Implementing TPM in your organization

TPM or total productivity maintenance is all about using the business resources like employees, process, and machines to improve production and quality. TPM aims to bring improvement using its 8 pillars mentioned below.

  1. Focused Improvement
  2. Autonomous maintenance
  3. Planned Maintenance
  4. Quality maintenance
  5. Cost Deployment
  6. Early Equipment Management
  7. Training and Education
  8. Safety Health Environment

Any improvement process involves changing the way things are done. Although TPM implementation is a positive step for everyone in the organization as it helps grow organisation as a whole, most organizations face challenges while TPM implementations. We have helped implement TPM in many organizations and hence would like outline top 5 challenges which every organization face.

1. Lack of Commitment

Top management is the key for success or failure of any TPM implementation. They are influencers and authority. They drive their team and workforce. It is important that the top management believes in this methodology and give their 100% to communicate the benefits of the programme and motivate them to make this programme a success.

2. Resistance to Change

Change is inevitable and only thing which is constant in our life. Any change (good or bad) requires some effort in changing the way we used to do things before. You will see lot of people in organisations who would advocate on change and improvement but trust me when it comes to changing anything in their life, most of them will resist to change. Be it a production manager, foreman or any ground level employee who have to change their existing process to bring improvements in the organization will resist to change.

3. Management see it as a cost centre

Total Productive Maintenance requires investment in form of time, people, material and money. If you don’t understand the main objective then it might look like a cost centre instead of a profit centre to the management.

Let us understand by a simple example:

Let us say that if we have 100 machines in an organisation and 1 engineer to do repair and maintenance. As machines get older they require regular maintenance to produce quantity and quality. Even a breakdown of few hours may cost lacs to the organization. Employing a resource who can maintain machines regularly may only cost a fraction of what an organization may lose at just one breakdown.

If TPM strategy demands an additional resource and Management people who are less involved in strategy may not understand the importance of that hiring ignore the bigger picture and hence disapprove the budgets for hiring extra resources and materials. This can be a big roadblock for successful TPM implementation.

4. Lack of Reward Programme

Any development could only take place when the way of implementation is different from the traditional one. TPM is such an unconventional methodology which is much progressive. T he employees are the roots and the pillars of a successful organization but, how often we forget their contribution. There should be a proper mechanism to reward and appreciate sincere and hardworking employees, which would motivate them to work with more passion.

5. Lack of TPM Knowledge

TPM is very effective yet a complex mechanism. It is much more than fixing machines and equipment. In most of the cases, TPM fails due to its incorrect implementation and lack of support system. Before implementing any innovative process, organisation should run proper training system. They could learn from the industries where TPM is successfully implemented.


Any change could not take place within a day or week. TPM is such an effective method which eventually takes time and also organization would have to invest money and resources, but more than this they have to collectively work as a team, where everyone is dedicated towards the growth, then only TPM will work and payoff.