Browsing by Author "Silva, Francisco"
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- Acqusition and data analysis of the eco-efficiency for the establishment of indicators parameters for industrial environmental sustainabilityPublication . Meira Castro, Ana C.; Silva, Francisco; Meixedo, Joao Paulo; Durão, Luís MiguelThe industrial activity is inevitably associated with a certain degradation of the environmental quality, because is not possible to guarantee that a manufacturing process can be totally innocuous. The eco-efficiency concept is globally accepted as a philosophy of entreprise management, that encourages the companies to become more competitive, innovative and environmentally responsible by promoting the link between its companies objectives for excellence and its objectives of environmental excellence issues. This link imposes the creation of an organizational methodology where the performance of the company is concordant with the sustainable development. The main propose of this project is to apply the concept of eco-efficiency to the particular case of the metallurgical and metal workshop industries through the development of the particular indicators needed and to produce a manual of procedures for implementation of the accurate solution.
- Assessment of the Impact of Lean Tools on the Safety of the Shoemaking IndustryPublication . Sá, José Carlos; Soares, Leonardo; Dinis-Carvalho, José; Silva, Francisco; Santos, GilbertoBoth 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 in each kind of manufacturing process, and this deserves to be studied. The study described here aims to understand the influence of each of a set of four Lean tools used in an industrial context with a strong manual labor component, seeking to determine the influence of each of these Lean tools on the increase in safety obtained through their application. For this purpose, four Lean tools that are quite commonly applied are selected, taking into account previously presented work that pointed to the positive influence of the application of each of these tools on worker safety: total productive maintenance system, Gemba walk, visual management and Yokoten. This study aims to apply these Lean tools and to analyze their impact on productivity, and then, on the safety of a company selected as a target in order to validate the concept. For this purpose, a new tool is created. In the first instance, the tool analyzes the current state of the productive process and the safety level through the study of the risk levels detected in the plant. In terms of productivity results, a reduction between 7% and 12% in cycle time is achieved in four areas of the plant. The feedback from employees showed increased satisfaction with the processes’ simplification. To conclude, a 50% reduction in the number of work accidents per month is observed as a result of the implementation of Lean tools. The influence of the selected Lean tools on increasing both productivity and safety is clear, and our results prove the selection of tools to be largely adequate.
- Automated combination of bilateral energy contracts negotiation tacticsPublication . Pinto, Angelo; Pinto, Tiago; Silva, Francisco; Praça, Isabel; Vale, Zita; Corchado, Juan ManuelThis paper addresses the theme automated bilateral negotiation of energy contracts. In this work, the automatic combination between different negotiation tactics is proposed. This combination is done dynamically throughout the negotiation process, as result from the online assessment that is performed after each proposal and counter-proposal. The proposed method is integrated in a decision support system for bilateral negotiations, called Decision Support for Energy Contracts Negotiations (DECON), which in turn is integrated with the Multi-Agent Simulator of Competitive Electricity Markets (MASCEM). This integration enables testing and validating the proposed methodology in a realistic market negotiation environment. A case study is presented, demonstrating the advantages of the proposed approach.
- Bilateral contract prices estimation using a Q-learning based approachPublication . Rodriguez-Fernandez, Jaime; Pinto, Tiago; Silva, Francisco; Praça, Isabel; Vale, Zita; Corchado, Juan ManuelThe electricity markets restructuring process encouraged the use of computational tools in order to allow the study of different market mechanisms and the relationships between the participating entities. Automated negotiation plays a crucial role in the decision support for energy transactions due to the constant need for players to engage in bilateral negotiations. This paper proposes a methodology to estimate bilateral contract prices, which is essential to support market players in their decisions, enabling adequate risk management of the negotiation process. The proposed approach uses an adaptation of the Q-Learning reinforcement learning algorithm to choose the best from a set of possible contract prices forecasts that are determined using several methods, such as artificial neural networks (ANN), support vector machines (SVM), among others. The learning process assesses the probability of success of each forecasting method, by comparing the expected negotiation price with the historic data contracts of competitor players. The negotiation scenario identified as the most probable scenario that the player will face during the negotiation process is the one that presents the higher expected utility value. This approach allows the supported player to be prepared for the negotiation scenario that is the most likely to represent a reliable approximation of the actual negotiation environment.
- Cleaner Production: Toward a Better FuturePublication . Silva, Francisco; Gouveia, Ronny MiguelThis book provides an overview of cleaner production, including how regulations have evolved, and presents a broad perspective on how it is being developed. Presenting several practical examples and applications of modern clean production technologies, it provides readers with ideas on how to extend these practices to other industry sectors in order to contribute to a better environment in the future. The authors start from the initial concepts of how to implement new cleaner production systems, before collecting recent developments in the area and demonstrating practical ways in which the latest knowledge can be applied. It motivates readers to develop new ideas on how to improve manufacturing systems to save energy and generate less waste, and discusses strategies on how to save, reuse and adapt materials, as well as techniques to reduce the waste and pollution produced. This book serves as a reference resource for industrial management engineers and researchers, and is also of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students looking for insights into cleaner production in industry.
- A context-based building security alarm through power and sensors analysisPublication . Silva, Francisco; Santos, Gabriel; Praça, Isabel; Vale, ZitaThe great technology advance over the last few years has led to a great increase in the quantity and availability of information. Having the means to obtain the required information, the main challenge is to make the best use of such information, by extracting as much knowledge as possible. The building security management process is no exception. With the emergence of IoT and the mature approach of SCADA, it is possible to guarantee a higher level of security, by analyzing the data that they are able to provide. However, a careful analysis is required to make the system able to correctly distinguish a normal situation from an undesired one. A given situation can be normal in a given context but reason for alarm in another. For this purpose, this paper presents a building security alarm enhanced with context-awareness which allows it to correctly identify an undesired situation in a given context.
- Data Mining Approach to support the Generation of Realistic Scenarios for Multi-Agent simulation of Electricity MarketsPublication . Teixeira, Brígida; Silva, Francisco; Pinto, Tiago; Praça, Isabel; Santos, Gabriel; Vale, ZitaThis paper presents the Realistic Scenarios Generator (RealScen), a tool that processes data from real electricity markets to generate realistic scenarios that enable the modeling of electricity market players’ characteristics and strategic behavior. The proposed tool provides significant advantages to the decision making process in an electricity market environment, especially when coupled with a multi-agent electricity markets simulator. The generation of realistic scenarios is performed using mechanisms for intelligent data analysis, which are based on artificial intelligence and data mining algorithms. These techniques allow the study of realistic scenarios, adapted to the existing markets, and improve the representation of market entities as software agents, enabling a detailed modeling of their profiles and strategies. This work contributes significantly to the understanding of the interactions between the entities acting in electricity markets by increasing the capability and realism of market simulations.
- Decision Support System for Opponents Selection in Electricity Markets Bilateral NegotiationsPublication . Pinto, Tiago; Silva, Francisco; Vale, ZitaThis paper presents a new multi-agent decision support system with the purpose of aiding bilateral contract negotiators in the pre-negotiation phase, through the analysis of their possible opponents. The application area of this system is the electricity market, in which players trade a certain volume of energy at a specified price. Consequently, the main output of this system is the recommendation of the best opponent(s) to trade with and the target energy volume to trade with each of the opponents. These recommendations are achieved through the analysis of the possible opponents’ past behavior, namely by learning on their past actions. The result is the forecasting of the expected prices against each opponent depending on the volume to trade. The expected prices are then used by a game-theory based model, to reach the final decision on the best opponents to negotiate with and the ideal target volume to be negotiated with each of them
- Decision Support System for the Negotiation of Bilateral Contracts in Electricity MarketsPublication . Silva, Francisco; Teixeira, Brígida; Pinto, Tiago; Praça, Isabel; Marreiros, Goreti; Vale, ZitaThe use of Decision Support Systems (DSS) in the eld of Electricity Markets (EM) is essential to provide strategic support to its players. EM are constantly changing, dynamic environments, with many entities which give them a particularly complex nature. There are several simulators for this purpose, including Bilateral Contracting. However, a gap is noticeable in the pre-negotiation phase of energy transactions, particularly in gathering information on opposing negotiators. This paper presents an overview of existing tools for decision support to the Bilateral Contracting in EM, and proposes a new tool that addresses the identied gap, using concepts related to automated negotiation, game theory and data mining.
- Demonstration of Tools Control Center for Multi-agent Energy Systems SimulationPublication . Teixeira, Brígida; Silva, Francisco; Pinto, Tiago; Santos, Gabriel; Praça, Isabel; Vale, ZitaThe use of energy from renewable sources is one of the major concerns of today’s society. In recent years, the European Union has been changing legislation and implementing policies aimed at promoting its investment and encouraging its use in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases [1].