The metrology area is responsible for measurement properties and is present in the market through services related to calibration, standardization, maintenance, measurement traceability, and certification. While there is a demand from metrology companies for efficient methods of managing the quality of their services and operations, lean culture encompasses the most important management techniques with applications in various segments. Considering the aspects that permeate these two areas, the question arises about a possible intersection between the demands of companies and metrology laboratories to remain competitive and certified in the market and benefits provided by lean culture. Thus, this paper performs a systematic review, according to the PRISMA protocol, in order to verify if there is an intersection between lean and metrology in the scientific literature. Through bibliometric and qualitative analyses, the research shows a gap of application with a lack of articles in this area, as well as a great potential of places and tools to be implemented.

The economy, culture, and social development of countries in the 21st century are directly related to the quality of education. For education to have expected quality and deliver the desired values to their client, many educational institutions are applying Lean management.  Therefore, the paper aimed to explore the Lean implementation in education through a systematic review of papers from the past five years, in English and the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The methodology was developed using the PRISMA protocol and has been according to the type of approach, place of analysis, tools, facilitators, barriers, positive results, negative results, and the tendency of future work. The main results found were that 69.57% of the papers are analytical, LSS is the most discussed tool, the reduction is the main facilitator, the lack of Lean knowledge is the main barrier, and the attendance to the student obtained the best positive result.

The concept of Industry 4.0 is very recent and has not been fully consolidated, and, for this reason, comprehensive implementations by the industrial sector may not be prudent. Studies show that only fundamentals of Industry 4.0 do not guarantee characteristics such as quality, for example, in production processes. Thus, lean production concepts are probably being used together to cover deficiencies in Industry 4.0. In this work, a literature review is proposed that points out where lean production tools are being used in the production processes of Industry 4.0. Using the results of this search, an analysis of the most important lean production tools, which appear in the works, has been made. The analysis has shown what is being used, in terms of the lean tools, in the production processes of Industry 4.0, and what improvements are provided from these tools.

Abstract-The investigation of electronic devices as a replacement for the biological retina has achieved considerable interest over the last years. Tests of retinal prostheses in living patients have led to encouraging results. Such devices can be thought of as image sensors which are created with CMOS technology. Thanks to CMOS fabrication techniques, signal processing hardware can be integrated at the same silicon area where the light sensors are located. The signals generated on the retina are used by different neural mechanisms which are responsible for visual perception, motion detection, depth map construction, and so forth. The knowledge of how these neural mechanisms work, and how they interact with the retina, will enable the development of prostheses for parts of the neural visual system beyond the retina. An interesting feature of the visual system which has not been exploited in terms of hardware is the diffusive filling-in mechanism. It is believed that this mechanism enables the perceptual reconstruction of surfaces. In this work we investigate the implementation of the filling-in mechanism details. Our goal is to gather information that will be useful for the development of hardware devices with features similar to those found in this visual perception mechanism.

To run cortical circuit simulations in spike mode, i.e. taking into account the neural representation of information in terms of sequences of electrical pulses (also known as spikes), the use of customized hardware, which is specific for this purpose, is recommended. Simulations using more traditional hardware can be prohibitive. In this context, theoretical predictions are important for customized hardware design. For example, theoretical predictions lead to an adequate neuron model choice. To make such theoretical predictions, the cortical circuit simulations are carried out in amplitude mode. Differently from the spike mode, in amplitude mode information is represented by sequences of scalar values that describe neural input and output spike rates. In this paper, it was proposed amplitude and spike mode simulations of a cortical algorithm, namely the diffusive filling-in algorithm, to investigate whether predictions based on the amplitude-mode results approximate well the behavior of the customized hardware (spike mode results). The diffusive filling-in algorithm was chosen because it is simple enough for spike-mode simulation in a conventional computer, but the proposed amplitude-mode prediction method is the same for more complex algorithms or circuits. We provide a highly realistic comparison between amplitude-mode and spike-mode in the diffusive filling-in case, which suggests that the amplitude mode is reliable for theoretical predictions useful for customized hardware design for cortical circuit simulation. The goal of this paper is not to bring closure to these discussions but to suggest a way of avoiding possible issues that could compromise the success of the customized device design.