Construção das capacidades organizacionais de tecnologia da informação no contexto dos sistemas institucionais integrados de gestão da UFRN

The IT capability is a organizational ability to perform activities of this role more effectively and an important mechanism in creating value. Its building process (stages of creation and development) occurs through management initiatives for improvement in the performance of their activities, using human resources and IT assets complementary responsible for the evolution of their organizational routines. This research deals with the IT capabilities related to SIG (integrated institutional management systems), built and deployed in UFRN (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte) to realization and control of administrative, academic and human resources activities. Since 2009, through cooperative agreements with federal and educational institutions of direct administration, UFRN has supported the implementation of these systems, currently involving more than 30 institutions. The present study aims to understand how IT capabilities, relevant in the design, implementation and dissemination of SIG, were built over time. This is a single case study of qualitative and longitudinal nature, performed by capturing, coding and analysis from secondary data and from semi-structured interviews conducted primarily with members of Superintenência de Informática, organizational unit responsible for SIG systems in UFRN. As a result, the technical, of internal relationship and external cooperation capabilities were identified as relevant in the successful trajectory of SIG systems, which have evolved in different ways. The technical capacity, initiated in 2004, toured the stages of creation and development until it reached the stage of stability in 2013, due to technological limits. Regarding the internal relationship capability, begun in 2006, it toured the stages of creation and development, having extended its scope of activities in 2009, being in development since then. Unlike the standard life cycle observed in the literature, the external cooperation capability was initiated by an intensity of initiatives and developments in the routines in 2009, which were decreasing to cease in 2013 in order to stabilize the technological infrastructure already created for cooperative institutions. It was still identified the start of cooperation in 2009 as an important event selection, responsible for changing or creating trajectories of evolution in all three capacities. The most frequent improvements initiatives were of organizational nature and the internal planning activity has been transformed over the routines of the three capabilities. Important resources and complementary assets have been identified as important for the realization of initiatives, such as human resources technical knowledge to the technical capabilities and external cooperation, and business knowledge, for all of them, as well as IT assets: the iproject application for control of development processes, and the document repository wiki. All these resources and complementary assets grew along the capacities, demonstrating its strategic value to SINFO/UFRN

Reconfiguração dinâmica de estratégias distribuídas em dispositivos foundation fieldbus para a otimização de processos na indústria do petróleo

The petrochemical industry has as objective obtain, from crude oil, some products with a higher commercial value and a bigger industrial utility for energy purposes. These industrial processes are complex, commonly operating with large production volume and in restricted operation conditions. The operation control in optimized and stable conditions is important to keep obtained products quality and the industrial plant safety. Currently, industrial network has been attained evidence when there is a need to make the process control in a distributed way. The Foundation Fieldbus protocol for industrial network, for its interoperability feature and its user interface organized in simple configuration blocks, has great notoriety among industrial automation network group. This present work puts together some benefits brought by industrial network technology to petrochemical industrial processes inherent complexity. For this, a dynamic reconfiguration system for intelligent strategies (artificial neural networks, for example) based on the protocol user application layer is proposed which might allow different applications use in a particular process, without operators intervention and with necessary guarantees for the proper plant functioning

Estimação e compensação de não linearidades inerentes aos atuadores dos processos industriais

The oscillations presents in control loops can cause damages in petrochemical industry. Canceling, or even preventing such oscillations, would save up to large amount of dollars. Studies have identified that one of the causes of these oscillations are the nonlinearities present on industrial process actuators. This study has the objective to develop a methodology for removal of the harmful effects of nonlinearities. Will be proposed an parameter estimation method to Hammerstein model, whose nonlinearity is represented by dead-zone or backlash. The estimated parameters will be used to construct inverse models of compensation. A simulated level system was used as a test platform. The valve that controls inflow has a nonlinearity. Results and describing function analysis show an improvement on system response

Controle preditivo neural aplicado à processos petroquímicos

A pesquisa tem como objetivo desenvolver uma estrutura de controle preditivo neural, com o intuito de controlar um processo de pH, caracterizado por ser um sistema SISO (Single Input - Single Output). O controle de pH é um processo de grande importância na indústria petroquímica, onde se deseja manter constante o nível de acidez de um produto ou neutralizar o afluente de uma planta de tratamento de fluidos. O processo de controle de pH exige robustez do sistema de controle, pois este processo pode ter ganho estático e dinâmica nãolineares. O controlador preditivo neural envolve duas outras teorias para o seu desenvolvimento, a primeira referente ao controle preditivo e a outra a redes neurais artificiais (RNA s). Este controlador pode ser dividido em dois blocos, um responsável pela identificação e outro pelo o cálculo do sinal de controle. Para realizar a identificação neural é utilizada uma RNA com arquitetura feedforward multicamadas com aprendizagem baseada na metodologia da Propagação Retroativa do Erro (Error Back Propagation). A partir de dados de entrada e saída da planta é iniciado o treinamento offline da rede. Dessa forma, os pesos sinápticos são ajustados e a rede está apta para representar o sistema com a máxima precisão possível. O modelo neural gerado é usado para predizer as saídas futuras do sistema, com isso o otimizador calcula uma série de ações de controle, através da minimização de uma função objetivo quadrática, fazendo com que a saída do processo siga um sinal de referência desejado. Foram desenvolvidos dois aplicativos, ambos na plataforma Builder C++, o primeiro realiza a identificação, via redes neurais e o segundo é responsável pelo controle do processo. As ferramentas aqui implementadas e aplicadas são genéricas, ambas permitem a aplicação da estrutura de controle a qualquer novo processo

Soil attributes and efficiency of sulfentrazone on control of purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus L.)

Herbicidas aplicados ao solo são submetidos à adsorção, lixiviação e degradação por processos físicos, químicos e biológicos, além da absorção pelas plantas. Todos esses processos são afetados pela classe dos solos onde foram aplicados e das condições climáticas reinantes logo após a aplicação, que afetarão a eficiência dos produtos no controle de plantas daninhas. Investigaram-se as influências dos atributos de solos e condições de cultivo na eficiência do herbicida sulfentrazone no controle da planta daninha tiririca (Cyperus rotundus L.). O Latossolo Vermelho-Amarelo Distrófico (LVAd), o Latossolo Vermelho (LVd - Distrófico; LVdf - Distroférrico; LVef - Eutroférrico) e o Nitossolo Vermelho Eutrófico (NVe) foram coletados sob duas condições de cultivo, visando obter solos com teores diferenciados de argila, óxido de ferro e matéria orgânica. As amostras dos solos foram submetidas à caracterização granulométrica, química e mineralógica e, em seguida, utilizadas no bioensaio de avaliação da eficiência do sulfentrazone (1,6 L p.c. ha-1) no controle da tiririca em condições de pré-emergência. O sulfentrazone apresentou comportamento diferenciado entre as classes de solos estudados e a sua eficiência diminuiu com o aumento do teor de óxido de ferro nos solos, na seguinte ordem: LVAd, LVd, NVe, LVef e LVdf, sendo que as variações nos teores de argila (240 a 640 g kg-1) e da matéria orgânica (12 a 78 g kg-1) dos solos não interferiram na eficiência do sulfentrazone.

A informática como uma ferramenta de apoio a inclusão do deficiente visual

An inclusive environment has its foundations in the belief that all people are entitled to participate, to live as normal a life as possible, without discrimination, especially in education. This is to ensure equal opportunities. For individuals with special needs, the use of computers and digital materials is not an alternative, but one of the only forms of access to information. For the visually impaired, they start from the beginning to enter the university, through the selection processes, not always accessible. For those who can, other difficulties arise, undermining the initial enthusiasm and generating a large rate of dropouts. In most cases, these students will depend on the goodwill of colleagues and volunteers for the reading of texts in the basic literature of the disciplines studied. The high cost of technology assisted allied to a lack of resources and knowledge of curricular adaptations, prevents many teachers help these students in an appropriate manner. This thesis seeks to contribute to the inclusion of the visually impaired student pointing alternatives that can help in caring education. The research was conducted specifically for the doctorate during the period 2001 to 2006, the cities of Natal, Salvador and Curitiba, and is based mainly on the methodology of action research. The objective was the construction of Virtual Teaching Support Center , structured in a Web portal that can serve as a resource to help support teachers, staff and other users concerned with the process of inclusion of people with needs special education, with the goal of assimilation of educational opportunities, with the support of resources and methods. The inclusion is for everyone because we are all different

Metodologia para modelagem, validação e programação de controladores lógicos industriais usando statecharts básicos

Due of industrial informatics several attempts have been done to develop notations and semantics, which are used for classifying and describing different kind of system behavior, particularly in the modeling phase. Such attempts provide the infrastructure to resolve some real problems of engineering and construct practical systems that aim at, mainly, to increase the productivity, quality, and security of the process. Despite the many studies that have attempted to develop friendly methods for industrial controller programming, they are still programmed by conventional trial-and-error methods and, in practice, there is little written documentation on these systems. The ideal solution would be to use a computational environment that allows industrial engineers to implement the system using high-level language and that follows international standards. Accordingly, this work proposes a methodology for plant and control modelling of the discrete event systems that include sequential, parallel and timed operations, using a formalism based on Statecharts, denominated Basic Statechart (BSC). The methodology also permits automatic procedures to validate and implement these systems. To validate our methodology, we presented two case studies with typical examples of the manufacturing sector. The first example shows a sequential control for a tagged machine, which is used to illustrated dependences between the devices of the plant. In the second example, we discuss more than one strategy for controlling a manufacturing cell. The model with no control has 72 states (distinct configurations) and, the model with sequential control generated 20 different states, but they only act in 8 distinct configurations. The model with parallel control generated 210 different states, but these 210 configurations act only in 26 distinct configurations, therefore, one strategy control less restrictive than previous. Lastly, we presented one example for highlight the modular characteristic of our methodology, which it is very important to maintenance of applications. In this example, the sensors for identifying pieces in the plant were removed. So, changes in the control model are needed to transmit the information of the input buffer sensor to the others positions of the cell

Uma arquitetura para sistemas supervisórios industriais e sua aplicação em processos de elevação artificial de petróleo

The using of supervision systems has become more and more essential in accessing, managing and obtaining data of industrial processes, because of constant and frequent developments in industrial automation. These supervisory systems (SCADA) have been widely used in many industrial environments to store process data and to control the processes in accordance with some adopted strategy. The SCADA s control hardware is the set of equipments that execute this work. The SCADA s supervision software accesses process data through the control hardware and shows them to the users. Currently, many industrial systems adopt supervision softwares developed by the same manufacturer of the control hardware. Usually, these softwares cannot be used with other equipments made by distinct manufacturers. This work proposes an approach for developing supervisory systems able to access process information through different control hardwares. An architecture for supervisory systems is first defined, in order to guarantee efficiency in communication and data exchange. Then, the architecture is applied in a supervisory system to monitor oil wells that use distinct control hardwares. The implementation was modeled and verified by using the formal method of the Petri networks. Finally, experimental results are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed solution

Controlador preditivo não linear aplicado ao controle de golfadas em processos de produção de petróleo

Slugging is a well-known slugging phenomenon in multiphase flow, which may cause problems such as vibration in pipeline and high liquid level in the separator. It can be classified according to the place of its occurrence. The most severe, known as slugging in the riser, occurs in the vertical pipe which feeds the platform. Also known as severe slugging, it is capable of causing severe pressure fluctuations in the flow of the process, excessive vibration, flooding in separator tanks, limited production, nonscheduled stop of production, among other negative aspects that motivated the production of this work . A feasible solution to deal with this problem would be to design an effective method for the removal or reduction of the system, a controller. According to the literature, a conventional PID controller did not produce good results due to the high degree of nonlinearity of the process, fueling the development of advanced control techniques. Among these, the model predictive controller (MPC), where the control action results from the solution of an optimization problem, it is robust, can incorporate physical and /or security constraints. The objective of this work is to apply a non-conventional non-linear model predictive control technique to severe slugging, where the amount of liquid mass in the riser is controlled by the production valve and, indirectly, the oscillation of flow and pressure is suppressed, while looking for environmental and economic benefits. The proposed strategy is based on the use of the model linear approximations and repeatedly solving of a quadratic optimization problem, providing solutions that improve at each iteration. In the event where the convergence of this algorithm is satisfied, the predicted values of the process variables are the same as to those obtained by the original nonlinear model, ensuring that the constraints are satisfied for them along the prediction horizon. A mathematical model recently published in the literature, capable of representing characteristics of severe slugging in a real oil well, is used both for simulation and for the project of the proposed controller, whose performance is compared to a linear MPC

Monitoramento em tempo real de processos fermentativos por espectroscopia no infravermelho próximo (NIRS)

A chemical process optimization and control is strongly correlated with the quantity of information can be obtained from the system. In biotechnological processes, where the transforming agent is a cell, many variables can interfere in the process, leading to changes in the microorganism metabolism and affecting the quantity and quality of final product. Therefore, the continuously monitoring of the variables that interfere in the bioprocess, is crucial to be able to act on certain variables of the system, keeping it under desirable operational conditions and control. In general, during a fermentation process, the analysis of important parameters such as substrate, product and cells concentration, is done off-line, requiring sampling, pretreatment and analytical procedures. Therefore, this steps require a significant run time and the use of high purity chemical reagents to be done. In order to implement a real time monitoring system for a benchtop bioreactor, these study was conducted in two steps: (i) The development of a software that presents a communication interface between bioreactor and computer based on data acquisition and process variables data recording, that are pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, level, foam level, agitation frequency and the input setpoints of the operational parameters of the bioreactor control unit; (ii) The development of an analytical method using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in order to enable substrate, products and cells concentration monitoring during a fermentation process for ethanol production using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Three fermentation runs were conducted (F1, F2 and F3) that were monitored by NIRS and subsequent sampling for analytical characterization. The data obtained were used for calibration and validation, where pre-treatments combined or not with smoothing filters were applied to spectrum data. The most satisfactory results were obtained when the calibration models were constructed from real samples of culture medium removed from the fermentation assays F1, F2 and F3, showing that the analytical method based on NIRS can be used as a fast and effective method to quantify cells, substrate and products concentration what enables the implementation of insitu real time monitoring of fermentation processes

Monitoramento por dgps e análise dos processos erosivos da linha de costa na praia de Pirangi do Norte - Parnamirim / RN

Through out the course of a steady increase in search and recovery of space in the coastal zone, there is also an expanding concern about the erosion processes of this area. The main problem in coastal areas is that urbanization occurs in a disorderly fashion and unsustainable, further aggravating the problems of coastal dynamics. The study area of this work is located on the southern coast of Pirangi do Norte beach to about 20km south of Natal, capital of Rio Grande do Norte in the Parnamirim City. This area has the length of approximately 1km, divided into three sections (Western, Central and Eastern) with a morphology consisting of a tableland at the top, sea cliffs in the West and Central parts and sand dunes in the Eastern section, both vegetated, and a coastal plain on the inferior part associated with the presence of beach rocks. This study aimed to analyze the erosion processes operating in the excerpt of Pirangi do Norte beach and assess the feasibility of their monitoring making use of DGPS (Global Positioning System Differential mode). During the work it was carried out a physical description of the area through photo-interpretation and site survey after measurement of the shoreline in the period between November 2004 and November 2009 and beach profiles between August 2005 and July 2006. The analysis of the results of the annual surveys showed the occurrence of variations of the shoreline along the stretch traveled. Sites are identified in advancement coast from the sea and it was verified in loco the presence of erosion with deposition of materials on the lower part of the coastal bluff, the former position of the shoreline, showing a false notion of advancing it. This leads to the conclusion that the data collected in a survey of the shoreline should always be accompanied by photographic records of the local area and with the highest rate of erosion, thus avoiding the mistake of treating the deposit materials as evidence of progress coast. At the end of the study, after a review of various works to mitigate the erosion in the coastal zone, it is recommended to the area of study the adoption of an artificial feeding of the beach, aiming the minimization of the erosive effects of the tides. Moreover, it is suggested that even the continuity of monitoring, maintenance of existing vegetation and control of the occupation on the edge of sea cliffs

A doença como ponto de mutação :os processos de significação em mulheres portadores de lúpus eritematoso sistêmico

Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) is a chronic and auto-immune disease that can affect several systems of one´s body, including the nervous system, causing several clinical evidences, which can put in risk the person´s life. Although the illness could manifest itself at any age or sex, studies indicate higher incidence among women. Its etiology points to the combination of genetic, hormonal and environmental factors. Due to the disease´s complexity, it is evident that it affects all the person´s life as a whole and not only its organic dimension. It is believed that the signification attributed to all the process of sickening influences its treatment, as well as the person´s capacity to cope with the difficulties and implicit profits involved in the process.In this study, eight women who were affected by SLE were interviewed, with the aim of examining carefully the processes of signification as well as the generation of meanings which permeate these women´s sickening processes. The analysis of their speeches evidences distinct forms of giving meaning to the process, regardless of the time of the diagnosis. The fact that the disease is incurable was shocking to all the participants, and it demanded changes in their lives, in order to detain a relative control of their condition. The majority of the participants were able to deal with these modifications, since strategies have been created to face the difficulties and thus to preserve their social life, without damaging their health. However, some of the participants did not obtain strenght to cope with the disease, eventually developing a depressive state. It is observed that not only SLE has innumerable ways of manifestation, but the experience of the illness is very subjective and dynamic. There are also several ways of expressing this experience, according to the implications in the social, cultural and economic context where the participants are inserted. This ratifies the necessity of a interdisciplinary approach to embrace SLE complexity. (310 words, 1.610 characters)

Geração de processos WS-BPEL com base em um algoritmo de reescrita de regras

Web services are computational solutions designed according to the principles of Service Oriented Computing. Web services can be built upon pre-existing services available on the Internet by using composition languages. We propose a method to generate WS-BPEL processes from abstract specifications provided with high-level control-flow information. The proposed method allows the composition designer to concentrate on high-level specifi- cations, in order to increase productivity and generate specifications that are independent of specific web services. We consider service orchestrations, that is compositions where a central process coordinates all the operations of the application. The process of generating compositions is based on a rule rewriting algorithm, which has been extended to support basic control-flow information.We created a prototype of the extended refinement method and performed experiments over simple case studies

Planejamento do controle estatístico de processos com baixa fração não conforme restrito a amostras pequenas

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Gráficos de controle de EWMA e de X-barra para monitoramento de processos autocorrelacionados

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)