TPM in the digital era: the evolution of TPM and the use of information technology

The digital technology progress and the globalization have made the world become a vast global village forcing companies to increasingly seek models for loss elimination to sustain their competitive. Likewise, to survive in this new business model it is crucial that manufacturing exerts an active role and become itself a competitive advantage. The term “World Class Manufacturing” represents in a wide way the application o f the manufacturing “best practices” for both, as a tool for loss elimination and as an operation strategy . Among these practices TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is in the present one of the most important methodologies for industrial management, envisioning zero loss through the deep involvement of the entire organization. Since its creation in the ’70s, TPM has been in constant evolution. In the same period an important evolution also occurred in the Information Technology (IT) field. Making an analogy is observed that many TPM processes and tool s have opportunities to be optimized and increase its efficiency since the current technological resources were not available when they were first created. The purpose of this article is fro m a case study shows how IT can assist TPM processes and tools through the use of electronic tools, especially supporting the Autonomous Maintenance teams. This article attempts to establish the best balance between the use of electronic tools versus the original TPM physical tools ("pencil and paper") getting all the benefits that IT provides without losing the essence and the functionality of the original tool