Aplicação das ferramentas da qualidade na produção do açúcar.

Abstract

Facing the globalization, the majority of the industrial sectors has been seeking for the newest technologies in order to improve their processes and consequently, improving the quality of the final product. To ensure its survival on the market, or to achieve a better participation in the World market competition, companies use consecrated quality programs, which are already employed in other companies, that have been presenting success, such as the Six Sigma program. Six Sigma is an improvement program aimed at the reduction of non-quality waste, in order to minimize, favoring the customers’ requirements, both in the final product quality and delivery reliability. The present work presents a summary of the main quality management tools, within the context of sustainability and presents an initiative of the implementation of the Six Sigma program to the sugar manufacturing process in a plant, located in Santa Rita-PB. It was verified, through the analyses of all the existing materials at every stage of the sugar manufacturing process, and on a 30 days period, an improvement in production, with the identification of the points that necessarily needed to upgrade and control the results. The improvements were evident, translated not only in the performance of the tasks, but in the performance of the mill operators. The obtained results were then analyzed, thus confirming that the application of Six Sigma in the productive and organizational process leads to an improvement in manufacturing, generating at the end a product with better quality and consequently generating profits for the company and leading to the employee satisfaction, as these can see the performance of their activities in the final product.