THE PLANNED STATE OF TPM

Oftentimes in today?s industrial scenario, huge losses, or wastes, occur on the shop floor, due to idle machines, idle manpower, machine breakdowns, rejected parts, and more. There are also other ?invisible? wastes like operating the machines below the rated speed, start up loss, and bottlenecks in the process, to name a few. Zero-oriented concepts such as zero tolerance for waste, defects, breakdown, and accidents are becoming a pre-requisite in the manufacturing industry. In these situations, the concept of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) has been adopted.

TPM can be considered the ?medical science? of machines. The goal of the TPM program is to markedly increase production while, at the same time, increasing employee morale and job satisfaction. TPM brings maintenance into focus as a necessary and vitally important part of the business, seeking to avoid wastage, produce goods without reducing product quality, and reduce costs.

STAGES IN TPM IMPLEMENTATION
Preparatory Stage
This stage involves the initial decision to implement TPM into the shop. Typically, an announcement should be made by management and a TPM awareness program should already be in place. The decision to implement TPM should be published in the in-house magazine, displayed on the notice boards, etc., and a letter informing the same is sent to suppliers and customers.

The next step involves initial education, in which training of employees is to be done based on need. This could include intensive training, or simple awareness training based on employee knowledge in regards to maintenance. Thirdly, TPM and departmental committees should be set up. TPM, as will be discussed below, includes several ?pillars?. Committees should be set up to take on the needs of these different pillars.

The fourth step is establishing the TPM working system and target. Each area/work station is benchmarked and a target is fixed up for achievement. The final step of this prep stage involves the ?master plan? for your implementation; TPM must become an organizational culture.

Introduction Stage
A meeting including suppliers should be conducted. Customer participation at this point is also a plus. Those from related companies and affiliated companies who share your concerns should also participate. Some may learn from us and some can help us, but the important thing is that customers will get the message from us that we care about quality output, costs, and keeping to delivery schedules.

Implementation
This is where the eight ?pillars? in the development of TPM activity come into play. Of these, the first four activities are included for the purpose of establishing the system for production efficiency.

Institutionalization Stage
By now the TPM implementation activities would have reached the maturity stage. Now is the time to apply for a PM award.

PILLAR 1 ? 5S
TPM starts with 5S, a systematic process of housekeeping to achieve a serene environment in the work place, and must involve employee commitment. Problems cannot be clearly seen when the workplace is unorganized; cleaning and organizing helps the team to uncover these problems. 5s is actually a foundation program before the implementation of TPM. If 5S is not taken seriously, then it leads to 5D: Delays, Defects, Dissatisfied customers, Declining profits and Demoralized employees. See Figure 1 for the Pillars of 5S.

PILLAR 2 – JISHU HOZEN (Autonomous Maintenance)
This pillar is geared towards developing operators? abilities to be able to take care of small maintenance tasks, thus freeing up more skilled maintenance people to spend time on more value added activity and technical repairs. The aim here is to maintain the machine to keep it as close to new condition as possible. The activities involved include cleaning, lubricating, visual inspection, tightening of loosened bolts, etc. The goals of this pillar are: achieving uninterrupted operation of equipment; creating flexibility for operators to operate and maintain other equipment; eliminating the defects at the source through active employee participation.

Steps in Jishu Hozen
1. Preparation of employees – Educate the employees about JH advantages and steps, and about the equipment they use; i.e. the frequency of oiling, day-to-day maintenance activities required and the abnormalities that could occur.

2. Initial cleanup of machines – Arrange all items needed for cleaning. On the arranged date, employees clean the equipment with the help of the maintenance department. Dust, stains, oils and grease must be removed.

When cleaning oil leakage, loose wires, unfastened nuts and bolts and worn out parts, care must be taken. After clean up, problems are categorized and suitably tagged; e.g. white tags are place where operators can solve problems, pink tags are placed where the aid of the maintenance department is needed. The contents of tags are transferred to a register.

3. Take counter measures – Inaccessible regions have to be reached easily; e.g. if it takes many screws to open a flywheel door, replace with a hinge door. Instead of opening a door for inspecting the machine, use acrylic sheets. Machine parts should be monitored to prevent accumulation of dirt and dust.

4. Fix tentative JH standards ? A JH schedule has to be made and followed strictly, regarding cleaning, inspection and lubrication, and it also should include details like when, what and how.

5. General inspection – The employees are trained in disciplines such as pneumatics, electrical, hydraulics, lubricant and coolant, drives, bolts, nuts and safety. This is necessary to improve the technical skills of employees and to use inspection manuals correctly. After acquiring this new knowledge the employees should share this with others.

6. Autonomous inspection – New methods of cleaning and lubricating are used. Each employee prepares his own autonomous chart/schedule in consultation with their supervisor.

7. Standardization – The surroundings of machinery are organized so that searching time for a particular item is reduced. The environment should be modified such that there is no difficulty in getting any item. Everybody should follow the work instructions strictly. Necessary spares for equipments are planned and procured.

PILLAR 3 – KAIZEN
"Kai" means change, and "Zen" means good (for the better). Basically kaizen aims at small improvements, but carried out on a continual basis, involving all people in the organization. The principle behind this is that a very large number of small improvements are more effective in an organizational environment than a few improvements of large value. This pillar is aimed at reducing losses in the workplace that effect efficiency. By using a detailed and thorough procedure we eliminate losses with a systematic method using various Kaizen tools. These activities are not limited to production areas and can be implemented in administrative areas as well.

Kaizen Policy
1. Practice concepts of ?zero loss? in every sphere of activity.
2. Have a relentless pursuit to achieve cost reduction targets in all resources.
3. Improve overall plant equipment effectiveness.
4. Extensive use of PM analysis as a tool for eliminating losses.
5. Focus of easy handling of operators.

Kaizen Target
Achieve and sustain zero loses with respect to minor stops, measurement and adjustments, defects and unavoidable downtimes. Kaizen aims to achieve 30 percent manufacturing cost reduction. Tools used in Kaizen include the ?why? analysis, Poka-yoke (a Japanese term, which in English means ?mistake proofing? or 'error prevention'), a summary of losses, a Kaizen register, and a Kaizen summary sheet.

PILLAR 4 – PLANNED MAINTENANCE
This aims to have trouble-free machines and equipments producing defect free products for total customer satisfaction. This breaks maintenance down into four "families" or groups: Preventive Maintenance, Breakdown Maintenance, Corrective Maintenance, and Maintenance Prevention.

With Planned Maintenance we evolve our efforts from a reactive to a proactive method and use trained maintenance staff to help train the operators to better maintain their equipment. This Pillar seeks to achieve and sustain availability of machines, low maintenance costs, reduced spares inventory, and improvement in reliability and maintainability of machines.

Targets of Planned Maintenance
1. Zero equipment failure and break down.
2. Improve reliability and maintainability by 50 percent.
3. Reduce maintenance cost by 20 percent.
4. Ensure availability of spares at all times.

Six steps in Planned Maintenance
1. Equipment evaluation and recording present status.
2. Restore deterioration and improve weakness.
3. Building up the information management system.
4. Prepare time-based information system, select equipment, parts and members and map out the plan.
5. Prepare predictive maintenance system by introducing equipment diagnostic techniques.
6. Evaluation of planned maintenance.

Please tune in next month for part two, where we will discuss implementation of the final pillars to bring your TPM implementation full circle.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

From An Introduction to Total Productive Maintenance, J. Venkatesh, www.plant-maintenance.com.