Maintenance
systems all over the world aim at high reliability and availability of
equipment and other assets. Other objectives of maintenance systems include:
- · Reduction in production loss (due to unplanned stoppages)
- · Extended productive life of assets
- · Higher resale value
- · Safety
- · Lower cycletime of diagnosing the equipment failures and repairing and restoring equipment to health
- Avoiding surprises
- · Higher productivity and efficiency of equipment
- · Reduced setup delay and losses due to lowspeed operation of machines
- · Lower overall operational expenses, inclusive of cost of maintenance.
- · Reducing the loss due to catastrophic failure of equipment
Total quality
management (TQM) has been applied successfully for maintenance systems, in order
to improve its effectiveness. The concept of TQM has an interesting history.
At the end
of the Second World War, in order to minimize delivery of defectives to
customers, producers began to emphasize stringent norms for finished goods
inspection. However this caused a rise in rejection rate and cost of goods increased.
In order to
reduce the production of defectives, producers began to improve quality at the
manufacturing stage. The success was limited, because experience told them that
many defects were caused not due to manufacturing stage, but due to defective
design itself.Now the companies realized the need to improve quality
company wide, improve everything that company did.
Soon it was realized that defects were
contributed by parts bought from vendors. In order to involve everybody within in
the organization as well as with the vendors
the new concept was named total quality management. These concepts were
initially introduced in Japan.
Quality management system
In order to
ensure consistent quality output, through TQM, throughout the organization,
International standards organization introduced three new standards, viz. ISO
9001, ISO 9002, and ISO 9003 forthe implementation and certification of quality
management systems. These standards were later combined into a single standard:
ISO 9001 certification.Process
approach was adopted for improvement of quality in every business activity. ISO
9001 Consultants continue to play an important role in the application of TQM,
and successful implementation of ISO 9001.
Two distinct approaches of TQM
concept implementation emerged:
·
Continuous
improvement approach through quality
circles (small group activity) at grass root level, and
·
Cross
functional quality improvement teams (of experts), who try to improve quality
through breakthrough solutions, which result in quantum jump in overall performance.
PDCA cycle:
TQM methodology
involves four sequential stages, known as PDCA cycle:
In the
planning stage, the team of people, identifies the problem to be solved and collectsfactsand
data, and use the TQM tools such as
·
- Brain storming
- · Fish bone or Ishikawa diagram (Cause-effect relationship diagram)
- · Control charts
- · Check sheets
- · Pareto analysis
- · Histogram
- · Scatter chart
- · Process flowchart and
- · Stratification
Based on
the root cause analysis done by using fishbone diagram, solutions are planned
in this stage. Best solutions are determined and implemented in the Do stage.
During the
Check stage, the team determines the measurements to decide the effectiveness
of the solution implemented,and confirm the effectiveness.
In the Actstage
team prepares the document of changes and the results, communicates to others
in the organization so that solution can be adopted on companywide basis.
Necessary training is given. Based on
the experience gained, next cycle of PDCA is initiated to ensure continuous
improvement on a sustainable basis.
Aviation sector,
among others, has reported successful implementation of TQM for improvements in
maintenance.Benefits reportedinclude enhanced safety, reduced cycle time of
fault diagnosis and repair activities as well as reduced down time.Latest
quality improvement techniques now being
adopted include business process re-engineering(BPR), adoption of best
practices(BP) and benchmarking(BM) as well as six sigma approach to fine tuning
the processes.
Almost nothing surprises you as far as developments go, and impact of them is nonexistent. Vietnam Quality Control Company
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