Other Maintenance Improvement Methods

Over the past 10 years, a variety of management methods, such as total productive maintenance (TPM) and reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), have been devel- oped and touted as the panacea for ineffective maintenance. Many domestic plants have partially adopted one of these quick-fix methods in an attempt to compensate for perceived maintenance shortcomings.

Total Productive Maintenance

Touted as the Japanese approach to effective maintenance management, the TPM
concept was developed by Deming in the late 1950s. His concepts, as adapted by the Japanese, stress absolute adherence to the basics, such as lubrication, visual inspec-tions, and universal use of best practices in all aspects of maintenance.

TPM is not a maintenance management program. Most of the activities associated with the Japanese management approach are directed at the production function and assume that maintenance will provide the basic tasks required to maintain critical pro- duction assets. All of the quantifiable benefits of TPM are couched in terms of capac- ity, product quality, and total production cost. Unfortunately, domestic advocates of TPM have tried to implement its concepts as maintenance-only activities. As a result, few of these attempts have been successful.

At the core of TPM is a new partnership among the manufacturing or production people, maintenance, engineering, and technical services to improve what is called overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). It is a program of zero breakdowns and zero

defects aimed at improving or eliminating the following six crippling shop-floor losses:
•  Equipment breakdowns
•  Setup and adjustment slowdowns
•  Idling and short-term stoppages
•  Reduced capacity
•  Quality-related losses
•  Startup/restart losses

A concise definition of TPM is elusive, but improving equipment effectiveness comes close. The partnership idea is what makes it work. In the Japanese model for TPM are five pillars that help define how people work together in this partnership. Five Pillars of TPM. Total productive maintenance stresses the basics of good busi-ness practices as they relate to the maintenance function. The five fundamentals of this approach include the following:
1. Improving equipment effectiveness In other words, looking for the six big losses, finding out what causes your equipment to be ineffective, and making improvements.
2. Involving operators in daily maintenance This does not necessarily mean actually performing maintenance. In many successful TPM programs, oper-ators do not have to actively perform maintenance. They are involved in the maintenance activity—in the plan, in the program, and in the partner-ship—but not necessarily in the physical act of maintaining equipment.
3. Improving maintenance efficiency and effectiveness.In most TPM plans, though, the operator is directly involved in some level of maintenance. This effort involves better planning and scheduling better preventive mainte-nance, predictive maintenance, reliability-centered maintenance, spare parts equipment stores, and tool locations—the collective domain of the maintenance department and the maintenance technologies.
4. Educating and training personnel. This task is perhaps the most important in the TPM approach. It involves everyone in the company: Operators are taught how to operate their machines properly and maintenance personnel to maintain them properly. Because operators will be performing some of the inspections, routine machine adjustments, and other preventive tasks, training involves teaching operators how to do those inspections and how to work with maintenance in a partnership. Also involved is training super-visors on how to supervise in a TPM-type team environment.
5. Designing and managing equipment for maintenance prevention. Equip-ment is costly and should be viewed as a productive asset for its entire life. Designing equipment that is easier to operate and maintain than previous designs is a fundamental part of TPM. Suggestions from operators and maintenance technicians help engineers design, specify, and procure more effective equipment. By evaluating the costs of operating and maintaining Impact of Maintenance