4 th International Conference on Production Economics and Project Evaluation ICOPEV 2018, Guimarães, Portugal 205 IMPROVING RISK MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN INDUSTRIALIZATION PROJECTS: CASE STUDY OF AN AUTOMOTIVE COMPANY Bruno Rodrigues, 1,3* Madalena Araújo, 1,2 Anabela Tereso, 1,2 João Faria 2 and Paulo Assis 3 1 Department of Production and Systems, University of Minho, Portugal 2 ALGORITMI Research Centre 3 Bosch Car Multimedia Portugal, S.A. * Corresponding author: bruno_alvesrodrigues@hotmail.com, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal KEYWORDS Industrialization projects, Risk management, Lessons learned ABSTRACT Project-based work is increasingly regarded as a powerful organizational response to the complex challenges of management, being an excellent way to integrate organizational functions with the expectations of stakeholders, with the aim of achieving higher levels of performance and productivity. However, the particular characteristics of projects lead them to be considered risky undertakings, making risk management one of the most important knowledge areas among project management practices. Knowledge management is, in turn, progressively taken into account in risk management, since many of the problems underlying risk management processes arise from scarcity of information or lack of knowledge to understand the existing information. Then, within the scope of risk management, knowledge management can provide learning from past risks in order to simplify and support the management of new risks and decision- making. The case study research methodology was applied at a plant of a first tear automotive industry supplier by using participant observation, document analysis and questionnaires to describe the current industrialization project risk management practice. Then a proposal for a risk catalog in the form of a risk database was developed to integrate information and knowledge in order to promote and support the existing and future project risk management practice. INTRODUCTION Projects dealing with new product development is, in most cases, a difficult process, with considerable level of uncertainty. These difficulties and uncertainty come from its size, complexity and degree of innovation and technical sophistication of the product and also from project itself. These aspects arise, in many cases, with constraints of time, resources and external dependencies, facts that could be exacerbated by the conflicts of interest of stakeholders, increasing uncertainty and risks. Since the project environment is a growing reality within the industrial environment, it is critical that organizations develop efficient Project Management (PM) practices in order to enable them, not only to anticipate events, but to respond to them and evolve continuously (Badewi, 2016), decreasing uncertainty and consequently some risks. Thus, with the purpose of guaranteeing the viability of business, of reducing the likelihood of project failure and make informed decisions, it is important that risks are effectively managed, through a well organized and methodical approach. The Risk Management (RM) of projects is therefore an essential part of PM, because when uncertainty and known project risks are managed, information to optimize decision-making is available (Peixoto, Tereso, Fernandes, & Almeida, 2014), contributing for project success. The purpose of this study is to explore the RM process underlying industrialization projects, taking as research environment a portuguese plant of a leading global supplier of technology and services, responsible for producing a wide-range portfolio of electronic products, like integrated intelligent solutions for entertainment, navigation, telematics and driving aid functions. The industrialization of these products is promoted at different plants located worldwide, being this portuguese plant in Braga one of them. The industrialization process covers different stages: production of samples; manufacturing line design and production ramp-up. All of these stages are carried out by several departments which makes the industrialization projects’ environment an increased challenge for RM. Therefore, since RM is nowadays, in a globalised, competitive and volatile scenario, a critical, strategic and operational priority for some organisations (Shimizu, Park, & Choi, 2014), it is important to perform a detailed analysis of the RM pratice developed at the company in order to improve the process, focusing on the maximizing the process efficiency. For this purpose, the analysis of organizational Knowledge Management (KM) will be considered as a way to integrate information and lessons learned from the RM process with the aim of smoothing the management of risks in future projects. In addition,