For more articles about TPM, use the drop down menu in the top left corner. This is the introduction article

The foundation for an efficient factory is smooth running machinery. Therefore everyone – from operator to maintenance engineer – should make joint efforts to improve the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). This philosophy is the heart of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). Small multidisciplinary teams, who ‘own’ machines or production lines, improve the OEE thereof, step-by-step.   
To give the program focus, attention is given to management ‘pillars’ like autonomous maintenance, preventive maintenance, training, security and standardization of working methods. The ultimate goal: zero errors, zero work-related accidents, and zero losses!

All efficiency improvement methods aim to improve productivity and reduce losses, says the Dutch TPM-consultant Ton van Kollenburg. 'Besides that, all methods share a cyclical plan-do-check-act approach’

'I think it is typically Western, that different business disciplines have developed their own line of approach. In Japan, there is less parochialism. Only here, you see a strict separation between for example Lean manufacturing and the Theory of Constraints, both developed from a logistic perspective, and Six Sigma, which was invented by quality managers.’

Also maintenance technicians developed their own view on improvement. Their most important tools are Reliability Centered Maintenance and Total Productive Maintenance, as discussed in this article.

TPM: Popular in the (semi-) processing industry, in food production and among automotive suppliers

Examples of companies that apply TPM:

• Delicia
• Heineken
• Lassie
• Nedalco
• Solvay (with TPM as a stepping stone for WCM)
• Unilever (with TPM as a stepping stone for WCM)
• Outokumpu

The field of application of TPM is wide. This is illustrated nicely by applications in Japan. There you find TPM-implementations in food and chemical industry, metal industry, the automotive sector and in machine factories.

Shared responsibility
Nearly all industrial production processes are carried out with the aid of machines. So it doesn’t sound bad at all to focus on the machinery, if you want to increase the productivity. The basic principle of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is, that everyone should start to feel responsible for maintenance. Note, that this also encompasses ‘improvement’ of the machinery. According to the TPM-philosophy, a machine functions worst at the moment it was bought. After that, the goal is to find and eliminate hidden defects. That is the basis for continuous improvement!

TPM is a Japanese method. However, the story of TPM begins in America, where concepts for preventive maintenance were already developed in the forties, among others as part of the Training Within Industry (TWI) program.

TWI was developed during WOII in American factories. The goal was to quickly train new workers, as a replacement for employees who had left as soldiers. TWI introduced for the first time a scientific approach to process improvement. Today, this approach is known as PDCA, or plan-do-check-act, and it became deepley embedded in the Lean approach of Toyota.

Hein Winkelaar¹, TPM-manager at PURAC Biochem, thinks this history of preventive maintenance is the reason why Americans nowadays find it sometimes difficult to accept TPM. ‘The Japanese assume a shared striving for improvement in small steps, which they call Kaizen. They say that mapping what has to be improved comes first, next everyone should try to prevent problems themselves. This problem-preventing attitude and shared responsibility is what they call autonomous maintenance. Implementing a formal preventive maintenance programme is considered as the next step. Americans don’t agree. They say that everything starts with preventive maintenance.’

Total employee participation
In the beginning of the sixties, several Japanese companies studied the preventive maintenance methods in the US. That lead to the establishment of the Japanese Institute for Plant Maintenance (JIPM).

The phrase TPM came up for the first time in 1961, inside the Japanese company Nippondenso. At that moment, this supplier to the automotive industry carried out a project named  'productive maintenance with total employee participation.'

Seiichi Nakajima, employed within the Japan Institite of Plant Maintenance (JIPM), worked out the TPM-ideas in a scientific way. Among others, he developed a phased implementation process, originating from eight management pillars. The first three of these are striving for continuous improvement and introducing autonomous and preventive maintenance. 

Raising consciousness
'The implementation of TPM starts with raising the consciousness of hidden losses’, explains Van Kollenburg. ‘One example is a machine failure, or time needed for a machine set-up. Also if a machine cannot run at full speed, or if it delivers inferior products this is considered as a loss-making activity.’
 
In a ‘loss-free’ process, the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) of all machines equals 100%. In that case every machine always operates at full speed and delivers only products of good quality (see also the box: TPM-jargon).

In reality, the OEE often only is 40-50%. It is the goal of TPM to raise the OEE gradually, per machine, to at least 80%. ‘We start with a pilot-project, in which we measure the OEE of one particular machine. First, we do this simply with pen and paper. This has the advantage that all people concerned will get a feeling for the things that are influencing the OEE.’

Continuous improvement
At the same time, overdue maintenance is carried out. This is part of tidying the work floor, which is called a Total Clean Out. This, followed by the formal implementation of 5S clears the way for implementing the first pillar of TPM: continuous improvement.

'At that moment the first small and multidisciplinary team is formed, which starts to tackle one specific problem that limits the OEE. The project they carry out is called a small group activity or SGA. In a SGA-team usually there are both machine operators and mechanics, and besides that for example quality inspectors and/or logistic managers. The advantage is that the whole group starts to feel responsible for ‘their’ machine or production line.’

With TPM, small but multidisciplinary teams gradually improve the Overall Equipment Effectiveness of their machines or production lines, by way of 'small group activities'. (photo Purac)

Owner
The team becomes owner of the performance of their machines. This results in a cultural shift. For example “I operate, you repair”, is replaced by “We, as operator and engineer, share the responsibility for keeping our installation working”

Problems, to be dealt with by the SGA-team, are selected by way of a Pareto-analysis. Then, the team will search for the root cause of the problem. An Ishikawa-diagramme, to map causes and consequences in a fishbone structure, can be helpful. Sometimes the more extended CEDAC-method is used as well, this acronym stands for Cause Effect Diagram with Additional Cards.

'When the SGA-team has detected a root cause of a problem, they will send a proposal for a resolution to their senior management. Included is a cost-benefit analysis. If the solution is approved, it will be implemented. Finally, if will be checked if the OEE is improved.'

Step-by-step
After that, the SGA-team continuous by attacking the next problem, that then limits the OEE the most. This way, the OEE is improved step-by-step.

This endlessly repeated improvement cycle is however only the first step of TPM. When that ‘pillar’ is implemented, seven more management pillars should follow. ‘Pillar number two concerns the introduction of autonomous maintenance. After that, maintenance is not only a task for technicians, but involves everyone, between the bounds of their expertise. For example, operators should inspect their machines regularly, and they can sometimes clean and/or lubricate their equipment themselves.

Pillar three refers to making a schedule for preventive (and sometimes also predictive) maintenance. Pillar four entails a training programme, to make all employees familiar with the TPM-principles and continuous improvement, not only in general bit also in relation to their own place of work.

The fifth pillar, early management, deals with the development of new production processes and/or the purchase of new machines. In the latter case, during the selection process, the amount and method of maintenance are already taken into consideration.

‘I saw once that a new machine was installed with the door facing the wall. To prevent such things, early management is important.  Sometimes it can for example be handy if a machine has transparent panels, this simplifies the carrying out of inspection rounds.’

Pillars
Van Kollenburg thinks that the first four or five TPM-pillars are the most important. ‘However, I am not so charmed by thinking in pillars. I think that is one of the weakest points of TPM. The borders between the pillars are vague. Essentially, TPM should form a whole. Then it is for example possible that a SGA improvement-team discovers that it is necessary to raise the frequency of preventive maintenance.’

‘Companies with a lot of machines and or complex process control systems cannot leave out TPM’, Van Kollenburg concludes. ‘However, it is important to prevent local optimization. Therefore I advise to supplement TPM with a logistic improvement method like Lean manufacturing.’

Focus
To give the process improvement with TPM focus, strategy defining methods like Hoshin Kanri are often applied, for example by Heineken. First, it is then determined which losses should be reduced in a factory during the next year. Next, these priorities are translated into Key Performance Indicators (KPI's), first for the middle management level, and later for the operational level. This way, you get a cascade of KPI's. The idea is that finally, everybody knows how he or she can personally contribute to fulfill the improvement agenda!

>  For an introductory TPM-case see Purac below!

Case: Purac
Total Productive Management improves all business processes.

Within Purac, a company which makes lactic acid derivates, TPM is not ‘limited’ to Total Productive Maintenance. The idea is not only to optimize the manufacturing activities, the goal is to improve all business processes!. To stress that, the employees speak of Total Productivity Management.

Hein Winkelaar¹ is TPM manager at PURAC in the Netherlands. ‘CSM, our parent-company, acquired a factory from Unilever which produced bakery ingredients . The management of CSM was astounded how much the employees of that plant knew about TPM. Therefore they decided to implement that method within the whole CSM group. That way, TPM was introduced in our factory too, this happened three years ago’, Winkelaar explains.

'I am the project manager for the rollout within Purac’, he adds. ‘However, it is the intention that my job will become superfluous in time. It is typical for TPM that in the end, responsibilities are handed over to the people on the shopfloor.’

The implementation of TPM is guided by the Japan Maintenance Associate Consultants (JMAC) in Paris. 'This is the European branch of JIPM, the Japan Institute for Plant Maintenance. JMAC also cooperates with Unilever, this explains why we choose for their participation'

'We follow strictly the rules of the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance. So, the implementation is done pillar-by-pillar. There are more then hundred steps, but we do not experience that as bureaucratic. On the contrary, TPM stimulates solution-oriented thinking. By way of the TPM-boards with OEE-charts, our people see the actual problems and start thinking about possible solutions.’

      
To make hidden losses visible, often a Total Clean Out is necessary (photo Purac)

Although TPM seems complicated, in practise this not the case. 'The necessity to implement all the TPM pillars is a logical consequence of the first pillar, continuous improvement by searching for and eliminating losses.'

Winkelaar clarifies this, by a description of the pilot project for TPM within Purac. This was done in a factory that produces calcium lactate powder. ‘We started to define OEE-indexes for all the machines in that plant. Next, we did a Pareto-analysis to map which things were limiting the OEE-indices the most. That turned out to be two things. First, a pump which started to leak every three weeks. And second, a communication problem between two departments.’

Human actions
The latter issue requires an explanation, because OEE-indexes in general only include sub-indices that concern the machine efficiency, such as the availability, performance and product quality. ‘This is true. But if you do that, you pass by the fact that 80% of the efficiency losses are caused by human actions. Therefore we sometimes include as many as ten sub-indices in our OEE-calculations. For example we take into account if raw materials are supplied in time. In addition, timely transportation form one factory to another can be included. This brang the afore-mentioned communication problem to light.’

An improvement group was formed to solve the problem. ‘In that team were two people from each factory, and besides that a mechanic and a quality manager. The good thing about TPM is, that such a team often finds a solution by themselves in 70% of the cases. Here, the solution turned out to be, that the factories should communicate about their status by e-mail. In addition, the responsibilities of the departments were laid down in separate OEE sub-indices. The supplying department now has its own index. So, it is plain when they do not meet what is promised.’

In a similar way the other issue was resolved, the frequent occurring of pump leakages. ‘In that improvement team, someone from the pump supplier was included. It became clear soon, that a suboptimal packing was used, and that there weren’t timely inspections for leakages. So, pillar one, focused improvement, in this case automatically lead to pillar three: preventive maintenance’
 
Continuous improvement is a cyclical process, adds Winkelaar. 'When we had solved the biggest problems in the powder factory, we continued with the problem that was at that moment limiting the OEE the most. That turned out to be a packaging line, where about 2,5% of the packaged products were rejected, caused by contamination. Dirty sensors turned out to be unable to detect the packages. In addition, conveyer belts sometimes made black stripes on them.

Total Clean Out
The solution: a Total Clean Out.  'To stick to the improvement, we enrolled pillar two of TPM, autonomous maintenance. From that moment on, operators cleaned their machines themselves. To make that possible, racks with tools were placed in their neighbourhood.’
 
Winkelaar returns to the problem with the leaking pump, to give another example which clarifies the relation between the TPM-pillars. ‘If you standardize the start-up procedure, the pump is overloaded less often. As a consequence the frequency of preventive maintenance can be reduced.’

The experience that is gained by applying the first four pillars, becomes of use when pillar five is brought to bear: Early management. The goal of that is to take maintenance into consideration when new equipment is purchased.

The first two pillars of TPM are now fully implemented within Purac. ‘Last  year TPM saved us as much as one million Euro. We are making more products with the same production capacity, and our maintenance costs have dropped.’

The final goal is to compete for the yearly awards of the Japan Institute for Productive Maintenance. 'In that way, we can show our customers and shareholders that we are becoming a world class manufacturer.’

¹) Hein Winkelaar has left Purac and started a business of his own.

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