There are 2 points to be permanently remembered about TPM:

1) TPM is not an additional job: TPM is a helping tool which makes our job more easy and effective.

2) TPM is an opportunity: When TPM is practised in an organisation, it becomes an opportunity to address many lingering problems, with which we have lived without getting the scope to pay attention.

(Mis)Representation of TPM

It is important to realize that,TPM is not about making some reports and presentations, or doing lot of paintings and visual displays and boards. If that is the level of TPM that is practised in a plant, where TPM is not being used to reduce Losses and not contributing to business objectives of the organisation,  it is basically a useless activity, a wastage of time. That is why, often it is seen that people in many organisations feel reluctant to involve in TPM, considering it as a show-type activity.

In many plants where such TPM is practised, it becomes painful for the TPM Coordinators when all the people show they are busy with their regular work and have no time for doing TPM activities. This happens because,they consider TPM as a show-purpose additional activity, beyond and unrelated to their regular functional jobs.

It becomes the role of the TPM consultants as well as the TPM Coordinators, to bring TPM closer to the everyday life of people. There are various tools, concepts and approaches in TPM, which should be used and customised for various applications in the people’s level, with the sole intent of making their regular functional jobs more easy, and more effective.

Customised application of TPM

In every organisation, there are lots and lots of regular jobs, which are followed in complicated, cumbersome and time taking processes. TPM should be used to address such processes and make them simplified and easy to follow. There are sometimes undefined job processes, which different people do in different ways. TPM should be used to bring standardisation of the existing routine job processes. This helps in making a standard base on which any new person will be able to learn quickly and follow the processes in a simple manner.

With data

In the Operations side, TPM brings a major insight through the tracking of the processes through data. The data trends make us understand whether there is improvement, or consistency or deterioration in the output. In many organisations, even the very basic data are not collected, or not recorded and stored for any sort of analysis. Introduction of TPM brings the need to collect all the necessary data and route them in a channelised manner so that people do not have to run for or request for data from various departments. A data once entered should not be typed again. It will only flow through pre-destined channels and arrive at the destination workstations, in the required format in which it will be easy to read the data and understand it.

The data is used to identify and prioritise Loss areas and initiate focussed action towards elimination of selected Losses to achieve the improvement connected with the business goals.

The basic and ultimate purpose

The basic and ultimate purpose of TPM is to bring reliability and stability in plant operations. That means a lot of attention to the very basic condition of equipment, operators’ involvement, their skill & knowledge about the equipment and processes. In many organisations, this is not a priority, focussed attention is missing in this front, though the intention is always there to produce more and in better quality. TPM provides the opportunity to strengthen this base, through sure step by step methods which help to realise the same objective, by involvement of all the people in the frontline. And the same people who have been accustomed to do their work in a monotonous way day after day in the same manner, suddenly find a lot of opportunity to improve, with encouragement, training and purpose. Unbelievable energy gets released, and momentous improvement, in many innovative ways, start happening all around. I have seen this phenomenon happening in many many companies who practised TPM with this purpose.

And there are so many other functions like Safety, Environment, Skill development, Projects &engineering, Office Functions like Procurement, Finance, HR, & Admin, further including Logistics, Supply chain, Marketing, etc., where TPM methods can be used to bring in more solid improvement in a sustained manner, mainly by involving the people in the improvement activities. People become conscious of the problems in their own work, analyze and find solutions to their own work and bring improvement to their own work – by simply involving TPM techniques.

Hence what Amakawa san had mentioned during his visit on my invitation, to Indian Oil Corporation, Refinery Head Quarters, Delhi in 2016, “ Do not do TPM .. do (your work) with TPM” becomes so very true.

[Mr KAZUHIKO AMAKAWA was the youngest JIPM TPM Consultant when I met him for the first time as a TPM interpreter way back in the year 2000 when he was only 45 year of age, and he was the first JIPM Consultant with whom I started working as an Interpreter and I worked with him for 2 years till 2002, after which Mr Amakawa got engaged in research of TPM applications for Nuclear powerplants and petrochemical industries in japan, and his India visits were stopped. Later on I met him again in 2012, when he came back to India as a JIPM TPM Award Assessor, and again he was the youngest JIPM Assessor that time.]

Lastly, I want to add on from my side: “You can enjoy your work, if you do it <with TPM>.”

SURAJIT DEB
TSD INSTITUTE
26^th January, 2021