5 Steps To Proper Use of TPM

What is TPM (total productive maintenance) and how does it impact your organization? Using TPM your company can find a way to reduce or eliminate defects from occurring. When you properly implement TPM the goal will be to find a way to help all the employees to get on the same page to help them all have a chance to perform their job duties with the lowest defect ratio possible. When defects are down, you do not have issues pertaining to efficiency of the company and you are able to maintain a higher standard for your customers.

When TPM is used in the right manner, you will be able to increase the operation of the company. In many cases, TPM will be able to provide you with an increase in overall productivity and labor by about 50%! This is a huge number for any company and will be able to provide you with the positive returns that you are hoping for.

As you focus on using TPM it is important that you look at how you can implement it in the right manner. You must focus on the following 5 steps to have the right type of improvement and the right implementation of the program:
1. Equipment effectiveness. This is one of the first steps that you need to make. It is important that you focus on ways in which you can improve your equipment to have it make any kind of difference. Your equipment is what is responsible for the overall creation of your product and without effective equipment; you will end up dealing with products that do not meet the standards of the customers or of the company in general. Take time to focus on the equipment so you can identify all the areas that need to be improved. You will likely have areas that are centered around issues pertaining to the speed of the machinery, downtime and product defects.
2. Employee responsibility. For TPM to work, each employee needs to be held accountable to some degree. It is important that you focus on proper training to make your staff members take responsibility for the equipment that they run. They will need to perform certain maintenance tasks and other things in order to keep the equipment running properly. The employees must also let you know when they identify issues such as machinery that is not running up to it's full potential. When you are able to really work on understanding the issues. It makes it easier to deal with them ahead of time.
3. Scheduled maintenance. With TPM, everything you do needs to focus on the prevention of problems. You should focus on scheduled maintenance for your machinery. This way you will always have the latest upgrades to the machines and other things so that you can reduce errors and defects from occurring in the first place.
4. Correct training. Many companies do not take the time to properly train their employees. This is another thing that is important to consider with TPM. You need to create a training program that is effective and one that actually teaches your employees all of the information they need to have in order to do their jobs in the right way.
5. Correct examination of equipment. Why are you having the issues? Always take time to examine the process that your company uses to create the products. You need to focus on tracking all of the different areas that can lead to problems in the company. It is important to look at the design of the products on to the manufacturing line itself.