Proposição de um método para concepção da estratégia de produção: uma abordagem a partir do conceito de subunidades estratégicas de negócios

Abstract

The so-called “new economy” – a combination of globalization with the speed of high technology – enter the business environment a set of complexities in terms of management. First, with the increase of competitors (increasing supply), due to globalization, and the mismatch in terms of increase of consumer market (demand), organizations tend to expand their range of products offered to the market to achieve scale-up production. Moreover, with the dissemination of information, made possible also by the “new economy”, best practices, in conceptual terms, are accessible to all. The difference therefore between systems and organizations may not be in the practices and techniques themselves, but rather in how these are understood from the design of different production strategies. The theoretical framework seeks to present the main theoretical aspects concerning the production strategy: i) competitiveness, ii) competitive strategy, and iii) strategic levels, iv) production strategy; v) competitive dimensions vi) design models of manufacturing strategy; vii) Focused Factories and viii) Strategic Business Units (SBUs). To enrich the concepts surveyed the research presents theoretical propositions from the literature reviewed above: i) Strategic Business SubUnits (SubSUBs), ii) comparisons between the concepts of Focused Factories, SBUs and SubSUBs iii) analysis of results by SubSBU and iv) economic aspects of the strategy. Starting from scenario, this research proposes a general method to assist in designing the production strategy of the enterprises. However, from the perception of increased diversification of product lines within companies and the consequent expansion of the complexity of managing the same, a gap was perceived in the existing concepts in the context of manufacturing strategy and proposes the adoption of the concept of SubSBUs. Thus, the purpose of this research is to develop a method that, by adopting the concept of SubSUBs could contribute to the construction of manufacturing strategy by aligning the economic-financial, marketing and production of industrial companies. The research method was the Design Research, and the stage of empirical research was conducted in a company of the metal-mechanic located in Caxias do Sul (RS). The proposed method was based on five sources of information: i) the existing concepts in the context of manufacturing strategy, ii) theoretical propositions of the research; iii) empirical knowledge of an expert group that evaluated the method before its application; iv) contribution of professionals in the company and the researcher from applying the method and v) the evaluation method from the application of it in a business environment. At the end of the research was a proposal to end the method that is available for new applications.