ABSTRACT
TPM at many plants has turned into "display TPM." It consists of plastering the walls of the plant with management graphs and telling the workers to look at them. TPM has three basic foundations: Everyday maintenance: Workers take care of their machines and production lines themselves. Periodic maintenance: Certain maintenance tasks are scheduled to happen annually or semiannually, like a complete physical exam for machines. Instant maintenance: Small problems with equipment are fixed within three minutes. The first fundamental source of wasted effort is not installing equipment appropriate to the amount of production. The second source is rushing to automate fully without first introducing the simpler forms of automation. The third source of waste is failure to automate changeover, even when the rest of the process uses automation effectively. The fourth source of waste is the lack of synchronization between processes. The fifth source of waste is a lack of mechanisms for ensuring that employees follow safety rules.
