Action plans for implementation of total productive maintenance

Maintenance is an inevitable function in manufacturing plants. Manufacturing plants are exposed to newer and rapidly changing paradigms. Today, a productive maintenance strategy and programs have utmost importance in order to discover the useable but hidden resources in an organization. A well-conceived action plan is a pre-requisite to unearth those potential treasures. This paper presents a brief action plan for implementation of total productive maintenance (TPM). From an empirical study, conducted by these authors, it is revealed that demanding quality in maintenance practices is still a far cry. Lack of understanding of the method and implementation guidelines appear to be the major factors responsible for this state. Therefore, it is strongly felt that TPM deserves more attention both in practices and research