Aplicação da Simulação de Eventos Discretos (SED) e da Aprendizagem Baseada em Problema (ABP) no ensino de gestão da produção

Abstract

Given the challenges put forward by the modern labour market, pertaining to the need for training professionals to develop better problem-solving skills, educational institutions have been encouraged to take up active learning methodologies. As such, this study described the results for employing, simultaneously, Discrete Event Simulation (DES) (through the software Flexsim) and Problem Based Learning (PBL) as teaching tools in the Production Management module of an Industrial Engineering course. To achieve this, 3 puzzles with increasing difficulty were developed and presented to the students, who were divided into teams to solve them by means of the simulator. Each difficulty level acted as a PBL learning cycle and, generally, student performance was very satisfactory, with each team pursuing a different strategy to solve the puzzles. An assessment of this experiment showed 100% of students agree the PBL methodology helped with in-class learning, resulting in positive outcomes for the optional subject “Simulation Applications in Production and Logistical Systems”. In the assessment, 73,3% of students agreed they felt capable of using simulations to solve problems after the experiment. On a scale of 1 to 10, the software Flexsim was rated an average of 8,18, with best performance in the graphical interface criteria. Lastly, on a scale of 1 to 10, the average rating for the combined application of DES and PBL was 9,13, which characterizes an excellent result and brings to light the benefits these methodologies could provide if employed more frequently and in other modules of the course.