When you adopt a company Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) plan, you involve everyone in machine maintenance, upkeep, reliability, and overall performance.
Main TPM concepts involve improved machine performance, reduced downtime, and improved productivity.
These concepts are similar to Total Quality Management (TQM). TPM implementation involves employee empowerment, benchmarking, documentation, and other TQM tools. Nippondenso and other Japanese TPM pioneers may have been in the automotive sector, but TPM strategies can benefit manufacturers of all types.
Improved machine performance
Machine operators are key to reducing equipment downtime and should be the first line of defense. Who better to detect minor changes in equipment behavior than those who work with the equipment daily? Operators know how equipment should handle and what it should sound like. They know the output character and integrity. They’re therefore the best candidates to know when machines require extra attention. Attentive, engaged operators increase productivity as a direct result of their participation in TPM plans.
Reduced downtime
Daily machinery maintenance is a TPM cornerstone. Such detailed attention to your equipment asset enables you to detect minor changes in performance that could cause major changes to your productivity. Additionally, daily maintenance can prevent small problems from escalating while improving machine performance over the short and long-term. An efficient machine is a productive machine.
Improved productivity
No one needs “busy work.” TPM is not simply a matter of checking off boxes. It’s an immersive action plan to improve overall plant productivity. Spending five minutes each day to check equipment is far less downtime than could occur if the machine breaks. And we all know time is productivity and money.
TPM withstands the test of time simply because it makes good business sense. You can certainly run a piece of equipment as hard as possible as long as possible without investing in TPM. But at the end of the equipment’s shortened life cycle, you’d have to choose between either an expensive repair bill and lost productivity or an expensive equipment replacement bill and lost productivity.
Like any initiative, TPM requires discipline and vigilance.
At Global Electronic Services, we understand the importance of proper equipment maintenance as it relates to your bottom line, and we understand how to help you encourage your employees to fully buy into your TPM plan.