DESIGN OF INTEGRATED QUALITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM FOR MAINTENANCE OF DESALINATION PLANTS USING SIX SIGMA

Abstract

The six-sigma method based on DMAIC principle is a helpful method to understand the problem through the define phase of the MED/TVC and determine that most of the variations of the outputs of the system comes from the lack of maintenance of the system and the calibration of devices not maintained. Further data and measures were collected in the measure phase by means of operation output measures, which led to the estimation of the performance baseline of the operation process. In the analyze phase of DMAIC approach, a set of studies, including DOE, were conducted to identify the root causes of variation of the measures. Some of the relevant causes had origin in calibration of the devices itself, but others had origin in downstream operations where maintenance of equipment not obtained. The improve phase involved the development and implementation of a set of improvement actions that were grouped around four areas of action. Each action shall apply in the philosophy of IQAP, not each action applied alone. The results after apply the four actions the results showed that the behavior of MED/TVC unit improved, the Reliability and the Availability of the MED/TVC unit increased. The effectiveness of the improvement actions were also confirmed by the significant enhancement on the values of the operation parameters