The large scale selective waste routing process congregates a lot of information and is subject to a huge number of constraints, which makes it a hard problem to solve by exact methods.

This project is based on a real case scenario for one of the most important selective waste Portuguese operators.

We focus on the Vehicle Routing Problem optimization using heuristics. The estimation of the solid waste generation is based on a model using demographic and economic data.

Preliminary results will be presented and discussed.

Keywords: Environmental Management, Routing, Forecasting

That’s the abstract that has been accepted in the 24th European Conference on Operational Research, Euro XXIV Lisbon.

It’s a three day (July 12 – 14 2010) event where I expect to learn a lot and present, for the first time, my almost finished master thesis.

Euro 2010 Lisbon here I go!

Este ano será marcado pelo desenvolvimento de uma dissertação cujo meu tema é Optimização de rotas de recolha selectiva com auxílio de técnicas de previsão e durante o 1º semestre um modulo de Avaliação de Projectos, composto por ter disciplinas: Avaliação de Projectos e Risco, Estratégia e Custos e Marketing Industrial.

Estou a gostar bastante deste ano pois sempre primei por ter uma boa cultura económico-financeira e as cadeiras deste semestre estão a ajudar. Quanto à dissertação é na área da optimização e previsão juntamente com exploração de dados, três áreas nas quais me pretendo especializar este ano.

E agora vou voltar para os meus novos amigos que me vão acompanhar nos próximos meses:

Aarts, E., & Lenstra, J. K. (1997). Local search in combinatorial optimization. Wiley. Armstrong, J. S. (2001). Principles of forecasting: a handbook for researchers and practitioners. Springer.
Barlaz, M. A., Ranjithan, R., Weitz, K. A., & Nishtala, S. R. (1995). Life-Cycle Study of Municipal Solid Waste Management. Environmental Protection Agency.
Beigl, P., Lebersorger, S., & Salhofer, S. (2008). Modelling municipal solid waste generation: a review. Waste management (New York, N.Y.), 28(1), 200-14.
Glover, F., & Kochenberger, G. A. (2003). Handbook of metaheuristics. Springer.
Makridakis, S. G., Wheelwright, S. C., & Hyndman, R. J. (1998). Forecasting (3rd Ed.). John Wiley & Sons. Makridakis, S., & Wheelwright, S. C. (1973). Forecasting methods for management. Wiley.
Michalewicz, Z., & Fogel, D. B. (2000). How to solve it: modern heuristics. Springer-Verlag.
Ministério Do Ambiente, O. T. (2007). PERSU II – Plano Estratégico para os Resíduos Sólidos Urbanos 2007- 2016.
O’Leary, P. R. (1999). Decision-Maker’s Guide to Solid-Waste Management (2nd Edition). DIANE Publishing Company.
Osman, I., Reeves, C., & Smith, G. (1996). Modern Heuristic Search Methods. Wiley.
Voß, S., Martello, S., Osman, I. H., & Roucairol, C. (1998). Meta-heuristics: Advances and Trends in Local Search Paradigms for Optimization. Springer.

NOTA: Para quem tem que usar bastantes referencias bibliográficas aconselho o Mendeley, é um gestor de referencias grátis e  multi-plataforma, que interage muito bem com o Word e outros processadores de texto. Têm me salvo muito tempo na organização de artigos e no tratamento da bibliografia!

Now I can share a bit of the work that has been developed in the 3 weeks I was there. This is the masterpiece of five crazy engineers work.

We design a unique device that offers an unforgettable experience!

Beo3DEx is a discreet, small, moving media center that can move around the house and can also be picked up and placed anywhere. It has a 3D projector so it takes the experience of watching TV, listening to music and watching photos to a whole new level.
Here is an animation that shows our concept:

Many people call it science fiction but we say that this is the way to go and studies shows that it’s expensive but it’s possible!

Last but not least I would like to thank my team for their hard work, Leni Lausdahl, Jakub Macek, Jan Hula and Tomasz Likus it was a pleasure to work with. And a special thanks to B&O and all the teachers that guides us in the best direction and made this work possible!

I learn a lot of new and interesting things and it opened my horizons to new subjects and realities. I haven’t had the time to share it but if you need help in Logistics, Production Management, Simulation, Data Warehouse, Systems Decision Support or anything else related to System Engineering just let me know and I will see what I can do

Now its time to relax and prepare my second and last year, the thesis… I’m considering a project about introducing and improving optimizations (in a Systems Engineering point of view) to a Waste Management software, it’s a big project with a good company involved. For now I’m just gathering material to study the case and see where the optimization can be more helpful.

When I can I will let you know more, I have already study some similar problem but if you know a thing or two about Waste Management I appreciate some notes

The Summer School happened between 29 June and 17 July in Struer (Denmark) and it was my first ERASMUS experience and I love it!

Denmark is a nice country, it has weather similar to Portugal, the food is almost the same (they eat to much boiled potatoes) but the thing me and my friends missed the most was the espresso coffee. The price of living is expensive compared to Portugal, but we were lucky because housing, food and some of the travel expenses were supported by the program. The most strange thing in Denmark is the hours of darkness, in the Summer the night starts at 23h30m and ends at 5h and even in the night is not really dark but the worst thing is in the Winter, the day starts at 9h and ends at 17h, it most be tough. :/

It was amazing to work at Bang & Olufsen and know more about one of best companies in audio and visual products. They prime for innovation, design and excellence. It was impressive to see their quality standards, the product has to be perfect, it can’t even have a tiny scratch

We were integrated in multicultural and interdisciplinary teams; my team was composed with a Polish, two Czechs, a Danish girl and a Portuguese (me). Each group were ask to develop innovative concepts, justify them and prototype them the best we can, it was a though challenge not just because of the demanding task but also because of the different cultures and backgrounds.

I can’t say that it was easy, happiness and frustration are a part of the creative process, but in the end we did and amazing job! As a personal note, I achieved my goals, I helped the team as much as I could, I proved that I can work successfully in a completely new environment, my English is good enough to understand and be understood by everyone and my knowledge of Systems Engineering and my social skills helped me being the Project Leader of my team. I knew it, but know I’m sure, if we work hard we can achieve anything we want anywhere in the world!

In the way back we stop in London for a 24hours adventure with 5 portuguese and 2 english guys, it was really good to see London one more time, I love the city but I can’t say the same thing about their weather… if London had sunny beaches I moved there right now

I could written a lot more about the three spectacular weeks but this post is getting huge, so one last piece of advice, if you ever get the chance to be part of something like don’t look back and go for it!

It’s a multicultural and interdisciplinary summer school, that focus on conceptual design and the development of innovative products.

The project is organized and coordinated by the Engineering College of Aarhus and co-organized by several participating European institutions, I’m glad that my university is one of them.

Best of all almost all my expenses (housing, food, even most of my travel costs) will be covered by the CDDIP and the industry involved (Bang & Olufsen)!

It will be my first ERASMUS experience and I can’t wait to go, but first thing first, now I have to study and work hard so when the time come I can focus 100% on this experience!

I will keep you updated and if you have any tip about CDDIP, Denmark or Struer just let me know

One of the things responsible for that was my Simulation and Production Management project.
The task of my group (Amílcar Pereira, Simão Ribeiro and me) was to simulate in Rockwell Arena 10 an enterprise in all his manufacturing steps and study the best affectation algorithm for parallel machines.

Just a simple example for those who don’t know Arena, two sample videos of my project. The first one is the logical model with all the Arena entities.

The second is the physical model with a little bit of animation (the texts in the videos are in Portuguese).

I think Arena is a powerful simulation tool but to get the hang of it takes a while. If you had any contact with simulation tools tell me how was your experience.

Numa reunião com a minha direcção do CeSIUM, estávamos nós ainda em Dezembro de 2007, surgiu a ideia de aproveitar os recursos do Google Calendar e receber notificações via SMS das ementas da cantina da Universidade do Minho no telemóvel uma hora antes de cada refeição.

A ideia agradou-me bastante e desde então, todos os meses, disponibilizo as ementas (Normal, Ovo-lacto-vegetariana e Rampa B) no Google Calendar para assim quem quiser, de forma gratuita, pode receber as ementas no telemóvel.

Em baixo ficam as explicações detalhadas do que é preciso fazer, se tiveres alguma dúvida ou sugestão deixa em comentário.

Para receber as notificações no telemóvel é necessário ter uma conta de email no Gmail.

Depois vai ao Google Calendar e activa a recepção de notificações via SMS, para isso:
- carrega em Definições no topo superior direito;
- separador Configuração do telemóvel e introduz o teu numero de telemóvel, receberás um SMS, introduz o código que recebeste;

Agora que as notificações estão configuradas vamos adicionar as ementas que pretendes.

Para a ementa do almoço (A) carrega no botão em baixo e depois carrega em “Sim, adicionar este calendário”

Agora vamos configurar as notificações do calendário que acabaste de adicionar:
- carrega em Definições no topo superior direito;
- separador Calendários;
- Carrega na seta que está depois do nome A (carrega em Notificações);
- Adicionar um lembrete;
- escolhe SMS e escolhe o tempo de antecedência que pretendes receber (recomendo 58 minutos, assim recebes uma mensagem as 11h com o menu do almoço e as 18h no caso das ementas do jantar).
- carrega em Guardar.

Para as outras ementas é só repetir os passos anteriores mas desta vez carregar nos botões seguintes.

Ementa do jantar (J):

Ementa do almoço ovo-lacto-vegetariana (AV):

Ementa do jantar ovo-lacto-vegetariana (AJ):

Ementa do almoço Rampa B (Azurém) (AR):

Nota: Para todos os que na Notificação do Calendário não aparece SMS escolham a opção ical. O problema deve-se a um erro temporário de tradução do Google Calendar pois se alterarem a língua para Inglês já aparece SMS em vez de ical.

Creating a blog was a challenge that a good friend made me a long time ago, but I never had the time to actually done it. But new year, new resolutions, new blog!

On this blog I’ll post about my achievements, technology and everything I love. Mainly the posts will be written in English so all my friends can read it, but from time to time I’ll post in my native language (Portuguese).

I little bit about me, I’m currently attending a Masters degree in Systems Engineering at Department of Production and Systems Engineering in University of Minho (UM), so every week I learn some cool stuff!

In the last three month I had Database Advanced Exploration and Management, currently I’m attending at Production Management, Systems Decision Support and Simulation, this are the first term curricular units of my MSc.

For now I’m working in Rockwell Arena 10 (Simulation), if you got any experience or just need a help with this software let me know.

Last year I started to work as a Junior Researcher, I work in two different projects but both equally interesting, I loved the experience of having to learn all by myself, it was great!

I love informatics, last year I got a new MacBook, so now and then I discover new and exiting things about Mac OS X and I will share them with you.

Stay tuned and you may find some interesting stuff!