TPM Total Productive Maintenance

 TPM is stand for Total Productive Maintenance. TPM is a system that increase the effectiveness of machines and create safe environment by the activity involvement of each employee of the company. This system is Top to Down approach i.e. to start TPM System initiation is taken by the head of the company, after this top management is involved in TPM activities then middle management and then the employees on the shop floor. 

The objective of of tpm to increase the overall effectiveness of the equipment that is OEE by the actively involvement of all the employees. TPM is also lead to the continuous improvement in the company. In Kaizen individual or a function to continuous improvement where as in TPM each and every employee has common goal of continuous improvement.

In simple words we can say that TPM is nothing but proper cleaning of machine and near by area and daily of the machine which lead to zero breakdown, zero rejection and zero accident.

Total productive maintenance has eight pillars that are aimed to achieve the Goal of TPM: 

TPM Pillar 1: Autonomous Maintenance (Jishu Hozen)

TPM Pillar 2: Planned Maintenance

TPM Pillar 3: Quality Maintenance

TPM Pillar 4: Focused Improvement (Kobetsu Kaizen

TPM Pillar 5: Early Equipment Maintenance

TPM Pillar 6: Education and Training

TPM Pillar 7: Health, Safety & Environment 

TPM Pillar 8: TPM in Office Functions

TPM Pillar 1: Autonomous Maintenance (Jishu Hozen)
In Autonomous maintenance, no maintenance team is required, basic maintenance  activities that are carried out by shop floor workers include cleaning of machines, lubricating, oiling, and tightening of nuts and bolts, inspection, diagnosis of potential problems and other actions that increase the productive life of machines or equipment. This also help maintenance team to attend to more difficult or complex maintenance activities or issues.
The down time of machines or equipment is reduced as basic health condition is monitored and correct by operator of the machine. Operator also not wait for maintenance team to perform basic maintenance activities.

By implementing autonomous maintenance company have many benefits:
1. Skill level of operators will increase as they are aware about basic working and condition of the machine.
2. Maintenance team will spare to solve complex issues of the plant.

3. Life of machines and equipment will increase as daily lubrication and initial cleaning is done. Operator will attend small problem before they convert into larger one.

4. Overall productivity of the machine will increase as number of breakdown reduce.

5. Economical Industries will get benefits as they don't have to replace machine and equipments as often as they remain in good condition for more time.

TPM Pillar 2: Planned Maintenance

Planned maintenance is the scheduling of maintenance activities based on observed behaviour of machines such as failure rates and breakdowns. 

In other words, since there is a specific time to perform maintenance on equipment, we can schedule maintenance around the time when equipment is idle or producing at low capacity, rarely interrupting production.

TPM Pillar 3: Quality Maintenance

The quality maintenance pillar focuses on working design error detection and prevention into the production process. This pillar focus to find permanent solution of the problem instead to rushing to short term solution which is not permanent solution for the given problem or defect. This can be done thru brainstorming with everyone including in that function after that do fact varification and why-why analysis, by this we will permanent solution. 

Aim of Quality maintenance pillar is to reduce cost of poor quality, by doing the things correct in first time, so that no rework and scrap cost will increase.

TPM Pillar 4: Focused Improvement (Kobetsu Kaizen

The aim of this Pillar is to improve the process or system, for this cross functional team come and do brainstorming to find the improved system. 

Kaizen is done in this pillar with the help of employees from different departments. So that more preferable solution will come and generation of ideas will be more in numbers This pillar increases efficiency by reducing product defects and the number of processes while enhancing safety by analyzing the risks of each individual action. It also ensures improvements are standardized, making them repeatable and consistent.

TPM Pillar 5: Early Equipment Maintenance

Early Equipment Maintenance pillar is based on past experience of the machine so that the new machine has the the all functions or Kaizen done in previous machines so that at very first stage new machine will run as efficient as older machine. This pillar help to improve the quality and design of new equipment on the basis of past experience of production and maintenance team. 

Early Equipment Maintenance pillar is enable the equipment and machine with safety features, it also ensure that new machine has ease to clean and lubrication. Comfortable for operators so that fatigue level will reduce. Quantity and quality of products will also increase.

TPM Pillar 6: Education and Training

Most Important pillar of TPM is Education and training pillar. By this we can pillar increases the skill of employees about TPM and machine parts and tools. In the absence of knowledge and information TPM can be misunderstood and difficult to achieve TPM goal. This aim of Education and Training pillar is to take senior management, supervisor and workmen on common platform about understanding of TPM. This pillar also top to bottom driven, first senior management get traning about TPM and then supervisors and then operators.

Skill level is made for each employee and in this pillar it is ensure that any gap in skill level should should be zero, for this if required repeated training can be done or method of training can be changed for better understanding of the topic. 

TPM Pillar 7: Health, Safety & Environment

It is very important that every employee should work in safe and healthy environment. This not only make them safe but also increase quality and productivity of product and hence increase overall profitability. One of the main goal of TPM is ZERO ACCIDENT, this goal is achieved by this pillar. 

Cross functional teams are made to identify all unsafe conditions in the plant and make sure that all unsafe condition converted into safe condition they also make sure that no unsafe act also done by workmen in shop floor this will finally result in zero accident.

Safe and healthy environment change the the attitude of the workman towards his work which result in good quality product. As number of accidents will be low absenteeism will be low. Operator should mentally free for his work. To reduce number of accident one should identify the maximum number of unsafe condition and unsafe act so that the cross functional team work on it and reduce the number of unsafe condition and unsafe act.

TPM Pillar 8: TPM in Office Functions

Last pillar of TPM is office TPM or administrative TPM. Good company not only can find PCM to the shop floor but also extend to the offices of the management and other supporting functions like sales & marketing, R&D, etc. This will also help include everyone in TPM activity. Office TPM help how to eliminate the waste in the offices and work on the lean management so that the retrieval of files, documents, drawings can be track by any buddy and in very less time. Office cheap air will increase the transparency to find out the documents and the data which can help or used by anyone at any time. Office tpm is not only confine to the table or the almirahs and desktop of the computer, everything should be well labelled and well arranged.

Here we have completed all the 8 pillars of TPM each pillar can be taken individual as per the requirement of the company but it is more beneficial and more productive for the company if all the eight pillars can be taken.