CESE - Indexed Articles in Journals

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    Alignment prediction in collaborative networks
    ( 2012) António Henrique Almeida ; Américo Azevedo ; Roberto Piedade Francisco
    Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the alignment measurement in collaborative networks, using the fit concept and predictive performance measurement as its main enablers. A performance prediction approach is used in order to control a collaborative business network based not only in present and past performance measurements of each partner, but also taking into account the future behaviour of the intra- and inter-organisational processes performance. Design/methodology/approach - An exploratory case study was applied to a Brazilian collaborative network and mathematical approaches normally used in control theory were adopted to support alignment measurement. Findings - The use of predictive measurements to manage the alignment between the results of inter-organisational processes and performance targets set by the collaborative network.
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    Analysing the correlation between social network analysis measures and performance of students in social network-based engineering education
    ( 2016) Putnik,G ; Eric Macieira Costa ; Alves,C ; Castro,H ; Varela,L ; Shah,V
    Social network-based engineering education (SNEE) is designed and implemented as a model of Education 3.0 paradigm. SNEE represents a new learning methodology, which is based on the concept of social networks and represents an extended model of project-led education. The concept of social networks was applied in the real-life experiment, considering two different dimensions: (1) to organize the education process as a social network-based process; and (2) to analyze the students' interactions in the context of evaluation of the students learning performance. The objective of this paper is to present a new model for students evaluation based on their behavior during the course and its validation in comparison with the traditional model of students' evaluation. The validation of the new evaluation model is made through an analysis of the correlation between social network analysis measures (degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, eigenvector centrality, and average tie strength) and the grades obtained by students (grades for quality of work, grades for volume of work, grades for diversity of work, and final grades) in a social network-based engineering education. The main finding is that the obtained correlation results can be used to make the process of the students' performance evaluation based on students interactions (behavior) analysis, to make the evaluation partially automatic, increasing the objectivity and productivity of teachers and allowing a more scalable process of evaluation. The results also contribute to the behavioural theory of learning performance evaluation. More specific findings related to the correlation analysis are: (1) the more different interactions a student had (degree centrality) and the more frequently the student was between the interaction paths of other students (betweenness centrality), the better was the quality of the work; (2) all five social network measures had a positive and strong correlation with the grade for volume of work and with the final grades; and (3) a student with high average tie strength had a higher grade for diversity of work than those with low ties.
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    An application of the lean production tool standard work
    ( 2015) Braganca,S ; Eric Macieira Costa
    Standard Work is a very useful tool of the Lean Production paradigm to specify standards and to establish the best methods and sequences for each process and for each worker, helping to reduce wastes. Despite its usefulness, this tool is often underused, neglected and misunderstood. Apart from that, there is a lack of literature about Standard Work. It is possible to find many papers on Lean Production in general and on some Lean tools, but there are few that focus on or describe in detail this particular tool. The main purpose of this paper is to prove the validity and show the importance and the applicability of Standard Work. The main aspects and ideas to understand this tool are described, as well as the benefits of applying it in a real world manufacturing environment. In this paper, an application example is given on a production unit of an elevators company, following the Action-Research methodology. The main findings are that Standard Work is effectively a good tool to normalize work procedures, allowing increased flexibility and production, and decreased wastes and assembly errors.
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    Case studies on collaboration, technology and performance factors in business networks
    ( 2013) Luís Carneiro ; António Lucas Soares ; Patricio,R ; Américo Azevedo ; Jorge Pinho de Sousa
    This paper presents part of the findings of a research project aiming at characterising high-performance collaborative business networks and at defining the conditions required for their creation and management. The project adopted a multiple case study research strategy and three different business networks are presented in this paper. Empirical studies have been performed in Northern Portugal. The results of the study include operational definitions based on a comprehensive literature review, a conceptual reference framework for the analysis of high-performance collaborative networks and recommendations for the creation and management of such networks.
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    Collaborative business frameworks comparison, analysis and selection: an analytic perspective
    ( 2009) Américo Azevedo ; César Toscano ; Claudia-Melania Chituc
    Several e-business frameworks are currently available, which are aimed at modelling e-business. The aim of this article is to analyse and compare relevant industry-neutral and industry-specific e-business frameworks currently in use, emphasising their strengths and weaknesses towards seamless interoperability in a collaborative networked environment. Their main differences and similarities are underlined based on an analytical model for e-business frameworks comparison. The applicability of the Analytic Hierarchy Process multi-criteria method in e-business frameworks selection is discussed. These analytical approaches are then illustrated with two real cases from industry.
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    Collaborative smart process monitoring within virtual factory environment: an implementation issue
    ( 2017) Shamsuzzoha,A ; Filipe David Ferreira ; Américo Azevedo ; Helo,P
    The focus of this paper is to elaborate collaborative business process monitoring within virtual factory (VF) environment in a smarter way. This process monitoring is tracked through visualisation over a user interface such as 'dashboard'. This research briefly provides all aspects of implementing process monitoring through the dashboard user interface and explains technical aspects of monitoring. The dashboard features state-of-the art business intelligence and provides data visualisation, user interfaces and means to support VF partners to execute collaborative processes. With advanced visualisations that produce quality graphics it offers a variety of information visualisations that brings the process data to life with clarity. This data visualisation provides critical operational matrices (e.g. KPIs) required to manage virtual factories. Key reporting outputs such as KPIs and day-to-day operational data can be used to monitor and empower partners' processes that help to drive collaborative decisions e VF broker or partners' also retain full flexibility to create, deploy and maintain their own dashboards using an easy to understand wizard-driven widget and an extensive array of data visualisation components such as gauges, charts, maps, etc. Various technical aspects of this dashboard user interface portal are elaborated within the scope of this research such as installation instructions, technical requirements for the users and developers, execution and usage aspects, limitations and future works. In addition to the dashboard user interface portal this research also investigates the VF life cycle and provides architectural framework for VF. The research work highlighted in this paper is conceptualised, developed, and validated within the scope of the European Commission NMP priority of the Seventh RTD Framework Programme for the ADVENTURE (ADaptive Virtual ENterprise ManufacTURing Environment) project.
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    Combining regression models and metaheuristics to optimize space allocation in the retail industry
    ( 2015) Fábio Hernâni Pinto ; Carlos Manuel Soares ; Pavel Brazdil
    Data Mining (DM) researchers often focus on the development and testing of models for a single decision (e.g., direct mailing, churn detection, etc.). In practice, however, multiple decisions have often to be made simultaneously which are not independent and the best global solution is often not the combination of the best individual solutions. This problem can be addressed by searching for the overall best solution by using optimization methods based on the predictions made by the DM models. We describe one case study were this approach was used to optimize the layout of a retail store in order to maximize predicted sales. A metaheuristic is used to search different hypothesis of space allocations for multiple product categories, guided by the predictions made by regression models that estimate the sales for each category based on the assigned space. We test three metaheuristics and three regression algorithms on this task. Results show that the Particle Swam Optimization method guided by the models obtained with Random Forests and Support Vector Machines models obtain good results. We also provide insights about the relationship between the correctness of the regression models and the metaheuristics performance.
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    Comparing the performance of geostatistical models with additional information from covariates for sewage plume characterization
    ( 2015) Del Monego,M ; Ribeiro,PJ ; Patrícia Ramos
    In this work, kriging with covariates is used to model and map the spatial distribution of salinity measurements gathered by an autonomous underwater vehicle in a sea outfall monitoring campaign aiming to distinguish the effluent plume from the receiving waters and characterize its spatial variability in the vicinity of the discharge. Four different geostatistical linear models for salinity were assumed, where the distance to diffuser, the west-east positioning, and the south-north positioning were used as covariates. Sample variograms were fitted by the MatSrn models using weighted least squares and maximum likelihood estimation methods as a way to detect eventual discrepancies. Typically, the maximum likelihood method estimated very low ranges which have limited the kriging process. So, at least for these data sets, weighted least squares showed to be the most appropriate estimation method for variogram fitting. The kriged maps show clearly the spatial variation of salinity, and it is possible to identify the effluent plume in the area studied. The results obtained show some guidelines for sewage monitoring if a geostatistical analysis of the data is in mind. It is important to treat properly the existence of anomalous values and to adopt a sampling strategy that includes transects parallel and perpendicular to the effluent dispersion.
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    Critical technologies for the North of Portugal in 2015: the case of ITCE sectors - information technologies, communication and electronics
    ( 2007) Luís Carneiro ; António Carrizo ; Marta Tavares
    The Commission for Coordination and Regional Development of the North of Portugal (CCDR-N) promoted NORTINOV 2015, a project created to define a regional innovation strategy for the North of Portugal based on automotive clusters and Information Technology, Communication and Electronics (ITCE) clusters. Accordingly, it developed a technology forecast for the year 2015 in order to help the North of Portugal cope with the intensifying global competition and rapid technological changes. This paper describes the methodology used to identify critical technologies for the regional economy of the North of Portugal under the project NORTINOV 2015. It involved three main steps: technology identification and study, in which a list of emerging technologies was implemented; refinement of emerging technologies, in which 90 technologies were identified and finally, classification and hierarchisation of technologies, in which 30 technologies were identified as critical for the crafting of regional innovation strategy. In this final step, a workshop involving major stakeholders of the three clusters under study played a major role.
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    Cutting and packing
    ( 2007) José Fernando Oliveira ; Gerhard Wäscher
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    Cutting Path as a Rural Postman Problem: solutions by Memetic Algorithms
    ( 2012) Ana Maria Rodrigues ; José Soeiro Ferreira
    The Rural Postman Problem (RPP) is a particular Arc routing Problem (ARP)which consits of determining a minimum cost circuit on a graph so that a given subset of required edges is traversed. the EPP is an NP-hard problem with significant real-life applications. this paper introduces an original approach based on Memetic Algorithms - The MARP algorithm - to solve the RPP and, also deals with an interesting Industrial application, which focuses on the path optimization for componenet cutting operations. Memetic Algorithms are a class of Metaheuristics which may be seen as a population strategy that involves cooperation and competition processes between population elements and integrates "social knowledge", using a local search procedure. The MARP algorithm is tested with different groups of instances and the results are compared with those gathered from other publications. MARP is also used in the context of various real-life applications.
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    A data warehouse to support web site automation
    ( 2014) Domingues,MA ; Carlos Manuel Soares ; Alípio Jorge ; Rezende,SO
    Background: Due to the constant demand for new information and timely updates of services and content in order to satisfy the user’s needs, web site automation has emerged as a solution to automate several personalization and management activities of a web site. One goal of automation is the reduction of the editor’s effort and consequently of the costs for the owner. The other goal is that the site can more timely adapt to the behavior of the user, improving the browsing experience and helping the user in achieving his/her own goals. Methods: A database to store rich web data is an essential component for web site automation. In this paper, we propose a data warehouse that is developed to be a repository of information to support different web site automation and monitoring activities. We implemented our data warehouse and used it as a repository of information in three different case studies related to the areas of e-commerce, e-learning, and e-news. Result: The case studies showed that our data warehouse is appropriate for web site automation in different contexts. Conclusion: In all cases, the use of the data warehouse was quite simple and with a good response time, mainly because of the simplicity of its structure. © 2014, Domingues et al.; licensee Springer.
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    Decision support systems in forest management - requirements for a participatory planning perspective
    ( 2012) Annika Kangas ; Suzanne Menzel ; Eva-Maria Nordstrom ; Mikael Buchecker ; Alexandra Sofia Marques ; Hari Saarikoski
    Participatory approaches and computerised tools such as decision support systems (DSS) represent conflicting tendencies in state-of the-art sustainable forest management. As a result, there may be considerable tension between these two developments in practice. The objective of this paper is to explore how participatory approaches and DSS could be brought together to improve planning processes and to explore how DSS could be adapted in their use or combined with other tools to enable successful participatory planning. From a review of the literature, we identified criteria related to successful participatory planning. From these criteria, we selected those a DSS can influence and created a short list of the criteria that could be used to evaluate participatory processes where DSS are applied. The evaluation criteria with particular relevance for DSS that we identified are as follows: fairness, opportunity to influence outcome, quality and selection of information, cost-effectiveness,
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    Defining the regional innovation strategy for the year 2015: the case of the ITCE clusters in the North of Portugal
    ( 2008) Catarina Selada ; António Carrizo ; Luís Carneiro
    This paper describes the methodology and the definition of the regional innovation strategy, based on the Information Technology, Communications and Electronics (ITCE) clusters, for the North of Portugal under the project NORTINOV 2015, which was promoted by the commission for the coordination and regional development of the north of Portugal (CCDR-N) under the NORTINOV programme. Three strategic lines were proposed to achieve a regional innovation strategy for the ICTE cluster for the year 2015: the strategic line, in order to create conditions for the development of innovative clusters, the sustainability line, in order to facilitate the interaction with other clusters, and the structural line, in order to position the North region as a world-class region.
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    The Dial-a-Ride Problem with Split Requests and Profits
    ( 2015) Parragh,SN ; Jorge Pinho de Sousa ; Bernardo Almada-Lobo
    In this paper we introduce the dial-a-ride problem with split requests and profits (DARPSRP). Users place transportation requests, specifying a pickup location, a delivery location, and a time window for either of the two. Based on maximum user ride time considerations, the second time window is generated. A given fleet of vehicles, each with a certain capacity, is available to serve these requests, and maximum route duration constraints have to be respected. Each request is associated with a revenue and the objective is to maximize the total profit, that is, the total revenue minus the total costs. Transportation requests involving several persons may be split if it is beneficial to do so. We formulate the DARPSRP as a mixed-integer program using position variables and in terms of a path-based formulation. For the solution of the latter, we design a branch-and-price algorithm. The largest instance solved to optimality, when applied to available instances from the literature, has 40 requests; when applied to newly generated instances, the largest instance solved to optimality consists of 24 requests. To solve larger instances a variable neighborhood search algorithm is developed. We investigate the impact of request splitting under different geographical settings, assuming favorable settings for request splitting in terms of the number of people per request. The largest benefits from request splitting are obtained for problem settings exhibiting clustered customer locations.
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    Discovering a taste for the unusual: exceptional models for preference mining
    ( 2018) de Sa,CR ; Knobbe,A ; Carlos Manuel Soares ; Alípio Jorge ; Paulo Jorge Azevedo ; Duivesteijn,W ; 4981 ; 5606 ; 5001
    Exceptional preferences mining (EPM) is a crossover between two subfields of data mining: local pattern mining and preference learning. EPM can be seen as a local pattern mining task that finds subsets of observations where some preference relations between labels significantly deviate from the norm. It is a variant of subgroup discovery, with rankings of labels as the target concept. We employ several quality measures that highlight subgroups featuring exceptional preferences, where the focus of what constitutes ‘exceptional’ varies with the quality measure: two measures look for exceptional overall ranking behavior, one measure indicates whether a particular label stands out from the rest, and a fourth measure highlights subgroups with unusual pairwise label ranking behavior. We explore a few datasets and compare with existing techniques. The results confirm that the new task EPM can deliver interesting knowledge. © 2018 The Author(s)
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    Dynamic and collaborative business networks in the fashion industry
    ( 2013) Shamsuzzoha,A ; Kankaanpaa,T ; Luís Carneiro ; Almeida,R ; Chiodi,A ; Fornasiero,R
    In order to stay competitive and avoid being smashed by large companies, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to establish and manage dynamic and non-hierarchical networks to respond to market opportunities, ensuring a quick response, unique products with competitive prices and high product quality. This article proposes an innovative methodological approach and ICT platform to support non-hierarchical collaboration between SMEs for customised product design and manufacturing. The ICT services are based on mapping a methodology on an open source platform in order to apply low cost solutions to SMEs. Two case studies in the fashion industry have been analysed and used to test the proposed approach for network management.
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    Dynamic VRP in pharmaceutical distribution - a case study
    ( 2006) José Miguel de Magalhães ; Jorge Pinho de Sousa
    In recent years, the pharmaceutical sector has gone through deep changes, partially due to the ageing of the population and to the increasing of costs in health care services. With margins that are getting lower and lower, the drug distribution problem to pharmacies has become much more important, particularly in large metropolitan areas. As pharmacies demand shorter delivery times, vehicle routing and scheduling problems become harder for distributors. It is recognized that the traditional system based on fixed routes does not fulfil the expectations of pharmacies and may, in some cases, be quite inefficient for distributiors. In this work, a case study has been carried out and a change of the traditional approach is proposed, by adopting a system of variable routes that are dynamically designed, based on orders that are constantly arriving along the day. A dynamic algorithm is therefore proposed, meant to be run several times a day. It has four phases: first, a clustering of th
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    Editorial
    ( 2015) Américo Azevedo ; Almeida,A
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