The purpose of the paper is to present the author’s reflections on the origin and popularity

of various approaches to maintenance and improvement of production processes, their

terminological consistency, understanding, and practical application of their principles. The

author’s reflections are based on his observations made over his many years of activity as

a lecturer and consultant in the area of production engineering and management. It was

shown that there is a need to make scientists and practitioners aware of the relatively large

degree of freedom in defining the scope and way of application of strategies of continuous

improvement. The author’s proposal is to refer to all approaches to maintenance and improvement

of production processes with the title “Strategies of Efficient Action” and all

supporting methods as “Practices of Efficient Action”.

Considerations presented in the paper can be useful in more and more efficiently applying

the power of TQM, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and other strategies of processes

maintenance and improvement in the daily activities of companies.

The experimental material consisted of semi-finished products of high-grade, medium-carbon constructional steel with: manganese, chromium, nickel, molybdenum and boron. The experimental material consisted of steel products obtained in three metallurgical processes: electric and desulfurized (E), electric and desulfurized with argon-refined (EA) and oxygen converter with vacuum degassed of steel (KP). The production process involved two melting technologies: in a 140-ton basic arc furnace with desulphurisation and argon refining variants, and in a 100-ton oxygen converter. Billet samples were collected to analyze: relative volume of impurities, microstructure and fatigue tests. The samples were quenched and austenitized at a temperature of 880o C for 30 minutes. They were then cooled in water and tempered by holding the sections at a temperature of 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600o C for 120 minutes and air-cooled. Fatigue tests were performed with the use of a rotary bending machine at a frequency of 6000 cpm. The results were statistical processed and presented in graphic form. This paper discusses the results of microstructural analyses, the distribution of the relative volume of impurities in different size ranges, the fatigue strength characteristics of different production processes, the average number of sampledamaging cycles and the average values of the fatigue strength coefficient for various heat processing options.