Aplicação do ciclo PDCA para a redução de quebra de garrafas em uma linha de envase de cerveja

Abstract

The reduction of production costs and waste have become increasingly relevant for companies to remain competitive in the market and increase their profits, being more and more sought, especially in the beverage industry. Given this, continuous improvement methods are very effective in process management and consequently in cost savings, having fundamental importance for achieving and maintaining good results. This paper aims to reduce the one-liter-returnable bottle breaking in the brewery where it was applied, an item of significant relevance among the variable costs of the filling line in question, which had a negative history for several months, being a recurring problem in the brewery. To do so, a quantitative approach was adopted in this case study, and the PDCA Method was applied along with some Quality tools, to enable the problem understanding and the planning of treatment actions. Following the implementation of the proposed actions, a reduction of 66.7% in the indicator was achieved, exceeding the target by 20%, moving from a scenario of an average break of one in 84 bottles to one in 247 bottles. It was concluded that changes in measuring and management of the indicator produced positive results, while meeting good operational practices was directly related to the reduction in the number of failures, proving their importance to the company.