Contribuição das práticas de engenharia reversa para a gestão estratégica de custos

Abstract

In addition to the agility in launching new products, the current market competitiveness requires creating greater value for the customer at a lower cost. This reality meant that cost management was incorporated into a part of the business strategy. In this context, Strategic Cost Management (SCM) emerges, which includes strategic issues in the analysis of cost measurements. One of the possible ways to apply SCM is to use Reverse Engineering (RE) practices, which seek to extract knowledge from a product through the process of deconstructing it. Therefore, this work aimed to analyze the contribution of Reverse Engineering practices to Strategic Cost Management. The stages of the Reverse Engineering process were identified and analyzed from a Multicase Study in two companies. The strategic positioning in both cases pointed to the Focus, as there was a need to overcome the competition with better delivery times and with more quality products. The use of Reverse Engineering contributed to support these competitive strategies, because during the process of disassembling the components of the products, opportunities for improvement were identified, without changing the final functionality of the products. The redesigns generated reductions in production times and costs, which allowed companies to overcome the competition with shorter delivery times and maintaining the necessary quality. This study is justified by the discussion of initiatives that direct the company to analyze the costs that impact its strategies and, through the use of practices such as Reverse Engineering, achieve greater agility in the launch of products. This study is relevant for comparing the steps identified in the cases analyzed with the Product Development Processes addressed by Rozenfeld et al. (2006).