Please send your comments and questions to: git@fe.up.pt

First published at: March 1998  | Last update: September 1998

The Mission

The Telework Interest Group () of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computers (DEEC) of the Engineering Faculty of Porto University (FEUP), has a two-fold objective of introducing students to this new research and development field, as well as building the support for research develoment and continuing education in the use and promotion of telework co-ordination support tools.

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Focus

The is concentrating its effort in the support of the so-called Small Information-based Organisations, where all activities involve information processing and transfer, usualy among sub-contracted teleworkers. For these companies there is a clear concept for the term Project, defined as a one-of-a-kind activity network.

Resarch topics:

  • Enterprise Modelling and Integration

    Modelling and Integration Reference Frameworks

  • Telework workflow management
    •

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    The Team

    Leader: João José Pinto Ferreira (jjpf@fe.up.pt)

    Members:

  • José Augusto Silva (MSc Student - Electrical Engineering and Computers)
  • Francisco Pinto (Student - Informatics Engineering and Computers) 
  • Francisco Marques (Student - Electrical Engineering and Computers)
  • Luis Rodrigues (Student - Electrical Engineering and Computers)
  • Pedro Rodrigues (Student - Electrical Engineering and Computers)
  • Nuno Gomes (Student - Electrical Engineering and Computers)

    • New Members:

  • José Miguel Pereira Pinto (Electrical Engineer) for the telecomunications e internet issues.
  • Maria Milano (Architect) for Interface Design

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    The History

    The Telework Interest Group was first announced in September 1997, and had its first meeting late in October, as a result of the so-called "Interest Groups".

    (...) "It is a core capacity to achieve change that distinguishes the profession of engineering from lawyers, bankers, and most other professions. Engineers take a nation forward from its past" [Cole]. He further quotes Michael Gerber: "It is true that people are trained to be employees. We do not as individuals develop the skills of discrimination, organisation, innovation, communication, broadly and deeply enough. As such, from a very young age we are unable to identify opportunity from an entrepreneurial perspective, which, of course, is a continuous attention to create, to expand, to discover, to define, and to improve. Our natural trend to invent is made more difficult and suffocated, and because of this we become good employees." On the other hand, there is growing need for innovation [Barrat]. Innovation is something new or significantly improved that is done by an enterprise to create added value either directly for itself or indirectly for its customers. Engineering is essentially a profession of the future, this meaning that the leadership and the entrepreneurial perspective should be part of the engineering education.

    From the belief in giving the students the chance to develop their own project ideas and to cultivate their own self-confidence, it was born the so-called "Interest Groups" and "Extra-Curricula Projects". The initiative, introduce in September 1997 had the twofold objective of promoting FEUP/DEEC student's "engineer attitude", as well as to allow the leadership and the entrepreneurial minds to stand up from the emerging co-operation networks. (...)"

    João José Pinto Ferreira

    in "Enacting Extra-Curricula Activities at an Engineering School", January 1998

    References:

    [Cole] Trevor W. Cole : "AAEE - An Agent of Change", Australasian J. of Engng. Educ., Vol. 7, No. 1, ©1996 AAEE

    [Barrat] Paul Barrat: "Educating the Innovating Engineer", Australasian J. of Engng. Educ., Vol. 6, No. 2, ©1995 AAEE

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    Projects

    1. "Building a Telework Workflow Co-ordination System - A Case Study"

  • José Augusto Silva
  • Francisco Pinto
  • Francisco Marques
    •

    2. "Building the basic Internet collaboration support services for Members"

  • Luis Rodrigues
  • Pedro Rodrigues
  • Nuno Gomes
    •

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    Papers

    1. José Augusto Silva, J. J. Pinto Ferreira : "From Telework Project Planning to Project Co-ordination, An integrated Approach"; IFIP International Conference PROLAMAT '98; The Globalization of Manufacturing in the digital communication era of the 21st century: Innovation, Agility and Virtual Enterprise September 9-11, 1998 Trento

    This paper focuses on the telework support to the so-called Small Information-based Organisations, where all activities involve information processing and transfer, usually among sub-contracted teleworkers. Most of these companies run by managing multiple parallel projects, i.e. one-of-a-kind business processes, each project usually involving remote activity execution by teleworkers. There is therefore a clear demand for workflow management systems supporting telework, featuring facilities that further enhance traditional office automation systems by filling the required support to geographically distributed co-operative work. The work presented was undertaken during a telework workflow management system requirements' specification, to support the so-called Small Information-based Organisations. To this end, we analysed the virtual enterprise life cycle, identifying the required modelling tool types for each of the required steps. The consecutive project steps from project planning to co-ordination were then identified, with special relevance to the definition of the so-called execution primitives and to the support of human interaction through the speech-act theory. This approach allowed the description of a consistent life-cycle approach from project planning to co-ordination.

    2. Francisco Marques, Francisco Pinto, José A. Silva, J.J. Pinto Ferreira: "Building a Telework Workflow Co-ordination System": Telework'98 Lisbon, 23 - 25 Setember FIL

    See GIT Presentation at Telework'98

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    Links

    Enterprise Modelling and Integration

  • IFIP/IFAC...
    •

    Telework

    Portugal

    World

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    Acknowledgements

    The Team wants to acknowledge the INESC Manufacturing Systems Engineering Group for allowing some members of this team to have access to a computer laboratory.

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    Responsabilities

    The Team is the only entity allowed to mantain and update the information in this page.

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    (c) 1998 - Graphics by João José Pinto Ferreira.