Gestão da capacidade em um engenho produtor de cachaça de alambique: um estudo de caso.

Abstract

In the production management context, one of the most important aspects is how the companies manage their capacities, and how they adjust it to the market demands. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the specificities of each sector, and this may require actions to deal with the divergences between the company’s capacity and what the company really uses. This is the case of the alembic cachaça mills, which have important feature in the economy and tradition in the Paraíba State, and, most importantly, in the microregion of the Brejo, where Areia is one of the most representative cities. Given this, there’s the main problem which generates the definition of the main objective: to describe the management of the production capacity in one alembic cachaça mill in the city of Areia – Paraíba. In terms of methodological procedures, this research has the applied nature, of descriptive character with a qualitative approach. About the technical procedures utilized, it classifies as bibliographic and field study, with the utilization of a semi-structured script for the realization of the interviews with the owner- managers of the selected company: the Triunfo mill. As results, based on the capacity measure applied, a level of 76% of utilization was identified, and 95% of efficiency regarding the alembics capacity, therefore identified as bottlenecks in the company, and limiting the whole process. As to the demand adjustment way, the mill adopts a constant capacity policy; however, it develops important actions to enhance the yield in all process steps, improving the performance of the company in a whole. The propositions and reflections of the results contribute to future academic researches in the area.