Employees' skills, manufacturing flexibility and operational performance: a structural equation modelling applied to the automotive industry

• Author(s): Machado, José Cândido Ferreira
• Date: 2010
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/2902
• Origin: uBibliorum
• Subject(s): Recursos humanos - Profissionais especializados; Recursos humanos - Flexibilidade
• Document Type: Master thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Mendes, Luís António Fonseca
• Contributor(s): uBibliorum

Description

Flexibility and human resources, have a great importance in our days, in our industries, in a competitive environment, who can not be flexible loses market share to their opponents. The survival depends how you can deal with the unpredictability and volatility. In this field, human resources are fundamental, no one can be flexible if don’t have available a multi – task team prepared to learn and improve daily. The main goal of this research is to show the importance of the relationship between the employee skills and manufacturing flexibility and the relationship between employee skills and operational performance of the firm. In this research it was used the structural equation modelling (SEM) as a statistic method to check for the consistency of the model proposed. In data collecting, it was used a survey and send to the selected companies by e-mail and confirmed after by phone. The market selected for analysis was the automotive market, selecting their suppliers of raw material and sub-components. The surveys were sent to 441 companies, achieving a return rate of 32.6%, corresponding to 144 valid surveys. The results show the tight connection between employee skills and operational performance and employee skills and process and product flexibility, showing human resources are core variable to continuous improvement and product development, meanwhile, we cannot see this impact in volume flexibility, in this case is necessary to use other support means to reach the organization goals.