Total Productive Maintenance:
A people-oriented approach that seeks to provide an effective and efficient maintenance program to maximize the operational efficiency and availability of equipment by resolving maintenance and reliability problems at the source and empowering operators to help maintain their equipment.
TPM is a strategy that
promotes the idea of shared responsibility for equipment by emphasizing the
involvement of all staff, from top management down to supervisors and
operators, to improve maintenance through small-group autonomous maintenance
activities.
Autonomous Maintenance which is also commonly known as Operator Based Maintenance has a very essential role in productive maintenance and is one important pillar that allows operators to perform basic equipment maintenance – which involves carrying out inspections,
cleaning, and performing simple maintenance tasks. This approach emphasizes
creating a close relationship between maintenance artisan and equipment
operators thus improving the condition monitoring and corrective maintenance
techniques of the plant.
TPM is a company-wide maintenance philosophy – that remodels its traditional maintenance strategies and practices into new plant-oriented maintenance techniques by making it a part of corporate policy where each member of an organization is expected to participate in promoting the concept of total productive maintenance in their own way. For example, the Top management and reliability engineer of a plant interprets maintenance data and generates useful business insights and relevant metrics. Similarly, Procurement, devising maintenance policies and shutdown plans, and revision of settings and specifications owing to improve KPIs are the responsibilities of the engineering department that they can focus on. Likewise, the operators are now expected to maintain the normal operating conditions of machinery and identify incipient issues before they become failures.
Another basic fundamental of
TPM is to maximize overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) – Availability,
performance rate, and quality. And all of the parameters of OEE can be improved
with the support of TPM initiatives or the proper implementation of TPM Pillars
– reduction of downtime loss increases availability, reduction in speed losses
improves performance rate, and reducing defects losses increase quality rate.
TPM also reinstates its
maintenance policy and believes that the greatest maintenance opportunities
exist before the installation of equipment. Therefore, working actively with
the engineering and construction department in the designing, procurement, and
installation phase to ensure the minimum equipment maintenance life plan is the
crux.
8 Pillars of TPM:
There are eight basic pillars of Total Productive Maintenance and the 5S technique is considered the foundation block of this eight pillars.
1- Focused Improvement
2- Autonomous Maintenance
3- Planned Maintenance
4- Early Equipment Maintenance
5- Quality Maintenance
6- Education and Training
7- Office Maintenance
8- Safety, Health, and Environment
Operators' Role in Autonomous Maintenance Program.
Operators are considered the most important member of the maintenance team – the first line of defense against unplanned asset downtime. A qualified and skilled person who makes sure that the equipment is clean and working as per O&M specifications is surely an asset to an organization whose knowledge, skills, and accountability can be utilized to prevent equipment failures. Autonomous Maintenance also underscores that the operators' contribution to sustaining asset reliability depends greatly on their knowledge about the equipment and the pattern that is followed before functional failure occurs - with the help of this useful information overall equipment effectiveness and reliability can be improved. And if organizations underutilize their operators' experience, and abilities should consider involving operators in clean and inspect routine activities – an operator care program which is 5S – a foundation of the block of TPM 8 supporting pillars. Because no company can afford extra technicians or engineers for equipment cleaning and neither it’s reasonable for an organization to have highly qualified and highly paid technicians and engineers do that when their skills can be utilized to carry out permanent, root-cause repairs.
The essential characteristic
of Autonomous Maintenance or Operator Based Maintenance is to imbue a sense of
plant ownership in operators and assign them over first-level equipment
maintenance. This seems fairly a simple task to figure out what to do and how
to do it but changing people’s attitude towards the maintenance section from “I
bust it and you mend it” to “I will maintain my equipment” is quite challenging
because the idea of cleaning often puts people off – particularly the
operators, And initial cleaning is the first practical equipment task for every
TPM team – whether it’s autonomous maintenance or preventive maintenance team.
The
exercise of initial cleaning equipment is an application of 5S inside the plant
area which is predominantly an operator-driven program. The goal of 5S is to
create a work environment that is clean and well-organized. It consists of five
elements:
1- Sort: Eliminates anything
that’s not truly needed in the work area.
2-
Straighten: Organize the remaining items.
3-
Shine: Clean and inspect the work area.
4-
Standardize: Create standards for performing the above three activities.
5-
Sustain: Ensure the standards are regularly applied.
The implication of the
aforementioned 5S elements in the work area will enable the team to locate the
source of any problem in the equipment.
Since one of the basic
concepts in implementing OBM (Operator Based Maintenance) is operators’
involvement in first-level equipment maintenance and this statement emphasizes
that the operators should be able to identify faults before taking corrective
or preventive actions – although not in the same way as an engineer would
normally look for but by using their four senses:
1- See – obvious areas of damage and contamination
2-
Touch – Surfaces as they are
being cleaned or hot.
3-
Smell – leaks and spills.
4-
Hear – Noises
The Autonomous Maintenance
Program underscores the importance of training and educating operators under
the umbrella of TPM’s 8 pillars wherein Training and Education of the staff
have an essential place. OBM ensures that operators are trained to detect
abnormalities and are able to correct minor abnormalities on their own, they
have the knowledge and skill set to maintain optimal equipment condition via
basic condition monitoring and checks.
After training, operators are
expected to do the following maintenance tasks on their own in support of the
maintenance team with the help of TPM.
1- General Inspection: A general inspection of equipment or asset operator can detect all incipient
abnormalities before they turn into potential failures. Operators can ensure
that all assets and allied equipment are working fine.
2-
Cleaning: Operators can keep assets clean, and work on the prevention of causes
of dust and dirt.
3-
Lubrications: Operators can perform minor maintenance like lubrication and
change of oil etc. because it slows down equipment wear and tears.
4-
Operating Procedures: Availability of operating procedures is indispensable in
the successful implementation of TPM as it gives thorough instructions about
equipment operations and clears out all ambiguities. Operators are expected to
follow them more frequently.
5-
Autonomous Management: Development of goals and making of improvement
activities routine. MTBF (mean time between failure) recording and analysis.
6-
Standardizations: Standards for clean-ups, check-ups, lubrications, data
records, and other on-the-job management and upkeep management items.
7-
Operating Conditions: Operators are expected to check all assets operating
conditions whether the environment is correct, and equipment is not being
overloaded or unsafely used. Take initial steps for remedial and correct
reporting to concerned stakeholders.
8-
Documentations: Operators can document all kinds of failure trends and details
of repair actions, failure statistics, and the tools and parts used in repairs.
This kind of information helps in failure analysis.
9-
Designing Phase: If the assets are being designed or modified make sure that
operators are present along with maintainers.
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