Action research is a qualitative method that is increasingly achieving a place of prominence as a technical procedure used in production engineering research. However, this method is discriminated in its scientific merit and lacks conduction validation. In an attempt to fill in these gaps in the literature, this paper proposes a process for conducting research in production engineering by means of action research. The scientific contributions of this work are the discussion about the forms of initiation and the implementation of validation phases employing the action research method. It was concluded that, within the scientific paradigm of realism, the most appropriate criteria for the validation of action research method are the ontological appropriateness, contingent validity, multiple perception of participants, methodological trustworthiness, analytic generalization, and construction validity.
Production engineering; Action research; Research methodology
