Laura Costa Maia

Design of a Lean Methodology for an Ergonomic and Sustainable Work Environment in Textile and Garment Industry

This paper presents a methodology to implement Lean Production (LP) in Portuguese Textile and Garment Industry (TGI). Lean Production is a well-known work organizational model being, nowadays, widely implemented in all sort of industries and services companies. LP responds to customers’ demand for on-time delivery of high quality products at reduced costs, through continuous waste elimination (e.g., overproduction, raw materials, energy and water more than necessary, among others). In this methodology is included, besides the Lean tools and techniques, some ergonomics tools in order to assess the ergonomic work conditions and techniques to evaluate the company sustainability. It is expected that, with the involvement of these tools, will allow the implementation of a Lean Production that creates a positive work environment for workers giving special attention to sustainable development.Copyright

Definition of a protocol for implementing lean production methodology in textile and clothing case studies

The authors of this paper would like to express their acknowledgments to the companies and to all people who accepted the challenge to participate in this study. The authors are also grateful to Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under Strategic Projects PEstOE/EME/UI0252/2011 and PEst-C/EEI/UI0319/2011, for financial support.

Perceptions and Understandings on the Need of Change: Viewpoints across Management Levels

The need of change in two Portuguese Textile and Clothing Industry companies is discussed using a qualitative analysis of content transcribed interviews through webQDA.Semi-structured interviews were conducted to several top managements level of both companies. From the interviews it has been possible to understand how the companies intend to contribute to change, their attitudes and perceptions and the benefits expected. The results of this study demonstrated that it is important to involve the different management levels in the process of change. The key-factors that influence change as motivation, involvement, information dissemination for a successfully change were identified as important. However, the findings also show that the interviewees understand that change involves risk and it has both advantages and disadvantages.

Lean Education Impact in Professional Life of Engineers

The authors would like to express their acknowledgments to national funds by FCT Strategic Project PEst2015-2020, reference UID/CEC/00319/2013