Total productive maintenance (TPM) originated in Japan in 1971 as a method for improved machine availability through better utilization of maintenance and production resources.
Whereas in most production settings the operator is not viewed as a member of the maintenance team, in TPM the machine operator is trained to perform many of the day-to-day tasks of simple maintenance and fault-finding. Teams are created that include a technical expert (often an engineer or maintenance technician) as well as operators. In this setting the operators are enabled to understand the machinery and identify potential problems, righting them before they can impact production and by so doing, decrease downtime and reduce costs of production.
TPM is a critical adjunct to lean manufacturing. If machine uptime is not predictable and if process capability is not sustained, the process must keep extra stocks to buffer against this uncertainty and flow through the process will be interrupted. Unreliable uptime is caused by breakdowns or badly performed maintenance. Correct maintenance will allow uptime to improve and speed production through a given area allowing a machine to run at its designed capacity of production.
One way to think of TPM is "deterioration prevention": deterioration is what happens naturally to anything that is not "taken care of". For this reason many people refer to TPM as "total productive manufacturing" or "total process management". TPM is a proactive approach that essentially aims to identify issues as soon as possible and plan to prevent any issues before occurrence. One motto is "zero error, zero work-related accident, and zero loss".
Read more about Total Productive Maintenance: Introduction, History, Implementation, See Also
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