SMU MBA ASSIGNMENTS

The achievement of outstanding performance demands delivery of quality products expeditiously and economically. Organisations simply cannot achieve excellence with unreliable equipment. The approach towards maintenance management has changed as a result of quick response manufacturing. Just-in-Time (JIT) reduction of work in process inventory and the elimination of wasteful manufacturing practices. Before breakdown in machine and idle time for repair was once an accepted practice. Times have changed. Today, when there is a break down in a machine, it can shut down the production line and the customer’s entire plant. The Preventive Maintenance (PM) module provides an integrated solution for supporting the operational needs of an enterprise-wide system. The Plant Maintenance module includes an entire family of product; covering all aspects of plant/equipment maintenance. It becomes vital to the achievement of process improvement. The major subsystems of a Plant Maintenance module are:

· Preventive Maintenance Control

· Equipment Tracking

· Component Tracking

· Plant Maintenance Calibration Tracking

· Plant Maintenance Warranty Claims Tracking

5.6.1 Preventive Maintenance Control

Preventive Maintenance Control (PMC) provides planning, scheduling, and control of facilities and equipment. Equipment lubrication, component replacement and safety inspection can be planned, scheduled, and monitored. Maintenance tasks can be tracked for each piece of equipment or machine, by two user-defined modes, as well as calendar day frequency. These modes include tracking by hours of operation, units of production produced, gallons of fuel consumed, or the number of days in operation since the last service interval. Preventive Maintenance Control enables organisations to lower repair costs by avoiding downtime, machine breakage, and process variability. Companies achieve higher machine utilisation and improved machine reliability and tolerance control, along with higher production yields.

Equipment Tracking

Equipments are an asset that needs to be protected and monitored. In many situations, costs of equipment maintenance constitute the single largest controllable expenditure of an organisation. All facets of plant location history and utilisation history are described and tracked. This history includes acquisition of disposition information and associations between different pieces of equipment to pinpoint operational dependencies. Running totals for operation units to date (miles, hours, days, units of production, and so on.) are also provided. Each piece of equipment is defined by, a serial number and model. User-defined data sheets are developed, which allow for the grouping of user data into formats that can be linked to equipment records. All of this information can be used to create equipment stipulation, which provide detailed information for technical specialists working in equipment operations, maintenance, and transportation control.

Component Tracking

Components are subsets of larger equipment and deserve the same amount of cost controlling scrutiny. Component Tracking helps equipment managers to; identify components with chronic repair problems. They can determine if either repair or replacement must be covered by warranty. Planning component replacements, rather than waiting for component failures to occur, reduces unscheduled equipment downtime. Component tracking includes repair/exchange history and component service life.

Plant Maintenance Calibration Tracking

Plant Maintenance Calibration Tracking (PMCT) allows organisations to leverage their investment in the Plant Maintenance module by, providing for the tracking of equipment calibration in support of ISO 9000 requirements.

Plant Maintenance Warranty Claims Tracking

Plant Maintenance Warranty Claims Tracking (PMWCT) is an administrative system designed to, provide control of all items covered by manufacturer and vendor warranties. It helps plant management to recover all of the warranty; reimbursements to which they are entitled but have not been able to recover in the past. Features include the ability to establish the length and type of warranty. For example, elapsed day, months, operating units, or mileage stipulation. A complete history review is performed for each item covered by the warranty and complete information regarding the warranty service provider is generated.

Quality Management

Basics and Overviews About Quality Management includes many links about basics and overviews of quality management.

Benchmarking is the use of standard measurements in a service or industry for comparison to other organizations in order to gain perspective on organizational performance.

Continuous Improvement, in regard to organizational quality and performance, focuses on improving customer satisfaction through continuous and incremental improvements to processes, including by removing unnecessary activities and variations.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis is an approach that helps identify and prioritize potential equipment and process failures.

ISO9000 is an internationally recognized standard of quality, and includes guidelines to accomplish the ISO9000 quality standard. Organizations can be optionally audited to earn ISO9000 certification.

Lean Management is a process of maximizing customer value while reducing waste. Any activity or process that consumes resources, adds cost or time without creating value becomes the target for elimination.

Total Quality Improvement (TQM) is a set of management practices throughout the organization, geared to ensure the organization consistently meets or exceeds customer requirements. TQM places strong focus on process measurement and controls as means of continuous improvement.

Six Sigma is a quality management initiative that takes a very data-driven, methodological approach to eliminating defects with the aim to reach six standard deviations from the desired target of quality. Six standard deviations means 3.4 defects per million.