With lean manufacturing machine downtime becomes an intolerable situation, requiring a different approach to maintenance.

The common focus is changed from fixing breakdowns to preventing them. We use a process to help companies achieve this by transferring and sharing skills between the machine operator and maintenance people.

Since operators are the closest to the machines, they are included in maintenance and monitoring activities in order to prevent and provide warning of malfunctions. The machine operator stays and helps when the machine breaks down, learns how to do some of the routine maintenance tasks like cleaning the machine, and detects abnormal conditions early.

At the same time, maintenance people learn from the machine operator how to setup, run production, and shutdown the machine.

The benefits of Total Preventive Maintenance come when companies transition from a fire-fighting mode of fixing one sudden breakdown after another to preventing those breakdowns. For more information, please download our quick summary, Total Productive Maintenance at a Glance [pdf]