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This work was developed in a company that produces components, such as, Bowden cables and comfort systems for the automobile industry. The company's external logistics department was the place where the work was carried out. The constant need of urgent shippings in the company in order to comply with the delivery scheduled with its customers, leads the organization to have an unnecessary cost. This case study is no exception, and this type of costs represents about 33% of total transport costs, revealing a major negative economic impact for the company. For the analysis of urgent transport some quality tools were used to determine the root causes of the identified problem (high cost with urgent transport). The use of these quality tools, namely brainstorming, Ishikawa's diagram and Five Whys, allowed for greater involvement by employees from different areas. Thus, it was possible to share knowledge and, consequently, a more reliable analysis and identification of possible root-causes of the problem, as well as, the implementation of actions to eliminate them. With the implementation of the improvement actions, the urgent shipping costs were reduced by about 68%.

Este livro pretende ser um contributo para as unidades curriculares de Matemática 1 ou Análise Matemática, focando aspetos considerados essenciais para os estudantes de engenharia e de ciências em geral de forma a fornecer conhecimentos base necessários para outras unidades curriculares. Os seus conteúdos resultam em grande parte da experiência das autoras no ensino destas unidades curriculares nos vários cursos de Engenharia que são ministrados no Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) e incluem o cálculo diferencial, o cálculo integral, as séries numéricas e séries de funções. Foi escrito tendo como premissa básica o ser acessível para qualquer estudante do 1º ano do ensino superior, considerando as bases matemáticas apreendidas no ensino secundário.

This paper proposes a Decision Support System (DSS) for Calculating the Economic Production Lot Size. The focus is on the analysis of improvement of manufacturing productivity in the packaging industry, specifically in a metal packaging company. Through combining different SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) in the same production order, as opposed to the current single SKU orders production paradigm of, it is possible to increase the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). This study identified the most critical OEE products within the company portfolio. One critical OEE was selected from within company’s strategic fitting process for the assessment of all relevant parameters set for the manufacturing process so that no product variant was disregarded. Evaluation of the improvement achieved by the new production paradigm was possible through a DSS tool developed to combine different SKUs in due production order, taking into account real data from customers’ orders. Following the tool development, it was possible to proceed with simulations for various review periods. As this study is an iterative process, the results obtained within each simulation enabled an improved definition for subsequent analysis focusing on the goal set - improving the OEE without increasing stock value. Finally, results were evaluated and the operational and economic benefits of combining different SKUs within the same production order were unequivocal, representing an OEE increase of 20% and a maximum decrease of 367,215€ in stock value.