The Use of Lean Production Practices Principles in the Brazilian Automotive Cluster of Parana

摘要

The relevance of practices and principles of Lean to help automotive industries to become more competitive has been receiving more attention nowadays, mainly in a market like that with high pressure of costs and global competition. However it is necessary to research which tools have been used to improve this production system. This paper aims to identify the main Lean Production practices and principles (P&P) adopted in the auto parts industry of the second largest Brazilian automotive cluster. Therefore, it was applied the questionnaires of the HPM (High Performance Manufacturing), that is an international project conducted by several universities around the world. The methodology described here will be a survey; the questionnaires were applied to nine companies in the automotive cluster of Parana. The consistency, reliability and validity of responses were verified by applying the Cronbach's Alpha test. The results shown that there is a high level of understanding and application of Lean Production P&P in the automotive cluster of Parana, especially with regard to the pull production (Pace Maker), continuous flow, visual control (Andon), autonomation (Jidoka), capacity leveling (Heijunka), multifunctionality, standardized working intructions tools (SWI), OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) and, mainly, understanding the Lean Culture of long term.