Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of boxes
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Glossary
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Understanding the lean journey
- 3 Understanding your organisation
- 4 Laying the foundation stone of CANDO
- 5 Visual management and performance measurement
- 6 Problem solving, TQM and Six Sigma
- 7 Pull systems
- 8 Total productive manufacturing (TPM)
- 9 Sustainability
- 10 Group learning
- 11 Reflections and future challenges
- References
- Index
8 - Total productive manufacturing (TPM)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of boxes
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Glossary
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Understanding the lean journey
- 3 Understanding your organisation
- 4 Laying the foundation stone of CANDO
- 5 Visual management and performance measurement
- 6 Problem solving, TQM and Six Sigma
- 7 Pull systems
- 8 Total productive manufacturing (TPM)
- 9 Sustainability
- 10 Group learning
- 11 Reflections and future challenges
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The maintenance function and its relationship with production operations is often a neglected area of lean production systems design, yet the skills of this department, when harnessed correctly, add a new dimension to the competitive arsenal of the firm (Willmott and McCarthy, 2000; McCarthy and Rich, 2004). In truth, maintenance engineering and its associated skills, has been neglected for many years. However, as early as 1970, the exemplar Just-In-Time (JIT) supplier companies to the ‘world class’ Toyota Motor Corporation had already spotted and were closing this ‘missing link’ of sustainable high productivity management and had begun to ‘blur the edges’ between the operations and maintenance functions so as to integrate both departmental improvement efforts. These businesses included the Aisin corporation and the world renowned Denso (then known as Nippondenso) and the approach was demonstrated to be so powerful that it has been promoted by the Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance ever since (Nakajima, 1988). These early pioneers, Denso and Aisin, were quick to understand that with a lean production system of no stockpiles of inventory and shop floor problem-solving groups, the performance of the factory maintenance engineering needed to be improved. These businesses therefore set in process a chain of events which would later lead to the development of the total productive maintenance (TPM) approach to high performance manufacturing or total productive manufacturing as it is now more popularly known.
Despite including the term ‘maintenance’, TPM is far from a functionally driven maintenance improvement initiative (Rich, 1999).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Lean EvolutionLessons from the Workplace, pp. 141 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006