Abstract: Additive Manufacturing (AM) has seen continued growth in adoption by organizations in recent years, changing production processes, supply chain, maintenance, product development and the global economy. There are several Additive Manufacturing technologies and equipment on the market, however, there are no guidelines, benchmarking or decision support tools for proper selection. After a systematic review of the literature, the lack of propositions that act during the development of the product and process was evidenced. This research focuses on the selection of Additive Manufacturing technologies for a production system. The general objective being to propose a decision support model based on the characteristics of additive technologies and competitive criteria, resulting in a choice aligned with the guidelines of organizations and their production systems. For the operationalization of the model, the AHP techniques and conjoint analysis were used together, where the characteristics of the Additive Manufacturing technologies were related to the competitive criteria for the model to indicate the recommended technology to the production system or organization in question. Finally, the artifact recommended the right technology in three distinct situations, from a vendor, user, and expert point of view. Thus, this research contributes to both academia and business by developing a functional artifact of additive manufacturing technology selection. Also, by contributing to the increased availability of information on the nine most commonly used additive technologies in industry.

Managers of organizations have few tools to evaluate manufacturing capabilities. Such scarcity implies in a greater difficulty to generate or maintain sustainable competitive advantages over competitors. This study aims to replicate the instrument developed by Jain et al. (2014) for the evaluation of manufacturing capabilities and analyze the results in the Brazilian business and cultural contexts. The instrument was translated into Portuguese using back-translation. After this, was performed a pre-test to verify understanding and clarity, then the instrument was distributed electronically. For data analysis, reliability analysis, face validation method, content validation, multiple regression analysis and factor analysis were performed. Subsequently, the results were compared with those of the work by Jain et al. (2014). Additionally, an exploratory factor analysis was performed to verify the convergent validity of the work. Statistical results were not adequate to validate the instrument in its current format, which requires improvements for it to be applied as a manufacturing capabilities assessment method in Brazil. The reliability index was adequate in approximately half of the instrument questions. As for multiple regression analysis, the results were not satisfactory. In addition, this research performed an exploratory factor analysis. Inconsistencies were identified. From ten expected factors, only four were obtained and had a low reliability index. These results contributed to the improvement of the instrument developed by Jain et al. (2014). It will be possible to take into account the results obtained in this study for implementations of statistical improvements and to observe questions that need to be changed in order to actually represent the 10 manufacturing decision areas of Hayes et al. (1988). Thus, it is necessary to conduct further studies and make improvements to make it a valuable tool for manufacturing.

A construção enxuta ou Lean Construction, auxilia no gerenciamento dos processos das empresas da construção civil, buscando a redução das atividades que não agregam valor e da variabilidade do processo. Além disso, pode proporcionar o aumento da flexibilidade do produto e promover o uso da melhoria contínua dos processos. No entanto, apesar dos benefícios relatados, existem escassez de pesquisas que avaliem os efeitos proporcionados pela utilização da construção enxuta. Buscando contribuir neste sentido, este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a percepção dos profissionais de engenharia e construção civil quanto aos benefícios proporcionados pela aplicação dos princípios da construção enxuta como uma filosofia que auxilia as empresas da construção civil a melhorar o seu desempenho operacional.  Foi realizada uma pesquisa tipo survey com engenheiros e gestores que atuam na construção civil no Sul do Brasil. Para análise de dados foi utilizado a regressão linear. Dentre os principais resultados foi possível identificar os princípios prevalentes para aumento do desempenho operacional das empresas que utilizam a construção enxuta. Conforme observado, o uso de produtos pré-moldados ou a utilização de kits foi apontado como o mais relevante, seguido pela flexibilização das saídas, do controle das inconformidades nos serviços na empresa, do incentivo ao funcionário em apresentar novas ideias, o controle do tempo de ciclo e por fim a utilização do benchmarking. A identificação das variáveis prevalentes sobre a melhoria do desempenho operacional pode guiar os gestores em decisões futuras.