Towards Zero Defect : Zero Breakdown

Introduction:

Zero defect aims at producing goods and services right first time and every time. Maintenance is an opportunity for achieving the production of goods and services right first time. Zero Breakdown, similarly to Zero Defects is perhaps difficult to achieve but should be aimed at as a long term objective.

Zero defect:

• Zero Defect aims at producing goods and services right first time and every time.
• This concept has mainly been people oriented involving changing worker attitudes towards the importance of waste elimination and producing goods and services to customer requirements in the context of customer-supplier chains.
• Total Preventative Maintenance is an opportunity for achieving the production of goods and services right first time.
• Indeed by determining process capability and ensuring process stability, inputs can continuously be converted into quality outputs with Zero Defects.

The link between Total Preventative Maintenance and Total Quality Control:

• It shows that TQM is much affected by attitudes towards the maintenance function.
• A comprehensive preventative maintenance policy means that process maintenance control takes place on-line and this therefore facilitates the implementation of in-process control so that output is produced with Zero Defects.
• Preventative maintenance relies on the continuous recording and analysis of data to prevent process failure.

Table shows the continuous effort of changing the role of the maintenance function from basic routine maintenance. Routine Maintenance only tries to preserve the utilisation of process equipment over a long period of time. The new role of maintenance is represented by a phase where efforts are made to identify weaknesses in the process design and rectifying them so that failures are eliminated completely.