Abstract
This paper addresses the problem of interaction design for service provision to customers in a multi-platform environment. It is based on a qualitative and quantitative study of a Portuguese multi-channel retail bank, and shows that, as most of the financial operations are functionally available across the different service platforms, experience requirements become increasingly influential in customers' usage of the different channels. Different financial services generate different interaction needs, and the fit between experience requirements and channel performance in satisfying those needs has a strong impact on customer channel choices. Based on these findings, essential use cases are applied and extended to capture experience requirements for the different financial operations in a technology independent way. With this approach, interaction designers can identify which platforms are best suited to provide the different services available, improving the multi-channel service as a whole. On the other hand, it also enables the identification of areas of interaction experience that need improvement in each platform, if services offered are likely to be effectively used.

Abstract
This paper presents the INFOVINI project that aims to be the leading portal for the wine industry in Portugal. The basic idea is simple, yet powerful: to have a single entry point for all the latest information on Portuguese wines. The site will build upon the experience gained from a previous project, e-Mercatura, and will be based in an open platform that will enhance the collaboration between organizations in the sector. The innovative approach lies not only in the completeness of the database, which will be unique in Portugal, but also in the platform built in order to assure automatic update of the information. The INFOVINI project represents an extremely important contribution to a new way of working, promoting collaborative processes across organizations, and projecting a new image of Portuguese wines in foreign markets.

Abstract
In this paper, we study the complexity of a data mining algorithm for extracting patterns from user web navigation data that was proposed in previous work.(3) The user web navigation sessions are inferred from log data and modeled as a Markov chain. The chain's higher probability trails correspond to the preferred trails on the web site. The algorithm implements a depth-first search that scans the Markov chain for the high probability trails. We show that the average behaviour of the algorithm is linear time in the number of web pages accessed.

Abstract
This paper presents some lines of thinking related with the establishment of a concrete mathematical basis to measure the ability of enterprises in a supply chain to maintain equilibrium under unexpected variations. It will be argued that flexibility will be the most appropriate term to classify the concept behind such idea and that agility can be understood as a special case of flexibility. Then, a simple theory of flexibility directed to demand variations in the supply chain is deduced and commented, as well as some results achieved by dynamic supply chain simulation presented and discussed.

Abstract
Here we present a computer application planned to be used as an interactive tool for Supply Chain Management Training. Implemented with Visual C++, this application embeds the "Cranfield Blocks Game" (Richard Saw, 2002) network structure, and uses precisely the same demand patterns as the manual version of the game. Anyhow, instead of reducing the play to 12 reorder cycles, as the manual version does, this application extends those patterns throughout the time till any number of reorder cycles, what let the results become more useful and interesting even for didactic purposes. At the same time, the present application substitutes the classroom table by the computer screen, and can be made to run in AUTOPLAY mode, meaning the game can also be played with only one player or even automatically, with no players at all. In a certain way, this comes closer to some kind of Distributed Supply Chain Simulation, apart from the fact each lead time is fixed, as the "Cranfield Blocks Game" states, and the AUTOPLAY stock policy is empirical. As each application communicates with the SERVER using the TCP/IP protocol, the players can be spread by different computers and even placed at different geographic locations if connected to the INTERNET. In the end of this paper, results achieved with an automatic running session and with the involvement of a group of students from the Escola de Gestao do Porto (EGP) will be presented and compared.

Abstract
In this paper an application of constraint logic programming (CLP) to the resolution of nesting problems is presented. Nesting problems are a special case of the cutting and packing problems, in which the pieces generally have non-convex shapes. Because of their combinatorial optimization nature, nesting problems have traditionally been tackled by heuristics and in the recent past by meta-heuristics. When trying to formulate nesting problems as linear programming models, to achieve global optimal solutions, the difficulty of dealing with the disjunction of constraints arises. On the contrary, CLP deals easily with this type of relationships among constraints. A CLP implementation for the nesting problem is described for convex and non-convex shapes. The concept of nofit polygon is used to deal with the geometric constraints inherent to all cutting and packing problems. Computational results are presented. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.