What is Total Productive Maintenance

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is an innovative approach to maintenance that is executed systematically that optimizes equipment effectiveness, eliminates breakdowns and promotes autonomous operator maintenance through day-to-day activities involving the total workforce in the organization.

TPM can be considered as the medical science of machines which involves a newly defined concept for maintaining plants and equipment. TPM brings maintenance into focus as a necessary and vitally important part of the business. It is no longer regarded as a non-profit activity. Down time for maintenance is scheduled as a part of the manufacturing day and, in some cases, as an integral part of the manufacturing process. The goal is to hold emergency and unscheduled maintenance to a minimum.

TPM is a proactive approach that essentially aims to prevent any kind of breakdowns before occurrence. Its motto is "zero defect, zero waste, zero breakdown and zero work-related accident."

History of TPM

TPM originated in Japan and was an equipment management strategy designed to support the Total Quality Management strategy. The Japanese realized that companies cannot produce a consistent quality product with poorly maintained equipment.

Nakajima began studying preventive Maintenance in 1950. The focus in Japan was then primarily on the preventive maintenance. As new equipment was installed, the focus was on implementing the preventive maintenance as recommended by the equipment manufacturer. Thus a high value was placed on equipment that operated at designed specifications with no breakdowns.

In 1962 Nakajima first visited United States to study in greater details of the American way of doing preventive maintenance. Since then he visited the American and European manufacturing facilities to study and learn about their Preventive Maintenance systems. Based on the valuable lessons learned from the American and European preventive maintenance system, Nakajima developed Total Productive Maintenance in 1971.

Major Features of TPM

Nakaiima described the word “total” in TPM into three major features:

1. Total effectiveness - indicates TPM's pursuit of economic efficiency and profitability of the organization
2. Total maintenance system - includes maintenance prevention (MP) and maintainability improvement (MI), as well as preventive maintenance (PM). This refers to “maintenance-free” design through the incorporation of reliability, maintainability, and the support characteristics into the equipment design.
3. Total participation of all employees - includes autonomous maintenance by operators through small group activities. Essentially, maintenance is accomplished through a “team” effort, with the operator being responsible for the ultimate care of the equipment that he / she is operating through the Cleaning, Lubrication, Adjustment, Inspection and Retightening (CLAIR) that is empowered to them.

Key Elements of TPM

According to Nakaiima, the concept of TPM consists of five key elements:

1. TPM aims to maximize equipment effectiveness (overall equipment effictiveness)
2. TPM establishes a thorough system of preventive maintenance (PM) to lengthen the equipment's life span and increase its effectiveness
3. 3. TPM is implemented by various departments in a company (engineering, operations, and maintenance). It's requires a cross functional team effort to make it a success.
4. 4. TPM involves every single employee from top management to the employees on the factory floor from the initial TPM pilot team to the TPM Big Bang when is fan-out across the organization.
5. 5. TPM is based on the promotion of preventive maintenance (PM) through “motivation management” through autonomous small group activities.

There are also other key elements of TPM which are not mentioned by Nakajima:

1. TPM is helps establish a close relationship between man and machine and how these two elements work together in harmony to get the maximum effectiveness
2. TPM is about how organization utilizes it resources to improve work standards, the effectiveness of the equipments and people to raise its level of operational excellence and bottom line
3. TPM is a long term investment made by organization but potentially it has a high yield of return through gains from cost saving and cost avoidance if implemented systematically
4. The TPM process is along and continuous one. It takes time for the employees to learn, change, adapt to new ways, methodology and systems
5. TPM need strong continuous commitment and patience not only from the top management but everyone who is involved in the strategic implementation because it can be difficult, time consuming and hard to implement

Eight Pillars of TPM

• TPM identifies the 16 types of waste or muda that exist in organization and then works systematically to eliminate them by making continuous improvements. TPM has 8 pillars of activity and each pillar has a “zero” target to achieve. Following are the eight pillars of TPM:
• Autonomous Maintenance (AM)/ (Jishu-Hozen): in autonomous maintenance, the operator is the key player. It involves daily maintenance activities carried out by the operators themselves that prevent the deterioration of the equipment.
• Autonomous Maintenance is central to a successful TPM process where operators take care of their own equipment. It starts with basic cleaning, inspection, retightening and lubrication and later involved the operators with minor adjustment and repair (DeWesse).
• Kobetsu Kaizen or Focus Improvement (KK): for eliminating waste (six major losses)
• Planned Maintenance (PM): for achieving zero breakdowns
• Training: for increasing productivity. The TPM training starts eith the management team. The TPM process depends on significant skill development for the operators and support group. This involves generic TPM implementation training, on-the- job, teaming technical and problem solving skill development.
• Safety: for achieving zero work-related accidents and for protecting the environment
• Early Equipment Management: to reduce waste occurring during the implementation of a new machine or the production of a new product. All lessons learned in the continuous improvement of existing equipments and processes must be incorporated into the development of new products, processes and equipment. Tacit knowledge of operators, technicians and engineers are retrieved and feedback to designers and builders so that new machines are easier to operate and maintain.
• Quality Maintenance (QM) / (Hinshitsu-Hozen): This is actually “maintenance for quality”. It includes the most effective quality tool of TPM: “poka yoke”, which aims to achieve zero loss by taking necessary measures to prevent loss.
• Office TPM: for involvement of all parties to TPM since office processes can be improved in a similar manner as well