Economias de escala em duas tecnologias alternativas: estudo do setor siderúrgico

Abstract

An important characteristic of the capitalist industrial production is related to the exploration of the scale economies in a widespread way by firms with the purpose of enjoying better economical results. This was the case of the steel industry, which, in order to meet the increasing needs of operational efficiency started to adopt larger and larger equipment and facilities in their industrial plants. This path was more intense in the integrated plants, which present larger size than the mini-mills . This work investigates the role of the scale economies in the metallurgical processing, through extensive bibliographical research in specialized literature and visits to different companies. Besides, numerous interviews with metallurgists from several areas of these industries have been done. The results indicated, among other things, that most of the semi-integrated plants now in operation do not fully explore the potential of scale economies associated to the process, for having been constructed in sub-optimal scale. In a more dynamic demand scenery, a better exploration of this economy is expected, where it would prevail the path of increasing scales for both technological routes, the integrated and the semi-integrated plants.