TPM Manufacturing Meaning
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a lean manufacturing philosophy (a production method aimed at reducing the time and cost of production) developed in the early 1950s. TPM manufacturing strives for “total perfection” with no breakdowns, no defects, and no accidents by positioning maintenance operations as a core, value-added function rather than a cost center.
In other words, tpm in lean manufacturing reframes maintenance as a competitive advantage because it has the potential to greatly reduce unscheduled downtime and lost revenue.
- Sharing the responsibility of maintaining equipment throughout the entire organization
- Continuously re-evaluating and improving processes and procedures
- Eliminating waste (anything that does not provide value to the customer)
- Keeping workspaces clean and organized
- Using a variety of planned maintenance strategies to reduce the likelihood of equipment failure
- Implementing quality checks throughout the production process to reduce defects and rework
- Prioritizing the safety and well-being of all employees
- By implementing TPM correctly, manufacturing companies can save millions of dollars in downtime per year.
- Read on to learn more about how TPM and lean manufacturing work, how to implement TPM manufacturing in your facility, and how a CMMS can hel
How Does It Work?
TPM manufacturing makes use of a variety of planned maintenance strategies to drive down the cost of maintenance and reduce the likelihood of breakdowns. Planned maintenance is a proactive approach to maintenance that focuses on minimizing downtime even if that means intentionally letting an asset run to failure.
Remember, some assets need more maintenance than others, so using a blanket maintenance strategy for all assets is ineffective. A TPM manufacturing strategy must involve a mix of the following maintenance strategies:
- Preventive maintenance – Scheduled maintenance that is performed regularly on a piece of equipment to prevent unexpected failure. Reserved for high-value equipment.
- Corrective maintenance – Checking and fixing overall equipment effectiveness when it shows initial signs of wear in order to prevent further damage.
- Breakdown maintenance – Intentionally allowing low-value or easily replaceable assets to run to failure as a cost-saving strategy.
How to Implement TPM in The Manufacturing Industry
Companies must train their employees and establish new processes to ensure that everyone in the facility from operations to plant maintenance and engineering is contributing to maintenance.
In some cases, implementing the TPM process in a manufacturing company requires making changes to the company’s organizational structure, production system, and employee responsibilities.
TIP: To avoid overwhelm, choose a pilot area to start with perhaps a single machine or production line then spread it to other parts of the business.The process for implementing TPM manufacturing looks something like this:
Identify a starting point
Pick one machine or pilot area to start with. For example, you might start with autonomous maintenance: requiring machine operators to clean, inspect, and lubricate the equipment they use rather than designating a technician to do it. If you want to reduce risk, select a machine that is not critical to production OR choose a machine you rely upon heavily if you want to prove the benefits of TPM manufacturing fast.
Gather baseline data
Your baseline data gives you something to compare against so you can measure the results of your TPM plan. Examine your failure metrics like MTTR (Mean Time To Repair), MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures), and MTTF (Mean Time To Failure). The goal of TPM in the manufacturing industry is to improve these failure metrics. Do a root cause analysis to find out what’s causing your biggest problems eg: excessive emergency maintenance on a particular asset. Here are some other data points to examine:
- Labor hours – If technicians report excessive labor hours to complete a particular work order, find out why. Perhaps they’re missing the right equipment or the instructions were unclear.
- Work order history – Track the number of breakdowns and repairs for critical assets per time period.
- Maintenance backlog – A long maintenance backlog suggests technician wrench-on time is low or you have a staff/equipment shortage.
- Operating time – Machine runtime tells you how long a machine runs continuously without failing.
- Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) – OEE is the gold standard for measuring manufacturing productivity. It defines the percentage of manufacturing time that is truly productive, where 100% means you are manufacturing only good parts as fast as possible with no stop time.
Educate the workforce
Train employees on what TPM manufacturing is, why it matters, how it affects their day-to-day workflow, and how it will benefit them as well as the company. Remember, everyone in your organization needs TPM manufacturing training, even administrative and management staff.
TIP: Implementing TPM should not be a top-down approach. Identify early adopters or enthusiasts at all levels of the organization who can help champion the rollout and cascade knowledge to other employees.
Implement a preventive maintenance program in the starting area
Come up with a preventive maintenance plan for your most high-value asset(s). This can be a piece of equipment that is critical to production and/or an item that is expensive to repair or replace. To start with, use the maintenance frequency suggested by the equipment manufacturer. As you gather more data, you can refine your PM frequency to avoid over- or under-maintaining the asset.
Expand TPM manufacturing to other parts of the business
You do not need to perfect the pilot area before expanding TPM manufacturing to other parts of the business. Perhaps you start with preventive maintenance and then work on improving your inventory management to make sure you have parts in stock when scheduled maintenance comes due. Get your early adopters to champion the TPM rollout for you.
The Eight Pillars of TPM Manufacturing: Procedures to Put Into Practice
1. Autonomous maintenance
The operations team monitors and maintains the condition of their own equipment and work areas by performing minor maintenance tasks like cleaning, inspecting, and lubricating equipment. This begins by getting the machine to a “like new” standard and keeping it there.
2. Planned maintenance
Planned maintenance is the best way to avoid unscheduled downtime. Regular maintenance keeps assets in optimal condition, improves compliance, and reduces customer complaints. Programmed maintenance that requires machines to shut down should be done after regular work hours.
3. Quality integration
Implement tight quality management procedures to reduce defects, rework, and scrap parts. The goal is to achieve zero defective products in lean manufacturing.
4. Focused improvement
Keep reiterating your processes and procedures based on the latest data. Review your failure metrics and collect information from machine operators. Your team must be proactive and willing to brainstorm different approaches and try new methods.
5. Early equipment management
Choosing high-quality equipment and parts from the start sets you up for success, for example, an IoT-enabled machine that can self-diagnose malfunctions. Use your maintenance reports to anticipate and plan for parts and equipment life cycles. Just-in-time inventory management uses predictive analytics to order and stock parts ahead of scheduled maintenance. You may need to adjust your preventive maintenance and routine maintenance cycles based on your data.
6. Training and education
TPM Implementation should be a companywide manufacturing effort. Educate machine operators on how to keep their work areas clean and functional. Make sure executive management supports the implementation in terms of budgets, time allocated for training, and providing guidance on processes and procedures. TPM manufacturing helps improve employee morale, retention, and efficiency.
7. Safety, health, and environment
TPM safety standards aspire towards zero accidents, zero pollution, and no employee burnout. Proper maintenance of equipment and buildings reduces occupational hazards. Additionally, be sure to minimize workers’ exposure to harmful chemicals such as asbestos, radiation, and fumes.
8. TPM in administration
Administrative workers and executive management play an instrumental role in TPM. Don’t just leave it to the “worker bees.” Everyone must be proactive and focused on continuous improvement.
How a CMMS Can Help with TPM Manufacturing
A CMMS is indispensable when it comes to implementing TPM at a manufacturing facility. This is because TPM manufacturing relies heavily on having up-to-date, accurate maintenance data and using that data to continuously refine processes and procedures. Inventory management, work order scheduling, autonomous maintenance, and preventive maintenance features are also essential to achieving TPM manufacturing goals of zero waste and zero equipment downtime.
Work order management
Request, schedule, assign, and track work orders in real-time while keeping track of labor hours and money spent. Prioritize work orders according to criticality and other ongoing maintenance tasks.
Asset management
Track the usage and performance of equipment using detailed asset profiles. Streamline all procedures and maintenance for an asset, from maintenance scheduling to repairs. Manage all asset tracking and asset-related workflows in one place.
Preventive maintenance
Schedule recurring maintenance tasks automatically to ensure optimal equipment availability and asset life cycle.
Inventory management
Keep track of spare parts. Track which parts have been used for a particular work order or repair, how many parts are left in your inventory, plus how using a spare part contributes to the total cost of a work order.
Employee management/training etc.
Work orders come with comprehensive instructions, checklists, parts lists, so you save time training and onboarding technicians.
Mobile-first interface
Access your software on any mobile device, designed with a user-friendly interface.
Reporting and analytics
Track important maintenance KPIs, forecast upcoming expenses and evaluate technician performance. Track uptime vs. downtime, the cost of maintenance, and the cost of downtime.
Tech stack integrations
Some solutions have open APIs that allow you to integrate with your existing tech stack.
Other Resources
What Are the Goals of TPM Manufacturing?
Reactive maintenance refers to all unplanned maintenance that occurs in response to equipment failure. However, reactive maintenance does not necessarily constitute an emergency. For example, say a vehicle is critically low on oil. While driving it continuously could cause irreversible engine damage, it won’t necessarily jeopardize the driver’s life.
While this means maintenance is urgently required, it is not considered an emergency. The difference between reactive and emergency maintenance is in the timing and urgency of repairs. Reactive maintenance occurs to maintenance that is done when equipment has already broken down.
Why You Need TPM in Your Manufacturing Facility
Manufacturing plants are asset-intensive operations, which means that equipment maintenance can literally make or break the company’s bottom line. To that end, the ultimate goal of a total productive maintenance system is to achieve near-perfect production.
1. Eliminating production bottlenecks – Getting rid of breakdowns, work stoppages, and reduced speed resulting from poorly performing equipment.
2. Eliminating waste – Reducing rework, scraps, and defects.
3. Improving the utilization of production assets and plant capacity – Extending asset life cycle by using optimal maintenance strategies for each asset.
4. Achieving near-perfect production – By practicing all of the above, manufacturing plants can bring themselves closer to this ideal.
In a manufacturing plant, poorly maintained machines can derail production, cause the company to lose revenue, and jeopardize its reputation. The goal of lean manufacturing is to keep machines running in optimal condition.
By properly maintaining equipment using a preventive maintenance plan for your high-value assets and mitigating breakdown risks, plant managers can reduce scrap, stoppages, and product defects while improving production maintenance quality.
Fewer equipment breakdowns mean your machines are running for longer periods of time, increasing your overall output.
Most companies significantly underestimate their true downtime, and over 80% of companies are unable to calculate their actual downtime costs accurately.
Here are some other ways TPM manufacturing can improve output, productivity, and quality at your facility:
- Better quality products – By doing preventative quality checks, manufacturers can reduce product defects and customer complaints
- Minimized delays, breakdowns and production stops – Clean, well-lubricated equipment is less likely to break down unexpectedly. Secondly, making basic maintenance tasks and root cause analysis the responsibility of the entire facility rather than just the maintenance team increases the likelihood that defects will be detected in advance.
- Lower maintenance costs – In the long run, reducing unplanned downtime with TPM manufacturing can save organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.
- Better employee retention and engagement – A clean, hazard-free workspace where technicians have access to tools that are in good working condition is key to recruitment and retention in manufacturing plants.
What Is TPM in Lean Manufacturing?
The TPM manufacturing philosophy stands on eight TPM pillars, with 5S as its foundation. The 5S quality tool is derived from five Japanese terms beginning with the letter ‘S’ and is used to create a workspace suited for lean production.
If this looks overwhelming, think of it this way: 5S explains the principles of Total Productive Maintenance or the “spirit” of it, if you will, while the eight TPM pillars refer to the practices you must put in place or the “how to do it.”
5S: The Principles of TPM manufacturing
- Seiri (Sort): Identify and set aside the tools, parts, and instructions you need. Remove anything you don’t need from the workspace.
- Seiton (Set in order): Organize tools nearly by arranging and identifying parts for ease of use.
- Seiso (Shine): Clean and sanitize the work area, removing unneeded parts as necessary.
- Seiketsu (Standardize): Conduct seiri, seiton, and seiso daily to maintain a workplace in perfect condition through regular cleaning and maintenance.
Shitsuke (Sustain): Repeat the first four steps over and over until it becomes second nature. Only then can Total productive Maintenance become standard operating procedure.