Maintenance …the TPM way
Ashok Puri
Director and India Head
Kaizen Institute India
We are using Japanese products in our day-to-day life as well as in the in industries. They are reliable than others and better in quality. They are also maintenance free and user / operator friendly.
Japan was known for bad quality products till they adopted Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) culture in 1972. Only by mere changing their work practices and Daily Work Management (DWM), a change was visible in the country within a few years. Japan has been ruling the World markets since then. Japanese manufacturers are present in practically every country of the world and lead the markets wherever they are present.
TPM was originally introduced in fabrication and assembly industry, particularly in the auto sector. Now it is more successfully and effectively being implemented in all the engineering & process industries.
In today’s competitive world, any industry has to produce Quality products at really competitive costs.
Before I take you into some of the fundamentals related to TPM ,let us ask a few questions concerning the meaning of the words . What is maintenance? According to some experts Maintenance is activity performed on a piece of equipment, or a machine , to keep it in excellent working condition and it also implies that the activity takes place before the malfunction occurs.
What is the difference then between preventive maintenance and maintenance. Don’t you hear the same word twice. It’s redundant. Maintenance by its nature occurs before something breaks down. After a machine has broken down ,you are not performing maintenance you are performing a repair. You are fixing something that is broken.. it no longer works.
So the real question for any company is ,Do you have a maintenance department or a repair department ? The real message here of TPM is to develop a maintenance focus, not limited to those individuals whose job title happens to contain the word maintenance ,but extending across all the functions in the operation.
Objective of a manufacturing unit: A good factory must be one that has 100% of its equipment run for 100% of the time with 100% capacity, producing 100% quality (this is what we call 100% Overall Plant Effectiveness). It is more important in a continuous process industry. Unlike in fabrication / assembly line, Chemical, Power, Paper, Cement, Metal, Oil/Gas based continuous process plants have different type of work environment as:
- Minor stoppages / breakdowns in single equipment can shutdown entire plant.
- Startup of plant takes more time, as a sequence of operations have to follow satisfying process conditions / logic.
- Energy / time / money lost for heating / starting reaction.
- Vertical startup (immediate full production) is not possible in many cases, causing normal production loss.
- Centralized control. Operators wait for instruction from Control Room.
- Immediate quality production is not possible in many cases. In process testing & corrections takes time.
- Rejected material produced until process stabilizes.
- Energy source also goes (steam/ hot gasses / captive power) with plant shutdown.
- Every shutdown reduces life of critical equipment due to generation of abnormal conditions.
- Critical spares used to be replaced for every cold startup.
- Panic when shutdown. Operators to ensure that every equipment / process must go in fail safe condition.
- Number of equipment outnumbered operators.
- Losses are huge even for a small breakdown
- High pressure and temperature environment, toxic gases or chemicals makes areas unsafe and accident-prone.
In a typical maintenance mindset.. the operators run the machines; maintenance people fix them when they break.
A preventive maintenance mindset is ..the operators run the machines; the maintenance people will change the oil every now and then, and fix the machines when they break.
A total productive maintenance mindset is one of ..everyone in the organization is responsible for and involved in our success. We will all work together ,as individual skill sets dictate, and we will keep our mechanical resources in outstanding condition ,to promote an environment of superb total quality and minimal variation during our production day. It’s as simple as that.
The people who operate the equipment are trained in and are responsible for daily and weekly maintenance activity. Tasks such as daily lubrication ,inspection of hoses and cables ,and weekly checks on the tightness and adjustment of various components are the responsibility of production associates.
TPM is the one associated with the Lean model of manufacturing and is found more effective in the 14 circumstances stated above. The objective of 100% OPE is attainable in process industries with work culture improvement supported by eight pillars. The pillars are:
Pillar Approach in Process Industry
Focused Improvement:
Making Loss-tree & cut losses, attack on wastes, improvement in OPE, improve bottlenecks, benchmarking with the best & continuous improvement on that.
Result: Higher profits with Cash value addition
Self-Maintenance:
Changes- “I operate, you maintain” to “I Operate, I maintain”,Cross-functional Teams (CFTs) spreads knowledge through One Point Lessons. They make cleaning / lubrication / inspection easy. CFTs own process/set of equipment, surface out & rectify process/equipment weaknesses, make standards & checklists. Hand over good equipment to operators. Changes come in 7 Steps.
Result: Low cost improvements, better OPE. Early detection of problems. Abnormalities free equipment & surroundings, visual controls. Knowledge enhancement
Planned Maintenance:
Organizes maintenance department in 7 steps. Focuses on specialized maintenance leaving day to day routine work to Self Maintenance teams. Increases equipment availability through Elimination of root-causes. Perform Predictive & Reliability Centered Maintenance. Deploy Kaizens horizontally.
Result: Zero breakdowns, Low maintenance cost, better OPE
Quality Maintenance:
Attacks origin (Man or m/c) of Customer complaint / rejections, makes in-process testing & controls simpler.
Results: Zero rejections / complaints. Market confidence
Education & training:
Nothing can be done without knowledge. Employees’ skill enhancement in four levels. These are
Results: Multiskilling, motivation
Office TPM:
Support manufacturing by faster availability of material, faster commercial departments, provide infrastructure to reduce losses.
Results: Faster offices, reduced work load. Satisfied internal / external customer
Safety, Health & Hygiene:
Safe working environment through elimination of unsafe areas & practices. Counter measure for unhygienic conditions & near misses. Addresses occupational Health & hazards.
Results: Zero accidents, ease in work, good-looking factory
Early Management:
Launching new product / byproducts. Major modifications for De-bottlenecking, cost & energy saving, ease in operation, Design of safe, rejection & maintenance free and high life cycle cost (LCC) equipment as per feed backs.
Results: A leading edge to company & more profits
As the first five of above bring changes in equipment / work practices, others help to change culture in totality as support functions and facilitate a faster change. PDCA cycle ensures continual improvement by teams.
TPM aims for:
- Zero accidents
- Zero losses
- Zero breakdown
- Zero Customer complaint / rejection
- Zero Pollution
- Zero Defects and
- Maintenance prevention for longer periods
The success of TPM comes through the commitment and involvement of Top Management through role model, and small group activities of employees with changing of attitude & adoption.
TPM deployment has an approach of walk the talk. Senior management teams demonstrate their commitment by creation of some Managers’ Model Areas at different locations in the plant. Champions are created by this activity to further multiply the deployment. Involvement of senior management in the beginning itself gives them a feel of possible issues to be addressed in future at the time of shop floor employees would take over these activities. They will facilitate better. Team competitions are the motivating & driving factors in it.
With the 12-step deployment plan, TPM improves equipment, working culture and gives sustainable results. It moves in steps / sub-steps and teams have to pass through an audit before moving to next step / sub steps. So the monitoring of step vise progress in all the areas is easy.
It is very easy to adopt TPM in a continuous process industry as these have many stationary and stand by equipment to work. Good results after working on standby equipment boost the moral of teams. They find better ways for horizontally deployment on others. Since all the operations are in sequence in a continuous process industry, good results are immediately visible to all.
TPM creates an atmosphere of learning and sharing. After sometime the elevated moral of employees drives the system & change culture. It goes bottom up.
Below are some major losses in process industries:
- Shut down loss
- Production adjustment loss
- Equipment failure loss
- Process failure loss
- Normal production loss
- Abnormal production loss
- Quality defect loss
- Reprocessing loss
- Yield loss
- Energy loss
- Management loss
- Inventory loss
A quantum leap is being noticed in all the TPM implementing companies in our country in the form of:
- Higher OPE (Overall plant effectiveness)
- Lower Losses & low cost improvements
- Owner ship & confidence in employees
- Shared responsibility for common goal
- Good looking factory
- Safe & healthy work environment
- Profits
Organizations can be assisted in TPM deployment through committed instructors and expert consultants. Following basic awareness program, the experts propagate the culture through various workshops. Champions can be created in course of deployment itself who take the movement forward.
A serious organization can thus take TPM as a Zero Abnormality Movement (ZAM).
Many organizations across the globe are reaping high profits through deployment of such movements and are in the process of proving to the world what quality maintenance is possible and it can do a lot good to the organizations