Os impactos da implementação de um programa de melhoria contínua na linha de envase de uma indústria agroquímica do Paraná

Abstract

The kaizen methodology, originated in Japan, is used by companies that seek to become more competitive in the market and bring improvements to their process in several aspects, such as: lead-time, increased productivity, in-process inventory, among others. The main difficulty faced by many organizations is not only related to the methodology development process, but also in how to effectively drive the change in the shop floor employees' culture. This paper aims to describe the steps and present the results obtained from a kaizen event that took place over 5 days in an agrochemical company located in the state of Paraná. The main focus of the event was to implement immediate and lowinvestment improvements that would reduce the setup time of one of the company's most complex filling lines and take actions that positively impacted the quality of the final product in order to reduce the complaint rate from clients. The main results obtained were a 40.43% reduction in line setup time, a reduction of 2,981 meters in the distance traveled throughout the process and a 38% reduction in the customer complaint rate for products manufactured on the line in study.