Topic guide · 24 articles
TPM and maintenance
Total productive maintenance (TPM) makes equipment reliability a shared job between operators and maintenance staff, instead of leaving it to the maintenance department alone. It is built on eight pillars that rest on a 5S foundation, with autonomous maintenance at its core: operators clean, inspect, lubricate and tighten their own machines and catch small problems before they become breakdowns. These guides cover TPM and its pillars, the maintenance strategies it works alongside, and how to measure and reduce downtime with OEE and the six big losses.
Also useful: Maintenance kaizen ideas, Downtime benchmark charts
Quick guides: Model area 90-day plans, Reducing machine downtime: a worked month
Also: Model area 90-day plans, Cost of downtime, Lean books with honest summaries
Picture gallery: Autonomous maintenance examples (24)
Start here
- 1
Autonomous Maintenance: The Seven-Step Process
The 7 steps of autonomous maintenance, from initial cleaning to full operator self-management. What each step produces and where AM programs usually stall.
Read the guide - 2
What are the Different Types of Maintenance Workers?
Most maintenance teams have 3 types of maintenance workers: technicians, engineers and planners. What each role does day to day and how their work differs.
Read the guide - 3
Understanding Equipment Failure: Causes and Prevention
Equipment failure: common causes, from aging equipment and improper operation to skipped preventive maintenance and the environment, and how to prevent it.
Read the guide
All 24 articles on tpm and maintenance
Total productive maintenance (3)
Autonomous maintenance and CILR (4)
Maintenance strategies and teams (10)
- What are Five Types of Maintenance Strategies?
- Proactive vs Reactive Maintenance: The Difference
- Preventive vs Predictive Maintenance: Key Differences
- What are the Benefits of Preventive Maintenance?
- Planned Maintenance: Optimization Strategies for Reliability
- The Difference Between Planned and Scheduled Maintenance
- Reliability-Centered Maintenance: A Practical Guide
- What are the Different Types of Maintenance Workers?
- Maintenance KPIs: What to Measure and Why
- Why You Should Digitize Equipment Maintenance
Downtime, OEE and equipment failure (7)
- Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE): What is it?
- The Six Big Losses in Lean Manufacturing
- How to Reduce Manufacturing Downtime?
- Planned Downtime: What it is, the Benefits
- Understanding Equipment Failure: Causes and Prevention
- Four Most Common Causes of Equipment Failure
- Root Cause Analysis for Equipment Failures: Methods and Framework
Key terms
- Total productive maintenance (TPM)
- Eight pillars of TPM
- Autonomous maintenance
- CILR (clean, inspect, lubricate, retighten)
- Preventive maintenance (PM)
- Predictive maintenance (PdM)
- Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM)
- Planned maintenance
- Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
- Six big losses
- Mean time between failures (MTBF)
- Micro-stops
- Mean time to repair (MTTR)
- PM compliance
- Equivalent annual cost (EAC)
- Compressed air leakage
- Machine hour rate
Where LeanSuite helps
Autonomous Maintenance
Rolls out visual CILR (clean, inspect, lube, retighten) checklists so operators catch small abnormalities before they cause downtime.
See Autonomous MaintenanceCILR Checklists
Build visual CILR checklists so operators clean, inspect, lubricate and re-tighten on schedule and catch problems before they become breakdowns.
See CILR ChecklistsMicro-stops
Log the brief jams your ERP and MES never report, and see which micro-stops cost the most so you can win back OEE.
See Micro-stopsAI SMP
Film a senior technician once and get a standard maintenance procedure with torque values, lockout steps, tools and parts.
See AI SMP
Free tools
- OEE calculatorOverall equipment effectiveness from shift time, downtime, ideal cycle time and part counts.
- TEEP calculatorTotal effective equipment performance: OEE multiplied by how much of all calendar time you plan to run.
- Downtime cost calculatorWhat an hour, an event and a year of unplanned downtime cost, from lost output, idle labour, scrap and overtime.
- MTBF and MTTR calculatorMean time between failures, mean time to repair and availability from operating time, failures and repair time.
- Maintenance strategy selectorAnswer the RCM questions for one failure mode and get the maintenance strategy, the reasoning and the check or test interval.
- Repair or replace calculatorEquivalent annual cost of keeping and repairing an old machine against buying a new one, with each one's economic life and the break-even figures.
- Compressed air leak cost calculatorAir lost, kW and cost a year for each tagged leak from its size and the pressure, ranked so the biggest gets fixed first.
- Machine hour rate calculatorWhat one productive hour of a machine costs, with and without the operator, the cost per part and how utilisation moves the rate.
Free templates
- Autonomous maintenance (CILR) checklist20 clean, inspect, lubricate and retighten checks with a box per day, an abnormality log and sign-off.
- SMED changeover worksheetChangeover steps with times, internal or external, what can move, ideas and before/after totals.
- OEE tracking sheetOne row per shift for a week. The Excel version works out availability, performance, quality and OEE and charts the week.
- Preventive maintenance checklist templateA PM checklist per machine with readings and sign-off, and a PM schedule that works out the next due date.
- Equipment downtime log (MTTR and MTBF)A breakdown and downtime log, with MTTR, MTBF and downtime by machine and cause worked out in Excel.
- Lubrication schedule templateEvery lube point with lubricant, method, amount, frequency and who, with next due dates and a monthly sign-off record.
- TPM tag logEvery abnormality tag with type, who fixes it, priority and dates, with days open and counts by type and week.
- Autonomous maintenance step auditCriteria for each of the seven autonomous maintenance steps, scored 0 to 2, with the step result and the decision to move on.
- Six big losses worksheetWhere a machine's planned time goes: the six big losses in minutes, ranked, with A, P, Q and OEE worked out.
- Maintenance work order formOne form per maintenance job from request to handback, and a log that tracks response, completion and backlog by priority.
- Maintenance KPI trackerMTBF, MTTR, availability and PM compliance per asset and month, plant figures from the totals, planned maintenance % and backlog in weeks.
- Equipment criticality analysisAssets scored 1 to 5 on six criteria with your own weights, ranked and sorted into classes A, B and C with a safety override and a suggested maintenance strategy.
- RCM worksheet (failure mode and task selection)Failure modes classed as hidden, safety, operational or non-operational, then a task chosen for each: condition-based, discard, failure-finding, redesign or run to failure.
- Cost deployment matrixWCM cost deployment on paper and in Excel: loss quantities by process, causal and resultant losses, the cost of each loss, a Pareto and the projects that recover them.
- Breakdown analysis reportOne equipment breakdown from the stop to the 90-day check, plus a breakdown log with repeat flags, MTBF and MTTR by asset and a Pareto of causes.
- Weekly maintenance schedule templateNext week's maintenance jobs, scheduled only when ready, loaded against each craft's hours by day, with schedule compliance and break-ins at week end.
- Autonomous maintenance 90-day model area planAM steps 0 to 3 on one model machine in 13 weeks, a KPI board, the day-90 gate and expansion waves for months 4 to 12.
- Professional maintenance (PM) 90-day model area planThirteen weeks from breakdown analysis to a running PM calendar on one model machine, a KPI board, the day-90 gate and expansion waves.
- Early equipment management 90-day model area planThirteen weeks from lessons on current machines to a tracked start-up on one model equipment project, a KPI board, the day-90 gate and expansion waves.
- Cost deployment pillar 90-day model area planThirteen weeks from the loss map to costed, ranked projects in one model area, a KPI board, the day-90 gate and expansion waves.
- Downtime reason codes template26 starter codes mapped to the six big losses, a log with drop-downs, a Pareto by code and by loss, and a code card for the line.
- Critical spare parts list and stocking levelsAssets ranked by consequence, each part classed and given a stocking policy, and min and max worked out from usage and lead time, with the downtime each stock-out would cost.
- Overhead crane inspection checklist: frequent and periodic34 crane checks tied to OSHA 1910.179: an operator's pre-shift card, frequent and periodic inspections with signed records, a deficiency and tag-out log, and a register of next due dates.
- Maintenance job plan templateOne job planned on one sheet: steps and craft hours, parts checked against stock, tools, lockout and permits, documents, a ready check for the schedule, and technician feedback.
- Condition monitoring route sheetA route of measuring points with baselines, alert and alarm limits, a check interval from the P-F interval, readings with rising and overdue flags, and an exceptions list worst first.
Free training decks
- Autonomous maintenance training presentation: the 7 stepsThe 7 steps of jishu hozen, who does what and how step audits work, in 19 slides with notes and a quiz.
- TPM training presentation: the 8 pillarsWhat TPM is, the six big losses, OEE and the 8 pillars, in 19 slides with a loss-spotting activity.
- Manufacturing excellence pillars training presentationThe 20 pillars, cost deployment, the 7-step approach, model areas and audits, in 17 slides.
Free printable posters
- Lockout tagout (LOTO) steps posterThe eight lockout tagout steps, from preparing to restoring, for every machine with stored energy.
- Compressed air and water leaks posterWhere air and water leaks hide, and five steps to find, tag, fix and re-check them.
- TPM 8 pillars posterThe TPM house on a 5S foundation, with a line on each of the eight pillars.
- Autonomous maintenance 7 steps posterThe seven steps of jishu hozen, from initial cleaning to autonomous management.
FAQ
Questions about tpm and maintenance
Initial cleaning; eliminating contamination sources and hard-to-reach areas; setting provisional cleaning, lubrication and inspection standards; general inspection; autonomous inspection; standardization; and full self-management. The sequence was codified by the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance, and each step builds the foundation the next one needs.
Five common strategies are reactive (breakdown) maintenance, preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, predictive maintenance and reliability-centered maintenance. Reactive maintenance fixes equipment only after it fails, which usually means more downtime and higher repair costs, although it can still make sense for non-critical equipment.
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) measures how productive a piece of equipment is, calculated by multiplying availability, performance and quality. The six big losses (unplanned stops, planned stops, small stops, slow cycles, production rejects and startup rejects) break the lost OEE down further, so you can see which kind of equipment waste costs the most. Both come from Seiichi Nakajima's work on TPM.
Planned maintenance works out what a job needs: which tasks to perform, how to carry them out, and the tools and parts to have ready. Scheduled maintenance decides when the work happens and who does it. The two go hand in hand, but they are not the same thing.
More topics
- Lean manufacturing fundamentals
- Kaizen and continuous improvement
- Root cause analysis and problem solving
- Quality management
- 5S and visual management
- Value stream mapping and flow
- Standard work, SOPs and training
- Safety management
- Lean leadership and employee engagement
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