ESEG graduate had work among the top three at the Administration and Innovation Congress.

The event had over 700 registrations, and Guilherme presented on the application of the k-means methodology.

 The 13th edition of the Congress on Administration, Society and Innovation (CASI) took place online on May 20th and 21st and received 787 paper submissions, of which only 64% were approved. Among the research presented was that of Nathália Xavier Ochoa and Guilherme Mascena da Silva, graduates of Production Engineering from ESEG – Faculdade do Grupo Etapa. The advisors for the papers were Professor Dr. Leila Canegusuco, Professor Dr. Carlos Cerqueira, and Professor Dr. Thales Sakamoto.

Participating in the thematic area of Productive Operations and Services Management (AOP), Nathália's work was entitled "Process Improvement: Analysis of Administrative Processes in an Engineering Office" and aimed to "present proposals through the application of elements of Lean Office and Six Sigma methods to optimize internal processes," stated Professor Leila, the work's advisor.

“It was concluded that many procedures in various areas of the company ceased to be followed over time due to increased informality or lack of employee training. Reformulations to operational flows were suggested to improve process performance,” explains the professor. “The application of quality improvement concepts and methods helped to show how their careful and thorough application can also bring benefits to administrative processes, not being limited to industrial areas.”.

“Using the concepts learned in the Production Engineering course, the student mapped and reorganized two processes that presented problems such as slowness and a high number of failures, contributing to the overall improvement of workflows,” shared Dr. Carlos Cerqueira, coordinator of Graduation Projects (TGs) at ESEG.

Guilherme was approved in the same area with the research "Application of the k-means methodology for customer segmentation in an e-commerce company of pet products". The work was supervised by professors Carlos Cerqueira and Thales Sakamoto and was nominated as one of the three best works in the subject.

“Our main objective was to use statistical tools and data mining to better understand, from a database, the main customer profiles based on previous purchases,” stated Professor Cerqueira. “In this way, we created more assertive communication strategies based on the identified profiles.”.

“"The great merit of this work was to show how, starting from a database, it is possible to base the strategic action of the company studied in relation to its clients, through data that leads to information and, ultimately, knowledge," the professor added.

The Congress began in 2007 to offer courses, lectures, and extension research to students and professors of Administration at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) in Volta Redonda. Two years later, it was opened to external researchers. In 2011, CASI expanded throughout Brazil.

In this year's edition, the Congress featured national and international scholars, as well as lectures, debates, workshops, and panels. In total, there were 14 thematic areas. For the theme of Human Behavior in Organizations (CHO), one of the coordinators was Dr. Aline Barbosa, a professor at ESEG.

The institution encourages the participation of students, alumni, and professors in relevant events and journals in each area of their courses. "This leads students both to delve deeper into a specific area of knowledge and to substantiate their considerations using a clear and replicable methodological approach in numerous other situations. Participation in conferences is an integral part of this training, as it shows students that their efforts bear fruit and that study is not a process with a final point, but rather a continuous process," says the professor.

“In terms of contribution to society, we have the use of tools that originated in factory environments, aimed at optimizing the production process, for other areas, such as administration, demonstrating their scope and applicability. For the student, she applied the knowledge from her training in her own work environment, which resulted in the Graduation Project that led to publication, so that she could experience in her professional daily life the close relationship between theory and practice,” she concludes.