José Carlos Sá

• Professor and Researcher
• Associate Professor (Professor Coordinator) at Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto

In the context of retail logistics, achieving operational efficiency and cost reductions requires distinguishing between value-added (VA) and non-value-added (NVA) activities. VA activities are those that bring products closer to their correct position on the shelf, with their price updated, guaranteeing their availability to customers. All other a...

The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is a European framework and the most commonly used excellence Model in European countries, including Portugal, even though the Shingo Model has been growing in scope and is increasingly also being implemented, especially in European countries. Both are excellence Models created under different f...

This study aims to describe a new approach to managing the reduction or elimination of cable end waste during the Bowden cable trimming operation in production lines since this waste represents thousands of meters of wasted cable per year, which is unsustainable from an economic and environmental point of view. This study has shown how the implemen...

Purpose: To improve their efficiency and effectiveness, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are embracing Industry 4.0 (I4.0), which requires new equipment equipped with intelligent control systems. In the light of the new paradigm, it is becoming increasingly important to promote adequate educational provision in the training of Quality Mana...

Lean methodologies have been implemented in various sectors, helping to improve the overall efficiency and performance of organisations. The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between Lean and occupational safety and its impact on people’s behaviour. To this end, a survey was developed and a statistical study carried out. The s...

This special issue not only presents several cases of Lean Six Sigma implementation in Portuguese and Brazilian organisations in different sectors of activity but also addresses the contributions of Lean Six Sigma to Sustainability and Industry 4.0. In this way, it aims to make a strong scientific contribution to both business practice and the scie...

Purpose: This paper intends to evaluate the impact of Toyota Way (TW) focused activities on operational performance and its connection to sustainability and long-term success. Methodology/Approach: Three theoretical-practical activities were implemented in a real pickup assembly plant. Performance was assessed through the recording of standard docu...

This research focuses on designing a clear methodology for problem-solving. It investigates the application of a defined ‘Lean’ methodology for the proactive application of process improvement activities using a phased digitized measurement and monitoring system. This case study in a Medtech organisation utilized the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) mod...

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outline a global agenda for sustainable development, but need more detailed implementation guidelines for businesses, particularly Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). Given their limited resources, SMEs face significant challenges in adopting sustainability practices aligned with the SDGs. Th...

In the competitive world we are facing, organizations strive to achieve excellence. To this end, organizations must also ensure the safety, health and well-being of their employees. The EFQM and the Shingo models are globally recognized excellence models that help organizations to enhance their performance. In view of the above, the need arose to s...

This paper proposes a conceptual framework to integrate three relevant business models: Lean Management, Six Sigma, and international ISO Management Systems Standards (MSS). It explores the multiple synergies among them from an organizational excellence viewpoint. From the literature review, Lean Management, Six Sigma, and international Management...

The present research suggests a new perspective to investigate the effect that a particular type of language, in particular abstract language, may have on the consumer's perceived quality of an imperfect product. This relationship has not yet been considered in the literature and this is where we want to intervene, to solve the research gap and off...

Due to the increase in gas emissions and the growth of environmental problems globally, companies are striving to reduce their emissions and waste products in order to become more sustainable and preserve the environment. In order to solve this problem, an initiative called Science Based Targets has been created with the aim of defining targets and...

This study aimed to understand the impact of digital culture on companies’ knowledge and constant commitment to digital transformation, as well as its impact on organizations as a whole. Secondly, it aimed to explore the impact of digital technology adoption on organizational performance and competitiveness. Finally, the study investigated the role...

Industries must prepare diagnoses that indicate their actual state in using Industry 4.0 technologies, especially in Logistics 4.0. So then, focused on the food sector industries, designing and testing a model to carry out this diagnosis is necessary. This project aims to present a Diagnostic and Characterization Model for the Food Sector Industrie...

Speaker on the 64rd European Congress of Quality | Quality for the Future!

Both the Lean philosophy and occupational safety and health have been widely studied, although this has usually been carried out independently. However, the correlation between Lean and occupational safety and health in the industrial context is still underexplored. Indeed, Lean tools can be applied to ensure the best safety environment for workers...

Material selection for product design is a complex task. Thus, one of the objectives of this work is to analyze and understand and to promote the importance of material selection to conceive quality products with the help of designers that promote green self-identity in the early stage of new product conception. A questionnaire was sent to professi...

Sustainable development is a subject of intense discussion, mainly due to climate change, pollution, and increased waste, among other factors. The governments of various countries worldwide have been setting environmental targets for emissions and consumption to combat climate change and improve the state of our planet. Therefore, it is necessary t...

The presented work is focused on applying continuous improvement tools to reduce waste and process variability throughout an air-conditioned pipe production line (PL), to determine the line’s capacity and improve efficiency so that the desired productivity levels can be achieved. The line’s processes were analyzed, together with the integrated appl...

This paper presents the improvements in the internal logistical flows of material and information on the welding section of a company, specializing in the production of sterilizers for laboratories and hospitals. Based on the diagnostics phase, associated with the Action Research Methodology applied in this project, the main problems identified wer...

Nowadays, for companies to assert themselves in the markets, the focus on sustainability and social responsibility is preponderant and supported by academic research. For this, certification is considered an essential means to achieve high levels of social responsibility and sustainable development. In this study, we investigate the Geo distributio...

Drilling is the most common operation in the manufacture of machined parts. The complexity of this process depends on the number of holes to be machined which can reach hundreds or even thousands for certain parts. Also, the geometrical distribution of holes may or may not be regular, on a single plane or on several. Therefore, optimizing tool path...

This paper approaches the importance of technological development, as well as patent registration and consequent innovation. The main country/blocks that interact with each other in the business of the respective product innovation through the registration of patents are analyzed. The creation of wealth in the world moves between 5 blocks, designat...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand whether or not the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Model and the Shingo Model promote and are embedded into the three pillars of sustainability, as well as to propose a conceptual model for excellence in business towards sustainability. Methodology/Approach: Following the PRISMA...

The textile industry represents one of the most important economic links worldwide due to its essential generation of direct and indirect jobs, its contribution to the economy, and its ability to reinvent itself and adapt to market trends, government regulations, and the demands of interest groups. However, the textile industry is called upon to co...

Material selection for product design is a complex task. Thus, one of the objectives of this work is to analyze, understand and promote the importance of selection of materials to conceive quality products with help of designers' that promote green self-identity in the early stage of the conception of new products. A questionnaire was sent to profe...

Due to environmental degradation, using environment-friendly products has become necessary to reduce carbon emissions. However, the consumption of such products is still below expectations because these products are usually costlier than their traditional counterparts. The current study aims to investigate consumer behavior towards environment-frie...

Purpose: This research aimed to make a diagnosis of the implementation of Lean and Six Sigma philosophies in Portuguese laboratories and to evaluate the impact of these philosophies on organizational performance. Methodology/Approach: A quantitative research methodology was used, based on the survey research strategy, and using as data collection...

Employee effectiveness is highly important for all economic activities. Several factors can affect its degree, either positively or negatively. In this vein, this work aims to examine the impact of knowledge management and total quality management on employee effectiveness in the industry of emerging countries. For that, Tunisian small and medium e...

Occupational safety is a major concern these days because it is an important social issue promoting financial implications for organisations, employees, and society. But while occupational safety is an important concern, the top management of organizations usually prioritize waste and cost reduction. Therefore, there is a need for a technique that...

Increased consumer demand as well as increased competition, has led organizations to need continuous improvement. The Lean and Six Sigma philosophies, widely applied in industry, have shown important results in terms of process improvement, which has attracted the attention of many organisations, including services. This research aims to characteri...

This paper presents a warehouse layout improvement to supply an assembly line of an automotive company, using Lean methodologies. For the layout change to be efficient, it was first necessary to reorganize the material in the Final Assembly supermarket. Once this task was completed, the racks were reorganized. The implementation of these two improv...

Cost estimation of manufacturing processes is quite important, as it can be used to provide budgets to costumers, by providing these budgets accurately and in a fast manner greatly contributes for good relations between the company and the costumers. However, providing these accurate budgets is quite difficult and time-consuming for some processes....

The purpose of this study was to solve a problem in the warehouse belonging to a Danish transport and logistics company. The detected issue was the inefficiency of the system used to manage warehousing and storage operations. Thus, this study aimed to achieve improvements to the performance of the warehouse and increase efficiency through the imple...

Lean thinking is a philosophy that allows organizations to move towards perfection through continuous improvement. With the applications of lean tools, it is possible to identify waste within an organization and present simple, effective, and cost-effective solutions to achieve higher productivity and profitability. The present article is a result...

In this chapter, the authors highlight the benefits of using Lean Maintenance, showing and discussing obtained results from studying industrial companies and concluding about used tools and level of this concept implementation in their activity. For obtaining the base results for this work, surveys were used for research carried out in enterprises....

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the innovative and most recent composite technology, developed by the R&D Wood Based Products Technology Group. The technology uses a combination of wild thistle (Cynara cardunculus) particles and polyurethane foam, proposed for the conception of lighter and mechanically resistant furniture, which compete...

The purpose of this research is to analyze the structural relationship between total quality management (TQM), Industry 4.0 (I4.0), and sustainability performance in the ready-made garments (RMG) sector of Bangladesh. An online survey was used to collect data from 240 employees working in ready-made garments located in Bangladesh. The data was anal...

This project is the result of a volunteer program that took place in the Republic Guinea-Bissau (RGB) at the Paediatric Hospital. The Paediatric Hospital was working with the same technologic skills as Portugal in the 70’s years. There was no wired network between departments, no informatic system and all work was handmade. The physicians received...

With the emergence of industry 4.0, several elements of the supply chain are transforming through the adoption of smart technologies such as blockchain, the internet of things and cyber-physical systems. Logistics is considered one of the important elements of supply chain management and its digital transformation is crucial to the success of indus...

The use of increasingly comprehensive, efficient and effective information systems is a crucial need for the sustainable development of companies in all sectors. However, the implementation of these systems has not always met expectations. In this work, this problem is studied from the point of view of ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) software c...

In the 20th century, there was a burst concerning the development of the automobile industry, which has become an essential asset for society. With its evolution, this industry created a foundation that based its competitiveness on satisfying people’s needs with the highest possible quality and always respecting the delivery deadlines. With the gro...

This study aims to understand the relevance of digital transformation and its impact on organizations in Portugal. In this way, it is intended to evaluate the application of technologies, knowledge management , and incremental innovation in an organizational context. As a methodology, the authors intend to prepare a questionnaire in Google Docs, ma...

Several products with a high length/section ratio and with a relatively low stiffness are used in the automotive industry, causing several problems because of a lack of stiffness. One of the examples where this occurs is in the production of Bowden cables, where automation has played a very important role in the flexibility of processes and product...

Companies are continuously looking to improve their production systems using excellence models, with lean thinking, the Shingo model, six sigma and lean six sigma being the most comprehensive and applied. It is expected that the initial focus for the survival of companies is their economic profitability, but when economic needs are met, the next st...

Manufacturers of automotive components are faced with the need to request very frequent external logistics services, sometimes with identical or very similar destinations. These services are always the subject of a quote request, which does not always present the necessary agility in terms of information flow. Thus, this work has the main objective...

The automotive industry is constantly stimulated by strong competitiveness in terms of product quality, cost control and commitment to delivery times. In the last two decades, competitiveness has been increasing, demanding from organizations greater control over production and surrounding processes, in order to reduce production time and, consequen...

The main objective of this work is to implement tools capable of improving the efficiency of production and internal management with a view to improving customer service. To do so, it is necessary to analyze the current processes, identify the points that can be improved and only then adopt the solutions that best serve the objectives to be achieve...

Companies face new challenges needing to find ways to stand out from the competitors. All companies face new projects, which need to be managed assertively and faster, launching new products on the market ahead of competitors. This strategy requires enormous dexterity and agility within teams, which are increasingly multifaceted, multidisciplinary,...

The main objective of this work is to implement tools capable of improving the efficiency of production and internal management with a view to improving customer service. To do so, it is necessary to analyze the current processes, identify the points that can be improved and only then adopt the solutions that best serve the objectives to be achieve...

Currently, certification is an essential tool for a company’s sustainability and a seal of trust for the stakeholders. The B Corporation (B Corp) certification system is in line with the leading indicators of sustainable development and social responsibility published by the general assembly of the United Nations, namely: environment, community, wo...

Projects have grown into more dynamic and complex endeavors, and agile project management should be considered as a way to deal with them. This is a novel study in this field, because the implementation of agile project management in the automotive industry was not explored so far, thus, this work intended to fill this gap, by identifying barriers...

To remain competitive in the marketplace, organizations are seeking the adoption of management models and tools that will allow them to find better and more effective practices to reinvent themselves, and continuously improve their business processes and product's quality in a sustainable way, hence pursuing the ultimate goal of reaching enterprise...

The industry of automotive components is highly competitive. Polymer injection, used to over-mould conduits, is used to produce the necessary connections between the end of the Bowden cables and the car parts where they need to be assembled. Depending on the vehicle or the use, there will be a different connection of the conduit. The industry conti...

Production scheduling generates a direct impact on several aspects of manufacture, such as the number of delays in delivery to customers, total flow time, as well as the percentage of equipment used. It must, therefore, constitute a priority in production management, which should seek to implement scheduling techniques that will lead to positive re...

Machining is widely used in many kinds of industries and outsourcing in this area is an increasing way to improve competitiveness. Thus, to get quotes for small, medium, or high series of parts is a common practice, which implies a strong effort from the possible suppliers to analyze the dimension, geometry, and specificities of their machining pro...

This research assesses the lean and green (LG) practices' impact on the competitive advantage (CA) of organizations, through sustainable performance, considering lean maturity as the moderator. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from a cross-sectional sample of 261 companies operating in Portugal. Hypotheses are tested through stru...

The manual assembly processes and the dynamic industrial environment usually requires fast adjustments between work teams and workstations to accomplish customers’ needs. Sometimes, activities are scheduled without considering occupational health of work teams. Those occurrences can compromise work conditions and employee’s health. Thus, the specif...

As a pillar of Industry 4.0, simulation embodies an extremely useful tool in the resolution of issues related to decision-making and the choice of strategies. Since these are problems which exist in the wine sector, the purpose of this work was to build a decision support tool based on system dynamics, which would encompass the main factors that in...

The purpose of the present study consists in the development of a conceptual model to optimize assignments between staff’s and workstations with manual assembly processes. This model is planned to satisfy customers’ needs without compromising workers’ health. The development of occupational risk measurement tools is urgent and essential to prevent...

Due to the competitiveness in the job shop nature of the metalworking industry, project management plays an important role in improving performance, efficiently and effectively managing its performance. Many of the generic problems observed in project management in metalworking industries were in the domain of document management, communication, mu...

The present work was carried out on a cork company that is dedicated to the production of floating floors and its aim was to reduce by 15% the time it takes to perform series changes in one cutting line. The research methodology used in this work was the action research methodology. The methodology consisted of 5 phases, as follows: 1 st-historical...

The global competitiveness creates an enormous pressure on companies as they need to reduce production costs in order to increase productivity. In this sense, the SMED and 5S tools appear as competent tools to reduce the waste associated with these processes. This work aims to study and assess some processes in a company in the textile sector. Impr...

This paper presents a performed study to develop and improve the process of after sales of a Latvian company specialized in manufacturing fish processing equipment. The project was developed based on an action- research methodology. During the first stage of the study, the current after sales process was analysed to identify the issues and possible...

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) emerged to deliver sustainable economic, environmental, and social value to organization's extended stakeholders and society in general. This study investigates the similarities, differences, and relationships between B Corp, ISO 9001, and ISO 14001 certifications and is supported by a mixed research methodolog...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of a maintenance philosophy, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), on the operational performance of the Portuguese industry, identifying how it enables the systematic reduction of waste in maintenance. Design/methodology/approach A structured questionnaire was constructed and sent to 472 Por...

This study was developed in a furniture company and aimed to implement some Lean tools, such as 5S and Visual Management to reduce waste, by improving the production process. To carry out this analysis an observation plan was used, having the Spaghetti diagram as a reference as well as the value-added analysis of the operations. The implementation...

Occupational health and safety constitutes a topic of great importance in organizations nowadays, given the social and financial implications that arise. In addition to these problems, the manufacturing industry is greatly responsible for the number of accidents at work worldwide. In parallel, organizations focus on improving processes and eradicat...

Continuous improvement in the manufacturing industries is the prime requirement to make the organization profitable. Lean manufacturing and six sigma are old techniques to improve the production of the industry by eliminating waste. These tools help the industry to grow worldwide in the competitive environment. This paper is based on the case study...

Lean production has already proved to constitute an effective management philosophy when eliminating time loss in production processes. However, achieving economic results is currently insufficient. In the context of this study, research was conducted on the Web of Science platform in order to identify which lean tools are of most widespread use in...

Due to increasing competitiveness in the industry, companies will invariably adopt strategies to ensure that their employees continuously eliminate waste and create more value. This concept was applied at a company that designs, develops, and manufactures steel moulds for the injection of thermoplastics, with the purpose of implementing Lean thinki...

Lean manufacturing has already proven to be an effective management philosophy for eliminating waste in production processes, leading to operational gains. However, nowadays, it is not enough just to obtain economic results, with the environmental aspect being a concern that organizations have been incorporating into their production processes due...

The production of stamping dies requires the manufacture of numerous components, many of which have similar dimensions. However, because they are almost all different, this brings added problems in the acquisition of materials, and in their machining, the main process used in the manufacture of these components. Most SMEs do not have production sys...

The main objective of the study is to minimize interdepartmental communication, potentiation of fast and efficient decision making, and computerization of data. Using software such as MS Excel® and MS Power BI®, a Power BI® tool was conceived to be capable of incorporating, for the entire company, the dashboards that collect the main KPIs of each d...

Customers are becoming increasingly demanding and logistics is gaining more importance in order to assure customer satisfaction in terms of money, quality and time. The goal of this paper is to show that warehouses can be a source of competitive advantage and that a critical approach towards the existing available space may lead to increases in cap...

Digitalization is rushing throughout the world, namely, in industrial and societal infrastructures. Hence, digital transformation becomes a pillar of industrial policy, known in Europe as “Industry 4.0,” in China as “made in China 2025,” in Asia as “Smart Cities,” in Japan as “Society 5.0,” and in North America as “Industrial Internet.” These trans...

Purpose: This study was carried out in a cork company and its purpose was to observe and analyze the practices and methods used during the tools/series change moments and to propose improvements and alternatives to these same procedures so that the time needed to carry out the setup is reduced by 15% in both lines. Methodology/Approach:The methodo...

In recent years, there has been an increase in the adoption of lean manufacturing principles, as well as tools, in multiple industrial sectors. In fact, this management philosophy, which is already well-established, has been applied successfully in other various contexts than just production. However, companies are under pressure to manage their ac...

Purpose This study aims to improve the reception and positioning of materials in the warehouse, as well as the internal logistics of a bus manufacturing company by acting upon the processes of supply line management. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on the action research methodology which, through a practical approach, intends to g...