Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance programme or you can say a medical science for machines and equipment’s. The goal of the TPM is to increase production, by decreasing the delay times while at the same time increasing employee morale and job satisfaction. TPM is a vital part of any business performances as it urges to hold emergency and unscheduled maintenance to a minimum.
It is a step to achieve perfect production that is no breakdowns, no small stops or slow running of production and most importantly no defects. An addition benefit is that it values a safe working environment which is no on process/during work accidents. The implementation of a TPM program creates a shared responsibility for machines & equipment that encourages greater involvement by plant floor workers. It emphasizes on empowering the operators to help maintain/take care of their respective machines/tools etc.
Autonomous Maintenance
This stands for placing responsibilities for routine maintenance such as cleaning, lubrication, inspections etc. It is simple identifying emergency issues before they become failures.
Planned Maintenance
This stands for scheduled maintenance based on predicted or measured failure rates. It mainly focuses on reducing or eliminating instances of unplanned stop times.
Quality Maintenance
This targets quality issues by applying root cause analysis to eliminate recurring sources of quality defects. This is mainly done to detect errors that can be caused in a production process.
Focused Improvement
This means to have small groups of employees working together proactively to achieve regular incremental improvements in work operations. In simple terms, recurring problems are identified and solved by a competent team.
Early Equipment Management
This urges to have practical knowledge and understanding of manufacturing processes and its equipment’s as maintenance is simpler and more robust due to practical review conducted by the employees itself.
Training & Education
This promotes to have knowledge and develop skills that are necessary to achieve TPM goals. This mainly applies to operators, maintenance personnel and managers.
Safety, Health & Environment
This refers to eliminate potential health & safety risks. It emphasizes on having a status of accident-free workplace.
TPM in Administration
This refers to extend TPM benefits beyond plant floor by addressing waste/defects/errors in administrative functions.
Setting up a TPM Board is best what an organization can do. All the relevant or important information of productive maintenance on machines/equipment’s etc. can be effectively shown. TPM messages and reminders of equipment waste to promote a culture of preventative and predictive maintenance.
For all this to work more smoothly, visual management will play an important role where it’s simply the management of needed visuals at the right place.