Who Is TPM For? TPM is a program for production (or operations in a power plant, for example). It is a manufacturing (or operational) strategy. In a TPM shop, operators are king of the hill. Without operation’s full, complete, and unwavering support, evidence of the TPM program will be hard to find a year after installation, or even less. The word Maintenance in TPM seems to scare operations people away. If TPM is implemented by or even initiated by the Maintenance department, it will fail. When we say operations, we mean operators, supervisors, production control personnel, managers, and everyone else all the way up to plant managers.
The TPM point of view must be the lifeblood of the productive effort and understood by everyone, especially the middle managers. To a large degree, the active support and at least cooperation of the middle management is the most essential element of a successful TPM installation. The support of production control (production scheduling) is essential because they have to add TPM time into their schedules. Supervisors are essential because initially the TPM tasks have to be assigned, and managed so they are actually done.
Why Is This? I was training the operators in a large precision stamping factory about TPM. They were excited because they got to finally address issues that had been bothering them, in some cases for years. We made great strides in cleaning the machines and realizing production gains. The first phase of the training was complete. The team was supposed to continue the TPM activity in the pilot area and gain enough expertise to roll the program out to other areas. But as soon as I left, the production supervisor told the operators, “Well, that was fun, but now it’s time to get back to work.” In some cases, the supervisors were harder to sell (and more important to sell) than either top management or the operators. When I returned, we had to start over almost from scratch — with the added morale problems — with the formerly excited operations group.
Production Incentives The last issues concern production incentives. TPM will increase production after the losses are identified and either eliminated or mitigated. During that transition, production might fall for a time. Production incentives have to be adjusted so that performance of the TPM tasks is covered by the incentive program. Otherwise, TPM activity takes bonuses out of people’s pockets (in the short term) and will be sabotaged. So, if you are maintenance professional, this book can help you understand your important role in TPM. But, this book is for your production counterpart.
Why the Results from TPM Are Urgent Today
A new situation has developed in the way we look at organizations. Throughout the last 25 years, organizations have slashed their ranks, reduced overheads, and optimized processes. This process accelerated at the end of the 2000s with the economic crisis. At thesame time, we increased the complexity and speed of the equipment and our reliance on computers, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and sophisticated controllers. We are faced today with smaller crew sizes — and basic maintenance demands are going unmet. Yet basic maintenance continues to be essential for reliable performance.
Superficially, TPM recruits operators into the maintenance function to handle basic maintenance tasks and become both the champions of their machine's health and the tinkerers to reduce production losses from all sources. Operators become involved in maintenance activity (as well as other areas to detect and mitigate the losses) and decisions. TPM uses the operators in autonomous groups to perform all the routine maintenance, including cleaning, bolting, routine adjustments, lubrication, taking readings, start-up/shut down, and other periodic activities. This might sound ungrateful (based on the fact that operations personnel work very hard and are proud of what they have accomplished), but at a deeper level TPM is designed to wake up operators and their supervisors as well as everyone up the chain of command. Many people sleep walk through their day and stop seeing the waste right in from of them. That is just not good enough anymore. TPM along with Lean Maintenance, TQM, and RCA (Root Cause Analysis) are complimentary programs that try to get full engagement from the operators and supervisors. With full engagement, success is possible.
The reason for this sleep walking is psychological. The single biggest barrier to identifying waste is called “the normalization of deviance.” This is a fancy way of saying that if you look at a pile of junk long enough, you’ll stop noticing it. The pile begins to seem normal. This tendency is the bane of operators (who stop seeing minor jam-ups and other missed opportunities), PM inspection (when people stopseeing deterioration), and lean maintenance efforts (when people stop recognizing waste). Sometimes we have to shake up our normal methods of seeing. TPM is first an extended class in seeing and investigating our productive effort, and second a continuing alarm clock to awaken the producers. But make quick productive use of your altered sight — in a day or two, most you slip back to being blind to the waste.
The maintenance department becomes an advisory group to help with training, setting standards, doing major repairs, troubleshooting, and consulting on maintenance improvement ideas. Maintenance departments are the specialists in major maintenance, major problems, problems that span several work areas, and trainers. Under TPM, maintenance becomes very closely aligned with production.
For TPM to work, maintenance knowledge must be disseminated throughout the production hierarchy. The old philosophy of “Produce at all costs, damn the torpedoes — full speed ahead!” will fall flat on its face with TPM. TPM needs some downtime in order to be successful. The operators must have complete, top level support throughout all phases of the transition and thereafter. Good maintenance practices, as highlighted by the article in Exhibit 1-2 on the following page, can contribute to the productive output and profit of the whole organization. It contributes to safety too.