Improving the Quality of Maintenance Processes by Using Information Technology

Due to increased levels of automation and quality, production maintenance is becoming increasingly important and for some branches of industry, even indispensable. Since the quality of the entire process is increasibly dependent on the maintenance process, these processes must be carefully designed and effectively implemented There are various techniques and approaches at our disposal, such as technical, logistical and intensive application of the information-communication technologies. This last approach is presented in this paper. This approach begins with organizational goals, quality objectives in particular. Then, maintenance processes and integrated information system structures are defined. Maintenance process quality and improvement processes are defined using a set of performance characteristic, with a special emphasis placed on the effectiveness and quality economics. The paper also presents the structure of the information system for improving maintenance economic as well as simulation software solution for integrating maintenance and production functions. Besides a theoretical analysis, the work also presents the results authors obtained by analyzing the food industry, metal processing industry and building materials industry. (C) 2009 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.