TPM - a survival strategy

The Sunday Times FT team was in for a pleasant surprise when they visited the Unilever Factory at Agrapatana. What struck most at the factory was its orderliness, quite remarkable for a tea manufacturing plant. The staff was in clean uniforms, the roadways were clearly demarcated and dirt-free, the equipment was sparkling and the entire environment was hygienic.
How does a tea factory look like a five star hotel (no pun on the other Tea Factory Hotel)?

Ishraq Thameem, Manufacturing Director at Unilevers Ceylon Limited, who steered such a transformation along with others at the company said, that it was all due to Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) which the company adopted four years ago. "This concept is a precursor to adding to a company's bottom-line, while making the employees feel important," he explained, adding that TPM facilitates a strong factory environment, while establishing the ability to respond effectively in the new areas of business competition and satisfying the requirements for continuous corporate success.

He also swears by the end results. This is further cemented by the fact that Unilever Sri Lanka Limited secured the Level 1 excellence Award by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM) which is the authority on TPM. According to Thameem, in today's lean manufacturing environment, resources may be scarce and need to be utilised as economically as possible, especially those personnel in supporting roles, or the 'overhead'.

He said to improve the use of existing resources, a change in the workplace that moves from an expert-based system to a culture-based one could be beneficial. Such a culture is one where everyone shares an understanding and bears some responsibility, where all members of a work organisation are informed and empowered to make improvements appropriate to their level of assigned responsibility.
"The statement that 'being organised can change the morale of the work force and make them more productive' will most likely get you disinterested, but if it states that it brings in huge profits and cut costs many industrialists will sit up and take notice," he added.

Thameem said that this concept was not implemented overnight and the eventual result, however, is worthy of significant recognition for its positive workplace effect, with reduced injuries and their related costs and loss reductions, together with increased productivity, improved quality, better workforce stability and morale gains.

"The simplest definition of TPM is to Improve machine efficiency, material yields and methods to best available, trough enhancing man skills, knowledge and morale of the employees," he said, explaining that the initial step to TPM is a well organised workplace which motivates people, while improving safety, work efficiency and productivity.

Further establishing his point, Thameem ventured to show The Sunday Times FT team a short audio clip of what the factory was four years ago, before Unilever Sri Lanka operations began in the three sites at Grandpass, Lindel and Agrapatana started TPM. The scenes were of a factory background in 2002 at Grandpass about 10.5 acres of land and one which had an aged workforce, a high wage level (being a 60 year old factory), low skilled workforce, which was highly unionised and resistant to change. Thameem said there was poor labour productivity and high losses with the company facing a severe threat of becoming unviable in the near future. "The operators at the time used to perform only production tasks without any team work activities," he added.

The audio clip next revealed a revamped factory which is completely unrecognisable with extreme orderliness. "We found that TPM is a particular approach to productivity improvement that aims to bring together an organisational culture with a range of tools and techniques operating at a variety of levels to ensure that there is harmony for the overall company strategy through product and process design and onto the production floor," he said.

Explaining the five qualitative organisational goals of TPM, he said that the primary condition is to build a profitable operation by making production more economical by eliminating accidents, quality defect and breakdowns. "The second is to practice prevention rather than cure, involve everyone (practice participatory management, and treat everyone with respect) and the third is to organise the workforce into a pyramid of overlapping small groups, and have operators carry out autonomous maintenance," he said, adding that next comes using the hands-on, shop-floor approach which is bringing the equipments into its ideal state, introduce extensive visual management, and create clean, uncluttered, well-organised workplaces.

"The next goal is to aim for automation and unattended operation (FAT to FIT) and work towards a shop floor with minimum manual operations," he added. He said since the modern business world is a rapidly changing environment, the last thing a company needs if it is to compete in the global marketplace is to get in its own way because of the way in which it approaches the business of looking after its income generating physical assets. "So, TPM is concerned with the fundamental rethink of business processes to achieve improvements in cost, quality, speed etc. It encourages radical changes, such as flatter organisational structures, fewer managers, empowered teams, multi-skilled workforce and rigorous reappraisal of the way things are done - often with the goal of simplification," he said.

He explained that there are eight pillars in the TPM structure which involve Autonomous Maintenance, Planned Maintenance, Equipment and process improvement, Early management of new equipment, TPM in the supply chain, training and education and quality, maintenance, safety and a hygienic environment.

"The need for TPM in the business environment was identified as lower cost (which was essential for survival), stringent demands and quality, more diverse requirements and shorter delivery times and also pressure on resources such as people and equipment," he further said.

The equipment to counter these challenges in the business environment were reduce costs dramatically by maximising equipment and production efficiency, establish and maintain zero defect conditions, keep minimal changeover times firm the initiation and facilitate stockless production and build a flexible production system, which is responsive to demand.

"Our vision for 2010 is to have perfect quality through zero defects, perfect production through perfect equipment, zero accidents, zero breakdowns, perfect costs through zero waste," operations through team working and multi skilled staff and a perfect product with the lowest cost," Thameem added.

"After TPM, we do not wait until a failure occurs and then remedy the situation as quickly as possible," Ajith Bandara, an employee at Agrapatna factory said, adding that now it is easier to work since there were no repairs in the machines at all. "This is mainly because it is easier to identify what goes wrong before it goes wrong and also the employees have a skill gap analysis with an action plan to train them where they lack knowledge," he added.

"For each week that the implementation of a particular machine was procrastinated, the product of that machine had a cost of almost double than it has now. For some products and trades, this kind of cost increase can represent the temporary or definitive loss of market share," Saman Jayaratne, Manufacturing Manager at Unilevers said, adding that TPM is capable of bringing a machine back to its original condition and even better.

According to N.A. Nimal Shantha, the workers were taught about preventive mechanisms and to believe that a regular maintenance attention will keep an otherwise troublesome failure mode at bay. "Rather than looking at a calendar and assessing what attention the equipment needs, we should examine the 'vital signs' and infer what the equipment is trying to tell us. This means assessing the health of our plant and equipment," he added.

Thameem said that TPM also places these changes within a culture of betterment underpinned by continuous improvement monitored through the use of appropriate measurement. "The principal measure is known as the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). The OEE indicator tells you how efficiently you produce when you have planned to produce. TPM helps you to improve your OEE by providing a structure to quantify these losses, and by subsequently giving priority to the most important ones. TPM provides concepts and tools to achieve both short and longer term improvements. This figure ties the 'six big losses', which include equipment downtime, engineering adjustment, minor stoppages, unplanned breaks, time spent making reject products and waste to three measurables, which are availability (time), performance (speed) and yield (quality)," he said.

"There were low machine efficiencies; dirty dangerous machines produce defectives with a lack of motivation and commitment, including poor reliability. With TPM implementation, there was an improvement of overall equipment efficiency from 57 percent to 76 percent," Thameem added.

There was also a 41 percent manning reduction through this restructuring. TPM encourages both setting goals for OEE and measuring deviations from these. "Better understanding of equipment criticality and where it is worth deploying improvement effort and potential benefits is important and it has helped us to be more aware," said Chandana Priyantha.

Thameem said that improved teamwork and a less adversarial approach between production and maintenance, improved procedures for changeovers and set-ups. He also added that TPM is becoming an industrial standard and it is an approach to optimise the effectiveness of production means in a structured manner. "At this crucial point of global competition, the implementation of TPM is not a matter of liking it or following the fashion and today it has turned into a survival strategy."