The Maintenance Mindset

 

  A TPM Board is a simple visual tool used to define basic maintenance and equipment-care tasks that can be performed by production operators. This is commonly referred to as Operator Autonomous Maintenance. Not every maintenance task requires a maintenance technician. Operators are already at the equipment throughout the day, so there are certain routine tasks they can perform safely with the proper training. These can include cleaning, basic inspections, checking for leaks or damage, wiping down components, and lubricating designated grease points. The first step is deciding which tasks should remain with maintenance and which can reasonably be assigned to operators. For example, an electrical inspection may be performed by maintenance every 60 days, while an operator may grease designated fittings weekly or clean an inspection window daily. Basic Items on the Board -           Calendar -       ...

  I have spent a lot of my career around manufacturing equipment. I have worked in Lean, engineering, maintenance, process improvement, and reliability. Of course, we have to repair equipment, and we need good preventive maintenance. But I think there is another question we should be asking. How can I make this machine better? For many years, most of my improvement work was focused on traditional Lean manufacturing. Around 2016, I became much more involved in maintenance and manufacturing engineering. I started experimenting with sensors, cameras, equipment data, monitoring systems, and other technologies. I began to see how much opportunity there was when I combined engineering with maintenance. I remember working with heavy industrial equipment where we had machines taking some pretty significant impacts during production. The frustrating part was that maintenance didn't always know an impact had occurred. The machine might continue running and then fail hours or even days late...