Industrial Engineering and Operations Management I

This paper develops a study of the concept of a one-dedicated-lane light rail system with real world data from the Valley Transit Authority (VTA) two-dedicated-lane rail system using a simulation model. The model analyzed 14 train stations in the San Jose area that included the downtown plaza. The results showed that a one-dedicated-lane is feasible even at the different service time periods that the VTA light rail encounters throughout a weekday. Statistical analysis (ANOVA) was performed on the two different track configurations, different headways, and service-time periods to determine the effect they have on train speed. From the analysis, the results showed that headway has a significant effect on train speed. Our results demonstrated a promising potential of the concept of a one-dedicated-lane Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) or light-rail system for efficient operation, as an end-state or as an intermediate state of a two-dedicated-lane, space-efficient system, i.e. 150–250 words.

This paper discusses the framework for identifying high risks in the Fluid Penetrant Inspection (FPI) of critical parts, based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Bayesian Belief Network (BBN). This topic is very important because the inspection of critical parts with Fluid Penetrant (FP) in the industry is very critical. The correct selection and use of an adequate analysis method is key to the success of the inspection. If risks are not identified and proper responses are not provided, catastrophic accidents can happen. In this study, potential risks factors and typical scenarios pertaining to FPI have been investigated based on the most current literature on the subject and validated by process experts. The combination of probability and the impact identified the most significant risks. As a result, the method revealed that the most significant risks in the FPI of critical parts are Negative Organizational Factors, Unfavorable Control/Environment and Operator Failure. The conclusion is that the proposed method is an invaluable source for safety engineers and decision makers in companies, in the sense that it augments their information and help to identify critical risks in FPI of critical factors and implement actions to avoid critical parts failure and improve the safety in the inspection of critical parts.

Numerous examples exist where teams and organizations perform at a high level only to see performance decrease over time. This phenomenon can be observed in manufacturing and engineering organizations where teams provide value to organizations through the use of tools, processes, and procedures to address customer needs. The rapid acceleration of digital innovations aimed at making teams more effective have actually compounded these problems by increasing the complexity of a task while ignoring the capability of the team to harness these new tools. The aim of this paper is to provide managers with a theoretical analysis of how sociotechnical interactions influence team and organizational performance within a larger context of environmental demands. This paper will propose a team process capability model to explain how dynamic social and technical interactions coupled with organizational decision-making influence team and organizational performance. The model will illustrate how team social and technical system interactions are influenced by managerial decisions which subsequently influences its performance. The concept of requisite process capability will be introduced to the reader within the context of resiliency factors such as dynamic capability and environmental uncertainty. Academic readers can benefit from this paper through applying the concepts within this paper to future research related to sociotechnical and organizational interactions. Managers can use the information shared in this paper to improve his or her understanding of how team performance is influenced by such systemic changes as digital and technical innovations or system complexity.

With the issue of sustainability on the rise, companies are beginning to take measures to mitigate the environmental impacts generated by the production process. In addition, legislation is becoming more severe on environmental issues, and this factor involves the correct disposal of waste produced by companies. Thus, the reverse flow of the products for their recycling becomes more and more important every day. From the knowledge of the costs involved in this reverse flow, the company can better understand this process and implement improvements in order to reduce waste. The objective of this work is to map the reverse logistics of an industrial packaging company in northern Santa Catarina, Brazil. The data were obtained by means of a case study. From the RL mapping it was possible to raise the costs involved in this practice and distribute them to the logistics activities involved. After analyzing these costs, it was verified that the reverse logistics can generate positive revenue for the company, besides generating environmental and social gains.

In last years, the market penetration of the Additive Manufacturing (AM) processes in aerospace industry is continuously growing, if on one hand the advantages of AM process are indisputable under technological perspective, on the other hand the costs due to AM process are quite variable and, in many cases, identifying a preliminary cost estimation is very difficult. Indeed, engineering and manufacturing costs are strongly dependent by complexity and by specificity of the part to be manufactured. The purpose of this paper consists in developing a cost model based on a computational algorithm that allows to quickly asses the overall cost due to design and production of part by means of one of the most recently AM technology (Wire+Arc AM). Consistently, the model is adopted for evaluate and compare the process costs due to production of a batch of aerospace parts, adopting both Wire+Arc AM (WAAM) and traditional machining technologies. The results of the experimental study conducted, show that the most cost-effective technology, between WAAM and traditional machining, is strongly depending on batch size to be manufactured.

Blood donation is considered a safe procedure. Injuries are not common during blood donation and are most frequently fainting or minor bruising. Blood donation does, however, lower iron stores. Recently, Canadian Blood Services announced plans to increase the deferral period for females from 56 to 84 days between consecutive donations to avoid the risk of anemia. The change will reduce the number of collections that can be obtained from women. Lost donations have both a permanent component in terms of fewer donations, as well as a transient effect, due to the timing of the last donation by female donors prior to the implementation of the deferral change. In this paper, we present a forecasting model and optimization routine to identify donor requirements following the change in deferral durations. Model results suggest that the deferral change should be phased-in as female donors book new appointments. Phasing in the policy change reduces the need for newly recruited donors by 5–10%. Nevertheless, a substantial recruiting effort will be required for the first five weeks following the deferral change. Results also show that 32,000 to 35,000 additional donations will be required to during that period. These results were subsequently adopted by CBS, as donation targets following the change in deferral policy and the figure of 35,000 additional donations has been widely quoted in the press.

After the fact of the Internet Bubble, the technology companies, especially the Internet companies, were characterized as a sector of greater risk when compared to the other consolidated sectors. Thus, the present study aims to analyze whether the market risk of companies in the internet sector is still higher than companies in consolidated sectors. For this comparison, the Value-at-Risk (VaR) risk management method was used, which summarizes, in a single number, the worst expected return within certain confidence intervals and time. This methodology was applied to two groups: internet companies, traded in NADASQ, and companies in consolidated sectors, such as consumer goods, manufacturing, financial services, among others, traded on the NYSE. Samples are divided between 2000–2007 and 2008–2014 periods to compare behavior over time. The final result suggests that Internet companies still had a higher market risk than firms in consolidated sectors, but this risk decreased substantially between the periods studied.

Construction companies have been searching for alternatives to increase their profits margins, based on reducing costs, raising productivity, technological solutions and management of production. The sector finds in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system the possibility of controlling and managing the execution of the works on any work step. The ERP, through comercial software packages for the construction industry, operate in an integrated network. The tool has been used by companies in the construction industry to make production and management more efficient. The ERP system has been used by companies in the construction industry to make production and management more efficient. However, implanting this system provokes a great organizational change, which justifies why some companies achieve good results while others do not. The objective of this article is to identify which variables regarding implantation, management and performance of the ERP system interfere in the organizational maturity of a construction company. It has been proven that construction companies with ERP system have more developed aspects of organization and similar management processes. These construction companies distinguish themselves for their bigger integration between processes and departments; a better information flow; and a higher formalization of activities, projects, processes, company positions and functions.

In today’s world, innovation is a very important force to enable companies to survive. It is no longer enough for companies to develop products or services using only their internal resources. For this reason, companies are receiving support from external sources in order to save time and cost while continuing innovation activities. This approach is an open innovation approach that includes customers, suppliers, consumers and other firms. In recent years it has been observed that companies that adopt open innovation are ahead of the competition. Choosing effective strategies and practices when networking with external partners plays an important role for success. In this study, 20 large companies interested in open innovation in America were selected and criteria they consider when creating their open innovation networks and strategies and practices they use were investigated. After reviewing the literature on open innovation, eight criteria and fifteen strategies and practices have been identified that are effective in creating networks of companies. TOPSIS method was used as a multi criteria decision-making methods to determine the most effective strategies and practices. While the importance level of the criteria was determined, the opinions of the employees of the companies within the scope of the research were taken. Based on the results, the most effective strategies and practices when creating a network, were discussed and future work directions were highlighted.

The nations are looking for ways to increase the capacity and potential of innovation at national and international level. In order for the nations to use the competitive advantages resulting from innovation practices, a country should predict its innovation potential and hence prepare its strategic plans accordingly. The traditional forecasting methods are usually insufficient where sudden and unexpected changes happen nationwide and/or worldwide and limited information is available. The aim of this study is to provide a forecasting approach to predict the future innovation potential. To forecast the innovation potential, the percentage of enterprises with innovative activities is used as the main indicator. In the case of predicting the Turkey’s innovation potential, there exist a few bi-yearly historical data where traditional forecasting methods are insufficient. Therefore, grey forecasting approach that can handle uncertain environments is used in this study. The results indicate that the grey forecasting approach achieved satisfactory results while constructing the grey model with a small sample. In the innovation potential of Turkey, the predicted percentage for organization and/or marketing innovator is found to be highest with 60% where the actual is approximately 51%, and the predicted percentage of enterprises with abandoned/suspended innovation is found to be lowest with 6.5% where the actual is 8%. These predictions of innovation potential can be used to evaluate the effects of national and international policies within the country. Moreover, according to these predictions, the national policies should be improved to enhance the country’s competitive advantage in terms of innovativeness.

The demand for high-rise structures is having an increased spillover effect as a result of economic, physical and social needs. Due to their extended size, large impact and area of influence on the urban pattern, these buildings have the potential to improve the quality for living environment through detailed design and urban integration. On the other hand, planning considerations regarding sustainable integration of high-rises need to be considered with more detail and care than with other small-scale structures. This study focuses on the sustainability performance of high-rise building systems in the context of physical and social environmental impacts where these impacts are examined through a case study in Aegean Region, Turkey with a coastal mediterannian climate. The focal sustainability concept provided to be an observational tool to conduct a study on existing or new high-rise structures, from the architectural planning to the urban scale. This paper also examines current construction methods, design and occupancy of contemporary high-rise buildings to understand what impacts on the environment they make and also discovers how renewable energy/energy saving measure are already currently incorporated into high-rise buildings to determine what changes need to be made to build and create high-rise buildings that are more environmentally conscious and ultimately environmentally friendly.

Countries with emerging pharmaceutical market (pharmerging countries) has gained prominence in the international scenario because they are identified as the future responsible for the sustainable growth of the new medicines sale. However, there are still few studies focused on these regions, and it is of extreme interest to assess whether these countries are exploring their domestic markets. In this work, a technological and industrial mapping of the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical segment were developed through the analysis of patents data extracted from the Derwent World Patent Index platform (Thomson Reuters Scientific) as well as the association of R&D report. In the pharmaceutical scenario, the importance of European and North American industries stands out, mainly Novartis (1,402 patents) and Roche (1,380 patents), which are the pharmaceutical industries that most invested in R&D in 2017, suggesting a positive correlation between R&D and pharma innovation. For biopharmaceutical patents, the importance of Merck and the German company Sartorius Bioprocess Solutions, both with about 74 protections, stands out. The total of biopharma patents refer to only 2.2% of total pharmaceutical protections, suggesting that biopharmaceutical sector still has much to advance in innovation. Also, it was conclude that pharmerging countries, like China and Brazil, are not represented by the companies that most invest in R&D, nor do they currently stand out among the largest holders of pharma or biopharma patents, showing low exploration of emerging market opportunity.

The hybrid vehicle is a key technology in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in road transport, improving long-term environmental sustainability. The aim of this paper was to evaluate the research status of Hybrid vehicles and identify its industrial and commercial impact. Visualizations have been made from data from WOS (1900–2017) that allow us to understand the field of research of hybrid vehicles. The relationships between main institutions, relevant authors and keywords have been analyzed. Moreover, a very innovative contribution is the analysis of web indicators to quantify the industrial impact of the research. Global results show that hybrid vehicle is rapidly obtaining attention in scientific production. The research concentration is mainly in USA and China, as well as the institutions with more publications. In addition, those institutions are the ones that collaborate the most. The intellectual landscape is formed by very general terms such as electric vehicle and hybrid vehicle, but fields related to battery, energy management, optimization and design, among others, are also being studied. Regarding industrial and commercial impact, the impact on the market of USA scientific research is higher.

Identifying and assessing the influence of cultural factors in international research and projects is a topic that is becoming increasingly relevant as the world continues to globalize. Cultural values that differ across the world have a deeper influence on everyday life than many people are normally aware of. The scientific contribution of this work will be in line with other publications found in the area of management of international cultural projects with a specific aim of what steps can be taken in order to better prepare individuals working overseas and maximize their productivity. The most common country studied in the context of intercultural project development is China. However, the present research aims to establish and develop this knowledge in the context of Brazilian professors doing research in the United States through means of a survey taken by eleven Brazilian professors and one doctoral student answering both open-ended and closed questions with a numeric rubric about their experiences in the US. The results of this project measured cultural factors related to personal life and everyday working issues in order to gain a better understanding of what cultural aspects are having the greatest influence on Brazilian professors conducting research in the US. The data, consistent with much of the literature consulted for this project, demonstrated that among other areas, communication, comfort in one’s everyday working and social life, and autonomy in the workplace were considered to be of the most importance areas for Brazilians living in the US.

The waste of food represents a missed opportunity to feed the growing world population. This is the main reason why member states of the European Union are committed to halve the food loss and waste by 2030. To reach this goal, researchers and practitioners are working to find solutions on the level of prevention of food loss and waste. However, to adequately tackling the problem, researchers and relevant stakeholders need to understand the origins of food loss and waste for the different stages of the supply chain. To help with that, this paper reviews the main causes of food loss and waste for each stage of the supply chain. In conclusion, the most urgent causes of food loss and waste to tackle seem to be the demand forecasting, the handling and operational bad practices, the specifications set by retailers regarding weight, size and colour, and the decay of the products quality. Therefore, since these are common to almost all stages of the supply chain, researchers and practitioners should form multi-disciplinary teams to develop solutions for food loss and waste prevention, based on concepts of supply chain cooperation and coordination, seeking to improve the organization and the visibility of information along supply chains.

To perform maintenance, the prioritization of sectors on power distribution networks still has been a challenge for managers and maintenance engineers. It should consider relevant aspects of the sectors, such as population density, the number of hospitals, and the number of schools, among others. In order to guarantee facilities reliability, this paper presents a proposal for this problematic by developing a Load Areas-sorting methodology to improve maintenance decisions on power distribution networks. It uses multi-criteria approach; characterizing criteria and weights. The initial phase of the methodology was concerned with defining of relevant operational criteria, suggested by the literature, as well as admitting new criteria that the decision makers may be deemed necessary in each scenario. The main objective was the obtaining comparison parameters to determine critical Load Areas by the occurrence of failures and allocate these areas in priority classes. An application was performed by collecting data from an electric power company in Brazil. For this application, the classes suggested were: High, Medium, and Low priority. Thus, each Load Area was allocated in a priority status regarding its importance to the company and community. The multi-criteria method used in this phase was ELECTRE TRI. With this development, it was possible to know the most critical area equalizing the decision maker’s view and operational indicators. Thus, the maintenance developments can be updated with this methodology, providing sustainability in electricity distribution by adjusted maintenance actions.

This research aims to propose a model for predicting the time performance of a mechatronic new product development. The proposal consists in a System Dynamics model to support the planning and execution phases of projects by simulating the influence of product complexity and team seniority on project times for a previous defined quality requirement. The proposed model adopts seniority and complexity as the variables to relate time and quality demands of mechatronic projects. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model, we tested it on a development project of a medical product: a Retinography device. The results of applying the proposed model made it possible to foresee the development time with a success rate of 100%. Thus, using the model, a given company could use complexity and seniority parameters, based on the project team composition and a list of product components for accurately foreseeing the time a product development project would take.

The current context of the furniture industry is represented by a competitive and demanding consumer market and the consequent need for modernization and implementation of methods and tools that contribute to a lean and efficient management, cost reduction and an increase of quality and productivity. This research aims to analyze the results obtained with the application of Lean Manufacturing in the inventory management of a furniture industry. A qualitative research strategy was adopted, in two phases, initially a literature review, followed by a case study in a Brazilian furniture company. The use of Lean Manufacturing principles, techniques and tools such as Value Stream Map, organization of productive process with Kanban, levelling of production with Heijunka, and percentage of inventory accuracy calculation helped significantly the company to identify and eliminate waste that was affecting process performance. Results were positive with an eight times reduction of the finished product inventory (almost 88% reduction) and lead time two and a half times smaller in the administrative management flow of inventory, even with addition of processes and people.

In most real cases the problem of scheduling operations are sequence dependent, that is, the setup time depends on the sequencing of tasks/batches in the machine. Given the current industrial manufacturing trends and requirements such as high variability, customization and reduction of product life cycles, organizations seek to implement new methodologies to adapt and respond with more flexibly to new demands of the global markets. Thus, this work sought to analyse, inspired by a real case of the textile industry, how production scheduling can be understood as a complement to SMED in order to achieve productivity improvement. In the case under analysis we presented the problem of scheduling tasks in uniform parallel machines with sequence-dependent setup times. The main objective of this work was to minimize the total production time. To this goal, optimization heuristics were used, in this case, simulated annealing algorithm, that demonstrated how the use of heuristics can be an advantage to reduce setup times when associated with other methodologies such as SMED.

Employee involvement is considered as an active quality management (QM) principle, once: it is related with a key asset of organizations—the human resource; it is the base to implement the other QM principles; and it is linked also with the customer satisfaction. This paper discusses this QM principle, since it definition, the relationship with the others principles and the TQM fundaments, putting the focus on real context practice that could be promoted to implement it in a systematic and efficient way. Was developed a case study, an intrinsic study, in an automotive Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) where was performed a project designated Quality Box (QB). The research has as main contribution to support the QB implementation project, in a real case context, highlighting the bridge between industry and academy. Contributes, also, to the dissemination of real good set practices integrated in the QB project, which could inspire other organizations. The originality of this work is justified by the relation that is established between the implementation of QM principles with the quality management approaches and its dimensions. Focusing the importance that all activities related to quality management, need to know, understand and integrate a multiple approach of quality. The work also highlights the relevance of employee involvement in the Digital transformation era, concluding that more automated processes require more “humanized” workers.

This research aimed to provide an integrating model for the principle contributions of the scientific literature on software metrics with an impact on that field. Software metrics has emerged as a crucially important aspect of software development planning insofar as indicators representing development costs and the effort involved are essential for the formulation of new systems proposals and the analysis of the systems already in use inside organizations. To that end an exploratory, quantitative, bibliometric study was carried out using the Theory of the Consolidated Meta-analytic Approach. The study retrieved 658 relevant registrations from the Web of Science database for the period 2010–2018. The main contributions and most important approaches are presented together with an integrating model with three main classifications (a) Metrics for Quality in Cloud (40.93%), (b) Software Metrics as Technique (29.30%), and (c) Current Uses of Software metrics (29.77%). In addition the taxonomy of the most cited articles was established and comparisons were made with the results from multi-language databases like Scopus and Google scholar.

The search for excellence, related to the processes, products and services quality and to the market requirement, makes organizations to implement their Quality Management Systems (QMS). In this context, with ISO 9001 standard revision, published in 2015, a new requirement is established: risk-based thinking. The main focus of this article is to provide information, by doing a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), about the state of the art of Risk and ISO 9001 standard, identifying the risks’ approaches used by the organizations and finding gaps and inconsistencies in the literature. This SLR was conducted as follows: (a) establishing the research main question; (b) locating studies (defining the research sources, timing and criteria); (c) analysis and synthesis (supported by QSR NVivo); and (d) findings and conclusions. The main field of research was chosen to answer the question “what kind of methodologies and methods, companies that have a QMS based on ISO 9001 can use as a support to the risk-based thinking requirement?” The paper’s aim is also to contribute with companies who are looking forward to implement the Risk Management in their processes.

The technological advances of the Digital Era can be a success depending on the quality of the data for decision making. There are many opportunities to invest in solutions for quality improvement. Many technologies promise to identify faults and even resolve them automatically. There is a gap in identifying the criteria that support decision making. It has been perceived the need to describe how the flow is for decision making of quality improvement projects and innovation within an automotive company. The purpose of this article is to examine and identify how an industry, which invests in high technology, is addressing the advances of these technological transformations. The applied methodological design is the explanatory research carried out in the form of a case study through the combination of document analysis, direct observations and semi-structured interviews. The contribution of this research highlights the importance of using criteria that best demonstrate the benefits, constraints and risks in the decision-making process for solving quality problems with the adoption of new technological resources. The main results indicate a convergence with the already existing data in the literature, considering, for example, the local culture. There is a need to consider other criteria to better inform decision-making in the adoption of technological artifacts.

The aim of this article is to analyze the efficiency of the provision of healthier foods for public school students whose offer was made by family farmers. The importance of this work stems from the need to change the eating habits of children and young people, based on the assumptions of Food Security. In addition, proving the efficiency of small farmers is important to encourage Solidarity Economy projects in order to raise the incomes of the poorest workers. We use Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a research method, through the Variable Returns of Scale (VRS) model oriented to the output. The choice of this model is justified because it takes into account the scale of production and the need to increase the number of schools served by small farmers. Our results show that small producers are efficient especially in agricultural products (Vegetables, Tuberous vegetables and Fruits). On the other hand, more elaborate products (Canned food, Flour and semolina, Dairy products) did not reach the efficiency. This result shows that schools can be supplied with fresh and healthy food from the region itself, benefiting the health of children and young people and the economy of small local farmers.