Abstract:

Currently, the chemical sector continues to consolidate itself as one of the key business sectors of the Peruvian economy, especially as its products are on high demand as essential components used by other industries, such as construction, mining, and textile. This reflects the great responsibility that chemical companies have regarding efficiently managing their material and human resources, which includes assessing productivity in terms of growth rates and levels. Within this context, Lean Manufacturing tools are used to measure these indicators and propose improvements and/or solutions that may generate added value to the company. However, Peru does not report a wide variety of research that focuses on the chemical industry productivity. In this light, this study proposes using the abovementioned tools to assess the current situation and determine opportunities for improving production processes in this industry. However, the literature review also reveals that Lean projects may sometimes not be successful owing to implementation issues. Therefore, this proposal will be developed using an agile approach to quickly make decisions in the event of any problem. This model was validated through a pilot run at a small Peruvian chemical company, which reported low productivity issues owing to idle operator times, non-conformities with production requirements, reprocesses, and poor purchasing planning. All this represents a great increase in the operations costs of the company under study. The pilot implementation was conducted for a month and the results were assessed through a simulation, which reflected an increase in productivity coupled with a decrease in reprocesses and service levels.