ABSTRACT
Eliminating accidents and pollution is a mandatory requirement for winning the preventive maintenance (PM) prize in Japan. The safety records of prize-winning operations are, in fact, significantly better than before they introduced total productive maintenance (TPM). Ensuring equipment reliability, preventing human error, and eliminating accidents and pollution are basic tenets of TPM. This is why safety and environmental management is a key activity in any TPM development program. Perfect safety and environmental cleanliness are basic manufacturing requirements. In practice, however, there is always a possibility of plant or equipment causing accidents and pollution. Most serious accidents and pollution incidents are equipment-related. Although TPM initially focuses on equipment, its goal is to establish conditions that reflect an understanding that production plants are people- machine systems. The chapter reviews some key strategies for preventing accidents that originate both in people's behavior and in equipment.
