Total Product Maintenance

Management in businesses and organizations is the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources. Management is also an academic discipline, a social science whose objective is to study social organization. Management is also called Total Product Maintenance)

                TPM is a innovative Japanese concept. The origin of TPM can be traced back to 1951 when preventive maintenance was introduced in Japan. Maintenance group took up only essential maintenance works. Total Product Maintenance (TPM) can be considered as the medical science of machines and it is a maintenance program which involves a newly defined concept for maintaining plants and equipment. The goal of the TPM program is to markedly increase production while, at the same time, increasing employee morale and job satisfaction. TPM brings maintenance into focus as a necessary and vitally important part of the business. It is no longer regarded as a non-profit activity. Down time for maintenance is scheduled as a part of the manufacturing day and, in some cases, as an integral part of the manufacturing process. The goal is to hold emergency and unscheduled maintenance to a minimum. TPM was introduced to achieve the following objectives. The important ones are avoid waste in a quickly changing economic environment, producing goods without reducing product quality, reduce cost, produce a low batch quantity at the earliest possible time, goods send to the customers must be non-defective, involve equipment operators in the simple, day-to-day basics of equipment cleanliness and checks to enhance employee ownership in maintaining and identifying equipment problems immediately.

TPM is divided into several types: breakdown maintenance, preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, and maintenance prevention. Breakdown maintenance means that people wait until equipment fails and repair it. Such a thing could be used when the equipment failure does not significantly affect the operation or production or generate any significant loss other than repair cost. Preventive maintenance is a daily maintenance ( cleaning, inspection, oiling and re-tightening ), design to retain the healthy condition of equipment and prevent failure through the prevention of deterioration, periodic inspection or equipment condition diagnosis, to measure deterioration. Corrective maintenance improves equipment and its components so that preventive maintenance can be carried out reliably. Equipment with design weakness must be redesigned to improve reliability or improving maintainability. Maintenance prevention indicates the design of new equipment. Weakness of current machines are sufficiently studied ( on site information leading to failure prevention, easier maintenance and prevents of defects, safety and ease of manufacturing ) and are incorporated before commissioning a new equipment.

Today, with competition in industry at an all-time high, TPM may be the only thing that stands between success and total failure for some companies. It has been proven to be a program that works. It can be adapted to work not only in industrial plants, but in construction, building maintenance, transportation, and in a variety of other situations. Employees must be educated and convinced that TPM is not just another "program of the month" and that management is totally committed to the program and the extended time frame necessary for full implementation. If everyone involved in a TPM program does his or her part, an unusually high rate of return compared to resources invested may be expected.