Barriers to Implement TPM

The relevance of TPM and the urgency to implement in Indian industries is of special interest in capital scarce economy, to sustain local and international markets and to face ever growing competition because of recent liberalization. It is desirable to mould the mechanism of implementation in India to suit local conditions succeed, a consensus style of decision making, etc. Indian industry suffers traditionally with factors like inadequate compensatory package, below average level of workers awareness, segmented hierarchical kind of setup, old maintenance practices etc. Most of Japanese concepts including TPM provide to satisfy people's higher order needs and it can be observed that TPM promotes achievement motivation.

TPM will be more successful if it is tried in those industries, where reasonable packages are offered and there is required degree of job security. Orienting the people's attitudes towards accepting and appreciating the concept of TPM, through meetings. Workshops are important in addition to technical inputs to improve maintenance skills.

Companies that plan to implement TPM should aim for Zero breakdowns and Zero defects. Every company that adopts TPM approach must adopt three imperatives.

1. The quality and functioning of equipment must change.
2. The equipment operators must change their way of thinking about equipment.
3. As a result, work place itself must change drastically.

TPM will not be successful in companies that will not make change in cultures - decision making responsibility must be pushed to lower levels of hierarchy. Road to successful TPM implementation raises some tough questions like :

1. How does the company reward operators?
2. Do you trust and believe operators will adjust their machines?
3. Why should maintenance assume management responsibilities?
4. What is the cost of our current approach to maintenance?

The TPM can only succeed if companies realise that path to progress and success lies through integrating maintenance fully into total business system of company.

Thus it can be seen that overall maintenance effectiveness is of technical features of system being used, as well as the culture of the organisation.