#Opinion: Fortifying TPM pillars with digital

The number of enterprises across globe in the manufacturing sector, projected to be 7.11 million in 2024, is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.17% over next 5 years¹. This significant increase implies tough competition and thus Profitability, Brand Value and Customer Satisfaction will become critical factors for any organization. Cost and quality of product will be important levers to ensure survival in a fierce, competitive environment.
According to a 2022 Forbes article, industrial manufacturers lose as much as 50 billion dollars per year² to unplanned downtime. Furthermore, as a general rule quality-related costs for any organization can range between 10% to 15% of sales revenue³. Thus, controlling downtime and quality will decide the future of any organization.

TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) has proven its place in the industry for several decades, companies that embraced TPM have been able to control both downtime and cost.
TPM philosophy, through its seven pillars, emphasizes on involving entire workforce in maintaining equipment and establishing proactive and preventive maintenance practices that lead to improvement in overall equipment performance and reliability.

How digital will help TPM Philosophy?

Fourth industrial revolution has brought digital shop-floor technologies such as OEE monitoring, real-time alerts and dashboards into the focus of entire manufacturing industry. Mature organizations are even exploring Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for manufacturing use cases.
With digital becoming the norm in industry, fortifying TPM with digital technology will improve its success rate and boost returns. TPM 2.0, powered by Digital Tools, will improve maturity of maintenance practices and ease TPM adoption.

Digital interventions will not just help organizations with well-established TPM practice but will also help organizations which are yet to integrate TPM into their operations. As connected machines and other digital tools are becoming more abundant in industries, making a shift towards TPM that is powered by digital will provide organizations an edge the over competition. Adoption of Digital TPM will result in additional benefits of around 5-10% each in OEE improvement, first pass yield improvement and maintenance cost and breakdown reduction over traditional methodology.

How can we redefine TPM pillars?

Though all pillars in TPM are equally valuable, Planned Maintenance, Autonomous Maintenance and Quality Maintenance would offer maximum return by addressing challenges inherent to these pillars through digital applications. Identification and implementation of appropriate digital use cases would be critical to get the desired outcomes from digital powered TPM.

Digital Maintenance System could enhance PM pillar performance. Maintenance requests in a manual system are usually raised through phone calls or mails, which lacks accountability, need multiple follow ups, and cause inefficiencies. Furthermore, execution of requests also calls for multiple approvals and reminders which causes delays. A digital maintenance system can help stakeholders to raise request, provide consolidated view of all requests to the maintenance team and notify relevant stakeholder basis the established workflow.

Autonomous maintenance deals with training challenges, safety and hazard risk and accountability issues in terms of managing machine abnormalities. This puts both machine and operator at risk.

Leveraging digital tools for training and support would help operators execute maintenance tasks. Utilization of AR/VR modules and digital training modules along with digitized documents such as SOPs, checklist that can be accessed through a smart device would support and ease operators in their maintenance duties.

Unavailability of accurate and complete data, limited monitoring of standard operating procedures and lack of feedback integration impact the effectiveness of Quality Maintenance. This causes unnecessary defects to seep in thereby increasing rework, rejects and waste.

FMEA, being a live document, should be updated regularly considering inputs and feedback from day-to-day activities. However, as paper-based system requires manual approvals, maintaining and updating it becomes challenging. Linking FMEA with PFD and control plan will ensure that document remains live. Insights from RCAs could be updated in the FMEA and Control plan easily. Digital document approval system will ease the approval process, maintaining document history and document control.

How should organizations adopt?

Digital adoption is already underway in many organizations as many digital use cases are getting developed and deployed. It is imperative to integrate this digital adoption with TPM philosophy to enhance returns from TPM initiatives.

Author: Hitachi Digital Services
Hitachi Digital Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd., is an edge-to-core digital consultancy and technology services provider helping organizations realize the full potential of AI-driven digital transformation. Through a technology-unified operating model for cloud, data and IoT, Hitachi Digital Services’ end-to-end value creation for clients is established through innovation in digital engineering, implementation services, products, and solutions. Built on Hitachi Group’s more than 110 years of innovation across industries, Hitachi Digital Services helps to improve people’s lives today and build a sustainable society tomorrow. To learn more, visit https://hitachids.com