Technology • November 11, 2025
Production downtime costs companies millions. Unplanned stoppage of the line, shortage due to a broken machine, slow operation of worn out equipment are all direct loss of profit. Total productive maintenance solves this problem systematically: instead of fixing what is broken, the methodology teaches to prevent breakdowns and involve every employee in maintaining productivity.
Total productive maintenance was born in Japan in the 1970s as a response to the challenges of mass production. Today this is a proven system that helps factories around the world reduce downtime by 50-80%, increase production quality and create a culture of continuous improvement.
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a holistic approach to equipment maintenance that integrates the efforts of all departments within a company to maximize the performance of production equipment throughout their entire life cycle.
Key elements:
Total productive maintenance isn’t just a repair schedule. It’s a philosophy where the machine operator becomes its first “guardian”: daily inspections, cleaning, lubricating and noticing even the slightest deviations. Maintenance personnel focus on complex tasks, while the routine tasks are handled by those who work with the machine every day.
Total preventive maintenance is often confused with total productive maintenance, but they are different concepts. Preventive maintenance is only one of the pillars of TPM, while the system itself encompasses culture, training, process improvement and much more.
TPM is built on eight interconnected pillars. Each pillar is responsible for its own area of work, but together they create a coherent system as part of a comprehensive TPM program.
Autonomous maintenance delegates basic equipment maintenance tasks to operators. Instead of waiting for a mechanic every time a line gets dirty or experiences a minor issue, equipment operators perform the following tasks themselves:
The autonomous maintenance plan includes gradual skill development so operators can maintain their own equipment in prime operating condition.
Example: At a packaging plant, operators used to call a mechanic at the slightest contamination on the line. After implementing the autonomous maintenance program, they started cleaning the conveyors themselves every shift using an autonomous maintenance checklist. As a result, minor downtime was reduced and mechanics were able to focus on serious modernization tasks.
Focused improvement uses kaizen methodology to eliminate major losses. Small cross-functional groups (operators, technicians, engineers) gather to address a specific problem: frequent component breakdowns, long setup times, chronic defects.
Tools:
Small-group activities are the heart of this pillar. Regular short meetings (15-30 minutes) allow for quick idea generation, hypothesis testing and consolidation of changes to achieve sustainable improvement.
Example: A team of three noticed that one press was stopping 4-5 times per shift due to jammed workpieces. After a week of kaizen activities, they installed an additional sensor and modified the guides. Downtime due to this issue completely disappeared.
Planned maintenance shifts repairs from “if it breaks, we fix it” to “know when it’s going to break, we replace it in advance”. The system is based on:
Instead of waiting for a bearing to seize up in the middle of a shift, you replace it according to the schedule — during the scheduled maintenance intervals, when the line is down anyway. This approach uses the baseline replacement interval to optimize maintenance planning.
Quality maintenance focuses on defect prevention through process control. The idea is simple: defects don’t occur randomly — they are caused by variations in equipment operation (temperature, pressure, speed, tool wear).
Key practices:
Example: Underfills were occurring periodically on a bottling line. The quality maintenance team discovered that vibration from a nearby compressor was shifting the calibration of a level sensor. The solution: anti-vibration mounts and daily sensor calibration. The underfill rate dropped significantly, moving closer to the goal of zero defects.
Early equipment management integrates operating experience into the design of new lines. When engineers purchase or design equipment, they consider:
Instead of struggling with an inconvenient machine for three years, you immediately purchase or design equipment that is easy to maintain and rarely breaks down.
Training and education are the pillars without which all others will collapse. The TPM program requires new skills from operators (basic diagnostics, schematic reading) and technicians (statistical analysis, data manipulation).
The training system includes:
Example: A pharmaceutical company launched an “AM Champions” program: 20% of operators completed in-depth mechanical and electrical training. Now, each shift has someone capable of fixing equipment — handling 80% of minor issues without calling a technician. Average response time to a problem has been reduced from 45 minutes to 5.
Safety, Health and Environment integrates occupational health and safety and environmental requirements into daily TPM practices. Equipment in good condition is safer: no oil leaks, broken wires, or unexpected mechanical movements.
Practices:
Office TPM applies these principles to office processes: procurement, logistics, HR and IT. The idea is the same: eliminate waste, standardize and engage everyone
Examples:
TPM categorizes all types of productivity losses into six categories — the Six Big Losses. This is the foundation for a loss-driven implementation roadmap.
Major losses are analyzed through the lens of equipment performance and target equipment to focus improvements. Poor maintenance is often the root cause of major losses.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is the key indicator of TPM program success. It combines three dimensions into a single metric of equipment effectiveness:
OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality
Global Standard:
A loss-driven roadmap is an approach in which the TPM implementation plan is built from a “loss map”.
You don’t implement all the pillars at once across the entire plant, but start with the equipment and pillars that will yield the greatest impact.
Preventive maintenance (PM) is scheduled, planned maintenance, one element of TPM. TPM, on the other hand, is a comprehensive system that includes PM but adds autonomous maintenance by operators, targeted improvements (kaizen), quality management, staff training, and four other pillars. PM is performed by technicians, while TPM is performed by the entire organization.
Yes. TPM principles are applied in hospitals (medical equipment maintenance), logistics (forklift and conveyor maintenance), data centers (predictive server maintenance), and even office processes (administrative TPM for IT systems and HR procedures).
Total productive maintenance and Lean are the best friends. Lean eliminates waste in production flows (overproduction, waiting, transportation, unnecessary movements), while TPM eliminates waste associated with equipment (downtime, reduced speed, defects). Many companies implement them together: 5S and visual management are common tools, and kaizen is a common approach.
OEE is the main metric. Additional metrics: MTBF (mean time between failures) is increasing, MTTR (mean time to repair) is decreasing, number of employee suggestions is increasing, maintenance cost per unit is decreasing, and defects per million is decreasing.
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