Análise de Capacidade Processo Inspeção Visual

Este trabalho foi realizado no âmbito do Mestrado em Engenharia Mecânica, especialização em Gestão Industrial, do Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto. O estudo foi desenvolvido na Continental Mabor – Indústria de Pneus S.A., sendo analisado o processo de Inspeção Visual dos pneus. Face à atual conjuntura de mercado, as empresas devem estar munidas de dados detalhados e precisos relativos aos seus processos produtivos. A Capacidade instalada apresenta-secomo um parâmetro determinante na medida em que condiciona diretamente a resposta a solicitações de clientes. Esta é fortemente influenciada pelo Layout fabril, pelo que a otimização do mesmo é fundamental numa perspetiva de ganho de Capacidade produtiva. O relatório iniciou-se com a determinação do Tempo Previsto da operação segundo o referencial REFA. Seguidamente quantificaram-se as atuais perturbações através de auditorias ao processo. Deste modo obteve-se uma Capacidade instalada de 59380 pneus/dia. A análise das perturbações desenvolveu-se a partir de um diagrama causa-efeito, no qual foram identificadas diversas potenciais causas, classificadas posteriormente por uma equipa experiente e conhecedora do processo. Assim, conhecidas as perturbações de maior impacto, foi apresentada uma solução de Layout que visou a sua minimização. O ganho estimado, em termos de Capacidade, após a implementação da solução proposta é de 3000 pneus/dia. Este ganho de 5% é significativo na medida em que é obtido sem a necessidade de aquisição de novos equipamentos nem de área fabril adicional. É expectável que esta implementação proporcione ainda melhorias no processo produtivo subsequente - Uniformidade, especificamente na alimentação do mesmo. A quantificação desta melhoria, na sequência deste trabalho, apresenta-se como uma oportunidade de estudo futuro.

Desenvolvimento de programação offline e de novos processos robotizados de lixamento

Atualmente a vantagem competitiva de uma empresa passa pela sua rápida adaptação às variações de procura do mercado, sendo necessário garantir elevados níveis de produtividade e, simultaneamente, grande flexibilidade, indispensável ao fabrico de pequenos lotes. A necessidade de ajuste do processo e a diminuição da média de vida do produto levam a paragens cada vez mais frequentes da célula de fabrico para programação e afinação, com consequentes perdas de produtividade. De forma a dar resposta a estes problemas, neste trabalho é testada a viabilidade da utilização da programação e simulação offline de tarefas de lixamento na Grohe Portugal, complementando a solução com o desenvolvimento de um novo método de afinação do programa, permitindo uma adaptação às flutuações do processo produtivo. Para isso foi necessário analisar o estado da arte dos robôs industriais na área de acabamento superficial e respetivos métodos de programação. Em seguida, após um trabalho prévio rigoroso de preparação e modelação da célula de trabalho, é possível fazer a programação offline das várias rotinas e trajetórias complexas que compõem um ciclo de lixamento de um produto, contribuindo para o aumento da qualidade do produto final sem comprometer os níveis de produtividade. Nesta dissertação são descritos e detalhados alguns dos procedimentos fulcrais no sucesso da aplicação deste método de programação. Por último é feita uma nova abordagem ao método de ajuste ponto-a-ponto convencional, desenvolvendo-se para isso um sistema de ajuste automático do programa, dotando o robô da capacidade de se adaptar às variações do processo, assegurando a consistência do mesmo. Foram realizados testes em pequena escala, extrapolando-se os resultados para a aplicação deste novo método no processo produtivo da Grohe Portugal, como forma de complemento ao método convencional de ajuste ponto-a-ponto do programa, reduzindo o tempo de paragem da célula de trabalho.

Achieving better service level results, through improvements in procedures

This project aims to prepare Worten Empresas (WE) fulfilling the increasing market demand through process changings, focusing on the Portuguese market, particularly on internal B2B clients1. Several methods were used to measure the current service level provided - process mapping, resources assessment, benchmark and a survey. The results were then used to compare against service level actually desired by WE’s customer, and then to identify the performance gaps in response times and quality of the follow-up during the sales process. To bridge the identified gaps, both a set of recommendations and an implementation plan were suggested to improve and monitor customer experience. This study concluded that it is possible to fulfill the increasing level of demand and at the same time improve customer satisfaction by implementing changes at the operations level.

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.

Historic and potential technology transition paths of grid battery storage: Co-evolution of energy grid, electric mobility and batteries

Scarcity of fuels, changes in environmental policy and in society increased the interest in generating electric energy from renewable energy sources (RES) for a sustainable energy supply in the future. The main problem of RES as solar and wind energy, which represent a main pillar of this transition, is that they cannot supply constant power output. This results inter alia in an increased demand of backup technologies as batteries to assure electricity system safety. The diffusion of energy storage technologies is highly dependent on the energy system and transport transition pathways which might lead to a replacement or reconfiguration of embedded socio-technical practices and regimes (by creating new standards or dominant designs, changing regulations, infrastructure and user patterns). The success of this technology is dependent on hardly predictable future technical advances, actor preferences, development of competing technologies and designs, diverging interests of actors, future cost efficiencies, environmental performance, the evolution of market demand and design and evolution of our society.

A deslocalização produtiva em Portugal: o caso de uma empresa do setor das cutelarias

Projeto de estágio de mestrado em Economia Industrial e da Empresa

Implementation of a lean six sigma project in a production line

Companies from the motorcycles components branch are dealing with a dynamic environment, resulting from the introduction of new products and the increase of market demand. This dynamic environment requires frequent changes in production lines and requires flexibility in the processes, which can cause reductions in the level of quality and productivity. This paper presents a Lean Six Sigma improvement project performed in a production line of the company's machining sector, in order to eliminate losses that cause low productivity, affecting the fulfillment of the production plan and customer satisfaction. The use of Lean methodology following the DMAIC stages allowed analyzing the factors that influence the line productivity loss. The major problems and causes that contribute to a reduction on productivity and that were identified in this study are the lack of standardization in the setup activities and the excessive stoppages for adjustment of the processes that caused an increase of defects. Control charts, Pareto analysis and cause-and-effect diagrams were used to analyze the problem. On the improvement stage, the changes were based on the reconfiguration of the line layout as well as the modernization of the process. Overall, the project justified an investment in new equipment, the defective product units were reduced by 84% and an increase of 29% of line capacity was noticed.

Os desafios da comunicação integrada no grupo dst: fazer negócios a falar de cultura

Relatório de estágio de mestrado em Ciências da Comunicação (área de especialização em Publicidade e Relações Públicas)

A comunicação e promoção turística de Cabo Verde

Dissertação de Mestrado em Comunicação Social – variante da comunicação estratégica

Advertising bans

I show that an advertising ban is more likely to increase -- ratherthan decrease -- total consumption when advertising does not bring abouta large expansion of market demand at given prices and when it increasesproduct differentiation (thus allowing firms to command higher prices). Inthis case, the main impact of a ban on advertising is to reduce equilibriumprices and thus increase demand. I argue that this is more likely tohappen in mature industries where consumer goods are ex--ante (i.e.without advertising) similar and advertising is of the `persuasive' type.The ban is the more likely to increase profits of the firms the weakerthe ability of advertising to expand total demand and the less advertisingserves to induce product differentiation.

Dynamic price competition with fixed capacities

Many revenue management (RM) industries are characterized by (a) fixed capacities in theshort term (e.g., hotel rooms, seats on an airline flight), (b) homogeneous products (e.g., twoairline flights between the same cities at similar times), and (c) customer purchasing decisionslargely influenced by price. Competition in these industries is also very high even with just twoor three direct competitors in a market. However, RM competition is not well understood andpractically all known implementations of RM software and most published models of RM donot explicitly model competition. For this reason, there has been considerable recent interestand research activity to understand RM competition. In this paper we study price competitionfor an oligopoly in a dynamic setting, where each of the sellers has a fixed number of unitsavailable for sale over a fixed number of periods. Demand is stochastic, and depending on howit evolves, sellers may change their prices at any time. This reflects the fact that firms constantly,and almost costlessly, change their prices (alternately, allocations at a price in quantity-basedRM), reacting either to updates in their estimates of market demand, competitor prices, orinventory levels. We first prove existence of a unique subgame-perfect equilibrium for a duopoly.In equilibrium, in each state sellers engage in Bertrand competition, so that the seller withthe lowest reservation value ends up selling a unit at a price that is equal to the equilibriumreservation value of the competitor. This structure hence extends the marginal-value conceptof bid-price control, used in many RM implementations, to a competitive model. In addition,we show that the seller with the lowest capacity sells all its units first. Furthermore, we extendthe results transparently to n firms and perform a number of numerical comparative staticsexploiting the uniqueness of the subgame-perfect equilibrium.

Research- Web app for android

Application development for mobile devices has evolved substantially in recent years. Creating apps for mobile systems is becoming a standard in order to create better solutions to meet the market demand. Currently, half of the US population own Smartphones. This market comprises 150 million people, and 28% of these people consider mobiles their primary way of accessing the Web (Hales, 2013). A common feature of most websites tailored for mobile devices is that they are reduced versions of the desktop site. Several factors that must be considered when making this transition from desktop sites to mobile devices are: identifying elements from the desktop website that should be displayed on the mobile device screen; the amount of information the institution (BSU in this case) wishes to provide and designing an interface that will please the users;

Genetic variability of Brazilian rice landraces determined by SSR markers

The objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic variability of rice (Oryza sativa) landraces collected in Brazilian small farms. Twelve simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers characterized 417 landraces collected in 1986, 1987 and 2003, in the state of Goiás, Brazil. The number of landraces with long and thin grain type increased in the evaluated period, probably due to market demand. Based on the molecular data, the genetic variability increased during this period and, as per to the factorial correspondence analysis, most of the accessions were grouped according to the year of collection. The incorporation of modern rice cultivars in landrace cultivation areas and the selection carried out by small farmers are the most probable factors responsible for increasing landrace genetic variability, during the evaluated period. Genotype exchange between farmers, selection practice and local environmental adaptation are able to generate novel adapted allele combinations, which can be used by breeding programs, to reinitiate the process.

Aloittavan koivunjalostusyrityksen toiminnan kuvaus ja sen kehittäminen

Työn tavoitteena oli löytää koivua jalostavan saha-aihiolaitoksen tuotannon keskeisimmät ongelma-alueet ja kehityskohteet. Työssä selvitettiin laajasti koivunjalostukseen liittyvää problematiikkaa kirjallisuuden ja oman havainnoinnin avulla. Koivuraaka-aineen käytön lisäämiselle on olemassa hyvät mahdollisuudet. Suurimmat ongelmat koivu-raaka-aineen käytössä ovat tukkien saatavuus ja laatu, jotka aiheuttavat suuria ongelmia koivua jalostavalle teollisuudelle. Osaprojektina työssä pyrittiin löytämään kohdeyritykselle jokapäiväiseen käyttöön soveltuvat tuottavuuden tunnusluvut. Työssä käsiteltävät tunnusluvut valittiin yrityksen omistajan asettamien tavoitteiden pohjalta. Erilaisia tuottavuuden tunnuslukuja voidaan laskea kirjallisuuden perusteella runsaasti, mutta kohtuullisen tunnuslukumaaran hallinta on pk-yrityksessa resurssien sanelema valinta. Pk-yrityksille valmistetut taloushallinto-ohjelmat antavat hyvät perustyökalut raportointiin ja niistä saatava informaatio on helposti muutettavissa tunnusluvuiksi

Materiaalivirtojen kehittäminen asiakasohjautuvassa tuotannossa

Asiakasohjautuva valmistus on tämän päivän tuotanto-organisaation elinehto. Useilla aloilla kilpailukykyä ja kannattavaa tuotantoa on vaikea ylläpitää ilman asiakasohjaukseen perustuvaa tuotantotapaa. Tulevaisuuden yritys tarvitsee menestyäkseen kykyä mukautua nopeasti ja vaivattomasti markkinoiden yllättäviin muutoksiin. Näihin muutoksiin pystytään vastaamaan ketterällä tuotantofilosofialla, ja ketterän toiminnan nopealla omaksumisella onkin suuri merkitys yrityksen kilpailukykyyn tulevaisuuden kiristyvillä markkinoilla. Diplomityössä tarkastellaan herkästi markkinoiden muutoksiin sopeutuvan tuotannon vaatimuksia ja edellytyksiä. Työssä keskitytään ketterän tuotannon toimintatapojen ja piirteiden kuvaamiseen sekä niiden soveltamiseen käytännön toimitaan. Tavoitteina ovat materiaalivirtojen sujuvuuden parantaminen ja läpimenoaikojen lyhentäminen. Empiirisessä osassa kuvattiin kohdeyrityksen nykyinen toimintatapa ja esitettiin perusteltuja kehitysehdotuksia ketterän tuotannon piirteiden pohjalta. Tavoitteet pyrittiin saavuttamaan tuotantoeräkokojen optimoinnin, layout –muutosten, visuaalisten ohjausmenetelmien sekä automaattisten materiaalinkäsittelylaitteiden avulla. Työssä esitettiin käytännön toimenpide-ehdotukset, kustannuslaskelmat sekä arviot saavutettavista hyödyistä.