Abstract
Cutting and packing (C&P) is an important area of operational research and its problems arise in various industries such as: textile, wood, glass and shipbuilding. The main objective is to maximize the efficiency of a layout by rearranging and/or reassigning items inside containers in order to reduce costs and environmental impact. In this work, a raster solution to the bidimensional irregular strip packing problem, which consists of placing irregular shapes items inside a single rectangular container with variable length, is studied. In raster methods, the selection of the grid size is very important to the outcome of the algorithm. It influences the size of the search space, the overlap algorithm efficiency, as well as the memory requirements of the packing algorithm. An analysis of the impact of the choice of grid size is performed using 15 benchmark cases from the literature and, through careful observation of such test results, a simple rule to define the grid size is suggested.

Abstract
The irregular strip packing problem is a common variant of cutting and packing problems. Only a few exact methods have been proposed to solve this problem in the literature. However, several heuristics have been proposed to solve it. Despite the number of proposed heuristics, only a few methods that combine exact and heuristic approaches to solve the problem can be found in the literature. In this paper, a matheuristic is proposed to solve the irregular strip packing problem. The method has three phases in which exact mixed integer programming models from the literature are used to solve the sub-problems. The results show that the matheuristic is less dependent on the instance size and finds equal or better solutions in 87,5% of the cases in shorter computational times compared with the results of other models in the literature. Furthermore, the matheuristic is faster than other heuristics from the literature. © 2016 Brazilian Operations Research Society.

Abstract
The past decades have been characterized by an increasing interest of companies in international trade and significant foreign direct investments, which led to a shift from localized manufacturing companies to global manufacturing networks. The main goal of this research is to analyze the management of information within the process of supplier selection in the context of manufacturing networks. The adoption of field study methodology allows understanding how the supplier selection process is carried out in Multinational Companies (MNCs) in different manufacturing sectors. In particular, this paper aims at identifying the information that mother company and their subsidiary companies share during the supplier selection process, and how they access to this information.

Abstract
Purpose - In collaborative settings, such as research and development projects, obtaining the maximum benefit from knowledge management systems depends on the ability of the different partners to understand the conceptualisation underlying the system's knowledge organisation. This paper aims to show how information/knowledge organisation in a multi-organisation project can be made more effective if the domain experts are involved in the specification of the systems semantic structure. A particular aspect is further studied: the role of conceptual relations in the process of collaborative development of such structures. Design/methodology/approach - An action-research approach was adopted, framed by a socio-semantic stance. A collaborative conceptual modelling platform was used to support the members of a research and development project in the process of developing a lightweight ontology aiming at reorganising all the project information in a wiki system. Data collection was carried out by means of participant observation, interviews and a questionnaire. Findings - The approach to solve the content organisation problem revealed to be effective both in the result and the process. It resulted in a better-organised system, enabling more efficient project information retrieval. The collaborative development of the lightweight ontology embodied, in fact, a learning process, leading to a shared conceptualisation. The research results point to the importance of the elicitation of conceptual relations for structuring the project's knowledge. These results are important for the design of methods and tools to support the collaborative development of conceptual models. Originality/value - This paper studies the social process leading to a shared conceptualisation, a subject that has not been sufficiently researched. This case study provides evidence about the importance of the early phases of the construction of ontologies, mainly if domain experts are deeply involved, supported by appropriated tools and guided by well-structured processes.

Abstract
There is no doubt that nowadays internationalization is increasingly attractive for companies that want to become more competitive. However, many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) still are resourceconstrained, lacking adequate information and facing problems to establish and manage relationships to operate in a sustainable way in international markets. Despite receiving some support from governments and from other institutional entities, these difficulties faced by SMEs call for a stronger support, which can be played by industrial enterprises associations (IEAs). This chapter brings the perspective of five different companies that are associated with IEAs. The main objective is to have their opinion about the role of IEAs as information managers and promoters of collaborations, mainly for internationalization processes. Another objective is to understand the acceptance by these companies regarding the use of collaborative platforms, managed by IEAs, for supporting their information and collaboration management activities. © 2017, IGI Global.

Abstract
Knowledge management practices are used in collaborative networks promoting innovation in order to share critical knowledge among network members towards improving organizational results. This paper proposes to explore the channels and practices for knowledge sharing in collaborative networks, by means of an exploratory multiple case study carried out in two types of collaborative networks: (i) industrial associations; and (ii) science and technology parks. Empirical evidence has been collected from interviews with managers of the collaborative networks and of organizations participating in the collaborative networks. The contribution of this paper to the knowledge management literature is twofold: (i) it provides a characterization of the channels and technology used for knowledge sharing in collaborative networks based on empirical evidence and (ii) it describes knowledge sharing practices used among organizations to foster new forms of connectivity between groups and individuals.