Abstract:

Digital Transformation (DT) is a phenomenon resulting from the growing use of digital technologies and the internet. It has changed organizations at cultural, social, and technical levels received with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic as an additional stimulus for its implementation and consolidation. According to Haefner and Sternberg [1], it can be seen as a reorganization of society in terms of its thinking, acting, promoting, consuming, and creating new businesses. These changes also reached the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) context, quickly transforming all processes to the new restrictions and remote work. New tools were used in work routines, and consequently, the results were impacted. In this sense, these actions align with the Lean Thinking philosophy (LT), which focuses on waste management for delivering value to consumers. In this context, this work aims to understand the digital transformations resulting from the changes introduced during the period of remote work. It places at the Center for Human, Social and Agrarian Sciences, Campus III of the Federal University of Paraíba, in the coordination of the higher education courses to identify whether there was a reduction in waste as a result of this process. In methodological terms, this work was based on an inductive approach, considering that it is the observation of particular phenomena to identify existing regularities and patterns given the generalization of the investigated object. In addition, this one fits in the exploratory group once it sought greater familiarity with the theme, making it evident. In procedures terms, research based on studies on DT and LT was used; and the field research, through the accomplishment of a case study with the coordinators and/or secretaries of the graduation courses of the mentioned Campus. Data were collected through interviews, with a semi-structured script for its conduction. The analyzes were performed in an interpretive-comparative mode. The results show that the period of remote work caused an unprecedented acceleration in the process of digital transformation in the units surveyed; it was noted: a) a significant advance in the use of digital technologies and the internet; b) a reduction of service delivery time; c) reduction in the use of material resources; d) reduction in displacements, movement and material handling time; e) greater agility and efficiency in communication; f) reduction in the number of physical files; g) improvement in the quality of services delivered. The conclusion reached fits in line with what the literature predicts. The changes imposed by the context of remote work promoted a change of mindset in the academic community, realizing a clear absorption and consolidation of the use of technologies and their impacts on improving the quality of services provided to users, which demonstrates that DT is a driver for the LT philosophy.

Keywords:

Digital Transformation, Lean Thinking, Waste, High Education.