The paper addresses intelligent and sustainable production achieved through combination and integration of online predictive maintenance, monitoring of process parameters and continuous quality control of both input materials and output from the process. This enables production systems, within both manufacturing and process industries, to move towards zero-defect manufacturing. Such a zero-defect manufacturing approach allows for earlier identification of problems or issues, which will or already negatively affect the output. The paper outlines the first part of the second cycle of an action research effort at Gestamp HardTech AB in Sweden, whose objective is to keep its position as a world-leading provider of press-hardened vehicle parts. In order to fully implement the zero-defect manufacturing approach, 4-6 action research cycles are expected to be needed in order to iteratively refine the approach. During the first cycle, various methods and solutions for some of the individual issues/problems have been conceptualized, realized and initially tested. The selected design criteria for the action research efforts were: simplicity, low cost, robustness, high-quality output and future-proofing. The result from the research in the second cycle so far is an action plan for the technical change and a set of challenges/problems which need additional investigation.