New Global Perspectives on Industrial Engineering and Management

This paper is motivated by discussing the long-term capacity decision making. This decision is especially relevant to capital intensive production processes that require long-term planning. Among the many questions related to this subject, this paper aims to apply three financial parameters to compare scale alternatives. They are the Unitary Cost (UC), the Return on Investment (ROI) and the Net Present Value (NPV) and were calculated for a hypothetical process composed by two main resources. As results, the paper shows that the first two methods despite being trivial to apply don’t have reliable results while the NPV proves itself as good parameters to compare the alternatives. It is also presented a sample of the use of the NPV as a parameter to analyse the scale as a meter to define the competitive strategy.

One of the main approaches that production companies apply in order to get the competitive advantage is process innovation. Under favor of process innovation applications, the facts like cost improvements, increase in product quality and customer satisfaction and increase in employee satisfaction and motivation have direct or indirect impacts on business profit. In consideration of these concepts, in this study a process innovation application in production sub-processes of packaging and filling of a company that is operating in food sector is explained in detail. The facts like costs, quality, and customer satisfaction are compared between former system and the new system after that process innovation application.

The world has suffered from the exploitation of its natural resources and so the search for alternative sources of energy gains more and more space. These non-renewable alternative sources do not harm nature. Thus, within a context of new global perspectives, the improvement of the use of renewable energies by diversifying generation sources should be a constant challenge for architects, engineers and those professionals involved in the use of energy in buildings. The lack of an adequate project contributes to low energy efficiency of the building, consuming energy, often unnecessarily, and without concern for its generation. The use of bioclimatic strategies emerges as a fundamental instrument in the design of a good architectural project, foreseeing the intelligent use of natural resources and providing rationality in the consumption of renewable energies. Therefore, a natural thermal conditioning in dwellings, where this is possible, can bring new perspectives of rational use of energy. The general objective of the work is to demonstrate that it is possible to replace mechanical ventilation with the use of natural air conditioning, thus reducing the consumption of traditional electric energy. Such strategies are possible for use in both residential and industrial buildings.

Hybrid organizations are emerging in the organizational landscape, integrating social and commercial objectives into the same strategy. This paper aims to address the strategies adopted by social enterprises (a particular case of hybrid organization), serving target groups who cannot pay for services and products as common customers, to overcome operations resources constraints. Based on the case of Vintage for a Cause the authors identify the incorporation of external resources and reputation through partnerships, the recruitment of beneficiaries as volunteers to the workforce and the diversification of income generating activities as some of the strategies that can be followed by organizations sharing the same particularities.

Nowadays the service sector is a relevant segment to the countries around the world. Especially referent to public transportation service, it is important to highlight that it is essential for the economy and welfare of the society. In this sense, the quality and the customer´s satisfaction are important factors in this sector. Thus, it seems to be pertinent to measure these factors. Then, the objective of this paper is to describe the scale construction process, whose purpose is to measure and evaluate the quality of the public transportation service according to the customer´s satisfaction. Further, this work seeks to present the preliminary results obtained from the application of this scale. The scale in discussion was published in ENCOBEP 2016 (Encontro do Centro-Oeste Brasileiro de Engenharia de Produção), but after this event, the scale was analyzed by authors of this paper to get the third version. This version was applied in a sample of 146 customers of the public transportation service and the quantitative data were treated statistically. The results showed that the reliability of the scale is acceptable and the conclusion is that the customers are unsatisfied with the public transportation services.

Currently, it is fundamental for world-class organizations to implement effective continuous improvement processes which ask for significant and sustainable cost reduction programs. However, there is a lack of models and methodologies that support and validate continuous improvement in organizations. Its application in the logistics operation is particularly important because, currently, it is a determining factor of competiveness and differentiation, affecting significantly the profitability of organizations. In this investigation, an innovative model of continuous improvement based on costs has been developed and implemented; it is structured on three main steps: (1) a definition of cost management responsibilities, (2) establishing a relationship between financial performance indicators and operational indicators and (3) a dynamic generation of a continuous cycle of continuous improvement. Its implementation results also in a three level maturity model (A–C). The model was developed and implemented in a benchmark logistics department of one of the most important first tier suppliers of the automotive industry. The studied company made possible the implementation of the model in its fullness (level C), since the logistics department is in a high maturity level of the cost management and performance measurement process. This model can be replicated in other companies, departments and supply chains that want to reduce the costs proactively through really effective and efficient continuous improvement processes.

Smartphone devices are one of the products most bought by consumers and show the differential of the device in the sale may not be the only positive point, but it is also necessary to be able to keep the device being intuitive in its functions over time, in order to retain the consumer to the brand. Currently both the software and the hardware of the devices are becoming more equal, as both market companies are using the same manufacturers in their products. In this trend, usability is a factor that will contribute to customer satisfaction. For businesses, access to information on which functions are most used and what deserve more prominence is essential to create new interfaces of the operational system. For that, it was used the Borda’s method of operational research to rank in a compensatory way those functionalities.

The objective of this article is to measure the efficiency of the Latin American and Asian countries in converting economic complexity into quality of life between 2010 and 2014. The method used was Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The results showed in 2014, all Asian countries were efficient except China and Philippines. Cuba was the country that most served as benchmark for inefficient countries. The window analysis showed only Japan, South Korea and Singapore remained effective over time.

The objective of this article is to determine the relative efficiency of the Brazilian Federative Units in converting public expenditures into improvements in educational indicators between 2011 and 2014. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate the efficiency and the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) to evaluate the productivity. The efficient Brazilian States in the period were: Alagoas, Amapá, Distrito Federal, Maranhão, Piauí, Rio de Janeiro, Roraima and Amazonas Moreover, the inefficient Federative Units could improve their results by an average of 4.83% in 2011, and 4.87% in 2014, using the same public resources applied.

Drayage is the stage of the intermodal transport that deals with transport of freight on trucks among the intermodal terminal, and customers and suppliers that are located in its hinterland. This work proposes an algorithm based on simulated annealing heuristics to solve the operations of drayage. This algorithm has been used to solve battery problems, demonstrating the validity and suitability of its results, which were compared with exact method.

This paper addresses the development of a simulation model of operations in the train arrival process at Port Terminal of Ponta da Madeira, aiming to develop a simulation model to support decision making. The case study was used in this study as technical procedure, for the understanding of the theoretical concepts in a practical situation. At the end of the study, it was possible to verify that the developed model presented adherence to actual behavior of the system studied, being valid for the operationalization, as a tool to support decision making.

Second-generation ethanol is a biofuel derivate from lignocellulose sources that promotes greater savings and it is an environmental friendly option. However, this new technology still has some gaps that must be overcome such as low yield of raw material conversion and high production costs. Using a study developed by a Brazilian research institute and simulations in different scenarios over time; the present paper has the objective to reinforce the competitive potential of second-generation ethanol. The results demonstrate the potential of improve efficiency and reduce production costs in different technological scenarios.

The decision to pursue a tertiary education degree can be seen as an investment decision. The decision involves taking up or not a student loan to pay for the higher education degree. This investment decision can be evaluated in a standard net present worth/internal rate of return (IRR) analysis. With uncertain outcomes the net present worth analysis is generally evaluated in a mean (or most likely) scenario, complemented with a sensitivity or risk analysis. We apply a quantile regression technique to provide a simple but powerful analysis of risk-return investment decisions, using the case of student loans in Brazil (FIES) as an illustration. While mean net present worth/IRR for paying for higher education degree with a student loan is positive, the IRR differ by a factor of 30 between high and low wage university degrees wage earners and some women and non-white degree holders.

A Deterministic Equivalent Problem (DEP) is developed to understand the assignment of threats to secondary inspection at a U.S.-Mexican border port of entry, and how the overall assignment can affect security and the overall reward of further inspection. The United States and bordering countries benefit from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But amongst the positive effects of NAFTA there is a looming drug threat that effects the overall flow of companies supply chains. In 2011, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed over 64,000 trucks, rail, and sea containers a day. During that 2011 Fiscal year CBP seized 5 million lb of narcotics, including nearly 370,000 lb at the ports of entry. The objective of the developed DEP is to incorporate real time data and to quantify how security officials assign threats to secondary inspection. This information can provide insight into staffing, resource allocation, and the disruption of industrial supply chains. This study will focus on the Pharr–Reynosa International Port of Entry. The expected outcome of the DEP will provide security officials insight into security policies and the associated cost associated with those strategies.

The concern with the disposal of waste generated by industry as well as by households is not recent. This work has sought to make a review on the production and disposal of the waste generated by electrical and electronic products, such as computers and mobile phones. Also, this review aimed to characterize the components of such waste and investigate the effectiveness of current methods of waste treatment. In addition, a tool is proposed to predict the production of computers in Brazil through the statistical method of autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models, which suggested the model ARIMA (0, 0, 1) to carry out the forecast. With this model, it was possible to suggest that the production of computers in Brazil, due to the global economic crisis, should continue to decrease.

The linear ordering problem (LOP) is an NP-hard problem in combinatorial optimization. The problem has been investigated in many research areas such as mathematics, logistics, economics, computer science, etc. The complexity motivates researchers to find effective solution methods to the problem. The aim of this study is to develop an efficient algorithm to solve LOP. In this study, a genetic algorithm based approach is proposed for LOP. An additional local search component is embedded in the algorithm to intensify the search. Proposed algorithm is applied to a number of LOP instances taken from the LOLIB. At the end of the computational study, competitive and effective results are found.

Business logistics, both integrated and reverse, is an important activity in the supply chain, capable of managing raw materials, stocks, transport and information. With regard to reverse logistics, it is developed in the processes of return management, which plays a critical role in the management of organizations. The retail sector, besides being one of the main recipients of returned products and packaging, plays a fundamental role in the supply chain and has a significant participation in issues of dissemination of social and environmental responsibilities. Thus, given the representativeness of retail and the importance of the reverse logistics activity, this study aimed to analyse the publications of articles, between 2007 and 2016, regarding the use of reverse logistics for the management of returns in retail. Through a systematic literature review, the results show that the studied subject is still in development, since, from the 116 references found, only 10 were considered for the final analysis of this present study. Another factor that reaffirms this evidence is the predominant exploratory character of all the available research, and the fact that half of the studies selected for the final analysis were published in the last year (2016). Furthermore, it was possible identify that advantages obtained by reverse logistics management is, principally, related in economic and environmental scope.

The complexity of chains, their vulnerabilities to internal and external risk factors and their relationships, have caused the managers of organizations to analyze the risk within the supply chain. This insight has led companies to seek ways to establish a relationship between processes and principles that reduce the occurrence of risks and can mitigate them and improve their competitiveness. The identification of the risk does not occur in an isolated way in the chain, and can propagate along its extension. Thus, the purpose of this article is to identify the risks and their generating factors that occur internally at a supply chain link of a natural gas industry. In the Research Methodology, we used the application of semi structured interviews and application of questionnaires and for the validation of risks we used the method of focal group. The results obtained include the identification of internal risks in the studied companies and their risk-generating factors as well as the common risks between companies, highlighting vulnerability points such as: outsourcing, increased dependence on suppliers, economic and political crises, to which the chain is exposed.

Although Lean Manufacturing has becoming an important theme of research, the connection between Lean and Green on the supply chain is still a topic recently studied. The main objective of this research is to identify methods used in order to identify wastes in Lean and Green areas and also discuss the synergies and differences between all methodologies available in current literature. This chapter is constructed to address four primary issues: (i) Collect research on databases and categorize the main articles already published; (ii) Understand the most significant journals, contributing authors, and relevant articles commonly cited; (iii) Analyse results and contributions from each article and comment on a relationship between the articles; and (iv) Reach conclusions that direct the focus to future research. Studies were elicited from significant research databases. 19 articles were chosen as most relevant, and we observed that almost 50% of the articles were published within the last three years (2014–2016). As main results we can highlight that the methods for deployment of Lean and Green philosophies need to be spread across the industries. The US Toolkit is the most used methodology, and Sus-VSM methodology appears to be the latest, trendiest topic. The majority of Lean and Green researchers on the supply chain do not use VSM techniques for systematic waste elimination; instead, waste searching and elimination is done without a specific methodology. During this research, we identified some essential points for Environmental VSM techniques, including the importance of connection with other methodologies/policies and the importance of establishing correct indicators. The main indicators found were: Energy consumption (kwh), Water Consumption (kg or litters), Raw material consumption (kg), emissions (kg or kg CO2) and garbage (kg). Beyond that, case studies need to pursue wider and deeper applications that technically show the improvements and benefits of using sustainable VSM. Practitioners of Lean Manufacturing need to add environmental tools into their research on supply chains, because utilizing such tools can lead companies to reach their environmental goals and can improve society to more effectively use resources.

Vaccines are perishable products consisting of antigens that degrade and lose potency when exposed to temperatures outside the specification limits. The storage system and transport of vaccines is a recurring concern for several Brazilian and international organizations. These products should be well maintained throughout the cold chain, respecting rigorously its temperature limits determined by the manufacturer. Thus, this work aims to analyze the Brazilian vaccine cold chain, in order to understand the problems and suggest improvements. Main contributions of this research are: (i) information management improvement, in order to provide demand data accuracy; (ii) development of a demand forecast model, able to cover all the cold chain; (iii) routine vaccination schedule solution as a way of reducing multi-dose vaccines waste; (iv) new national distribution centers and (v) packaging improvements.

Additive Manufacturing adoption has been growing in adoption in the last decades, holding the potential to fundamentally transform traditional production systems. Yet, its prospected impact on Production Systems and Operations Strategy is controversial. This article contributes to this debate by examining and summarizing the prospected impact of Additive Manufacturing on Production Systems, in the light of the Competitive Dimensions through a Systematic Literature Review. In particular, this paper organises this debate by highlighting the specific impacts prospected by the literature for each competitive dimension.

A heuristic method is presented to solve the problem of timetable planning in a courier network. In a problem involving goods transport by routes on a network, the departure, transshipment and arrival times must be obtained for each node on the network. Transportation is via several types of transport vehicles with different capacities (generally multimodal). The vehicles must comply with a timetable that guarantees the connections at the points of transshipment while simultaneously ensuring that the greatest amount of merchandise is collected at each node. This problem can be generalized for other transport networks with transshipment stations for passengers or goods.

When a forest fire occurs, to cope with this disaster a range of facilities are needed. Although these facilities may be efficient, their usages should be coordinated according to the requirements needed for a particular forest fire. Initiating firefighting activities on time, especially arrival of fire water tender and the ground team onto fire areas in critical response time is crucial for effective fighting against forest fires. Additionally, when multiple fires occur during a dry season, the response planning, and coordination become vital to fighting fires. Therefore, emergency response planning/coordination gains paramount importance while firefighting. This study focuses on one of the most important aspect of the wildfire response phase: initial emergency response in fixed regional forest directorates and airports. In this study, a heuristic methodology is proposed to solve this problem with real map data by using Network Analyst toolbox under ArcGIS program, which is used to determine optimum route that minimize arrival time to forest fires. To show the applicability of the proposed methodology, forest fire data that was collected in Turkey is used.

Although RFID has matured over the years, it still presents some drawbacks. One of its crucial limitations is its high cost implementation for most companies. In order to solve that, the open-source prototyping electronic platform, Arduino has been used worldwide. However, studies on the use of Arduino and RFID have been scarce yet. Hence, this paper aims to analyze the state of art on these technological tools so that other authors can use it in their papers review. The research was carried out through a structured literature review, in February 2017, using the database Scopus. As a result, it was obtained 59 papers, published from 2007 to 2016. Then, relevant papers, main countries, areas of application, and papers per year analyzed.

Change in products, process, technology and markets are significantly contributing to an increase in the uncertainty level of the Supply Chain. The result is that the companies must take decisions with less information or more ambiguous, on shorter times and with higher penalty costs. In the agri-food sector, managing the uncertainty is especially important, not only to control the effects of these factors, but also because it is a sector characterized by the existence of large sources of uncertainty throughout the process, from the growing in the countryside to the conservation in the retailers’ shelves, with perishable products, special transport requirements or treatment of products that can suppose health risks. In this paper, a framework of analysis is presented to evaluate the impact of the sources of uncertainty on three key aspects (quantity, quality and time) for each of the stages of AF-SC and at each decision level (strategic, tactical and operational).

In the quest for greater competitiveness or profit, organizations often resort to using structured methods to achieve reductions in their costs and expenses. In this way, the objective of this article is to show that, concurrently with efforts to reduce operating costs, it is plausible to achieve, even if involuntarily, significant environmental improvements. This verification could be carried out through a case study in a furniture industry of the Brazilian furniture sector in which the ecodesign was adopted to obtain reduction of the operational costs. Once the implementation of ecodesign in a product line was completed, even without considering the environmental aspects, it could be verified that they also presented significant gains to the improvement of the environment.

The production strategy leads the companies to stand out through their competitive priorities, which presents the relevant element in the strategy of development. Therefore, the present study has as objective to analyse which the competitive priorities the hotel sector has used to get strategic advantage in the market. The research was conducted in Sinop, city in the north of the Mato Grosso state–Brazil. The methodology is characterized as exploratory research, using the theoretical and methodological assumptions of qualitative approach for comprehension of the studied phenomenon. In conducting of the research were listed five hotels of the city, in which were applied questionnaires to fulfil the objectives. To the analysis were chose the following priorities: velocity, reliability, cost, quality and flexibility, according to Slack et al. (Administração da Produção. Atlas, São Paulo, 2009). With that, it was possible to identify that the quality is the competitive priority that is most present in the researched companies. It was also found that the greater hotel demand is from business tourists.

Design thinking is an iterative approach that contrasts with the conventional new product development process, which is considered a linear process. The purpose of this study is to look into the use of design thinking as an approach to improve the new product development process by finding the motivators that encourage and the barriers that restrain the use of the methodology in NPD. A systematic literature review was used as method. Some of the main motivators found include an improvement to innovation results and greater understanding by users. The major barriers that may restrain its use derive from the teams’ fear of failing and improper implementation. Understanding such factors may help companies that wish to use the approach, or even prevent potential mistakes and giving up.

The objective of this research was to apply the total productive maintenance analyzing the performance of the autonomous maintenance pillar in a pilot manufacturing industry. The case study used as a procedure with the nature of research as applied quantitative approach. The results showed that even the pillar of autonomous maintenance, being the process of training, in order to make operators able to promote changes in their work environment that guarantee high levels of productivity, it needs the support of the basic pillars. Without them, such pillar would not have the necessary conditions to act in the planning of application of the methodology. The overall equipment efficiency had its value maximized by 30% in two and a half years, indicating that had its productive capacity high, enabling the increase in the organization’s revenues.

The cosmetics industry demands large amount of water: for this reason, companies have implemented strategies to reduce consumption. A comparative study among three companies located in Brazil showed that the use of clean-in-place routine was the strategy that led to a more significant reduction in water consumption.

Japanese industries had been developed quality improvement programs since the 1950s, developing long terms in Quality Engineering. Considering A3 Thinking and following Toyota’s original idea, every business problem can and should be captured on a single sheet of paper. Therefore, a case study was carried out in company located at Panambi, RS–Brazil. The first step was a pilot project in a specific product line, with the objective of knowing the Lean philosophy. After the results of this step, the method developed for the implementation of the Lean philosophy were structured in projects with a duration from 10 to 12 months, conducted by a multidisciplinary team. At the end, it is noted that the company has expanded and implemented the Lean philosophy for 25% of its production lines and 10% of its employees have already qualified for participation in any of the 11 projects developed over the last 3 years.

The extra costs (hidden costs) incurred in international engineering projects are an element of great relevance from the perspective of project management. These costs have been analysed generally from case-specific perspectives, being necessary the development of a theoretical model that contemplates these hidden costs studying and explaining their nature. In this sense, it is interesting to take advantage of the growing literature on hidden costs associated with offshoring experiences (and originated in the new reshoring trend). Those offshoring experiences have great similarity with international projects as the problems faced come from the same international-related factors. Thus, this paper explores into that literature developing a theoretical model for the analysis of hidden costs applicable to international engineering projects. The model is based in the analysis of the causes of those costs, the processes affected and the final impact on performance. It is finally contrasted and validated with its application to three real cases of three international projects developed by companies of the energy sector. The model is this way proved to be a suitable theoretical basis for the study of hidden costs in international experiences, and the starting point for the definition of risk analysis models to prevent these costs.

One of the main objectives of portfolio management is related to the strategic alignment of the projects with the organizational strategy, through decision making. From this premise the present article aims to demonstrate how the portfolio management influences the decision making process in the projects of a financial organization. To achieve this goal, the project portfolio management processes and their relationships with decision making were studied. The methodological option chosen was a unique case study. The collected data were treated and analysed using the technique of qualitative data analysis through five phases of analysis and their interpretations. The results confirmed that use of the project identification process in portfolio management influence decision-making and as consequence, adding value to the business. It was also possible to demonstrate moderately that the use of criteria for project selection influences the consequences of decision making, to assist in the strategic management of the organization.

China and Brazil appear as major emerging pharmaceutical markets and the literature suggests that the sustainable development of the pharma industry will depend on the pharmerging countries. The mapping of this sector in the technological and industrial scope was the objective of this work, considering international database patent analysis (World Intellectual Property Organization and Derwent) and the implementation in MATLAB® of an algorithm for scenario prediction. It was found that most pharmaceutical patents in the world are filed in the USA (23%) and Europe (29%), notably the innovation indices of Roche (1032 patents) and Novartis (671 patents). However, it was observed an estimated increase of more than 25% in the number of Brazilian and Chinese pharmaceutical patents, suggesting the dissemination of technological and scientific knowledge and an increase in competitiveness in this strategic segment.

Central and Eastern European countries are lacking well-developed home care systems that would balance quality, equity and costs even more with the advancing population ageing. In this study we propose a home health care (HHC) routing and workforce scheduling algorithm, that considers a possibility of using electric bicycles instead of the currently used combination of public transport (buses) and walking. The coordination of aims, such the optimal allocation of care resources, the reduction of transport costs, sustainability and environmental awareness is tackled.

Brazilian health care system has been going through profound changes, causing hospital institutions to adopt quality management programs. The goal is to continually improve these processes, products and services. This article analyzes the impact promoted by hospital accreditation methodology in the development of a quality culture directed towards providing services with excellence. It uses a qualitative approach, with multiple case studies, in five different hospitals, from November 2015 to March 2016. The approach was done through interviews, with the support of a semi-structured survey. The results showed that accreditation methodology is the main means by which a hospital initiates and diffuses quality management. The conclusion shows that the accreditation methodology is able to promote the processes, which give rise to the development of a culture of quality, increasing patients satisfaction.

Today’s universities are expected to simultaneously conduct teaching, research and third stream activities. These latter activities are usually materialized in the form of technology transfer activities. In a context were researchers are expected to simultaneously excel in all the tasks they perform, the scheme of incentives for the academic community is crucial. This study seeks to investigate and generate a new debate on in which activities are researchers devoting their efforts and time. In order to do so, we describe the evolution of research (publications) and technology transfer (R&D contracts and funded projects) outputs in the four technical universities of Spain. Results reveal that while revenues coming from R&D activities have notoriously diminished in the last years, the number of scientific publications has increased. These findings lead us to question whether Spanish universities are not properly aligned with industry needs, thus contradicting their raison d’être.

The herein described research proposes the development of evaluation methodologies based on designed rubrics for developing a strategy to be applied as a guide to evaluate Hydraulic Engineering Projects. These projects are present in horizontal and vertical interactions in the field of Hydraulic Engineering studies. At the horizontal level, the implementation of such rubrics can help to improve the acquisition of competences related to Design and Project in the studied matter. At the vertical level, the developing of an organized strategy can lead to a better coordination of learning outcomes in the acquisition of transversal competences according to the domain level, maintaining a uniformity of criteria within the different degrees in which subjects of this scope are offered in the UPV in its various campuses.