Implementing Tpm: Some Guidelines

The structural consideration

One aspect of corporate management is related to the long term structural decisions on process purchasing and implementation. Total Preventative
Maintenance will play a major role in facilitating the selection, implementation, maintenance and control of any new process equipment.
Furthermore, TPM will ensure the integration of old and new so that operations are optimized and disruptions are eliminated.

The tactical consideration

Total Preventative Maintenance interacts strongly with other activities such as production and operations by providing vital information on process capability, capacity availability, and timetables for routine and non-routine (Diagnostic Maintenance) programmes.
Furthermore important decisions on equipment replacement have to rely on input from the maintenance function.

Involvement in supplier appraisal - equipment selection

Traditionally, maintenance engineers are only involved in equipment selection after the deals with suppliers have been sealed and agreed. It is of paramount importance that maintenance personnel/operators are involved at the early stages of supplier appraisal, equipment evaluation, selection and implementation.
After all, if process capability has to be established and maintained, it is the people who are expected to assume the responsibility of maintaining process capability, who should be involved in decision-making.
Traditionally, capital investment decisions were the domain of senior managers who were more motivated by financial arguments than meeting customer requirements.
Decisions were on the whole driven by output optimization and economic returns from such investments. Meeting customer requirements in a variety of ways, all the time, was hardly considered by many organisations.

TPM has to be operator centred

Operators are expected to manage process equipment and consequently manage the production of quality output with Zero Defects.
It is therefore only right to design for operator requirements, by making sure that process maintainability is not beyond operator knowledge and understanding and that maintenance (routine) has to be part of operator job specification.
To produce right first time and all the time, operators have to have an extremely good knowledge of the process they are responsible for everyday of their working lives. This knowledge can only be acquired through skill upgrading, continuous training and education.
Operators have also got to be encouraged to work closely with maintenance specialists on complex technical problems and be closely involved in process diagnosis and data collection processes.

Use statistical techniques for TPM

Statistical techniques can be used to manage process equipment in order to make decisions on capacity availability, maintenance schedules etc. Statistical techniques can help questions such as:

Is process equipment in control? Have all the assignable (attributable) causes been eliminated?
Are all the routine elements such as oil consumption, oil pressure drops and vibration amplitudes at the right levels within the required limits to prevent failures from happening?
Is the previous data obtained on failures adequate enough for predictions to be accurately made?
What parts ought to be kept in stock? What inventory levels are required?

Make Zero Breakdown a continuous improvement activity Zero Breakdown is essential if Zero Defect is to become a realistic objective. Maintenance has to be publicized as everyone’s responsibility and slogans such as ‘maintenance is free’ can be used to convey the message to all the employees. Improvement in maintenance can provide optimum capacity and also make sure that process capability can be extended for optimum precision and optimum accuracy.