Use of Complaint Records of Maintenance Departments for Continuous Improvement

Abstract

Housebuilding companies are required to deal with customer complaints in the warranty period. Some of them have maintenance departments that make necessary repairs in existing buildings. Due to this service, companies accumulate records on the quality of projects, which can contribute to the understanding of occurrence defects and their causes, supporting continuous improvement. However, deficiencies in information management can make it difficult to use complaints records as a feedback source. The literature does not discuss solutions for managing information related to customer complaints, nor the use of performance metrics that can effectively provide feedback from quality problems identified. This study has two contributions: a classification structure for the types of defects identified from complaints, and indicators generated by fault tree analysis. The study was carried out in the maintenance department of a Brazilian housebuilding company. The evidence sources used were: complaint database analysis, discussion seminars, and interviews with the company representatives. The proposed solutions resulted in improvements regarding the structure and level of detail of the records. Also, the fault tree analysis made it possible to identify the most critical quality problems as well as to evaluate the level of impact of each one in project quality.