Aplicação de conceitos da manufatura sustentável: pesquisa-ação em uma empresa gráfica

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Avaliação de sistemas de indicadores de desempenho para empresas da construção civil da Região Metropolitana de Belém

A globalização e a demanda de ações sustentáveis do mercado atual, exigem cada vez mais das empresas a busca da melhoria contínua. Os gestores das empresas buscam a todo o momento alcançar o máximo de resultados positivos para obtenção de lucro, com baixos custos de produção e que suas atividades sejam cada vez mais sustentáveis. A utilização de sistemas de indicadores de desempenho é uma alternativa para mensurar o desempenho organizacional, sendo reflexo desta preocupação. Este desempenho deve ser avaliado não apenas em informações financeiras, pois desta forma seria insuficiente para a compreensão do ambiente de negócios dinãmico da atualidade. A utilização de sistemas de indicadores constitui-se uma das principais iniciativas que podem ser implementadas para acompanhar a necessária modernização e evolução da indústria da construção, na busca de aumento de eficiência, eficácia e gerando efetividade nos diversos processos que constituem o sistema de produção. A estratégia de pesquisa utilizada é um estudo de caso, pois tem como objetivo compreender os sistemas de indicadores de desempenho utilizados na região metropolitana de Belém e a relevãncia destes para a tomada de decisão empresarial. Para a pesquisa foram realizadas 5 etapas: 1) elaboração de templates para coleta de dados, 2) seleção de empresas para realização da pesquisa, 3) levantamento de indicadores utilizados, 4) reuniões com as empresas participantes e 5) proposta de sistema de indicadores padronizados. Os principais resultados obtidos foram: (a) entendimento da dinãmica de utilização dos indicadores de desempenho na região; (b) compreensão do comportamento empresarial das empresas da construção civil da região metropolitana relacionados ao uso de sistemas de indicadores de desempenho; (c) proposta de um padrão de sistema de indicadores de desempenho como uma ferramenta de gestão para auxiliar na tomada de decisão empresarial. Verifica-se com os resultados obtidos a necessidade de desenvolvimento de estudos acadêmicos que estimulem a criação de ambientes propícios para a realização de práticas gerenciais colaborativas, na linha de gerenciamento da construção civil, em especial no desenvolvimento de clubes de boas práticas utilizando indicadores de desempenho.

Cleaner Production initiatives and challenges for a sustainable world: an introduction to this special volume

This special volume of the Journal of Cleaner Production is comprised of articles presented at the 3rd International Workshop Advances in Cleaner Production held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2011. The content underscores the recognition of the pressing and inescapable need for making changes from unsustainable to sustainable production and consumption patterns. The 48 articles from 15 countries provide different, but complimentary approaches to help industrial and societal sectors in advancing on their paths towards sustainability. Initiatives and challenges are included, which systematically address problems affecting raw material changes, technological modifications, product and policy changes. The findings range from proposals for alternative uses of wastes, substitution of raw materials for environmentally friendlier substances, optimization of industrial processes by source reductions of wastes and emissions and documented economic and environmental advantages of a wide array of initiatives. The roles of operational and managerial practices are also stressed, highlighting the role of diverse stakeholders as promoters of implementation and internalization of innovative cleaner technologies within companies. Systemic assessment tools are employed and experimented with in order to more effectively evaluate the environmental performance of systems on the biosphere scale. The methodological procedures and proposals presented can help in the design and management of production systems, for governmental and corporate policy development, for implementing and monitoring CP Programs, prevention and mitigation strategies, and evaluation of the outcomes of CP initiatives in the production and service sectors. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Proposta de diretrizes embasadoras para introdução de sistemas de medição de desempenho em empresas de projetos de instalações prediais

The civil construction in Brazil has grown a lotover the last years. This has caused a greater competition between companies of the sector. A little difference in quality in service or product a company offers can determine their success in the market. There is a growing demand for tools that optimize processes and bring greater quality to each activity in these companies. Performance measurement systems make it possible to control process efficiency and effectiveness using performance indicators. Considering this need, the paper before you has the objective of creating basic guidelines to introduce performance measurement systems inbuilding installations project companies. A theoretical reference is presented to describe organizational aspects of project companies along with performance measurement systems characteristics. Using a qualitative research methodology, a study case was executed with interviews, observation and document analysis as evidence sources. In the study case, limitations where identified, such as, high degree of product and process flexibility, dependence on subjective analysis for decision making and lack of specialized information systems. Considering the theoretical reference and the study case,the proposed guidelines intend to ease and guarantee greater chances of success when implanting one of these systems

Exergy efficiency analysis of chemical and biochemical stages involved in liquid biofuels production processes

Liquid biofuels can be produced from a variety of feedstocks and processes. Ethanol and biodiesel production processes based on conventional raw materials are already commercial, but subject to further improvement and optimization. Biofuels production processes using lignocellulosic feedstocks are still in the demonstration phase and require further R&D to increase efficiency. A primary tool to analyze the efficiency of biofuels production processes from an integrated point of view is offered by exergy analysis. To gain further insight into the performance of biofuels production processes, a simulation tool, which allows analyzing the effect of process variables on the exergy efficiency of stages in which chemical or biochemical reactions take place, were implemented. Feedstocks selected for analysis were parts or products of tropical plants such as the fruit and flower stalk of banana tree, palm oil, and glucose syrups. Results of process simulation, taking into account actual process conditions, showed that the exergy efficiencies of the acid hydrolysis of banana fruit and banana pulp were in the same order (between 50% and 60%), lower than the figure for palm oil transesterification (90%), and higher that the exergy efficiency of the enzymatic hydrolysis of flower stalk (20.3%). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

LALP: a language to program custom FPGA-based acceleration engines

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are becoming increasingly important in embedded and high-performance computing systems. They allow performance levels close to the ones obtained with Application-Specific Integrated Circuits, while still keeping design and implementation flexibility. However, to efficiently program FPGAs, one needs the expertise of hardware developers in order to master hardware description languages (HDLs) such as VHDL or Verilog. Attempts to furnish a high-level compilation flow (e.g., from C programs) still have to address open issues before broader efficient results can be obtained. Bearing in mind an FPGA available resources, it has been developed LALP (Language for Aggressive Loop Pipelining), a novel language to program FPGA-based accelerators, and its compilation framework, including mapping capabilities. The main ideas behind LALP are to provide a higher abstraction level than HDLs, to exploit the intrinsic parallelism of hardware resources, and to allow the programmer to control execution stages whenever the compiler techniques are unable to generate efficient implementations. Those features are particularly useful to implement loop pipelining, a well regarded technique used to accelerate computations in several application domains. This paper describes LALP, and shows how it can be used to achieve high-performance computing solutions.

An abstract machine based execution model for computer architecture design and efficient implementation of logic programs in parallel.

The term "Logic Programming" refers to a variety of computer languages and execution models which are based on the traditional concept of Symbolic Logic. The expressive power of these languages offers promise to be of great assistance in facing the programming challenges of present and future symbolic processing applications in Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge-based systems, and many other areas of computing. The sequential execution speed of logic programs has been greatly improved since the advent of the first interpreters. However, higher inference speeds are still required in order to meet the demands of applications such as those contemplated for next generation computer systems. The execution of logic programs in parallel is currently considered a promising strategy for attaining such inference speeds. Logic Programming in turn appears as a suitable programming paradigm for parallel architectures because of the many opportunities for parallel execution present in the implementation of logic programs. This dissertation presents an efficient parallel execution model for logic programs. The model is described from the source language level down to an "Abstract Machine" level suitable for direct implementation on existing parallel systems or for the design of special purpose parallel architectures. Few assumptions are made at the source language level and therefore the techniques developed and the general Abstract Machine design are applicable to a variety of logic (and also functional) languages. These techniques offer efficient solutions to several areas of parallel Logic Programming implementation previously considered problematic or a source of considerable overhead, such as the detection and handling of variable binding conflicts in AND-Parallelism, the specification of control and management of the execution tree, the treatment of distributed backtracking, and goal scheduling and memory management issues, etc. A parallel Abstract Machine design is offered, specifying data areas, operation, and a suitable instruction set. This design is based on extending to a parallel environment the techniques introduced by the Warren Abstract Machine, which have already made very fast and space efficient sequential systems a reality. Therefore, the model herein presented is capable of retaining sequential execution speed similar to that of high performance sequential systems, while extracting additional gains in speed by efficiently implementing parallel execution. These claims are supported by simulations of the Abstract Machine on sample programs.

Transformer-coupled converter for voltage modulation techniques

In high performance digital systems as well as in RF systems, voltage scaling and modulation techniques have been adopted to achieve a more efficient processing of the energy. The implementation of such techniques relies on a power supply that is capable of rapidly adjusting the system supply voltage. In this paper, a pulsewidth modulation multiphase topology with magnetic coupling is proposed for its use in voltage modulation techniques. Since the magnetic coupling in this topology is done with transformers instead of coupled inductors, the energy storage is reduced and very fast voltage changes are achieved. Advantages and drawbacks of this topology have been previously presented in the literature and in this paper, the design criteria for implementing a power supply for the envelope elimination and restoration technique in an RF system are presented along with an implementation of the power supply.

Iteración creativa. El uso de la maqueta como herramienta de proyecto en OMA

El texto aborda el uso de la maqueta como herramienta en los procesos proyectuales de OMA. Lejos de entender el proyecto como una gran elucubración individual, mística, puntual y fugaz, se plantea su visión desde los procesos diarios y rutinarios del trabajo colectivo. El texto ofrece una aproximación crítica a los sistemas de trabajo de una de las oficinas más destacadas de la arquitectura contemporanea, la reconocida OMA, de Rem Koolhaas. Además de analizar su sistema de trabajo pone el enfasis principal en el estudio del uso de la maqueta como elemento vertebrador de su práctica arquitectónica y como elemento constituyente de un lenguaje que permite que OMA cree una arquitectura libre de ataduras formales y unicamente comprometida con el valor de las ideas. ABSTRACT. The text raises the use of the model as a tool in the OMA project processes. Far from understanding the project as a great personal lucubration, mystical, punctual and fleeting, a vision arises from the daily and routine processes of collective work. The text offers a critical approach to the work systems of one of the most important offices of contemporary architecture, the renowned OMA, directed by Rem Koolhaas. In addition to discussing their work system, the text puts the main emphasis on the study of the use of the model as the structuring element of his architectural practice and as a constitutive element of a language that allows OMA to create a formal untrammeled architecture and only committed to the value of ideas.

Profiling in sport using momentum and perturbations

Examining a team’s performance from a physical point of view their momentum might indicate unexpected turning points in defeat or success. Physicists describe this value as to require some effort to be started, but also that it is relatively easy to keep it going once a sufficient level is reached (Reed and Hughes, 2006). Unlike football, rugby, handball and many more sports, a regular volleyball match is not limited by time but by points that need to be gathered. Every minute more than one point is won by either one team or the other. That means a series of successive points enlarges the gap between the teams making it more and more difficult to catch up with the leading one. This concept of gathering momentum, or the reverse in a performance, can give the coaches, athletes and sports scientists further insights into winning and losing performances. Momentum investigations also contain dependencies between performances or questions if future performances are reliant upon past streaks. Squash and volleyball share the characteristic of being played up to a certain amount of points. Squash was examined according to the momentum of players by Hughes et al. (2006). The initial aim was to expand normative profiles of elite squash players using momentum graphs of winners and errors to explore ‘turning points’ in a performance. Dynamic systems theory has enabled the definition of perturbations in sports exhibiting rhythms (Hughes et al., 2000; McGarry et al., 2002; Murray et al., 2008), and how players and teams cause these disruptions of rhythm can inform on the way they play, these techniques also contribute to profiling methods. Together with the analysis of one’s own performance it is essential to have an understanding of your oppositions’ tactical strengths and weaknesses. By modelling the oppositions’ performance it is possible to predict certain outcomes and patterns, and therefore intervene or change tactics before the critical incident occurs. The modelling of competitive sport is an informative analytic technique as it directs the attention of the modeller to the critical aspects of data that delineate successful performance (McGarry & Franks, 1996). Using tactical performance profiles to pull out and visualise these critical aspects of performance, players can build justified and sophisticated tactical plans. The area is discussed and reviewed, critically appraising the research completed in this element of Performance Analysis.

Federal white-collar pay system : report on a market-sensitive study.

"August 1989."

To learn from one's mistakes: The role of impulsivity in positive workplace behaviours

Recentiy a neuropsychological model of learning has been proposed Qackson, 2002) which argues that Responsibility provides a cognitive re-expression of Impulsivit)' in the prediction of functional and dysfunctional behaviour. Jackson argues that primitive, instinctive impulses lead to antisocial behaviours and socio-cognitive regulators such as Responsibility leads to the re-expression of Impulsivity in terms of pro-social behaviours. Study 1 tests and supports the measurement properties of the assessment methodology associated with the model. Study 2 provides evidence in favour of the instinctive basis of Impulsivity and the conscious basis of Responsibility, which reinforces the underlying neuropsychological basis of the model. Study 3 uses structural equation modelling to determine if Responsibility mediates Impulsivity in the prediction of a latent variable representing work performance, work commitment and team performance, but does not mediate Impulsivit}' in the prediction of a latent variable representing sexual proclivity, workplace deviancy, gambling and beer consumption. Results provide strong support for Jackson's model and suggest that Impulsivity and Responsibility are fundamental to both functional and dysfunctional learning

Shareholder value application in UK listed companies

This paper is based upon the initial findings of a CIMA research project into the way in which corporate performance measurement systems are influenced by the use of shareholder value management techniques. It compares and contrasts the techniques in use in a sample of 10 companies that either explicitly use shareholder value techniques also known as Value-Based Management (VBM), or explicitly do not use such techniques. The analysis undertaken is based upon the finding of semi-structured interviews with company representatives which formed the first part of the data collection process of the project. The analysis traces the interactions between corporate objectives, decision making criteria, performance measurement systems and executive incentive schemes in order to develop an understanding of the effects of such shareholder value techniques upon corporate behaviour. The literature reviewed suggests that the other aspects of the planning and control system should be aligned with the corporate objectives whether a company has adopted VBM or not. Therefore this research contributes new evidence on the use of VBM techniques in the UK and also more generally on whether VBM and non-VBM companies internal planning and control systems are aligned.

Eco-efficiency measurement and material balance principle:an application in power plants Malmquist Luenberger Index

Incorporating Material Balance Principle (MBP) in industrial and agricultural performance measurement systems with pollutant factors has been on the rise in recent years. Many conventional methods of performance measurement have proven incompatible with the material flow conditions. This study will address the issue of eco-efficiency measurement adjusted for pollution, taking into account materials flow conditions and the MBP requirements, in order to provide ‘real’ measures of performance that can serve as guides when making policies. We develop a new approach by integrating slacks-based measure to enhance the Malmquist Luenberger Index by a material balance condition that reflects the conservation of matter. This model is compared with a similar model, which incorporates MBP using the trade-off approach to measure productivity and eco-efficiency trends of power plants. Results reveal similar findings for both models substantiating robustness and applicability of the proposed model in this paper.

Signal power asymmetry optimisation for optical phase conjugation using random DFB laser Raman amplification

We numerically optimise in-span signal power asymmetry in advanced Raman amplification schemes, reaching 3% over 62 km SMF, and evaluate its impact on the performance of systems using mid-link OPC using 7 × 15 16QAM Nyquist-spaced WDM-PDM. © 2015 OSA.