João Bastos

Using an informal ontology in the development of a planning and control system—the case of the virtual enterprise

This paper describes a preliminary experience in trying to improve the communication and to reach language agreements in the context of a large R&D trans-national project, comprising partners with different academic and industrial cultures. This kind of projects has difficulties in that, besides cultural and language problems, the project teams undertake work largely by themselves, with reduced interaction with each other. The use of ontologies has a great potential in reducing those problems. Within this research work our goal is to extend the communication role of an ontology towards the mediation of the development actors “world views”. In doing so, we intend to improve the engineering of an intrinsically complex software system, particularly in the requirements identification, system specification and system design phases, overcoming some of the referred difficulties. It is presented an extract of the Virtual Enterprise ontology currently under construction, focusing in some core definitions relevant for the purpose of developing a distributed planning and control software system. An example concerning the development of such a system is described in order to demonstrate the usefulness of the ontology based systems development.

Analyzing preemptive fixed priority scheduling of data flow graphs

Data flow graphs can conveniently model embedded streaming applications (ESAs) that are typically implemented as networks of concurrent tasks having an iterative pipelined execution, where the activation of each task may be conditioned by intra- and inter-iteration data dependencies. We propose a novel analysis approach for preemptive Fixed Priority Scheduling (FPS) of multiple ESAs assuming a fixed mapping of tasks onto the processors of the underlying Heterogeneous Multi-Processor System-on-Chip (HMPSoC). The tasks of an ESA are event activated, have varying execution times, and participate in cyclic dependency chains such that they may not have an activation pattern that can be depicted using traditional periodic / sporadic event models. Instead we propose to characterize the data flow graphs of ESAs to upper bound the load they impose on a processor and use it to compute the worst-case response time of an actor executing on that processor at a lower priority. We show that ours is a generic approach for analyzing FPS of data flow graphs. We also propose a refinement of our technique for graphs with a dominant periodic source. We demonstrate our improvement over the state-of-the-art FPS analysis for data flow in our experiments.

Managing Performance to Align the Participants of Collaborative Networks: Case Studies Results

The paper underlines the interest of using a performance management system applied to monitor the strategy effectiveness and the interoperation’s performance in the collaborative networks (CN). The aim with this study is to verify if a performance management system helps decision-makers reach the alignment among participants in a collaborative network. It is expected that this work provides an adequate tool for supporting quick decisions to meet the feasible and desirable improvements in inter-organisational processes. A framework (CNPMS) is also presented, having been developed to support the dynamic performance management, which was applied in case studies of two Brazilian collaborative networks.

Implementation of customisation strategies in collaborative networks through an innovative Reference Framework

Abstract Consumer needs and expectations of specific target groups – such as elderly, obese, disabled or diabetic persons – are arising as challenging opportunities for European companies which are asked to supply innovative customised goods of high quality at affordable price. This is particularly true in the fashion as well as in the orthopaedic sector where there are many different competences to conjugate to offer dedicated products to the mentioned target groups. This paper aims at proposing a reference model to support companies in defining collaborative supply networks for customised production. In particular, this work describes the implementation of the developed model in a real case highlighting the changes implied at network level to address the need for fashionable and healthy products.

Reference Model Framework for Production of Small Series of Innovative and Fashionable Goods in Manufacturing Networks

In fashion business, consumer needs and expectations of specific target groups—such as elderly, obese, disabled, or diabetic persons—are arising as challenging opportunities for European companies that are asked to supply small series of innovative and fashionable goods of high quality, affordable price and eco-compatible. This paper aims at proposing a reference model to support collaborative supply networks in addressing the need for Fashionable and Healthy Clothing and Footwear products. In particular this work describes the implementation of the model in a real case highlighting the developments and changes implied at network level.

Lean Learning Academy: An innovative framework for lean manufacturing training

Worldwide competitiveness poses enormous challenges on managers, demanding a continuous quest to increase rationality in the use of resources. As a management philosophy, Lean Manufacturing focuses on the elimination of activities that do not create any type of value and therefore are considered waste. For companies to successfully implement the Lean Manufacturing philosophy it is crucial that the human resources of the organization have the necessary training, for which proper tools are required. At the same time, higher education institutions need innovative tools to increase the attractiveness of engineering curricula and develop a higher level of knowledge among students, improving their employability. This paper describes how Lean Learning Academy, an international collaboration project between five EU universities and five companies, from SME to Multinational/Global companies, developed and applied an innovative training programme for Engineers on Lean Manufacturing, a successful alternative to the traditional teaching methods in engineering courses.

Customer-Oriented and Eco-friendly Networks for Health Fashionable Goods – The CoReNet Approach

The design, production and distribution of small series of health fashionable goods for specific target groups of wide impact in terms of market for the European industry as elderly, disables, diabetics and obese people represents a challenging opportunity for European companies which are asked to supply the demand with affordable price and eco-compatible products. Added to this challenge, textile, clothing and footwear manufactures seek for innovative collaborative networking solutions that could provide an entire digital life-cycle for the products and services required by the market. Aligned with this need, the EU CoReNet project aims to design and develop a new smart collaborative consumer-driven framework with the related services and components. This paper addresses the multidisciplinary complexity of customer-oriented and eco-friendly networks for health fashionable goods in particular addressing business requirements analysis, value chain issues, co-planning production and co-design topics in collaborative business processes tailored for high variability of the consumers demand and expectations.

Virtual Factory Framework: An Innovative Approach to Support the Planning and Optimization of the Next Generation Factories

Abstract Industrial managers are in the expectation that the new generation factories bring more competitiveness to the manufacturing companies through innovative approaches, methods and tools that support the factory planning process. The concept of “factory as a product” perceives the factory as a complex long life product introducing design advantages for factory planning and optimization, seeking to improve quality, reduce ramp-up, product delivery and overall reduce time and costs. In order to attain these objectives, there is an urgent need for an innovative and suitable Virtual Factory Framework to structure the development of new generation factories.

Collaborative planning in customer-oriented supplier networks - The CoReNet approach

Due to the dramatic change of the market competition for industrial manufacturers - especially in TCFI (Textile, Clothing and Footwear Industry) - in the recent past resulting from the globalization and consequent openness of the markets together with the financial crisis, resulted in an increased need of networked collaborative approaches and tools. This pressing need of collaboration among SMEs (small medium enterprises) is changing the overall strategic approaches of the companies in the way they address the market demand. Company managers are realizing that in order to compete in open markets with increased responsiveness, they need to develop and provide new, complex and high configurable products and services supported in fully functional collaborative networks. This paper presents a new collaborative aggregated planning approach for supplier networks, where groups of SMEs collaborate in the formation of the network, the definition of the operations plans, in replying to customer inquiries and the release of individual production orders for each unit in the network. The proposed approach promotes the definition of multi-criteria evaluated production plans through collaborative negotiation and individual capacity checking validation.

Collaborative Services for Customized Production in Networked Companies

Increasingly, consumer demand of fashionable products is arising as significant challenge for company managers. In order to respond to this demand, companies are asked to supply small series of innovative and fashionable goods of high quality, affordable price and eco-compatibility in short periods of time and with high service levels. As a result of these rapidly evolving challenges, companies are forming collaborative networks in order to design, develop, produce and distribute such products and services in a collaboratively way. These highly integrated and dynamic supply networks depend intensively in new set of tools, methods and related services in which rely the collaborative networking operation. This paper presents a specific case study implementation of these collaborative supporting services, through the realization of a collaborative portal.