What does Lean Maintenance and TPM bring to us?
Often, maintenance is not considered to be a [...]
Maintenance is often considered to be a function that does not add value to an organization and therefore should not be a waste of resources.
However, we must keep in mind that maintenance is an essential function in any production process, as it is what allows it to continue to operate in the best conditions, ensuring the fulfillment of its objectives without errors and at the lowest possible cost, this requires that it is done as quickly and efficiently as possible and a good way to achieve this is by using basic Lean tools, such as 5S, Poka Yoke, Spaghetti Diagram and 5 Why or, better yet, more complex tools such as A3, SMED and Visual Management. Thus we can describe Lean as helping to perform tasks as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But in today's highly competitive environment, where costs must be kept to a minimum, stringent quality requirements must be maintained, and flexibility must be increased while delivery times are reduced, resulting in increased pressure on available resources, this is where the philosophy needs to be fully implemented.
TPM (Total Productive Maintenance), which is capable of improving and making production processes more profitable by improving both the people involved and the assets needed to carry them out.
TPM is capable of providing a series of benefits, both tangible in the form of improvements in production, quality, costs and personnel motivation; and intangible such as greater personnel involvement, improvement in work stations, reduction of problems and improvement in the image of the organization. These benefits are measurable and evaluable.
Considering the interest among managers, engineers and maintenance technicians, I have made an agenda to explain the main concepts of a Lean Maintenance and TPM plan and the main elements of a Lean Maintenance and TPM plan. The main objective is to know how they are applied in a practical way and how you learn to measure them in a practical way and how you learn to measure and evaluate them, so that they can then be transferred to real production processes. If you are interested in knowing the agenda and practice you can consult more information of the Lean Maintenance and TPM workshop/course that I present. More information.
Article written by: Jorge Asiain Sastre
Senior Mechanical Engineer, CEng MIMechE, MBA
AlterEvo Ltd. European University
