Recent years have shown an increasing use of lean manufacturing (LM) principles and tools in several industrial sectors. Already a wellestablished management philosophy, it has shown numerous successful applications even outside production environments. This work presents the application of some LM tools, and the corresponding shift in philosophy, in two Portuguese companies of the food and beverage industries. Main implementation issues are presented and discussed; followed by the results obtained from the application of LM tools in the production system of these companies. Significant gains are obtained in both companies and, more importantly, it instills a continuous improvement culture and increases production flexibility while reducing lead times.

This work provides a practical approach for the definition of rural road networks in hilly regions of developing countries. The proposed methodology enables the determination of obligatory points for the road network, which provides basic accessibility to settlements within a specified maximum walking time. The proposed methodology, based on a geographic information system (GIS), takes into account the regions’ main characteristics (i.e., trails slope and availability), and does not require significant data. Moreover, simplifications to the method are proposed herein, allowing it to be used even without a GIS; thus making it a more practical, realistic, and user-friendly approach for obtaining real-world road networks of hilly regions in developing countries.