Total Productive Maintenance takes a very structured approach in identifying the problems that limit equipment effectiveness and gives us the tools to address those problems.  More importantly, it enrolls employees in the problem solving process, thus building a sense of ownership and commitment––pride in their equipment.

TPM is not an overnight success.  It takes years to fully integrate your plant or organization.  Three to five years is quite common.  Unfortunately, many Americans are not long-term oriented and think that patience are those people who check into hospitals (sorry, that’s patients––not patience).  We are too busy seeking the quick fix.

I encourage you to read these sections dealing with the basic principles and fundamentals as it is important that you understand why  TPM is so important as well as how it works.  Sounds pretty interesting, doesn’t it?

History

The major credit for the development of TPM (remember, when you see the letters T P M in this book, just think TPM, they are one-and-the-same) goes to Seiichi Nakajima, an engineer from Japan who created Total Productive Maintenance.  It was developed in the early 1970’s as an outgrowth of productive maintenance––a hybrid of preventive and predictive maintenance and several engineering methods carried out through employee involvement. 

Nakajima was instrumental in incorporating the best of the evolving maintenance systems into an organized approach.  He began studying American preventive maintenance in the 1950’s and refined it over the next thirty years.  As a result of his work, Toyota was able to significantly reduce equipment related problems in its movement toward Just-In-Time (JIT).  By minimizing delays caused by equipment problems, TPM is a key contributor in streamlining the flow of production.  

Nakajima did an excellent  job in pulling these together into a highly effective process.  However, the major elements of TPM originated in the U.S.  Reliability and maintainability engineering, Life Cycle Costing, Zero Defects, preventive and predictive maintenance, Operator-Assisted Maintenance, and task teams were developed in the United States.  In fact,  George Smith, the founder of Marshall Institute, was invited to Japan in the 1950’s to teach the Japanese preventive maintenance concepts and was credited by Nakajima in his first English book on TPM, Introduction to TPM.  Nakajima was George’s technical interpreter while George was making the lecture circuit.