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Book summary · TPM and maintenance · Intermediate

Introduction to TPM: summary and review

Total Productive Maintenance

By Seiichi Nakajima. First published 1988.

The short answer

This is the English edition of Nakajima's short introduction to Total Productive Maintenance, the system that links equipment upkeep to quality control and to the people who run the machines. Its central argument is that operators should own basic care of their own equipment while maintenance and engineering go after the causes of losses. It is a compact 1980s overview with examples from Japanese plants, not a step-by-step manual. Read it to understand why TPM is built the way it is. Skip it if you want a current, detailed implementation guide.

Read it if

  • You are about to pilot autonomous maintenance on a first machine and must explain the reasoning to operators and maintenance leads.
  • Your plant has chronic small stops and you want the origin of the six big losses and OEE vocabulary your team already uses.

Skip it if

  • You want checklists and a week-by-week rollout plan. Nakajima's 1989 TPM Development Program is the larger companion.
  • Your problem is condition monitoring or reliability engineering. A 1988 translation predates CMMS software and sensor data.

When it pays off: Before you start TPM on a first machine, so you can say why operators and maintenance are being asked to share the equipment. Once a pilot runs, the pilot teaches more than a second read.

The core ideas, in plain language

  1. 1

    Equipment care is a shared job

    Operators clean, inspect and lubricate their own machine (autonomous maintenance, jishu hozen). Maintenance technicians then spend their time on work that needs their skills.

  2. 2

    Measure losses, not uptime

    TPM counts six big losses: failure, setup and adjustment, idling and minor stops, reduced speed, process defects and reduced yield. They group into availability, performance and quality, which multiply into OEE. A machine running all shift at half speed looks fine on an uptime chart.

  3. 3

    First cleaning is inspection

    The aim is zero breakdowns by restoring and keeping basic conditions. Wiping a machine down exposes leaks, cracks and loose parts that nobody had a reason to see, which is why the first autonomous maintenance step is cleaning.

  4. 4

    TPM is company-wide

    The publisher describes it as preventive maintenance combined with total quality control and total employee involvement. Wikipedia reports the first PM Prize going to Nippondenso, a Toyota parts supplier, in 1971.

  5. 5

    American preventive maintenance, rebuilt around operators

    According to the Marshall Institute, George Smith taught preventive maintenance in Japan in the 1950s with Nakajima as interpreter. TPM kept that discipline and moved routine work to the people at the machine.

How to use it on Monday morning

  1. 1

    Time one machine's stops

    Pick the machine with the most unplanned stops. Sit with it for two hours on one shift with a stopwatch. Record each stop's length and the operator's explanation, then sort the minutes into the six loss types.

  2. 2

    Run a one-hour clean-and-tag

    Bring the operator and a maintenance technician. Clean the machine together and hang a tag on every abnormality: leak, loose bolt, worn guard, unreachable inspection point. Count the tags.

  3. 3

    Close the cheap tags this week

    Split tags into operator-fixable, maintenance-this-week and needs-downtime. Fix the first group before Friday. Operators judge TPM by whether their tags get closed.

  4. 4

    Let the operator write the daily check

    Draft a one-page list of 10 to 20 clean, inspect and lubricate tasks with the operator and cut what they say cannot be done in the time.

What to be careful about

  • Short and dated

    It is 129 pages, translated in 1988, with examples from plants of that period. It predates automatic OEE capture, CMMS software and sensor-based monitoring, so you must add those yourself.

  • Rollout detail sits elsewhere

    The 1989 TPM Development Program translates Nakajima's TPM tenkai, and Kennedy cites it as the first printed source of OEE. Wikipedia says the eight-pillar model came later, expanded from an original five.

  • The 85 percent OEE figure is misused

    Many sources credit Nakajima with an 85 percent OEE target. Wikipedia's OEE article calls it a myth: OEE omits some losses, and the same score can hide very different availability, performance and quality mixes. Baseline each machine against itself.

  • Programs fail on people

    Reliamag names the common failure as treating autonomous maintenance as a cleaning program, plus underfunded inspection training and fading management commitment.

Introduction to TPM compared with TPM Development Program: Implementing Total Productive Maintenance

Nakajima's 1989 book is the larger companion and, by its title, the implementation volume. Choose Introduction to TPM for the reasoning in about 130 pages before you commit a line. Choose the Development Program when you are planning the rollout. Its page count and content were not verified, so check a library copy.

Tools and templates on LeanSuite that go with it

Book details

Bibliographic details of Introduction to TPM
TitleIntroduction to TPM: Total Productive Maintenance
AuthorSeiichi Nakajima
First published1988. English translation of the Japanese TPM nyumon, published by Productivity Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts) in 1988. The year of the Japanese original could not be verified.
Edition shownFirst English edition, hardcover (129 pages, preface by Norman Bodek), Productivity Press, 1988
ISBN-13978-0915299232
Pages129

Details checked against public records on 7 October 2026. Other editions have other ISBNs. We carry no affiliate links.

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