Integrating Quality and Maintenance Development - Opportunities and Implications

Today, the drive in many organizations is to focus on reducing production costs while increasing customer satisfaction. One key to succeed with these goals is to develop and improve both quality and maintenance in production as well as quality and maintenance in early phases of the development processes. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how and motivate why research within quality and maintenance development may interact, in order to help companies meet customer demand while at the same time increase productivity. The paper is based on ideas and research perspectives of the newly formed competence group on ‘Quality- and Maintenance Development’ at the School of Innovation, Design and Engineering at the Malardalen University, Sweden. This paper elaborates on the concepts of Quality and Maintenance, its important integration, and provides some examples of ongoing research projects within the competence group.