There are several strategies (Modern Mass Production, Lean Manufacturing, Responsive Manufacturing (RM), Mass Customization, Agile Manufacturing, etc) that can be used to aid manufacturing management in enterprises. This paper focuses on Responsive Manufacturing. RM is applied in environments of high variety of made-to-order product, in which response time (the elapsed time between the end of an inquiry and the beginning of a response) is a critical factor and should be minimum without diminishing quality and disrupting productivity. In Brazil, RM is not well known or frequently used. The objective of this study is to propose and evaluate, by means of an action-research, a method to achieve RM in the footwear industry. For the majority of the footwear manufacturers, the reduction in response time represents a key competitive advantage. Among the main results obtained with the implementation of the proposed method in the company studied (Kidy) are: substantial reduction of response time, reduction of production and labor costs, increase of service level, and reduction of rework rate.
Responsive manufacturing; Production planning; Production control; Footwear industry; Make‑to‑order; Layout
