Ferramentas lean alavancando a produtividade: estudo de caso na confecção de máscaras cirúrgicas em situação de emergência

Abstract

In December 2019, the world was affected by a virus, which was unknown to humanity, called SARS-CoV-2 (covid-19), which emerged in the city of Wuhan, China. In Brazil, the first case was detected in February 2020, and in March Mato Grosso officially registered the first incidence of an infected person. During this same period, there was a lack of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in hospitals and many suppliers did not have materials for replenishment either. Given this scenario, the Government of the State of Mato Grosso, through the Health State Secretary, sought a solution to mitigate the problem of the lack of disposable facial protection masks, thus emerging the partnership with National Service of Industrial Apprenticeship in the Government of the State of Mato Grosso (Senai MT). Senai Cuiabá, which, until then, performed only the function of professional education, had to adapt to the new requirements and make its activities more flexible. In March 2020, a contract was signed that established the production and installment delivery, in up to 180 days of five million face protection masks for distribution to all state hospitals in the state. In three days, Senai Cuiabá restructured its Events Center and created in that space a production factory (or campaign factory), enabling the organization of one hundred work positions within the new layout and, therefore, hiring one hundred professionals with sewing skills. During the process, over 250 jobs were added, hiring seamstresses, with home office operations. Senai Cuiabá also developed all the logistics of this production process: product development, which was approved by the Health State Secretary; acquisition of inputs; preparation of the material to the be used; distribution of material to the seamstresses; product quality control; packaging and delivery at destination. With the general objective of showing how the chosen lean tools leveraged productivity in the manufacture of surgical masks in an emergency regime, the production of masks in the first month of activity was mapped, making it possible to identify the critical stages in the production process and implement the adoption of lean manufacturing tools, identified as the most suitable to promote improvements in critical processes. Applying these tools there was a significant growth in daily and monthly production compared to the month of April, confirming that, by leveraging productivity using such means for the manufacturing of surgical masks, it was possible to meet the contracted deadline, even in the case of emergency production