The profile of manufacturing performance in multinational company of emerging country: Obstacles and opportunities

Multinational companies need to achieve high performance in productivity and quality regardless if the plant is located on developed or on emerging countries. And sometimes, the same kind of obstacles and opportunities are available on both sites, mainly when the technology is transferred from one place to the other. This paper researched 30 manufacturing cells from an automotive multinational company established in Brazil, identifying characteristics used in operation of equipments under a lean production system and observing its efficiency. Additionally, the effectiveness of particular equipment was compared with a similar installation, in place at the company home country, manufacturing the same component, with the same quality requirements. The conclusion was that the solution in place in the emerging country presented better results than the solution in the home country, not aligned with common sense.