What is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)? Learn it now!

The tool TPM - or Total Productive Maintenance - is an industrial device developed in the '70s by the Japanese Seiichi Nakajima. It has a fundamental concept to maximize the productivity and efficiency of a productive process, through the structured and consistent implementation of its 8 pillars of support.

This instrument aims to provide favorable conditions for a process to be able to operate in a standardized way and without unforeseen interruptions.

The support obtained by its 8 pillars, the TPM tool seeks to prevent certain undesirable industrial situations from occurring, such as:

• Disorganized, prolonged and constant corrective stops
• Delays in delivery due to maintenance problems
• Need to have high stocks due to low process reliability
• Have a high index of defective products because of process instability
• Fail to maintain an improvement made in the process or product

In this article, you will discover the relationship between TPM tool and Lean Manufacturing and to understand why companies like Johnson & Johnson or Coca-Cola for example adopt these 8 pillars in their production processes. Let's go?

What is TPM Total Productive Maintenance?

The TPM is a tool to minimize errors and failures and promote total productive maintenance. In addition to the focus on equipment maintenance, there is also an aspect that values ​​the involvement of everyone to increase the quality of manufactured products and ensure "zero breaks", "zero defects" and "zero accidents".

Although employee involvement is very important, a mentality change is also necessary, in order for a new organizational culture to be established in the company that wishes to employ the TPM tool.

This culture must be based on bringing man, machine and product closer together, in order to avoid mistakes.

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Relationship between Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Lean Manufacturing

After being exposed to the business world in the '80s, the Lean Manufacturing System integrated the TPM tool quickly into its wide range of lean tools to meet a particular strategic goal: achieving greater stability - a highly necessary condition for the lean model to function.

Do you remember that the basic goal of Lean Manufacturing is to combat waste?

So, to combat their 8 waste corporate and promote the performance increase of an organization, Lean adopts 4 fundamental principles: its 2 pillars of support Just in Time and Jidoka, its concept Takt Time and its philosophy Kaizen.

But all these principles need to be based on the predictability of a productive process. The basis for any change or improvement in these processes is standardization, consistency, and stability: both consequences achieved through the implementation of the TPM tool.

8 Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) pillars

1. Autonomous Maintenance

This pillar of support consists of training the workforce for the use of simple maintenance techniques - ranging from cleaning and lubrication to more specific adjustments and machine adjustments.

Its purpose is to encourage the relationship between the production and maintenance employees, as well as to lead the beneficial exchange of their experiences. With this, the application of efficient activities that prevent the appearance of problems of operation in the production process becomes much more effective.

2. Planned Maintenance

The purpose of this pillar is to prevent the machine from operating due to unforeseen problems arising in the process.

To meet this requirement, planned maintenance relies primarily on two forms of action: preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance.

The first one seeks to prevent the interruption of the machine through the management of its spare parts. The second seeks to investigate constantly and periodically indications of any abnormality in the process so that the combat is later planned.

3. Quality Maintenance

The purpose of quality maintenance is to prevent defective products from being generated.

This is achieved through the implementation of standard operating procedures, Poka-Yoke prevention, detection and also by the use of control charts connected to the fundamentals of Statistical Process Control, SPC.

Ensuring that quality is conducted in a preventive way is the responsibility of this pillar.

4. Focused Improvement

The performance indicator OEE seeks to measure the overall effectiveness of equipment, considering its levels of availability, efficiency, and quality.

It brings as one of its goals the opportunity for the process, quality, production and maintenance professionals to understand and discuss which of these factors are most important to effectively deploy tools for performance and productivity improvement.

5. Early Equipment Management

The life of a product has been decreasing constantly, has it not? This is due to the technological and industrial advances that are daily developed in the corporate environment.

To ensure that there is an efficient system to rapidly market new products and processes, it is essential to analyze thoroughly and in advance the equipment and products involved.

Through this preventive analysis, it becomes possible to adopt strategies that seek to make the product easier to produce and the machine easier to operate.

6. Training

Investing in training and empowerment for all employees of a company is something seen as essential nowadays. New systems and technologies are being developed and a company must ensure that the skills and competencies of its workforce continue to evolve with this progress.

It is daily that the sustainability of a business is won.

7. Safety and Environment

As important as preventing the production of defective products is to prevent the occurrence of accidents.

Adopting strategies that promote the safety of employees and prevent the aggression of undesirable products to the environment is the purpose of this seventh pillar of support of the TPM tool.

I don&rsquot need to point out that given these requirements, the motivation of the company only tends to increase, right? We know that committed and motivated employees maximize the performance of an organization.

8. Administrative TPM

In administrative processes there are also waste and fighting them is essential to ensure the full performance of the most diverse sectors of a company.

To achieve this objective, the Lean Office and the 5S program are two excellent lean tools used to increase the performance of these processes.

The foundation of the 8 pillars of TPM: 5S

The 8 pillars of TPM begin with the implementation of the 5S program. Problems cannot be identified when the workplace is disorganized. Cleaning and tidying the workplace helps the team discover flaws, which is the first step towards improvement.

This program consists of 5 elements:

Seiri (Sort): Eliminate anything that is not really needed in the workplace

Seiton (Set in order): organize the remaining items

Seiso (Shine): Clean and inspect the work area

Seiketsu (Standardize): Create patterns to perform the three activities mentioned above

Shitsuke (Sustain): Ensure that the actions taken in the previous senses are regularly applied.

Intuitively, it's possible to imagine how 5S creates a foundation for a business to run efficiently and fluidly.

For example, in a clean, well-organized work environment, tools and parts are easier to find, as well as simplifying the identification of emerging issues such as leaks, spills, wear, and more.

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