| TPM
is built upon employee involvement.
It depends on participation and commitment by
operators, maintenance craftsmen, engineers, and
others to improve the organization’s equipment. The strength of TPM lies in the fact that the process
involves not only the operators and maintenance
craftsmen, but also engineering, purchasing,
supervision, management, and so on. It is also a major means to reduce costs, breakdowns and
quality defects.
Commitment
ultimately follows involvement and ownership,
but it has to be developed slowly.
It requires a cultural change in the way we
look at our jobs and responsibilities.
We are not seeking participation––we are
seeking commitment and ownership.
It takes a while to develop because you grow
commitment. You
cannot demand it.
That is one of the reasons it takes years to
fully integrate TPM.
It must become a habit we do on a regular
basis.
A mark of
success is when TPM is so interwoven with existing
practices, you can hardly see it.
I was conducting a Train-The-Trainer course for
some TPM coordinators for Baxter Healthcare.
Several had been to the Baxter plant in Marion,
North Carolina, which has been at TPM since 1986.
They remarked that it was so much part of the
work procedures and environment that you could hardly
tell the plant had TPM.
Now that is success.
With the emphasis on
process improvement, cost reduction/containment, and
improved quality though total participation, Total
Productive Maintenance could better be called Total
Productive Management.
It is built upon how we manage our equipment.
Operators, supervisors, maintenance, engineers,
and management have joint responsibility . Got it so far? Yes
No Maybe
World
Class Manufacturing Support
TPM
is a perfect fit to other organizational improvement
processes such as JIT and Total Quality Management (TQM).
It is the foundation for world class
manufacturing. It
provides the means to enable other programs and
processes to work well.
Think of it as the “teeth” for improvement
strategies.
By
identifying and resolving common and special causes,
TPM is a natural complement to Statistical Process
Control (SPC) and other quality efforts.
TPM doesn't solve all organizational or process
problems, but it does provide an excellent means to
improve equipment efficiency.
TPM is not a substitute
for other improvement processes.
Rather, it is a means to supplement those
efforts by addressing equipment related problems that
prevent the other processes from being as effective as
they could. As
the diagram on the next page shows, TPM is a base for
TQM and JIT. TPM,
as well as TQM and JIT, relies on a foundation of
Employee Involvement––enrolling many problem
solvers instead of a few staff problem solvers.
To be able to compete in a global marketplace,
we have to become world class.
As a company president once remarked, “we can
either talk about being world class like others, or we
can do it…I choose the latter.”
Click
here for more TPM resources
|
