Given the need for a quick response to today's dynamic market, the maintenance function is considered increasingly important for industrial companies. Waste elimination, in particular the reduction of work in process and overproduction, required by Lean Manufacturing methodology that has spread across industries, highlights and also increases the impact of failures or malfunctions of equipment on productivity. Managing maintenance involves several activities such as: planning of preventive maintenance actions; scheduling of activities considering available resources and planned production; management of spare parts; analysis of data to reduce the occurrence of failures and to improve performance of the maintenance function. To support this function, companies adopt information systems designated by computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) to provide timely and accurate information. Several CMMS are offered in market. However, its main drawback is that they do not perfectly match the particularities of each company. Thus, many companies prefer to develop their own system. This paper presents an ongoing project aiming to develop a CMMS for a manufacturing company. Crucial phases of the project, involving the identification of requirements and the specifications of the system, are described in detail, showing the approach that was followed and reflecting about its effectiveness and efficiency

This paper documents a work on all-purpose discrete event simulation tools evaluation. Selected tools must be suitable for process design (e.g. manufacturing or services industries). Rather than making specific judgments of the tools, authors tried to measure the intensity of usage or presence in different sources, which they called “popularity”. It was performed in several different ways, including occurrences in the WWW and scientific publications with tool name and vendor name. This work is an upgrade to the same study issued 5 years ago (2011), which in its turn was also an upgrade of 10 years ago (in 2006). It is obvious that more popularity does not assure more quality, or being better to the purpose of a simulation tool; however, a positive correlation may exist between them. The result of this work is a short list, of 19 commercial simulation tools, with probably the nowadays' most relevant ones.

A Lean company is always in a journey of continuous improvement and innovation. Every process, procedure and/or tool are critically studied in order to highlight problems and satisfy the customers’ needs without any waste. In the studied Lean company there are many production support tools that were developed as a temporary solution to solve a specific problem but, frequently, remain definitive and became themselves a problem. Examples of these tools are Standard Work Sheets (SWS) and Control and Fabrication Instructions (CFI) that demand updated, easy access and trustworthy information. Improving these tools (e.g. by automatizing) is an opportunity for a company to become more competitive. The SWS and CFI are indispensable tools for Process Engineering and have implications on product quality and productivity. The development process of SWS and CFI involves many human resources, resulting in a long task that is susceptible to the introduction of errors. By including the process of documentation for all shifts, it facilitates the coworkers training and reduces both variability and irregularity. Currently, the SWS in the studied company is not automatically performed and articulated with the updated real time knowledge of CFI, production quantities and assembly lines coworkers’ availability. This generates inefficient resources utilization. The objective of this paper is to present an undergoing project that intends to automate the SWS and CFI development process and to facilitate their integration with other company systems information