Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to research the way in which Lean practices are affecting the performance of manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs), analyzing the effects of Lean practices on companies' operational, financial and market performance. Design/methodology/approach An online questionnaire was distributed among Portuguese organizations that fitted the category of SMEs and belonged to the manufacturing sector. A sample of 329 enterprises was analyzed with partial least squares-structural equation modelling. Four hypotheses on the impact of Lean practices on company performance were tested. Findings The results show that the effects of Lean on performance are positive, which stresses the benefits attainable with the implementation of Lean practices. The aggregated implementation of Lean practices, namely, customer involvement, statistical process, continuous flow and total productive maintenance leads to improvements in company's global performance measured by market, financial and operational performance measures, and also improves each of these performance measures individually. It was also noticed that financial capability is one of the indispensable factors for the successful implementation of Lean practices. Originality/value This is the first study that examines the impact of the effect of Lean on operational, financial and market performance in a discriminated and simultaneous way.

Abstract
In the technology enabled, competitive service environment, organizations try to innovate their service while redesigning their processes to increase efficiency. The present study is aimed at developing a design method that brings together, complementarily, constructs and approaches from two fields: Service Design, which offers a human-centered, holistic focus on creating novel services and Business Process Reengineering, mainly organizational, process redesign and process efficiency focused. The Service Design for Business Process Reengineering (SD4BPR) method was developed following a Design Science Research methodology and it was applied in a business environment for the improvement of the Pre-Sale processes of a software development company dedicated to the health area. The development of the method and its process of work are presented and discussed in order to show how SD4PBR can support the design of technology-enabled services while taking into consideration organizational issues and desired business efficiency.

Abstract
Este artigo tem como objetivo identificar os desafios, as barreiras e as aprendizagens com a atividade de remanufatura. Por meio de uma busca realizada na internet foram encontradas empresas de diferentes regiões do país que operam no setor. Desse modo, como procedimento de coleta, foi adotado o estudo de casos múltiplos e, como técnica de coleta, foi utilizada a entrevista semiestruturada, uma vez que a intenção era obter dos entrevistados o relato sobre o seu dia a dia e o seu ambiente de negócio na remanufatura. Os resultados mostraram que a atividade é carente de incentivos por parte do poder público. Outro ponto que prejudica é o custo da logística reversa. Há, ainda, a falta de locais apropriados na fase de descarte dos materiais, cujas condições de reaproveitamento no processo não são mais viáveis. Destarte, o estudo permitiu conhecer um pouco mais da remanufatura por meio do que as empresas contatadas vivenciam no mercado.

Abstract
Nowadays the production systems are linear and the consumption patterns are essentially based on products with a short life cycle, which contribute to increase the demand for raw materials and environmental impacts. The Circular Economy (CE) is playing a major role among scholars and practitioners. Many aspects are now defining this new trending paradigm such as the roles of product development, transformation and remanufacturing/recycling, and/or management of waste, ensuring the economic and environmental benefits. The increasing demand causes instability of the prices and markets, and there is also the risk of supply rupture. This is very unsustainable and puts at risk countries' development. In this work we analyze and assess some EU critical raw material (CRM), considering existing global reserves and production. Correlation between several parameters was also analyzed. Under this assumption one scenario was considered to assess the depletion of two CRM. China is the main supplier in 15 out of 25 CRM considered in this analysis and its average percentage is 65%. Phosphate rock presents the highest value and antimony the lowest for depletion indicator. It was possible to conclude that no significant correlation was found between depletion, self-sufficiency and economic importance indicators. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Abstract
Various companies choose to outsource the delivery of part of their services, so as not to deviate from its core business and improve the service level. This approach leads to a new type of organizations, so-called networked and virtual enterprises, where possibly a great number of companies work together without having direct contact but through a broker, as an intermediary, that streamlines the relationships between them. To enable high level efficiency, as well as some other functional requirements, the meta-organizations and brokering services are conceived as environments and services for networked and virtual enterprises operation and dynamic reconfigurations, representing a model of organizations-of-organizations, as an implementation of one of the Industry 4.0 models and ecosystem for networked and virtual enterprises dynamic reconfiguration. In this paper, the meta-organizations with embedded brokering services, modelled as call centres, are analyzed. Various simulations are presented, based on Erlangs formulas for some of design and performance measures parameters evaluation, such as service level, average waiting time, agent occupancy and service traffic intensity.

Abstract