What is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): An Overview

Manufacturing companies continuously seek TPM implementation steps to increase their production and efficiency in today’s fast-paced business world. Equipment downtime and unforeseen maintenance are among manufacturers’ most significant problems. Unplanned maintenance can seriously disrupt operations, raising expenses, lowering output, and customer satisfaction. In the last three years, 82% of companies experienced at least one unplanned downtime incident. Additionally, businesses must take action to reduce any hazards to their workers and the environment because these issues are growing more and more significant.

In response to these difficulties, many firms perform TPM implementation steps to enhance equipment dependability and increase production effectiveness. But what really is TPM, and how can it assist businesses in overcoming these difficulties let’s see.

What is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Total Productive Maintenance – The TPM is a strategy for maintaining and enhancing the performance of equipment that involves all employees. The TPM implementation process boosts overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) through less downtime, increased productivity, and providing employees with a safer environment. TPM promotes a culture of continuous improvement by involving all staff members in identifying issues, dealing with them, and suggesting solutions. It’s best described as a comprehensive method that incorporates everyone in an organization to attain near-perfect output. The goal of total productive maintenance is to maintain equipment and prevent unexpected downtime. 

What are the Objectives of TPM?

• Objective 1: Boosting productivity and decreasing breakdowns to improve equipment performance.
• Objective 2: Encouraging participation from all staff members in the maintenance and improvement of the equipment, including operators and maintenance personnel.
• Objective 3: Putting safety first by spotting and eliminating any dangers
• Objective 4: Encouraging staff members to suggest fixes and enhancements will help to promote a culture of continual improvement.

Total Productive Maintenance is built upon eight pillars to accomplish these objectives. Let’s take a look at them.

What are the Pillars of TPM?

To create an effective Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) program, all members of the organization must understand the core principles of TPM. The main purpose of TPM lies in the implementation of the 5S foundation, which serves as the basis for creating an organized and efficient work environment. Building upon this foundation, TPM is further supported by 8 pillars that contribute to its overall effectiveness, they are:

Pillar 1- Focused Improvement

This TPM pillar concentrates on locating and addressing certain flaws or difficulties within the production process in order to boost overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). The employee must be proactive, willing to try new methods, and eager to find solutions.

Pillar 2- Autonomy

This pillar encourages all employees, including operators and maintenance personnel, to take responsibility for the maintenance and improvement of the equipment. This ensures that every equipment is maintained correctly, improves early failure detection, and frees the maintenance staff to perform more complex tasks.

According to Statista report, the Global predictive maintenance market is expected to grow from 4.5 Billion U.S. Dollars to 64.3 Billion U.S. dollars in 2030.

Pillar 3- Quality Maintenance

The major goal of TPM’s quality maintenance program is to generate zero defective items, which undoubtedly has an impact on customer satisfaction.

Pillar 4- Planned maintenance

The best way to avoid problems and downtime is planned maintenance. The best time for any planned maintenance, necessitating the machinery being turned off, is during regular business hours. After business hours, maintenance saves manufacturers time, and it also doesn’t impact any productions.

Here are some of the statistics of average downtime cost across multiple industries. Automotive manufacturers incur the highest loss due to downtime.

Pillar 5- Early Equipment Maintenance

When buying new equipment or producing new products, early experiences make a huge difference and make the maintenance process easier. This might be as simple as choosing wall paint that can be easily cleaned or as complex as choosing a robot that can diagnose problems independently (which improves production).

Pillar 6- Training and Education

For TPM, investing money in training and education is essential. It is essential to understand the basics of asset maintenance. Continuous training is the only way to ensure that professionals are up to date on new technology and industry best practices. Just-in-time learning can play a significant role in this pillar of TPM.

Pillar 7- Safety, Health, and Environment

Other TPM objectives include safety, health, and the environment, including zero work accidents, zero pollution, and zero burnout. In addition to ensuring the health and safety of every employee, effective maintenance management helps avoid accidents while doing maintenance duties.

Pillar 8- Office TPM

Managers and administrative personnel should also engage rather than rely solely on the workers. Everyone must be proactive and dedicated to improving, from scheduling to logistics.

7 Steps to Implement the Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

You won’t believe that an effective TPM program leads to improved productivity and reduced waste time and most importantly the cost. After seeing all its benefits, you want to know how to implement the TPM program in your organization. Right?

Of course yes!! So, for your reference, we have also shared the essential steps that you should follow to implement the Total Productive Maintenance program. Here you go:

1. Create clear, standardized procedures, starting with 5S principles.
2. Train your frontline team on TPM concepts for effective maintenance.
3. Restore equipment to its optimal working condition.
4. Conduct regular maintenance inspections, reducing future breakdowns and improving reliability.
5. Before expanding to the entire operation, it is suggested to start the TPM program by implementing it in a specific area.
6. It is recommended to track Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to monitor performance.
7. Implement scheduled maintenance to prevent unexpected equipment downtime.

What Are the Benefits of Total Productive Maintenance (Tpm)?

Benefit 1- Less Unplanned Maintenance Time

One of the main advantages of TPM is that it cuts unplanned maintenance time by spotting and fixing possible equipment issues before they become significant problems. Routine checks, maintenance, cleaning, repairs, and planned downtime for maintenance can help accomplish this. TPM reduces downtime and boosts workers productivity by preventing equipment failure and breakdowns.

Benefit 2- Safer Working Environment

A safer working environment is achieved via TPM, which focuses on identifying and removing potential dangers while prioritizing worker safety and environmental protection. This involves putting safety procedures in place to guarantee that workers do so in a secure environment, which can lower the likelihood of accidents and injuries.

Benefit 3- Increased Output Quality

TPM also contributes to raising the standard of the produced goods or services. This is accomplished by ensuring all equipment is running at peak efficiency, which can lower the number of defective goods produced and raise customer satisfaction.

Benefit 4- Proven Impact

It has been demonstrated that TPM has a beneficial impact on a company’s overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and bottom line. This effect can be measured in terms of cost savings from decreased maintenance and downtime expenses, as well as through improvements in productivity and efficiency. Companies that use TPM can see a considerable return on their investment through better equipment reliability, higher output, and decreased maintenance and downtime expenses.

Benefit 5- Increased employee empowerment and engagement

TPM involves all employees, including operators and maintenance staff, in the maintenance and improvement of equipment. This promotes employee ownership of their work and the tools they use, which boosts engagement and empowers workers, ultimately leading to more productivity and higher-quality output.

Benefit 6- Increased Flexibility and Adaptability

The TPM in manufacturing approach to maintenance is flexible and adaptive. It enables businesses to immediately respond to any issues or problems that may develop as well as adapt to changes in manufacturing processes and equipment. Companies that are flexible and adaptable can stay competitive in a market that is constantly evolving.

Let’s check out a TPM example

The easiest way to understand TPM is by going through an example of implementing TPM. This is the crux of what it looks like:

• Step 1– Identify the Pilot Area: The first step is to find any problem in the production area–easiest to improve/bottleneck/most problematic.
• Step 2- Equipment restoration to its Prime Operating Condition: After identifying the pilot area, the next step is to create a criterion for current productivity, and ordinate and construct a plan for TPM implementation through 5S and autonomous maintenance.
• Step 3- Measurement of OEE: Use a manual or automated system to track the OEE and include an unplanned stop time reason code.
• Step 4- Address Major Losses: In this step, you need to address the major causes of downtime through Focused Improvement methodology. It also involves identifying the most effective fixes to address the issues.
• Step 5- Introduce Proactive Maintenance Techniques: Identify the items of proactive maintenance, establish proactive maintenance intervals and create a feedback system for optimizing them.

Conclusion

To sum up, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a thorough maintenance approach that engages all staff members in preserving and enhancing the functionality of the equipment.

With TPM education, manufacturers can provide their workforce with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively use AR technology in repair and maintenance, resulting in a more efficient and streamlined process. Additionally, TPM training can help employees identify areas of improvement in their maintenance practices, which can be further enhanced with AR technology. By combining TPM training and AR technology, manufacturers can reduce downtime, increase productivity, and improve overall maintenance operations.

When the eight pillars are combined with AR technology, employees will be able to understand the equipment and its maintenance requirements better, and real-time information will be provided to support them in swiftly recognizing and resolving faults. This will result in higher production productivity, better overall equipment performance, and lower maintenance and downtime expenses. Adding AR to TPM can also improve staff training by making it more engaging and efficient. Manufacturers may stay ahead of the curve and boost their competitiveness in the current fast-paced business environment by introducing AR into TPM. Check out how Plutomen’s AR solutions can benefit your organization regarding TPM.

Written by

Keyur B

CEO, Founder of Plutomen

With more than 12+ years of experience in the world of enterprises, technology, and metaverse, Keyur Bhalavat is leading Plutomen to gain meaningful partnerships & to have a strong clientele network. He is one of the board members of GESIA (Gujarat IT Association Ahmedabad).