Abstract
User modeling and user adaptive interaction has become a central research issue to understand users as they interact with technology. The importance of the development of well adapted interfaces to several kinds of users and the differences that characterize them is the basis of the successful interaction. User Personas is a technique that allows the discovery and definition of the archetype users of a system. With that knowledge, the system should shape itself, inferring the user expertise to provide its users with the best possible experience. In this paper, an architecture that combines User Personas and a dynamic, evolving system is proposed, along with an evaluation by its target users. The proposed system is able to infer the user and its matching Persona, and keeps shaping itself in parallel with the user's discovery of the system.

Abstract
In the current marketplace, enterprises face enormous competitive pressures. Global competition for customers that demand customized products with shorter due dates and the advancement in information technologies, marked the introduction of the Extended Enterprise. In these EMEs (Extended Manufacturing Environments), lean, virtual, networked and distributed enterprises, form MO (Meta-Organizations), which collaborate to respond to the dynamic marketplace. MO members share resources, customers and information. In this paper we present a hybrid framework based on a DKBS (Distributed Knowledge Base System), which includes information about scheduling methods for collaborative enterprises sharing their problems. A core component of this system includes an inference engine as well as two indexes, to help in the classification of the usefulness of the information about the problems and solving methods. A more structured approach for expanding the MO concept is presented, with the HO (Hyper-Organization). The manner in which MO-DSS can communicate, cooperate and share information, in the context of the HO is also detailed.

Abstract
In the current global market organizations face uncertainties and shorter response time. In order to remain competitive many organizations adopted flexible resources capable of performing several operations with different performance capabilities. The unrelated parallel-machines makespan minimization problem (RmIiCmax) is known to be NP-hard or too complex to be solved exactly. Among the several heuristics used for solving this problem, it is possible to identify MCT (Minimum Completion Time) that allocates tasks in a random order to the minimum completion time machine. This paper proposes an ordered approach to the MCT heuristic. MOMCT (Modified Ordered Minimum Completion Time), which will order tasks in accordance to the mean difference of the completion time on each machine and the minimum completion time machine. The computational study demonstrated the improved performance of the proposed ordered approach to the MCT heuristic.

Abstract
Scheduling problems occurring in parallel machines manufacturing environments are quite usual and many different methods have been applied for solving it. These methods vary from the application of more or less simple heuristics and rules up to more complex methods, including distinct kind of metaheuristics. In this paper we discuss a fuzzy optimization method using simulated annealing (Fuzzy-SA) for solving an unrelated parallel machines manufacturing scheduling problem. To demonstrate the potential of our method we use an illustrative example of a parallel machines scheduling (PMS) problem and then we analyse it and perform statistical tests with 20 instances.

Abstract
Extended Manufacturing Environments (EMEs) are nowadays growing due to the increase on Distributed and Virtual Enterprises, which led to an emergent need to apply scheduling approaches accordingly. This can be achieved in several different ways, namely by putting forward new approaches or by trying to adapt existing ones. In this paper the adaptation of some existing scheduling methods is proposed for solving a two stage manufacturing scheduling problem, and an illustrative example is presented. Several approaches were analyses, namely through the use of the ANOV A and the Post Hoc Scheffe's test, that demonstrated the superior performance of one of the proposed methods.

Abstract
Current Manufacturing Systems challenges due to international economic crisis, market globalization and e-business trends, incites the development of intelligent systems to support decision making, which allows managers to concentrate on high-level tasks management while improving decision response and effectiveness towards manufacturing agility. This paper presents a novel negotiation mechanism for dynamic scheduling based on social and collective intelligence. Under the proposed negotiation mechanism, agents must interact and collaborate in order to improve the global schedule. Swarm Intelligence (SI) is considered a general aggregation term for several computational techniques, which use ideas and inspiration from the social behaviors of insects and other biological systems. This work is primarily concerned with negotiation, where multiple self-interested agents can reach agreement over the exchange of operations on competitive resources. Experimental analysis was performed in order to validate the influence of negotiation mechanism in the system performance and the SI technique. Empirical results and statistical evidence illustrate that the negotiation mechanism influence significantly the overall system performance and the effectiveness of Artificial Bee Colony for makespan minimization and on the machine occupation maximization.