Preventing unplanned downtime events isn’t just your maintenance team’s responsibility. While maintenance plays a central role in the upkeep and functionality of your equipment, driving toward zero unplanned downtime is a factory-wide effort.
This is what Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is all about. Developed in the 1950s by Seiichi Nakajima, TPM was first practiced in factories in the 1960s and eventually became part of Toyota’s production strategy. The methodology focused on enlisting the entire shop floor to achieve:
- Zero breakdowns and minor stops
- Zero defects
- Zero accidents or safety incidents
Today, TPM is a foundational strategy for maximizing operational availability (OA) and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). Let’s take a closer look at how total productive maintenance has evolved, its benefits, and what it looks like in a modern manufacturing facility.
What is Total Productive Maintenance?
Simply put, total productive maintenance is a strategy for preventing stoppages and maximizing equipment effectiveness. It’s a holistic process that involves machinery, equipment, people, and related resources to minimize downtime and boost product quality.
The ultimate goal of manufacturing TPM is to improve productivity by reducing downtime and waste. It incorporates proactive maintenance practices into nearly every shop floor activity. These practices can be as simple as an operator cleaning a machine component or a supervisor ensuring that an OAC checklist is up-to-date.
Involving all shop floor employees in asset maintenance not only improves uptime and production efficiency but also builds a culture of continuous improvement. We’ll dive into the major benefits of TPM below.
Benefits of applying TPM in manufacturing
Total productive maintenance methodologies offer incredible benefits for most manufacturers, especially those in industries with a high bar for quality, output, and precision. Highly regulated industries like aerospace, automotive, food and beverage, and pharmaceutical rely on TPM to meet stringent regulations and tight profit margins due to the following advantages:
- Increased equipment uptime: Proactive maintenance reduces unexpected breakdowns to keep production lines running smoothly and maximizing output.
- Lower maintenance costs: Preventive and predictive maintenance minimize expensive emergency repairs and extend the lifespan of machinery.
- Improved quality: Well-maintained equipment produces fewer defects, reducing waste, rework, and compliance risks.
- Fewer production delays: Reliable machines reduce the risk of late deliveries, which could impact supply chain activities and customer relationships.
- Better workforce engagement and collaboration: When operators take ownership of equipment care, accountability, efficiency, and overall job satisfaction tend to improve.
- Longer asset lifespan: TPM programs help manufacturers extend the lifespan of their machines and equipment, increasing predictive capacity and asset ROI.
Involving departments beyond Maintenance—like Production and Quality—in asset care minimizes unplanned downtime and fosters a sense of collective responsibility for equipment. In the next section, we’ll break down the eight basic components of a TPM program.
The eight pillars of TPM
TPM is based on eight pillars, each covering a critical step within the total productive maintenance process. While your TPM strategy must be tailored to a facility’s specific needs, it will follow the principles outlined in the chart below.
It's important to note that TPM can take years to fully implement—much depends on the size of your organization and the complexity of the implementation process. However, you can still get substantial value from only focusing on select pillars.
Here’s a quick rundown of the key components of TPM:
- Autonomous maintenance: Operators are responsible for routine maintenance tasks like cleaning, lubricating, and inspecting machines, which prevents mechanical issues and lets maintenance teams focus on more complex tasks.
- Planned maintenance: Scheduling maintenance activities based on failure rates and predicted breakdowns minimizes unplanned downtime and ensures availability during critical production periods.
- Quality maintenance: Baking error detection and prevention into production processes uncovers the root causes of defects, reducing scrap and associated costs.
- Focused maintenance: Small groups of employees from different departments can collaborate to identify opportunities for improvement in equipment operation.
- Early equipment management: Using insights gained from TPM processes, you can make better, more data-driven decisions about equipment design and usage.
- Training and education: Close skills and knowledge gaps at every level so that everyone on the plant floor is properly trained to meet TPM goals.
- Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS): Prioritizing employee safety and well-being minimizes safety risks and helps you achieve the goal of an accident-free environment.
- TPM in administration: Plant leadership gets involved in your TPM strategy by eliminating wasted time and efforts in administrative functions and finding ways to improve operational efficiency.
A successful TPM program is founded upon the 5S system and focuses on proactive problem-solving through plant-wide collaboration.
The relationship between TPM, OEE, and lean manufacturing
When discussing total productive maintenance, it’s common to hear terms like “overall equipment effectiveness” (OEE) and “lean manufacturing.” That’s because these terms are deeply interconnected. In short, TPM lays the foundation for reliable equipment, OEE measures performance, and lean manufacturing ties them together to eliminate waste and maximize efficiency.
TPM’s focus on zero breakdowns, defects, and accidents ensures machines are always available and running at peak performance. This directly impacts OEE, which measures equipment effectiveness across availability, performance, and quality. When TPM is fully implemented, OEE improves significantly—leading to fewer unplanned stops, higher throughput, and better product quality.
Lean manufacturing depends on this synergy. Without stable, well-maintained equipment, lean initiatives like just-in-time production and continuous improvement struggle to deliver results.
How to implement Total Productive Maintenance
Implementing TPM requires a structured approach that engages leadership, maintenance teams, and operators alike. Here’s how to successfully establish a TPM strategy in your manufacturing facility.
Step 1: Obtain commitment from management
TPM must be a priority at the highest levels of the organization. Leadership should not only approve the initiative but also actively support and reinforce it. Without strong management buy-in, TPM efforts can stall due to a lack of resources or competing priorities.
Key actions for leadership can include:
- Communicating TPM’s value and aligning it with company objectives.
- Allocating resources, including time, budget, and personnel.
- Setting expectations for plant managers, supervisors, and operators.
- Regularly reviewing progress and recognize teams for improvements.
When leadership consistently advocates for TPM, employees are more likely to engage and integrate its principles into daily operations.
Step 2: Conduct a thorough assessment of current maintenance practices
Before rolling out TPM, it’s essential to understand where your facility currently stands. A detailed assessment helps identify problem areas and establishes a baseline for measuring improvements.
Critical factors to include in this assessment are:
- Downtime data: Identify recurring breakdowns and their root causes.
- OEE performance: Assess availability, performance, and quality metrics.
- Current maintenance strategy: Determine the balance between reactive, preventive, and predictive maintenance.
- Operator involvement: Evaluate how much frontline workers currently contribute to equipment care.
- Parts and inventory management: Identify any delays or inefficiencies in getting replacement parts.
Gathering input from operators, maintenance teams, and engineers helps you uncover hidden inefficiencies. The more comprehensive the assessment, the more targeted your TPM strategy will be.
Step 3: Develop a TPM implementation plan
With data in hand, it’s time to create a detailed roadmap for TPM deployment. Define specific objectives, such as increasing preventive maintenance compliance or reducing unplanned downtime, by a set percentage.
Break the plan into phases, starting with pilot areas before scaling new TPM practices across your facility. Assign roles and responsibilities to ensure accountability, and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress.
Total productive maintenance should be introduced in manageable phases to ensure smooth adoption. A well-structured plan prevents confusion and ensures TPM is implemented systematically rather than as a one-off initiative.
Step 4: Provide training for employees
For TPM to succeed, all employees must understand their role in maintaining equipment reliability. Training should be practical, hands-on, and tailored to different job functions.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what this training covers at different levels:
- For operators: How to perform daily inspections, basic lubrication, and early problem detection.
- For maintenance teams: Advanced troubleshooting, predictive maintenance techniques, and root cause analysis.
- For leadership: How to sustain TPM, review OEE data, and drive continuous improvement. These processes can become part of leader standard work (LSW).
On-the-job coaching, visual maintenance guides, and refresher courses help reinforce learning and keep TPM knowledge top of mind.
Step 5: Implement autonomous maintenance practices
Autonomous maintenance is one of the most impactful TPM pillars, where operators take on a greater role in basic equipment care. This reduces the burden on maintenance teams and helps prevent minor issues from escalating into major failures.
Implementing autonomous maintenance starts with clear, standardized procedures. Providing operators with digital checklists for daily equipment checks ensures consistency—while applying 5S principles keeps workspaces organized for efficient maintenance.
Training operators to handle routine cleaning, lubrication, and minor adjustments empowers them to take an active role in equipment care. Plus, using visual controls like labels, diagrams, and dashboards helps them quickly spot abnormalities.
Recognizing and rewarding employees who engage in maintenance fosters accountability and strengthens a culture of ownership. When operators take responsibility for their machines, uptime improves, unplanned downtime decreases, and overall efficiency increases.
Step 6: Monitor and continuously improve processes
It’s important to recognize TPM as a long-term strategy that requires ongoing refinement. Regular monitoring ensures TPM practices are followed consistently and that improvements are sustained.
Ways to drive continuous improvement:
- Use OEE data to track trends in availability, performance, and quality.
- Conduct regular TPM audits to identify areas for process improvements.
- Hold team meetings to discuss maintenance successes and challenges.
- Encourage employees to report equipment abnormalities and suggest process improvements.
- Celebrate wins to publicly recognize improvements and boost engagement, reinforcing TPM culture.
Manufacturers can drive long-term efficiency, reliability, and cost savings by embedding total productive maintenance into daily operations and continuously optimizing processes. Check out the video below to learn more about successful TPM implementation.
Start your TPM implementation with a connected workforce platform
TPM implementation begins with a clear picture of your plant’s maintenance processes and an actionable plan for not only establishing but supporting a TPM program long-term. Moreover, you need to empower your employees with the right tools and systems to successfully execute TPM activities.
A connected workforce platform like L2L makes it easier for manufacturers to implement and sustain TPM by increasing visibility, streamlining workflows, and driving accountability. With real-time equipment data and issue tracking, teams can quickly identify small problems before they turn into major breakdowns.
L2L also simplifies autonomous and preventive maintenance by providing digital checklists, reminders, and automated scheduling. Operators can own routine tasks, while maintenance teams stay ahead of potential failures with optimized preventive maintenance plans. With built-in analytics and reporting, manufacturers can track OEE improvements and continuously refine their TPM strategy.
See how L2L can help your facility maximize equipment reliability and efficiency. Book a personalized demo with one of our experts today!
