Each pillar is headed by a Pillar Champion who coordinates the pillar activities. Most often these Pillar Champions are members of the TPM Steering Committee. Of the eight, the first five pillars are critical at the initial stage of the TPM implementation.
Objectives of TPM
TPM aims to establish good maintenance practice through the pursuit of "the five goals of TPM" (Nakajima)
- Improve equipment effectiveness: examine the effectiveness of facilities by identifying and examining all losses which occur such as downtime losses, speed losses and defect losses and take appropriate actions to minimize or eliminate them
- Achieve autonomous maintenance: allow the employees who operate equipment to take responsibility of the basic maintenance tasks. This can be at :
- The repair level (where staff carry out instructions as a response to a problem);
- The prevention level (where employees take pro-active action to prevent foreseen problems);
- Improvement level (where employees not only takes corrective action but also propose improvements to prevent recurrence)
- Plan maintenance: have a systematic approach to all maintenance activities. This involves the identification of the nature and level of preventive maintenance required for each piece of equipment, the creation of standards for condition-based maintenance, and the setting of respective responsibilities for operating and maintenance staff. The respective roles of "operating" and "maintenance" staff are seen as being distinct. Maintenance crew are seen as developing preventive actions and general breakdown services, whereas operating staff take on the "ownership" of the facilities and their general care. Maintenance crew typically move to a more facilitating and supporting role where they are responsible for the training of operators, problem diagnosis, and devising and assessing maintenance practice.
- Train all employees in basic maintenance skills: the defined responsibilities of operating and maintenance crew require that each has all the necessary skills to carry out these roles. TPM places a heavy emphasis on appropriate and continuous training.
- Achieve early equipment management: the aim is to move towards zero maintenance through "maintenance prevention" (MP). MP involves considering failure causes and the maintainability of equipment during its design stage, its manufacture, its installation, and its commissioning. As part of the overall process, TPM attempts to track all potential maintenance problems back to their root cause so that they can be eliminated at the earliest point in the overall design, manufacture and deployment process.
TPM and TQM
There is a close relationship and resemblance between the TPM program and the Total Quality Management (TQM) program. The TPM philosophy actually complements supports and reinforces the TQM principles and initiatives carried out by the organization. It is therefore highly important that TPM should not be made as a separate strategic initiative. Instead it should be integrated into the TQM strategic initiative.
Many of the tools such as employee involvement in continuous improvement activities, proper documentation, training and development, benchmarking, and many other tools and techniques used in TQM are also commonly in the TPM implementation. Following are the similarities between the TPM and TQM (Venkatesh):
- Total and continuous commitment towards the program by top management is required fro both programs without which do not even think of implementing them
- Both programs involve employees, at the lowest level in particular, in continuous improvement. They are empower to identify problems, establish root causes, initiate corrective action and convert the problem into opportunities using scientific method. To be able to do this major emphasis on training / education, coaching and facilitation is required.
- A long range outlook must be accepted as TPM may take a year or more to implement and is an on-going process. It involves a cultural change and changing the employee's mind-set and behaviors toward their job responsibilities will be a challenge. This requires time, continuous reinforcement and need to be managed tactfully.
Comparatively, TPM has almost all the essential elements in the Kaizen Umbrella:
- Total Quality Control
- Customer Orientation
- Small Group Activities
- Suggestion System
- Automation
- Discipline in the Workplace
- Quality Improvement
- Zero Defects
- Cooperative Labour (Teamwork)
- Management Relationship
The DNA of Toyota production system
TPM is a slow, tedious and difficult process to implement if not carefully plan and strategize. Simplification of the process into sequential logical steps which is easily understood and applicable to the targets is critical to ensure successful implementation of this program. An insight of the Toyota Production System (TPS) will be of most help to ensure a smooth and flawless implementation by adopting and adapting the TPS rules.
The tacit knowledge that underlies the Toyota Production System can be categorized into four basic rules (Spear & Bowen). These rules guide the design, operation, and improvement of every activity, connection, and pathway for every product and services in the Toyota operating systems. The rules are as follows:
Rule 1: All work shall be highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome.
Toyota's managers recognize that the devil is in the details of the work content. For this reason they ensure that all work at Toyota is highly specified as to content, sequence, timing, and outcome. This is applied to the activities of all employees regardless of their functional specialty or hierarchical role. This rule creates standardization of processes and the probability of achieving similar results and lesser defects is high
