Abstract
Purpose: The study purpose was to analyse the excellence and operational efficiency of Portuguese industrial companies through the measurement of lean practices implementation. Additionally, it intended to propose a new model to assess the lean production system. Design/methodology/approach: The research presents an in-depth lean literature review that served as a basis for the creation of a questionnaire. The survey was addressed to Portuguese industrial companies to obtain data about their lean implementation success. Collected data were analysed, resorting descriptive and exploratory statistics. A principal component analysis was applied to reduce the amount of data and define a new model that characterizes the lean practices adoption level. Some Chi-square tests were used to assess the independence of some variables. Findings: The results indicate that a significant percentage of organizations use lean practices within their activity. Concerning the lean implementation maturity, a plus side revealed by the study concerns the adoption of the teamwork, internal information shared principles, increase of process capability to produce conforming products, and reduction in set up times. On the other hand, responsibilities decentralization, more employees acting as team leaders, implementation of employees' suggestions, and interconnection with suppliers, are some of the principles that need to be given greater attention by the Portuguese industrial organizations. The key contribution consists of a new model for lean determinants based on three dimensions: work method, productive process elements, and work efficiency. Originality/value: The present research provides a new Lean determinants model that allows understanding the importance of the operational efficiency provided by a mature lean production system, being the key to the competitiveness in the global business market.

Abstract
The industry 4.0 revolution provides the machines with a sen-sory and communicational capacity, which allows them to mo-nitor and collect large amounts of information. This kind of data have an impact on planning, maintenance, and management of production, enabling real time reaction, efficiency increase, and the development of predictive and process improvement models. The most recent machines are prepared to communicate with the existing monitoring systems, however, many (around 60%) do not. The objective of this work is to present the proposal of a sys-tem for remote monitoring of equipment in real time that meets the requirements of low cost, simplicity, and flexibility. The system monitors the equipment in a simple and agile way, regardless of its sophistication, installation constraints and company resources. A prototype of a system was developed and tested both labo-ratory conditions and a productive environment. The proposed ar-chitecture of the system comprises of a sensor that transmits the machine's signal wirelessly to a gateway which is responsible of collecting all surrounding signals and send it to the cloud. During the testing and assessment of the tools, the results validated the developed prototype. As main result, the proposed solution offers to the industrial market a new low-cost monitoring system based in mature and tested technology laid upon flexible and scalable solutions.

Abstract
The selection of the resources system (SRS) is an important element in the integration/project of Agile/Virtual Enterprises (A/V E) because its performance is dependent of this selection, and even of its creation. However, it remains a difficult matter to solve because is still a very complex and uncertain problem. We propose that using Value Analysis (VA) in the pre-selection of resources phase represents a significant improvement of the SRS process. The current literature fails to formally address the pre-selection phase and none of the resource selection models incorporate the resources value and its consequence in the complexity of the selection process. Whereby, ours developed model with VA constitutes an innovative approach towards greater sustainability in the configuration of A/V E in the context of Industry 4.0, where a massive interconnection among enterprises is expected and consequently the increase of the selection process complexity. After the construction of a demonstrator tool for a set of the problem formulations, this paper verifies by computational results the thesis regarding the benefits of applying VA to the SRS process: VA reduces the complexity of the SRS process, even ensuring that the final system of resources achieve higher quality/value grade.

Abstract
Time, cost, and quality are the three indispensable factors for the realization and success of a project. In this context, we propose a framework composed of a multi-objective approach and multi-criteria decision-making methods (MCDM) to solve time-cost-quality trade-off optimization problems. A multi-objective Simulated Annealing (MOSA) algorithm is used to compute an approximation to the Pareto optimal set. The concept of the exploratory grid is introduced in the MOSA to improve its performance. MCDM are used to assist the decision-making process. The Shannon entropy and AHP methods assign weights to criteria. The first methodology is for the inexperienced decision-makers, and the second concedes a personal and flexible weighting of the criteria weights, based on the project manager's assessment. The TOPSIS and VIKOR methods are considered to rank the solutions. Although they have the same purpose, the rankings achieved are different. A tool is implemented to solve a time-cost-quality trade-off problem on a project activities network. The computational experiments are analyzed and the results with the exploratory grid in Simulated Annealing (SA) are promising. Despite the framework aims to solve multi-objective trade-off optimization problems, supporting the decisions of the project manager, the methodologies used can also be applied in other areas.

Abstract
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, multiple projects simultaneously, organizational structure, and poorly time estimation of project activities. The aim of this study was to improve the planning and time control in the project management of a metalworking industry in order to reduce the delivery delays. Using the existing data, an analysis of the project management process was carried out with the view to optimize the production system. In order to meet the established objectives, some of the project management tools were used, such as the Ishikawa diagram, PERT (three points estimating times), Monte Carlo simulation, as well as the involvement of people in the estimation and sequencing of activities, and holding weekly meetings to ensure the alignment of professionals. After the implementation of the actions proposed for the production process, there were gains of 50% and 38% in the average of deviations of times for two different projects of the case study and the Monte Carlo gave the best approximation.

Abstract
The innovation and digitalization of the industry is happening triggered by the Industry 4.0 and Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) paradigm. Enterprises are following the trend of digital transformation and are fostering projects that enable a higher comprehension of I4.0 solutions to answer their needs. The IIoT platforms have been a central component for industrial systems architectures to enable interoperability and data flow within industrial settings. However, the digitalization process has all sorts of shortcomings associated to them, and in the SME's this transformation has been slow to none. In this work we showcase a proof of concept of an IIoT platform that intends to simplify the digitalization process in SME's, based on the Portuguese footwear industry cluster.