[Marco]

TPM stands for Total Productive Maintenance and is a way to look at (machine)maintenance. Central in TPM is the machine operator who performs in a great extend (and sometimes all) the routine maintenance tasks by themself. This gives appropiate and effective efforts due to the machine is the "domain" of one person or team.

TPM is a critical adjunct to lean manufacturing. Imagine that the if machine uptime is not predictable or the the process capability is not on a sustained level, extra (buffer)stocks must be piled in order to "react" upon these uncertanlies.

Secondly TPM is all about preventing, not fixing the machine. Some people would use "Total Productive Manufacturing" or "Total Process Management". Where as TPM is proactive that essentially aims to prevent any kind of slack before occurrence its motto is "zero error, zero work-related accident, and zero loss".

To finilize this short summary, TPM has five goals

TPM identifies losses of waste in on the machine and works systematically to eliminate the by making improvements (Kaizen). Further more TPM has 8 pillars of activity with all active to achieve a “zero” target. These 8 pillars are: Focussed Improvement, Autonomous Maintenance, Planned Maintenance, Training and Education, Early Phase Management, Quality Maintenance, Office TPM, and Safety, Health and Environment.

In order to see if TPM activity do have any positive impact, the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a metric to use for.

[Haz]

Going to throw a spanner in the works here, what about a policy of agreed min/max stocks, discuss with the supplier of the machine what will break down first and purchase the top 10 spares, and a policy that you only fix a machine when it breaks down?, TPM is downtime and costs the same as a breakdown, you will also save a lot of money on the all weekend maintenance overtime.

Why is this not at least as good as the TPM thing?

Thoughts?

[Marco]

Originally Posted by Haz

Going to throw a spanner in the works here, what about a policy of agreed min/max stocks, discuss with the supplier of the machine what will break down first and purchase the top 10 spares, and a policy that you only fix a machine when it breaks down?, TPM is downtime and costs the same as a breakdown, you will also save a lot of money on the all weekend maintenance overtime.

Why is this not at least as good as the TPM thing?

Thoughts?

So if I understand it right you "resign" with a solution to have stock parts instead of getting to the rootcause and prevent the breakdown and thus prevent the stock...?

I would call that Total Purchase Management

[Haz]

Originally Posted by Marco

So if I understand it right you "resign" with a solution to have stock parts instead of getting to the rootcause and prevent the breakdown and thus prevent the stock...?

I would call that Total Purchase Management

Marco,
Not quite mate, you would have an agreed min/max stock with your customer so in the event of a machine breakdown you can still supply ok stock whilst you quickly fix the machine.

Thoughts?