Simulação como procedimento de apoio à gestão de custos: um estudo de caso numa instituição de ensino superior

Abstract

The liberalization of higher education in recent years has led to an increase in the number of private institutions and to the establishment of new courses offered by them, in a comparatively greater volume in Brazilian history. This development has created financial difficulties for the vast majority of community or confessional universities, pressured by the competition in terms of price from smaller colleges that often lack quality. This difficulty led to the research project discussed in this article that aimed to create a procedure which might help improve the cost management. Its analysis was done via a case study focusing on the process of registration and enrollment of the Academic Secretariat of a higher education institution. It is, therefore, an applied and quantitative study where primary data (rates of arrival, of service, of services concluded and of services failed) were collected and analyzed through statistical functions and modeling for simulation process. Its main conclusion consists of a diagnosis of the effectiveness of this procedure as regards the volume and level of information, which could aggregate quantified information that made it possible to have a better assessment of costs, which otherwise would not have been possible, thus helping to improve the quality of service and the management of costs. Key words: cost management, simulation, universities.