Uma contribuição crítica para o redesenho de cadeiras de rodas adaptadas para crianças e adolescentes com paralisia cerebral

This work was aimed at making a critical analysis of the product wheelchair, both for using four different models, which were objects of study of the dissertation of Cláudia Regina Cabral Galvão, entitled Critical Analysis of the Mobility Products Seated a wheelchair - Used by Children and Adolescents with Cerebral Palsy in Natal / RN and other municipalities of Rio Grande do Norte . This product is considered an instrument in the social rehabilitation of great importance for people with physical disabilities. This study aims to position the issue and develop comments on technical up grading of certain models according to the needs of the user. Describes features of four models in search searched through catalogs in order to know its advantages and disadvantages of use. Were presented the definitions of ergonomics and ergonomic aspects to be considered on a design, the study of anthropometry and its recommendations. Discussions the methodology of project design in two parts: the first, on the structuring of design problem (formulation, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.) And the second on the project (design and development, implementation and evaluation and solution). With that review will include the possibilities for a new redesign of the wheelchair, based on forms of adaptation in order to achieve the target that was compressed by the average population studied. Seeks to that this project makes an improvement in quality of life of people in wheelchairs by including these people in society but also the improvement of rehabilitation

Doenças sem doentes: Ocorrência de Distúrbios Osteomusculares Relacionados ao Trabalho DORT nos operadores de caixa de um banco

The changes incurred in the financial system with the introduction of new technologies and new forms of administration of banks has caused impact on the health of workers. These changes, which passed in the process of work, generate a combined share of the risk factors that result in numerous injuries and illnesses among banks, notably between the operators of banks tellers. The Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disordes - WRMD represent a group of occupational diseases always present among these workers. Because of its high incidence and the amount of financial resour envolved to manage the problem has been the object of constant study. This paper aims to analyze the bank teller activity; search the occurrence of WRMD in the activity, identifying the factors determining the occurrence of WRMD in the activity and determine the real number of touchs on a keyboard made by the operator and propose solutions that influence the reduction of illness in the workplace of the bank teller. Methodological tools of ergonomics are used to provide a broad knowledge of aspects of work that have been studied and influential in the generation of occupational diseases studied. It was found that activity put workers to serious risk of occupational diseases. As the main contributory factors and determinants for this illness: the requirements and control the numbers daily endorsements; evaluation system based on performance targets for productivity; management system at time of service to customers; work with stressful factors (broken box); excess of time worked; furniture of workstations with ergonomic inadequacies and policy for the prevention of occupational diseases inefficient. They have also noted cases of illness for DORT workers without fulfilling the legal requirement of the issuance of the communication of labour accident and without the removal of the employee of the workplace

Busca heurística através de algoritmo genético e memético com construção de vocábulos para o problema de atribuição de localidades a anéis Sonet

Telecommunications play a key role in contemporary society. However, as new technologies are put into the market, it also grows the demanding for new products and services that depend on the offered infrastructure, making the problems of planning telecommunications networks, despite the advances in technology, increasingly larger and complex. However, many of these problems can be formulated as models of combinatorial optimization, and the use of heuristic algorithms can help solving these issues in the planning phase. In this project it was developed two pure metaheuristic implementations Genetic algorithm (GA) and Memetic Algorithm (MA) plus a third hybrid implementation Memetic Algorithm with Vocabulary Building (MA+VB) for a problem in telecommunications that is known in the literature as Problem SONET Ring Assignment Problem or SRAP. The SRAP arises during the planning stage of the physical network and it consists in the selection of connections between a number of locations (customers) in order to meet a series of restrictions on the lowest possible cost. This problem is NP-hard, so efficient exact algorithms (in polynomial complexity ) are not known and may, indeed, even exist

Método de avaliação do gerenciamento de resíduos em canteiro de obras da construção civil : proposta baseada em empresas construtoras da cidade de Natal-RN

According to great concern between the developed industrial activities and resultant impacts over the environment, an association of several factors have occurred, procedures to the efficient management of the rotation between economical development and the environment have been improved. A research in field have been realized inside building sites of companies in order to provide knowledge about the implemented and accomplish actions according to the resolution from CONAMA nº307. Trough the interview among the representations of the companies and photographic survey in loco, such as, what makes the companies implement this management, reutilization and recycling, transport and disposition. The present study had as objective: analyze the insertion of the used tools to residuals management, proposing improvements, in a way that it can be easily identified during the procedures execution in the building sites of the building companies of the city of Natal/RN. To reach the goal, in the first place a revision of the pertinent literature was performed; there for, it can be seen the relation between residues management and environment sustainability, once it happens in a continued way it may prevent the waste and reduces the risk that the activities way bring to the employees, community and environment; once found the great difficult faced with regard to labors, material, equipment, project, planning, costumer s interference, furnisher. And still, it could be verified wich materials generate greater indexes of residues in the works and the main occurrences of waste and loss. However a greater transparency is needed coming from the high administration in the commitment with the continued actions, to make it so, there must be a cultural change inside the company. There for there will be a greater productivity and quality of the under taking such as costumer s satisfaction

Heurísticas usando construção de vocabuilário aplicadas ao problema da atribuição de localidades a anéis em redes SONET/SDH

The SONET/SDH Ring Assignment Problem (PALAS) treats to group localities in form of some rings, being respected the traffic's limitations of the equipment. Each ring uses a DXC (Digital Cross Connect) to make the communication with the others, being the DXC the equipment most expensive of the net, minimizing the number total of rings, will minimize the total net cost, problem's objective . This topology in rings provides a bigger capacity of regeneration. The PALAS is a problem in Combinatorial Optimization of NP-hard Class. It can be solved through Heuristics and Metaheuristics. In this text, we use Taboo Search while we keep a set of elite solutions to be used in the formation of a part of the collection of vocabulary's parts that in turn will be used in the Vocabulary Building. The Vocabulary Building will be started case Taboo Search does not reach the best solution for the instance. Three approaches had been implemented: one that only uses vocabulary's parts deriving of Taboo Search, one that it only uses vocabulary's parts randomly generated and a last one that it uses half come of the elite and half randomly generated

Análise antropotecnológica do desenvolvimento de novos produtos na produção artesanal : caso das rendeiras de bilro da Vila de Ponta Negra em Natal, RN

Brazilian craft production plays an important role in the generation of employment and income for many families in every state across Brazil. In Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, among many types found, identifies itself with the production of bobbin-lace, still practiced in Ponta Negra Village for ancient craftswomens of city that try to preserve the art and tradition of bobbin-lace. This work presents the results of an analysis conducted based in concepts of anthropotechnology, on the effects of a design workshop held with bobbin-lace craftswomen in the village of Ponta Negra in July of 2006. The workshop was intended to propose a new concept of products and a new alternative for production in the activity of the craftswomen, on the premise that the laces could be used as a detail inserted into other industrial products such as shirts, bags, towels, etc. Evaluations after the workshop showed that none of the artisans continued to work, indicating that actions focused solely on products did not generate representative results in the production of bobbin-lace. Evaluations also indicated that knowledge about the artisan's personal and professional characteristics, organization, pace, workload, and cultural and historical issues that permeate the activity are essential to the success of technology transfer, particularly when the transfer affects the craft production as it relates to the inseparable aspects of the craftswomen's work and lifestyle

Competitividade dos produtores rurais de cana-de-açúcar da região agreste do Rio Grande do Norte

Deregulation of the sugar-alcohol sector in the 90s meant that agribusiness firms begin a process of reorganization of their production structures to enhance their abilities to become competitive in the new scenario. This study aims to examine the Production Chain of Sugar cane in Agreste region of Rio Grande do Norte, with studies to contribute to the competitiveness of farmers giving grants for planning and implementing policies, programs and projects, public and / or private. The method used in the study was researching the literature on the history of sugar cane in Brazil, agribusiness management, production chains and competitiveness, in field research used a questionnaire to collect information from farmers. It is concluded that the rural producers of cane sugar in newborns are not competitive and therefore it is necessary policies and / or for private gain in competitiveness of producers and consequently the production chain. It is hoped that the study serves as a subsidy for those policies proposição

Utilização de soluções business-to-business (B2B) no segmento downstream da cadeia de suprimentos de uma distribuidora de combustíveis

The pursuit of competitive advantage is lobbying organizations to strategically plan the use of their material, human, technological and financial resources, so that it s possible to add value to the product, even when it is considered a commodity. The scenario for this planning should not be limited to the company in question, but cover an entire supply chain, which is composed of several organizations which have common goals of growth and sustainability of the market. They should form trade links, integrating the chains of individual values, in a perspective of value system. In this supply chain there is a flow of services, payments and information, as products well as. The training of these links can be supported by the adoption of a set of information technology, here called solutions business-to-business (B2B), which will be responsible for the production, storage and distribution of relevant information to business transactions between the companies involved. On this view, this thesis aims to describe the B2B solutions adopted in the downstream segment of the supply chain of a distributor of fuel and the nature of these technologies as well as their impact on the creation of value for business and optimization of the relationship between companies. This is a case study on a national distributor of fuels, from a model of research produced under the influence of theories of integrated logistics system and value of Michael Porter. The analyses came to the conclusion that information technology is perceived as an essential tool to the operation of all activities carried out by the company. Among them, at was also brought the key activities of integrated logistics: administration of applications, inventory management, management transport and customer services, which were highlighted in this study. It was also noticed that even these activities are, in principle, purely operational; they all had in the adoption of strategies for leadership in cost or differentiation, supported by B2B solutions identified, making it more conducive to business and direct customer, the clinic reseller of fuel, to obtain value and benefits of this market segment as competitive

Desenvolvimento de protótipo de cadeira de banho para indivíduos com paralisia cerebral tetraparética espástica

This study proposes to develop an equipment that attends the demands of tetraplegic people due to cerebral palsy and that promotes an adequate caregivers postural biomechanics during the shower activity of daily living. First, a bibliographic review was performed to define the terms refering to cerebral palsy, activity of daily living (specifically shower), and assistive technology, besides listing the wheelchairs made on the mainly national assistive technology companies. Therefore, this is a descriptive-exploratory study based on a literature review and on a based-field exploration research. On the field research a survey was adopted as a methodological procedure as it is related to a direct investigation related to a phenomenon, on the case, represented by the current shower situation of the people investigated in this study. Data were collected with the application of a form to the caregivers and consumers of the medical-therapeutic treatment and place used by the participants. Such form, which was made up of open and close questions, tried to identify, besides the personal data of evaluated users and consumers, the characteristics of the current shower activity, such as the place where it takes place in the house, the used equipmentS, in the case there is any, and how often it occurs. The form also was used to identify the caregivers and consumers desires and perceptions in relation to the present characteristics of the new dispositive besides the users and consumers anthropometric data. The evaluation of the results obtained through the form, together with the practice and clinical experience of the researchers and engineers involved in this study, made it possible to develop and make up a real shower chair prototype with the specific adjusts destined to adequate the equipment to be used according to the needs of each user and consumer

Análise de critérios de decisão em estratégia de arranjos produtivos locais: um estudo aplicando o processo de hierarquia analítica (AHP) no setor de cerâmica

This master thesis has the objective of investigating the strategic decision criteria of participants of Local Production Arrangements (LPA) in Brazil. The LPA s are an initiative of support agents to enterprises with the purpose of organizing joint actions for the development of groups (clusters) of enterprises. The choice of the actions is a decision of the participating enterprises and this paper aims at applying a Multi-criteria Analysis Method to analyze the criteria of entrepreneurs that are participating of a LPA. The used method is the Process of Analytical Hierarchy (PAH) and an application is presented along with questionnaires to participants of a ceramic LPA in the northeast of Brazil. The main results show that, in first place, from the implicit strategy of each enterprise there is only one objective for the LPA group and so, at the beginning, an action decided by all of them tends to favor some more than others. In second place, it was observed that there are general inconsistencies between the strategic objectives and the importance as to criteria, even though there have been cases of coherency. As the main conclusion it is pointed that the use of Methods of MCDA is useful to improve the decision making process and to bring more transparency to the logic of the found results

Aplicação da metodologia seis sigma em uma empresa de médio porte do setor têxtil

The Six Sigma methodology has received considerable attention in the last two decades. This is due to its great potencial to reduce processes variability, through the use of accurate data, facts and statistical techniques. The methodology seeks to improve the quality of products and services, maximizing the company s financial performance. Specifically, its implementation and results in medium-sized textile enterprises is unknow, although there are signs that the methodology can be applied with success. Considering this scenario, the goal of this research is to describe the application of the Six Sigma methodology in a médium-sized textile company specialized in the production of male shirts in the satate of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. First, we present a literature review, seeking to highlight the themes of quality, Six Sigma and its methodology for improvement. Then, we show the implementation of the project selected, depicting the steps and procedures that must be performed. The results confirm the efficiency of Six Sigma in providing significant gains to companies. It is observed substantial improvements in the speed of product development and the flexibility of the parts produced, reducing the process lead time from 12.5 to 6.2 days, which means a performance improvement of over 50%. This leads also to cultural and behaviour change, creating motivation for implementation of new projects and a continuous search for knowledge

Importância do gerenciamento com base em dados estudo de caso : farmácias de manipulação do Estado do Rio Grande do Norte

Last century Six Sigma Strategy has been the focus of study for many scientists, between the discoveries we have the importance of data process for the free of error product manufactory. So, this work focuses on data quality importance in an enterprise. For this, a descriptive-exploratory study of seventeen pharmacies of manipulations from Rio Grande do Norte was undertaken with the objective to be able to create a base structure model to classify enterprises according to their data bases. Therefore, statistical methods such as cluster and discriminant analyses were used applied to a questionnaire built for this specific study. Data collection identified four group showing strong and weak characteristics for each group and that are differentiated from each other

Qualidade em obras públicas: um estudo comparativo entre as metodologias Seis Sigma, ISO 9000 e PBQP-H no RN

In Brazil the theme quality in public construction has been widely discussed in the early 1990s, with the creation of the Brazilian Program of Quality and Productivity for the Habitat (PBQP-H) which is strongly influenced by the wave of studies on issues of quality in the world, such as the ISO 9000. Over the years, other approaches have emerged and been consolidated, evolving from market and customer´s needs. An example is the Six Sigma methodology. This study aims to examine the Six Sigma, ISO 9000 and PBQP-H methodologies, noting the common elements, differences, gaps and how the methods are complementary, so that with the ongoing work, proposed initiatives can be developed to improve the quality that enables its application in public construction. Still aiming to optimize the deployment of the proposed initiatives, it was performed an analysis of ISO 9001 and PBPQ-H certifications in Brazil and in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, with respect to the construction industry and a case study to identify the factors that influence the adoption of initiatives to improve quality, and check if the selected construction company is prepared to implement the proposed initiatives. This research is characterized as exploratory and applied, with literature review and a case study. The data collection instrument was a questionnaire and the statistical analysis used a multidimensional scaling method. The conclusion is that the methodologies are compatible and complementary, and their integration could potentialize the goals set. It was identified that the state of Rio Grande do Norte has a few number of certifications in construction. Nine initiatives are proposed for implementation at construction companies. In the case study it was found that the studied company would be able to implement the suggestions proposed and the requirement for certification by clients and funding institutions influence the adoption of quality improvement initiatives. This result confirms the literature which states that top management support is crucial for the successful implementation of quality methodologies

Análise da integração dos stakeholders na adoção de estratégias de marketing verde: um estudo em empresa moveleira

This master's thesis aims to ascertain how the Stakeholders interactions influence the adoption of green marketing strategies from the perspective of the Alpha Company, a furniture industry located in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The methodology has a qualitative approach and uses the exploratorydescriptive case study method as model of formal and systematic study. Following the theoretical and conceptual propositions of Polonsky (1995), Michell, Angle and Wood (1997) and Frooman (1999) as a reference base. This study identifies and assesses the importance degree of the relevant stakeholders, shows their expectations and needs and describes the tactics used by the company for the implementation of green marketing strategies. The study describes the reality of a furniture industry in Rio Grande do Norte, and shows his philosophy and background; identifies present stakeholders that influence the decision process of the company and also, analyzes the degree of importance of each group showing their needs and expectations and, finally, it states the changes in the organization with the implementation of green marketing strategies. The results it s concluded that stakeholders are taken into consideration in the adoption of green marketing strategies, even without a proper strategic perception from the company, an imperative to advance towards the adoption of the green marketing philosophy. This case study explores knowledge that may be used and suited to small companies that act in the strategic segment-trend of green marketing

A expansão da agroindústria do mel no Rio Grande do Norte

The beekeeping activity has become in all regions of Brazil until the early 80s and from 2000 to beekeeping Northeast also has developed, becoming a major oil producing honey. The Rio Grande do Norte following these developments happened to occupy fourth place in the ranking of export of honey between the states of the Northeast in 2007. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present a macro radiography of recent developments in the production chain of honey in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, organizing and discussing the information, collected in the period 2004 to 2007, as well as evaluating the prospect of the honey industry in order to provide a diagnosis able to identify opportunities and enhance the marketing of their products. From the methodological point of view, this study can be classified as a research study exploratory and descriptive by using questionnaires. The group of several studies has been productivity, production and market. Search results indicated the growth of industry in 4 years of activity by the number of beehives full and populated, infrastructure, production and marketing of the state. It can be said that beekeeping of Rio Grande do Norte, despite its potential for developing the activity comes in a different way when compared to other activities, because the actors who play to start the activity through training and to play with it in a professional manner, in addition to support staff who work in the industry