Lean logistics: abordagem Lean no sistema produtivo de um centro de distribuição

Abstract

The economic and technological changes lead us to an exponential increase of the globalization and competitiveness in a range of market segments, making selling and buying products and services in other parts of the world easier and therefore, increasing the number of customers, suppliers and many other factors that reflect into the complexity of the logistics. These facts made enterprises and managers focus on ways to improve their productive systems and how to administrate their business, using innovative philosophies and methodologies to do it. The Lean Thinking is a philosophy already known into Brazilian manufacture, however, not so often implanted for logistical purposes due to the lack of knowledge related to the concepts and methodologies of the Lean Logistics. According to Bowersox (2006), the Lean Logistics, is the capacity of planning and managing systems to control the transportation and geographical localization of materials, activities in process and finished products at the lowest possible costs. Aiming the continuous and efficient flow of feedstock throughout the production chain. Based on the mentioned context, this study aims to analyze and suggest improvements for the operations of a distribution center by means of deployment of concepts, practices and tools of the Lean philosophy. On this endeavor, the study is characterized as a research action, which means that the study is empirical made by cooperative or participative collaboration among the researchers and participants, with a common objective that might be an action or resolution of a shared problem. The execution of the work resulted in improvements for the Distribution Center and brought benefits to the academic community by demonstrating that Lean Logistics is the best way to provide logistical improvements to a CD.