MAR & TPM
MAR’s company goal is to deliver a competitive edge to Australian manufacturing-reliant companies by providing fully integrated ‘world class’ manufacturing systems across a wide range of industries including food, beverage, paving and bricks, metals and pharmaceuticals.
Every production-critical company requires efficient manufacturing to survive in today’s economic environment.
To ensure that the systems we build are of a world class standard, MAR has adopted TPM (Total Productive Manufacturing) principles into the organisation and consequently is the only Accredited TPM Supplier in Australasia, as certified by the Centre for TPM (Australasia).
TPM had its genesis in the Japanese car industry in the 1970s and is a company-wide methodology aimed at improving the efficiency, productivity, output quality and availability of machinery.
The Key Principles
For improvement to be sustaining there are 3 key principles that management and staff must understand, embrace and apply to every day decision making:
• Holistic Measurement
• Workplace Ownership
• Formal Continuous Improvement
Holistic Measurement
The key measurement that drives TPM is Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), an internationally accepted performance measurement calculated as follows:
OEE = Availability X Performance Rate X Quality Rate
Availability, Performance and Quality all have their own equations and multiplied together deliver a number that can be compared to international best practice figures.
The international best practices figure is >85% while in most companies it is most common to find it sitting between 40% and 75%.
Workplace Ownership
Modern manufacturing dictates that workers must be multi-skilled, enabling them to be more flexible in rapidly changing environments. However this often results in a lack of care for their equipment, as they don’t have the ownership that typified years past, where they may have worked with the same machine for many years, while today they know they may soon be moved elsewhere.
Formal Continuous Improvement (FCI)
The third principle has been found to correlate closely to OEE and is based on the percentage time allocated to FCI. The most common ratio found in the majority of companies is 1% devoted to FCI with 99% focused on achieving the production plan. In the situation OEE is invariably low.
Companies where FCI is >15% have quantifiably higher OEE.
The 10 Pillars
There are 10 Pillars that make up TPM and encompass both plant and people and they range across a complete spectrum of business practices including safety, process improvement, management, maintenance, quality, innovation, logistics, training and support.
MAR, as an accredited supplier, needs to ensure that all equipment supplied complies as per the 7th Pillar which is ‘New Equipment / Product Management’. This pillar defines how all systems are designed and built to be ‘TPM Friendly’.
In addition MAR embraces all other areas as part of its operational plan.
For a company to undertake the TPM journey and to become “TPM Friendly” it works with TPM consultants in all of the areas towards predefined goals. The ‘journey’ can take many years although measurable benefits are obvious within the first 12 months.
By being a company-wide strategy, the principles benefit all aspects of the business, not just specifically the manufacturing arm where productivity is most measurable.
Tangible Benefits of TPM
A company that has implemented TPM can expect the following benefits (based on actual case data):
Capacity / OEE Productivity From 25% to 100% increase
Productivity From 50% to 100% increase
Scrap & Rework From 70% to 90% decrease
Customer Complaints From 50% to 75% decrease
Total Operational Costs From 20% to 30% decrease
Maintenance Costs From 25% to 50% decrease
Accidents From 90% to 100% decrease
Inventories & Stocks From 40% to 60% decrease
MAR and TPM
As an accredited TPM supplier MAR will meet the following criteria when designing an building new projects or upgrading existing systems.
MAR Accountabilities
1. Operability of equipment – have all operating conditions been thought thru – ergonomic, environmental, ease of use, accessibility, noise, dust, etc
2. Maintainability of plant and equipment – has this been incorporated into the design and documentation, with a focus on minimization?
3. Standardisation of equipment and impact on spares – does the system leverage current learnings and/or tools required?
4. Safety – are the systems fully compliant with all OH&S standards?
5. Interaction between operators and maintenance – has this been incorporated into the implementation, commissioning and running procedures?
6. Overall Equipment Effectiveness – has this measurement been established and measured against?
7. Life cycle costs (LCC) – does it meet international standards? LCC is the cost required for the entire service life of the equipment. It is used as a design parameter to calculate the most economical designs and installations and is based on 5 points:
1. Acquisition Cost
2. Maintenance Cost
3. Production Cost
4. Planning Cost
5. Support Processes Costs
Design Accountabilities
1. Are the visual controls clear and easy to understand?
2. Is the equipment easy to access for all operation, maintenance and repairs?
3. Is the operator fault finding simple with easy to understand diagnostics capability?
4. Are lubrication schedules clearly understood and easily implemented?
5. Is the operator / front line care manual – well documented and easy to understand and implement?
TPM and the MAR Customer
As a supplier MAR must firstly ensure the customer understands any design recommendations that impact both Overall Equipment Effectiveness and Life Cycle Costs.
The customer is then able to make decisions regarding the up front cost of incorporating major design decisions that improve OEE & LCC vs the manufacturing costs by not incorporating design recommendations.
Secondly, MAR must ensure that Operability, Maintainability and Standardisation is part of the all designs.
The Centre for TPM
The Centre for TPM (Australasia) which is a membership based organisation, was created as an outcome of the first conference dedicated to TPM in Australasia held in Sydney in 1995. During the conference, which was chaired by Ross Kennedy, there was a call from the delegates to establish a much-needed Institute for TPM to support industry, academia and government similar to those already present in Europe, USA and Japan. Responding to this call, the Centre for TPM (Australasia) was established in January 1996 to specifically provide support to companies wishing to increase their understanding of TPM3 (an enhanced and expanded Australasian version of 3rd Generation TPM) and to support them on their journey to World Class Performance.
We are very mindful of the need for companies to establish their own in-house capabilities to lead, manage and facilitate their TPM3 journey in order to achieve sustained success. However we also acknowledge that TPM and TPM3 has been developed over more than 30 years of practical experience and research, and as such establishing or developing internal capabilities is not achieved just by attending one or two training courses. Proper training from a recognised authority is critical however most of the learning comes from doing. There are very few short cuts to experience.
Machinery Automation & Robotics
1/101 Derby Street
Silverwater NSW 2128
Phone: (61) 2 9748 7001
http://www.machineryautomation.com.au