The initiation of Total Productive Maintenance to a pilotproduction line in the German automobile industry
Abstract: At WITTE Automotive's plant in Velbert, Germany, an effort has been startedto implement Total Productive Maintenance. It is a Production managementmethod and WITTE's ultimate goal in introducing TPM is as a means to achievea leaner production and a calming of the material flow. In Total Productive Maintenance, reliability and availability are theultimate goals and the way to accomplish the goals is through elimination ofthe major losses. These losses are only due to mechanical nature andvisualised by the key figure Overall Equipment Effectiveness. The goal of the thesis is to achieve an increase in produced units per hourand employee from 140 to 160. In doing so, OEE should also increase, but anygains in productivity or effectiveness should only be justified throughmeasures in TPM, not harder labour.Through literature studies, a workshop with an experienced consultant and avisit at the exemplary TPM implementing company ArcelorMittal in Bremen, thetasks to be performed were set. In order to visualise production losses, asheet for recording production progress in a timely manner was developed,together with a computer aided analysis, and the possibility to illustratethe data for further evaluation. Meanwhile, the introduction of a task forcecalled TPM-Commando, specialised in eliminating the major losses was to besupported and rendered a continuous improvement process to be applied.Lastly, the author was to provide scheduling and visual aids for introducingthe workers to autonomous maintenance. The start value for the thesis goals proved to be overestimated, with theactual initial value at 115 produced units per hour and employee. If the same improvement rate of 14% was to be applied to the new value, the new goal was to top 130 pu/hEE. However, the expectations were surpassed and a value of over 140 was averaged in a four week period, signifying an increase in over 20%. The most significant result however, is the fact that the trend isincreasing, as well as the fact that employees found the method to bebeneficial to both the company and the operators. Consequently, recommendations were made to fortify the project TPM with aproject plan complete with goals and a timeline, as well as to assignsufficient resources to the implementation.
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