Total Productive Maintenance in China
What is Total Productive Maintenance ?
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is an approach to equipment improvement used to increase equipment reliability, reduce costs and improve quality. The main goals of implementing TPM are zero breakdowns and zero defects. Companies that achieve excellence in reliability are able to maximize equipment availability and optimize production levels. Operating costs will drop significantly, because equipment failures are less frequent and workers’ productivity rises. Product quality improves because stabilized production eliminates the variability caused by frequent shutdowns and restarts.
TPM is a critical adjunct to Lean Manufacturing. If machine uptime is not predictable and if equipment reliability is not guaranteed, the process must keep extra stocks to buffer against these uncertainties and flow through the process will be interrupted. The starting point of TPM is to measure the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to give both a baseline for improvement potential and to identify improvement priorities.
Companies implementing the TPM methodology can, among others, expect to following benefits :
- Gain a thorough understanding of the performance of the equipment, what is achieved in OEE terms and what are the reasons for non – achievement.
- Improved teamwork and a less adverse approach between the production and maintenance departments.
- Improved procedures for changeovers, set-ups and carrying out frequent maintenance tasks.
How to implement TPM ?
Maintenance strategies have evolved over time as organizations continuously look to combine a high equipment reliability and availability with a reasonable maintenance investment. A major challenge for any organization is to apply the appropriate maintenance strategy so that the organization’s overall goals and objectives can be attained at minimal cost. Appropriate maintenance strategies can range from corrective maintenance, over preventive and predictive to total productive maintenance.
Corrective maintenance, in which an asset is operated until it fails or breaks, might still be an appropriate strategy for many non – critical equipments. Some equipment failures however, might have far reaching consequences. Hence, a different maintenance strategy evolved to accomplish the objective of avoiding (prevent) these equipment failures, preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance takes into account the equipment history in order perform maintenance before the equipment might break down. The benefits of preventive maintenance however come costly. Preventive maintenance inevitably means that maintenance is being performed more often than is necessary (over – maintaining). Because of the current increased pressure on any organization to reduce costs, many turn to the next step in maintenance strategy, predictive maintenance. With predictive maintenance, the condition of the equipment is measured regularly until it starts to give evidence of deteriorating performance. Maintenance is then performed, just in time, to prevent the equipment from failure.
Total Productive Maintenance encompasses all of the aspects of equipment maintenance, described above, with one key addition, it makes fully use of the knowledge & skills of the machine operator related to the equipment condition and the execution of basic maintenance tasks. This frees up maintenance team members for predictive maintenance, equipment improvement, overhauls, training and other high value added activities. With TPM, machine operators must accept new responsibilities, such as daily maintenance checks, minor adjustments, lubrication and minor part changes.
Collecting data on equipment performance is critical for the successful implementation of TPM. This is most conveniently done using the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) measure. The OEE measure breaks down the non – performance of the equipment in six categories (six big losses) : equipment breakdowns, setup and adjustment delays, minor stoppages, reduced speed, scrap, reduced yield. OEE measurements are afterwards analysed and root causes for the observed big losses are identified. Operator input is critical, as the operator knows the equipment best and is in an ideal position to analyse performance. Once the root causes of problems are identified, permanent corrective action plans must be established and implemented.
The Role of Stanwick in the implementation of TPM :
- The execution of a maintenance assessment to identify the current level of equipment reliability and evaluate the effectiveness of the current maintenance strategy.
- Identifying the improvement potential in equipment uptime and equipment reliability.
- Setting up an implementation plan together with local management to implement the desired maintenance strategy, incorporating the needed TPM elements to achieve long term improved results in equipment uptime and reliability.
- Providing in house TPM training sessions.
- The organization, monitoring and reporting of the progress of the TPM implementation to the management.
What are the results you can expect from the implementation of TPM ?
Stanwick has supported valuable projects for its customers with improvements in several areas. Some examples of recently concluded customer project & results illustrate this :
- OEE improvement of 20 % through the installation of the OEE measurement and analysis of the big losses with a customer in the semi process industry.
- Installation of a maintenance management system, keeping track record of the maintenance tasks performed on different equipments, facilitating the implementation of a preventive maintenance strategy.
- Significant decrease of the change over time, by facilitating a better cooperation between production and maintenance departments with a customer in the process industry.
Some recent client engagements in TPM: Alcon, Recticel, Philips, Noble, Scott Continental, Terumo, Umicore, Swedish Match, Tate & Lyle.
