Aplicação da simulação a eventos discretos para melhoria da capacidade em uma fábrica do ramo de equipamentos industriais

Abstract

The increasing competitiveness of the global industry requires companies to achieve higher levels of efficiency, agility, and adaptability. In this context, production bottlenecks hinder responsiveness to market demands, making it essential to seek solutions that improve operational performance. The objective of this research is to investigate, through Discrete Event Simulation (DES), alternatives for improving the capacity of an industrial equipment production line by evaluating the effects of increasing the testing process capacity on the performance of the production system. The object of study was a company that manufactures industrial equipment, whose production lines consist of two assembly stages followed by a testing process, in which the equipment is verified for compliance with quality standards. The identified problem was a bottleneck in the testing process, caused by a mismatch between assembly capacity and testing capacity. This imbalance resulted in production limitations. The method adopted was modeling and simulation, enabling the analysis of production flows and the identification of process improvements. The research also involved analyzing the impact of increasing capacity at the critical workstation. The improvement in production, achieved through Discrete Event Simulation, resulted in an increase in daily output, validated by a statistical framework, and enabled the identification of critical bottlenecks, proposing significant improvements to increase production. It is concluded that the application of Discrete Event Simulation can provide significant improvements in the performance of production lines, increasing companies’ competitiveness and demonstrating potential for improving production capacity.