Proposta de melhoria para o modelo de avaliação de um sistema de produção específico de uma empresa calçadista

Abstract

The evolution of production systems over the years has been driven by the continuous need for companies to improve their operations. One widely recognized production system is the Toyota Production System (TPS), which began in Japan. While this Japanese system was working on developing process improvement methods and tools, the West was also advancing in the evolution of its own production systems. Later, the concept of World Class Manufacturing (WCM) emerged, which integrates the best practices of both Western and Japanese approaches. In this context, after several companies tried unsuccessfully to replicate these practices, it was realized that in order to ensure lasting benefits, it is necessary to adapt these practices to the specific characteristics of each organization. This movement led to the development of company-specific production systems (XPS). Thus, each company that adopts an XPS uses different approaches to implement its system, making it essential to develop specific evaluation and monitoring methods to ensure the effectiveness and constant improvement of the system. In this sense, this research aims to develop an improvement project for the XPS assessment model of the industrial units of a company in the footwear sector, integrating the different implementation approaches. The company currently has two strategies for implementing its system, but it assesses and monitors them in different ways, hindering a systemic assessment of the maturity of XPS. Therefore, to develop the proposal for the new model, an analysis of the assessment model already in place at the company was carried out, identifying opportunities for improvement, which were later incorporated into the project. The proposed model was developed following the steps of a generic methodology for developing maturity models, covering: (i) definition of the scope and objectives of the model; (ii) evaluation criteria, instruments and methods; (iii) level of analysis and data collection; and (iv) empirical testing of the proposed model. As a result, the research showed that the new assessment model was comprehensive in analyzing the implementation of the XPS since 20% of the machines or cells that were validated with the system were not covered by the current model. In addition to other benefits, it was also observed that some XPS elements acted in more production areas than the current monitoring identified. Thus, it was possible to demonstrate that the integrated assessment model proposed in this work is capable of connecting the two XPS implementation approaches, enabling the continuous improvement flow that it advocates.