Is production the core competence for the internationalization of emerging country firms?

The rise of new multinationals in countries like Brazil provides an opportunity to revisit and carefully construct theories of how firms internationalize, a topic on which extant theory is weak. Brazilian firms are "infant multinationals", unlike developed country firms that are "mature multinationals". They are also internationalizing in a very different global context, and can do so on the basis of different competitive advantages than multinationals that came before. Therefore, this study aims at creating subsidies for theory building about early-stage internationalization. Emerging country firms have Production competences as main competitive asset to internationalize, what reflects their competitive positioning in home markets and their entry strategy in international markets. In the case of early-entrants - Western multinationals in the 1950s and Japanese in the 1980s - the Production competence played a key role for successful internationalization. Thus, the focus of the study is the role that the Production competence plays in the internationalization of late-entrants, the emerging country multinationals. The research design considers not only the position of the headquarters but also the initiatives of the subsidiaries and the dynamic interplay between both. The paper allows a better understanding of internationalization processes and the role of Production, when firms start building their own international networks. It brings relevant insights about the paths that are being followed by emerging country multinationals, the difficulties they find, the solutions they develop. These are important inputs not only for new theory building but also for managerial practice. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Two extensions for the ALWABP: Parallel stations and collaborative approach

In this article, we introduce two new variants of the Assembly Line Worker Assignment and Balancing Problem (ALWABP) that allow parallelization of and collaboration between heterogeneous workers. These new approaches suppose an additional level of complexity in the Line Design and Assignment process, but also higher flexibility; which may be particularly useful in practical situations where the aim is to progressively integrate slow or limited workers in conventional assembly lines. We present linear models and heuristic procedures for these two new problems. Computational results show the efficiency of the proposed approaches and the efficacy of the studied layouts in different situations. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Asynchronous teams for joint lot-sizing and scheduling problem in flow shops

The integrated production scheduling and lot-sizing problem in a flow shop environment consists of establishing production lot sizes and allocating machines to process them within a planning horizon in a production line with machines arranged in series. The problem considers that demands must be met without backlogging, the capacity of the machines must be respected, and machine setups are sequence-dependent and preserved between periods of the planning horizon. The objective is to determine a production schedule to minimise the setup, production and inventory costs. A mathematical model from the literature is presented, as well as procedures for obtaining feasible solutions. However, some of the procedures have difficulty in obtaining feasible solutions for large-sized problem instances. In addition, we address the problem using different versions of the Asynchronous Team (A-Team) approach. The procedures were compared with literature heuristics based on Mixed Integer Programming. The proposed A-Team procedures outperformed the literature heuristics, especially for large instances. The developed methodologies and the results obtained are presented.

Experimental investigations of heat transfer coefficients of cutting fluids in metal cutting processes: analysis of workpiece phenomena in a given case study

This paper reports an experimental method to estimate the convective heat transfer of cutting fluids in a laminar flow regime applied on a thin steel plate. The heat source provided by the metal cutting was simulated by electrical heating of the plate. Three different cooling conditions were evaluated: a dry cooling system, a flooded cooling system and a minimum quantity of lubrication cooling system, as well as two different cutting fluids for the last two systems. The results showed considerable enhancement of convective heat transfer using the flooded system. For the dry and minimum quantity of lubrication systems, the heat conduction inside the body was much faster than the heat convection away from its surface. In addition, using the Biot number, the possible models were analyzed for conduction heat problems for each experimental condition tested.

Transparent bacterial cellulose-boehmite-epoxi-siloxane nanocomposites

Organic-inorganic composite membranes were prepared from membranes of the bio-polymer bacterial cellulose (BC) and organic-inorganic sal composed of nanoparticulate boehmite and epoxi modified siloxane. Bacterial cellulose membranes are obtained in a highly hydrated state (1% cellulose and 99% cellulose) from cultures of Gluconacetobacter xylinus and could be used in the never-dried or in the dried state. Depending on the use of dried or never-dried BC membranes two main kinds of composites were obtained. In the first one dried BC membranes coated with the hybrid sol have lead to transparent membranes displaying a hi-phase structure where the two components could be easily distinguished, with individual structures preserved. A decrease was observed for tensile strength (50.5 MPa) and Young's Modulus (2.8 GPa) when compared to pure BC membrane (112.5 MPa and 12.7 GPa). Elongation at break was observed to increase (2.5% against 1.5% observed for BC). When never-dried BC membranes were used transparent membranes were also obtained, however an improvement was observed for mechanical properties (tensile strength - 116 MPa and Young's Modulus - 13.7 GPa). A lower value was obtained for the elongation at break (1.3%). In the last case the interaction between the two-phases lead to changes in the cellulose crystallinity as shown by X rays diffraction results. Multifunctional transparent membranes displaying the cellulose structure in one side and the boehmite-siloxane structure at the opposite face could find special applications in opto-electronics or biomedical areas taking advantage of the different chemical nature of the two components. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A review and evaluation on constructive heuristics to optimise product mix based on the Theory of Constraints

In this paper, we address the problem of defining the product mix in order to maximise a system's throughput. This problem is well known for being NP-Complete and therefore, most contributions to the topic focus on developing heuristics that are able to obtain good solutions for the problem in a short CPU time. In particular, constructive heuristics are available for the problem such as that by Fredendall and Lea, and by Aryanezhad and Komijan. We propose a new constructive heuristic based on the Theory of Constraints and the Knapsack Problem. The computational results indicate that the proposed heuristic yields better results than the existing heuristic.

Dependence of brittle-to-ductile transition on crystallographic direction in diamond turning of single-crystal silicon

The objective of this paper is to show the dependence relationship between the crystallographic orientations upon brittle-to-ductile transition during diamond turning of monocrystalline silicon. Cutting tests were performed using a -5 degrees rake angle round nose diamond tool at different machining scales. At the micrometre level, the feedrate was kept constant at 2.5 micrometres per revolution (mu m/r), and the depth of cut was varied from 1 to 5 mu m. At the submicrometre level, the depth of cut was kept constant at 500 nm and the feedrate varied from 5 to 10 mu m/r. At the micrometre level, the uncut shoulder generated with an interrupted cutting test procedure provided a quantitative measurement of the ductile-to-brittle transition. Results show that the critical chip thickness in silicon for ductile material removal reaches a maximum of 285 nm in the [100] direction and a minimum of 115 nm in the [110] direction, when the depth of cut was 5 mu m. It was found that when a submicrometre depth of cut was applied, microcracks were revealed in the [110] direction, which is the softer direction in silicon. Micro Raman spectroscopy was used to estimate surface residual stress after machining. Compressive residual stress in the range 142 MPa and smooth damage free surface finish was probed in the [100] direction for a depth of cut of 5 mu m, whereas residual stresses in the range 350 MPa and brittle damage was probed in the [110] direction for a depth of cut of 500 nm.

GREEN MACHINING ORIENTED TO DIMINISH DENSITY GRADIENT FOR MINIMIZATION OF DISTORTION IN ADVANCED CERAMICS

After sintering advanced ceramics, there are invariably distortions, caused in large part by the heterogeneous distribution of density gradients along the compacted piece. To correct distortions, machining is generally used to manufacture pieces within dimensional and geometric tolerances. Hence, narrow material removal limit conditions are applied, which minimize the generation of damage. Another alternative is machining the compacted piece before sintering, called the green ceramic stage, which allows machining without damage to mechanical strength. Since the greatest concentration of density gradients is located in the outer-most layers of the compacted piece, this study investigated the removal of different allowance values by means of green machining. The output variables are distortion after sintering, tool wear, cutting force, and the surface roughness of the green ceramics and the sintered ones. The following results have been noted: less distortion is verified in the sintered piece after 1mm allowance removal; and the higher the tool wear the worse the surface roughness of both green and sintered pieces.

Reference model for implementing an MRP system in a highly diverse component and seasonal lean production environment

Companies are currently choosing to integrate logics and systems to achieve better solutions. These combinations also include companies striving to join the logic of material requirement planning (MRP) system with the systems of lean production. The purpose of this article was to design an MRP as part of the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) in a company that produces agricultural implements, which has used the lean production system since 1998. This proposal is based on the innovation theory, theory networks, lean production systems, ERP systems and the hybrid production systems, which use both components and MRP systems, as concepts of lean production systems. The analytical approach of innovation networks enables verification of the links and relationships among the companies and departments of the same corporation. The analysis begins with the MRP implementation project carried out in a Brazilian metallurgical company and follows through the operationalisation of the MRP project, until its production stabilisation. The main point is that the MRP system should help the company's operations with regard to its effective agility to respond in time to demand fluctuations, facilitating the creation process and controlling the branch offices in other countries that use components produced in the matrix, hence ensuring more accurate estimates of stockpiles. Consequently, it presents the enterprise knowledge development organisational modelling methodology in order to represent further models (goals, actors and resources, business rules, business process and concepts) that should be included in this MRP implementation process for the new configuration of the production system.

Performance of polymeric reinforcements in vehicle structures submitted to frontal impact

Preformed structural reinforcements have shown good performance in crash tests, where the great advantage is their weight. These reinforcements are designed with the aim of increasing the rigidity of regions with large deformations, thus stabilising sections of the vehicle that work as load path during impact. The objective of this work is to show the application of structural reinforcements made of polymeric material PA66 in the field of vehicle safety, through finite element simulations. Simulations of frontal impact at 50 km/h and in ODB (offset deformable barrier) at 57 km/h configurations (standards such as ECE R-94 and ECE R-12) were performed in the software LS-DYNA R (R) and MADYMO (R). The simulations showed that the use of polymeric reinforcements leads to a 70% reduction in A-pillar intrusion, a 65% reduction in the displacement of the steering column and a 59% reduction in the deformation in the region of the occupant legs and feet. The level of occupant injuries was analysed by MADYMO (R) software, and a reduction of 23.5% in the chest compression and 80% in the tibia compression were verified. According to the standard, such conditions lead to an improvement in the occupant safety in a vehicle collision event.

Bootstrap confidence intervals for industrial recurrent event data

Industrial recurrent event data where an event of interest can be observed more than once in a single sample unit are presented in several areas, such as engineering, manufacturing and industrial reliability. Such type of data provide information about the number of events, time to their occurrence and also their costs. Nelson (1995) presents a methodology to obtain asymptotic confidence intervals for the cost and the number of cumulative recurrent events. Although this is a standard procedure, it can not perform well in some situations, in particular when the sample size available is small. In this context, computer-intensive methods such as bootstrap can be used to construct confidence intervals. In this paper, we propose a technique based on the bootstrap method to have interval estimates for the cost and the number of cumulative events. One of the advantages of the proposed methodology is the possibility for its application in several areas and its easy computational implementation. In addition, it can be a better alternative than asymptotic-based methods to calculate confidence intervals, according to some Monte Carlo simulations. An example from the engineering area illustrates the methodology.