System Engineering Management

Learning Quality Management for Ships’ Upkeep and Repair Environment

“…The attributes can be expressed in measurable quantitative terms including 'size, weight, shape, durability, hardness, performance, reliability, maintainability, supportability, seaworthiness, robustness, speed and operation-ability and availability in general with personnel and training on the forefront' (Blanchard, 1986). The areas of logistics and maintenance of quality should include an Operation Quality Assurance Section (OQAS), to monitor the assurance of the quality of product, the Maintenance Quality Control Section (MQCS) to monitor deep maintenance and, where necessary, to propose changes and a Logistics Quality Assurance Section (LQAS) to ensure the robustness and originality of spares and material (Hoyle, 2000;Evans & Lindsay, 2008).…”

“…(Hoyle, 2000, p. 21). To articulate the foregoing statement further, when the product satisfies the client with the agreed terms and conditions such as appropriate durability, robustness, a guarantee period, maintainability, affordability, operation-ability and mutually agreed costs, with necessary post guarantee support (Blanchard, 1986), one can say that the product has a good quality implication and it can meet the expectation of the customer. Customers can equally compare quality with other products or available standards to make feasible decisions even if they do not follow the ISO.…”

“…OQAS require deep concentration and should also be a professionally qualified body within the overall quality management team and they should be involved in supporting safety engineering, testability engineering, maintainability engineering, logistics engineering, availability engineering, design engineering etc. They should, in fact, be fully trained and involved to understand all failure patterns, particularly for the main and auxiliary machinery, and to monitor the manufacturing factory patterns such as that of the bathtub techniques where a model of machinery is fully tested at the factory and data recorded for future use covering the total major overhaul cycle (Dileep et al, 2013;Blanchard, 1986;Moubray, 1991). They should support Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) either through the use of factory patterns with the understanding of the system function and the likelihood/consequences of breakdown and also to reduce the probability of failure.…”

“…They should devise a proactive method to prevent such failure in the future; especially where changes/modification/are implemented, taking configuration control into consideration. The team should house specialists in the area of Mechanical, Hull, Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Technicians to maintain or return the platforms availability in a 'configuration change control' (Mintzberg, 1991;Blanchard, 1986;Hoyle, 2000;Philpott, 2003;US-Navy, 2004) of product and services. The quality control of the infrastructures is equally important to support those platforms.…”

“…b) Procedures -The whole process should be properly planned and conducted according to requirements; either to meet the planned maintenance, to update the operational records of marine machinery, equipment and systems or to recheck the machinery or system to prevent or rectify defects (Kwok & Tummala, 1998;Moubray, 1991;Blanchard, 1986). Time remains a very important element or soft resource.…”