For several years now, I have been very familiar with the implementation of the Lean Manufacturing disciplines. I know of the problems that implementers face and how these can be approached to fully accomplish their goals.

On the other hand, we have gradually seen so much progress in machine designs, so many innovative systems, that our maintenance crews are very much aware of the need to keep up with change. This puts some pressure on them. TPM helps to relieve this pressure. It lets them evolve to more effectively respond to the new requirements.

This makes me think that it is obvious that the most successful lean implementations should include TPM. Total Productive Maintenance starts by creating a very much needed bonding and cooperation between maintenance crews and production operators, supervisors and management. These forces have been traditionally antagonistic: production blames on maintenance for any breakdown, production blames on the operators for abusing the machine.

TPM is a discipline comprised of most of the key ingredients of the Toyota Production System, now known as Lean Manufacturing, such as:

• Total participation
• Employee empowerment
• Leadership environment
• Continuous improvement
• Development of ownership feeling
• Improved attitude and morale
• Increased reliability

Once a good TPM program takes off, the benefits start flowing to the whole organization. That is when many people start coming aboard. The participants feel encouraged and become familiar with communicating their ideas, confident in the new listening attitude of the whole team.

In order to create the right environment, we have to comply with the most elemental requirements:

• Total commitment from the top management.
• Appropriate diffusion of the plan and its results.
• Authentic empowerment and mutual respect at all levels.

We have experienced first hand the benefits derived from this approach. The spirit of cooperation is growing constantly after years of the implementation stage. It is not unusual for operators to come up with outstanding ideas to improve quality or cut-shorten-ease operations. This becomes a part of the Lean Philosophy that is spreading. It will be up to the TPM coordinator to keep this trend actively growing.

It is important to thoroughly assess  the needs of a plant to determine which discipline should be implemented first. We also recommend to be open minded towards applying in some cases, more than one discipline at a time.

A TPM Kaizen event starts the TPM implementation by creating the basic process for Autonomous Maintenance. The participants from various departments discover how TPM will help them. It should be perceived not as an extra load on them, but as the opportunity to reach a higher level of knowledge and value to ease the achievement of their own goals.

There is a lot more information on TPM in our Articles section