Implementing Total Predictive Maintenance - Essay Example

?Running Head: Summary Summary [Institute’s Summary Malaysian Manufacturing sector has impressed its critics for more than two decades now. Its phenomenal performance has allowed the Malaysian manufacturing sector to enjoy competitive advantage over other foreign manufacturers in terms of cost and quality. However, as time passed, efficiency and effectiveness of the equipment and machinery emerged as one of the most important critical success factors in the manufacturing sector. It appeared that manufacturers with efficient and effective equipments where enjoying a competitive advantage over others. Traditional methods used by technicians were being labeled as passive and non-productive. The manufactures did not take long in realizing that proper maintenance management and control of machines and equipment have a stronger and direct relationship with organizational performance and productivity. This was the time when the concept of “Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)” (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005) appeared on the scene aiming at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the equipment by using the skills and abilities of the human resource of the organization. The ultimate target is to improve the “Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) and reach to the level of Zero Defects and Zero Breakdown” (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005). The paper sheds some light on the optimum use of TPM in the Malaysian Manufacturing Industry and some implementation issues. The literature review reveals that the strategies concerning TPM can be divided into Human orientated strategies and Process orientated strategies. Human oriented have three important aspects. First, top management commitment and leadership, which is important because implementation of TPM (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005) is always met by high resistance from the subjects. In order to successfully implement such a change, commitment, dedication and force from the side of the top management is imperative to get things into momentum. Second, Total employee involvement is imperative because in the absence of the same, the system would collapse. It is when employees engage and own the system that the system delivers results or else it is doomed to extinct. Third, training and education is another important factor for the success of TPM because it introduces employees to TPM in a systematic and educated manner, providing them with information before hand and preparing them for the upcoming issues and challenges. Process oriented strategies have their roots in the technical approaches. “The goal is identify all possible sources of losses and inefficiencies in the equipments due to breakdowns, time loss, shortage of equipments, defects, startup time and others” (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005). The simple three-point agenda process oriented strategy is to first, find such losses and analyze its causes, second, planning improvements to cope up with losses and third, confirming and building on the results. In short, process oriented strategies put all their energies in creating environments and processes where employees could be provided with an optimal environment to achieve satisfaction and higher productivity, which would ultimately lead to higher organizational performance. The paper moves on with considering the problem of implementation of TPM in a developing country such as Malaysia (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005). Despite the fact that its implementation is imperative, at least for the manufacturing industry, however, resistance towards TPM has come from all directions. Non-conductive and unsupportive environments, lack of commitment and dedication from the top management, refusal of employees to take up extra training and responsibilities and others remain important causes marking the failure of TPM. In order to understand various dimensions of this problem, the paper moves forward with a structured survey approach where questionnaires have been used as the research tool. Industrial manufacturers from Northern and Central region of Malaysia (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005) remained the target of these questionnaires, which aimed at capturing insights about organization profile, TPM background, extent of current TPM activities, and success of such activities, their complexity, and others. These manufacturing organizations were working on the various industries such as consumer electrical and electronic products, pharmaceutical and health care, precision tooling and machining, rubber and plastic, semi conductors and food and beverage industries. In light of the literature present on the topic, three hypotheses have been developed for testing with the help of this research. These are as follows: “H1: Extent of Human-oriented strategy will be positively related to Extent of TPM implementation. H2: Extent of Process-oriented strategy will be positively related to Extent of TPM implementation. H3: Human-oriented strategy has greater impact on Extent of TPM level then” (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005) Process-oriented strategy With the help of multiple regression analysis, following are the important findings and results achieved from the research. “First, the relationship of operations strategy and extent of TPM implementation is considerable” (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005). This is true because the numbers indicate that operations strategy alone can explain almost 32 percent of the variation in the extent of TPM implementation. Second, furthermore, factors such as general training, maintenance training, and workplace improvement have shown a significant positive relationship with the extent of TPM implementation. Important here to note is that both general training and maintenance training are human orientated strategy factor, thus to this point, H1 is partially provided. However, considering the first finding and the fact that work place improvement is a process oriented strategy factor, there is significant evidence to conclude that H2 has great support for validation. Third, the findings revealed that like, H1 and H2, H3 (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005) is also a valid hypothesis since the variance caused by process-oriented strategy was around 5 percent; however, the same percentage for human oriented strategy was at 16 percent. The positive relationship between the human oriented strategy and TPM implementation comes as no surprise since changing the organizational strategy, work culture, training of employees and others are quite understandably, critical organizational issues, which should receive the due attention. As mentioned earlier that hardcore implementation of TPM represents a strong organizational change. Furthermore, organizations want this change to be long lasting and enduring and long-term changes are not possible without keeping in view the human factors. Short term are possible with an authoritarian style; however, for long term changes, it is important to take all people onboard, take their suggestions and feedback, allow them to contribute, prepare and train them for the change and guide them through the process and journey. Furthermore, like this research, the works of various authors have indicated a strong and positive relationship between the process-oriented strategy and the implementation of the TPM. “Workplace improvement is an important aspect, which was found to be positively related with the extent of TPM implementation” (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005). Quite understandably, in the absence of a supportive environment, work instruction controls, standardized equipments, it is less likely that any TPM implementation program would come even near to success. Without the doubts, the third hypothesis of the research held much importance since it aimed at finding that whether or not one type of strategy has any significance or dominance over the other type. As mentioned earlier that the research showed that human oriented strategies have an upper hand over the process-oriented strategies. This comes as no surprise because quite understandably, human oriented strategy lays the foundation of implementation of TPM. An organization can function in the absence of faulty equipment since the equipment or machinery can be repaired, exchanged, or replaced. However, the same is not true for the people. When people resist and fail to embrace change, the organizational performance drops down significantly. Employee satisfaction remains the key to organizational success whether it is the service sector or the manufacturing sector. “Every organization spends thousands of dollars each year for the development, training, recruitment, selection, rewards and retaining its employees” (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005). Considering the turbulent macroenvironment of today, organizations cannot suffer from high turnovers since the same means that it is losing its investment. Every employee represents a significant amount of organizational investment over a long period and when an organization loses the same bluntly, the losses are huge out of which some are unquantifiable. Therefore, the focus should be more on the human oriented strategies. Therefore, towards the end, it is understandable to conclude that in the light of the findings that both process and human oriented strategies have a significant impact of TPM implementation; however, the human factors have a slight edge over the process factors. However, important here to note is that this does not provide any rational for avoidance or underrating the process factors but it does support the idea of focusing more on meeting the resistance towards change posed by the human resource of the company (Seng, Jantan & Ramayah, 2005). References Seng, O. Y., Jantan, M., & Ramayah, T. (2005). “Implementing total productive maintenance (TPM) in Malaysian manufacturing organization: An operational strategy study.” The ICFAI Journal of Operations Management. Volume IV, Issue 2, pp. 53-62. Read More