entornos Grid. Las características del sistema pueden ser diferentes en cada ejecución y en algunos casos dentro de una misma ejecución. Los recursos remotos comparten enlaces de red y, los procesos de la aplicación comparten las maquinas con otros procesos. En esos escenarios se propone el uso de la técnica de sintonización dinámica de prestaciones para ayudar las aplicaciones a adaptarse a los cambios en las características del sistema con la intención de resolver los problemas de prestaciones. Esta tesis analiza el problema de la ejecución de aplicaciones paralelas en entornos Grid, herramientas para el análisis de prestaciones disponibles y modelos adecuados para la sintonización dinámica de aplicaciones paralelas en este tipo de entorno. De este análisis, se propone una arquitectura para sintonización dinámica de aplicaciones paralelas en entornos Grid llamada GMATE. Esta arquitectura incluye diversas contribuciones. En el caso donde un gestor de recursos de alto nivel decide el mapeo de procesos de la aplicación, se proponen dos aproximaciones para el seguimiento de procesos que habilita GMATE a localizar donde las capas de software del Grid ha mapeado los procesos de la aplicación. Una aproximación consiste en la integración de GMATE a las capas de software del Grid. La otra integra los componentes requeridos de GMATE dentro de los binarios de la aplicación. El primer enfoque requiere derechos de administración en cuanto que el segundo incrementa el binario del la aplicación, lo que torna más lento el arranque de la misma. Para respetar las políticas de las organizaciones propietarias de los recursos, todas las comunicaciones usan el mismo certificado de seguridad de la aplicación. Esas comunicaciones son hechas con base en las capas del Grid. Esta aproximación habilita la arquitectura a monitorizar y sintonizar los procesos de la aplicación de forma dinámica a las restricciones de cortafuegos de las organizaciones y políticas de uso de la red en las mismas. Para bajar la necesidad de comunicaciones en la arquitectura GMATE, se encapsula parte de la lógica requerida para colectar las medidas y para cambiar los parámetros de la aplicación en componentes encuestados que ejecutan dentro de espacio de memoria del proceso de la aplicación. Para colectar medidas, se ha creado componentes sensores que disminuyen la necesidad de comunicaciones llevando el procesamiento de eventos para dentro del proceso de la aplicación. Diferente de la instrumentación tradicional, los sensores pueden retrasar la transmisión de los eventos y ejecutar operaciones básicas como sumas, temporizadores, promedios o generación de eventos basados en umbrales. Esas capacidades reducen los requerimientos de comunicaciones que son útiles en situaciones de bajo ancho de banda. Se propone también el encapsulamiento de la lógica de cambio en las aplicaciones en componentes actuadores. Los actuadores son instalados en el flujo de ejecución de la aplicación y posibilita la sincronización y baja intrusión en cambio de variables y ejecución de funciones para modificar la aplicación. La arquitectura propuesta posibilita la comunicación entre sensores y actuadores lo cual habilita la sintonizaciones sencillas sin necesidad de comunicaciones. Para aplicar la sintonización dinámica en entornos Grid, necesitamos de un modelo de prestaciones que pueda ser usado en entornos con heterogeneidad de red y procesadores para guiar el proceso. Se propone un modelo de prestaciones basado en una heurística para lograr usar el máximo número de esclavos y el mejor tamaño de grano en una ejecución Maestro-Esclavo en sistemas Grid. Se considera que una clase de aplicaciones pueden ser desarrolladas con la capacidad de cambiar el tamaño de grano en tiempo de ejecución y que esa acción cambia la relación entre cómputo y comunicación. En el escenario donde usuarios reciben un conjunto de recursos para una ejecución paralela, esos recursos pueden configurar un sistema de múltiples clústeres. La heurística del modelo presentado permite guiar la selección de los recursos para disminuir el tiempo total de ejecución de la aplicación. Se intenta buscar el punto donde el maestro usa el máximo número de esclavos posible asignando prioridad a aquellos más rápidos. Se presentan los resultados de sintonización del tamaño de grano y número de esclavos en ejecuciones Maestro-Esclavo en entornos Grid donde se logra bajar el tiempo total de ejecución de la aplicación y aumentando la eficiencia de uso de los recursos. Se presentan las implementaciones de las aplicaciones multiplicación de matrices, N-Body y cargas sintéticas las cuales tienen diferentes grados en la relación entre cómputo y comunicación en escenarios de cambio del tamaño de grano.When moving to Grid Computing, parallel applications face several performance problems. The system characteristics are different in each execution and sometimes within the same execution. Remote resources share network links and in some cases, the processes share machines using per-core allocation. In such scenarios we propose to use automatic performance tuning techniques to help an application adapt itself thus a system changes in order to overcome performance bottlenecks. This thesis analyzes such problems of parallel application execution in Computational Grids, available tools for performance analysis and models to suit automatic dynamic tuning in such environments. From such an analysis, we propose system architecture for automatic dynamic tuning of parallel applications on computational Grids named GMATE. Its architecture includes several contributions. In cases where a Grid meta-scheduler decides application mapping, we propose two process tracking approaches that enable GMATE to locate where a Grid middleware maps application processes. One approach consists of the integration of GMATE components as Grid middleware. The other involves the need to embed a GMATE component inside application binaries. The first requires site administration privileges while the other increases the application binary which slows down application startup. To obey organizational policies, all communications use the same application security certificates for authentication. The same communications are performed using Grid middleware API. That approach enables the monitoring and tuning process to adapt dynamically to organizational firewall restrictions and network usage policies. To lower the communication needs of GMATE, we encapsulate part of the logic required to collect measurements and change application parameters in components that run inside the processing space. For measurements collection, we create sensor components that reduce the communication needs by event processing inside the process space. Different from traditional instrumentation, sensors can postpone the event transmission and perform basic operations such as summarizations, timers, averages or threshold based event generation. That reduces the communication requirements in cases where network bandwidth is expensive. We also encapsulate the modifications used to tune the application in components called actuators. Actuators may be installed at some point in the program flow execution and provide synchronization and low overhead control of application variables and function executions. As sensors and actuators can communicate with each other, we can perform simple tuning within process executions without the need for communication. As the dynamic tuning is performance model-centric, we need a performance model that can be used on heterogeneous processors and network such Grid Systems. We propose a heuristic performance model to find the maximum number of workers and best grain size of a Master-Worker execution in such systems. We assume that some classes of application may be built capable of changing grain size at runtime and that change action can modify an application's compute-communication ratio. When users request a set of resources for a parallel execution, they may receive a multi-cluster configuration. The heuristic model allows for shrinking the set of resources without decreasing the application execution time. The idea is to reach the maximum number of workers the master can use, giving high priority to the faster ones. We presented the results of the dynamic tuning of grain size and the number of workers in Master-Worker applications on Grid systems, lowering the total application execution time while raising system efficiency. We used the implementation of Matrix-Multiplication, N-Body and synthetic workloads to try out different compute-communication ratio changes in different grain size selections

Process tracking for dynamic tuning applications on the grid

Los recursos computacionales requeridos por la comunidad científica para solucionar problemas son mayores que los ofrecidos por la infraestructura actual. La necesidad de mayores prestaciones se debe al constante progreso de la investigación, nuevos problemas o aumento del detalle en los problemas corrientes. Usuarios crean nuevos sistemas distribuidos en larga escala como sistemas Grid para lograr prestaciones deseadas. Sistemas Grid son generalmente construidos sobre los recursos computacionales disponibles como clusters, maquinas paralelas o dispositivos de almacenamiento distribuidos en diferentes organizaciones e interconectado por una red. Sintonizar aplicaciones en un sistema Grid no es fácil debido a las características de distribución de procesos en múltiples clusters controlados por diferentes sistemas de colas y heterogeneidad de la red de comunicaciones. Nosotros tenemos un entorno de monitorización, análisis y sintonización (MATE) que permite la sintonización dinámica de aplicaciones en entornos cluster. Debido a las muchas capas de software presente en sistemas Grid, dos ejecuciones de una misma aplicación pueden usar recursos distintos. Para sintonizar los procesos de la aplicación, nuestra herramienta debe localizar y seguir la ejecución de los procesos en el sistema. Nosotros llamamos eso como problema de localización de procesos. Este artículo presenta la integración de MATE con Gris y dos aproximaciones implementadas para solucionar el problema de localización de procesos dentro de sistemas Grid.The computational resources need by the scientific community to solve problems is beyond the current available infrastructure. Performance requirements are needed due constant research progress, new problems studies or detail increase of the current ones. Users create new wide distributed systems such as computational Grids to achieve desired performance goals. Grid systems are generally built on top of available computational resources as cluster, parallel machines or storage devices distributed within different organizations and those resources are interconnected by a network. Tune applications on Grid environment is a hard task due system characteristics like multi-cluster job distribution among different local schedulers and dynamic network bandwidth behavior. We had a Monitoring, Analysis and Tuning Environment (MATE) that allows dynamic performance tuning applications within a cluster. Due to the many software layers present on the grid, similar job submission may execute on different places. To tune application jobs, our tool needs to locate and follow the jobs execution within the system. We call this a process tracking problem. This paper presents MATE integration to the Grid and the two process tracking approaches implemented in order to solve the process tracking problem within Grid systemsVII Workshop de Procesamiento Distribuido y Paralelo (WPDP)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

AUTOAVALIAÇÃO PEDAGÓGICA E GESTÃO ESCOLAR: CONCEPÇÕES E PRÁTICAS DA IMPLANTAÇÃO DO PROGRAMA NOVO ENSINO MÉDIO

This article is an excerpt from a doctoral research that analyzed pedagogical self-assessment and school management: conceptions and practices of the implementation of the New Middle School Program in schools of the state education network in Manaus-AM. The teaching-learning process currently in Brazil has been suffering severe criticism, either by the country's educational system itself, which conceives and evaluates it from principles somewhat deteriorated by the lack of an efficient educational policy, or by the educational community itself that expects an immediate salvation from all the pedagogical problems faced within the school. Therefore, changes in Brazilian education are always controversial and full of divisions. And this reflects directly on the bases, that is, in schools, where the subjects who build, or at least try to build, a quality education are inserted. Then, the pilot schools adhering to the New Middle School Program appeared. Thus, this research approaches in a qualitative way, using the methodology of bibliographic survey, it presents questions about how the pilot schools are prepared to assume a commitment of change so important for Brazilian education and how the School Manager can contribute in this process.Este artículo es un extracto de una investigación de doctorado que analizó la autoevaluación pedagógica y la gestión escolar: concepciones y prácticas de la implementación del Programa Nueva Escuela Media en escuelas de la red estatal de educación en Manaus-AM. El proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje actualmente en Brasil viene sufriendo severas críticas, ya sea por el propio sistema educativo del país, que lo concibe y evalúa a partir de principios un tanto deteriorados por la falta de una política educativa eficiente, o por la propia comunidad educativa que espera una inmediata salvación de todos los problemas pedagógicos enfrentados dentro de la escuela. Por lo tanto, los cambios en la educación brasileña son siempre controvertidos y llenos de divisiones. Y esto se refleja directamente en las bases, es decir, en las escuelas, donde se insertan los sujetos que construyen, o al menos intentan construir, una educación de calidad. Luego, aparecieron las escuelas piloto adheridas al Programa Nueva Escuela Media. Así, esta investigación aborda de forma cualitativa, utilizando la metodología de levantamiento bibliográfico, presenta interrogantes sobre cómo las escuelas piloto están preparadas para asumir un compromiso de cambio tan importante para la educación brasileña y cómo el Gestor Escolar puede contribuir en este proceso.O presente artigo é um recorte de uma pesquisa de doutorado que analisou a autoavaliação pedagógica e gestão escolar: concepções e práticas da implantação do Programa Novo Ensino Médio em escolas da rede estadual de ensino em Manaus-AM. O processo de ensino aprendizagem, atualmente no Brasil, vem sofrendo críticas severas, quer seja pelo próprio sistema educacional do país, que o concebe e o avalia a partir de princípios um tanto deteriorados pela falta de uma política educacional eficiente, quer seja pela própria comunidade educativa que espera uma salvação imediata de todos os problemas pedagógicos enfrentados no âmbito da escola. Portanto, mudanças na educação brasileira são assuntos sempre polêmicos e cheios de divisões. E isto reflete diretamente nas bases, ou seja, nas escolas, onde estão inseridos justamente os sujeitos que constroem, ou pelo menos tentam construir, uma educação de qualidade. Surgem, então, as escolas piloto aderentes ao Programa Novo Ensino Médio. Assim, esta pesquisa aborda de forma qualitativa, utilizando a metodologia de levantamento bibliográfico apresenta questões acerca de como as escolas piloto estão preparadas para assumir um compromisso de mudança tão importante para educação brasileira e como o Gestor Escolar pode contribuir nesse processo.  O presente artigo é um recorte de uma pesquisa de doutorado que analisou a autoavaliação pedagógica e gestão escolar: concepções e práticas da implantação do Programa Novo Ensino Médio em escolas da rede estadual de ensino em Manaus-AM. O processo de ensino aprendizagem, atualmente no Brasil, vem sofrendo críticas severas, quer seja pelo próprio sistema educacional do país, que o concebe e o avalia a partir de princípios um tanto deteriorados pela falta de uma política educacional eficiente, quer seja pela própria comunidade educativa que espera uma salvação imediata de todos os problemas pedagógicos enfrentados no âmbito da escola. Portanto, mudanças na educação brasileira são assuntos sempre polêmicos e cheios de divisões. E isto reflete diretamente nas bases, ou seja, nas escolas, onde estão inseridos justamente os sujeitos que constroem, ou pelo menos tentam construir, uma educação de qualidade. Surgem, então, as escolas piloto aderentes ao Programa Novo Ensino Médio. Assim, esta pesquisa aborda de forma qualitativa, utilizando a metodologia de levantamento bibliográfico apresenta questões acerca de como as escolas piloto estão preparadas para assumir um compromisso de mudança tão importante para educação brasileira e como o Gestor Escolar pode contribuir nesse processo.

Process tracking for dynamic tuning applications on the grid

The computational resources need by the scientific community to solve problems is beyond the current available infrastructure. Performance requirements are needed due constant research progress, new problems studies or detail increase of the current ones. Users create new wide distributed systems such as computational Grids to achieve desired performance goals. Grid systems are generally built on top of available computational resources as cluster, parallel machines or storage devices distributed within different organizations and those resources are interconnected by a network. Application tuning on Grid environment is a hard task due system characteristics like multi-cluster job distribution among different local schedulers and dynamic network bandwidth behavior. We had a Monitoring, Analysis and Tuning Environment (MATE) that allows dynamic performance tuning applications within a cluster. Due to the many software layers present on the grid, similar job submission may execute on different places. To tune application jobs, our tool needs to locate and follow the jobs execution within the system. We call this a process tracking problem. This paper presents MATE integration to the Grid and the two process tracking approaches implemented in order to solve the process tracking problem within Grid systems.Facultad de Informátic

Development and tuning framework of master/worker applications

Parallel/distributed programming is a complex task that requires a high degree of expertise to fulfill the expectations of high performance computation. The Master/Worker paradigm is one of the most commonly used because it is easy to understand and there is a wide range of applications that match this paradigm. However, there are certain features, such as data distribution and the number of workers that must be tuned properly to obtain adequate performance. In most cases such features cannot be tuned statically since they depend on the particular conditions of each execution. In this paper, we show a dynamic tuning environment that is based on a theoretical model of Master/Worker behavior and allows for the adaptation of such applications to the dynamic conditions of execution. The environment includes a pattern based application development framework that allows the user to concentrate on the design phase and makes it easier to overcome performance bottlenecks.Facultad de Informátic

Development and tuning framework of master/worker applications

Parallel/distributed programming is a complex task that requires a high degree of expertise to fulfill the expectations of high performance computation. The Master/Worker paradigm is one of the most commonly used because it is easy to understand and there is a wide range of applications that match this paradigm. However, there are certain features, such as data distribution and the number of workers that must be tuned properly to obtain adequate performance. In most cases such features cannot be tuned statically since they depend on the particular conditions of each execution. In this paper, we show a dynamic tuning environment that is based on a theoretical model of Master/Worker behavior and allows for the adaptation of such applications to the dynamic conditions of execution. The environment includes a pattern based application development framework that allows the user to concentrate on the design phase and makes it easier to overcome performance bottlenecks.Facultad de Informátic