TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND TOTAL PRODUCTIVE MAINTENANCE IN HIGH PERFORMANCE MANUFACTURING

Abstract

This study compares the implementation’s degree of the different methods of the advanced manufacturing practices: Quality Management and Total Productive Maintenance in high performance industrial plants and standard ones to analyze which methods of both practices are correlated with high performance manufacturing. Material and methods Based on previous rounds of the international research: “High Performance Manufacturing”, a set of questionnaires was developed to perform quantitative analysis of the current situation of industrial plants in Europe, Asia and America in the sectors of machinery, electronics and automotive which conforms the third round of the international research on HPM. The industrial plants’ sample distinguished two types: High Performance Manufacturing Plants and Standard Performance Manufacturing Plants. The study used the data provided by 179 plants of the total of 265 participant plants owing to the fact that 86 industrial plants were not classified by the previous types. Results The tests carried out provide an overview of which methods related to Quality Management and Total Productive Maintenance present a higher differentiation in the degree of implementation between high performance and standard performance industrial plants. An analysis of the different countries and sectors of the study was performed. Those methods more implemented in industrial plants classified as high performance ones, are those that confer a competitive advantage, although it should be noted that performance is not only a function of the methods analyzed in this study, but also depends on other manufacturing practices of the High Performance Manufacturing model. Discussion The methods of process control, customer focus and involvement, and supplier partnership are the techniques most correlated with high performance, as the high performance manufacturing industrial plants have a higher degree of its implementation. Those plants that have also implemented maintenance support show a superior performance than plants that do not consider such an implementation.