What is Total Productive Maintenance?

The modern view of maintenance is that it is all about

preserving the functions of physical assets. In other words,
carrying out tasks that serve the central purpose of
ensuring that our machines are capable of doing what the
users want them to do, when they want them to do it. The
possible maintenance policies can be grouped under four
headings viz.
1. Corrective - wait until a failure occurs and then remedy
the situation (restoring the asset to productive capability)
as quickly as possible.
2. Preventive - believe that a regular maintenance attention
will keep an otherwise troublesome failure mode at bay.
3. Predictive - rather than looking at a calendar and
assessing what attention the equipment needs, we should
examine the 'vital signs' and infer what the equipment is
trying to tell us. The term 'Condition Monitoring' has come
to mean using a piece of technology (most often a vibration
analyser) to assess the health of our plant and equipment.
4. Detective - applies to the types of devices that only need
to work when required and do not tell us when they are in
the failed state e.g. a fire alarm or smoke detector. They
generally require a periodic functional check to ascertain
that they are still working.
Apart from detective maintenance, the central problem that
companies have struggled with is how to make the choice
between the other three. This has led to the increasing
interest within industry in two strategies, which offer a path
to long term continuous improvement rather than the
promise of a quick fix. These are Reliability Centred
Maintenance (RCM) and Total Productive Maintenance
(TPM). The two strategies, although having similar names,
actually have very different strengths. RCM has been fully
described while TPM will now be discussed.
TPM is a manufacturing led initiative that emphasises the
importance of people, a 'can do' and 'continuous
improvement' philosophy and the importance of production
and maintenance staff working together. It is presented as
a key part of an overall manufacturing philosophy. In
essence, TPM seeks to reshape the organisation to liberate
its own potential.
The modern business world is a rapidly changing
environment, so the last thing a company needs if it is to
compete in the global marketplace is to get in its own way
because of the way in which it approaches the business of
looking after its income generating physical assets. So, TPM
is concerned with the fundamental rethink of business
processes to achieve improvements in cost, quality, speed
etc. It encourages radical changes, such as;

flatter organisational structures - fewer managers, empowered

teams,
multi-skilled workforce,
rigorous reappraisal of the way things are done - often with the
goal of simplification.
It also places these changes within a culture of betterment
underpinned by continuous improvement monitored
through the use of appropriate measurement. The principal
measure is known as the Overall Equipment Effectiveness
(OEE). This figure ties the 'six big losses' :
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Equipment Downtime
Engineering Adjustment
Minor Stoppages
Unplanned Breaks
Time spent making reject product
Waste

to three measurables:
Availability (Time), Performance (Speed) & Yield (Quality).
When the losses from Time X Speed X Quality are
multiplied together, the resulting OEE figure shows the
performance of any equipment or product line.
TPM sites are encouraged to both set goals for OEE and
measure deviations from these. Problem solving groups
then seek to eliminate difficulties and enhance
performance.

TPM achievements
Many TPM sites have made excellent progress in a number
of areas. These include:

better understanding of the performance of their equipment (what

they are achieving in OEE terms and what the reasons are for nonachievement),
better understanding of equipment criticality and where it is worth
deploying improvement effort and potential benefits,

improved teamwork and a less adversarial approach between

Production and Maintenance,

improved procedures for changeovers and set-ups, carrying out

frequent maintenance tasks, better training of operators and
maintainers, which all lead to reduced costs and better service,

general increased enthusiasm from involvement of the workforce.

However the central paradox of the whole TPM Process is that,
given that TPM is supposed to be about doing better maintenance,
why do proponents end up with (largely) the same discredited
schedules that they had already (albeit now being done by different

people)? This is the central paradox - yes, the organisation is more

empowered, and re-shaped to allow us to carry out maintenance in
the modern arena, but we're still left with the problem of what
maintenance should be done.
The RCM process was evolved within the civil aviation industry to
fulfil this precise need. In fact, the definition of RCM is "a process
used to determine the maintenance requirements of physical assets
in their present operating context". In essence, we have two
objectives; determine the maintenance requirements of the
physical assets within their current operating context, and then
ensure that these requirements are met as cheaply and effectively
as possible.
RCM is better at delivering objective one; TPM focuses on objective
two.

Can the techniques be deployed together?

The answer depends on what 'brand' of RCM is being
considered. The 'hired gun' or 'magic box' approach will
never be compatible with TPM. RCM must be performed by
the organisation itself. The sole focus must be to teach
organisations to analyse their own assets. In this way,
empowered teams remain empowered, ownership is
retained and enhanced and companies begin to win the
asset management battle.
Your company can also benefit from TPM. Our 2 day
TPM seminar will show you exactly how.
See what others have to say about our training
seminars here.
Contact tpm@maint2k.com
Click here to bookmark this page.

Routine preventive maintenance has served us well over the

past 40 years, but in order to maintain the equipment in
optimal condition, new and progressive maintenance
techniques need to be established.
It involves the cooperation of the equipment and process support
personnel, equipment operators and the equipment supplier.
They must work together to eliminate equipment breakdowns,
reduce scheduled downtime, and maximize utilization,
throughput and quality.
Total Productive Maintenance provides the methods to measure
and eliminate much of the non-productive time, if implemented
properly.
In order to help businesses implement TPM, Imants BVBA
provides the Total Productive Maintenance Guide, a practical and

comprehensive Powerpoint Presentation of all the aspects of TPM.

Table of Contents

The Total Productive

Maintenance Guide is
a Powerpoint
Presentation
consisting of 38
slides :
1. TPM Definition (2
slides)
2. Origins of TPM
3. TPM principles
4. Eight Major Pillars
of TPM
1.
Autono
mous
mainten
ance (2
slides)
2.
Equipm
ent and
process
improve
ment
and
Overall
Equipm
ent
Effectiv
eness
(6
slides)
3.
Planned
mainten
ance
4. Early
Manage
ment of
New
Equipm
ent
5.
Process

Quality
manage
ment
6. TPM
in
adminis
trative
and
support
depart
ments
7.
Educati
on and
training
8.
Safety
and
environ
mental
manage
ment
5. TPM
implementation
1. 3
require
ments
for
fundam
ental
improve
ment
2. 12
implem
entation
steps
(15
slides)
6. TPM benefits

Target
group

This guide provides strategies, tools and techniques for both executives and
managers in production, maintenance, engineering, and quality
departments.
It also meets the growing needs of students studying business and especially
production/operations and maintenance management.

Benefits

The Total Productive Maintenance Guide will enable you to:

adapt the presentation to your own needs
show the presentation in your own company
implement the proposed actions
monitor the results
communicate the knowledge of Total Productive Maintenance to
your colleagues in your organization

use it as a means to deepen your understanding of the topic