Quick, Cheap and Simple
One of the biggest Returns on Investment from the continuous quality improvement process comes from quick, cheap and simple changes. Most of the time the results are too small for the team to quantify. However if those results are accumulated the figures might be encouraging. Therefore continuous quality improvement teams must encourage focusing on changes that are quick, cheap and simple.
Number of projects
One-way to ensure that the quality improvement process continues is to set goals for the number of projects to be completed in a year. Status of projects needs to be reviewed at regular intervals by top management. This becomes part of the reinforcement process where the team activities are monitored and results evaluated.
Cultural impact will result in many collateral projects
As the quality improvement teams get matured, there will be many minor and major improvement projects occurring concurrently. To ensure the organization reaped a good return of investment, all these projects must be tactfully coordinated and managed. This is especially so when there are limited resources to support the project or when it becomes very costly. The perception that management is not supportive of the projects to be implemented by the teams should be avoided.
How to implement the process
It is important to have trained personnel facilitating or coaching the quality improvement teams. Most often there are only a few personnel who are trained and have the experience in coaching quality improvement process in the organization. If the cost of hiring external consultant were expensive, the best method would be hands on experience. Instead of playing the single role of coaches, they get involve directly and play a dual role a coach and team member. This will help to accelerate their tacit knowledge of the quality improvement process. They can later share their experiences with the other coaches or facilitators.
Change Management
For a process to be changed, people must also change. Process improvements are the results of changes made through people involvement. Managing the changes is a massive job. Quality improvement management teams need to have the change management skill for them to facilitate the change process.
Cost of implementing TPM
Followings are cost associated to the TPM Strategic Implementation for all the pillar activities (S&C TPM Office, Texas Instruments, M'sia):
- Direct Cost of TPM Members
- The direct cost of TPM Members includes those cost of the members of the TPM Office and those permanent resources such as TPM trainers
- Direct cost of other Company Personnel
- Cost of other personnel who are indirectly involves in the strategic implementation activities
- Cost of any external resources required
- Cost of engaging external trainers or consultants to train targets and facilitate the TPM processes during the early stage of implementation. This also includes cost of external training and benchmarking involved by members of the TPM Office and Pillar Champions.
- Cost of spare parts, tools and other items
- Cost of spares, supplies, tools and expenses incurred that are required or used in the Autonomous Maintenance, Kobetsu Kaizen, PM, Safety and Quality Maintenance Pillar Activities either during the restoration of improvement process.
- Training and consultancy support cost
- Training and consultancy hours provided by in-house consultants or subject matter experts who form part of the teaming support structure.
- Lost production revenue due to the need to stop the process for TPM Activities
- Total involvements of employees in the TPM activities require equipments and processes to be shutdown. This involves substantial potential lost of revenue.
Benefits of TPM
Gaining Competitive Advantage
TPM focus on the Six Major Losses and also on Man, Machine and Workplace aim primarily at increasing equipment effectiveness and achieving zero breakdown, defect, waste and accident respectively. This strategy addresses the ever changing customer care abouts which are:
- Superior Quality products / services
- Lower Cost / Unit
- Shorter Cycle-Time / Lead Time
- Greater Dependability through continuity of supply
- Flexibility in the operations to meet the up-swing and down-swing
To achieve these aims, it involves the involvement of employees in the entire organization to translate these customer care abouts into the operational perspectives. The successful implementation of the TPM activities helps organization to:
- Create error free processes to assure superior quality products / services to be delivered to the customers
- Increase the productivity level
- Increase the speed of processing by shortening the cycle-time
- Create a reliable operations which are stable that can ensure continuity of supply to the customers and meeting the on-time delivery commit
- Has the flexibility to respond quickly to changes in demand
These attributes give the organization the competitive advantage over its competitors with the ability to do it right, do it cheap, do it fast, do it on-time and do it differently.
Lowering the Manufacturing Cost
The increase in operational effectiveness has significant impact on the manufacturing cost structure. Reduction in cost of goods sold in the form of cost avoidances or cost savings increase the gross profit margin and ultimately profit from operations.
