Envolvimento dos funcionários na produção enxuta: práticas, relação e desenvolvimento de escala

Abstract

Employee involvement is reported in the literature as a human resource practice that has significantly contributed to the success of lean manufacturing efforts. However, the subject is superficially addressed in the literature, lacking in-depth studies. Thus, the overall objective of this work is to understand the relationship between employee involvement practices in lean manufacturing efforts and to develop a scale capable of measuring these practices' adoption levels. The thesis was structured into three main chapters following an article format to achieve this. The first article used a systematic literature review and expert opinions to identify employee involvement practices in lean manufacturing efforts. Ninety articles were analyzed, resulting in a list of fifteen essential practices. The second article analysed these practices' driving relations and dependence using interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and fuzzy-cross-impact matrix multiplication (Fuzzy MICMAC). As a result, the most influential practices and those with the highest dependence were identified, leading to a framework that shows how companies can prioritize employee involvement practices implementation in lean manufacturing efforts. After identifying the priority, the third article focused on developing a scale to measure the level of practice implementation in companies. The scale construction process started by extracting items from relevant literature. These items underwent expert evaluation and were then subjected to four rounds of Q-sorting to validate them. Once the items were validated, a survey was conducted with manufacturing company operators in the north and southeast regions of Brazil to further validate the scale path for implementation. The result was an instrument that measured employee involvement in lean manufacturing efforts and helped companies to identify opportunities to stimulate employee involvement. A conceptual model was developed to measure employee involvement in lean manufacturing by utilizing best practices. This model can help managers prioritize the implementation of practices that require more attention, leading to better decision-making and increased employee involvement. Consequently, this can lead to more effective and sustainable implementation of lean manufacturing.