Industry 4.0

Over the past five years, I have specialized in Industry 4.0 maturity models and implementation of critical technologies in Small and Medium Enterprises, their integration in Industry 4.0, and how these companies can shape themselves to reap the full benefits of their inherent digital transformation


Manufacturing Flexibility by Industry 4.0 Technological Concepts:

Impact and Assessment

Industry 4.0 is expected deliver a greater flexibility to the worldwide industrial sector together with the highest quality standards in engineering, planning, manufacturing, operational, and logistic processes. Literature to-date already contemplates tools to help companies endure in I4.0 endeavor or real-case examples of technological implementation to demonstrate that companies’ I4.0 entry barriers might not be as high as they initially may appear, but currently, it is lacking a method that allows for a systematic assessing the profitability of technological concepts of I4.0 under explicit consideration of the affected flexibility. This article intends to fill this gap in the literature by proposing a decision theory-based procedure model for the evaluation of I4.0 solutions. That is, a model that enables a transparent assessment which is tailored to the different technological concepts of I4.0 as well as the affected types of flexibility (available, needed).

Lean methods digitization towards lean 4.0:

a case study of e-VMB and e-SMED

In the last decade, industry across the globe has been under a massive change in its manufacturing paradigm triggered by the emergence of concepts such as Industry 4.0. Established streamlining philosophies such as Lean manufacturing had to cope with this paradigm shift. In this regard, expansive literature has developed concepts such as Digital Lean or Lean 4.0 to address such change. This publication fits in this same research stream as it provides a comprehensive and detailed conjunction on how to adapt lean instruments and the concepts of Lean Manufacturing to the Industry 4.0 environment. Two Lean tools/methods are taken as examples in this research to showcase something bigger: the difference between a pure digital conversion of a Lean tool (Visual Management Boards) and a possible “novel” Lean method (Single Minute Exchange of Die), enabled by its digitalization. New ways to apply both techniques are proposed. The analysis done in this study shows the feasibility to upgrade and modernize established Lean tools and methods, improving its efficiency and effectiveness, and also the possibility to give new features and scope to some of them, causing not only an improvement but a transformation.

  • Partially developed Professor Paulo Peças

  • Published in International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM)

Microneedle Array Patch Markets and Automated Manufacturing Modeling:

The integration of Process-Based-Cost-Model and Discrete-Choice-Models

Microneedle Array (MNA) Patches represent the new era of drug delivery as they provide painless, simple delivery of injectables into the skin, eliminating traditional needle waste at the same time. They are a new type of painless transdermal delivery technology that includes an array of microneedles, with dimensions ranging from 100 to 1,000 µm in width and up to 1 mm in length. The needles contain the bioreactive drug, and deliver the drug directly into the skin by dissolving in it. I perform an in-depth analysis of their manufacturing process by the use of a Process-Based-Cost-Model to map each individual steps and tasks. By modelling the cost and the process constrains we are able to take conclusions about optimal product dimensions and design. Following the methodology of the Carnegie Mellon class "Quantitive Entrepreneurship", I then combine such modelling with customer's preferences discrete choice models to understand which dimensions and components of the product are the most relevant to the consumer.

  • Developed under an NDA for a technological start-up duting 6 months (2022).

Master’s research

Industry 4.0 maturity model for Small and Medium Enterprises

Over the past five years, I have specialized in Industry 4.0 maturity models and implementation of critical technologies in Small and Medium Enterprises, their integration in Industry 4.0, and how these companies can shape themselves to reap the full benefits of their inherent digital transformation.
I was a researcher for 9 months in the cooperative research program “cátedra 4.0” between Instituto Superior Técnico and The Navigator Company. All of my work was done under the supervision and guidance of Professor Paulo Peças, professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, and co-founder of engineering-consulting firm, Erising

From this effort, I have successfully published 4 articles in academic international journals. I have initially published an article looking at the state-of-the-art literature on Industry 4.0 maturity models, highlighting their flaws, and proposing a methodology to build an Industry 4.0 maturity model that targets Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). I have followed the same methodology I proposed and built such Industry 4.0 maturity model focused on SMEs. I have, meanwhile implements one of the most known Industry 4.0 maturity models and showed how these models can be used by proposing technology implementation [proposing technology implementation] in two processes of a technological laggard. Leveraging blue-color work from a colleague in my research group at the time, we have shown the impact that Industry can have on working-method philosophies such as Lean management. Lastly, I have spent some time studying firms manufacturing flexibility and how the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies might affect it.