.     Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) TPM is a philosophy of continuous improvement that seeks to achieve Zero Breakdowns and Zero Defects through proper equipment maintenance and sustained operator involvement. The benefit of TPM is the elimination of losses on the shop floor -- losses that increase manufacturing cost through sub-standard quality, reduced plant capacity, reduced asset utilization and longer production lead times. TPM recognizes six major losses: 1. Breakdown losses result in equipment downtime for repairs and are unexpected. Associated costs include downtime, labor and spare parts. 2. Set-up and adjustment losses occur during product changeovers, shift change or other changes in operating conditions. Ramp-up efficiency losses would be included in this category. 3. Minor stoppage losses are typically from zero to 10 minutes in length and include machine jams and other brief stoppages that are difficult to record manually. As a result, these losses are usually hidden from efficiency reports and are built into machine capabilities. When combined, they can represent substantial equipment downtime. 4. Speed losses occur when equipment must be slowed down to prevent quality defects or minor stoppages. In most cases, this loss is not recorded because the equipment continues to operate, albeit at a lower speed. Speed losses obviously have a negative effect on productivity and asset utilization. 5. Quality defect losses are caused by the manufacture of defective or sub-standard products, which must be reworked or scrapped. These losses include the labor and material costs (if scrapped) associated with the off-specification production. 6. Yield losses reflect the wasted raw materials associated with the quantity of rejects and scrap that result from start-ups, changeovers, equipment limitations, poor product design, etc. It excludes the category 5 defect losses that result during normal production. Collectively, these six losses determine the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), which is a multiplicative combination of equipment availability (losses 1 & 2), equipment performance (losses 3 & 4) and yield rate (losses 5 & 6). TPM seeks to reduce these losses. In a typical company, OEE tends to be between 50-60%; world-class is considered to be 85%-plus. TPM, often referred to as Autonomous Maintenance (which is technically one aspect of TPM) involves small group activities with participation from Maintenance and Operations personnel on the shop floor. The objective is to teach operators how to maintain their equipment by performing daily checks and lubrication, replacing worn or damaged parts, performing minor repairs and detecting abnormal conditions before a breakdown or loss occurs. The standard program involves seven steps:   TPM in Seven Steps Step 1: Initial cleaning Step 2: Prevention of contamination Step 3: Develop cleaning/lubrication standards Step 4: Conduct thorough overall inspection Step 5: Develop maintenance standards Step 6: Develop process quality assurance plan Step 7: Self-supervision and continuous improvement The result is improved equipment reliability, higher-skilled workers who have "ownership" of their equipment and increased productivity, quality and plant capacity. To learn more about TPM and how your organization can achieve the benefits of increased people and equipment capabililty, give us a call. We'll help design and implement a TPM process tailored to your operation. .