Total Productive Maintenance
(TPM) is a support strategy for improving all aspects of manufacturing; it must
be in place for total quality management and Just-In-Time to be effective. TPM
involves the following:
- Maintenance
prevention in the design and selection of new equipment
- Predictive
maintenance to determine the life expectancy of components
- Corrective
maintenance to improve equipment performance
- Preventive
maintenance on a scheduled basis to ensure the continuous smooth operation
of equipment
- Autonomous
maintenance to involve production employees in the total maintenance process
The
importance of TPM is understandable when you consider that production machine
reliability must be consistently high to support throughput, and that TPM is the
only strategy that specifically provides such support.