Total Productive Maintenance

Maintenance is critical to a firm's ability to successfully compete in the market not only on the basis of quality and delivery, but also on the basis of cost. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) reduces total maintenance costs by involving the operators in routine maintenance. TPM increases equipment reliability without increasing costs by involving everyone in the maintenance process. The increased in equipment reliability helps create internal capabilities that provide the firm a competitive advantage. TPM fundamentally changes a firm's infrastructure to create the capabilities that lead to a competitive advantage. Top management and mid-level management support is essential to successfully implement TPM since the design of jobs, human resource practices and management techniques will need to change. TPM requires that the basic planning and control systems be adequate before it is implemented. Since each maintenance activity costs less, a firm can perform more maintenance activities cost effectively.

Maintenance is not an expense; it is an investment in improved manufacturing. Investment in maintenance, one of the basic functions of a firm, returns improved quality, safety, dependability, flexibility and lead times. Maintenance is a full partner striving together with the other functions to achieve the firm's strategic goals. The integration of maintenance with other functions is accomplished with Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), which was introduced in 1971 in Japan to provide a competitive advantage to those adopting it.

The classical view of maintenance is that all maintenance is performed by a set of specialists (i.e., maintenance engineers and technicians). In this view, the optimal level of maintenance occurs at the point of minimal total maintenance costs-the point where the sum of the cost of equipment losses and maintenance activity costs is minimized. The manager's role is to limit maintenance activities to those necessary to keep equipment losses at this minimum point. TPM aimed to reduce equipment breakdowns without increasing the total cost of maintenance.

TPM is a systematic approach to understand the equipment's function, the equipment's relationship to product quality and the likely cause and frequency of failure of the critical equipment components. TPM reduces equipment losses by investing in people who can then improve equipment availability, improve product quality and reduce labor costs. To maximize equipment effectiveness TPM establishes a thorough system of maintenance for the equipment's entire life span. This TPM system requires all employees working in autonomous small groups to work together to eliminate equipment breakdowns. Everyone is involved since every component of the manufacturing system-including operations, product design, and process design and management-impacts equipment maintenance. As suggested by researcher, there are six categories of equipment losses throughout production system:
1. Equipment failures.
2. Setup and adjustment.
3. Idling and minor stoppages.
4. Reduced speed.
5. Defects in the process
6. Reduced yield.
The competitive advantages of improved quality, improved delivery and increased flexibility would be nullified if they were obtained with excessive maintenance investments, which could make a firm's costs noncompetitive. TPM increases maintenance activities without increased costs. The high costs of maintenance activity often comes from inadequate planning of support requirements for machines, inadequate consideration of the machine's reliability, ignorance of the relationship of maintainability to machine design and poor design of logistic support capability. TPM directly addresses these issues by involving all of the functions in creating the solution.

The initial TPM steps may be done with a minimal amount of organizational change by implementing minor improvements such as identifying and tracking the causes of breakdowns. To fully implement, TPM requires that most companies undergo substantial change. The firm's ability to achieve its goal of increased equipment reliability is determined by its ability to coordinate its human resource practices, management policies and technology. For managers to quickly diagnose the TPM program's progress, researcher suggests that small groups categorize and record the time they spend on different activities (e.g., education, training and maintenance).
Management must determine:

• Whether all the group members have mastered the techniques.
• Whether the group proposes and implements improvements.
• Whether the group solves problems.
• Whether the group works independently to achieve its goals.
• Whether the maintenance activities in the standardized maintenance program are completed.

Successful implementation of TPM may require a change in performance measures, such as:

• What types of performance measures are being used now?
• Is there an incentive for the maintenance worker to train the operator?
• Is there an incentive for the operator to notify and or help the maintenance worker?

Example: a firm which assigned maintenance workers to work teams as members. The team was evaluated on their product quality, on-time delivery and machine up-time performance, so that the maintenance workers had an incentive to train the operators on their team.