Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Overview

The world is now, without doubt, in the midst of the "Quality Revolution", a period of change affecting every type of business, organization and person. In general, companies compete on three issues: quality, price, and delivery. This is true for all types of firms, whether manufacturing, services, or public sector. Quality is shaped at present as a fundamental strategy for the support and improvement of competitiveness in manufacturers and service industry.

In the middle of the eighties, there was growing interest in the study of maintenance models for systems with failure. These studies of maintenance are concerned with applying Total Quality Management techniques to the maintenance of both industrials and services processes where the main goal is to keep the firm in productive operation for as much of the time as possible (1).

In connection with, technical development, the influence of productivity and quality, move increasingly, from man to machine. The importance of maintenance is increased as high productivity and quality can be achieved by means of well developed and organized maintenance. Therefore the maintenance managers should be able to identify, evaluate, and manage the difficulties that are faced by their organization.

It is vital that maintenance management becomes integrated with corporate strategy to ensure equipment availability, quality products, on-time deliveries and competitive pricing. The changing needs of modem manufacturing necessitate a re-examination of the role that improved maintenance management plays in achieving key cost and service advantages (2).

Modem industrial firms are characterised by their dependence on technology to produce goods and services. All manufacturing and service businesses need equipment to deliver their output. Equipment is an asset that is essential for business success in the competitive global economy. Productivity and efficiency have increased rapidly due to the dramatic changes in equipment technology (3). However, the equipment is getting more complex and more expensive, which means this equipment should be in full operational mode to avoid any extra losses.

1.2 General Background

During World War 1, the production process became more complex demanding many operators work under the control of each foreman. Thus firm is employed full time inspectors to remove the defects that were produced. Inspection was the basic way of quality control during the first half of the 20th century. After World War 1, two quality gurus, Juran and Deming, introduced the statistical quality control approach to Japanese companies. These companies integrated quality into their management practices within 20 years. They made significant penetration into western markets through the higher quality levels of their products (4).

Preventive maintenance (PM) was introduced in the 1950's, with productive maintenance becoming well-established during the 1960's. The development of total productive maintenance (TPM) began in the 1970's, when preventive maintenance was rapidly being replaced by predictive maintenance or condition-based maintenance (CBM). Predictive maintenance uses modern techniques to diagnose the condition of equipment during operation to predict the imminent failure. The period prior to 1950 can be referred to as the "breakdown maintenance" period (5). Figure 1.1 describes the parallel evolution between quality and maintenance based on quality evolution maintenance evolution.

1920 1920 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Quality Statistical QC

Operator QC Total QC

Foreman QC Total Quality Management

Inspection QC

Maintenance

Breakdown

Preventive

Reliability Control

Condition Based

Total Productive

Fig 1.1 Evolution of Quality and Maintenance

During the past twenty years the advances in technology available to the maintenance department to manage its processes has delivered the situation where it is within the reach of all maintenance operations to achieve a world-class level of maintenance delivery. However, Maintenance still depends heavily on human input because only operations have been automated. Automated and technologically advanced equipment, however, requires skills beyond the competence of the average maintenance supervisor or worker, and to use it effectively requires an appropriate maintenance organization (6).

Ben-Daya and Duffuaa (7) have proposed a broad framework for modeling the interaction between maintenance and quality, which can lead to their integration with production. The dependences between these three important components of any production system are shown in figure 1.2. The second output of production is maintenance, whose output is increased production capacity. Both the production process and the quality of the maintenance work, which, in turn, affects equipment condition, affect the quality of final product.

Primary Input Primary Output

Product Quality

Equipment

Fig 1.2 Production, Quality and Maintenance dependences

Because quality is becoming a business strategy leading to success, growth, and enhanced competitive position, organizations strive to attain that position through maintaining the equipment in ideal operating conditions. The link between quality improvement and productivity is well established Quality improvements mean, elimination of waste such as scrap and rework, which increase productivity and often leads to cost reduction.

Under the total quality management (TQM) philosophy, quality can no longer be inspected into the product, where final control inspection is being moved to the process level through adequate process control techniques (7).

1.3 Total Quality Management

TQM is an integrated management philosophy and a set of practices that emphasize continuous

improvement, meeting customer requirements, reducing rework, long-range thinking, increased employee involvement and teamwork, process redesign, competitive benchmarking, team-based problem solving, constant measurement of results, and closer relationships with suppliers (8). Using TQM in manufacturing will result in a number of improvements, including increased profits, more satisfied customers, and better business practices in general. TQM is broken down into the following shortening:

T - Total = involvement from everyone at the company

Q - Quality = the standard in which you define product perfection

M - Management = the system of managing the different steps of the business management strategy

In fact, TQM is a philosophy or an approach to management that can be

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 11.01.2018
ISBN: 978-3-7438-4983-9

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