CaoLiao Knowledge Base | 7 Steps and Improvement Thinking for TPM Autonomous Maintenance

Original: https://cli.im/article/detail/1932

When implementing autonomous maintenance, one should not expect to solve all problems at once. Therefore, goals and content are organized into seven steps, known as "step-by-step autonomous maintenance." The ideal approach is to thoroughly complete each step, and once a certain level is achieved, proceed to the next step.

The 7 Steps of Autonomous Maintenance in TPM Management

Step 1: Initial Cleaning (Cleaning as Inspection)

Initial cleaning involves thoroughly removing dust, debris, and other contaminants from the equipment. The goal is to transform cleaning into inspection, identifying issues and uncovering potential defects in the equipment, addressing them promptly. Additionally, cleaning helps operators develop a sense of care for the equipment.

Equipment Goals:

1. Remove debris and dirt to reveal potential defects.
2. Restore aged or defective components.
3. Identify the sources of debris and dirt.

Personnel Goals:

1. Familiarize team members with group activities through simple cleaning tasks.
2. Team leaders learn leadership and management skills.
3. Cultivate a sense of care for the equipment through visual and tactile inspection, fostering curiosity and inquiry.

Managerial Guidance and Support:

1. Lead by example through functional modeling.
2. Teach employees the importance of key cleaning areas, lubrication, and reinforcement.

Step 2: Addressing Sources and Difficult Areas

To maintain and enhance the results of the initial cleaning phase, it is essential to eliminate the sources of dust and contamination (e.g., through removal, covering, or sealing). Effective measures should also be taken for hard-to-maintain areas, such as lubrication, cleaning, and decontamination, to improve equipment maintainability.

Activities:

1. Implement measures to prevent scattering.
2. Improve cleaning efficiency and reduce time.

Equipment Goals:

1. Prevent the generation and adhesion of debris and dirt to enhance equipment reliability.
2. Ensure the sustained cleanliness of equipment and improve maintainability.

Personnel Goals:

1. Learn the principles of mechanical operation and processing.
2. Use local debris and dirt as improvement topics to learn problem-solving methods and implementation.
3. Develop interest and initiative in equipment improvement.
4. Experience the satisfaction of successful improvements.

Managerial Guidance and Support:

1. Teach the principles of mechanical operation and processing.
2. Use analytical techniques (e.g., "where-where," "what-what") to teach methods for analyzing phenomena.
3. Increase the frequency of concretizing improvement ideas.

Step 3: Developing Cleaning and Lubrication Standards

Based on the insights gained from Steps 1 and 2, develop provisional standards for maintaining assigned equipment, such as cleaning, lubrication, and tightening.

Equipment Goals:

1. Improve hard-to-lubricate areas.
2. Implement visual management.
3. Ensure the maintenance of basic equipment conditions (cleaning, lubrication, reinforcement) to embed anti-aging activities.

Personnel Goals:

1. Establish and adhere to personal standards.
2. Learn the importance of compliance and the concept of management.
3. Foster a sense of responsibility and teamwork.

Managerial Guidance and Support:

1. Prepare lubrication management regulations.
2. Teach lubrication and inspection techniques, providing hands-on guidance.
3. Instruct on the development of cleaning and lubrication standards and assist in their creation.

Step 4: Comprehensive Inspection

To fully utilize the inherent functions of equipment, learn its structure, functions, and judgment criteria. Inspect the appearance of key components, identify defects, and restore them. Acquire the necessary inspection skills and continuously refine previously established standards.

Activities:

1. Provide inspection skills training.
2. Conduct comprehensive inspections.
3. Improve inspection methods and equipment.
4. Develop standards for reliable inspections within specified timeframes.

Equipment Goals:

1. Restore and improve aged or defective components.
2. Thoroughly implement visual management.
3. Improve hard-to-inspect areas.
4. Ensure the sustained restoration of aging through daily inspections, further enhancing equipment reliability.

Personnel Goals:

1. Learn equipment structure, functions, and aging judgment criteria through inspection training.
2. Learn simple defect handling methods.
3. Develop leadership skills through guidance from team leaders.
4. Learn methods for collecting, summarizing, and analyzing inspection data, understanding their importance.

Managerial Guidance and Support:

1. Prepare comprehensive inspection checklists, manuals, and training materials.
2. Develop inspection schedules.
3. Promptly address delegated tasks.
4. Teach simple defect handling methods.
5. Instruct on visual management and improving hard-to-inspect areas.
6. Guide the collection of inspection data.

Step 5: Autonomous Inspection

Integrate the standards from Step 3 (cleaning, lubrication, inspection) with the knowledge from Step 4 to form autonomous inspection standards. Continuously learn and familiarize with equipment operation, actions, and their relationship to quality and equipment, developing the ability to operate equipment correctly and detect abnormalities early.

Activities:

1. Develop autonomous maintenance standards, schedules, and complete equipment-focused activities.
2. Adhere to standards and faithfully perform daily maintenance.
3. Aim for zero failures.

Equipment Goals:

1. Apply individual improvement results to similar equipment.
2. Comprehensively revise visual management.
3. Enhance reliability and maintainability.
4. Achieve efficient operational processes and equipment.
5. Create a workplace where abnormalities are easily understood.

Personnel Goals:

1. Develop a comprehensive understanding of processes and equipment.
2. Use sensory perception to detect abnormal signs, fostering the ability to prevent failures and cultivate skilled operators.
3. Embed autonomous management within teams.

Managerial Guidance and Support:

1. Define roles for autonomous and specialized maintenance inspections.
2. Teach basic maintenance skills and simple diagnostics.
3. Share examples of preventing failures proactively.
4. Instruct on the unique structure and functions of processes and equipment for systematic understanding.

Step 6: Ensuring Process Quality

Expand activities from equipment-focused to ensuring process quality. Develop management standards, simplify management objects (materials and tasks), and ensure thorough organization and compliance. Implement visual management and standardization in the workplace.

Activities:

1. Implement activities to prevent defects from flowing downstream.
2. Conduct activities to avoid producing defects.
3. Ensure processes and equipment aim for zero defects.

Equipment Goals:

1. Revise quality assurance items.
2. Achieve reliable processes where defects do not flow downstream.
3. Redefine conditions for acceptable products.
4. Realize reliable processes and equipment that do not produce defects.

Personnel Goals:

1. Cultivate operators skilled in equipment and quality, turning them into technicians.
2. Enable operators to perform autonomous management.

Managerial Guidance and Support:

1. Teach process quality and conditions for acceptable products (processing).
2. Explain the relationships between requirements, causes, and results.
3. Instruct on the five conditions for easy compliance.
4. Teach the five conditions for easy QA: clear (quantitative) conditions for acceptable products, easy setting of conditions, easy change of conditions, easy detection of condition changes, and easy restoration of conditions.
5. Use equipment operation and processing principles to teach quality assurance.
6. Integrate operations, maintenance, quality assurance, production technology, and product design departments into the quality system.

Step 7: Autonomous Management

Through the previous six steps, significant results have been achieved, and personnel have been greatly developed. Step 7 focuses on establishing a continuous improvement mindset, consistently applying the PDCA cycle, aligning with company policies and goals, and setting new team activity targets for thorough autonomous management.

Activities:

1. Maintain current levels.
2. Continuously improve.
3. Inherit and sustain the current TPM level.

Equipment Goals:

1. Maintain zero accidents, zero defects, and zero failures, aiming for higher standards.

Personnel Goals:

1. Embed auxiliary task activities, identify personal issues, and develop problem-solving habits.
2. Predict abnormalities and prevent failures and defects proactively.
3. Embed autonomous management, enabling independent implementation of company and factory policies at the frontline.

Managerial Guidance and Support:

1. Support activities to maintain, improve, and inherit TPM levels.
2. Further enhance technical skills.
3. Aim for the next generation of TPM.

Conclusion

TPM autonomous maintenance refers to employees autonomously implementing comprehensive management, maintenance, and care of the enterprise. The key to autonomous maintenance lies in truly achieving "autonomy," making the maintenance and care of onsite equipment a conscious behavior of operators and a good work habit and inherent quality.

Autonomous maintenance is primarily carried out by production site operators, who inspect equipment using their senses (hearing, touch, smell, sight, taste) and receive training in maintenance skills such as lubrication and tightening. This enables employees to handle minor repairs. Through continuous training and learning, onsite operators gradually become familiar with equipment structure and performance, not only operating, maintaining, and diagnosing faults correctly but also handling minor issues.

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7 Steps and Improvement Thinking for TPM Autonomous Maintenance