Salesian Journal on Information Systems

2-15

Authors: LINDO, O. D.

Investments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can provide firms with both tangible and intangible benefits (IBs). However, these investments are generally analyzed and evaluated by means of traditional methods, which focus on the measurement of the tangible to determine, mainly, the amount of profit that has been obtained. In this paper we develop the foundation of a methodological guide with focus on the estimation of IBs. For this, we present evidence that suggests that an analysis of the impact of ICT investments by focusing on the estimation of IBs may be based on the value chain of a business unit; we also provide a list of factors of intangible value of ICTs identified in the literature reviewed and propose stages to fulfill and variables to use so as to contribute for a comprehensive evaluation of said investments.

34-41

Authors: GARCIA, C. M.; ABÍLIO, R.

In companies environments, it is normal to exist several systems to ease daily activities. In academic environments, it also happens. However, academic environments may be even more heterogeneous as there are many specialized activities, such as: restaurant, library, academic processes, administrative processes and computer network services, such as email and network authentication. To maintain the data consistency throughout the systems, all the systems must be integrated. This integration was carried out in the Federal University of Lavras by using Simples Object Access Protocol (SOAP) as communication protocol. The development of a new system (mobile application), it was noticed that SOAP is very CPU-intensive and slow, as mobile devices have constraints such as internet and processing. Thus, a REST-JSON layer to integrate mobile application and the integration architecture was developed, benefiting from all the resources the integration architecture had. By using this new layer, the offer of functions from the integration architecture was also expanded to REST, attending to other applications without having to make big changes in the code. It was measured that the REST-JSON layer consumes around 73% less data than SOAP. The REST-JSON layer was released, attending to about 5600 installations of the application that requests the integration around 54000 times a day.

53-61

Authors: WATANABE, H. H. M., CIRINO, R. B. Z., SOLER, W. A. O., SANTOS, M. O.

This paper addresses the Production Routing Problem (PRP). In this problem we make integrated decisions about the number of products to be manufactured, the number of products to be delivered to each customer and the routes of the vehicles used to deliver the manufactured products. The integrated problem attempts to minimize both production and distribution costs, over all periods of a finite planning horizon. An Integer Programming Model is presented and model-based heuristics are proposed to tackle the PRP. Computational results are shown for both benchmark and proposed instances, in order to compare the proposed solution method with a high-performance commercial solver. The results show that our approach outperforms the commercial solver in getting high-quality solutions in instances with more than 10 customers and 5 products.