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The Six Sigma project aims at a continual reduction in process variation, eliminating defects or flaws in products and services, optimizing processes and reducing costs. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate improvements in customer service index (CSI), product cycle time and inventory turnover after implementation of a Six Sigma project.

This research focused on the value stream mapping of a company process, performed by a multidisciplinary team that implemented a pull production system, the standard operational procedure in machines that were process bottlenecks, and the kanban system.

After three months of implementation, the authors observed an 11.7 percent reduction in product cycle time, increase in customer service index (CSI) from 93.9 to 97 percent and increase in inventory turnovers from 4.9 to 9.

The project was in accordance with the competitive strategy of the company, which is focused on customer satisfaction and cost reduction.

We present a critical literature review debating Brazilian research on social and environmental accounting (SEA). The aim of this study is to understand the role of politics in the construction of hegemonies in SEA research in Brazil. In particular, we examine the role of hegemony in relation to the co-option of SEA literature and sustainability in the Brazilian context by the logic of development for economic growth in emerging economies. The methodological approach adopts a post-structural perspective that reflects Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory. The study employs a hermeneutical, rhetorical approach to understand and classify 352 Brazilian research articles on SEA. We employ Brown and Fraser’s (2006) categorizations of SEA literature to help in our analysis: the business case, the stakeholder–accountability approach, and the critical case. We argue that the business case is prominent in Brazilian studies. Second-stage analysis suggests that the major themes under discussion include measurement, consulting, and descriptive approach. We argue that these themes illustrate the degree of influence of the hegemonic politics relevant to emerging economics, as these themes predominantly concern economic growth and a capitalist context. This paper discusses trends and practices in the Brazilian literature on SEA and argues that the focus means that SEA avoids critical debates of the role of capitalist logics in an emerging economy concerning sustainability. We urge the Brazilian academy to understand the implications of its reifying agenda and engage, counter-hegemonically, in a social and political agenda beyond the hegemonic support of a particular set of capitalist interests.

This paper aims to analyze what Samarco and Brazilian magazines speak and say about Mariana’s environmental crime. Discover their doxa in this subject. Interpret the speakings, sayings and doxas through the theories of the treadmills of production, crime and law.

It is a qualitative and documental research and a narrative analysis. Regarding the documents: 45 were from public authorities, 14 from Samarco Mineração S.A. and 73 from Brazilian magazines. Theoretically, the authors resorted to Bourdieusian sociology (speaking, saying and doxa) and the treadmills of production, crime and law theories.

Samarco: speaking – mission statements; saying – detailed information and economic and financial concerns; doxa – assistance discourse. Brazilian magazines: speaking – external agents; saying – agreements; doxa – attribution, aggravations, historical facts, impacts and protests.

The absence of discussions that addressed this fatality, with its respective consequences, from an agenda that exposed and denounced how it exacerbated race, class and gender inequalities.

Regarding Mariana’s environmental crime: Samarco Mineração S.A. speaks and says through the treadmill of production theory and supports its doxa through the treadmill of crime theory, and Brazilian magazines speak and say through the treadmill of law theory and support their doxa through the treadmill of crime theory.

To provoke reflections on the relationship between the mining companies and the communities where they settle to develop their productive activities.

Concerning environmental crime in perspective, submit it to a theoretical interpretation based on sociological references, approach it in a debate linked to environmental criminology, and describe it through narratives exposed by the guilty company and by Brazilian magazines with high circulation.

The purpose of this paper is to longitudinally assess the technical efficiency and productivity, considering investment projects and technological change, in a second-generation petrochemical company.

The study uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) together with the Malmquist index to measure efficiency during the analysis periods. The working method consists of four main phases, namely development of the conceptual model, construction of the mathematical model, application of model to the case, and analysis of the results. The study utilizes a quantitative approach with descriptive goals seeking to evaluate the impacts of technical changes on the operational efficiency and productivity of the production process.

The use of DEA associated with the Malmquist index proved to be viable for analyzing a single company and identifying efficiency improvements, as well as the impacts of the learning process and the implementation of improvement projects. However, the results of the improvement projects and learning process were not representative and had no statistical significance on the actual change in efficiency of the company during the periods analyzed. For the case in question, the learning process and continuous improvement were not observed during all study periods.

The proposition that the improvement projects and investments implemented increased the efficiency of the company was rejected. Hence, with this work, it was possible to determine that the company unnecessarily invested resources in projects to increase efficiency. Furthermore, the company could have explored more internal resources before making significant investments in increased efficiency.

As for the value of this research in the theoretical and academic scope, this paper advances knowledge on the application of DEA because it proposes to establish an internal reference benchmarking for comparison. The literature contains few studies that analyze organizations using continuous processes, such as petrochemical processes, in longitudinal studies as a function of time, especially with the use of DEA.

This study aims to provide an analysis of teaching the “10 Rs” – Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Remodel, Remanufacture, Reuse, Recycle and Recover energy, in technological-level undergraduate courses offered in Brazil. Technological undergraduate courses are more dynamic and pragmatic than bachelor’s degrees and aim to meet market demand.

The study collected data from 39 educators who know the reality of technological-level undergraduate courses in Brazil. The data were analyzed using the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution class technique.

The main findings of the research show potential for improvement in teaching all the “Rs” analyzed when considering technological-level undergraduate courses. Refuse, Restore and Recover energy are the most critical when considering how they should be taught in undergraduate technology courses in Brazil.

The paper’s originality lies in a unique empirical analysis of the circular economy – which is increasingly emerging as an intriguing approach to seeking sustainability in production chains – and the new generation of professionals in technological undergraduate courses who need to be educated and aligned with these concepts. The results can improve the curriculum, syllabus, course objectives and learning outcomes, upgrading the courses’ pedagogical projects.

The Industry 4.0 initiative – with its ultimate objective of revolutionizing the supply-chain – putted more emphasis on smart and autonomous systems, creating new opportunities to add flexibility and agility to automatic manufacturing systems. These systems are designed to free people from monotonous and repetitive tasks, enabling them to concentrate in knowledge-based jobs. One of these repetitive functions is the order-picking task which consists of collecting parts from storage (warehouse) and distributing them among the ordering stations. An order-picking system can also pick finished parts from working stations to take them to the warehouse. The purpose of this paper is to present a simplified model of a robotic order-picking system, i.e. a mobile manipulator composed by an automated guided vehicle (AGV), a collaborative robot (cobot) and a robotic hand.

Details about its implementation are also presented. The AGV is needed to safely navigate inside the factory infrastructure, namely, between the warehouse and the working stations located in the shop-floor or elsewhere. For that purpose, an ActiveONE AGV, from Active Space Automation, was selected. The collaborative robot manipulator is used to move parts from/into the mobile platform (feeding the working stations and removing parts for the warehouse). A cobot from Kassow Robots was selected (model KR 810), kindly supplied by partner companies Roboplan (Portugal) and Kassow Robotics (Denmark). An Arduino MKR1000 board was also used to interconnect the user interface, the AGV and the collaborative robot. The graphical user interface was developed in C# using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 IDE, taking advantage of this experience in this type of language and programming environment.

The resulting prototype was fully demonstrated in the partner company warehouse (Active Space Automation) and constitutes a possible order-picking solution, which is ready to be integrated into advanced solutions for the factories of the future.

A solution to fully automate the order-picking task at an industrial shop-floor was presented and fully demonstrated. The objective was to design a system that could be easy to use, to adapt to different applications and that could be a basic infrastructure for advanced order-picking systems. The system proved to work very well, executing all the features required for an order-picking system working in an Industry 4.0 scenario where humans and machines must act as co-workers. Although all the system design objectives were accomplished, there are still opportunities to improve and add features to the presented solution. In terms of improvements, a different robotic hand will be used in the final setup, depending on the type of objects that are being required to move. The amount of equipment that is located on-board of the AGV can be significantly reduced, freeing space and lowering the weight that the AGV carries. For example, the controlling computer can be substituted by a single-board-computer without any advantage. Also, the cobot should be equipped with a wrist camera to identify objects and landmark. This would allow the cobot to fully identify the position and orientation of the objects to pick and drop. The wrist camera should also use bin-picking software to fully identify the shape of the objects to pick and also their relative position (if they are randomly located in a box, for example). These features are easy to add to the developed mobile manipulator, as there are a few vision systems in the market (some that integrate with the selected cobot) that can be easily integrated in the solution. Finally, this paper reports a development effort that neglected, for practical reasons, all issues related with certification, safety, training, etc. A future follow-up paper, reporting a practical use-case implementation, will properly address those practical and operational issues.

This paper is dedicated to elaborating, proposing and validating an action plan to enhance the mitigation of risks generated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the electric sector supply chain, aiming to promote a more resilient supply chain.

For this, a systematic review of the literature was carried out to prepare an action plan that was validated by a group of experts, through the Delphi methodology.

As a result, an action plan was obtained, with 18 actions subdivided into 13 resilience elements and related to 20 main risks arising from the pandemic. The actions oriented to the development of relationships among supply chain members, promotion of a culture oriented to learning and problem solving, contingency plan, safety stock and risk management were pointed as those capable of generating resilience in the chain analyzed in the moment of crisis.

The results achieved can contribute to the expansion of debates in the area of resilient supply chain management, as well as contribute to supply chain managers in their elaboration and definition of actions that aim to make the supply chain more resilient. It is noteworthy that no similar study was found in the literature considering the specificities of supply chain management in the Brazilian Amazon region.

Meat is a crucial source of protein and other nutrients for human health. However, excessive consumption of meat products is not advisable due to their elevated sodium and animal fat levels. Hence, there is a strong recommendation for reducing sodium and fat content in meat products. This study aims to delve into the current sodium, total and saturated fat content of meat products in the Brazilian market.

A total of 1,600 products underwent analysis.

The highest sodium concentrations were identified in jerked beef (5.48 g/100 g), charqui (5.21 g/100 g) and salted pork meat (2.58 g/100 g). In contrast, the highest total and saturated fat levels were observed in bacon (35.33 and 12.50 g/100 g), salami (26.00 and 9.25 g/100 g) and pork coppa (22.00 and 9.75 g/100 g). Most meat products were categorized as medium in terms of sodium (77.75%), total fat (52.93%) and saturated fat (48.25%). However, many meat products exhibited high total and saturated fat levels.

This study represents the first comprehensive examination of the sodium, total fat and saturated fat content listed on the labels of many meat products in Brazil.