Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Concepts of Total Productive Maintenance - Topic - 2 : A Brief History of Total Productive Maintenance


A Brief History of Total Productive Maintenance


Long time after first industrial revolution (initiated in Great Britain, in the mid of 18th century, in between 1820 to 1840), the manufacturing process based industries from Europe, United States, Germany Russia and most of the other countries realized that the continuous manufacturing processes required for mass production are completely dependent on a synchronous interaction of human and machine. It is in did, needless to mention that with the evaluation and advancement of automation, equipment dependency also increases. Overall productivity thus, is a result of high performing machine operated by a skilled operator.



Figure 1. A Roberts loom in a weaving shed in 1835. Textiles were the leading industry of the Industrial Revolution, and mechanized factories, powered by a central water wheel or steam engine. (Picture collected from Wikipedia link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution)

After Second World War was concluded in Sep’1945, Japan also focused to turn around their economy by strengthening business networks around the world. They were supported by United States and a good amount of knowledge exchange between Japan and US was visible at that period. Many industrial experts, statistician s and subject matter experts travelled form US to Japan and Japan with its unique managerial expertise adopted all the concepts and developed unique Japanese management systems, most popular among are Total Quality Management and Total Productive Maintenance.


When the concepts of maintenance first entered in Japan from United States approximately around 1950 -51 it was used to mean preventive maintenance. Earlier the concept of breakdown maintenance (i.e. repairing the machine after breakdown occurs) was quite popular. In between 1950 s to till 1960 s various other aspects of maintenance were also introduced in Japan, namely Productive Maintenance (PM), Corrective Maintenance (CM), Maintenance Prevention (MP), Reliability Engineering (RE), Maintainability Engineering etc. along with which idea of Preventive Maintenance form Unitd States became quite popular among Japanese manufacturing experts. Nippondenso was the first company to introduce plant wide preventive maintenance in 1960. Preventive Maintenance is the concept wherein, operators produced products using machines and the maintenance group was dedicated with work of maintaining those machines. But with the automation of Nippondenso, maintenance became a problem as more maintenance personnel were required. So the management decided that the routine maintenance of equipment would be carried out by the operators themselves. Thus modern maintenance concepts were brought in to existence by modifying the American traditional idea of  Preventive Maintenance combining it with unique Japanese perspective and then tailoring it to the Japanese ways of management.

From 1960 s through 1970s concepts of traditional maintenance underwent numerous modifications which added value and gradually the concepts of Total Productive Maintenance came into picture.
Nippondenso which already followed preventive maintenance also added Autonomous Maintenance which was taken-up  by production operators. The maintenance personnel’s  went in the equipment modification for improving machine reliability, thus paving the ways to  the concepts of Maintenance Prevention. Preventive Maintenance along with Maintenance Prevention and Maintainability Improvement brought Productive Maintenance principals. The target of Productive Maintenance now was to deliver plant and equipment effectiveness to achieve optimum life cycle cost of machineries. Concepts of Productive maintenance combining with total employee involvement, management focus towards effective production process and management structure was framed as TPM or Total productive maintenance. Nippondenso Co. Ltd. , a TOYOTA group company, because of it’s unique initiatives in the path of enriching TPM, was awarded the distinguished plant prize for developing and implementing TPM, by the Japan Institute of Plant Engineers ( JIPE ), for the 1971 fiscal year. Being able to recognize the value of TPM   practices for the coming era of automation since 1970 s to till date Japan Institute of Plant Engineers and Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance are promoting the concepts of TPM. The TPM Awards are promoted by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM) and approximately 2,000 plants have received TPM Awards both in Japan and outside since the inception of the awards.

Some of the remarkable events are listed below (Following details are taken from the reference Link: https://www.jipm.or.jp/en/company/history/ ) : 

1961
The Japan Management Association (JMA) establishes a Plant Maintenance Committee.
1964
A system for awarding PM Awards is established.
1969
The Plant Maintenance Department is dissolved and the Japan Institute of Plant Engineers is established.
1971
The concept of plant maintenance with total participation (Total Productive Maintenance) is proclaimed.
1981
The Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance is launched, following approval from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry as charitable corporation.
1989

  • The definition of TPM is revised.
  • The Society of Plant Engineers Japan is established.

1990
The Japan Association of Maintenance and Service Contractors is launched.
2005
JIPM Solutions company limited is separated and transferred from JIPM as a profit-seeking corporation.
2012
JIPM was approved as a public interest incorporated association by the prime minister.



Amazon link of some TPM referance books: 
1. "Introduction to TPM: Total Productive Maintenance" Book by Seiichi Nakajima :  https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-TPM-Productive-Maintenance-Preventative/dp/0915299232
2. " TPM in Process Industries (Step-By-Step Approach to TPM Implementation) by Tokutaro Suzuki : https://www.amazon.com/Process-Industries-Step-Approach-Implementation/dp/1563270366
3. " TPM for supervisors (The Shopfloor  Series)" : https://www.amazon.com/TPM-Supervisors-Shopfloor-Productivity-Press/dp/1563271613

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