Margarida Dias @ ASQ EMEA Spring Students Café

Margarida Dias, Master student and member of the Research Group on Quality and Organizational Excellence (RG-QOE), delivered a presentation entitled “Quality 4.0: Thinking Outside the Box” at the the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region Student’s Café that took place virtually last March 11.

This event was mainly directed to students in order to provide them an opportunity to share with the community the work they are developing.

PhD Thesis Plan presentations by RG-QOE students

Anabela Silva and Cátia Pinto, RG-QOE Junior Researchers and PhD Students of the Doctoral Program on Industrial and Systems Engineering presented their Thesis Plan.

Anabela Silva PhD project is entitled “Quality 4.0 predictive model for customer defects” and is supervised by Professor Paulo Sampaio and Professor José Machado, both from the ALGORITMI Research Centre, University of Minho. The examination was performed by Professor Maria Henriqueta Nóvoa (external examiner from the University of Porto). Anabela presented her Thesis Plan virtually on February 10 and she was approved with a grade of 17 out of 20.

Cátia Pinto PhD project is entitled “Framework for Management Systems 4.0" and is supervised by Professor Paulo Sampaio and Professor Pedro Domingues, both from the ALGORITMI Research Centre, University of Minho. The examination was performed by Professor Otavio Oliveira (external examiner from Paulista State University, Brazil). Cátia presented her Thesis Plan virtually on February 8 and she was approved with a grade of 17 out of 20.

QOE paper published @ TQM&BE

The paper “2017 world state of quality: first worldwide results” has been published in the Total Quality Management & Business Excellence.

This paper is co-authored by Paulo Sampaio and Catarina Cubo, both members of the Research Group on Quality and Organizational Excellence.

The full reference of the paper is:

Catarina Cubo, Pedro Saraiva, Paulo Sampaio & Marco Reis (2021) 2017 world state of quality: first worldwide results, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 32:3-4, 379-388, DOI: 10.1080/14783363.2019.1575722.

Jeferson Alves dos Santos at RG-QOE as a Visiting PhD Student

Jeferson Alves dos Santos was a Visiting PhD Student at the Research Group on Quality and Organizational Excellence, from February 2020 to 2021. Jeferson is PhD candidate in Environmental Sciences at the Federal University of Alfenas, Brazil. His research is focused on the development of an audit model for higher education institutions using sustainability indicators.

During this year, Jeferson had the opportunity to deliver some lectures, such as a lecture for the Industrial Engineering and Management Integrated Master students and a Risk Management webinar organized by the ASQ Student Branch UMinho.

World Quality Day 2020

The World Quality Day (WQD) 2020 is celebrated annually on the second Thursday in November. It intends to celebrate quality worldwide, share quality achievements and to raise awareness of quality around the world as quality is a contribute for the improvement of performance every day of the year. 

To celebrate the WQD 2020, the coordinator of the Research Group on Quality and Organizational Excellence (RG-QOE), Paulo Sampaio, leaves a message: “More than ever Quality is important to the world”.

André M. Carvalho @ ASQ Quality 4.0 Summit

André M. Carvalho, Post-doc at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Research Affiliate of the Research Group on Quality and Organizational Excellence (RG-QOE), delivered a presentation entitled “Culture and Change: Setting the Foundations for Quality 4.0” at the ASQ Quality 4.0 Virtual Summit that took place as a virtual event last September 28-30.

RG-QOE organized the 4th International Conference on Quality Engineering and Managament

The 4th International Conference on Quality Engineering and Management – ICQEM took place last September 21-22 in a format fully online due to worldwide situation caused by the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic. 

Paulo Sampaio, Coordinator of the Research Group on Quality and Organizational Excellence (RG-QOE), is the Conference Chair of this biannual event that intends to “present and discuss the progresses in the Quality Management, Quality Engineering and Organizational Excellence fields, providing a unique opportunity to share the latest insights of academic and industrial research and applications on Quality and Organizational Excellence.” 

The conference program was composed by keynote speakers presentations and several technical parallel sessions including different topics distributed by the two days of the event, such as six sigma, quality tools, quality management, operational and organizational excellence, quality and industry 4.0, or sustainability. 

The first day keynote speakers included António Cunha (Digital transformation for intelligent quality assurance), Maxim Protasov (What is the Russian National Quality System all about?) and Christianna Hayes (Achieving Personal Goals Through Quality). 

The second day keynote speakers included Jorge J. Román (Intellectual Property Crime and Business Excellence Framework. Dubai Police case study) and Benito Flores (Quality 4.0: More than Technology). 

Some members of RG-QOE also presented their work on September 22: 

- André M. Carvalho presented the “Technology and Quality Management: a review of concepts and opportunities in the Digital Transformation” (authors: André Carvalho, Paulo Sampaio, Eric Rebentisch and Josef Oehmen); 

- Cátia Pinto presented the “Innovation, Technology and Quality” (authors: Cátia Pinto and Paulo Sampaio); 

- Cátia Pinto presented the “The Relationship between Quality Management and Innovation” (authors: Cátia Pinto and Fernando Romero). 

Two conference awards were deliverd in the categories of best paper and best student paper: 

- Best paper was awarded to “Applying Lean Six Sigma Methodologies for Quality Improvement in a Powder Coatings Industry” by Fátima Carneiro, Diana Valdoleiros, Henriqueta Nóvoa and Mariana Rodrigues; 

- Best student paper was awarded to “Quality Management in Higher Education. Using SERVPERF to assess services quality” by “Ricardo Rodrigues, Maria João Rosa, Patrícia Moura Sá, and Gonçalo Santinha”. 

This event was a great opportunity of learning, knowledge sharing, and important contributions to this field of knowledge. 

What a success!