By 2012 the dairy industry in New Zealand had grown by 77% since 1992 and is estimated to reach total export values of over 17 billion dollars by 2016. Like most food industries around the World, quality failures in the industry pose a serious threat in the production of milk powder. The melamine contamination experience at San Lu in China in 2008 is a case in point. Such experiences could results in costly product recalls and damaged brands among other undesirable consequences.
A local dairy factory that manufactured 130 698 metric tons of powder milk in 2012, lost 3.4% of its production due to various quality issues. The 3.4% production loss translated to 7.5 million dollars in lost revenue and is clear evidence that there is room for improvement in the mitigation of cost of quality failures.
The purpose of this study is to identify quality failure causes and their relationship to equipment maintenance management. The identification of this relationship may then lead to rethinking of how maintenance management techniques could be improved with a focus on mitigating quality failures. The quantitative research design examines maintenance and production data collected from the factory covering a 12 month period and attempts to establish a correlation between these two data streams. It also examines the input of maintenance staff through a survey, to determine their awareness to their contribution or lake of to improving product quality.
The results show a clear relationship between product downgrade and maintenance related unplanned stoppages. They also indicate that there is a high awareness within the maintenance team that their actions contribute to product quality, but there is less engagement to executing maintenance activities with a focus on product quality. Further research on a wider over a longer time period is recommended in order to derive quality focused maintenance strategies that can effectively drive down the cost of quality failures
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