Search

Genipa americana L. is a plant native to the Americas, popularly known in Brazil as Jenipapeiro, and is chemically characterized by the presence of genipin, which has pharmacological actions such as anti-inflammatory and antioxidant. The bark is used for its antiulcerogenic and antidiarrheal activities. Research developed for chemical knowledge have shown the plant is of interest for the production of efficient drugs such as antioxidants and antimicrobials. Free-living parasites, including those of the genus Acanthamoeba, have aroused interest and the study of plants used in folk medicine is a strategy for the discovery of conventional treatments to the infections caused by this parasite to be used pure or in preparations such as microemulsions (ME), which offer advantages related to the release of drugs and the absorption of the active ingredient. The aim of the study was to evaluate antiparasitic and antioxidant activities as well as to obtain a ME from the hydroethanolic extract (HEE) of G. americana. The DPPH free radical reduction method was used to evaluate the antioxidant activity of HEE, which showed an inhibition percentage (PI) of 47.82%. The antiparasitic activity of the HEE using A. castellanii trophozoites showed a PI of 80% at the highest concentration tested (9 mg mL-1). The ME containing 10% HEE was characterized for its droplet size (18.33 µm), pH (5.68) and polydispersity index (0.19). Therefore, the HEE presented antioxidant and antiparasitic effects, while its microemulsion showed potential to disperse particles. Genipa americana L. es una planta originaria de las Américas, conocida popularmente en Brasil como Jenipapeiro, y se caracteriza químicamente por la presencia de genipina, que tiene acciones farmacológicas como antiinflamatoria y antioxidante. La corteza se utiliza por sus actividades antiulcerogénicas y antidiarreicas. Las investigaciones desarrolladas para el conocimiento químico han demostrado que la planta es de interés para la producción de medicamentos eficientes como antioxidantes y antimicrobianos. Los parásitos de vida libre, incluidos los del género Acanthamoeba, han despertado interés y el estudio de plantas utilizadas en la medicina popular es una estrategia para el descubrimiento de tratamientos convencionales a las infecciones causadas por este parásito para ser utilizados puros o en preparados como microemulsiones (ME), que ofrecen ventajas relacionadas con la liberación de fármacos y la absorción del principio activo. El objetivo del estudio fue evaluar las actividades antiparasitaria y antioxidante, así como obtener una EM a partir del extracto hidroetanólico (HEE) de G. americana. Se utilizó el método de reducción de radicales libres DPPH para evaluar la actividad antioxidante del HEE, el cual mostró un porcentaje de inhibición (PI) de 47,82%. La actividad antiparasitaria del HEE utilizando trofozoítos de A. castellanii mostró una IP del 80% a la concentración más alta probada (9 mg mL-1). La ME que contenía 10 % de HEE se caracterizó por su tamaño de gota (18,33 µm), pH (5,68) e índice de polidispersidad (0,19). Por lo tanto, el HEE presentó efectos antioxidantes y antiparasitarios, mientras que su microemulsión mostró potencial para dispersar partículas. A Genipa americana L. é uma planta nativa das Américas, conhecida popularmente no Brasil como Jenipapeiro, e é caracterizada quimicamente pela presença da genipina, que possui ações farmacológicas como anti-inflamatória e antioxidante. A casca é usada por suas atividades antiulcerogênicas e antidiarréicas. Pesquisas desenvolvidas para conhecimento químico têm mostrado que a planta é de interesse para a produção de fármacos eficientes como antioxidantes e antimicrobianos. Parasitos de vida livre, incluindo os do gênero Acanthamoeba, têm despertado interesse e o estudo de plantas utilizadas na medicina popular é uma estratégia para a descoberta de tratamentos convencionais para as infecções causadas por este parasita a serem utilizados puros ou em preparações como microemulsões (ME), que oferecem vantagens relacionadas à liberação de fármacos e à absorção do princípio ativo. O objetivo do estudo foi avaliar as atividades antiparasitária e antioxidante, bem como obter uma EM do extrato hidroetanólico (HEE) de G. americana. O método de redução de radicais livres DPPH foi utilizado para avaliar a atividade antioxidante do HEE, que apresentou um percentual de inibição (PI) de 47,82%. A atividade antiparasitária do HEE utilizando trofozoítos de A. castellanii apresentou IP de 80% na maior concentração testada (9 mg mL-1). O ME contendo 10% de HEE foi caracterizado quanto ao tamanho de gota (18,33 µm), pH (5,68) e índice de polidispersão (0,19). Portanto, o HEE apresentou efeitos antioxidantes e antiparasitários, enquanto sua microemulsão mostrou potencial para dispersar partículas.

The COVID-19 crisis exposed the vulnerability and poor resilience of the global supply chains. The objective of this research is to reflect on the possible impacts of the Coronavirus crisis in the global supply chains and provide some recommendations to overcome the present situation, offering suggestions for future research: (1) What are the contingency factors affecting Supply Chains in the complex COVID-19 operating environment? (2) How do these factors affect post-COVID-19 operating performance? After a contextualization of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and its impacts, theoretical background on Supply Chains and Supply Chain Management are presented, and a summary of the main scenarios for the post-COVID-19 crisis are discussed. The propositions regarding the contingency factors and their impact on the Supply Chain operating performance in post-COVID-19 suggest that successful companies will focus on creating a new kind of operational performance and minimize risks. To that end, companies will aim to improve their operations’ resilience (ability to resist, hold on, and recover from shocks) and accelerate the end-to-end digital transformation. Consumers will have to adapt to the contact-free economy, less low-cost supply chains, and put additional emphasis on service levels. Governments will reinforce the focus in the health sector supply chain and increase spending in the health and social care sectors. Furthermore, the longer, the more concentrated, the less transparent, and the more price sensitivity is the supply chain, the more challenging the adaptation to the new pos pandemic realities. Suggestions for future research are also provided.

Supply chains have become one of the most important strategic themes in the aerospace industry in recent years as globalization and deep technological changes have altered the industry at many levels, creating new dynamics and strategies. In this setting, sustainability at the supply chain level is an emerging research topic, whose contributions aim to support businesses into the future. To do so the development of new products and the response to new industry requirements, while incorporating new materials appears as a path to follow, which require more resilient and agile supply chains, while guaranteeing their sustainability. Such supply chains will be better prepared for the future complex challenges and risks faced by the aerospace companies. Such challenges are addressed in this work, where an integrated framework is proposed to contribute to the resilience and sustainability of aerospace supply chains. Using different analysis methods, the framework addresses four important challenges in the context of aerospace supply chain sustainability: evolution and new trends, performance assessment, supplier selection, and supply chain design and planning., POFC - Programa Operacional Temático Factores de Competitividade(POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043), This work has been supported by project MITP-TB/PFM/0005/2013 in the frame of MIT-Portugal program, by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the project UID/CEC/00319/2013.

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.

Part 2: Industry Transformation and Innovation; International audience; In mature countries manufacturing is one of the most significant sources of economic development and growth. In those countries, manufacturing transformation systems will be grounded on seamless collaborative environments and will have a high degree of flexibility in production, in terms of product needs (specifications, quality, design), volume, timing, resource efficiency and cost, being able to adapt to customer needs and make use of the entire network chain for value creation. Future transformations systems will be massively collaborative and will be enabled by a network-centric approach, making use of multidimensional data analytics, driven by advanced ICT and the latest available proven manufacturing technologies.

Manufacturing applications address business to business (B2B) with highly customised applications developed for specific requirements, offering highly specialised solution-oriented and service-based software components, systems, and digital tools that aim at a fast and accurate decision-making support system. The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of digital technologies for operations management using manufacturing or engineering apps (eApps), for product design and manufacturing processes. In particular, starting from the specific needs of two companies from mature European industries as automotive and food, this work depicts how this kind of solutions can support companies and improve their operations. In particular, related benefits and challenges faced for the full implementation of the developed tools are highlighted. Moreover a business model to exploit the manufacturing apps is also proposed. The business model proposed for the exploitation of the eApps supports the commercialisation of all the revenue streams offered by this rapidly growing sector taking into account the specific needs of the concerned stakeholders through a diversified value proposition.

In the recent years, it has been confirmed both by theory and by practice that organisational models need to include networking strategies to cope with the current competitive environment. Different collaboration levels can characterise supply chains, virtual organisations (VO) and business communities; however, managing different networking scenarios is extremely important to allow SMEs to respond to market opportunities, ensuring a quick response, unique products with competitive prices and high product quality. This paper proposes an innovative methodological approach to support collaboration amongst SMEs for customised product design and manufacturing based on the VO concept. The work is based on mapping the methodology with the most important processes characterising the life of a VO and defining the operative practices to be performed within this type of network. This paper presents two case studies in the fashion industry, where the proposed approach for network management was tested and analysed.

Part 10: Advances in Production - Product Personalization; International audience; In nowadays competing market, companies are constantly challenged to reduce the lead time for new products design process by diminishing the time response that goes from the arise of the market opportunity to the satisfaction of the customer need. Simultaneously, companies and networked organizations face a growing number of product configurations, lower product volumes, a continuously growing appetence for personalized products, pressing the decision makers into adopting more efficient product development processes. The present paper addresses the main collaborative product development issues by proposing a responsive and efficient use of knowledge on networked environments through a lean-based framework for collaborative networks. In particular, this work describes the main lean concepts and tools that are enhancers of an efficient and distributed customizable product development process in networked environment.

Part 3: Collaboration Frameworks; International audience; In today’s business, consumers are challenging manufacturers by increasingly demanding low volumes of innovative, fashionable and inexpensive products; adopting high quality standards; responding in smaller intervals of time, and with high configurability and parameterization. This omnipresent scenario poses challenging opportunities for collaborative networked organizations. The present paper addresses the main collaborative business processes tailored for responsiveness and efficient use of knowledge on customized manufacturing environments through a lean-based framework proposal for collaborative networks inspired in the Set-Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) methodology. In particular this work describes the ongoing implementation of the proposed concepts through a web-based collaborative portal.

Quality control, failure analysis and improvement are central elements in manufacturing. Total Quality Management (TQM) provides several quality oriented tools and techniques which, in the event of things, are not always applicable. The increased use of Information Technology (IT) in manufacturing means increased data availability and improved potential for knowledge extraction. Exploiting this knowledge requires data storage and processing facilities with demanding, time consuming sessions for interpretation. Without suitable tools and techniques, knowledge remains hidden in databases. This paper presents a method to help identify root causes of nonconformities (NCs) using a pattern identification approach. Hereby, a general framework, Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), is adapted. This adaptation involves incorporating an economic concentration measure, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), as the data mining algorithm. After presenting the theoretical background, a new methodology is proposed. The suggested approach can be regarded as a quality tool to help make root cause identification of failures simpler and more agile. A case study from the automotive industry is examined using this tool. Results are obtained and presented in the form of matrix based patterns. They suggest that concentration indices help indicate possible root causes of NCs, warranting further investigation in this area. Nonconformity root causes identification in a multi-stages and multi-machine production process.Framework from knowledge discovery in databases with an integrated concentration measures as the data mining algorithm.Pattern identification approach as a quality tool in TQM.

Selecting quality improvement projects among a variety of mutually competing ones is characterised by prioritisation. In practice, this is often done by the rule of thumb, following a single attribute criterion or by subjective preferences of individual stakeholders of a project team. An approach to track systematically nonconformities and to identify those critical ones that should be prioritised based on multi-attribute criteria is presented. The approach is introduced and its purpose is explained. After the background of relevant topics is given, the method’s importance in research and for practitioners is derived. Steps of the approach are portrayed and an application case of a mature industrial company, integrated in the supply-chain of the automotive industry, is presented. Elements of quality tools and techniques are used as attributes, namely failure mode and effect analysis and Pareto diagram. Results based on industrial data indicate that the use of this approach contributes to support informed ...

Electrocardiographic effects produced by Ginkgo biloba extract (EGb) and by ginkgolides A (GA) and B (GB), and bilobalide (BB) were investigated in guinea pig heart mounted in Langendorff apparatus (Tyrode, 34 ± 0.1 oC, 95% O2, 5% CO2). Electrocardiographic parameters were evaluated in the conditions: 1) control with Tyrode and DMSO, 2) EGb (n=4), GA (n=5), GB (n=5) or BB (n=6), and 3) washout. The results showed that 0.1 and 1.0 mg/ml of EGb do not change the electrocardiographic parameters. However, 10 mg/ml of EGb increased the PR interval (PRi) at 21% (p

Part 9: Innovation Networks; International audience; Innovation networks are seen as an important opportunity for organizational performance by facilitating the creation of new knowledge, not just transferring existing knowledge. Collaboration in innovation between manufacturing companies and research centers is a trend that continues to grow in importance linked to business success. Embedded in the literature on business models in the context of networks organizations, this paper propose key pillars and elements required in order to support the establishing of open business model for innovation networks. Subsequently the use of these elements in practice was verified through empirical research evidence in a case study.

Purpose: Horizontal integration is a way of organizing the healthcare delivery for units that provide the same type of care. The Portuguese Hospital Centres (HC) is a way horizontal integration. Two or more hospital units are integrated creating a HC. The legal support of HC, created in 1999, defined several important objectives and benefits associated to this reality namely, to reinforce of the articulation and complementarity between hospital units, driven by better resources utilization; reinforce the differentiation of hospital care delivery and hospital technology; a more efficient hospital care delivery giving to the community what they need. Between 2005 and 2009 were created 17 HC and nowadays there are 23 HC in Portugal. Objectives: Our objective in this study was to know more about the external stakeholder’s expectations and experiences regarding the Portuguese Hospital Centres. External stakeholders are experts and decision makers that had political and manager responsibilities in healthcare during the last years. In this paper we present the preliminary results of this qualitative study. Background: To identify the key opinions and views, and to explore people’s knowledge, experience and expectation regarding the Portuguese HC, we used a qualitative research method: interviewing. There is a lack of information about this theme in Portugal. So, another reason to use this qualitative method was to gather feasible data that wasn’t available in any other form. We conducted interviews to different important people with past responsibilities in health system: Secretary-of-state in Health Ministry (past function), Central Administration of Health System (ACSS) board members (past function): HC board members (actual and past functions) and academics. Interviews were conducted as long they continue to tell me more about the Portuguese HC experience. We conducted 10 interviews with external stakeholders. A semistructured interview guide was developed based on the literature review. The main interview objectives were to collect information about: integration objectives; integration drivers; main benefits expected; the main difficulties nowadays faced by HC; the disadvantages of HC; what factors contributed to successful and unsuccessful cases of HC and the main challenges faced by HC. Transcripts of the interviews were analysed using NVivo 10. The analysis of each interview started with axial coding to relate some responses to the main HC objectives and benefits. Open coding was also used to give new insights about the other integration dimensions. 14th International Conference on Integrated Care, Brussels, April 2-4 2014 International Journal of Integrated Care – Volume 14, 01 October – URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-116213– http://www.ijic.org/ Conclusions: The external stakeholders referred the resource rationalization and optimization as the main integration objective. As main expected benefits they referred the improvement of quality of care (in patient dimension), cost reduction (organization dimension) and improve work conditions and training and development enrichment (professional dimension). They pointed also that the main reason for the unsuccessful integration experiences was the culture shock. According to these stakeholders the main challenge faced by the HC board is the definition of a strategic plan for the HC with clear objectives, strong leaders, definition of internal and external communication strategies and with the participation of all professionals.

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. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.

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.

This deliverable presents a description of the activities carried out under the task T8.1 Transfer to other sectors and Interest Group. The main goal of this task was to promote and disseminate the project achievements and research results, by promoting the creation of a SIG: Special Interest Group. In order to promote the creation of a SIG, several steps were planned with specific activities and results that will be presented in this report.

Part 20: Co-innovation and Competitiveness; International audience; Virtual Enterprise is one form of collaborative networks that allows partners to exploit emerging business opportunities in a flexible way. Moreover, in the competitive landscape of the twenty-first century, the business model innovation has become increasingly a key element for companies’ positioning in the market. Consequently, this paper aims at proposing a set of business model elements to be used by a virtual enterprise in order to explore a new business opportunity for its network. Literature review is used to identify the business model elements and evidence from a pilot case study confirms that these elements are considered in practice.

Design and production of small series for specific customer target groups in collaborative networks can help companies to increase their competitiveness. This paper aims to describe a new framework of services for collaborative networking for on-demand productions. After describing the business processes that need to be supported by innovative tools for partner search and collaborative production planning, we describe the developed services and how they are integrated to ease the communication between different activities. © 2012 International Federation for Information Processing.

Part 3: Value Chain for Enhancing Collaborative Networks; International audience; 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.

The new market trends are forcing companies for constantly business process reorganizations in order to react quickly to the new economical challenges. Not always, enterprise information systems provide an appropriate response to these situations by several reasons, like technology failure, lack of adaptable configuration tools or even by the financial investment required, making it unaffordable to companies. This article presents a functional model for ERP systems (called FME) that would guarantee a baseline structure to build solutions which would provide a complete configuration, and therefore, a timely reaction for market fluctuations. This model has been developed also resuming some of the most used functionalities of the ERP systems available.

The development of information and communication technologies and turbulent market conditions have forced enterprises to adapt their way of undertaking business, from traditional practices to e-business. In this context, achieving seamless interoperability among heterogeneous organizations becomes a critical issue. This article has two main objectives:(1)to present a review of the most relevant approaches aiming at achieving seamless interoperability in a collaborative networked environment. In this sense, major interoperability issues (e.g., interoperability requirements, technologies) are discussed, and the most significant independent (e.g., ebXML) and industry-specific initiatives (e.g., RosettaNet, papiNet, TexWeave) are analyzed; (2)to introduce a recently developed two-layered operational infrastructure aiming at attaining seamless interoperability in the footwear industry (the up-stream segment), based on the requirements identified for this sector in a recent industry survey conducted at European level. Other relevant initiatives targeting this sector are also analyzed, emphasizing the innovative aspects and advantages of this approach.

This paper describes the image processing tasks developed under a R&D project(iVLab project), between the Faculty of Engineering of Oporto University and anindustrial machinery equipment leader in the production of equipments for the corksector. The main objective of the project was to develop a system capable ofclassifying cork stoppers in different classes according to their surfacecharacteristics; therefore, using grey scale image processing and patternrecognition techniques it was possible to develop a system able of learning eachclass characteristics and, afterwards, make its classification in different classes.

In the new manufacturing environment, a single enterprise does not often own all resources and skills to offer competitive solutions. Therefore, such enterprises become part of enterprise networks of independent core competencies in order to produce marketable products. Thus, Business Networking is an innovative business paradigm that can help companies to remain competitive in the market. Nevertheless, its practical implementation is very complicated because of the several dimensions that it involves, and, especially in network start up phase, because it is often left to the case and not managed with adequate methodologies and tools. The present paper proposes a structured methodology for long term business network design that is based on a network descriptive model and that should be applied by a “network architect”. The proposed methodology has been developed and applied in the frame of KoBaS project funded through European Commission Program.

An important goal in schedule production orders through a manufacturing facility is to assure that the work is completed as close as possible to its due date. Work that is late creates downstream delays, while early completion can be detrimental if storage space is limited. Production planning and control manufacturing is becoming more difficult as family products increase and quantity decreases. This paper presents an ongoing information system development that aims the production planning of special test tables equipment for automobile components manufacturers. The simulated based information system will be used to support planning and schedule activities; to compare and analyze the impact of planning rescheduling; to forecast the production completion date; to detect bottlenecks and to evaluate machines performance.

Transformations in the marketplace have led manufacturing companies to focus on their core competences and compete through new forms of enterprise partnerships. A new concept of enterprise partnership is that of Virtual Enterprise wherein autonomous or independent companies come together to temporally address a specific market demand, by collaborating closely and presenting to the market as a single enterprise. A number of traditional operations management models or techniques need to be redesigned in order to cope with the demands brought by the implementation of the Virtual Enterprise concept. This paper attempts to ascertain the understanding that exist about the concept of Virtual Enterprise as well as its associated managerial challenges. Then, focusing on the issues of manufacturing capacity management, the requirements for an effective deployment of this function in a Virtual enterprise environment are described.

An important goal in schedule production orders through a manufacturing facility is to assure that the work is completed as close as possible to its due date. Work that is late creates downstream delays, while early completion can be detrimental if storage space is limited. Production planning and control manufacturing is becoming more difficult as family products increase and quantity decreases. This paper presents an ongoing information system development that aims the production planning of special test tables equipment for automobile components manufacturers. The simulated based information system will be used to support planning and schedule activities; to compare and analyze the impact of planning rescheduling; to forecast the production completion date; to detect bottlenecks and to evaluate machines performance.

This paper describes an order planning system for dynamic supply-chains,addressing the requirements of a make-to-order business environment. Adistributed and decentralised information system, based on an architecture ofagents and extensively using the internet, was designed and implemented toprovide new and more powerful decision support. The system aims atresponding to the basic requirements of cooperativeness, integration andconfigurability. It was developed under the scope of the CO-OPERATEEuropean Project, and implements the functionality defined in the context ofthe "request feasibility studies for the network" business solution.

VK: T20307