Overview

TPM is the original equipment-improvement side of the Toyota Production System.
Bob Williamson

Recall in the previous chapter, that Masaaki Imai1 clearly states you must first establish the routine use of 5S principles, which will also result in excellent housekeeping, before moving on to total productive maintenance (TPM).

According to Bob Williamson, the name of TPM stems from making the progression from breakdown maintenance to Preventive Maintenance (PM) to Productive Maintenance, and was at one time named Total Preventive Maintenance. As a student and in his discussions with Seiichi Nakajima, the creator of TPM, Williamson relates that Nakajima said in October 1990 that he probably made a mistake calling TPM "Total Productive Maintenance," because it goes well beyond maintenance. Nakajima remarked that the perception of maintenance in the U.S. was fairly dismal, and paraphrasing he said " You expect equipment to break down. That's why you (Americans) will struggle with the concept of Zero Downtime.' You understand Zero Defects and Zero Accidents, but when it comes to equipment you fail to grasp the concept that equipment does not have to fail." Nakajima went on to say it would have been better to have called it Total Productive Manufacturing, since that was its goal. Williamson also observes that his anecdotal information since the late 1980s indicates that the TPM "failure rate" is about 60%. In some cases it may be higher since many so-called TPM efforts were not true TPM, but rather focused on the single element of...