STATISTICAL PROCESS CONTROL (SPC): A CONTROL TOOL AGAINST WASTE OF INPUTS IN BRAZILIAN DAIRY

By reason of the requirements of quality on the part of consumers and regulatory agencies, the dairy industries require tools capable of optimizing their processes in virtue of threats from countries which have a lower cost of production. The Statistical Process Control (SPC) is a powerful tool to evaluate and monitor the process in relation to their stability. This paper presents an application of Statistical Process Control (SPC) in a dairy plant located in the south of Minas Gerais. The process analyzed was the packaging of butter in 200g pots. The purpose of this article is to identify the actual state of the filling process of butter in this dairy and compare them with the requirements established by legislation. Therefore, was used samples and control charts to demonstrate the current state of the process and normality tests, in particular the t-student. The results demonstrate that the industry does not harm the consumer and that is faithful to the legislation. However, it was identified that in case the industry presents an overweight in nominal content of each package, which leads to considerable injury once the feedstock used in the production of butter (cream) is of great economic value.