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What is Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and How to Enhance Production Quality
Total productive maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance management philosophy and strategy that maximizes production equipment effectiveness with the collective effort of all teams rather than just maintenance staff.
TPM engages employees at all levels—from floor plant technicians to senior facility managers—to boost production integrity, system quality, and operational perfection.
The ultimate aim is to minimize accidents, defects, mistakes, unscheduled breakdown maintenance, and downtime.
Total productive maintenance reframes traditional preventive maintenance as a value-added function and business advantage—let's understand how.
The philosophy behind total productive maintenance
TPM isn’t just another acronym added to the business lexicon. We believe it actually proposes a practical methodology that can transform operational efficiency.
TPM is often synonymous with ‘total participation maintenance” in my mind. It reflects the collective effort of every individual on the company floor.
The essence of TPM transcends the shop floor. Initially embraced by manufacturing, its principles have found homes in various sectors, from facilities management to education and healthcare.
This adaptability speaks to the universal value of TPM's core tenets: inclusion, continuous improvement, and learning.
As a Japanese-originated philosophy, TPM was developed on the basis of PrM concepts and methodologies. This concept was first introduced by M/s Nippon Denso Co. Ltd. of Japan, a supplier of M/s Toyota Motor Company, Japan, in the year 1971.
The basis of TPM assessments was to eliminate any form of waste by ensuring machines and equipment are always in top-notch condition.
The philosophy strives to achieve near-perfect production free from small stops, breakdowns, defects, and accidents. It does so by making equipment maintenance a shared responsibility of all employees.
As a result, when all workers are interested in keeping assets in tip-top shape, you can reduce cycle times and increase uptime.
TPM blurs the line between production and maintenance since everyone is involved in maintaining equipment. Companies adopting total productive maintenance zero in on preventive and predictive maintenance to improve the equipment's operational efficiency, lifespan, and productivity.
Now, let's dive deep into what you can achieve with total productive maintenance.
What are the goals for total productive maintenance?
Total productive maintenance has two primary goals: zero breakdowns and zero defects—both key to improving plant efficiency and minimizing inventory costs.
Numbers say so, too!
In a study about TPM’s impact, the OEE of a small-scale polymer industry improved from approximately 75% to 83% following TPM implementation.
It's also worth noting that more than half of all TPM implementations fail. Before planning small group activities for maintenance, you must understand the goals you're chasing.
To ensure good maintenance practices, you must meet the following five total productive maintenance goals.
1. Enhance facility and equipment effectiveness by spotting downtime, defect, and speed losses on time.
Facilio offers detailed monitoring of both static and dynamic parameters, using intuitive visualizations to help benchmark performance and identify deviations. This provides a clear overview of asset maintenance history and operational downtime.
With machine learning, Facilio can predict system anomalies and potential equipment failures, using historical data to forecast when maintenance or replacement parts are needed.
2. Accomplish autonomous maintenance by empowering equipment operators to own maintenance tasks.
Repair-level staff, for example, can follow O&M manuals to perform maintenance, whereas prevention-level staff can spot potential issues ahead of time. Improvement-level staff can implement corrective maintenance measures to resolve recurring issues.
3. Develop a systematic maintenance approach to create condition-based maintenance standards and determine preventive maintenance requirements for each piece of equipment.
With Facilio, alarm triggers can be set to detect anomalies and automatically generate work orders for timely asset repairs.
In TPM, maintenance staff plays a supporting role in training operators, diagnosing problems, and creating maintenance strategies. On the other hand, the operating staff own facilities and their care.
4. Facilitate appropriate and continuous training for all operations and maintenance staff. With adequate training, employees learn the necessary skills to do their jobs.
5. Move toward zero maintenance with maintenance prevention (MP), a practice focusing on equipment failure prevention and maintenance during the entire asset lifecycle. TPM aims to track and eliminate root causes of potential maintenance problems as early as possible.
Facilio uses real-time IoT insights to optimize asset performance by automating work orders and identifying root causes. It monitors power and water consumption in detail, drills down to asset-specific energy use with sub-metering, and projects monthly resource consumption.
Ultimately, the goal of TPM is to prevent:
- Downtime loss caused by breakdown or changeover times
- Idle time and minor stoppages resulting from abnormal sensor operation, etc
- Process defects occurring because of scarp and quality errors
- Speed loss that prevents equipment from running at the desired speed
- Yield loss during the time between machine start and stable production
What is the 5S foundation? A framework to set up TPM
The 5S framework lays an iterable foundation for creating an organized and productive workspace. 5S of total productive maintenance are:
- Sort: Remove unnecessary workplace items by separating crucial equipment and tools from less important ones.
- Straighten: Use organization skills to ensure everything is at the right place and time.
- Shine: Keep the workspace, tools, and equipment clean with on-time inspections.
- Standardize: Create clear standards and a framework to implement the above 3Ss.
- Sustain: Audit safety regulations for continuous improvement and long-term sustainment.
Companies generally combine the 5S framework with eight pillars of total productive maintenance to create a wholescale maintenance program.
TPM aims to optimize the entire production system by preventing mishaps through various strategies, including preventive maintenance (routine checks and upkeep to avoid breakdowns), corrective maintenance (quickly fixing equipment on failure), and error-proofing (designing equipment to minimize errors and defects).
What are the eight pillars of total productive maintenance?
The eight pillars of total productive maintenance improve equipment reliability with proactive and preventive measures.
1. Autonomous maintenance: This returns routine maintenance responsibility to operators. Equipment ownership means operators are responsible for cleaning and lubricating equipment, running facility condition assessments, and spotting emergent issues.
2. Planned maintenance: This proactive approach minimizes unplanned stop time by scheduling maintenance tasks based on measured failure rates.
3. Quality maintenance: Ensuring equipment consistently produces quality products by addressing root causes of defects and implementing measures to prevent them.
4. Focused improvement: Encourages group work to achieve regular, incremental equipment operation improvements.
5. Early equipment management: Eases planned maintenance by involving employees in the pre-installation stage.
6. Training and education: Provides comprehensive training programs to develop operator skills and knowledge related to equipment maintenance and TPM principles.
7. Safety, health, and environment: Implements practices that create an accident-free workplace by eliminating potential health and safety risks.
8. TPM in administration: Extends TPM principles beyond the plant floor to administrative and support operations (order processing, procurement, and scheduling). This improves efficiency and minimizes waste in administrative functions.
Total productive maintenance ensures continuous process improvement by creating new routines for everyone across all levels. For example,
- Machine operators are involved in document inspection, routing cleaning, replacing parts, lubrication, and greasing
- Plant staff remove debris, unused assets, and waste
- Facility technicians organize tools and equipment for ease of access
- Management trains operators to improve their skills in identifying potential issues
- Maintenance managers build maintenance checklists, work orders, and machine operation tasks
So, what benefits can you expect with total productive maintenance? Keep reading.
Benefits of total productive maintenance
Total productive maintenance frames maintenance as a business advantage. As a result, you experience multiple benefits, including reduced unplanned downtime, maintenance costs, and damage risk.
- Reduces unplanned downtime and maintenance: Scheduled, proactive maintenance activities help minimize equipment failure and downtime
- Improves workplace safety: The 5S framework helps you spot problems ahead of time, create an accident-free facility, and manage your workspace better
- Minimizes manufacturing costs: Since TPM improves overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), you can control equipment stoppage time and unplanned repairs better. This decline in maintenance costs leads to higher profits
- Minimizes defects: A consistent production line improves product quality and speed of delivery
Ultimately, TPM ensures equipment longevity and improves employee happiness with cross-departmental knowledge sharing, collaboration between all stakeholders, and equipment ownership.
Pro-tip: If you aspire to some of TPM’s principles, you should check if your CMMS is enabling your team to achieve them.
Legacy CMMS aren’t popular for being friendly, prioritizing on stakeholder engagement and seamless communication between departments. They’re looked at as asset maintenance registries, but they should be doing more.
Key aspects for TPM include:
- Inclusive and user-friendly interfaces for all end users, from field technicians to executive leadership, making it easy for them to access necessary information
- Engaging internal and external stakeholders including occupants, employees, tenants, customers, and contractors. Meeting them on their preferred platforms—whether web, mobile, or Kiosk applications—ensures they stay informed and can contribute to the maintenance process.
Most of the problems with maintenance management today stems from the systems used in carrying out operations. The traditional operational model is outdated, inefficient and is overdue for a change towards a more integrated approach.
Facilio’s connected CMMS democratizes information access, encouraging better internal collaboration and elevating the end-user experience.
Engaging multiple stakeholders bridges communication gaps and promotes a more cohesive approach to TPM management.
Here’s how it tackles pressing issues and revolutionizes maintenance management:
Legacy systems have its focus limited to assets and technicians, neglecting broader operational needs. This leads to inefficiencies and missed opportunities for overall performance improvement.
Facilio tackles this by adopting a comprehensive approach, that also includes people, processes, and systems.
Connecting people:
Facilio's CMMS centralizes communication, enabling smooth teamwork with instant updates and information sharing.
Connecting processes:
Facilio's CMMS enhances OT/IT system operations with low-code automation, enabling quick customization and efficient workflows.
Connecting systems:
With an API-first approach, Facilio offers out-of-the-box integration with BMS, sensors, BIM, and any 3rd party business software to ensure interoperability and resolve typical enterprise application integration problems.
Unlock portfolio-wide O&M efficiencies with connected operations
If that has piqued your interest, let's see how to calculate total productive maintenance and implement it at your facility.
How do you calculate total productive maintenance?
Total productive maintenance is best measured with overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
It provides a comprehensive view of how well equipment is performing by considering three main factors:
1. Availability: This means no stops. It considers availability loss events such as time losses due to equipment setup, adjustments, failure, and shift changes.
2. Performance: It considers all factors that prevent equipment from running at the maximum possible speed. Examples include minor interruptions, slow cycles, and small stops.
3. Quality: This ensures all manufactured items meet quality standards. It looks at factors such as production rejects and the reduced yield on startup.
TPM aims to achieve 100% OEE, which happens only when equipment runs at full speed without interruptions and produces high-quality products.
What is OEE in total productive maintenance?
OEE in total productive maintenance is maintenance KPI. It reveals an asset's efficiency in terms of availability, performance, and production quality.
Maintenance managers use OEE to understand what percentage of planned production time is genuinely productive. 100% OEE means perfect production, and that's what TPM helps you achieve.
5 Steps to TPM implementation
Ready to implement total productive maintenance? Check out these steps to get started.
- Step 1: Identify target equipment. This stage involves understanding which equipment is the easiest to improve, equipment with constraints, and other problematic assets. Prioritize the target assets depending on your maintenance strategy
- Step 2: Clean up and prep equipment for improving operations. Leverage the 5S framework and autonomous maintenance to build a consensus between operators and maintenance staff
- Step 3: Keep measuring OEE. Use a total productive maintenance checklist to bring OEE closer to 100%. You can also rely on total productive maintenance software to track unplanned stop times and make necessary adjustments
- Step 4: Fix losses. Once you review OEE data, you can address challenges impacting productivity improvements
- Step 5: Leverage proactive maintenance. Spot the assets that wear, fail frequently, and are under stress. This knowledge will help you optimize maintenance intervals and proactive maintenance programs
Tips to sustain TPM efficiency as you scale
Sustaining TPM efficiency can be challenging. That's why you need to focus on both short-term and long-term maintenance tasks. Check out these tips to stay on top of total productive maintenance efficiency.
- Motivate employees with a shared vision of the future and the path to achieving that. For example, you can introduce a 5S award for the most significant OEE improvements
- Build momentum for initiatives early on to ensure every initiative succeeds in the long run
- Reiterate the importance of TPM to prevent employees from turning to old ways of working
- Focus on continuous improvement so that the OEE score improves over timeAchieving high OEE is easier with facility maintenance management software like Facilio. It brings together machinery and maintenance data for managing, monitoring, and controlling maintenance activities.
