Today customer, competition, and change are the most dominant
factors governing the global markets. Change has always
remained constant—a force that is very dynamic, vicious and
unpredictable. To survive and grow in such a turbulent
environment, organizations have to focus on shifting from a
function-oriented to a process-oriented operation. This article
shows how Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) helps in the
fundamental rethinking of business processes to achieve
improvements of cost, quality and speed through zero defects,
zero accidents and zero failures in the production system through
“total employee involvement”.
Every time my vehicle troubles me, one thing my father never forgets to say is “This is what
happens when you rarely clean and maintain your vehicle”. Perhaps this is what we all say when
we see some one struggling to kick start their Pushpak Vimanam—a machine. From the very
beginning, man is fond of his possessions; but it is only when he experiences slowdown or failure of his
belongings that he feels the need for maintenance.
Maintenance as an engineering function has had its place ever since the onset of industrial revolution.
Before the industrial revolution, generally people used to just replace the equipment once its resistance
to stress has decreased and its tendency to fail has increased. People just followed the “use and throw”
principle. After the World War II, with the advancement of time and technology, machines became
more complex, automated and above all, expensive. This eventually led to a scenario where repair was
given more prominence than replacement.
This type of maintenance is called “Reactive Maintenance”
or “Breakdown Maintenance”, which even today is very commonly done.
In 1950, some of the Japanese engineers started a new concept “Preventive Maintenance”—
designed to retain the healthy condition of equipments and prevent failure of the machines. Doctors
generally prescribe preventive medicines to children to prevent them from contracting diseases; similarly
manufacturers used to recommend tips and methods to follow to mantain their vehicles in good
condition. Although this reduced downtime, it was an expensive alternative as it involved unnecessary
man hours and underutilization of their equipments. This technique resulted in machines being overserviced
in an attempt to improve productivity. The assumption was often that, “If a little oil is good to
the machine, a lot should be better”. The realistic requirements of the machine remained unfulfilled. |
