Monitoring of the dissemination of Salmonella in the chicken Frankfurt-sausage production line of a sausage factory in the state of São Paulo, Brazil

Poultry meat and its derivatives are among the foodstuffs considered by environmental health authorities to present the highest risks to the public. A total of 185 samples were collected in five monthly batches, from different processing stages in a sausage plant that uses mechanically-deboned chicken meat (MDCM) and tested for the presence of Salmonella. Enrichment was carried out in both Kauffman tetrathionate broth and Rappaport-Vassiliadis broth and isolation on Salmonella-Shigella agar and brilliant-green agar. Live Salmonella bacteria were isolated from six samples of the raw meat and from the emulsion, in batches three, four and five, but not from any sample in batches one or two. The six isolated strains were all classified as Salmonella Albany, which has not previously been reported in MDCM. of the two enrichment broths, Rappaport-Vassiliadis gave the better results. The Pattern of contamination suggests a probable common source, given that a new supplier was used in the third, fourth, and fifth months. It was also shown that the industrial cooking was effective in preventing Salmonella surviving in the final product.

Analysis of the performance of an extraction-condensation steam turbine on a cogeneration system of a Brazilian sugar-alcohol factory

In this work a detailed thermodynamic analysis for an extraction-condensation steam turbine capable to drive a 40 MVA electricity generator in a sugar-alcohol factory was carried out. The use of this turbine in the cogeneration system showed that its efficiency contributed to increase the power generation, although the condensation reduces the overall efficiency of the plant. Sensibility analyses were performed to evaluate the behavior of the overall energy efficiency of a plant with the extraction-condensation turbine in function of the boiler efficiency, the specific consumption of steam in the processes and the condensation rate in the turbine. It was observed that the plant efficiency is very sensible to the condensation rate variation and it increases when there is an increase in the demand of steam for processes.

Mutagenic activity of sweepings and pigments from a household-wax factory assayed with Salmonella typhimurium

The mutagenic activity of garbage originating from a household wax industry was determined by the Salmonella/microsome assay, using the bacterial strains TA100, TA98 and YG1024. The garbage was obtained by sweeping the floor of the factory at the end of the work shift. Organic compounds were extracted by ultrasound for 30 min in dichloromethane or 70% ethanol. After evaporation of solvent, these extracts (HFS: household-wax factory sweepings) were dissolved in DMSO, and were tested for the mutagenic activity at varying concentrations (HFS-ET: 0.08-0.68 mg/plate, HFS-DCM: 0.60-7.31 mg/plate). The colouring agents (pigments) used in the production of the wax were also dissolved in DMSO and tested with the assay. The concentrations tested for each pigment were: Amaranth: 0.46-3.65 mg/plate, Auramine: 0.15-1.2 mg/plate, Tartrazine: 0.46-3.65 mg/plate and Rhodamine B: 0.22-1.82 mg/plate. Both ET and DCM organic extracts had mutagenic activity, especially in the YG1024 strain. The pigments behaved in a similar way, demonstrating that YG1024 was the most sensitive strain for the detection of mutagenicity, and that metabolization increased the activity. Human exposure (occupational and non-occupational) to industrial residues generated during the household-wax manufacturing and packaging process should be monitored, since this type of garbage is normally deposited in the environment without any control. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Thermodynamic analysis of the cogeneration system expansion in a sugar-alcohol factory

In this work it was performed energetic and exergetic analyses of three thermal plants to assessment a cogeneration system in expansion of a sugar-alcohol factory. The initial configuration considered is constituted by a low pressure steam generator, single stage steam turbines for electricity generation and crusher, shredder and mills with mechanical driving. In the intermediary configuration, the low pressure steam generator was substituted by another which generates steam at higher pressure and higher temperature, the steam turbines for electricity generation were substituted by a multiple stages extraction-condensation turbine and the other steam turbines were maintained. The final configuration consists in the substitution of these last turbines by electrical motors. Thermodynamic analyses were performed to evaluate the equipment and the overall plants efficiencies to permit a comparison among the plants. Besides of this, some important parameters of the sugar-alcohol factories were calculated.

Mutagenic activity in waste from an aluminum products factory in Salmonella/microsome assay

The mutagenic activity of waste material originating from an aluminum products factory was determined by the Salmonella/microsome assay, using the bacterial strains TA100, TA98 and YG1024. The material was obtained by sweeping the factory floor at the end of the work shift. Organic compounds were extracted by ultrasound for 30 min in dichloromethane or 70% ethanol. After evaporation of solvent, these extracts were dissolved in dimethylsulfoxide, and tested for the mutagenic activity at varying concentrations. All the extracts from the factory had mutagenic activity, especially in the YG1024 strain, suggesting the presence of aromatic amines, later confirmed by chemical analysis. The TA98 strain also showed mutagenic activity, though it did not exhibit the highest mutagenicity index observed with the YG1024 strain. In TA100, mutagenic activity was not observed. This study should serve as an alert to management and those who are occupationally exposed, and as a warning that this type of waste should not be discarded in the environment without any control. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How the delphi and AHP methods are aiding to define the critical success factors priorities in a digital factory project implementation

Digital factory is a concept that offers a collaborative approach to enhance product and production engineering processes through simulation. Products, processes and resources are modeled to be used to develop and test the product conception and manufacturing processes, before their use in the real factory. The purpose of this paper is to present the steps to identify the Critical Success Factors (CSF) priorities in a digital factory project implementation in a Brazilian company and how the Delphi and AHP Methods are aiding to identify these CSF priorities. Copyright © 2008 SAE International.

The integrated lot sizing and cutting stock problem in a furniture factory

This work studies the integrated lot sizing and cutting stock problem, where the goal is to capture the dependency that exists between two important decisions in the production process, in order to economize raw materials and also reduce production and inventory costs. The integrated lot sizing and cutting stock problem is studied in a small furniture factory that produces wardrobes, dressing tables and cupboards and the lot sizing and cutting stock decisions are taken by the production manager. A column-generation technique is used to solve a linear relaxation of the proposed model. The computational results, using real data from the factory, show that it is possible to reduce total inventory and raw material costs when integrated planning is used. © 2013 IFAC.

FROM FACTORY-FLOOR TO UNIVERSITY

The interaction between industry and university is often discussed. Industry participants feel they do not have enough time to spend with academics because of tight deadlines to achieve your goals. The other hand, professors and his students do not have availability and resources for responding quickly to industry activities. Both sides recognize the associated problems and feel the consequences of various forms. One way to reduce the distance between them is to provide industrial labs that resemble the factory floor at the university. Thus not only students may work on a real technological base, but also the industry's problems can be brought to the university laboratory. To ensure that relevant industrial problems will be studied, the industry needs help in the formulation of the problem being researched. The graduate program of Automation and Control Engineering from UNESP Sorocaba is aimed at training human resources with skills in automation and control activities related to the development of automatic control processes, integrating electronic commands, intelligent manufacturing and industrial robotics. In order to achieve its objectives, one of the pillars of the university consists of a wide range of modern equipments and software for industrial automation, which allows the circuit assembly from most primitive until configuration and programming of a complex system of integrated manufacturing. This paper describes industrial automation equipments and laboratory structure offered to students of Control and Automation Engineering graduate program at UNESP Sorocaba as alternative to close technologies and real problems on the job until academic world. The strategic is to do students understand theory and operations in robotic and industrial automation by means to manipulating real production systems locate at university

Topics in the Routine Assessment of Newborn Puppy Viability

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

Scheduling the factory pick-up of new cars

Car manufacturers increasingly offer delivery programs for the factory pick-up of new cars. Such a program consists of a broad range of event-marketing activities. In this paper we investigate the problem of scheduling the delivery program activities of one day such that the sum of the customers’ waiting times is minimized. We show how to model this problem as a resource-constrained project scheduling problem with nonregular objective function, and we present a relaxation-based beam-search solution heuristic. The relaxations are solved by exploiting a duality relationship between temporal scheduling and min-cost network flow problems. This approach has been developed in cooperation with a German automaker. The performance of the heuristic has been evaluated based on practical and randomly generated test instances.