Productivity and quality enhancement through implementation of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) in a manufacturing plant

Abstract

Plant and equipment maintenance is a vital issue in manufacturing. The cost of regular maintenance might be low but the major breakdown of a machine can halt the entire production line. On the other hand effective machine maintenance would enable a plant to increase productivity, efficiency, quality operations, various flexibility, and responsive to customer service. Most importantly, this may prolong the life of machines. In order to measure performance of a maintenance system, the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a summarized metric of several performance measures used to determine a machine’s or plant’s performance and its impact on productivity. The purpose of OEE is to assist an organization with improved productivity, reliability, maintainability for both short term and long term effectiveness, and low cost yet quality product at the best value. To evaluate the OEE, research framework has been designed through interview-for initial assessment, observation of shop floor, collecting breakdown and repair data and analyzing those with statistical tools. After the documentation and analysis of data, findings are represented in graphical forms such as Pareto chart, cause effect diagram, and process flow diagram. Very little research is conducted about Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) implementation Bangladeshi manufacturing plant; so this thesis going to add value to that cause. Bangladesh spends significant portion of foreign currency to import industrial machineries. Understanding the reasons of machine breakdowns, failures, quality defects, reduced speed, setup and adjustment losses are vital for plants. Actual capacity of production line can be enhanced by understanding the big losses and evaluating OEE. Otherwise to meet the extended demand of a product, a plant has to spend more money on buying new equipment. Many Japanese and the USA manufacturing plant incorporated TPM few decades ago but this practice seems to be absent here. Practical implication of this study is that manufacturing plants needs to improve its maintenance policy.