Tag: Total Productive Maintenance

What do we have to do to make sure our investment in TPM pays off? How can we ensure we reap the promised business benefits?

We can’t give you a magic wand that ensures instant results. But we can share with you these three vital activities practised by JIPM award winning companies, such as Coca-Cola Beverages, Panasonic and Tetra Pak.

You will notice a common denominator for all three; time. TPM is not something that can be implemented overnight. Organisations take five years and more to even become eligible for the first level of awards.

The good news is that it doesn’t take that long for the performance benefits to start accruing. The sooner you start your pilot activities the sooner you can see a difference and improve your bottom line.

 

1. Obtain commitment from the very top
It’s no coincidence that the very first step on the 12 step journey is called “Declaration by management”.

The senior management team must first understand the reasons their company is embarking on this journey. And then they must communicate their intention to the entire workforce.

 

 

We have seen how companies who don’t start here take much longer to get results. Even the best efforts prove difficult to sustain and at worst the programme just fizzles out.

 

2. Integrate TPM activities into your company’s policy and strategy

Companies that are serious about using TPM to continuously improve their business performance, integrate it into their existing Policy Deployment plans. In fact this is the focus of the work in step 4 of the 12 step journey.

Think of it as a two pronged approach to support achievement of:

• Daily performance targets derived from customer requirements.
• Stretch goals derived from the annual policies.

Treating TPM as a set of activities additional to your short term or long term targets, dooms them to being side lined when the going gets tough.

You may have already experienced this scenario. You put a lot of time and effort into training your production associates in Autonomous Maintenance (AM). Once the production plan is complete the teams stop and move onto their AM work. Initially output and quality improve and unplanned downtime is reducing. AM works!

Then one Friday you haven’t met the plan, so you keep manufacturing. Maybe your order book is increasing or you had a particularly unusual and lengthy breakdown.

What we find is that if this happens regularly, the benefits of the TPM programme become forgotten and production output at all costs is the priority. The TPM activities cease over time, morale decreases and people become resistant to new initiatives.

Instead of treating TPM as a set of bolt on activities, integrate it. Specifically target use of the tools to prevent that breakdown happening again and to increase capacity over time.

The tools need to become part of daily working, not something scheduled for the end of the week. This applies at the shop floor as much as it does the boardroom.

 

3. Include every single person in the organisation

In a previous blog we learned that the main aim of TPM is to achieve zero losses. These losses can occur in every function and at every level within your business.

So to root out every loss you need to involve people from every function and at every level.

When only a proportion of the workforce are involved we always find losses and, of course, the costs associated with them.

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• If you want to find out more about the future of TPM, it’s integration with Industry 4.0 and how it can help your organisation reduce costs and improve quality then make sure book your place at Industry Forum’s TPM seminar.  This one-day event will allow you to learn from world-class, award winning manufacturers alongside speakers from the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance.

 

 

 

 

If you want to speak to a member of the team to find out more about TPM and how Industry Forum can support your TPM implementation give us a call on +44 (0)121 717 6600 complete our enquiry form or email us at [email protected]