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Maintenance and Quality

Maintenance and Quality covers two jobs that share the same plants, equipment and people. The maintenance half keeps your own production equipment running: an equipment register, preventive and breakdown work orders, spares and reliability. The quality half keeps product within specification: inspection plans and sampling, SPC, gauge calibration, non-conformance (NCR), corrective and preventive action (CAPA) and supplier quality. It does not keep its own stock or accounts; it works through Inventory, Procurement, Books and People.

Equipment at customer sites belongs in Field Service, and IT equipment in IT Service Management and Workplace.

Who uses it​

  • Maintenance admin: sets up plants, equipment and PM plans; triages requests; plans, schedules and closes work orders.
  • Maintenance technician: carries out assigned work orders, records readings, labour and spares; usually on mobile and limited to their plants.
  • Quality manager: owns inspection plans and sampling settings, usage decisions, NCRs, CAPA, gauges and supplier scorecards.
  • Quality inspector: enters inspection results and calibrations, decides lots within the sampling plan, and raises NCRs.
  • Finance admin: approves large work order costs and capitalisation.
  • Any employee: reports a problem with equipment and follows their own requests.

Before you start​

  • Your company is set up in Thoshika and Maintenance and Quality is switched on for it.
  • A stock app is on (Inventory, or Books, or Manufacturing's store ledger) if you want to issue spares; Inventory is needed for incoming inspections from quarantine.
  • Books is on if you want journals for spares and capitalisation, and fixed asset links.
  • Procurement is on if you want spares and service requisitions raised automatically.
  • People is on if you want labour costed at each technician's rate, hours logged to timesheets and shifts and leave shown when scheduling.

Set up​

  1. Plants. Add each plant with its address, spares store (a warehouse), cost centre and, optionally, a People location. Plants are also how technicians and quality staff are scoped.
  2. Equipment. Build the tree of lines, machines, components, utilities, buildings and instruments. Set the class, make and model, linked work centre and the five criticality factors.
  3. Failure codes and checklists. Add problem, cause and remedy codes per equipment class, and checklist templates for PM and inspections.
  4. Meters. Add counters (hours, strokes) and gauges (temperature, vibration) with alert and trip limits.
  5. PM plans. Create plans by time, meter or whichever comes first, with lead days, checklist, planned hours, spares and, for statutory inspections, the Act, section and competent person.
  6. Spares. Mark spares per equipment and set min, max and reorder point per plant store.
  7. Thresholds. Set the work order cost approval threshold, the finance threshold and the capitalisation threshold.
  8. Quality. Add inspection plans with characteristics and sampling (AQL, fixed sample or 100 percent), register gauges with calibration intervals, and print QR stickers for equipment and gauges.

Key workflows​

Report and fix a breakdown​

  1. Anyone scans the machine's QR sticker or opens the request form, describes the problem and says whether the machine has stopped. A stopped machine opens a downtime record at once.
  2. The maintenance admin approves the request and plans it: priority, checklist, spares, permits and estimated cost. Costs above the threshold go for approval.
  3. Schedule a technician on the board, which shows shifts, leave and skills.
  4. The technician starts work, fills the checklist, issues spares, logs labour and records failure codes.
  5. Completing the work order ends the downtime and sets the machine back to running.

Run preventive maintenance​

  1. A daily job creates work orders when a PM plan falls due by date or meter reading.
  2. The technician completes the checklist and records readings.
  3. The next due date or reading moves forward. PM compliance is reported on time against due.

Inspect incoming goods​

  1. Goods received in Inventory for items that need a check go to quarantine, and an inspection lot opens automatically.
  2. The inspector records results per sample. Maintenance and Quality suggests a decision from the defects found against the sampling plan.
  3. Accept, reject, accept part, or use as is (which needs the quality manager's approval). Accepted stock is released for putaway and the rest goes to the rejected bin. Rejections open an NCR.

Work an NCR through to CAPA​

  1. Raise an NCR from an inspection, the shop floor, a supplier or a customer complaint.
  2. Record containment actions such as sorting or holding stock, then the disposition and cost of poor quality.
  3. Open a CAPA when needed. Work through 5-Why or Ishikawa, assign actions, verify them and schedule the effectiveness check.
  4. Print the 8D report for a customer if required.

India specifics​

  • Statutory PM templates cover Factories Act examinations of hoists, lifts, lifting machines and pressure plant, boiler certificates under IBR, HT installation inspections and fire extinguisher checks, each with a certificate and competent person. Check periods against your state's rules.
  • External calibrations record the NABL lab and certificate number.
  • Service lines carry SAC and GST rate.
  • Capitalisation follows the component approach of Ind AS 16 and AS 10; other repairs are expensed.

Works with other apps​

  • Manufacturing: work centres, OEE, in-process and final inspection lots, and quality holds.
  • Inventory: spares stock and quarantine holds.
  • Procurement: spares and service requisitions, and supplier quality in vendor ratings.
  • Books: journals and the fixed asset register.
  • People: cost rates, timesheets, shifts, leave, skills and certifications.
  • Support: customer complaints linked to tickets.
  • Workplace: building equipment PM can be taken over from Workplace.
  • Analytics: maintenance and quality figures for cross-app reports.
  • The mobile app caches technicians' work orders and inspectors' lots, so results can be entered offline and synced later.

Next steps​