Want up to 30% more workforce productivity? Lean manufacturing is all about eliminating waste to keep costs down and productivity up. There is much that can be
done to achieve lean from posting production statistics to integrating your supply chain with your suppliers. What’s often missed however is maintenance and asset reliability. You can’t eliminate work in process or finished goods inventory entirely if you still need it to make up for lost production at any workstation. Downtime due to equipment failure is the Achilles Heal of lean. Uptime, RCM, TPM and all the tools are needed to eliminate this problem. Uptime is often considered to be a way to achieve TPM – Total Productive Maintenance.
TPM is a bit of a misnomer. It should stand for Total Productive Manufacturing, not Maintenance. It’s a philosophy and culture that is developed spanning all your
operations. It means different things in different companies depending on a variety of factors. That leads to confusion if you investigate it deeply. TPM itself is a philosophical approach to shifting culture. It’s not a method like RCM or RCFA. It has many variations and there are no fixed rules. Uptime describes elements that, when implemented together successfully, have been called TPM. The book itself was long considered a book on TPM. What TPM methods have in common are the use of self directed teams combining the skills and inputs of both maintainers and operators. As such it might more correctly be called Total Productive Management or Total Productive Operations, but the old name has rich historical roots and seems to stick. What matters most, is what gets done.
Implementing TPM requires a change in the way that many companies work and it extends far beyond the maintenance department. It is not an improvement initiative that is successfully undertaken at the departmental or even operational level alone. It will reach into your offices and support functions crossing departmental boundaries and breaking down all sorts of old cultural barriers. Contrary to common belief it is also not limited only to manufacturing environments although that is where it has its roots. The concepts that make up the TPM philosophy can be applied anywhere with a bit of creativity. What you are seeking to achieve is the unleashing of the hidden talents in your workforce – its creativity. TPM is not for companies that believe a quick fix will work – it can take 2 to 5 years to fully implement successfully and indeed several organizations dedicate their entire focus to TPM. We too offer our support in this advanced approach. Contact us for more information or to initiate a dialogue on how TPM might work in your organization.