Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a company-wide approach to equipment reliability. Instead of leaving machines to maintenance alone, TPM makes operators part of the care of their own equipment and drives toward zero breakdowns, zero defects and zero accidents. OEE is the metric it uses to keep score.

The pillars of TPM

TPM is usually described as a set of pillars on a foundation of 5S (workplace organisation). The pillars work together; you do not need all of them at once.

• Autonomous maintenance: operators clean, inspect and do basic care, catching problems early.
• Planned maintenance: scheduled, data-driven maintenance based on condition and history.
• Quality maintenance: design out the conditions that cause defects.
• Focused improvement: small teams attack specific losses (often the six big losses).
• Early equipment management: design new equipment for reliability and easy maintenance.
• Training, safety and TPM in the office: build skills and extend the approach beyond the floor.

Autonomous maintenance

The heart of TPM is autonomous maintenance. Operators are closest to the machine and notice the early signs (a noise, a leak, a vibration) long before a breakdown. By owning cleaning, inspection and minor adjustments, they keep small problems small. Cleaning is inspection: wiping a machine down is how you find the loose bolt or weeping seal. A ready autonomous maintenance checklist lists those operator checks for 10 machine types, with a sign-off and a red tag log.

How TPM drives OEE

TPM and OEE are two sides of the same coin. The six big losses that TPM attacks are exactly the losses that pull OEE down. Track Availability with reliability measures (MTBF and MTTR), Performance with speed and micro-stop data, and Quality with first pass yield. As autonomous and planned maintenance mature, breakdowns fall, MTBF rises, MTTR falls, and OEE climbs.

Where to start

Start small: pick one critical machine, run 5S and a deep clean, set up an autonomous-maintenance checklist, and measure OEE before and after. Use focused-improvement teams on the biggest loss. The partner we recommend, Fabrico, automatically captures stops and, where cameras are fitted, their video so the focused-improvement teams work from evidence, not guesswork. Fabrico is a partner we recommend; the tools here are free regardless.

Where TPM comes from

TPM was developed in Japan and set out by Seiichi Nakajima in Introduction to TPM (1988). Nakajima also defined the six big losses that OEE measures, which is why TPM and OEE are usually introduced together. See the six big losses.

Tagging defects in the first clean

The first deep clean is an inspection. Every abnormality the team finds gets a tag:

• Hang a tag on each problem: a leak, a loose bolt, a missing guard, a worn belt, a lubrication point nobody can reach.
• Mark who fixes it: operators take what they can do safely, maintenance takes the rest.
• Keep a list of open and closed tags, and review it weekly until it is short.
• Use the tags to write the daily checks, so the same problems are caught early next time.

What a daily operator check covers

Keep the daily check short enough to do every shift:

• Clean the points where dirt hides faults.
• Look, listen and feel for leaks, noise, heat and vibration.
• Check the oil levels and the lubrication points marked on the machine.
• Check that guards, fasteners and sensors are in place.
• Record anything abnormal so maintenance sees it the same day, and track repairs with the MTBF and MTTR calculator.

TPM on process equipment

TPM works on process equipment as well as on assembly lines. The guides for the mixer and agitator, evaporator, filter press, rotary dryer and homogeniser list the faults that daily checks and planned maintenance prevent. The foundation is 5S, and oil analysis adds early warning on gearboxes and hydraulics.

FAQ

Related: preventive vs predictive maintenance · how to calculate MTBF · how to calculate MTTR · the six big losses