TPM
What is TPM?
Total Productive Maintenance is a world class manufacturing strategy for optimizing the effectiveness of manufacturing equipment.
The goal of the TPM program is to drastically increase production while, at the same time, increasing employee morale and job satisfaction.
TPM was introduced to achieve the following objectives:
- Avoid waste in a quickly changing economic environment.
- Producing goods without reducing product quality.
- Reduce cost.
- Produce a low batch quantity at the earliest possible time.
- Goods send to the customers must be non defective.
TPM has 8 pillars, each being set to achieve a “zero” target:
- Focused improvement (kobetsu-kaizen): for eliminating waste.
- Autonomous maintenance (jishu-hozen): the operator is the key player. It involves daily maintenance activities carried out by the operators themselves that prevent the deterioration of the equipment.
- Planned maintenance (keikaku-hozen): for achieving zero breakdowns.
- Quality maintenance (hinshitsu-hozen): This is actually “maintenance for quality”. It includes the most effective quality tool of TPM: “poka-yoke”, which aims to achieve zero loss by taking necessary measures to prevent loss.
- Education and training: for increasing productivity
- Early equipment/product management: to reduce waste occurring during the implementation of a new machine or the production of a new product
- Safety, hygiene, environment: for achieving zero work-related accidents and for protecting the environment.
- Office TPM: for involvement of all parties to TPM since office processes can be improved in a similar manner as well.