Desenvolvimento de ferramenta de balanço de massa em usina de beneficiamento de sementes

Abstract

The pursuit of operational excellence inevitably leads to the concept of continuous improvement. Much more than a concept, continuous improvement is a set of actions and behaviors whose goal is to improve customer satisfaction and deliver the product or service with the best quality possible. In this sense, companies that wish to remain competitive and attractive in the market are forced to adopt the Lean Production philosophy. Their primary goal is to reduce or eliminate waste present in the production process. Thus, this paper aims to present the concept of Mass Balance, a simple and powerful tool able to identify points of losses and guarantee a greater control of production, as well as a methodology to implement such tool in a Seed Processing Plant. All work was structured according to the PDCA cycle (plan, do, check, act) and was developed with the help of Microsoft Excel ® software and spreadsheets and records of the company itself. From the developed tool, it was possible to satisfactorily represent the yield and the production losses for each material processed in the plant. A second approach to mass balance was carried out, and its results allowed financial quantification of material losses and greater visibility of the points of opportunity present in the production line, so that action plans could be implemented and waste could be reduced.