The terms ‘Total Productive Maintenance’ is finding a significant place in the planning for business excellence improvement because of the rising cost of maintenance and several in-direct losses due to disrupted production. The businesses worldwide are realizing the adverse impacts of unplanned and regular maintenance over their growth rate; therefore, these are turning to hire TPM consultants with proven specialization in the implementation of the TPM plan. Numbers of research studies show that the organizations that partnered with TPM services providing agency for business excellence received significant benefits like:

• Improved innovation outcome

• Enhanced customer satisfaction

• Organizational (employees) growth

• Higher employees’ satisfaction

• Better employees’ involvement and commitment to assigned tasks

• Better product quality

• Improved operational efficiency …… and more

 Eight Fundaments Concepts of Business Excellence:

As per the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), “The business excellence refers to the outstanding practices to manage the organization for achieving the target goals. The business excellence practices are based on eight fundamental concepts – results in orientation; leadership & purpose constancy; customer focus; management by facts; continuous learning, improvement & innovation; employees’ development & involvement; public responsibility and partnership development.”

 Business excellence is applicable to all size businesses, whether the business is public or private, small, mid or large and profit or non-profit type. It results in remarkable productivity improvements.

Role of TPM for Business Excellence:

If you want your business to succeed in the long term, you must win the trust of employees, operate safely, achieve customer satisfaction and earn a profit. Sustainable continuous improvement is the roadmap to succeed in a competitive environment. How does TPM work for business excellence?

TPM acts as a practical, coherent and clear “enabling tool” for continuous improvement of business efficiency and overall performance addressing the key concerns in all the critical domains not just the manufacturing floors maintenance. The key benefits of TPM implementation for achieving business excellence can be categorized as:

Equipment Benefits:

• Improved Process Capability, Product Quality, Productivity, and Reliability: The regular maintenance on day to day basis by the machine/equipment user, as is advocated by TPM, increases the productivity and reliability. The well-working machines/equipment ensure the peak process capability and product quality.

• Economical use of Equipment for the Total Service Life (Early Equipment Management): ‘Early Equipment Management’ plays vital role to detect and correct the emerging problems in machines/pieces of equipment at early stage before letting these become the major fault drawing the production shutdown; and, TPM facilitates for the maximum use of machine and equipment at low maintenance cost all through the total service life.

• Maximized Equipment Efficiency: TPM adhered workers inspect their machines/equipment on a regular basis; the up keeping of machines/equipment, including cleaning, is the part of the TPM approach. Well kept equipments support to achieve maximum efficiency that lowers the production cost and the organizations make a better profit.

Business Benefits:

• Improved Supply Chain: Supply chain management with the continuous flow is aimed to provide what the customer wants on the time. TPM supports the concerned workers to deliver as per planned schedules.

• Flexibility: The market conditions are volatile and ever-changing. TPM supports to upgrade the standards as per prevailing demand, competitiveness and sale’s trend.

• Improved Equipment Effectiveness (OEE): OEE is the vital contributory factor in an organization’s growth. When the focus remains upon the machine and equipment maintenance on a day-to-day basis, the increased equipment effectiveness improves the organization’s profitability and sustainable growth target.

People Benefits:

• Improved Supply Chain Delivers that are in Demand: The buying pattern and preferences of customers keep on changing. The role of TPM is no more limited just to production floors; it is widespread to take care of all the waste activities in other departments also to provide the customers that they need. Providing the latest products at the earliest much before the competitors is a proven strategy to succeed in a competitive environment; TPM implementation improves the supply chain also by producing the products on the time according to identified current needs without any failure or disruption because of machine and equipment failure.

• Effective Collaboration for Support Functions: TPM advocates for the involvement of individuals at all levels for consistent quality products at a lower cost. When the maintenance responsibilities are fixed at individual levels, the workers tend more to support each other to maintain the workflow.

• Trouble-Free Shifts With Proactive Rather Than Reactive Approach: The proactive maintenance rather than reactive maintenance is the critical TPM role. Early-stage maintenance solutions not only cost the less but take less time also; thus, workers feel more relieved of pressure often mounted because of machine and equipment failure or maintenance shutdown.

TPM Role Alignment to Achieve Business Excellence:

The journey of implementing TPM to achieve business excellence for target goals and particular objectives has different stages; and, each step needs to be aligned to working conditions, present mind-set of stakeholders at all the levels, available resources, etc. The strategic TPM role is fine-tuned to fundamental concepts of business excellence:

• Leadership and Constancy – The responsibility-sharing trait of TPM allows the leaders to introduce and reinforce the culture of achieving excellence at each stage.

• Customer Focus - TPM is aligned to improve responsiveness and product quality.

• Results Orientation: TPM is planned to improve the results in a manner that addresses the requirements of stakeholders.

• Management by Processes and Facts - TPM supports the idea to make everyone aware of data-driven facts for product effectiveness. The collected and analyzed data provides insights for improving the performance at an individual level to achieve the industry-best excellence.

• Learning and Involvement - TPM needs that all the employees are trained in their particular discipline. The knowledge and capability to manage the day-day to the problem make them more involved with ongoing improvement activities because they get recognition for their performance.

• Partnership Development – TPM is aligned to address the need for partnership development also involving third parties to achieve the common goal of business excellence. TPM provides a platform to redesign the joint improvement activities for new goals.

• Public Responsibility - TPM is aligned to the latest norms for ‘Health, Safety, and Environmental responsibility’. Investment and training for a healthier and safe working environment improve the employees’ commitment and involvement.

• Continuous Learning and Innovation for Improvement - TPM is planned to present a data-driven picture of the organization’s production potential that helps to establish the borderlines to invest for re-engineering. Innovation for improvement by consistent production and no-cost maintenance is the key TPM approach; and, it needs continuous learning to know the new requirements and the ways to meet out the new requirements.

Concluding Note:

Total productive maintenance for business excellence needs a professionally structured approach that could address all the present and possible concerns; here comes the role of TPM consultant. TPM consulting company establishes a stable performance before implementation TPM strategy. Conducting the required training for particular individuals or groups of particular departments is also under the scope of the TPM consulting agency. In total, implementing TPM in an organization is quite easy, beneficial for all and profitable provided you hire the best-reputed TPM consulting professionals.