How Important Is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)?

In order to stay in this competitive business environment, it is important that organizations continuously improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their production methods. And this is determined by the effectiveness and efficiency of the equipment used. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is one of the major concepts and key operational activities of quality management systems. It is the system of maintaining and improving production and quality through efficient equipment, machines, processes and employees. There needs to be collective responsibility of operators, supervisors and workers to achieve the goal of TPM, which aims at optimizing overall performance of the organization to produce outstanding results. By implementing TPM, the equipment and productivity of the plant can undergo massive transformation because TPM focuses on keeping all equipment in top working condition to avoid breakdowns and delays in the manufacturing process. Therefore, the equipment is maintained and improved to reduce costs, thus increasing productivity. Hence, with TPM, output is maximized with minimized input.

History of TPM

TPM was introduced in Japan in the year 1951. However, Nippondenso was the first company to introduce this preventive maintenance in 1960. Preventive maintenance is where operators produce goods using machines, with a special maintenance group dedicated with the work of maintaining the machines. But, Nippondenso started facing problems of requiring more maintenance personnel. Therefore, the company decided that the routine maintenance of equipment will be carried out by the operators themselves. (This is autonomous Maintenance – one of the features of TPM.) Therefore, the collaboration of preventive maintenance and maintainability improvement resulted in productive maintenance, which aimed at maximizing plant and equipment effectiveness while reducing costs. This is how Nippondenso became the first company to obtain the TPM certification. If you are looking for such certification too, you can get in touch with TQMI to provide you with the finest and most professional TPM Training in India.

Objectives of TPM

·        As mentioned above, one of the main objectives of TPM is to improve the productivity and performance of the organization. To achieve this, it is important for the entire workforce to collaborate. Apart from the workers, effective leadership is also of great importance to implement TPM in the right manner. Proper support from top management makes TPM truly effective with the outcomes resulting in zero breakdowns, zero defects, and zero accidents.

·        TPM is also centered to increase the overall equipment effectiveness of plant equipment by investing in maintenance. It detects and identifies the six big losses, prioritize them, and eliminate the causes of these losses. (You can learn about the six big losses in detail further down the blog.)

·        Other objectives include avoiding wastage in the rapidly changing environment, producing goods of high quality, and reducing costs.

Six Big Losses

TPM deals with the ‘Six Big Losses’ to provide cost effectiveness in a business organization. The overall equipment effectiveness is the multiplication of performance, availability, and quality – each of which has two associated losses, thus making them six in total.

Overall equipment effectiveness = Performance x Availability x Quality

Performance losses – Reduced speed and Minor stops

Availability losses – Breakdowns and Product changeover

Quality losses – Startup rejects and Running rejects

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