Optimization of export support systems: How to promote exports from Portugal to Germany in the area of information technology and electronics

This work project focuses on developing new approaches which enhance Portuguese exports towards a defined German industry sector within the information technology and electronics fields. Firstly and foremost, information was collected and a set of expert and top managers’ interviews were performed in order to acknowledge the demand of the German market while identifying compatible Portuguese supply capabilities. Among the main findings, Industry 4.0 presents itself as a valuable opportunity in the German market for Portuguese medium sized companies in the embedded systems area of expertise for machinery and equipment companies. In order to achieve the purpose of the work project, an embedded systems platform targeting machinery and equipment companies was suggested as well as it was developed several recommendations on how to implement it. An alternative approach for this platform was also considered within the German market namely the eHealth sector having the purpose of enhancing the current healthcare service provision.

Optimization of export support systems

The present paper is a personal reflection on a work project carried out to promote exports from Portugal to Germany in the IT area, under consideration of the deliverables required by the clients CCILA and Anetie. The project outcome approaches the fact that the majority of the Portuguese market players has disadvantages in size and does rarely coordinate activities among each other, which hinders them to export successfully on a broad scale. To bring together Portuguese delivery potential and German market demand, expert interviews were conducted. Based on the findings, a concept was developed to overcome the domestic collaboration issues in order to strengthen the national exports in the identified sector - embedded systems implementation services for machinery and equipment companies.

An agent based architecture to support monitoring in plug and produce manufacturing systems using knowledge extraction

In recent years a set of production paradigms were proposed in order to capacitate manufacturers to meet the new market requirements, such as the shift in demand for highly customized products resulting in a shorter product life cycle, rather than the traditional mass production standardized consumables. These new paradigms advocate solutions capable of facing these requirements, empowering manufacturing systems with a high capacity to adapt along with elevated flexibility and robustness in order to deal with disturbances, like unexpected orders or malfunctions. Evolvable Production Systems propose a solution based on the usage of modularity and self-organization with a fine granularity level, supporting pluggability and in this way allowing companies to add and/or remove components during execution without any extra re-programming effort. However, current monitoring software was not designed to fully support these characteristics, being commonly based on centralized SCADA systems, incapable of re-adapting during execution to the unexpected plugging/unplugging of devices nor changes in the entire system’s topology. Considering these aspects, the work developed for this thesis encompasses a fully distributed agent-based architecture, capable of performing knowledge extraction at different levels of abstraction without sacrificing the capacity to add and/or remove monitoring entities, responsible for data extraction and analysis, during runtime.

A technical investigation of an oil painting on copper support, including a study on consolidants for treatment

Paper submitted to e-conservation Journal: Maria Leonor Oliveira, Leslie Carlyle, Sara Fragoso, Isabel Pombo Cardoso and João Coroado, “Investigations into paint delamination and consolidation of an oil painting on copper support”.

Electrokinetic treatment of environmental matrices. Contaminants removal and phosphorus recovery

There is a need to develop viable techniques for removal and recovery organic and inorganic compounds from environmental matrices, due to their ecotoxicity, regulatory obligations or potential supplies as secondary materials. In this dissertation, electro –removal and –recovery techniques were applied to five different contaminated environmental matrices aiming phosphorus (P) recovery and/or contaminants removal. In a first phase, the electrokinetic process (EK) was carried out in soils for (i) metalloids and (ii) organic contaminants (OCs) removal. In the case of As and Sb mine contaminated soil, the EK process was additionally coupled with phytotechnologies. In a second phase, the electrodialytic process (ED) was applied to wastes aiming P recovery and simultaneous removal of (iii) toxins from membrane concentrate, (iv) heavy metals from sewage sludge ash (SSA), and (v) OCs from sewage sludge (SS). EK enhanced phytoremediation showed to be viable for the remediation of soils contaminated with metalloids, as although remediation was low, it combines advantages of both technologies while allowing site management. EK also proved to be an effective remediation technology for the removal and degradation of emerging OCs from two types of soil. Aiming P recovery and contaminants removal, different ED cell set-ups were tested. For the membrane concentrates, the best P recovery was achieved in a three compartment (3c) cell, but the highest toxin removal was obtained in a two compartment (2c) cell, placing the matrix in the cathode end. In the case of SSA the best approach for simultaneous P recovery and heavy metals removal was to use a 2c-cell placing the matrix in the anode end. However, for simultaneous P recovery and OCs removal, SS should be placed in the cathode end, in a 2c-cell. Overall, the data support that the selection of the cell design should be done case-by-case.