Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) helps create a Lean enterprise by providing a structure in which team-based activities drastically reduce breakdowns, defects and other equipment-related losses. The result is an environment where people and machines are capable of delivering exactly what customers want, when they want it.

The goals of TPM are Zero Breakdowns, Zero Accidents and Zero Defects: performance, safety and quality. TPM's team approach brings together production, maintenance and engineering knowledge to assure reliability, maintainability and high performance. TPM prepares operators to do some equipment care independently of the maintenance staff, freeing skilled trades for more specialized activities like preventive maintenance, predictive programs and new equipment planning and design.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) Pillars:

• Autonomous Maintenance
• Focused Improvements
• Planned Maintenance
• Technical Training
• Quality Maintenance
• Early Equipment Management
• Environmental and Safety Management
• Office TPM

LVSI applies the TPM approach developed by Seiichi Nakamura, the father of TPM, adapted to the U.S. culture and enriched with over 13 years of implementation experience. Working in tandem, these strategies provide organizations with a powerful program to create equipment ideal for their production environment -- equipment that is easy to operate, easy to maintain and "right-sized" to aid in establishing flow.

LVSI also provides clients with a Reliability Assessment is a process of gathering detailed information and data to pinpoint and identify major equipment conditions and key culture issues affecting the productivity of the organization.

In collaboration with maintenance and production personnel, LVSI consultants will perform an objective assessment of equipment reliability providing a clear understanding of current state along with recommended improvement opportunities, improvement cost/benefit analysis, an implementation action plan, and the timeframe to execute the plan.

Effective Equipment Management is a structured process focusing on reducing the complexity often associated with the operation and maintenance of equipment. One of the eight pillars of Total Productive Maintenance, Effective Equipment Management brings the principles of Lean to the design and manufacture of equipment and consists of three elements:

• Design for Quality Assurance
  
• Design for Maintainability
• Life Cycle Costing