A TEORIA DAS RESTRIÇÕES APLICADA NUMA INDÚSTRIA DE CALÇADOS DE PEQUENO PORTE

The production of footwear is significant for the Brazilian economy, representing around 1% of GDP. It is present in various regions and states, including the Jaú/SP region, where the Local Productive Arrangement (LPA) of Women's Footwear is established, mainly composed of micro and small footwear manufacturing companies. The fact that this group consists of micro and small enterprises brings with it the paradigm that these companies would not be able to use quality and management tools. This article aimed to present two of these tools, the Theory of Constraints and the Process Flowchart, as tools for identifying potential bottlenecks in a footwear manufacturing company and, based on data analysis, propose actions to address the identified situations. For this purpose, data from the production process were collected on-site over a 15-day period, and together with the researchers' personal observations, a process flowchart was developed, which allowed the identification of two bottlenecks. Based on these findings, actions were proposed to address these constraints, demonstrating that regardless of the company’s size, quality and management tools can be fully utilized by managers.