Things to Think About and Do in 2011: TPM

Here is this week's installment of ReliabilityWeb.com's e-book, Things to Think About and Do in 2011. Can't wait for next week's topic? Thumb through the entire e-book for free at ReliabilityWeb.com, Happy Reading!

TPM—

...My thing to think about and do in 2011 is to take a piece of equipment—something that is both meaningful, due to being a capacity constraint, causing significant downtime, or both, and manageable, being small enough for your team of five to nine people to complete in three to four days, and perform the first three steps of autonomous maintenance:

• Restore—bring the equipment back into its original condition by cleaning, inspecting and correction all deterioration.

• Improve—make modifications to the equipment to eliminate sources of contamination and causes of deterioration, and to improve accessibility for both operation and maintenance.

• Maintain—prepare an operator maintenance standard and visualize the checkpoints on the equipment itself. Review the current PMs in relation to this new standard.

Not only is autonomous maintenance an improvement process, it is a learning process—for you to learn about how far your equipment has deteriorated, and for your operators to learn about how your equipment performs its functions.

Performing an autonomous maintenance pilot with your team members from your engineering, maintenance and operations departments will give you new insights into the status of your equipment and maintenance operations. 

—Malcolm Jones