Abstract

SELLITTO, Miguel Afonso; BORCHARDT, Miriam  and  PEREIRA, Giancarlo Medeiros. Presence of Lean Thinking principles and how to introduce them in the management of urban transport firms in Porto Alegre. Prod. [online]. 2010, vol.20, n.1, pp. 15-29.  Epub Mar 26, 2010. ISSN 0103-6513.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0103-65132010005000009.

This paper presents a research into the presence of Lean Thinking principles in the management of urban transport firms in Porto Alegre. The procedures were: measurement of presence of Lean Thinking principles in management of urban transportation firms in Porto Alegre; reliability checks and clustering of firms according to the degree of presence; and case studies with clusters, class association and a public operator who influences the industry. The research discovered that the industry has learning capacity and would welcome an inductive approach based on Benchmarking with world-class manufacturing operations, in order to enhance management. Also, the industry was less inclined to accept deductive approaches and academic activities in such a program.

Keywords : Lean Thinking in transportation; Benchmarking in transportation; Learning in transportation.