Ana R. Xambre

University of Aveiro | UA · Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering

Forest fires are becoming a more common occurrence in Portugal as well as worldwide. To extinguish or reduce them more quickly and effectively, it is crucial to understand how they spread. This paper presents a study and a model that shows how wildfires spread, assuming the forest can be represented by a graph, where the nodes correspond to forest...

Purpose The paper aims to define a dashboard of indicators to assess the quality performance of higher education institutions (HEI). The instrument is termed SMART-QUAL. Design/methodology/approach Two sources were used in order to explore potential indicators. In the first step, information disclosed in official websites or institutional document...

Incêndios florestais são classificados como fenómenos complexos, com dimensões de tempo e espaço que variam numa escala de segundos e milímetros a mais de um dia e mais de um quilómetro. Quando ocorre em florestas, o fogo pode ter um enorme impacto nos seres humanos, pois coloca a vida e propriedades em perigo. Portugal foi o único país dos Estados...

A forma como o fogo florestal se propaga depende, principalmente, de três factores: combustível (que pode ser caracterizado pela humidade, poder calorífico e carga), clima (nomeadamente a velocidade e a orientação do vento) e o declive do terreno. A incerteza do comportamento ao longo do tempo e do espaço destes factores dificulta a modelação da pr...

Neste trabalho propõe-se a utilziação do modelo de propagação de fogo de tempo minimo de transmissão em gestão florestal.

Sensory analysis is an area of the food industry to evaluate products' organoleptic characteristics. It encompasses a tasting process that produces large amounts of data used both in decisions about the products and to evaluate the tasters. In this context, some tools that usually support Industrial Engineering processes, can help making more relia...

Nowadays, due to globalization, business diversification and a growing number of different business projects, the need to support people involved in tasks related to project management is becoming increasingly important. Timely and accurate data about projects’ plans, their progress and related costs, are extremely important for project managers an...

In Cellular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) resources are grouped to create independent cells capable of completely processing a set of similar parts. The design of such a system is complex and entails several interconnected problems. The decision process regarding the design of CMS must, therefore, be sustained by solid data and supported by adequate...

Internal Logistics is the industrial department responsible, within an organization, for overseeing the information flow and for controlling the physical movements of materials in the warehouse, factory and between workstations. Currently the improvement of Internal Logistics processes is a key factor for delivering products to customers on time an...

The use of frameworks based on Free Open-Source Software (FOSS) has become a viable alternative in the software development process, when compared with Proprietary Software or Closed Source Software. Given that the quality of Open-Source Software (OSS) products varies widely, the careful evaluation of such frameworks, according to a set of requirem...

Since its beginning, lean manufacturing has built a worldwide reputation based on results related to production improvement and cost reduction in several companies. This management philosophy focuses on customer value creation through the elimination of production wastes. Lean methods and techniques have spread their scope from the automotive indus...

Tasting Panels are used in Sensory Analysis in order to evaluate products according to the way they are perceived by human senses. In this context, the main job of a professional taster is to assess the sensorial characteristics of products, for example in the food industry. Evaluating the individual performance of the tasters is thus essential, so...

This paper introduces a new physical simulation game framework, which can be used in a classroom environment (for both students and professionals) to help demonstrate the applicability as well as the potential advantages of lean production. The game provides a hands-on experience, focusing on experimental learning, and thus enabling students/traine...

In this chapter, a system to support the design of assembly and production lines used in the make-to-order production phase is presented. The relevance of the system is supported by the fact that current market dynamics often leads to frequent modifications in the allocation of manufacturing resources, and, as a result, decisions related to manufac...

There are essentially two ways to implement a Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS): physical and logical. In the first case, the machines are laid out in the floor space in dedicated manufacturing cells to exploit flow shop efficiency in processing part families, whereas in the second case machines are dedicated to process part families in a process...

One of the crucial steps in the design of a cellular manufacturing system is the cell formation problem, which involves grouping the parts into part families and machines into manufacturing cells, so that parts with similar processing requirements are manufactured within the same cell. When modelling this problem it is usually assumed that the spec...