"Leveraging TPM to the Corporate Bottom Line"

Steven Dightman

Plant Engineering

May 2004, pp. 25-26

This is the first of a series of two articles that discuss nine key principles that must be understood by the Total Productive Maintenance practitioner in order to directly link improvement activities to increased profits.

Five of the nine principles are addressed here:

1. Hold a systems view—The manufacturing equipment system is embedded within the larger manufacturing system, which is embedded within the organizational system. The interdependence with other systems should also not be overlooked
2. The production system can be viewed as a chain system with a weakest link; the weakest link limits the output of the entire system—The quickest place to look for increasing load capacity is the weakest link
3. Any waste or loss at the weakest link is a loss to the entire production system—The TPM measure of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is key here
4. Resources before and after the weakest link, by definition, have capacity to catch up with the weakest link, subject to variation—In order not to "starve" to weakest link, these resources need to also be appropriately monitored
5. Increased production capacity of the weakest link must be sold. Otherwise, there is no gain for the system—If the increased production just goes into inventory or more reserve stock at the distributors, then it is not generating profit.

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