Delivering Benchmark Levels of Business Excellence through TPM
By Peter Willmott WCS International Ltd.

Introduction
Increasing pressure to drive down costs and eliminate waste in all its forms across the Value/Supply Chain means the Continuous Improvement of our Assets – both physical and people related – is no longer an option that can be avoided.

The problem is that becoming world class is as much about buy-in to common goals as market and technology driven opportunities. This requires building the right management environment and shopfloor culture over time.

The question is - How can we assess the benefits, map our progress and guide the journey?

The EFQM Excellence Model™ or Business Excellence Model (BEM) provides a Toolkit for carrying out a very structured organisational health check. As such, the BEM provides the essential checks and balances. The company-wide approach to TPM provides a clear, practical, coherent, “enabling tool” to continuously improve a company’s “score” on the BEM and also the means to compare and benchmark with others.

30 years ago, Total Productive Maintenance showed the world that it is a very practical route to higher levels of equipment effectiveness. Since then, experience has shown that equipment and process problems are the root cause of many of the unplanned events that reinforce a reactive management style. Delivering reliable equipment on its own however, is not enough to deliver world class company performance. TPM has therefore evolved to address these wider management issues.

The company-wide approach to TPM in the sense of Total Productive Manufacturing, provides a clear, practical, coherent, “enabling tool” to continuously improve a company’s business efficiency and performance.

Together, the BEM and the TPM delivery process can give British Industry in terms of both large and Small Medium Enterprises, additional means for gaining and then sustaining competitive advantage.

This guide sets out the framework for using both tools together, in order to release the productive potential of process equipment and people through the elimination of waste in all its forms. Examples of using the BEM criteria are an essential part of the guide.

These notes are relevant to all of us - whether managers or advisors - who are involved in the elimination of waste in order to maximise added value across the supply chain.

How can we Benchmark and Share TPM Best Practice?
The EFQM Excellence Model ™ or Business Excellence Model (BEM) provides a Toolkit for carrying out a very structured organisational health check. As such the BEM provides checks and balances for (tactically) managing and (strategically) developing a business. The company-wide approach to TPM provides a clear, practical, coherent, “enabling tool” to continuously improve a company’s “score” on the BEM and also the means to compare and benchmark with others.

This guide draws together the practical, transparent and coherent links that exist between the widely accepted BEM toolkit and the TPM delivery process, in order to give British Industry additional means for competitive advantage via Best Practice TPM and Benchmarking.

EFQM & BEM
EFQM - European Foundation for Quality Management was established in September 1988.

EFQM Mission is: -

In the UK, the EFQM is represented by its partner organisation, The British Quality Foundation.

BEM - Because the BEM encourages the identification and sharing of best practices it is a powerful tool for performance improvement. In the UK, the EFQM Excellence Model™ is also referred to as the Business Excellence Model (BEM). At the heart of the BEM is the principle that the BEM is a self assessment tool. It consists of the 9 criteria shown below that provide a framework for exploring the link between organisational activities (or “enablers”) and results.

The BEM Benchmark
The Business Excellence Model provides an independent and widely accepted benchmark for managing the balance between strategic intent and tactical application across the business. It considers five enablers (Leadership, Policy + Strategy, People, Partnership + Resources and Processes) and four results (Customer, People, Society and Key Performance). It measures how closely the bottom up, day-to-day reality in each of the nine criteria reflects the intent set out in the top-down strategic vision and direction.

Through a scoring framework, organisations track their improvement progress by self-assessment, as well as comparing their own performance against rigorous independent benchmarks set by successful companies. This helps identify areas for improvement and priorities for action.

TPM & BEM
Through TPM all personnel are involved in continuous improvement activities, providing the opportunity to set and reinforce a common set of values and behaviours: on the shop floor TPM is driven by basic, hands-on goals, such as zero breakdowns and practical enabling tools to deliver it and much more.

Top down TPM is driven by a single business agenda supported by a structured management process proven to raise equipment output, customer service, reduced costs and improved safety, morale and of course, quality. It is an holistic approach releasing hidden value in current and future operations.

TPM works by helping management to systematically identify and then reduce hidden losses. This requires the level of attention to detail that is only possible by involving those who carry out the work.

TPM is an obvious quality tool to deploy in a manufacturing organisation of any size. It is primarily concerned with creating an environment in which individuals and teams are most likely to use all their productive resources in the most effective way. In turn this will lead to improved results, particularly in manufacturing effectiveness, but also in terms of health and safety, environmental concerns, customer and employee satisfaction, as well as hard financial returns: All key components of the BEM.

The TPM audit and coaching framework sets out a clear route map to zero breakdowns, waste elimination and beyond. As such it provides:

The outputs from the TPM audit coaching process can then be interpreted using the Business Excellence Model - to provide a realistic Standard and Benchmark of progress in order to focus future direction and action.

TPM and other Management Tools
TPM does not replace, nor does it conflict with, other management approaches such as Just in Time, lean production or ISO 9000. In fact, it compliments and supports them. In helping to reduce waste, TPM has a beneficial effect on environmental issues. In essence, BEM affects everything your company does - directly and indirectly. TPM can help you to do them all better.

What is TPM?
You have probably restructured your manufacturing operation in order to bring down labour costs and refocused the company around its core activities. You may have introduced Just-in-Time to reduce stocks and sought to build a Total Quality Culture. What else can you do to improve your competitiveness?

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) or, if you prefer, Total Productive Manufacturing, can slash unit costs in manufacturing and process industries by ensuring that plant and equipment are used to their maximum effectiveness. In the last few years, a number of large companies have implemented TPM. For many, the process has been hugely successful. Many more companies, including small, medium enterprises (SME’s) are realising that adopting TPM Principles from a Supply Chain perspective can bring significant competitive advantage. As such, TPM is a World Class enabling tool, used to secure:

Company-wide TPM recognises that it is customers who drive our business. We need to provide the necessary responses to not just satisfy, but also to exceed, the expectations of our customers. The goal is to maximise added value by eliminating waste in all that we do, right across the supply/value chain.

TPM is a Continuous Improvement process that strives to maximise equipment efficiency by creating the perfect relationship between people, their processes and equipment. It has five founding principles:

TPM is both practical and results driven. Applied to the shop floor, it is a common sense approach that provides visibility to all the six major losses that are a result of poor equipment performance. The resultant Business Performance Measure is called the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).

The TPM process must be led by manufacturing and encourages production and maintenance departments to work in harmony as a team, with the goal of increasing equipment effectiveness and in turn the organisation’s profitability.

It also involves other departments, such as supply chain administration, sales and marketing, warehousing and distribution, as well as the more direct manufacturing support functions of design, quality, production control, finance and purchasing which are concerned with equipment and process effectiveness. This of course includes management and supervision. TPM makes extensive use of waste elimination, standardisation, workplace organisation, visual management and problem solving.

Like all good “Enabling Tools” TPM must be tailored to suit the specific organisation and plant.

Adding Value By Eliminating Waste
The most effective way of adding value is to have a continuous determination to eliminate waste across the supply chain and thus maximise the Value Stream: Easy to state, difficult to deliver.

So where do the principles, processes and reality of TPM come into play to achieve the goal of a “Totally Productive Operation”?

The answer is to view TPM not simply as Total Productive Maintenance in the sense of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Autonomous Maintenance, 5 S’s, Clean Machines and so on, but rather as the proven roots and origins for applying Company-Wide TPM.

Similarly, “TPM in the Office” is better served by broadening the application of these sound and proven principles into “TPM in Administration” embracing all support functions such as sales, marketing, commercial, planning, finance, personnel, logistics, stores and IT. This recognises how the whole team contributes to the overall result.

Evolution of a Route Map to World Class
30 years ago, TPM showed the world that it is a very practical route to higher levels of equipment effectiveness. Equipment and process problems are the root cause of many of the unplanned events which reinforce a reactive management style. Delivering reliable equipment on its own however is not enough to deliver world class company performance. In helping to tackle these problems at source, TPM has evolved to address wider management issues and company-wide TPM has shown itself to be an enabler capable of delivering overall supply chain effectiveness and hence business efficiency.

What can TPM give my Business?
The benefits from TPM Implementation are realised under the following three categories: -

Assessing the Costs
One of the underlying strengths of TPM is its ability to reduce complexity and provide the route towards systematic decision making. Experience shows that a 1% improvement in the OEE is equivalent to between 5% & 20% of the annual maintenance budget: greater effectiveness leads to greater savings!

The On-the-Job Reality
TPM Implementation is based on a structured approach as shown in the 3 cycle, 9 step schematic with some fundamental and common sense ideals as a foundation.

All three cycles of the TPM Improvement Plan involve the principles of Autonomous Maintenance, as the second founding principle of Front Line Operator Asset Care.

The audit and review process explained later ensures not only accountability for this second principle, but also that all five founding principles are aligned to clear responsibilities of five Pillar Champions.

A key part of TPM addresses cleanliness and workplace organisation - eliminating dust, dirt and disarray. This is called the 5 S’s or CANDO. (Cleanliness, Arrangement, Neatness, Discipline and Order).

In summary, TPM recognises that to get a reliable and flawless operation through Continuous Improvement, it is the people who make the difference. By unlocking your full productive capacity, TPM unlocks the potential of your workforce.

How do we get Started?
To introduce TPM principles, philosophy and practicalities into an organisation, a structured, common sense, step-by-step approach has to be taken. It is a journey that comprises:

Typical timescales will of course vary according to the size of the operation, the amount of resource committed and the pace at which change can be initiated and absorbed. All these key questions plus cost/benefit potential are addressed within the front end Scoping Study or “Planning the Plan” phase, as the key part of securing management commitment.

The Potential to Transform Company Performance
Each year brings new challenges, so that not all decisions can be made on a computational basis. TPM helps us to control the routine 80%, giving us the time to focus and innovate around the difficult 20%.

TPM supports such a strategy by delivering:

Most importantly it provides a development route to enhance the impact and develop the capability of Key Personnel over four milestones:

These priorities are linked to the future business vision through the use of a continuous improvement master plan. The master plan is simply a summary of intentions laid out against the predictable stages of any change programme.

In order to sustain TPM beyond initial pilot projects the implementation of TPM has 3 dimensions: -

These align with first line and senior management roles and provide the basis for integrating management priorities. This is also aimed at giving the bottom up, team-based activity the necessary recognition at each level of TPM progress.

Alignment and Implementation
At different stages in the journey of using TPM to achieve World Class Performance, some criteria are more important than others. However, there are clear links with TPM and the Fundamental Concepts of Excellence which underpin the BEM:

The necessary alignment is provided by bottom-up evidence of the quality and status of the TPM journey through the four milestones, by very precise and exacting eight levels of Audit. The diagram below shows the audit and review criteria for the Level 1 Checklist and how it provides recognition at each level as the evidence of success during the Roll Out of TPM though geographic improvement zones in the plant.

•	Against each of the ten review points there is a nominated pillar champion with responsibility for each of the five founding TPM principles: Review points 1, 6 & 10 is the OEE Pillar Champion, 2 & 5 the Skill Development Champion, 3 & 4 the Operator Asset Care Champion, 7 & 9 the Maintainer and Quality of Maintenance Champion, and finally review point 8, the Early Equipment Management Champion.
•	For each review point there are detailed standards set against which to benchmark the assessment score. As well as the total score achievement each review point must achieve at least 3 for level 1A and at least 4 for level 1B.

Conclusions
Together, the BEM and TPM have important complimentary roles. The BEM can at a high level, help identify and reinforce the priority for improving Total Productive Manufacturing. It also helps to understand all the component activities and people who contribute to successful TPM. Having established the need for improvement, the TPM disciplines can be applied to provide the necessary and important next level of detail, as well as the practical frameworks for delivering improvement.

When used together, BEM and TPM provide a powerful force for building and sustaining true competitive advantage.

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