Verification of effectiveness of education and training pillar of total productive maintenance

Abstract

Reliability and productivity of the production systems are the key requirements for survival of any manufacturing firm in the era of global competition and recession. The reliability and productivity of the production equipments can be ensured with a fail-safe maintenance plan and trained workmen to deal with the equipments correctly. The education and training pillar of total productive maintenance (TPM) is vital in order to foster workmen skillful who are able to identify equipment abnormalities, repair them to restore the equipment condition and maintain the equipment to its best condition. Exercising this pillar also facilitates effective functioning of other activities of TPM. The extensive review of the literature shows that the performance of individual pillar of TPM has not been measured yet. The objective of this research is to measure and verify effectiveness of education and training pillar by implementing operational and maintenance development program for the workmen. Mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR), availability rate, performance rate, quality rate, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), overall line effectiveness (OLE), kaizen, safety health and environment issues and capability indices Cp and Cpk are identified as performance measurement metrics (PMM) and a detailed frame work is worked out to apply them in practice. Four processes of a medium scale halogen bulb manufacturing company and four processes of a large scale ball bearing manufacturing company were selected on the basis of the low observed performance as compared to that of the world class performance under various performance measurement metrics. To discover the possible reasons, a detailed skill mapping exercise was done that resulted in lots of skill gaps between desired skill levels and available skill level of the workmen. To bridge the skill gaps a well formulated training exercise was conducted that included, off the job training, on the job training and training using one point lessons.