Maintenance Is Not Only the Maintenance Department’s Job
In most plants, operators run machines and maintenance fixes them. When something breaks, production waits for a tradesperson. When nothing is broken, maintenance works through a schedule and operators have little to do with the condition of the equipment in front of them. Total productive maintenance starts from the view that this division is the main reason equipment performs below its potential.
This guide explains what total productive maintenance is, the ideas that hold it together, what it asks of operators and tradespeople, and how to begin without launching a programme that fades in six months.
What Total Productive Maintenance Is
Total productive maintenance, usually shortened to TPM, is an approach to equipment management that aims to maximise the effectiveness of plant by involving everyone who works with it. It was developed in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s, with the car component maker Nippondenso generally credited as the first to apply it across a company, and it was set out for a wider audience by Seiichi Nakajima of the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance.
Each word in the name does some work. Total means everyone, from operators to managers. Productive means the aim is output, not maintenance activity for its own sake. Maintenance means keeping equipment in the condition it was designed to be in, and improving on it.
The Six Big Losses
TPM begins by naming what equipment loses. The six big losses are grouped under three headings.
Availability losses. Breakdowns, and time spent on setup and adjustment, including changeovers.
Performance losses. Small stops and idling, where the machine halts briefly and restarts, and reduced speed, where it runs slower than it was designed to.
Quality losses. Defects and rework during steady production, and losses at startup before the process settles.
The value of the list is that it makes hidden losses visible. Breakdowns are logged and discussed. A filler that has been run ten per cent below design speed for three years, because it jams if pushed, is rarely recorded as a loss at all.
How TPM Connects to OEE
Overall equipment effectiveness is the measure TPM uses to keep score. It multiplies three ratios that correspond to the three groups of losses: availability, performance and quality.
The figure often quoted as world class is about 85 per cent. It comes from multiplying 90 per cent availability by 95 per cent performance and 99 per cent quality, which gives 84.6 per cent. Treat it as a reference point and not a target. A line with frequent changeovers and many product formats will sit well below a line that runs one product all week, and both can be well managed. The useful comparison is a line against its own history.
The Eight Pillars
TPM is usually described as eight pillars resting on a foundation of workplace organisation.
Autonomous maintenance. Operators take on routine care of their equipment: cleaning, inspection, lubrication and minor adjustments.
Focused improvement. Small cross functional teams work on specific losses, one at a time.
Planned maintenance. Maintenance is scheduled on the basis of condition and history, so that it happens before failure.
Quality maintenance. Equipment conditions that cause defects are identified and controlled, so that quality is built in and not inspected in.
Early equipment management. What has been learned from running and maintaining existing plant is fed into the design and purchase of new plant.
Training and education. Operators and tradespeople are given the skills the other pillars require.
Safety, health and environment. Improvements must not introduce risk, and a well maintained plant is a safer one.
TPM in administration. The same thinking is applied to planning, purchasing and other support functions that affect the floor.
No plant needs to start with all eight. Most begin with the first three.
Autonomous Maintenance in Practice
Autonomous maintenance is the pillar that most changes daily life on the floor, and the one most often misunderstood. It does not mean turning operators into fitters, and it does not mean handing maintenance work to production to save money.
It starts with cleaning, and the phrase used in TPM is that cleaning is inspection. An operator who wipes down a machine at the end of a shift sees the oil weep, the loose guard, the frayed cable and the sensor bracket that has moved. Those observations are tagged and recorded. Simple ones the operator fixes. The rest go to maintenance.
From there the work progresses in stages. Sources of contamination are removed and hard to reach areas are made accessible. Standards for cleaning, inspection and lubrication are written by the people who will follow them. Operators are trained to understand how their machine works and what normal looks like. Over time, routine checks move from maintenance to the operator, and tradespeople are freed for work that needs their skills.
What Changes for the Maintenance Team
TPM is sometimes resisted by tradespeople who see it as a threat. In practice it moves them up the value chain. With operators handling routine care and early detection, maintenance spends less time on callouts and more on planned work, condition monitoring, root cause analysis and equipment improvement.
It also raises the standard expected. When operators raise fifty defect tags in a month, maintenance has to deal with them. A backlog of tags that nobody acts on is the fastest way to end operator involvement.
Why TPM Programmes Fail
It is launched as a campaign. Posters and a kickoff event, then nothing changes in how time is allocated.
No time is given. Operators cannot clean and inspect if the line is never stopped for it. If ten minutes a shift is not protected, autonomous maintenance does not exist.
Tags are not closed. Operators report defects and see no response.
It is run by one department. TPM owned only by maintenance, or only by a continuous improvement team, misses the point of the first word.
The equipment is too far gone. A machine with years of accumulated defects has to be restored to a sound base condition before operators can be asked to keep it there.
Measures are used to judge and not to learn. If OEE becomes a stick, the data stops being honest.
How to Start Small
Choose one line or one machine, preferably one that matters and has a willing team. Measure its losses for a few weeks to establish a baseline. Stop it for a day and carry out an initial clean with operators, tradespeople and supervisors working together, tagging every defect found. Fix the defects, starting with safety and with the ones causing losses. Write simple cleaning and inspection standards with the operators. Protect a short period each shift to carry them out. Review the tags and the numbers every week.
Run this for three months, show the result and then move to the next machine. A plant that restores and sustains one line has learned more than one that announces TPM everywhere.
The Role of Outside Engineering Support
The initial clean on a neglected machine typically produces a long list of defects, and many are beyond what an in-house team can clear alongside normal work: worn parts with long lead times, guards that need remaking, sensors in the wrong place, sources of leakage that need a design change. Getting through that list quickly matters, because the momentum of a pilot depends on people seeing their tags acted on.
Where BevTech Fits
BevTech is a family owned engineering business in Richlands, Brisbane, with more than 25 years in beverage and FMCG manufacturing. Plants running improvement programmes use us to clear the engineering backlog those programmes uncover: machining replacement and redesigned parts in our own workshop, fabricating guards and covers, relocating sensors, correcting control faults on Allen Bradley and Siemens systems and restoring machines to base condition during planned stops and shutdowns. Our free FMCG and Beverage Plant Shutdown Planning Checklist, available on our website, is a useful companion for planning restoration work.
If your improvement team has a list of defects that is growing faster than it is closing, use the contact form at bevtech.com.au/contact.
