João Matias

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Aveiro

Production sustainable energy is one of the crucial issues in all countries. In this sense, marine renewable energies (MREs) can play a prominent role for the sustainable development of societies due to its abundant and sustainable characteristics. On the other hand, different sustainability limitations and less research have restricted their rapid...

The increasing production of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in Brazil is driving the adoption of circular economy (CE) practices related to the management of the WEEE reverse chain. Thus, the adoption of CE becomes essential for strategic management that promotes environmental preservation, and economic and social development. Thi...

Rural fires are currently one of the main global disasters, and Portugal is among the countries that have suffered from them for decades. These fires pose economic, environmental, and social threats to the country. A primary cause of rural fires is the burning of biomass to clear agroforestry residues. Thus, combating rural fires requires more effe...

European ports authorities are being forced to challenge their traditional approach to energy usage and how efficiently they manage energy within the port itself. Until recently, ports authorities did not engage as much with energy trading, generation, or purchase beyond the typical consumption, but now, there is an external pressure for the author...

The use of biomass as a renewable resource has gained significant attention in recent years due to concerns about climate change and the need for more sustainable energy and materi- als. Visualizing the residual forestry biomass supply chain allows for identifying opportunities and challenges related to feedstock harvesting, availability, and trans...

The project described in this paper was developed in a rubber area of a cork company, where maintenance activity was weak or non-existent. The main objective was to implement a maintenance philosophy, based on the principles of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). The methodology adopted was based on action-research. The autonomous maintenance (AM)...

The Brazilian territorial extension made it difficult to structure a reverse chain to deal with issues related to Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). This is due to government requirements for the management of this waste by electronics manufacturers and importers. To compete with external competitors, companies need to use the circul...

Residual agroforestry biomass, a byproduct of agricultural and forestry practices, can be used as feedstock in various industries, including bioenergy, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. In addition to its potential to contribute to the bio-circular economy, it can also help to reduce fuel loads in forests and mitigate the risk of forest fires. This s...

This article describes the work carried out with the objective of analyzing and improving the maintenance activity in the molding process of a company in the cork sector. Regarding the research design, an analysis of the production and maintenance process was carried out, which allowed an initial diagnosis with the identification of existing proble...

Background: With the increasing societal focus on sustainability and the critical need for innovative energy solutions, this research emphasizes the undervalued biomass originating from waste products of agroforestry activities. The traditional practice of disposing of these waste products through open-air burning has led to environmental challenge...

The industrial progress made throughout these years has led to great results in terms of producing fast and with good quality. However, the impacts related to that production, whether these are environmental, economic, or social have been, at times, neglected. The manufacturing sector, as one of the most pollutants, felt the urge to adapt to this i...

This study intends to make a characterization of the main tasks and skills needed to face the Industry 4.0. Moreover, it gives special attention to the different company’s hierarchical levels. To achieve the goals of this paper, a methodology based on Collaborative Decision Making method was used. Firstly, thirty participants were interviewed to un...

Taking into account the issues associated with climate change and reliance on external sources of energy, among others, the European Union and its commission have developed a strategy for transitioning to a climate-neutral economy by 2050. In this sense, a wide-ranging package was adopted to ensure the EU meets its climate and energy targets for th...

Fossil fuels, especially coal, contribute to carbon emissions, hindering the EU’s decarbonization goal by 2050. This article proposes converting the Pego Coal Power Plant into a biomass plant as a potential solution. Biomass, a renewable resource abundant in Portugal, can transform the Pego plant into a sustainable energy source, reducing greenhous...

Agroforest woody residual biomass can play an essential role in the decarbonization of energy production and in meeting the targets imposed for carbon neutrality. However, due to the constraints caused by some intrinsic characteristics, such as its low density, low calorific value, high heterogeneity and territorial dispersion, its management hampe...

Total Quality Management (TQM) is useful in both the industrial and service sectors. The purpose of this study was to increase profitability at a management consulting company by applying and improving internal operational excellence. This was accomplished using a case study. In order to overcome the problems, a prioritized plan of actions was deve...

The current market conditions and purchasing power put pressure on selling prices. To maintain corporate profits, it is important to increase manufacturing efficiency and lower costs. The industrial unit in which this project was developed aims to increase the annual production of cork stoppers and by doing so, maintain the high standards of the qu...

Oil refineries play an important role in the economy, mainly in the transport and energy sectors; however, they are energy-intensive industries and responsible for a significant amount of waste and carbon dioxide emissions. Industrial symbiosis can contribute significantly to increasing the sustainability of this sector, as it allows entities that...

Residual agroforestry valorization reduces the dependency on nonrenewable resources. It is also a source of cheaper, renewable, and greener raw materials. Apart from being used for energy production, it has the potential to be used as feedstock in various other industries if properly valorized. In this study, the potential biomass residues produced...

Due to the automotive industry’s strict demands, customers submit constant production pressure, leading to the adoption of new methodologies, techniques, and management ideas. The goal is always to minimise losses and waste. These demands also affect the maintenance department, which has to keep the balance between machines’ availability for produc...

In many cities and their surrounding environments, materials are wasted and underutilized. As a result, waste and energy recovery can play a critical role. The concept of circularity can be applied to urban environments and their areas of influence in order to stimulate Urban Industrial Symbiosis (UIS). As such, it is vital for cities to have a rob...

Biomass is an alternative energy source with high potential to contribute to the global energy mix and to countries’ energetic independence. The case of Portugal is particularly relevant, given its biomass availability. Thus, the quantification of woody residual biomass is assumed to be urgent. To achieve the objective of quantifying residual woody...

In recent years there has been an increasing competitiveness in the automotive sector with companies having to respond to an increasingly diverse choice of customers. Additionally, the incorporation of several technological features in cars and the consequent dependence on several electrical systems has increased the complexity and demands of the w...

In the European Mediterranean region, rural fires are a widely known problem that cause serious socio-economic losses and undesirable environmental consequences, including the loss of lives, infrastructures, cultural heritage, and ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and the provisioning of raw materials. In the last decades, the collaps...

The paradigm shift towards sustainable growth is urgent, and biomass, which is the oldest energy source that humans have used since the discovery of fire, might play an important role. Biomass waste from forestry and agriculture is expected to fuel part of the increasing demand for biomass, and its valorization allows for more the efficient use of...

Background: The present work is related to a project developed in a company dealing with the security and communication systems, fire alarms, and electronic displays sector, located in the district of Aveiro. This work aims to improve the logistics flow of material reception in the warehouse of a company by using case study research methodology. Me...

Nowadays, consumers search for organizations that can provide customized services at affordable prices. Therefore, it becomes essential for companies to meet those requirements by creating flexible and resilient production systems. Technological pathways such as industry 4.0 can represent a positive impact in the creation of those systems, through...

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the economic and environmental gains that result from the implementation of cleaner production in a small enterprise (SE) from the metal and mechanics industry, allowing for overcoming barriers and contributing to sustainable development goals. The research work builds on a case study that involved several d...

Industrial engineering and management (IEM) is considered a softer type of engineering. IEM professionals have been slow in implementing many changes that have occurred in production, ranging from mass production to mass customization paradigms embedded in Industry 4.0. This chapter introduces and discusses the role of IEM professionals in dealing...

Background: This study was conducted to demonstrate the importance of occupational health and safety (OHS) management in construction project environments, taking into account the successful development of those projects. The associated problems in OHS management projects were also studied, as substantial empirical research has shown this is a comp...

Collaborative Networks (CN) are well-known by the literature, has a mean to achieve multiple innovations, resulted from the collaboration with a broad variety of partners to access different types of knowledge and skills. Despite its establishment, even in academia and in the corporate world, its implementation, constitutes a challenge, mainly when...

Energy consumption is associated with economic growth, but it comes with a toll regarding the environment. Renewable energies can be considered substitutes for fossil fuels and may contribute to reducing the environmental degradation that the world is presently facing. With this research, we aimed to offer a broader view of the state-of-the-art in...

The production of residual biomass, such as vine pruning, presents environmental problems since its elimination is usually carried out through the uncontrolled burning of the remaining materials and with the emission of greenhouse gases without any counterpart. The use of these residues to produce biochar presents several advantages. In addition to...

The use of residual biomass of forest and/or agricultural origin is an increasingly common issue regarding the incorporation of materials that, until recently, were out of the typical raw material supply chains for the production of biomass pellets, mainly due to the quality constraints that some of these materials present. The need to control the...

This paper aims to present a study of the type of advanced technologies used across manufacturing supply chains in supporting the main processes of the supply chain operations reference model (SCOR). It also intends to identify a set of sustainable performance indicators (environmental, economic, and social) suitable to evaluate a supply chain 4.0...

Message from the Guest Editors This Special Issue calls for papers that present applied work regarding these issues. Contributions concerning theoretical approaches are also welcome. Topics of interest include but not are limited to the following: Sustainable development approaches in industry; Green product development in open innovation; Green t...

Considering the advantages associated with the port sector concerning the potential of offshore wind energy, several international ports are aiming to achieve a solid integration in offshore wind energy clusters. This article performs an analysis of several seaports and offshore wind energy clusters in Europe to assess the feasibility of implementi...

The use of residual forms of biomass, resulting from processes of transformation of the agri-food and/or forest industries, presents itself as an alternative with high potential for energy recovery, given the existing availability, both from the perspective of quantities, but also from the perspective of geographic distribution. In this work, sampl...

The elaboration of City Development Strategies (CDS) helps cities to harness the potential of urbanization through strategic planning, and consequently to contribute to promoting development, balancing city growth, and empowering citizens. Continuous and sprawling development along with peri-urban areas has offered a vast and almost limitless nexus...

The biomass industry is growing due to the current search for greener and more sustainable alternatives to fossil energy sources. However, this industry, due to its singularity, presents several challenges and disadvantages related to the transportation of raw materials, with the large volumes that are usually involved. This project aimed to addres...

Currently, the search for alternative sources of energy is not only due to the scarcity of non-renewable sources, since these still have an availability capable of meeting actual consumption needs, but also due to the negative environmental impacts that its consumption presents. Thus, the use of biomass as a renewable and sustainable energy source...

Innovation matters. Business success increasingly depends upon sustainable innovation. Observing recent innovation best practices, the emergence of a new paradigm is traceable. Creating an innovative ecosystem has a multilayer effect: It contributes to regional digitalization, technological start-up emergence, open innovation promotion, and new pol...

Digitizing public services is, at the moment, an essential necessity for numerous governments around the world. An improved government through digitization will not only have a growing effect on businesses, but it will also be able to intensify citizen engagement and push for economic growth. During the last 10 years more countries have progressive...

The world population is growing at a very high rate, which also entails a massive increase in energy consumption, and also, therefore, in its production, which is gradually and steadily increasing. Energy and the environment are essential to achieving sustainable development, and constitute a fundamental part of human activity. If we consider energ...

Collaboration between university and industry is essential in today’s changing environment, where limited resources must be used by as many users as possible in an efficient manner. At the University of Valladolid we have a Lean School equipped in collaboration with Renault-Nissan Consulting where training is given to students, workers and professi...

According to some existed studies, one of the economic sectors to achieve sustainability, is the household appliance sector. However, given the different issues (e.g. energy and water consumption, reliability, initial cost, design, noise, illuminance, etc.) to be considered, together with the existence of several brands and models from the market,...

Industrial symbiosis, which allows entities and companies that traditionally be separated, to cooperate among them in the sharing of resources, contributes to the increase of sustainability with environmental, economic and social benefits. Examples of industrial symbiosis have grown over the years with increasing geographic dispersion. Thus, throug...

In the current business landscape, customers’ orders compliance with the established delivery dates and the efficient use of resources are two relevant topics on the agenda. In this context, order fulfilment (OF) is a key business process dealing with all the activities needed to define customer requirements, design the production and logistics pro...

The maintenance management is a topic of strategic importance for automotive manufacturers. In fact, an effective maintenance process and a preventive maintenance (PM) procedure can significantly reduce the risk of equipment failures that can lead to downtime on the production lines. However, due to the complexity of an automotive production system...

In this paper the implementation of a total productive maintenance (TPM) plan is described for the reliability of an automotive production line of machining and assembly. This production line is considered critical for the industrial unit in this case study. In order to improve the current state of the machines operating on the production line, sev...

: Climate change is a reality that affects the daily lives of people around the world, with a set of effects that are systematically felt. If there is still discussion about the real cause behind these phenomena, with differing opinions defending the anthropic origin or the origin in terrestrial cycles of geological scale, it seems to be unanimousl...

The goal of this paper is to unravel a quality problem, mainly the quality improvement of a process by employing statistical methods. The normality test utilized in the case is cumulative frequency distribution with regression analysis. The statistical process control (SPC) technique control charts reveal that the process is centered and meets the...

The products related to automotive industry need to be extremely competitive. The metallic wire ropes used to open doors in the vehicles are based on a braided wire rope provided with accessories. The more expensive is the vehicle, the more complex is the required final wire rope. In order to prevent the corrosion and reduce noise, the internal met...

In order to reach a sustainable planet, there is a permanent need by the consumer (decision- agent), to achieve sustainable solutions, with its decisions. Given the importance of the buildings, as a sector to achieve such solutions, as well as the diversity of household appliances existent on the market, with all its different issues, there are sev...

Industrial symbiosis, which is characterised mainly by the reuse of waste from one company as raw material by another, has been applied worldwide with recognised environmental, economic, and social benefits. However, the potential for industrial symbiosis is not exhausted in existing cases, and there is still a wide range of opportunities for its a...

Commercialization of marine renewable energies (MREs) plays a prominent role in enhancing the sustainable development goals of the societies due to its abundant and environment-friendly characteristics. The existence of widespread marine areas around the world demonstrates the ability to apply these types of energy to meet the current needs of clea...

Industrial symbiosis has proven to be an important tool for improving business sustainability with numerous environmental, economic, and social benefits. The literature on this subject has been provided with countless case studies of the application of this practice in different geographical locations. However, studies concerning Portugal in this a...

The research community agrees there is an interrelation between lean manufacturing system 5S tool and workplace organization, organizational performance, and waste elimination, among others. However, the relationship between the 5S tool and Safety is scarcely explored in the literature and since evidences from practice exist, it is important to tur...

The energy consumption in buildings, can be reduced through a rational choice of the household appliances to be acquired. This choice can be based, on a specific criteria, settled according to the consumer needs. However, such choice, still needs to be optimized, since in general, an efficient equipment has a high investment, although a low energy...

This study aims to evaluate the implications of the use of maritime pine non-debarked wood chips as an alternative solid fuel in industrial boilers in Portugal, highlighting the energy properties and chemical composition of the produced ash. Several samples are collected from different sources, on which a proximate analysis is carried out in order...

The purpose of this paper is to compare the environmental performance of two internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) with distinct engines, one with the conventional diesel engine and the other with an electric motor supply (hybrid diesel) and a diesel engine, and then to assess which one has less environmental impact. The Portuguese automobile...

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a well-known Lean Manufacturing tool used to support wastes identification and value creation. The purpose of this paper is to present the application of this tool to the setting up of a new pre-series production area. To do so, a case study is presented from the automotive plastic sector. In this case study, VSM was u...

Automotive companies are constantly facing new challenges and new demands such as international competition and increasing pressure to reduce costs and increase their performance. In this context, the use of certain types of software becomes a very important tool as a factor of differentiation of performance and quality compared to other companies....

Industrial symbiosis is an important approach to achieve sustainability and to reduce significantly wastes. It is, therefore, imperative to evaluate and quantify the real impact of industrial symbiosis in order to provide more synergies between companies and more policies to encourage this practice. This article aims to present a literature review...

Palpable progress in Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are quickly turning Industry 4.0 a reality thus having a deep effect on every angle of the manufacturing industry, from logistics to quality control. The measurement for the quality control no longer will be made in a distinct metrology section, but instantaneously on...

Lean is becoming a world-class word that represents continuous improvement and most of all the importance of focusing on creating value. The implementation of Lean Manufacturing will lead us to improve quality, reducing costs and at the same time the elimination of non-value-added activities. For these reasons, several organizations try to adopt th...

It is ever more necessary that equipment, systems, and installations operate as long as possible without failures. And when failures occur they must be as short as possible. This is when maintenance becomes actively important through the obligation of giving a quick response, efficiently, and economically. To be successful at these types of respons...

Nowadays, in order to achieve manufacturing excellence and to ensure customer satisfaction in a competitive marketplace, companies are increasingly looking for simple techniques to bring them vital gains in terms of time and money. A powerful tool to minimize average production time and to save costs is the Kanban system, which not only reduces sto...

An energy-efficient appliance normally presents a lower energy consumption compared to a less efficient one, with a higher initial investment, although this not always happens. Additionally, each appliance, presents very different features, leading to some difficulties on its choice by the consumer (decision-agent).

Current research establishes an interrelation between lean tools and economic performance. However, the synergetic relationship between the lean tools and the triple bottom line approach is not so well explored and understood, making it a relevant research topic. So, this chapter aims to explore how some basic lean tools, such as 5S, Value Stream M...

Industrial symbiosis ties companies from all business sectors with the aim of improving the efficiency of resources at an intersectional level through the commercial exchange of materials, energy and water and sharing assets, logistics and experience. It involves industries and other organizations that have always been separated in a collective app...

The diversity of energy efficiency appliances existent on the market, with all its different issues, contributes to the existence of several tradeoffs (e.g., energy and water consumption vs. initial investment), which make the consumer’s choices in the market difficult. This becomes even more relevant, by knowing that nowadays a consumer tries to g...

The growing increase in world energy consumption favors the search for renewable energy sources. One of the existing options for the growth and sustainable development of such types of sources is through the use of biomass as an input. The employment of biomass as solid fuel is widely studied and is no longer a novelty nor presents any difficulty f...

In an increasingly and globally competitive industry like the automotive sector, the continuous improvement of processes assumes a key role in the enhancement of effectiveness and efficiency. In line with this philosophy, the study undertaken of the work method and its inherent activities has pointed to time measurement as a gemba support tool of g...

The aim of this paper is to provide a bi-level model for the expansion planning on wind investment while considering different load ranges of power plants in power systems at a multi-stage horizon. Different technologies include base load units, such as thermal and water units, and peak load units such as gas turbine. In this model, subsidies are c...

This paper presents a model to promote energy efficiency among household appliances, by supporting the consumer decisions through the maximization of his savings, associated to a set of electrical appliances from the market to be acquired. Not always an efficient equipment from the market, is more expensive than a less efficient one, which can lead...