Unlocking Excellence: How To Implement Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Master Operational Excellence With a Plan To Implement Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

In the relentless pursuit of operational excellence, many businesses are seeking strategic methodologies to help them optimize their processes and maximize productivity. 

One powerful approach is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). This comprehensive system goes beyond traditional maintenance practices by creating a well-thought-out plan for operational excellence. 

If you’re ready to maximize productivity and minimize downtime, we have the tools you need to succeed.

Gain powerful insights into the transformational potential of TPM as you discover how to boost efficiency with UpKeep’s step-by-step process for implementing Total Productive Maintenance.

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Table of Contents

• 8 Key Identifiers of Total Productive Maintenance

• How To Implement Total Productive Maintenance in 7 Steps

• What Are the Benefits of Total Productive Maintenance Implementation?

• How To Implement Total Productive Maintenance With the Help of UpKeep

8 Key Identifiers of Total Productive Maintenance

#1: Preventive Maintenance

Regular, systematic maintenance can go a long way towards preventing equipment breakdowns and failures.

Schedule maintenance tasks around times when your assets are the least busy. This way, you're less likely to see an impact on production.

#2: Autonomous Maintenance

Autonomous maintenance involves empowering operators to take care of routine maintenance tasks and inspections to keep equipment in optimal condition.

This is done by providing training on routine procedures. This ensures that those involved in this aspect of the company have a clear understanding of the skills required to manage the equipment and troubleshoot any potential problems that may arise.

#3: Focused Improvement

The best way to enact this is by enlisting the help of smaller teams to focus on specific processes and brainstorm ideas for improvement.

These continuous efforts help identify and address inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and problems in the production process.

#4: Training and Skills Development

Providing plenty of training empowers employees with the knowledge and understanding of Total Productive Maintenance and its implementation.

Additional career enhancement and coaching may be offered, as well.

#5: Equipment Reliability

Overall equipment reliability is pursued through measures such as improved design, standardized work procedures, and the use of reliable components.

#6: Early Equipment Management

Considering maintenance and reliability aspects during the design and acquisition of new equipment allows employees to reach required performance levels faster.

#7: Quality Maintenance

Quality maintenance ensures that maintenance activities contribute to and enhance product quality.

A root cause analysis may be conducted for quality assurance, design errors are exposed, and preventive measures are taken to prevent the progression of defects.

#8: Safety, Health, and Environment (SHE)

Integrating safety, health, and environmental considerations into maintenance practices ensures equipment is aligned with safety standards and can help secure an accident-free workplace.

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How To Implement Total Productive Maintenance in 7 Steps

#1: Implement Leadership and Create Awareness

Implementation of Total Productive Maintenance will only be successful when it has the commitment and support of your organization, including the chain of management from the top down. 

This may require some members of management to overcome their resistance to change regarding operators and other employees. Any skepticism will need to be cast aside to embrace the merits of TPM, but this can only be realized if they are fully aware of its benefits.

Creating awareness of your company's movement toward the implementation of Total Production Maintenance and regularly discussing the benefits are excellent ways to begin breaking down those barriers.

#2: Identify a Pilot Area

Identify a pilot area or single machine to zero in on. 

Notice what works and what doesn’t. Determine what adjustments may be needed for future success. 

Depending on your company's experience with TPM, choose your pilot area according to these three levels of intricacy:

1. If you are new to the concept of Total Productive Maintenance, choose the easiest area to improve. 

2. If you have minor experience with Total Productive Maintenance, select an area of bottleneck or constraint. This will boost your total output while simultaneously increasing payback. 

3. Have you already implemented Total Productive Maintenance? If so, choose to work on your most problematic area to strengthen your existing TPM project. 

#3: Conduct a Baseline Assessment

Once you have selected your pilot area, conduct a baseline assessment to get a standard for your current productivity. 

Assess the current state of your: 

• Equipment’s reliability

• Current maintenance practices; and 

• Equipment’s overall efficiency

#4: Restore Equipment to Its Basic Working Condition

Next, you will restore your pilot area to its prime condition. You might choose to:

• Take photos of the current state of the machine and the surrounding area. These can be posted on a project board for easy reference.

• Declutter the area by getting rid of debris, irrelevant tools, and anything else that may detract from the purpose of the pilot area.

• Organize the items required to operate and maintain the pilot area, such as tools, etc. Consider using a shadow board with clear outlines for each tool.

• Conduct a thorough cleaning of the equipment and the surrounding area.

• Take photographs of any improvements to the pilot equipment and surrounding area and add them to the project board.

• Create a standardized 5-S process to ensure the continuity of the process. This system is designed to reduce waste while optimizing productivity. It focuses on the use of visual cues to maintain an orderly workplace and improve the consistency of operational results. The components of the 5-S process include sorting, setting in order, shining, standardizing, and sustaining the cycle.

• Formulate an auditing process that decreases in frequency, beginning with daily, then weekly, then biweekly, etc., to guarantee that the 5-S process is being followed. Be sure to revise the process when needed to ensure it is up-to-date and relevant.

#5: Measure OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

Keeping track of overall equipment effectiveness involves closely monitoring the pilot equipment, either manually or through the use of automated software.

Using OEE as a “best practices” metric allows you to measure productivity in three main areas:

1. Quality

2. Performance

3. Availability

Through its use, you will be able to identify the percentage of your planned productive time that is truly productive.

Measuring overall equipment effectiveness is critical for helping manufacturers understand the percentage of operating time that is produced compared to time wasted. This is useful both as a baseline and a benchmark for productivity:

• Baseline – OEE allows you to track your overall progress when it comes to eliminating anything that does not add value to an asset.

• Benchmark – OEE allows you to compare the performance of your production assets as compared to:

• Similar in-house assets 

• The industry standards 

• Different people or shifts working on the same asset

UpKeep is an innovative CMMS software that utilizes a preventive maintenance tool to empower today’s maintenance professionals to prevent asset breakdowns before they happen. Request a demo today!

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#6: Identify and Reduce Major Loss Causes

Now it is time to pinpoint the most significant sources of lost productive time. 

This is best accomplished through focused improvement, where employees at all levels across the company invest their collective talents to accomplish regular, incremental improvements to the manufacturing process. 

Focused improvement may look like this:

1. Select a loss – In accordance with equipment-specific overall equipment effectiveness, choose a single major loss to address. Typically, the major loss you select should be your largest source of unplanned stop time.

2. Create a team – Organize a team to address the problem. It should consist of four to six employees with the best experience and equipment know-how from all areas, including:

3. Operators

4. Maintenance personnel

5. Supervisors

6. Collect necessary information – Gather detailed information on the focus problem, being sure to include:

7. Observations

8. Physical evidence

9. Photographic evidence

10. Organize a meeting – Set aside a time for a structured problem-solving session where the team will:

11. Identify the potential causes of the problem.

12. Evaluate the potential causes against the gathered information.

13. Determine the most effective way to address the problem.

14. Schedule – Appoint a planned stop time to implement the suggested fixes. If you have already established a change control process, utilize it for implementing fixes.

15. Restart – Reestablish production and evaluate the effectiveness of the changes over a predetermined time frame. If the fixes proved effective, document the changes to procedures. 

Once this is completed, it is time to move to the next major loss. If you didn’t obtain the desired results, collect additional data and plan another problem-solving session. 

#7: Implement Planned Maintenance

The final step in Total Productive Maintenance implementation is to plan and schedule maintenance activities. Focus on those components that suffer from the most wear and tear or are most prone to failure.

You may consider running a thermographic analysis or vibration test at stress points to determine exactly which equipment is at the highest failure risk.

Concentrate on the prevention of stop times by identifying the major factors that cause your equipment to fail and design a schedule of preventive maintenance over regular intervals. Outline the necessary maintenance intervals by using data surrounding:

• Wear level

• Predicted failure

• Time

• Work order

Decide on a baseline interval for each, then create a feedback loop to optimize your data into:

• Log sheets

• Maintenance log sheets

• Monthly or bi-monthly audits; and/or

• Data from thermography and/or vibration analysis

Schedule monthly audits to verify the existing data and review new entries.

Take control of your asset maintenance and reliability with UpKeep’s easy-to-use, mobile-first CMMS software. Schedule your free demo today.

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What Are the Benefits of Total Productive Maintenance Implementation?

One of the primary advantages of implementing Total Productive Maintenance is the significant reduction in unplanned downtime since TPM emphasizes preventive and proactive maintenance practices. 

Other benefits of TPM include:

• Improved safety

• Less planned downtime

• Autonomous maintenance

• Lower maintenance costs

• Maximized equipment effectiveness

• Enhanced product quality

• Lower manufacturing costs

• Greater employee satisfaction 

How To Implement Total Productive Maintenance With the Help of UpKeep

UpKeep is much more than just a CMMS Software.

It’s designed to centralize maintenance information and streamline maintenance operations.

Our CMMS Software is intuitive enough for every employee to use and makes it easy to:

• Manage multi-location, day-to-day maintenance life cycles.

• Optimize asset utilization.

• Gain insights into real-time performance data.

• Employ an ecosystem approach.

• Bridge the gaps between maintenance, reliability, and operations.

By integrating UpKeep into your workflow, you have the potential to extend your asset and equipment lifetime by up to 11% and achieve up to 652% ROI. 

What do you have to lose?

Request your free UpKeep demo today. 

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