PROCESS IMPROVEMENT VIA DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS AND CONTROL CHARTS
Statistical Process Control; Experimentation; Small business; Quality.
Considering the increasingly stringent requirements that the market imposes on businesses and the ability to adapt in ever shorter times required for them to remain alive and competitive, it is necessary to consider approaches that simultaneously monitor key processes and procedures that seek optimization. Given the above, the objective of this study is to propose a model of integrating statistical process control and experimentation for small enterprises. Therefore, we carry out a literature review to identify cases of applications of these tools in an integrated manner to provide the basis for constructing a frameworkl. Sequentially, the proposed framework is applied for verification and validation, through a case study in a small company responsible for manufacturing of packaging in polypropylene fabric. In this context, we employ a factorial split-plot 2³ x 2² design with repetition and replication. For the analysis of the xperiment, we use Minitab 17 software, which generated main effects and interaction plots, as well as analysis of variance (ANOVA). A proposal for monitoring via control charts is suggested to maintain the output variables in statistical control. Finally, the results show that the combined use of design of experiments and statistical process control can optimize the quality improvement process in small businesses.