Costs of quality and maintenance: Improvement approaches

Abstract

The inclusion of maintenance-related costs in an organisation's financial reports, through the analysis of the costs of maintenance, helps management evaluate the relative impact of its maintenance problems on the organisation's profitability. A cost of quality (COQ)/cost of maintenance (COM) system, once implemented, provides us with an invaluable foundation for our efforts to improve the effectiveness of the maintenance function. This approach provides us with a common language for communication between top management and the maintenance function to draw attention to where management should provide resources to correct quality problems and make improvements. The system provides new channels for communication to share best practices and to coordinate the efforts of experts in quality management with those in maintenance to improve our understanding of the statistical capability and reliability of equipment.