Maintenance Technology June 2015 - (Page 6)

UPTIME Remembering The Father of TPM Bob Williamson Contributing Editor T otal Productive Maintenance (TPM) was first developed in 1969 in Japan at Nippon Denso Co. (now Denso Corp., Kariya, Aichi Prefecture, Japan), part of Toyota Motors, under the leadership of Mr. Seiichi Nakajima of the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM), Tokyo. TPM was further developed and refined in Japan during the following decade, and reached America in the mid-1980s. On April 11, 2015, Mr. Nakajima, the "Father of TPM," who brought us his passionate vision and methods, died at age 96. This month, I would like to pay tribute to him by sharing some of his life and wisdom as my TPM sensei. 'Just-in-time manufacturing-Toyota's Production System-could not exist without TPM. Trouble-free equipment leads to uninterrupted flow, improved quality, reduced waste, and lower costs.' A life's work Mr. Nakajima worked for more than a half century as a maintenance and TPM consultant and teacher. During the rebuilding of Japan following World War II, he visited the U.S. to study maintenance methods. After studying American-style preventive maintenance, Mr. Nakajima introduced Productive Maintenance (PM), the predecessor of TPM, to Japan in 1951. I met Mr. Nakajima almost 40 years later in his intensive "Introduction to TPM" workshop. While his bilingual teaching method, with the aid of an interpreter, seemed cumbersome at first, it afforded plenty of time to make copious notes. These original notes, and learning from Mr. Nakajima's lectures over the subsequent five years, gave me many insights to what TPM was intended to be and do. A press release about Mr. Nakajima's death from JMA Consultants Inc. (affiliated with the JIPM), Englewood Cliffs, NJ, stated, "Without his remark- 6| MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY able effort, TPM and the manufacturing industry would not have been what it is today." It called his establishment of the PM Awards (the current TPM Awards), one of his most significant achievements. The first PM Awards winner with TPM methodology was Denso in 1971, the year in which most consider TPM to have originated. The release added that Mr. Nakajima's achievement was also honored by the Emperor of Japan, who presented him with the Ranju Ho-sho, or Medal with Blue Ribbon. The award recognizes individuals with significant lifetime achievements, and was given to Mr. Nakajima by the Emperor "to show gratitude for the dedication to improving the manufacturing industry through TPM." Toyota Production System The renowned Toyota Production System (TPS) and other key industrial strategies from Japan owe much to Mr. Nakajima and TPM. Taiichi Ohno, who developed the TPS and Kanban in the 1970s, and Shigeo Shingo, a Toyota industrial engineer in the 1960s and 1970s who contributed to TPS (and other strategies), have cited Mr. Nakajima for his foundational work in the area of eliminating equipment breakdowns. As Shingo wrote in A Study of the Toyota Production System (1981), "To approach the ideal of non-stock production [single-piece flow], eliminate breakdowns and defects by detecting and responding to their causes." And in Toyota Production System (1978), Ohno stated that, "Toyota's strength does not come from its healing process-it comes from preventive maintenance." Ohno and Shingo saw that TPM was the answer to eliminating equipment-related waste (or losses) and achieving the goal of uninterrupted production flow that could not be addressed by traditional maintenance approaches. Seiichi Nakajima proved over and over that TPM is the equipment side of TPS (and lean manufacturing). Unfortunately, Mr. Nakajima and his TPM principles are often overlooked by many of today's "lean thinkers" as they work to adapt the principles of the TPS to their journeys of continuous improvement. continued p.8 JUNE 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Maintenance Technology June 2015

My Take
Uptime
For On The Floor
Compressed Air Challenge
News
Friction, Fluid Optimize High-Inertia Systems
Improved Culture Cuts Downtime
Maximimize Power-Plant Skills
Gateways Make Systems Multilingual
Technology Showcase
Products
Marketplace
Lubrication Checkup

Maintenance Technology June 2015