Failures Of a TPM System If Its Not Implemented Correctly.

 TPM or 'Total Productive Maintenance' is a sub system of lean manufacturing and is used by companies as a way to reduce breakdowns and financial losses from machinery. If first came about in Japan when people at Toyota realised that many quality problems and set-up problems originated in poor maintenance. Quality and setup problems create defects, and defects create financial loss. The aim of TPM is to reduce the 7 Preventable losses; breakdown losses caused by equipment, setup losses, minor stoppage losses, speed losses, quality defect and rework losses and yield losses.

  Successful TPM systems work by reducing down time and increasing OEE (overall equipment effectiveness), reducing machine maintenance costs and reducing defects. Whilst a machine is not running it is not making profit, and when it is down it usually costs money to get running again. TPM generally uses machine operators to carry out the general daily maintenance on machinery such as the topping up off lubrication oils and checking of uncomplicated systems. Leaving maintenance engineers to concentrate on the more complex servicing and repairs, also reducing the number of service engineers required also cutting down expenditure. Machines can also be blamed for certain defects in products, if a machine cannot offer reliable and predictable measurements for produced parts then operating the machine can be very difficult and sometimes uncontrollable. The inevitability of this is defects, parts not to specified values and lost opportunities, costing the organisation a considerable amount of money. Many companies have recorded staggering reductions in machine downtime and in turn growth in productivity and gross profit, a few examples of these are as followed.  

•  Harley-Davidson estimates that the ROI from TPM has been ten-fold to the cost of implementation.
•    Kodak reported a $5 million investment in TPM that resulted in a $16 million increase in profits.
•   MRC Bearings reduced unplanned downtime by 98% in one cell and 99% in another - all within one year.

  However TPM requires full support and contribution of the whole workforce, from directors to the shop floor employees, without this support downfalls will occur and mistakes made. Managers responsibilities to TPM include; keeping track of OEE and benefits the company has seen from integrating TPM, ensuring that employees are keeping to their responsibilities and preventing employee resistance to change, equipping all staff from operators to maintenance technicians the required tools to carry out their responsibilities within the TPM system. The responsibility of the workforce and operators is to ensure that all general maintenance is carried out at the required intervals, whereas the roles of the technicians is to reduce downtime by swift and conclusive repairs are carried out to all machines requiring attention, and to carry out servicing on machines when the opportunity arises.

  If TPM is not carried out correctly, for example the managers are not checking that the operators are not carrying out essential service requirements, the operators of machines stop topping up lubrication oil, the maintenance staff do not act on breakdowns immediately and are slow to repair issues, then major breakdowns can occur. If for instance all 3 of the previously mentioned downfalls where to happen then, the manager would be responsible because had he of checked that the requirements had been met, the operators would of filled up the lubrication oil.  The machine operators would also be to blame because the machine would not have seized if the lubrication oil had been in the system. After the machine had seized the technicians did not respond to the issue as soon as expected therefore the downtime was longer then expected, remember each minute the machine is down profit is lost. This is just an example of how a TPM system can fail if it does not have the backing of everybody involved.  

  I have personally witnessed some of these failures to TPM in my occupation, the consequences of this is that budget for machine maintenance is exceeded, the downtime is greater then expected, the OEE is lowered, defects are increased and machine speed and reliability is decreased. All of these consequences amount to quite a large amount of losses in profit and failed KPI targets.