Q 603. What is TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and explain its pillars? How does TPM compare against TQM (Total Quality Management)?

 

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Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) refers to initiatives that aim for plant and equipment maintenance and effectiveness. The ideality for TPM is that equipment is maintained so well that it is always available for production, it never fails, is never defective, and produces no safety incidents.

 

The Pillars of TPM are:

1. Autonomous Maintenance: focused on improving maintenance/operator skills.
2. Kaizen: continuous improvement by elimination of waste & improved productivity.
3. Planned Maintenance: preventative maintenance planning.
4. Quality Maintenance: reduction of defects, root causes, and quality programs.
5. Development (Early Equipment) Management: TPM can be very helpful in using the operators' knowledge to reduce maintenance issues and improve maintenance planning as well as auditing.
6. Training and Education: training, upskilling, and change management training are needed in good maintenance & quality programs.
7. TPM in Administration: aligning with administrative and non-maintenance-focused parts of the organization.
8. Safety, Health, and Environment: safety standardization and tracking.

TPM often ends up being the responsibility of the maintenance department; however, it should be an organization-wide initiative that gains involvement from all employees. This is why TPM should be a part of the overall Total Quality Maintenance (TQM) strategy of a customer-focused and continuously improving organization with employees involved at all levels.

 

TQM is an organization-wide quality management program focused on customer satisfaction, continuous improvement, and employee engagement. TQM aims to attain quality and productivity, while TPM focuses on the organization's optimal use of plant and equipment.

TPM stands for Total Productive Maintenance founded in Japan a systematic and holistic approach to equipment maintenance and strives to achieve overall equipment effectiveness, Zero Breakdowns, Zero defects and Zero Accidents.

TPM gives importance to maintenance in detail on both proactive and preventative aspect of maintenance to improve the operational efficiency of equipment. It removes the difference between production and maintenance roles and strongly emphasis the machine operators to maintain their equipment.

Implementing TPM creates a shared responsibility among the departments (between Maintenance, Production, Quality, Purchase, etc.,) and increases involvement of the operators from shop floor on maintaining their machines thus it improves their morale and very effective in improving productivity, reducing cycle times, and eliminating defects, etc.,

Before Implementing TPM, Basic condition’s needs to set right thru 5S. 5S is the systematic methodology used to organize the for workplace. Hence, 5S is Basic foundation for TPM.

·      Sort out waste (Seiri)

·      Systematic arrangement (Seiton)

·      Shine the workplace (Seiso)

·      Standardize (Seikietsu)

·        Sustain thru self-discipline (Shitsuke)

 

The main objective of TPM is to improve the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) of plant equipment. TPM focuses on the deterioration and production losses by creating the right environment between operators and equipment to create ownership.

Most of the companies appoints consultants from JIPM (Japan Institute of Planned maintenance) to Impart, Educate and Implement TPM culture

 

Implementation of TPM:

1.      Establish and Implement the basic conditions right through 5S Methodology.

2.      In 2023, JIPM Created a check list which can be used as Self-assessment and to check their eligibility level before applying for TPM

3.      Initial Evaluation of TPM level by JIPM consultants

4.      Initial introductory training

5.      TPM steering Committee formation

6.      Master plan for TPM Implementation

7.      Training Phase by Phase for all key personals for all eight pillars

8.      TPM policy and goals finalization

9.      Road map for TPM Implementation pillar wise

10.   Period assessment by Plant executives and JIPM

 

TPM Awards

JIPM provides 5 level of Awards in TPM and sub-category also available in each award.

Level 1 - TPM Excellence Award

Level 2 - TPM Consistency Award

Level 3 - TPM Special Award

Level 4 - TPM Advanced Special Award

Level 5 - TPM World class achievement

 

8 Pillars of TPM

TPM has 8 Pillars and each pillar will be having their own steering committee to monitor the implementation and its progress. Steering committee should comprises key personals from all functions similar to CFT.

Comparison against TQM

 

However, both TQM and TPM share a lot of similarities,

Ø  TPM and TQM are considered as two different approaches in maintaining and following the world class systems.

Ø  TQM is based on five cornerstones, i.e., The Product, The Process, The Organization, The Leadership and Commitment. Whereas, TPM is based on 8 Pillars.

Ø  TQM and TPM are used to increase the quality with effective utilization of resources and to delight customer. However, the road map for reaching the objectives is different.

 

TPM - Total Productive Maintenance

TPM focuses on total productivity of equipment throughout its life cycle. It is aimed at increasing machine & process reliability to support lean production. It targets total efficiency, 100% operational availability with respect to delivery, quality, safety & cost with the help of continuous improvement & lean tools such as 5S, JIT, etc.

It means total involvement of everyone in the process such as not only maintenance staff but production operators & quality staff as well.

The following are considered the TPM pillars which are mainly focused on proactive & preventive techniques for ensuring 100% operational availability.    

·         Autonomous maintenance: It gives operators ownership of their equipment; they are responsible for cleaning, lubrication & inspection of equipment. It helps to identify issues before it’s too late, such as machine breakdown.

·          Planned maintenance: It includes implementation of preventive and/or scheduled maintenance. It reduces machine breakdowns and unwanted stoppages. Also helps to reduce WIP inventory by improving machine/process reliability.

·         Quality maintenance: It involves integrating quality staff as well in the process for implementing continuous improvement activities to address recurring quality issues thus reducing the defects/scrap.

·         Focused improvement: It means improving equipment operation with the help of continuous improvement activities & tools used by proactive cross-functional teams.

·         Early equipment management: It means production, maintenance, engineering, quality everyone’s input & involvement in design/development of new machine or modification of a machine. It ensures quick operational readiness & reduce or eliminate failure, scrap & issues with installations/modifications.

·         HSE: Health, Safety & Environment ensures safe & healthy practices are being followed throughout the process which also meets environmental standards & regulations. It helps to provide a safe workplace for employees, promote sustainability & earn customer trust.

·         TPM in admin: It includes implementation of TPM across all functions such as sales, supply chain & logistics, customer service, HR & finance to increase efficiency, increase profits and customer satisfaction by reducing delays & improved quality.

·         Training & education: It involves training all employees to fill the skill gap. It can motivate & engage employees thus increasing employee satisfaction. It helps employees to do their jobs safer & efficient way and support TPM principles.

   

TQM – Total Quality Management & TPM   

TPM focuses on operational availability/equipment efficiency, whereas TQM has a broader focus and it’s involved with customer satisfaction by improving the quality of product or service. TPM is a Part of TQM. TQM involves employees, management, everyone at all levels within the organization.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a Lean concept, which is an all-inclusive approach towards equipment maintenance. This maximizes productivity of any production/manufacturing process(s) thus minimizing defects, breakdowns, and mishaps. 

 

8 key pillars of TPM:
Autonomous Maintenance (AM): Training and empowering the operators to own routine inspection, cleaning, lubrication and minor maintenance of the equipment.
Focused Improvement (FI): Here several tools like Ischikawa diagram, problem-solving techniques and Kaizen is used by cross-functional teams to identify, eliminate/reduce defects/errors & inefficiencies to make incremental improvements.
Early Equipment Management (EEM): This aims at design optimization and acquisition of any new equipment to certify the equipment reliability, its maintainability and capability to meet the production requirements.
Quality Maintenance (QM): This involves activities like mistake-proofing, process control and process capability improvement to focus on prevention of defects and errors through detailed root cause analysis of quality related problems.
Planned Maintenance (PM): This aims at scheduled & preventive maintenance activities to keep all the equipment in best condition. Maintenance schedules and procedures are developed basis the system data and historic information.
Training and Development (T&D): This covers both technical skills and problem solving for the operators to ensure that the staff have all the required skills & knowledge to perform their duties effectively.
Safety, Health, and Environment (SHE): This focuses on safety, well-being of the employees and the environment by promoting safe work practices, compliance, and reducing workplace hazards etc.
Administrative & Office TPM (A&OTPM): This replicates all the principles of TPM to administrative and office processes and focuses to reduce administrative waste, defects, and inefficiencies in non-production areas.

 

Both TPM & TQM aim to improve organizational performance; However, TPM is primarily concerned with equipment reliability and production efficiency, while TQM is focused on quality management, CSAT, and process improvement throughout the organization.

 

 

 

Total Productive maintenance ( TPM's) main objective is to eliminate waste, defects, accidents and breakdown by involving everyone in the organization in continuous improvement activities. 

 

Following are eight pillars of TPM.

 

1. Autonomous maintenance. - In manufacturing plant, Operators are given responsibility to clean and maintain equipment and machine. for example lean practices like 5S can help here to prevent break down and improve productivity at certain level.

 

2. Kaizen or focus improvement - Kaizen events or Blitz are planned with cross functional team to discuss and address concern/ issues related to machine and equipment's.

 

3. SHE ( Safety, Health and Environment ) - In includes both corrective and preventive measures related to employees health, safety and environment related issue like carbon emission. 

 

4. Quality Maintenance - To see products are defect free and avoid any re-work it is important to have quality maintenance for example preventive measures like production start up check list. Corrective measures like RCA .

 

5. Planned or schedule maintenance 

 

6. Training and Education of Operator.

 

7. Early management of new equipment's based on parts and life cycle.

 

8 Administrative work to ensure that SOP and all above pillar are manged.

 

TQM

 

TPM is apart of TQM which Broder concept. Total Quality management is customer focused and objective to deliver product defect free where as TPM focus on productivity improvement through machine and equipment maintenance.  Overall equipment effectiveness is important Key measures of TPM where as Defective parts per Mn ( DPPM) is key measure of TQM. 

TPM

 

Total Productive Maintenance is a methodology aimed at improving the efficiency and productivity of production processes through elimination of unplanned downtime, defects, accidents etc. TPM is a continuous improvement process which requires involvement of everyone from the team and is executed through implementation of its 8 pillars. The pillars of TPM are as follows:

 

1. Autonomous maintenance - Operators are trained to perform routine preventive maintenance activities - goal of this pillar is to improve ownership quality among team. Examples include cleaning, inspection, lubrication etc. 

2. Planned maintenance - Scheduled maintenance activities are to be done on machines. Goal of this pillar is to avoid unplanned downtime. This follows a pro active approach rather than reactive / post mortem approach. Scheduling is done based on historic data patterns. Planned maintenance can be of two types - preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance.

3. Quality maintenance - This pillars focus is to eliminate quality issues by analyzing the causes of defects. Goal of this pillar is to prevent defective products from being generated.

4. Focused improvement - This pillar focus is to make small improvements by analyzing present process, eliminating waste/ non value added activities etc. Main focus is to do consistent small improvements.

5. Early equipment management - This pillar is about utilizing knowledge of machines to machines design. Goal is to  achieve optimal performance from first production day.

6. Training - To execute all the TPM activities, it is vital to train team members on all aspects (problem identification, routine maintenance, team building etc.). Goal is to train all team members on all aspects of TPM.

7. Safety and environment - Goal of this is to provide safe and healthy workplace to all employees. This can be achieved by focusing on eliminating accidents, mishaps etc.

8. Administrative TPM - Although admin is not directly involved in production, TPM methodologies can be used to eliminate waste and improve efficiency in administrative operations.

 

TPM vs TQM

 

1. TPM is equipment focused while TQM is customer focused (both internal and external). (Eg.) KPI for TQM is customer satisfaction while KPI for TPM is machine uptime.

2. Goal of TQM is to improve quality of products / services while TPM is to improve efficiency of equipment. 

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance method that mainly focuses on reliability and sustainability of the equipment used in production by maintaining to get longer time production.

 

Top Pillars of TPM:

Equipment Quality checks. 

Proactive maintenance. 

Planned service maintenance. 

Predictive parts maintenance. 

Production maintenance. 

Learning and improvement. 

 

TQM Is Total Quality Management which is more production outcome & customer experience focused. TQM is mainly focused to improve quality and productivity while TPM is to improve cost of production by improving equipment longevity.

TPM is an organization-wide effort aimed at reducing loss due to equipment failure, defects, slowing speed. The purpose of TPM is to achieve an economic balance between prevention costs and total cost while reducing failure costs.

Below are important pillars of TPM for building a world class organization :

 

Focused Improvement:  As name stated, “ Focus improvement” , we improve the effectiveness and efficiency of machines and processes by identifying and eliminating losses and problems.

 

Autonomous maintenance: This pillar involves some activities like cleaning, lubricating the machines/ equipment, inspection and restore the equipment by empowering associates.

 

Planned Maintenance:  Regular inspections and machine-part replacement to eliminate or avoid unexpected breakdown.Preventive maintenance is part of it.

 

Quality Management:  Attention of this pillar is on preventing defective parts from machine or equipment by identifying root cause analysis, preparing quality checks, Operator training etc. Quality check supports to compare the product before and after the action taken against any breakdown in machine/ equipment.

 

Early equipment management: Under this category, we involve all cross functional departments, stakeholders for the decision or brainstorming about equipment design and its reliability .

 

Education and training: this pillar guide us to involve all equipment operators in developing maintenance skills, it can result in improving the reliability of equipment.

 

Safety, Health and Environment (SHE):  In this category, organization target is to build up safe & healthy place for employees and stake holders by working on eliminating hazards and complying with environment regulation.

Administration : This pillar extends the TPM principles to administrative, support, and service functions to eliminate waste, improve processes, and enhance efficiency in non-manufacturing areas.

 

How does TPM compare against TQM (Total Quality Management)?

 

An organization can excel growth in good amount  if both TPM and TQM concept implementation done accordingly because both concepts propel result towards good quality, performance, productivity and customer orientation. But if we discern both conceptual wise,  TQM systematize the management to achieve objectives continuously while TPM increases the equipment efficiency and drive hardware improvement-oriented culture.

 

There are some set of core value / principles of TQM on which organization is to operate like:

vCustomer focused

vTotal Employee Involvement

vProcess-Centered

vStrategic and systematic approach

vContinual improvement

vFact based decision making

vCommunications

vIntegrated system

Great answers from all. The best answer for clearly highlighting the comparison between TPM and TQM is from D. Nandakumar. Well done!