The adequacy of business models to Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is an urgent requirement and a clear concern. Ways to recognize the relative position of a company and ways to evolve towards this new paradigm are an important step both for researchers and professionals. In general, most small and medium enterprises (SME) do not have their own resources or do not have the means to be fully supported by consultancies, to develop a specific model, and they do not recognize themselves as ready to initiate any action to adapt to this new paradigm. Based on the idea of identification of directions and opportunities of research about the conditions for the adoption of approaches involving readiness assessment, implementation framework, roadmap and maturity model, the main objective of this article is the identification of factors for the development of specific maturity models, oriented towards unique conditions, located in specific contexts, and that can cover both the need for self-diagnosis of the level of preparation, as well as the actions that aim to achieve a progressive reconfiguration and guided by continuous improvement towards Industry 4.0. A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of 67 articles was conducted and resulted in the identification of two approaches to address maturity models, which are the application of existing generic models and the process of building specific ones focused on the peculiarities of certain contexts. Moreover, this work points out five factors for development of a specific maturity model: context characterization, conceptual characterization, interaction with practitioners and experts, development of surveys, and qualitative research. Additionally, this work identified the need for development of methodologies that can be applied in a more autonomous way for the development of specific maturity models.

Performance Measurement Systems (PMS) have been a potential answer to problems related to production systems monitoring, allowing the management and manipulation of data collected at various levels in organizations. PMS can be defined as a group of indicators in an information system. There are several types of PMS, however, the relationship between indicators in a PMS is still an issue that needs to be explored, as the KPIs in a production system are not independent and may have an intrinsic relationship. The purpose of this paper is to present a multilevel structure and its intrinsic structural relation for managing and analysing KPIs for a value stream production system. This hierarchical structure has different KPI levels such as Improvement KPIs, Monitoring KPIs, and Results KPIs or KPR (Key Performance Results), intrinsically related from the strategic levels to the operational levels. This provides a useful tool for the management of production systems, being used to analyse, and support the organization's continuous improvement processes.

No abstract

The era of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) requires technology and engineering higher education institutions to provide their students with the competences inherent to this evolution. This requires teaching staff training, but first, naturally, teachers’ level of competences must be assessed. The objective of this work is to assess the current level of teaching staff self-perceived competences related to product, process, and production in the I4.0 Era, using a tailor-made questionnaire. Additionally, the work aims to evaluate the relation between academic degrees and years of experience, with the level of self-perceived competences. In terms of methodology, the development of the questionnaire’s items was based on the Acatech framework and existing I4.0 courses. The questionnaire was validated through the following steps: 1) think-aloud procedures with 4 teaching staff, and 2) test and retest statistics validation, developed with approximately 30 teaching staff from the referred institutions. Then, the questionnaire was applied to more than 200 teaching staff. Two I4.0 areas showed a lower level of self-perceived competence: Data Analytics and Digital Manufacturing. It became evident that the teaching staff, regardless of their level of experience or academic degree, may benefit from organizational and people management training including processes and techniques related to I4.0.

No abstract

The use of technology in organizations does not always produce the expected effects, because the cause-effect relationship in efficiency, productivity and therefore competitiveness is not linear. The available resources, ways of access and their capacities in terms of storage, processing and speed of response are known, however they are not always assimilated by the agents of the productive sector as they should to promote effective results and business agility. The research procedure adopted was a critical-descriptive analysis of a real case. Based on the bibliographic review on Business Processes reconfiguration and follow-up of an implementation project in a Brazilian company, a Business Model reconfiguration with ERP system implementation case was described and evaluated. The purpose of this article is to present a success case of Information Systems implementation project, to demonstrate the long way to go before reaching the results that makes such a project a successful project and to examine the impacts in the human resource perception. The research resulted in the description of an ERP implementation case, its evaluation based on perceptions, followed by critical discussion about barriers and risks inherent to projects of this nature. Although information technology has advanced a lot in the last decades in resources and functionalities, its cost has been significantly reduced, and its acquisition has been greatly facilitated, implementation is not a trivial activity. The article can serve as a guide for characterization of risks and sensitive aspects in reconfiguration projects for organizations that wish to achieve effectiveness in this type of project.

Purpose: This article aims to present successful practices in the management of training processes based on virtual reality and augmented reality, namely a strategy for evaluating the process with the principle of continuous improvement in mind, and monitoring its performance in terms of productivity and waste levels. It is proposed to apply Statistical Process Control (SPC) tools to develop control charts for monitoring individual events (i-charts).Design/methodology/approach: The methodology is based on a case study developed in an industrial project and is guided by a literature review on Work-Based Learning (WBL) and SPC.Findings: The developed work shows that SPC tools are suitable for supporting decision making in situations where the data to be analyzed is generated by human-computer interactions, e.g., involving students and virtual learning environments.Originality/value: The innovative aspect presented in the article lies in the evaluation of the effectiveness of pedagogical resources arranged in simulation environments based on virtual and augmented reality. The accumulated knowledge about the application of SPC in service areas, and others that demand data analysis, reinforces the hypothesis of the suitability of its application in the case presented. This is an original application of SPC, normally used in business processes quality control, but which in this case is applied in an innovative way to the evaluation of industrial training processes, with the same spirit for which it was designed, i.e. to provide the means to manage the quality of a process.

No abstract