Chapter 12

Total Productive Maintenance

12.1 Introduction

Nakajima, who is considered by many in the literature as the father of total pro-
ductive maintenance (TPM), defines it [5] as “productive maintenance carried out
by all employees through small group activities.” He also adds “TPM is equipment
maintenance performed on a company wide basis.” The authors define TPM as a
management approach to maintenance that imports total quality management
(TQM) philosophy and techniques to maintenance. TPM focuses on involving all
employees in the organization in equipment improvement. This approach has its
origins at Nippondenso, a subsidiary of the Toyota Motor Company in the 1960s
and evolved in the Japanese manufacturing sector beginning with the application of
American- and European-style preventive maintenance, and progressing to the
application of TQM and just-in-time manufacturing concepts to the equipment
maintenance arena. In 1971, the first prize is awarded by Japan Institute of Plant
Engineers (JIPE) for successful implementation of TPM and still going on.
TPM started in Japan and has spread to the Far East, Europe, South America,
and the USA. It became a recognized methodology for improving equipment
reliability and plant productivity. TPM eliminates losses resulting from unplanned
downtime, reduced speed, and quality. TPM brought to industry overall equipment
effectiveness (OEE) as a measure that combines losses from unplanned downtime,
reduced speed, and quality. The purpose of this chapter is to present the concepts
and implementation of TPM. Section 12.2 outlines the goals and the key elements
of TPM followed by autonomous maintenance in Sect. 12.3. Section 12.4 presents
equipment management, and Sect. 12.5 describes TPM implementation.
Section 12.6 provides a brief summary of this chapter.

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 261

S.O. Duffuaa and A. Raouf, Planning and Control of Maintenance Systems,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-19803-3_12
262 12 Total Productive Maintenance

12.2 TPM Goals and Key Elements

The JIPE in its definition of TPM in 1971 stated that TPM seeks the following five
key goals:
• maximize OEE, which includes availability, process efficiency, and product
quality;
• take a systematic approach to reliability, maintainability, and life cycle costs
(LCC);
• involve operations, materials management, maintenance, engineering, and
administration in equipment management;
• involve all levels of management and workers; and
• improve equipment performance through small group activities and team
performance.
The key elements of TPM include the following:
• Autonomous maintenance: Equipment operators are the focal point of TPM
activities. Although most operators understand what their equipment does, few
understand the underlying mechanisms of how it does it. The term “autonomous
maintenance” is used to describe the activities of the operators, which relate to
equipment maintenance, and to the independent study nature of the other
equipment improvement activities. Operators would perform cleaning, inspec-
tion, lubrication, adjustments, and minor component change outs and other light
maintenance tasks requiring some training and instruction, but not compre-
hensive craftsman skills. The operator gradually learns how to diagnose
equipment problems before they become serious.
• Equipment Management: In TPM, whenever equipment performs at a level
less than is required, the performance loss is recorded and monitored. These
losses can be grouped into six categories: breakdowns, setup and adjustments,
idling and minor stoppages, reduced speed, defects, and yield losses.
Breakdowns and setups cause downtime and impact availability, reduced speed
impacts the cycle time and defects, and yield losses impact quality. OEE is the
key TPM performance measure and is the product of availability, cycle time,
and quality rate. The operator and maintainer are trained to identify problems
related to OEE and perform root cause analyses in teams to investigate the
losses.
• Systematic Planning and Continuous Improvement: Within the maintenance
department, the TPM methodology encourages the development of systematic
planning and control of preventive and corrective maintenance, and fully sup-
ports the autonomous activities performed by the operator. In plants where the
basic operating and maintaining environment has been improved to the point of
diminishing returns, active maintenance prevention activities are undertaken, as
described earlier in the sections on designing for maintainability. Throughout,
there should be a strong emphasis on improving operator and maintainer skills.
Spending on training is customarily on the order of 5–8 % of the labor budget.
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12.3 Autonomous Maintenance

The benefits of involving the operators in the success of TPM cannot be overem-
phasized. A pragmatic way of achieving this is by using a systematic, data-based
approach to skill transfer. Skill transfer is the process of moving tasks requiring
lower skills from the exclusive domain of one work group to a shared task zone.
Under this policy, an operator who has been properly trained and certified can
perform a mechanic’s task and vice versa. This partnership between operations and
maintenance integrates maintenance and operation/manufacturing and has many
benefits that include the following:
• Operators and mechanics become multi-skilled, which leads to job enrichment
and improved flexibility of workers.
• The involvement of operators in routine maintenance builds a sense of
responsibility, pride, and ownership.
• Delay times are reduced and productivity is increased.
• Teamwork between operations and maintenance is promoted.

12.4 Equipment Management

Equipment is the focus of TPM. Well-maintained equipment reduces losses

resulting from unavailability, low speed, and quality defects. This effort for effec-
tive equipment management starts by identifying the major losses of equipment. As
noted above, the following six losses limit equipment effectiveness:
1. Equipment failure (breakdown),
2. Setup and adjustment downtime,
3. Idling and minor stoppages,
4. Reduced speed,
5. Process defects, and
6. Reduced yield.
The ultimate goal of TPM with respect to equipment management is to increase
its effectiveness to its highest potential and to maintain it at that level. This can be
achieved by understanding the above losses and devising means of eliminating
them.
Equipment failures
Breakdowns account for a large percentage of total losses. Every attempt should be
made to avoid them. In order to maximize equipment effectiveness, breakdowns
must be reduced to zero by changing the attitude that breakdowns are inevitable.
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Setup and adjustment downtime

When production of a given product type ends and the equipment is adjusted to get
ready to produce another product type, there are losses due to set up downtime and
defective products. These losses can be reduced by reducing setup time. Many
companies are working to achieve single-minute setups.
Idling and minor stoppages
Production may be interrupted because of a malfunction or a production machine
being idle between products. The sources of these losses must be identified and
eliminated. The elimination of minor stoppages is an essential precondition for
automated production.
Reduced speed
These losses correspond to the difference between equipment design speed and
actual operating speed. Reduced speed may be due to mechanical problems and
defective quality or may be imposed by the operator in fear of abusing the
equipment. In other cases, the optimal speed may not even be known. Productivity
improvement results from increasing the speed if the reasons for operating at a
reduced speed are identified and eliminated.
Process defects
These are losses in quality caused by the equipment. The conditions causing the
defect must be identified and eliminated.
Reduced yield
These are the start-up losses occurring during the early stages of production from
the beginning to its stabilization.
Improving equipment effectiveness requires that these losses be measured. The
above-mentioned six losses affect equipment availability, efficiency, and the quality
of the product as follows:

1. Equipment availability is affected by setup and adjustments, and equipment

failures.
2. Equipment efficiency is affected by idling, minor stoppage, and reduced speed.
3. Reduced yield and process defects affect product quality.

The overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is given as follows:

OEE = Availability
Performance efficiency
Quality rate

where

Loading time  Downtime

Availability ¼
Loading time
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loading time is defined as the available time minus planned downtime. Planned
downtime refers to the downtime officially scheduled in the production plan, such
as scheduled maintenance and management activities.

Theoretical cycle time
Amount processed

Performance efficiency =
Operating time

Amount processed  Defective amount

Quality rate =
Amount processed

Overall equipment efficiency can be reduced to the following:

Theoretical cycle time
Amount processed
Quality rate

OEE =
Loading time

Theoretical cycle time and loading time are constant per day. Therefore, OEE is
directly related to the number of items of good quality. OEE can be improved by
enhancing the availability, performance efficiency and, most importantly, the
quality rate. It can be seen that availability can be improved by reducing downtime
and that performance efficiency can be improved by reducing the cycle time.
In order to improve the quality rate, the state at which the equipment produces a
high-quality product must be identified. Then, a maintenance policy should be
established to keep the equipment in this state. Therefore, the goal of maintenance
should be to keep the equipment in the state where zero defects are produced.

12.5 TPM Implementation

The practice indicates that TPM is usually implemented over a horizon of 3 years.
Nakajima suggests four stages for implementing TPM. The stages are preparation,
preliminary implementation, TPM implementation, and stabilization. Each stage
consists of a number of steps. The total number of steps needed to implement TPM
is 12. An excellent treatment of TPM implementation is provided by Nakajima [5].

12.5.1 Preparation Stage

This stage has the following five major steps:

• Announce top management’s decision to introduce TPM: In this step, top
management informs employees of the decision to implement TPM and shows
enthusiasm and strong commitment.
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• Launch an educational campaign to introduce TPM: At this step, promotion

and training for TPM implementation must start immediately after the
announcement. The education and training is designed to eliminate resistance
and raise moral. The education should be tailored to the role that will be played
by the group in TPM implementation. Retreats, seminars, and presentations are
suitable for senior and middle management. Equipment management instruction
is suitable for operators and maintenance staff.
• Create organizations to promote TPM: The organization structure is usually
based on an organizational matrix consisting of horizontal groups and project
teams at each level of the vertical management or organization. JIPE recom-
mends a network of overlapping small groups organized at every level from top
management to the work floor. Each group leader participates as a member in a
small group at the next level. The group leader serves as a link between levels,
facilitating vertical and horizontal communication.
• Establish basic TPM policies: TPM leadership establishes goals and basic
polices for medium and long-range planning. For example, a basic policy could
be “To reduce losses by eliminating breakdown, defects, and accidents while
improving employee morale.” The company should prepare a manual to be the
charter for TPM implementation.
• Formulate a master plan for TPM development: The charter mentioned in the
previous step must contain a master plan for TPM development. TPM devel-
opment should be centered on the following basic five items:
– Improving equipment effectiveness by eliminating the six big losses,
– Establishing an autonomous (operator) maintenance program,
– Quality assurance,
– Establishing a schedule for planned maintenance, and
– Education and training to enhance skills.

12.5.2 Preliminary Implementation

• Hold TPM kickoff: This is the first step in TPM implementation and is the start
of the activities against the six big equipment losses. During the preparation
stage, management and professional staff play the major role. At this step,
everyone must participate and work to eliminate the big losses. In the meeting,
management reports on accomplishment in the preparation stage including TPM
promotion structure, basic TPM goals and policies and master plan for TPM
development. Management affirms management commitment.
12.5 TPM Implementation 267

12.5.3 TPM Implementation

This stage consists of the following five steps:

• Improve effectiveness of each piece of equipment: This is the first step of the
five steps of TPM development. Project teams consisting of engineers, main-
tenance staff, line supervisors, and small group members are formed to make
improvements through the elimination of big losses. Some project teams may
have doubts about the viability of TPM. To reduce or eliminate the doubts, TPM
effectiveness can be demonstrated by focusing on equipment with high losses as
a pilot. Root cause analysis and PM analysis developed by JIPE can help in
making improvement. In PM analysis, the P stands for “problem” or “phe-
nomenon” or “physical,” while the M stands for “mechanism,” “man,”
“machine,” or “material.”
• Establish an autonomous maintenance program for operators: This is the
eighth step and the second of the five TPM development activities and a unique
feature of TPM. Having autonomous maintenance requires cultural transfor-
mation where the concept of division of labor has to be overcome and everyone
from top to bottom in the organization believes that it is feasible for operators to
perform autonomous maintenance and be responsible for their equipment.
Operators must be trained to carry out autonomous maintenance such as
inspections, lubrication, cleaning, and other simple preventive maintenance
tasks. Nakajima in his classical book on TPM [5] provides a detailed description
for developing and perfecting autonomous maintenance.
• Develop a scheduled maintenance program for the maintenance depart-
ment: This is the ninth step and is one of the activities for developing TPM.
This step starts before completing autonomous maintenance. Existing planned
and scheduled maintenance need to be evaluated and improved as part of TPM
implementation. In order to optimize the preventive maintenance program,
reliability-centered maintenance is an option to use according to Ben Daya [2].
• Conduct training to improve operation and maintenance skills: This is the
tenth step in TPM implementation and the fourth step in TPM development
activities. Training is critical for TPM implementation, and it is an investment in
people to enable them to manage their equipment. Training includes mainte-
nance techniques, basic equipment operation, testing, trouble shooting, and
planning and scheduling.
• Develop an effective management program: This is the eleventh step and the
last step in TPM development activities. This step is performed by production
engineers and maintenance personnel. The early equipment management has
several stages that include planning, design, fabrication, installation, test run-
ning, and commissioning. The goal of TPM is to maximize equipment effec-
tiveness and pursue economic LCC.
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12.5.4 Stabilization

• Perfect TPM implementation and raise TPM levels. This is the final step and
at this stage, the organization perfects TPM implementation using continuous
improvement tools such as Six Sigma and the Deming cycle.

12.5.5 Challenges and Success Factors of TPM

Implementation

A proper implementation of TPM allows fundamental improvement within an

organization by improving worker and equipment utilization. Improvement in
equipment effectiveness and attitude of employees are key elements in the overall
improvement within the organization (for more on TPM, see [3, 4]). However, TPM
implementation is not an easy task and there are more companies that have failed in
TPM implementation than those that have succeeded. TPM implementation usually
encounters the following challenges:
• To secure and keep top management commitment.
• TPM implementation is a long-term project and takes around 3 years. It is a
challenge to keep the momentum, resources, people motivation, and manage-
ment commitment that long.
• TPM implementation requires organization culture change, and it is a challenge
to change cultures. Autonomous maintenance where operators do maintenance
tasks is hard for the organization especially those that have set division of labor
polices and clear demarcation lines among departments.
• Lack of cooperation from operations/production may occur. As an example, in
some cases production foremen are not willing to give up their people for TPM
implementation training because they have a heavy work load. See John
Auskamp [4] for more on how to make TPM everyone priority.
• Establishing incentives for the implementation process.
To ensure TPM implementation, the TPM project leadership must address the
challenges stated above. The following are the success factors for TPM
implementation:
• Top management commitment and contributions. This is achieved by
managing expectations and demonstrating to top management the expected
return on investment from the improvement on OEE. A pilot project for TPM
implementation may be used to demonstrate TPM benefits.
• Cultural transformation through training and reorganization. This is
achieved through training and education. Reorganization of maintenance and
production departments is expected to help. Visits to organizations that won the
TPM implementation prize are useful.
12.5 TPM Implementation 269

• Employee involvement. At the beginning, create a process for people to be

involved because everybody wants to be of help and participate. In other words,
involve everyone. The next step is to empower employees to make changes
through a well-designed program.
• Establishing planned and proactive maintenance polices. Existing planned
and scheduled maintenance should be evaluated as part of TPM implementation.
• Training and education is important for TPM implementation. It can be
developed and organized by benchmarking with organizations who won the
TPM prize or involving a consultant.
• Communication. In order to achieve ownership and the change needed to
implement TPM, an environment of trust and goodwill must be created. It is
necessary to create a flow of communication with operators, supervisors, and
managers. When they perceive our sincere purpose of providing them with a
better equipment and working environment, most of the barriers will be
overcome.
For more on TPM implementation challenges and success factors, see Ahuja [1].

12.6 Summary

This chapter presented TPM. It provided a brief history of TPM followed by the
goals and features of TPM. TPM has brought TQM techniques and tools to
maintenance. Autonomous maintenance and equipment management are two
unique features of TPM that are presented in detail in this chapter. An example how
to compute OEE is provided in this chapter. A detailed account for TPM imple-
mentation following Nakajima approach in [5] is provided including challenges and
success factors.

Exercises

1. Define TPM.
2. State the six big losses TPM strives to reduce and how would you measure each
loss?
3. How would you develop an autonomous maintenance program?
4. Visit a plant near your area and select one of their critical equipment. Compute
the overall effectiveness for this equipment.
5. State the steps of the PM methodology developed by JIPE.
6. What are the prerequisites for TPM implementation?
7. State the steps for TPM implementation.
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8. Explain how the story of John Auskamp “How to Make TPM Everyone’s
Priority” helps in TPM implementation. Obtain the story and read it then
answer.
9. Compare and contrast the steps for implementing TPM and TQM.
10. Suggest an effective organization for TPM implementation.
11. Design an education and training program for TPM implementation.
12. What is the major challenge in TPM implementation and suggest how to
overcome it.
13. Select three companies that have won a TPM implementation prize and identify
what are the common features among their maintenance systems.
14. How can RCM help in TPM implementation?

References

1. Ahuja PS (2009) Total productive maintenance. In: Ben Daya M, Duffuaa S, Raouf A,
Knezevic J, Ait-Kadi D (eds) Handbook of maintenance management and engineering.
Springer, London
2. Ben Daya M (2000) You may need RCM to enhance TPM implementation. J Qual Maintenance
Eng 6(2):82–85
3. Hartman PE (1992) Successfully installing TPM in a non-Japanese plant. TPM Press Inc.,
Pittsburgh
4. John Auskamp in his story “How to make TPM everyone’s priority”. www.tpmconsulting.org/
dwnld/article/tpmww/TPM%20article6.pdf
5. Nakajima S (1988) Introduction to TPM. Productivity Press, Cambridge