A obtenção de ganhos produtivos e diminuição dos desperdícios com a implementação de manufatura enxuta em uma indústria metalúrgica

This work was developed with the aim of explaining the real benefits of using the concept of Lean Manufacturing in a Metallurgical Industry. Through this will highlight the strategies and real gains from the use of this methodology and therefore, the tools of Production Engineering that were used in the implementation of Lean Manufacturing, in order to improve processes in various aspects such as reduced handling, standardization of production, reduced time used in machine setup. Practical methods applied for the purpose of reducing waste become apparent. Also highlighted will be the real difficulties encountered in the implementation of Lean Manufacturing

Aumento de produtividade em uma célula produtiva com processo de usinagem utilizando conceitos Lean

In the current competitive and global scenario, companies in search for solutions that become the production every time more efficient is increasing and at the same time cost reductions and cost eliminations are becoming increasingly evident and needed. In an attempt to improve production, this work aims to compare benefits obtained using principles of philosophy Lean Manufacturing in an productivity growth of a cell from an auto parts sector industry. For that purpose it will be studied the history, the concepts and the tools of philosophy Lean Manufacturing, thus using the as a business-strategic tool to accomplish goals that the company expects to get greater competitiveness and quality. The efficiency of philosophy Lean Manufacturing was already confirmed through applying the concepts in the process which has been improved inside an auto parts sector industry. At last, comparative analyzes showed benefits obtained with the use of Lean Manufacture tool called VSM, Value Stream Map, which translates the Value Stream Map of a particular family of parts as the identification, minimization and elimination of waste identified

Uma análise das estratégias de manufatura adotadas por seis montadoras da indústria automobilística mundial

The Brazilian automotive industry has undergone profound changes during the 90’s decade, as a consequence of the market opening up through the liberation of automobile imports. The exposure of the Brazilian domestic market to competition with imported products of high quality and lower prices indicated the need for significant changes in those auto industries operating in this country, with the intention of making them competitive. To achieve these objectives management and production concepts were adopted, such as: the just-in-time philosophy; lean manufacturing; outsourcing; reengineering and increasing the rate of automation in both production and management systems. These changes helped to increase productivity and, in turn, reduced the level of employment in the sector, especially in activities where the required qualification levels were low. Despite this modernization, the Brazilian companies have committed themselves to meet the specific needs of the Brazilian market. The objective of this paper is to analyze and present manufacturing strategies from six manufacturers of automotive vehicles: Toyota in Japan, Fiat in Italy, Volkswagen in Brazil and Germany and General Motors in the U.S. and Brazil. The predominant method of research was from reviewing relevant literature, whereas the empirical data was analyzed qualitatively. The article seeks to identify the manufacturing strategies adopted by manufacturers located in the above countries, electing one automotive manufacturer to represent each country. The research demonstrated that the processes for production of automobiles in four plants located in, the U.S. (GM); Italy (Fiat); Japan (Toyota) and Germany (VW) are similar to those adopted in Brazilian industrial plants of the same companies (GM and VW), with differences of operations only in the business strategies adopted by each of them.

Lean construction como estratégia para melhorias em canteiros de obras: uma revisão sistemática na literatura nacional

Pós-graduação em Engenharia de Produção - FEB

Adoption of lean thinking practices at Brazilian auto part companies

The objective of this study is to analyze the adoption of lean thinking practices at Brazilian auto part companies. For such, a survey was conducted at 75 sector companies. The results reveal that among all practices, the “systematic search for continuous improvement" obtained the highest implementation average. In terms of correlation, interdependence was observed among all Lean Manufacturing variables, most especially between LM5 (Kanban) and LM6 (Just-in-Time). This correlation can be explained by the importance of Kanban systems when implementing Just-inTime.

O planejamento e desdobramento em ações da estratégia de uma pequena empresa varejista

This thesis presents a way to plan and deploy the strategy of a small retailing company with use of lean six sigma technics. In small companies there are mostly no future strategic planning based on the external market and customer needs. Aiming for effective strategies, it is necessary to deal with significant information and transparency of plans and targets. With lean six sigma method it can be achieved and this Thesis has the purpose of analysis of the method application in the creation of a strategy for a small company in the city of Franca, state of São Paulo. The outcomes are a financial and market analysis, a structured strategic planning, an employees function outline, the creation of plans, indicators and targets, and the employees and owners' opinion regarding the new way of working

O planejamento e desdobramento em ações da estratégia de uma pequena empresa varejista

This thesis presents a way to plan and deploy the strategy of a small retailing company with use of lean six sigma technics. In small companies there are mostly no future strategic planning based on the external market and customer needs. Aiming for effective strategies, it is necessary to deal with significant information and transparency of plans and targets. With lean six sigma method it can be achieved and this Thesis has the purpose of analysis of the method application in the creation of a strategy for a small company in the city of Franca, state of São Paulo. The outcomes are a financial and market analysis, a structured strategic planning, an employees function outline, the creation of plans, indicators and targets, and the employees and owners' opinion regarding the new way of working

Is China's manufacturing sector becoming more high-tech? Evidence on shifts in comparative advantage, 1987-2005

Purpose – The paper assesses the extent to which China’s comparative advantage in manufacturing has shifted towards higher-tech sectors between 1987 and 2005 and proposes possible explanations for the shift. Design/methodology/approach – Revealed comparative advantage (RCA) indices for 27 product groups, representing high-, medium and low-tech sectors have been calculated. Examination of international market attractiveness complements the RCA analysis. Findings for selected sectors are evaluated in the context of other evidence. Findings – While China maintains its competitiveness in low-tech labour intensive products, it has gained RCA in selected medium-tech sectors (e.g. office machines and electric machinery) and the high-tech telecommunications and automatic data processing equipment sectors. Evidence from firm and sector specific studies suggests that improved comparative advantage in medium and high-tech sectors is based on capabilities developing through combining international technology transfer and learning. Research limitations/implications – The quantitative analysis does not explain the shifts in comparative advantage, though the paper suggests possible explanations. Further research at firm and sector levels is required to understand the underlying capability development of Chinese enterprises and the relative competitiveness of Chinese and foreign invested enterprises. Practical implications – Western companies should take account of capability development in China in forming their international manufacturing strategies. The rapid shifts in China’s comparative advantage have lessons for other industrialising countries. Originality/value – While RCA is a well-known methodology, its application at the disaggregated product group level combined with market attractiveness assessment is distinctive. The paper provides a broad assessment of changes in Chinese manufacturing as a basis for further research on capability development at firm and sector levels.

A configuration framework of manufacturing strategy paradigm in state owned enterprises within China's petrochemical industry:building context-embedded configurations for the paradigm of strategic manufacturing management from exploratory case studies

The role of the production system as a key determinant of competitive performance of business operations- has long been the subject of industrial organization research, even predating the .explicit conceptua1isation of manufacturing, strategy in the literature. Particular emergent production issues such as the globalisation of production, global supply chain management, management of integrated manufacturing and a growing e~busjness environment are expected to critically influence the overall competitive performance and therefore the strategic success of the organization. More than ever, there is a critical need to configure and improve production system and operations competence in a strategic way so as to contribute to the long-term competitiveness of the organization. In order to operate competitively and profitably, manufacturing companies, no matter how well managed, all need a long-term 'strategic direction' for the development of operations competence in order to consistently produce more market value with less cost towards a leadership position. As to the long-term competitiveness, it is more important to establish a dynamic 'strategic perspective' for continuous operational improvements in pursuit of this direction, as well as ongoing reviews of the direction in relation to the overall operating context. However, it also clear that the 'existing paradigm of manufacturing strategy development' is incapable of adequately responding to the increasing complexities and variations of contemporary business operations. This has been factually reflected as many manufacturing companies are finding that methodologies advocated in the existing paradigm for developing manufacturing strategy have very limited scale and scope for contextual contingency in empirical application. More importantly, there has also emerged a deficiency in the multidimensional and integrative profile from a theoretical perspective when operationalising the underlying concept of strategic manufacturing management established in the literature. The point of departure for this study was a recognition of such contextual and unitary limitations in the existing paradigm of manufacturing strategy development when applied to contemporary industrial organizations in general, and Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in particular. As China gradually becomes integrated into the world economy, the relevance of Western management theory and its paradigm becomes a practical matter as much as a theoretical issue. Since China markedly differs from Western countries in terms of culture, society, and political and economic systems, it presents promising grounds to test and refine existing management theories and paradigms with greater contextual contingency and wider theoretical perspective. Under China's ongoing programmes of SOE reform, there has been an increased recognition that strategy development is the very essence of the management task for managers of manufacturing companies in the same way as it is for their counterparts in Western economies. However, the Western paradigm often displays a rather naive and unitary perspective of the nature of strategic management decision-making, one which largely overlooks context-embedded factors and social/political influences on the development of manufacturing strategy. This thesis studies the successful experiences of developing manufacturing strategy from five high-performing large-scale SOEs within China’s petrochemical industry. China’s petrochemical industry constitutes a basic heavy industrial sector, which has always been a strategic focus for reform and development by the Chinese government. Using a confirmation approach, the study has focused on exploring and conceptualising the empirical paradigm of manufacturing strategy development practiced by management. That is examining the ‘empirical specifics’ and surfacing the ‘managerial perceptions’ of content configuration, context of consideration, and process organization for developing a manufacturing strategy during the practice. The research investigation adopts a qualitative exploratory case study methodology with a semi-structural front-end research design. Data collection follows a longitudinal and multiple-case design and triangulates case evidence from sources including qualitative interviews, direct observation, and a search of documentations and archival records. Data analysis follows an investigative progression from a within-case preliminary interpretation of facts to a cross-case search for patterns through theoretical comparison and analytical generalization. The underlying conceptions in both the literature of manufacturing strategy and related studies in business strategy were used to develop theoretical framework and analytical templates applied during data collection and analysis. The thesis makes both empirical and theoretical contributions to our understanding of 'contemporary management paradigm of manufacturing strategy development'. First, it provides a valuable contextual contingency of the 'subject' using the business setting of China's SOEs in petrochemical industry. This has been unpacked into empirical configurations developed for its context of consideration, its content and process respectively. Of special note, a lean paradigm of business operations and production management discovered at case companies has significant implications as an emerging alternative for high-volume capital intensive state manufacturing in China. Second, it provides a multidimensional and integrative theoretical profile of the 'subject' based upon managerial perspectives conceptualised at case companies when operationalising manufacturing strategy. This has been unpacked into conceptual frameworks developed for its context of consideration, its content constructs, and its process patterns respectively. Notably, a synergies perspective towards the operating context, competitive priorities and competence development of business operations and production management has significant implications for implementing a lean manufacturing paradigm. As a whole, in so doing, the thesis established a theoretical platform for future refinement and development of context-specific methodologies for developing manufacturing strategy.

Virtual manufacturing:a study of some important issues relating to the transformation of traditional manufacturing organisations

This thesis starts with a literature review, outlining the major issues identified in the literature concerning virtual manufacturing enterprise (VME) transformation. Then it details the research methodology used – a systematic approach for empirical research. next, based on the conceptual framework proposed, this thesis builds three modules to form a reference model, with the purpose of clarifying the important issues relevant to transforming a traditional manufacturing company into a VME. The first module proposes a mechanism of VME transformation – operating along the VME metabolism. The second module builds a management function within a VME to ensure a proper operation of the mechanism. This function helps identify six areas as closely related to VME transformation: lean manufacturing; competency protection; internal operation performance measurement; alliance performance measurement; knowledge management; alliance decision making. The third module continues and proposes an alliance performance measurement system which includes 14 categories of performance indicators. An analysis template for alliance decision making is also proposed and integrated into the first module. To validate these three modules, 7 manufacturing organisations (5 in China and 2 in the UK) were investigated, and these field case studies are analysed in this thesis. The evidence found in these organisations, together with the evidence collected from the literature, including both researcher views and literature case studies, provide support for triangulation evidence. In addition, this thesis identifies the strength and weakness patterns of the manufacturing companies within the theoretical niche of this research, and clarifies the relationships among some major research areas from the perspective of virtual manufacturing. Finally, the research findings are summarised, as well as their theoretical and practical implications. Research limitations and recommendations for future work conclude this thesis.

Where are UK manufacturers along the journey to Lean?

Lean manufacturing is now widely accepted amongst UK based manufacturers as a valuable aid to achieving competitiveness. The associated principles, tools and techniques have been well documented since the 1980s and there are many competent practitioners, consultants and academics promoting Lean manufacturing. Therefore, it is useful to ask how well UK manufacturers are progressing along the Lean journey? This paper therefore provides an insight into this question by presenting the results, based on indepth case studies of five representative companies, that reflect progress being made within the UK manufacturing sector.

A roadmap for cost engineering in the automotive supplier sector

The advent of global competition has introduced the need for new competitive manufacturing strategies. The implementation of new strategies has a dramatic effect on measuring product cost compared to traditional management accounting methods. It is found that new cost management methods are required to measure success and support decision-making within the new strategies. One example is the consequences of using traditional management accounting methods for measuring the effects of lean having catastrophic results during reporting. Such results steer managers away from lean manufacture based upon a false picture of the potential benefits. This research examines cost management methods potentially applicable within the automotive supplier sector. Because of the lack of cost-related data collected within the supplier sector companies, this paper ends with a demonstration of a novel method for use in data scarce environments. Copyright © 2008 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Understanding and improving the manufacturing and changeover process in Saudi Arabian business - a multiple case study approach

The importance of the changeover process in the manufacturing industry is becoming widely recognised. Changeover is a complete process of changing between the manufacture of one product to manufacture of an alternative product until specified production and quality rates are reached. The initiatives to improve changeover exist in industry, as better changeover process typically contribute to improved quality performance. A high-quality and reliable changeover process can be achieved through implementation of continuous or radical improvements. This research examines the changeover process of Saudi Arabian manufacturing firms because Saudi Arabia’s government is focused on the expansion of GDP and increasing the number of export manufacturing firms. Furthermore, it is encouraging foreign manufacturing firms to invest within Saudi Arabia. These initiatives, therefore, require that Saudi manufacturing businesses develop the changeover practice in order to compete in the market and achieve the government’s objectives. Therefore, the aim of this research is to discover the current status of changeover process implementation in Saudi Arabian manufacturing businesses. To achieve this aim, the main objective of this research is to develop a conceptual model to understand and examine the effectiveness of the changeover process within Saudi Arabian manufacturing firms, facilitating identification of those activities that affect the reliability and high-quality of the process. In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of this area, this research first explores the concept of quality management and its relationship to firm performance and the performance of manufacturing changeover. An extensive body of literature was reviewed on the subject of lean manufacturing and changeover practice. A research conceptual model was identified based on this review, and focus was on providing high-quality and reliable manufacturing changeover processes during set-up in a dynamic environment. Exploratory research was conducted in sample Saudi manufacturing firms to understand the features of the changeover process within the manufacturing sector, and as a basis for modifying the proposed conceptual model. Qualitative research was employed in the study with semi-structured interviews, direct observations and documentation in order to understand the real situation such as actual daily practice and current status of changeover process in the field. The research instrument, the Changeover Effectiveness Assessment Tool (CEAT) was developed to evaluate changeover practices. A pilot study was conducted by examining the CEAT, proposed for the main research. Consequently, the conceptual model was modified and CEAT was improved in response to the pilot study findings. Case studies have been conducted within eight Saudi manufacturing businesses. These case studies assessed the implementation of manufacturing changeover practice in the lighting and medical products sectors. These two sectors were selected based on their operation strategy which was batch production as well as the fact that they fulfilled the research sampling strategy. The outcomes of the research improved the conceptual model, ultimately to facilitate the firms’ adoption and rapid implementation of a high-quality and reliability changeover during the set-up process. The main finding of this research is that Quality’s factors were considering the lowest levels comparing to the other factors which are People, Process and Infrastructure. This research contributes to enable Saudi businesses to implement the changeover process by adopting the conceptual model. In addition, the guidelines for facilitating implementation were provided in this thesis. Therefore, this research provides insight to enable the Saudi manufacturing industry to be more responsive to rapidly changing customer demands.

The impact of lean practices on inventory turnover

Lean manufacturing (LM) is currently enjoying its second heyday. Companies in several industries are implementing leanpractices to keep pace with the competition and achieve better results. In this article, we will concentrate on how companies can improve their inventoryturnover performance through the use ofleanpractices. According to our main proposition, firms that widely apply leanpractices have higher inventoryturnover than those that do not rely on LM. However, there may be significant differences in inventoryturnover even among lean manufacturers depending on their contingencies. Therefore, we also investigate how various contingency factors (production systems, order types, product types) influence theinventoryturnoveroflean manufacturers. We use cluster and correlation analysis to separate manufacturers based onthe extent of their leanness and to examine the effect of contingencies. We acquired the data from the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) in ISIC sectors 28–35.

Gestão do sistema de produção e práticas enxutas adotadas nas indústrias paraibanas: um estudo multicaso

The evolution of the practices and strategies of manufacturing management, over the years, has made many companies realign their production systems in order to raise their competitiveness and operational performance. However, in most cases these changes are made in a heterogeneous manner, which ends up leaving the production system without a defined goal, which may end up damaging the managerial strategies of the organization as a whole. Thus, some organizations seek to use techniques and/or successful production practices used by other companies, believing can be able to reproduce the same results. An efficient production system must be fully planned and appropriate to the strategic objectives of the organization. Thus, this paper aims to identify the manufacturing management strategies adopted in paraibanas industries, as well as identify the lean practices used by them. Thus, a qualitative study was conducted, using as methodological basis the multicase study. Were made: direct observations, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires applied to those responsible by the production sector of the participating companies. As a result, it was possible to identify the type of manufacturing management system adopted by companies. Where it was detected that Company A uses a system of Modern Mass Production with focus on productivity and low cost and the Company B is using Lean Manufacturing system focused on quality and diversity. In the two organizations was possible to realize the application of lean practices where the Company what does not use the LM, possessed lean practices in standard extremely mature of utilization.