Método para incrementar a flexibilidade e reduzir custos: o caso da estamparia

Abstract

The search for competitiveness by reducing production costs is undoubtedly an important strategy pursued by companies. However, currently, the behavior of the client's needs is an unpredictable event, requiring the development of flexibility to constantly adapt to this unstable scenario. However, when analyzing this context empirically, it is possible to see that competing through costs would require a lean structure with little variability in order to seek the optimization of resources. Thus, seeking to develop, concomitantly, flexibility in an environment that requires cost reduction seems to constitute a trade-off. This conflict seems to be even more significant in complex environments such as press shops, whose context is formed by considerable setup times, a fact that in itself makes it difficult to promote flexibility. In this context, this research seeks, through the Design Science Research (DSR) method, to propose a set of logical steps to solve the “cost x flexibility” trade-off in the complex press shop scenario. For this, the maturation process of this method went through the proposition of a version provided purely from the literature - Method M0, followed by a new version M1 from the critical analysis of the practical implementation in a real press shop and, finally, a last suggested version after critical analysis by experts. Therefore, the proposed final method, called Integrated Press Shop Improvement Method - MIE, suggests the use of GPT, 5S, Heijunka, SMED, Preset and TPM artefacts organized in a logical and integrated manner. The academic contribution of the work would be related to the relationship and integration of several concepts and methodologies, suggesting an implementation logic for the specific scenario of press shops. When it comes to the business context of press shops, it brings a clear notion of implementation, reducing the practice of trial and error.