Integração da técnica seis sigma (DMAIC) com métricas ambientais para a busca de melhorias na ecoeficiência de um processo industrial

Abstract

Currently companies in general face a fierce competition in the market. Organizations have reshaped their strategies and are offering products and services that customers recognize superior in price, performance, quality, delivery and causing less significant impacts to the environment. The impressive results achieved by several companies through the Six Sigma methodology, has motivated other organizations to follow their footsteps in search of competitiveness and process improvement. As noticed in the literature, most Six Sigma projects implemented in manufacturing have taken place in process improvement, focusing mostly on optimizing product cycle times. On the other hand, worldwide organizations have been worrying about environmental issues, seeking to produce more with lower consumption of raw materials and lower environmental impact. The main objective of this study is to propose a procedure incorporating environmental variables into the DMAIC phases of Six Sigma methodology to expand its usual focus beyond the conventional process improvements. The goal is to use the Six Sigma procedure to also improve the eco-efficiency level of an entire manufacturing process. For that it was necessary to propose a single indicator to measure eco-efficiency. To verify the possibility of applying the proposed procedure to real-life situations it was applied to a machining process of a metal-mechanic company. The results achieved by this study enable to demonstrate that the procedure applied in an actual case, can significantly contribute to the increase of the ecoefficiency level of a manufacturing process.