Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2019-10-25"
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- Value EngineeringPublication . Tolentino, Eduardo Carlos Antonio Cerda; Simões, Fábio Jorge PereiraMAN Truck and Bus AG is a leading international provider of commercial vehicles as well as well-known producers of diesel and natural-gas engines. This report focuses on the products manufactured in MAN Nuremberg assembly plant, which produces a wide variety of engines designed and developed for different applications for customer needs. As any other company in the industry, MAN has high expenses while producing their engines. In response for this need, the PKO+ project was born. This project follows the VE ideology of improving the value of the goods or products by reducing the cost of the raw material, seeking of low cost suppliers, optimizing the product with or without customer perception, supply chain optimization, etc. VE techniques have been applied to coordinate properly the communication between the different departments involved in this project. The basics of this project and the starting process can be found in this report. These foundations consist of generating a support team, establishing long term targets, and processes to achieve such targets. At the end, the results from period January 1st 2019 to August 1st 2019 are shown in this report.
- When leaders fill the room: the effect of authentic leadership on employees’ performance and the role of affective commitmentPublication . Ribeiro, Neuza; Gomes, Daniel; Duarte, Patrícia; Kurian, ShajiPurpose – One of CSR’s main concern relates to the way an organization is able to develop Social Responsibility orientations guided towards its internal publics. How leaders behave in working contexts may decisively influence CSR’s social performance of an organization. This study seeks to understand how (a) Authentic Leadership (AL) influences employees' Affective Commitment (AC), (b) AL influences Individual Performance (IP), (c) AC influences IP and (d) AC mediates the relationship between AL and IP. Design/methodology/approach – The sample included 212 Portuguese employees from small and medium sized companies. A quantitative methodology was used following Baron and Kenny’s linear regression method and Sobel test to examine the existence of the proposed mediational relationship. Findings - The results show that AL explains employees’ AC and their IP. Moreover, AC mediates the relationship between AL and employees’ IP. Thus, leaders’ authenticity promotes employees’ affective bond to their organization, which in turn, increases their individual performance. Practical implications - This research has practical implications for CSR’s internal policies on social performance, with high contribute for socially responsible human resources management practices, particularly in what regards the way an organization should develop social internal policies supporting CSR implementation. Results also provide reasoning for CSR practices directed towards increasing employee commitment through augmenting AL. Originality/value – This study enriches the knowledge about the relevance of emerging area such as AL theory, CSR internal policies and responds to the need to understand underlying mechanisms linking leaders’ authenticity with workers’ commitment and performance (i.e., testing the construct’s nomological network).
- Bot Federation: Skill Delegation Feature for Wit Bot EnginePublication . Sismeiro, João Paulo de Oliveira; Ribeiro, José Carlos BregieiroMessaging applications are used on a daily basis for communication between people around the globe. Even though the main purpose of this type of application is to provide a service where people can join in order to interact with one another, it has evolved since and automated conversation has grown. This type of automated conversation is only possible through the implementation of intelligent agents called chatbots. The chatbots objective is to mimic user behavior in order to understand and reply to a given user input. This project aims to further improve the already existing mechanisms for this chatbots so that they can interact with other chatbots so that users can, in a single conversation, have access to multiple chatbots. This is possible through the implementation of a series of features that allow chatbot creators to create groups of chatbots, called federations, and delegate the conversation from one chatbot to another chatbot available in a federation. This approach aims to reduce the number of failed responses and at the same time prevent the user’s frustration because if a chatbot cannot answer, the user needs to find and open a conversation with a chatbot that can answer. Every chatbot has a series of tasks and knowledge that he can use to answer user questions, but there is always a reduced scope so that the chatbot can perform at his best. This solution’s objective is to keep this approach of reduced scopes for better performance, but every chatbot can contribute with his knowledge by lending his services to another chatbot.
- TeenPower: Auto-monitorização de Dados de Alimentação e do Sono como Estratégia de “Gamificação” numa Plataforma de mHealth para Prevenção da Obesidade na AdolescênciaPublication . Carvalho, Marta de Sousa Cruz Amado; Reis, Catarina Isabel Ferreira Viveiros Tavares dosEstudos recentes apontam para uma prevalência de pré-obesidade e obesidade, de 30,7% em adolescentes portugueses. A obesidade infantil é uma doença cuja etiologia está diretamente relacionada com diversos fatores como a alimentação e o sono e constitui um dos maiores desafios de Saúde Pública do século XXI, tendo vindo a atingir proporções epidémicas. A elevada prevalência desta doença durante a adolescência tem impacto direto e indireto na saúde, aumentando o risco de incidência de diversas doenças e também de perturbações do foro mental e psicológico, não só na adolescência, mas também na idade adulta. É consensual a ideia de que a alimentação constitui um dos principais determinantes de saúde e que é inquestionável a sua importância para um correto desenvolvimento das crianças e adolescentes. Hoje em dia, também o sono é referido como um período vital para os adolescentes, influenciando o estado de saúde dos indivíduos. A comunidade científica, acredita ainda que uma correta higiene do sono poderá ter implicações nos hábitos alimentares e, consequentemente, na prevenção e tratamento da obesidade. A evidência científica mostra que a alteração de comportamentos só é possível através de intervenções junto dos jovens. Por isso, o TeenPower trata-se de um projeto multidisciplinar que visa a promoção de hábitos saudáveis e a prevenção da obesidade infantil através de e-terapia em aplicações mHealth conjugadas com técnicas de “gamificação”. No âmbito do projeto foi criada uma plataforma composta por: uma aplicação web backoffice (BO) e uma aplicação móvel Android (APP) destinada a jovens dos 12 aos 16 anos de idade e que, essencialmente, lhes disponibiliza, entre outras, uma ferramenta para auto-monitorização da alimentação/refeições diárias e sono e repouso. Considera-se que a iniciativa teve impacto positivo nos adolescentes participantes, visto que, segundo eles próprios, o projeto TeenPower conduziu à autorresponsabilização e monitorização da sua saúde. No entanto, apenas cerca de 33% dos adolescentes das escolas parceiras do projeto aderiram e utilizaram a aplicação móvel criada no âmbito do mesmo. Conclui-se que é de extrema importância desenvolver estratégias de motivação e aceitação por parte dos adolescentes para fomentar a utilização destas tecnologias.
- The role of perceived organizational support and organizational identification in the relationship between CSR and turnover intentions: a study in the Portuguese hotel industryPublication . Duarte, Patrícia; Neves, José; Mouro, Carla; Ribeiro, NeuzaManaging employee voluntary turnover remains a challenge for human resource professionals. This is particularly true in a business sector characterized by a turnover culture such as the hospitality sector. Previous research suggests that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is related to diverse job-related attitudes and behaviors. Adopting an employee-centered approach to CSR, the present study aimed to analyze the relationship between employee perceptions of CSR and turnover intention, within the scope of a theoretical model that proposes perceived organizational support and organizational identification as potential psychosocial mediators, thereby extending previous research. For testing this model, a correlational study was developed near employees from 12 three to five-stars hotels operating in Portugal. Data were collected through a paper-and-pencil survey, being the participation in the study voluntary and anonymous. 370 employees completed the survey which included measures of the main variables selected from the literature. Data were analyzed using PROCESS macro for IBM SPSS 22.0 (model 4). The results indicate that employees' perceptions of the level of involvement of their employer in CSR practices is significantly and negatively related to their levels of turnover intention. The more responsible the organization is considered, the lower the intention to leave the company in the next year. This effect is mediated by the proposed variables, which suggests that the involvement in socially responsible practices contributes to a greater sense of organizational support and enhances employee identification with the company, which subsequently promote lower levels of turnover intention. Organizations can thus increase employees’ perceptions of organizational support, organizational identification, and intention to stay by adopting socially responsible practices.
- Load forecasting: a cross-field study on server and energy load forecasting Impact of temporal factors on generalization ability and performance of regression modelsPublication . Silva, Claudio Alexandre Duarte; Grilo, Carlos Fernando Almeida; Silva, Catarina Helena Branco Simões daThe server load prediction and energy load forecasting have available a wide range of approaches and applications, with their general goal being the prediction of future load for a specific period of time on a given system. Depending on the specific goal, different methodologies can be applied. In this dissertation, the integration of additional temporal information to datasets, as a mean to create a more generalized model is studied. The main steps involve a deep literature review in order to find the most suited methodologies and/or learning methods. A novel dataset enrichment process through the integration of extra temporal information and lastly, a cross-model testing stage, where trained models for server load prediction and energy load forecast are applied to the opposite field. This last stage, tests and analyses the generalization level of the created models through the temporal information integration procedure. The created models were both oriented to short-term load forecasting problems, with the use of data from single and combined months, regarding real data from Wikipedia servers of the year 2016 in the case of server load prediction and real data regarding the consumption levels in April 2016 of the city of Leiria/Portugal for the energy load forecasting case study. The learning methods used for creating the different models were linear regression, artificial neural networks and support vector machines oriented to regression problems, more precisely the Smoreg implementation. Results prove that it is possible to tune the dataset features, e.g., granularity and time window to improve prediction results and generalization. Results from this work, as well as an optimization approach through the use of genetic algorithms, normalization effects, split ratio vs crossvalidation influence and different granularities and time windows were peer-reviewed published.